Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5)

by Noah Mann

  That was what we believed. It was not what we knew, but what we felt was right.

  There’s always hope...

  Yes, there was. And I thought back to the last time I’d seen my friend, on the static-filled ATV transmission. That was where he’d slipped in what I’d thought was an innocent reference to a sporting team. What other information might he have tried to covertly pass along in that exchange? From memory, I couldn’t recall. But I wouldn’t have to do that.

  The transmission had been recorded.

  Forty Three

  Sitting at Micah’s workstation, I queued up the recordings saved from every ATV transmission both received and sent from the Bandon station.

  “Eagle One,” I said softly, fondly, recalling the call sign the child had given himself.

  There was much I could dwell on. Much nostalgia, both good and bad, in the recordings. The tomato plant growing before our eyes in a distant Wyoming greenhouse. The ultimatum delivered by General Weatherly. But I moved past those and found the precise snippet of digital data I needed to review.

  Neil’s freeze-framed face stared out at me from the monitor.

  I brought the mouse cursor over the play button and clicked the button.

  “...we could be sitting courtside at a Hawk’s game, drinking a beer.”

  I paused the playback there after my friend’s words lived again. His meaningful meaningless inclusion of a Hawk’s reference. I believed in my soul that he was trying to send me, send us, information that could help in our struggle against those threatening us. Against those he’d gone to not on a mission of treachery, but of sabotage.

  “What else is there, Neil?”

  I asked the question, wishing he would just answer me. That he would look out from the recording and speak to me, plainly, so that I would know what he was trying to do.

  Again I let the recording play, stopping and listening to sections over and over. Waiting, searching, for something that would mean anything. For hours I pored over every second. Every image. Every word. The sun rose outside and bled through the lone window into the space.

  “Help me, Neil...”

  I played the recording again. And again. Exhaustion was numbing me. Dulling my senses. But I remained convinced that something more had to be here. In this exchange.

  “Krista made you a drawing while she was here. She spent hours on this red rhinoceros thing. Did she show it to you?”

  For some reason I stopped there. Maybe just to savor a simple thing. Something he’d said that was unrelated to...

  “Anything.”

  Just like the Hawks comment was salient, without seeming to be, if what I believed to be true turned out to be so.

  “Red rhinoceros,” I said, repeated one part of the statement. “Red.”

  The Red Signal? Was he referencing that? But how could that play any role in what we were facing now? That repetitive beacon had begun as society crumbled at the outset of the blight. We were years past that.

  “Rhinoceros,” I repeated.

  That, too, meant nothing. Or nothing obvious. A zoo? Africa? Horn? What could the meaning be? I listened and listened, over and over, struggling to understand. When I was about to give up on this snippet of the conversation, I saw it.

  “Wait...”

  I backed the recording up to the earlier Hawks reference, and I saw it there, too. I forwarded again to the red rhino section, and Neil, once again, did the same thing.

  He let his thumb rise from where his hands were folded. He was giving a thumbs up on these specific parts of the broadcast.

  From the beginning I watched the entire transmission, twice, and only at those two times did my friend signal with a thumbs up. But, as I watched closer, I realized that I was being too broad in my recognition of this gesture. He was not giving a thumbs up to sentences—he was doing so when particular words were spoken. And only then. Nowhere else as he spoke did his hands make any movement.

  “Hawks,” I said, watching as the thumb came up, and then receded, gone when my friend moved on to the next word.

  I forwarded the recording once more and watched as I listened, pinpointing the very word he was speaking when his thumb flicked upward a final time.

  “Drawing,” Neil said on the recording.

  “Drawing,” I said in sync with my friend.

  Krista’s drawing.

  I didn’t bother shutting down the workstation. There was no time. I ran as fast I could from the house where Micah had lived and died.

  Forty Four

  Grace came to the entrance to their house and looked out at me through the screen door.

  “Fletch. You look terrible.”

  I hadn’t slept. The filth of the firefight and retreat from the northern checkpoint was still thick upon me. But I didn’t care. Didn’t feel weary or beaten. For the first time in days, maybe weeks, I was energized by possibilities. Possibilities that, oddly, were unknown to me.

  I had come here to change that.

  “Can I come in?”

  There was no doubt I would be welcomed. My friend’s wife simply stepped aside and let me in.

  “I’m sorry if I’m dragging a bit,” Grace said. “I only caught a few hours’ sleep after my shift at the clinic.”

  I shook off her apology. For a woman with two children, who’d just tended to people wounded in battle, she looked remarkable. Strong. These were the things I knew Neil had seen in her.

  “Grace, can I talk to Krista?”

  The request drew only a quick flash of curiosity from her.

  “Krista?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll get her.”

  I stopped the mother before she started down the hallway toward her daughter’s bedroom.

  “Can you ask her to bring her book of drawings?”

  A minute later I sat next to Krista on the couch, the book I’d asked for on her lap, Grace just across from us in the comfortable easy chair.

  “Krista, can I look at your drawings?”

  “Sure,” the child said, handing me the book.

  “Fletch, what is this about?” Grace asked.

  I held the book and looked to my friend’s wife.

  “In the transmission we received, Neil said that Krista had made a drawing for me.”

  “I did,” Krista said proudly, reaching to the book I now held and flipping it to the page in question. “Right here.”

  The child beamed at the image of the red rhinoceros.

  “I don’t think I got the horn right,” Krista said.

  “I think it looks wonderful,” I told her.

  Down the hall, the baby began to fuss.

  “And someone probably needs their diaper changed,” Grace said. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  I looked at the drawing as Grace left the room. Studied it. Searched for some bit of information that might have been hidden within the colors and lines and smudges. But I could see nothing but the playful and wonderful strokes of a child’s artistry.

  “Did Neil help you with this at all?”

  “No,” Krista said, both proud and perturbed at the suggestion. “These are all mine.”

  She flipped away from the red rhinoceros to show a selection of the other drawings she’d completed, all on her own.

  “Krista, can I ask a big favor?”

  “Sure.”

  I closed the book and held it, very carefully, as if it meant the world to me.

  “Can I borrow this for a while? I promise I’ll get it back to you.”

  Uncertainty flashed in the girl’s expression.

  “I promise.”

  “Why do you want to take it?”

  There were ways to craft a simple white lie. I could tell her that I wanted to show Elaine, who’d been driven home from the clinic I’d been told on my sprint here from Micah’s old house. Or any number of other falsehoods a child was sure to accept.

  I chose another route altogether.

  “Krista, I think there might be
something in here that can help all of us. The whole town.”

  “The whole town?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  Krista eyed the book in my hand for a moment, then, with no more hesitation, she nodded her acceptance.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” I said, leaning over to plant a quick kiss atop her head.

  When I did I saw Grace standing at the near end of the hallway. I stood, with the book in hand, the mother’s gaze fixed on mine. Wondering and worried.

  “I’ll bring this back soon,” I said.

  Then, before Grace could press me on what I was doing, I left her house, their house, and made my way quickly home.

  Forty Five

  Elaine was limping across the living room of our house when I entered.

  “What’s that?” she asked, noticing the book in my hand. “Are those Krista’s drawings?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing with those?”

  I explained to her what I believed I’d found in the ATV message.

  “Let me see,” she said.

  But I held the book close and shook my head.

  “I need to do this,” I said. “He said that the drawing was for me.”

  “So?”

  “What if he really meant that? That it was only for me to see? To know?”

  “Eric...”

  I stepped toward her. Behind us, through the open front door, a distant volley of gunfire erupted, then died out within a few seconds. No full scale battle had begun. Not yet.

  “Let me do this,” I said, gesturing with the book. “Let me find out what he was trying to say with this.”

  She didn’t press the issue anymore. I kissed her on the cheek and headed through the kitchen, out into the back yard where a small table sat in the space where a lawn had once spread from fence to flowerbed, two chairs near it. I pulled one out and sat, resting the book upon the table and flipping to the drawing of the red rhinoceros.

  Looking upon it I could still see nothing of note. Holding it close to my face, examining it with focused gaze, all that I could see was what was there—a child’s drawing. I flipped the page to the opposite side and saw a trio of palm trees sketched out and colored in with earthy browns and vibrant greens. Nothing there, either, pointed to any meaning in the drawing that preceded it.

  But some meaning I did find. Meaning that, itself, was preceded by mystery.

  What is that?

  The question rose silently as I turned the page back, feeling it, pinching both sides between thumb and index finger for the first time. There was something there. Some extra texture that felt out of place. I flattened both parts of the book to either side of the page and studied it from the edge. That was when I saw it.

  Two pages were stuck together. Glued, it appeared, right at the edges, red rhinoceros on one side, palm trees on the other, creating a space between. A sealed space. A pouch of sorts.

  And there was something in it.

  I took the small folding knife clipped inside my pants pocket and extended the blade. Carefully I slipped the point into a small imperfection in the seal between the pages, working it in and very gingerly spreading the spot, sawing back and forth, separating first one edge, then the long side, until I could just slide two fingers in to probe the contents.

  When they came out they held a folded slip of paper between them.

  I set the book aside and closed my knife, returning it to my pocket as I stared at the paper, still folded over. Something was written within. I knew this. Something my friend intended for me. For my eyes only, I suspected.

  When I opened it and read the first line of what was written, I knew that belief had been correct.

  “The security of a secret increases exponentially as the number of people who know it approaches zero...”

  I read the words aloud. Words that I’d heard before, verbatim, from Olin’s mouth. It had to be some admonition each had learned in their clandestine careers. Here, now, Neil was prefacing what came next with that very warning.

  As I read the remainder of what he’d written, I knew that I would have to take that warning to heart.

  Part Four

  BA 412

  Forty Six

  I did what I had to do. And I told no one.

  Not even Elaine.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  The small adhesive bandage lay across the meaty flesh at the base of my thumb, a dark spot soaked through.

  “I nicked it on the fence out back.”

  I’d been out in the back yard, and in the small garage which, until recent events, I’d been slowly converting into a small workshop. That I’d suffered some insignificant injury was not unusual. That I’d done so after retreating to the back yard to search Krista’s book for some message from Neil was.

  “Did you find anything?”

  In my hand I held the book, closed tight, the pages I’d separated glued back together while in my workshop. I looked at the book, and not to my wife, even as she took a step closer.

  “Eric...”

  I handed her the book.

  “Will you give this back to Krista?”

  Elaine eyed the collection of drawings, then tossed it onto the kitchen table.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” she said, more worried than annoyed, but enough of the latter that her displeasure with me was more than clear.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  She was ready to challenge me. To state some refusal to accept my reticence. But she didn’t get a chance, as the ringing phone interrupted our exchange.

  “I’ll get it,” she said, turning away, still agitated as she answered. “Hello.”

  She listened for a minute, glancing to me, whatever temper had risen gone as if never there, all about her now sober verging on grim.

  “All right,” Elaine said into the handset, then placed it back in its cradle.

  “Who was that?”

  “The mayor wants us down at the town hall,” she said. “He’s going to meet with Weatherly.”

  I absorbed the news. There would only be one reason Mayor Allen would choose to meet with the military leader of the Unified Government.

  “I think he’s going to surrender,” Elaine said, guessing my very sentiment without knowing she was doing so.

  * * *

  A Humvee picked us up and dropped us at the town hall. A crowd had gathered outside, dozens in number. Angry residents, tired of fighting, demanding an end to the conflict. Elaine and I pushed through their raucous demonstration, aided by Private Westin, and made our way to the conference room.

  Martin, Schiavo, and Mayor Allen were already there.

  “Good morning,” the mayor said.

  It was anything but that. Still, I smiled at the genteel old man. A widower now. Yet here he stood, giving all he had for the town he’d agreed to lead.

  “Our situation is untenable,” the mayor said. “The group you see voicing their displeasure outside has doubled in the last hour.”

  “Some of them are supposed to be on the line,” Schiavo said.

  “We may lose our army before our enemy fires another shot,” Mayor Allen said.

  “Not everyone will desert,” Elaine said.

  “Enough might,” Schiavo said.

  Elaine walked unsteadily to the head of the table and stood close to the mayor.

  “I will not lay down my arms,” she said. “I will not. And there are a lot of people in this town who feel the same way. They will continue to fight.”

  Mayor Allen looked to her, as a grandfather might to a favored grandchild, smiling at her dedication. Her spark. Her idealism.

  “I know,” he said, then he looked to Schiavo. “Have the message sent that I’ll meet with General Weatherly to discuss our situation.”

  “He’ll only discuss surrender,” Schiavo reminded the town’s leader.

  “Then tell him I’ll discuss surrender with him,” I said.

  All eyes shifted q
uickly to me, but it was my wife’s gaze that found mine first. Apart from my late mother, no other person, not even Neil, could read me as she could. From clues in my tone to the sometimes evasive choice of words, Elaine Morales Fletcher could tell, could sense, what motivation, what truth, lay beneath the words I chose to speak. Here, in her eyes, I could see that same understanding.

  She knew that I had some plan in mind.

  “This is not your responsibility, Fletch,” Mayor Allen told me.

  “No, it’s not,” I agreed. “But I’m volunteering. And I’m asking you to let me do this.”

  “Why?” Schiavo asked.

  “Because Neil wants me to.”

  The captain’s stare doubted me, some fire in it. Some anger that I was implying direction from one who’d abandoned us.

  “Let him do it,” Elaine said.

  Before Schiavo could challenge her, another voice rose.

  “Yes,” Martin said. “Let him meet with Weatherly.”

  Mayor Allen absorbed the endorsements of my proposal, then turned to his military counterpart.

  “Captain...”

  He was asking for her opinion. Maybe her blessing. To her credit, Captain Angela Schiavo did not throw down any gauntlet of disapproval. She might be unsure of just what was happening, but I knew that, whatever doubt there was swirling about her thoughts, she trusted me. Even with her life.

  Here, though, I was asking to be trusted with everyone’s.

  “I’ll have Westin send the message,” Schiavo told me. “I pray you know what you’re doing.”

  “Me, too.”

  Forty Seven

  The Blackhawk helicopter bearing General Harris Weatherly came in low from the east and settled into a hover over the clearing two miles from town. The dust of dead and disintegrating trees swirled in the woods that bordered the flat, barren meadow as the aircraft descended, its side doors sliding open. Hardly a second after its wheels touched down the military commander of the Unified Government stepped out, two armed troopers at his side.