“There's something wrong with you if you don't like the lemon ones.”
She mopped the inside of the bowl with the last of the bread and sat back in the chair, patting her flat stomach. She drained her glass and poured herself another.
“Man, you live good,” she said with a sigh. “Good food, good wine, a fucking awesome view and what looks like a fucking awesome nights sleep for me.”
“My Dad said that if you enjoy the simple things you'll find them easier to come by,” I said.
“Your Dad knew his shit.” I poured myself the last of the bottle. Riley stood up and stretched. “I'm going to get the portable dish installed before we lose the light. That way were can start getting feeds from the Colonel.”
“What have you been using so far?” I asked.
“Conventional satellites for my own stuff, they're okay but not secure. I’ve got a full comms rig in my kit and once that baby is running we'll be able to get much better Intel from the boys back home. I'll have a look round for a decent spot in a minute.”
She stood there for a moment as if poised to say something. Then she nodded to me in the military fashion, turned and walked back inside to get her kit. I guessed I was washing up.
Through the window above the sink I watched her unpack the mesh dish that was no bigger than a dinner plate mounted on a tripod. She opened it up like a blooming flower and raised it above her head, the tablet display in her other hand. She began moving across the open ground systematically, stopping every so often and adjusting the angle. Then, when she was satisfied, she planted the sharp points at the end of the tripod into the ground with a grunt of effort. She sat down next to it, tapping away at the screen for another minute or two as I finished cleaning the dishes. By the time I'd done the drying she was on her way back inside.
“That should do it,” she said, still looking at the tablet screen which lit up in bright blue. “There's an odd thing though.”
“Odd?” I asked, draining my wine glass and rinsing it clean in the suds.
“I'm only able to detect three working satellites.”
“How many do you normally access?”
“Six. That's really odd.”
Riley stood there tapping away before turning and heading for the stairs. I emptied the sink and carried the lamp to the front door and locked it by sliding the bolt across.
“I'm turning in,” I said as she climbed the steps in her bare feet, the soft padding noise the only sound in the house.
“Same here. I'll let you know if I get anything,” she said.
“What time do you want breakfast?” I shouted after her but she'd already gone into her room.
I did one last lap of the house, checking the doors and windows were closed in the same way my Dad had done since as far back as I could remember. Then I went up to the second floor and decided to have a look at Dad's old books.
He'd found the library in the house when he'd arrived. It was spotless and decorated in the usual style - walnut leather chairs, green lamps, tall book cases and an open fireplace. He'd fallen in love with that room straight away and there were enough books in there to keep us both reading until we were long gone. There were the usual suspects: encyclopedia, Reader's Digest, even some contemporary fiction and I think I'd made a dent on one side over the last few years. Dad had evicted one set of books from the bookcase behind the door to make room for his own works. He'd hand-written maps and routes of the country after the Panic on anything he could find and gathered them up into volumes of notebooks.
I began looking for anything that might give me a clue to the whereabouts of the bunker we were looking for but only after a couple of hours did I unearth something. It was in one of his later books and it showed a roughly drawn shape of the country with key cities marked on it, some different motorways and various supply caches my Dad had set up at some point before I could remember. What drew my attention to the map was the name of small black squares drawn in pencil on the crude map of England. They had names like 'Olympus' and 'Mecca', 'Jerusalem' and 'Bethlehem' and they were all over the map like big black spots on a pale face.
I took the book to my room and began trying to work out where they were. I hadn't been in my room for some time, more often than not staying at the southern edge of the field in the hammock. It wasn't much different to Riley's room except the bed was made and there was a slight breeze coming in through the high window that brought the scent of winter with it.
There was a comfy though threadbare reading chair in the corner next to a small table and a lamp stand. I lit the oil lamp with a flame from the other and sat down, flicking through the pages until I was confident I'd missed nothing. The paper was crisp and dry and show some signs of age. I'd have to copy the map rather than risk damage to the book. I saw my Dad's ink and smiled. In his own way he was still looking out for me, still training me despite being dead for so long. It was his legacy and made any decision to leave the house almost impossible to comprehend at that time.
I woke up before dawn with a sore back from the unfamiliar bed and took the book downstairs with me. I fired up the stove, opened the back door and went out into the cold morning that nipped my nose and made me yawn. The sky was clear and there was a thin layer of dew on the ground but not much. I put a pot of coffee on the stove top to boil and found some plain writing paper to begin copying the map. There were a box of HB pencils in one of the cupboards and I took one and sharpened it.
I spent time comparing the map to an OS map I had and tried to pinpoint where these bunkers actually were. Dad had left clues or landmarks in the margin but because I wasn't overly familiar with the larger cities it took longer than my Dad must have intended.
After two cups of strong, fresh coffee and a slice of bread and jam I was quite happy I'd located them all to within a few miles. The rest of the work could be done on foot. There were sixteen known bunkers in total and fourteen 'unknowns' that my Dad hadn't explored. That was a lot of leg work and by the time we'd checked out a quarter of them it could be too late. Our only hope was that the Colonel could narrow down our options.
I heard footsteps on the hallway staircase.
“Good morning,” said Riley as she appeared in the doorway. “You get up too fucking early for me.”
“That's why you never get the worm,” I replied.
“Did you?” I passed her my map and she whistled. “You've been working hard.”
“There's too many for us to search. Have you heard anything yet?”
“Nothing,” she replied. She was wearing her running gear again and the clean shoes were on her feet. “Still, I wasn't expecting anything until this afternoon.”
“Do you want a coffee?” I asked. She shook her head.
“I'm going for a run first. Then I'll wash and grab something then. I prefer to earn my breakfast and it looks like you've already earned yours.”
I heard her go out of the front door and set off in the same direction she'd taken yesterday. I put my Dad's book on the table in the hallway and began gathering ingredients for breakfast. By the time I'd put a batch of crumpets into the oven I heard her jogging back. I set some bacon rashers frying and poured two glasses of orange juice.
“Man, it's cold out there!” she cried as she came in, grabbing a glass and draining it in one go. Sweat was pouring off her forehead and it darkened her tee shirt. Again her shoes were almost spotless and without stopping she took the stairs two at a time to go and get washed. I'd already put a bowl of hot water and towels outside the door to her room, knowing that Rangers were worshippers of routine and that her 'run' would last almost the exact same length as the previous one. I filled up her glass again and flipped over the bacon, watching the dawn slowly crawl up the lazy sky, almost sad to have to wake up to a winters day so early. I had my own routine and I felt its primeval call. Breakfast first, then a patrol of the grounds which took over an hour, then back for another pot of coffee before retreating to the library to read or fill in my own n
otebooks. I was hoping that Riley would have something for me by that time so I didn't expect to be reading today.
She came back smelling of deodorant and soap and wearing her combats with the tight woollen jumper and high laced boots. This time she wasn't wearing her hat and her damp hair hung loose over her shoulders.
“Bacon, scrambled eggs and crumpets,” I said, setting the plate in front of her as she sat down. “There's some cheese in that dish and sliced chillies in the other.”
“Butter?”
“In that dish there. Get some on the crumpets while they're hot.”
She smeared some on as she tapped away at the tablet she'd brought with her. I poured two cups of freshly ground coffee, then sat down to eat my own breakfast. Somehow she was able to eat and drink without taking her attention from the tablet. At one point her fork suddenly stopped mid-air and the piece of bacon she was about to eat dropped back onto the plate.
“What's wrong?” I asked. It took her a moment to answer and in the meantime she began tapping at the thing with renewed enthusiasm.
“I... I can't make it out... all the sites I go on, they're going down somehow. People are posting stuff about the riots, but then they're saying something about an explosion in Detroit and Washington... Reports are sketchy.”
“Is it getting worse over there?” I asked.
“I... There's some photos... Oh my God!”
She turned the tablet to me and I saw the image but it took a while to make out what I was looking at. Then she tilted the thing and the image flipped and I realised it'd been upside-down. It was a shaky picture of a large explosion cloud hanging over a city on fire.
“It's Chicago!” she said. “They nuked it!”
“How? Who?” I said, my stomach turning. Riley's eyes had filled and looked about ready to burst with tears.
“They're saying it was a terrorist attack, a portable weapon carried into the centre of the city. This is seriously fucked up.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“I... what can I do? I can't go back, they won't...”
She put the tablet down and held her head in her hands. There was nothing I could do to comfort her, there were no notebooks on that kind of thing in the library and I felt strangely uncomfortable. After a moment or two she wiped her eyes and carried on with her breakfast in silence, eating slowly and mechanically, the way someone does who's been programmed to eat regardless of their emotional state. It was a safe routine that I expected brought her some comfort.
I drank my coffee and put my half-finished meal on the counter, covering it with a towel. When she'd finished eating she looked at the tablet again and stared at the haunting image of the mushroom cloud and the fiery skyline.
“The fucking bastards,” she muttered. “Fucking foreign Ruskie fucking bastards.”
“You think they were Russian?” I said.
“I'm fucking sure,” she spat. “Red fucking bastards. We put down the fucking Arabs years ago in Syria and Baghdad so it ain't them. There hasn't been an attack like that since...”
She slipped into silence again and I poured her the last of the coffee. She sipped at it, just another part of the machinery in her mind ticking over and she stared at the wall behind me.
“I'm going to check the dish and see if the Colonel has anything for us yet,” she said in monotone and got up. I watched her walk away and then the empty space where she'd been sat. Her home was on fire and yet here she was in a home that had burned down long ago.
“There's nothing,” said Riley as I joined her outside. The day was cold and crisp yet there were rain clouds moving towards us from the east - fat angry looking things that blotted out the mid-morning sun.
“Have you spoke to him?” I asked.
“I can only send coded messages in text form. I’ve sent a few lines to ask what the fuck is going on over there. The good news is we still have our 3 satellites in the air and they're still receiving us.”
“So you intend to carry on with your mission?”
“Too fucking right,” she said. “This is probably the best way to strike back at them. If the NSU really do want what Alex and this bitch have found then I intend to be there to deny them it.”
“She's a bitch now?” I said.
“Yeah, another Russian fucking bitch and if I get a chance she's going to die with the rest of them. They should never have let them get away with what happened in the Ukraine and Georgia. Never. That's when all this started. As if the T-14 tanks weren't enough warning for us.”
She knelt down to replace the scrim net that covered the dish and tucked the digital screen back into its box at the foot of the tripod. I passed her a second cup of coffee I'd made for her and she accepted it.
“Got anything stronger?” she joked.
“Yeah but it won't change anything.”
“I know. It's just...”
We both turned to look east as the humming of an engine suddenly emerged from the background noise of nature. The clouds were obscuring everything in that direction but we both knew exactly what it was.
“The garage!” I said, running towards the curtain of scrim netting where the Land Rover was parked. Riley was right behind me as the humming began to rise in pitch. It was almost on us.
I dropped to the floor and rolled under the net sideways and Riley followed suit, not stopping until we'd crawled under the 'Rover and led flat in the oil and the stench of diesel fumes. The drone passed by low overhead, turned and circled the house.
“The stove?” she whispered.
“I put it out but the house is already lined with stuff that should mask it anyway. If we'd have been caught in the open we'd have been spotted in no time. I should have been more careful but I haven't seen a drone for some years now.”
The humming faded into the distance and we crawled out from under the Land Rover. I dusted myself off and went back outside, following its direction in the sky.
“NSU?” she asked.
“Yeah. It's not the first I’ve seen.”
“Probably got something to do with Alex and the girl.”
“I can almost guarantee it. They've also done us a big favour.”
“How's that?” she asked. I took my pocket knife out and went to the spot where we'd been standing when we first heard the drone's engine.
“It came from that direction,” I said, pointing to the top of the pine tree I'd marked in my mind when the humming had started. “And went away in that direction.” I went back to the entrance to the garage, stuck my knife in the ground and dragged it in a line roughly following the drone until I'd gone past the dish. Then I lined the pine up in my sight and turned around, seeing where my imaginary line intersected the one I'd marked in the dirt. I went back to the house for a compass and began taking bearings and writing them on a piece of paper. It wouldn't be accurate based on my rough estimations but it would cut out a lot of initial leg work.
“What are you doing?” she asked and I was surprised that a Ranger had to ask.
“I'm trying to take a bearing from where it came from and where it went. I'm sure that the drone either came from the bunker they're in or was looking for it. So, given these bearings, our first search should be any bunkers that fall under these rough directions.”
“I see, but you're putting a lot of faith in your hunch.”
“It's somewhere to start, that's all,” I said. “Have you ever hunted something?”
“I bagged a few bucks last year but my old drill Sergeant did all the leg work.”
“Well I suppose we're hunting these two kids but we've nothing to go on really. So when you can't find a trail or spoor you go looking for it in the likely areas. Watering holes. Natural clearings. Near its food source, anything to narrow down your search.”
“Is that what we're doing? Narrowing down our search?”
“Yeah,” I said. “At least it gives us something to do.”
5.
Riley, still searching for an
y kind of reports from home, retreated to her room and I took the opportunity to load up my pack for a long distance trek. I hadn't told Riley yet but any travelling we'd be doing would be on foot. There just wasn't enough diesel to get us anywhere. If we were going to end up combing the country for Alex then it would be on Shank's pony. For the old English Special Forces 'tabbing it' was as natural as breathing, but for Rangers I wasn't so sure. They were used to flying in and flying out and I didn't know if Riley would be up for it. She hadn't got much choice in the end.
At lunch time I knocked on her door and I heard her tell me to come in. I opened and saw her sat in a chair by the window with the tablet in her hands, staring at it with red ringed eyes.
“Anything new?” I asked.
“Nothing. The whole fucking network is crumbling and I'm losing connections every five minutes. There's long lists of people missing or dead being posted online, some chat about NSU involvement, some say the Chinese, it's all just a pile of shit at the moment.”
She launched the tablet onto the bed and stared out of the window, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Her kit was arranged in neat piles around the room and her rifle was stood upright at the head of her bed. There was the scent of soap in the air mixed with gun oil.
“You want some lunch?” I asked.
“I want to be moving, that's what I want. I don't do 'waiting' very well.”
“I understand,” I said. Her head snapped round and she fixed me with a furious stare.
“How? How the fuck can you...?” She shook her head. “I'm sorry, of course you can understand. I didn't mean to...” She turned away. “Lunch would be nice.”
“I'll give you a shout when it's ready, okay?”
“Yeah.” I turned to leave with three of her empty coffee cups in my hand. “Miller?”
“Yeah?”
“You've seen it happen before...” she said.
“I wasn't old enough to remember.”
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