by Noah Mann
“You’re beautiful,” I said.
My compliment startled her. She turned abruptly, catching her breath before smiling at me.
“You could have not come up like a ninja,” she chided me.
I nodded, but did not approach her. Instead, I stood back, trying to hold it together, my obvious attempt to retain my composure impossible for her to miss.
“Eric, what is it?”
She put her tools down and came to where I stood a few yards away. She put a hand to my face and looked past me to the driveway. The empty driveway.
“Where’s the pickup?”
“Nick is loading roofing panels into it,” I told her.
“You walked back here,” she said.
“I had to. I needed...to think. And now I need to talk.”
She led me to the porch and we sat on the steps, door open behind so we could hear our daughter within. I told her about my visit with Doc Allen, which she’d wanted to know about, but hadn’t pried. I told her about the man I’d seen on the bluffs, or hadn’t seen. And then I told her what I’d just seen in the storage building next to the outpost.
“Either I’m losing it, Elaine, or...”
She squeezed my hand and shook her head.
“You’re not losing it,” she said.
They were words of comfort. And they were more than that. There was something behind the statement. Some knowing, or some suspicion. This I knew as her gaze ticked off me after she’d spoke the assurance.
“What is it?” I asked.
She refocused on me and seemed to gather her thoughts for a moment before answering.
“There was a technique we would use in the Bureau,” she began, harkening back to her time as an FBI agent, “we called it ‘tripping’.”
“Tripping?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And contrary to the name, it didn’t involve drugs.”
“What was it?”
“It was...subtle,” she said. “Most of the time. You would do things to get a suspect to doubt themselves. To believe they were making mistakes, or had made mistakes. Trip them up, hence the name.”
I understood, but I wasn’t following.
“Why?”
“Let’s say you have a suspect who you have under surveillance,” she explained. “You know they’ve hidden documents, embezzled funds, it doesn’t matter.”
“This is white collar crime,” I said.
“Exactly. These are usually smart people who aren’t career criminals. So if you introduce doubt into their lives, they begin to question their actions. Especially concerning things they don’t usually do.”
“Like commit crimes,” I said, the first outlines of what she was describing taking shape.
“A lot of times this was all it would take to make them revisit what they’d done to hide their crime,” Elaine said. “And with them under surveillance, we would have everything. Location, account numbers, everything.”
With a wave of clarity rushing over me, I knew exactly what she was suggesting.
“Or where they hid a deadly biological agent,” I said.
“Olin is a field operative, if what he described to you was true, and I think we have to assume it was. He would have been trained in these same techniques to use on adversaries, or on people with intelligence that the Agency needed.”
“You think he was doing this to me.”
She shook her head.
“No, I think he still is.”
The sight of him on the bluffs, the rocks. If he was responsible for those things, those efforts to trip me up, then that meant only one thing of consequence.
“He’s still here.”
Elaine agreed with a nod. I let out a very slow breath, some weight suddenly gone from my being.
“It feels good to know that I’m not a head case.”
“I can imagine,” Elaine said, gripping my hand more tightly now than just a moment before. “You can’t go after him.”
I hadn’t said anything of the sort. But I didn’t have to.
“I know you want to,” she said. “You can’t. You have to let this play out.”
“Play out?”
“Let him run his op to trip you up, but don’t ultimately bite.”
“I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
The location of the sample of BA-412 had gone to the grave with Neil, whose murderer, with that act, had made a successful completion of his mission virtually impossible to achieve.
“He doesn’t know that,” Elaine said, stating the obvious. “As long as he believes you do, he’ll keep trying to sow seeds of doubt in you. All you have to do is stay focused, finish the work, and we get back to Bandon.”
“Just like that?” I challenged her mildly. “He’ll just let me go.”
“He may stick around, but we’ll be back with a lot more people to watch your back. Remember, he needs you alive. You’re the only hope he has of locating Four Twelve.”
“So he thinks.”
“Exactly,” Elaine said, a hint of the ominous in her tone. “Let’s hope he doesn’t start doubting himself.”
Thirty One
Two shots split the deep quiet of the night.
It was near ten o’clock when the warning signal sounded from the east side of the settlement. I was out the door in less than a minute, Elaine remaining with Hope, her MP5 at the ready. As I jogged down Sandy Creek Road and crossed the covered bridge, I saw the Humvee from the outpost pull across the highway and onto the rough gravel road that twisted into a lopsided figure eight. Hart slowed the vehicle to a crawl, allowing me to climb in before continuing on, Corporal Enderson riding shotgun.
“Any idea what this is about?” Enderson asked.
“None,” I answered.
We reached the northernmost edge of the road and continued across the field, lights glowing brightly there amongst the trio of temporary tents that had been erected for families to occupy until their houses were made habitable. Hart pulled right up to them, Mike DeSantis standing in the dark with his and two other families. We exited the vehicle and approached, scanning the area for any threats.
“You fired the warnings?” Enderson asked, and Mike nodded.
“Someone reached into our tent,” Mike explained. “Reached right under. My daughter saw it and screamed. I just got a glimpse of her hand before she pulled it away.”
“It was a woman?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
Enderson looked to me. I’d reported to him the encounter with the red-haired woman near our house, and there was little chance that this was someone else.
“Do you want to be point on this, or do you want us to check it out?” Enderson asked.
He’d explained to Mike and Rebecca at our meeting that the responsibility for protecting Remote was theirs, but that the he and Hart would provide any assistance that was necessary. Now, he was putting the first decision in regards to that to one of the settlement’s leaders.
“I’d really like to not leave the family right now,” Mike said.
His six year old daughter stood in her nightgown and robe between him and his wife, hugging a stuffed bear. She looked up at me, perplexed more than scared.
“Not a problem,” Enderson said. “That’s what we’re here for.”
He and Hart started back toward the Humvee, as did I, but Mike DeSantis stopped me.
“Fletch,” Mike said, pulling his little girl close with one hand while holding his Mossberg pump with the other.
“Yes?”
“I got a glimpse when I chased after her for a minute,” Mike explained.
“Red hair?”
Mike confirmed that with a quick nod. What Elaine and I had seen had filtered beyond Enderson.
“One other thing,” Mike said, looking between me and the corporal. “She had a knife. A big one.”
* * *
Enderson, Hart, and I backed the Humvee into the open field and left its headlights on, beams cutting into the woods in the direction whe
re Mike had last seen the woman.
“I don’t want to kill someone for reaching into a tent for a can of beans,” Enderson said.
“We don’t know what she was reaching for,” I told him.
He had to allow that fact, particularly in light of the report that she was armed. Not as we were, but a blade could be just as deadly as a firearm when wielded by someone trained in its use. Or by someone pushed to the point of desperation.
“Dead or not, those are dense woods to search,” Enderson said.
“So we don’t search,” I said. “We wait.”
“Wait?” Hart asked.
“Yeah.”
“And where do we wait?” Enderson pressed.
* * *
Ten minutes later the three of us were positioned just below the crest of a hill to the north of Remote, between the tents and my temporary housing. We’d killed the lights and the engine and left the Humvee in the field, traveling on foot, as quiet as we could, to this position of overwatch.
“You’re not sure about this at all,” Enderson said, his voice hushed. “Are you?”
“It’s a hunch,” I said.
But, in reality, it was more than that. It was also an admission about the state of humanity, and the state of one particular individual, that did more than sadden me.
I’d noticed the smell when we’d arrived at the tents, some sort of soup cooking on a portable stove within one of the canvas structures. And the night the woman appeared at our house, we’d just put a pot of chicken stew over the fire in the hearth. In the stale, dead world outside, the scent of food, real food, could carry a good distance, and anyone facing hunger would zero in on that indicator of a possible meal.
Just like an animal would.
In my years hunting the Montana and Wyoming wilderness, I’d become accustomed, just as all hunters of any ability had, to letting game trails inform me of where animals would move. From the place they would bed down at night to a source of water. Or food. The red-haired woman had traveled a rough route from my house to the tents, skirting the open space where we’d left the Humvee. The only avenue to accomplish that without taking a wasteful and strenuous detour was directly below where we had perched ourselves.
“Movement,” Hart whispered, gesturing slowly with a gloved finger to a point just west of us.
“I’ll be damned,” Enderson said, shooting me a sideways glance. “You’re a wizard.”
I shook my head.
“I just like venison,” I corrected him.
The woman walked slowly, from tree to tree, taking cover behind the old, dead growth and scanning the way forward before moving again. In the darkness it was impossible to be sure, but I was almost certain I did see something in her right hand. Something large, with a dull shine reflecting in the moonlight filtered through thin clouds.
Enderson gestured to his right, and Hart nodded. The medic would move to a position behind the woman. The corporal nodded to me and pointed to a point ahead of her. He would move straight down the slope toward her.
“We go slow,” Enderson cautioned us.
We signaled our understanding with thumbs up, then we moved out. I focused on my assignment, and on the ground beneath me. The soil was damp and loose, no roots of natural ground cover to keep the slope intact. Much had eroded away from the effects of weather. We’d crossed a dozen fallen trees on the way to our initial position, and now I had to traverse them as I moved to cut off the woman’s forward progress.
That plan went out the window with the sound of sliding and tumbling to my right.
A quick glance told me that Enderson was on his feet. But beyond him there was only the sight of Hart rolling down the slope, a dislodged length of rotten log chasing him. An errant step had sent him, and it, careening down the hill, and had alerted the woman to our presence.
She bolted. I began running, leaping over the last few obstructions on the hillside, until I could see her sprinting into the open. I could hear Enderson in pursuit off to my right, and Hart recovering beyond him, all three of us part of the chase now.
But the chase did not last long.
Perhaps she had no energy to continue to flee. Or it might have been that she knew we would, eventually, catch up with her. If she’d had a firearm, even a hideaway gun, some .22 revolver of last resort, the confrontation she was about to force would have ended in a fusillade of gunfire. But it did not.
Our chase ended with the red-haired woman stopping in the middle of the open field and spinning to face us, teeth bared against the harsh white of Enderson’s weapon light as it came on. She brought the large knife up in her right hand, waving it in the narrowing space between her and us.
“Put the knife down,” Enderson ordered her.
Hart slid around to block her retreat, his own M4 trained on her. I sidestepped a bit away from Enderson and did something which might have been foolish—I lowered my AR and let it hang loose from the sling across my chest.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Yes you are!” the woman screamed at us. “You’re from there!”
I had no idea what she was referring to, or where, and I was not qualified to determine if she was suffering serious mental issues, or just suffering. She was thin, but not starved. The clothes she wore, old military BDU pants, a torn black sweatshirt, and mismatched boots, one black and one brown, did not hang off a skeletal frame. So she had survived, somewhere, but was now desperate. And afraid. Of us.
“I promise you,” I said, taking a step toward her, “no harm will come to you. Not from us.”
She stepped back, bringing the knife up, terror raging in her eyes. Then, without anything said to elicit the change, a sense of calm seemed to settle over her. Her jaw unclenched and her back straightened. The gaze which had burned at us, and directly at me at that moment, began to swim, as if she were about to faint.
But she was not.
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The scream she let out, blaring without warning from an otherwise serene face, preceded by a second her hand bringing the knife up, the other rising to add its grip to it, the business end of its blade pointed downward. Right at her own body.
I lunged forward, gloved hands outstretched, reaching for the woman’s arms as she started to drive the knife toward her own midsection.
“Fletch!”
Enderson wasn’t warning me of any danger. He was reacting to me throwing myself at danger. At the woman who was trying now to kill herself, the blade in her arms about to plunge through tattered material and into precious flesh when my hands batted her aim off its mark. She spun, and I grabbed at the hands she was now drawing back for another attempt on her life. Or on mine.
It didn’t matter, though, as two more pairs of hands joined the fight to subdue her, Enderson and Hart each seizing an arm, the medic twisting the weapon from her grip.
“Noooooooooooo!”
She cried out in protest, collapsing as the reality that she’d failed set in.
“Blood,” Hart said, looking to me.
I looked down and saw splashes of bright crimson illuminated by the light swinging at the end of Enderson’s M4, the wet stain on my gloves and left arm. But I felt no pain. None at all. Why that was became apparent a second later.
“She’s cut,” Enderson said.
We lowered the weeping, spent woman to the ground, sobs jerking her body, a flow of blood spilling from a gash on the back of her left hand.
“The blade caught her,” Hart said, retrieving a pressure bandage from his cargo pocket and applying it quickly as Enderson and I kept the woman from thrashing.
“Let’s get her to the outpost,” Enderson said.
We lifted her up and carried her across the fields to the Humvee, knowing two things—we’d caught an intruder, and, more importantly, we’d saved a life. At least for now.
Thirty Two
There’d been no provision for installing any sort of
holding cell in the outpost. There were no interior doors at all, in fact. But, as it turned out, none were needed to keep the woman in any sort of custody.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up from where she sat in the lobby, cup of coffee steaming in her uninjured hand.
Five of us stood facing her, two fresh arrivals joining those of us who’d captured her—Mike DeSantis and Rebecca Vance. The woman seemed most intrigued by her presence. Or her presence among the otherwise exclusively male group looking over her.
“What’s your name?”
Enderson asked the question for at least the tenth time, though the other inquiries had been made as we transported the still weeping woman in from the field.
“Dorothy,” she said. “I’m Dorothy.”
There was no effort to press for a last name, which, for the moment, was a meaningless bit of information. ‘Why’ was more important than ‘who’, in this instance.
“Were you looking for food?” I asked.
She hesitated, then nodded, embarrassed. Hunger was something common to admit in the world since the blight began to take its toll. But Dorothy seemed a more recent victim of those effects.
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
“Out there.”
“Were you with other people?”
Her gaze dipped, more than embarrassed now. Our probing was taking her to a place she’d left behind. A life she had no desire to revisit.
“Dorothy,” Enderson said. “We need to know.”
She looked up again, letting her gaze find Rebecca’s. They shared a moment, a look, Dorothy’s eyes almost pleading as they teared over.
“She doesn’t need to talk about that,” Rebecca said, running interference for the woman.
I sensed, as did the other men with me, that Dorothy had been through a hell none of us could comprehend. And, as Rebecca was making clear, we had no right to dredge that from the place the woman had tried to bury it.
