At the Quietest Word

by M. L. Buchman

:You never asked her about breakfast.:

  :It didn’t seem likely she’d pay any more attention to me than to you.:

  :Well now I’m not just hungry, I’m hungry and I’m naked.:

  Ricardo missed the second foot hole in his boxer shorts but snagged a toe in the elastic band. Before he could regain his balance, he tipped forward and banged his head on the locker door.

  Michelle naked. No more than twenty feet away through a concrete wall.

  :What are you thinking, Manella?:

  Thinking? No blood in his brain for any thinking. No! Not during training! He couldn’t afford any distractions if he was going to successfully traverse Range 37.

  :Spoilsport!:

  :Goddamn it! How do you always seem to know what I’m thinking?:

  :Women’s intuition. It’s an edge we developed, oh, like half a billion years ago.:

  :Half a billion years ago you were probably a trilobite.:

  :My point exactly. Girl power rules. We’ve had it since forever.:

  Ricardo didn’t know why he even bothered to try.

  Michelle was pretty pleased at how well she acquitted herself on the firing range. Nothing like Hannah or Ricardo, but more of Anton’s shooting lessons had sunk in than she’d thought.

  “You shoot decently for a civilian,” Kee said in her matter of fact tone.

  “Thanks,” she offered back in the same tone. Maybe that was Kee’s idea of high praise.

  “Think less about the weapon and more about the target. Half of marksmanship is trusting your trained instincts.”

  “What if I don’t have any trained instincts?”

  Kee smiled for the first time, “Then try not to shoot any friendlies.”

  “No matter how tempting?” Michelle tipped her head slightly to indicate Ricardo. For the last hour all they’d been doing was simple gun handling and target practice. Well, she’d been shooting at the fifty meter targets while Ricardo and Hannah had been firing at three and five hundred meters. Yet even here Ricardo had been hovering over her like a mother hen.

  “No matter how tempting,” Kee confirmed.

  Michelle was starting to like her.

  “Shall we see what they can do?”

  “Without getting me killed, if possible.”

  Kee pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Ricardo. “You have five minutes to make a plan.” An armorer came and took all of their weapons, then gave ones with blue handles to both Ricardo and Hannah.

  Kee took Michelle by the arm and led her toward a steel staircase that climbed the side of a building that ran all down one side of the shooting range.

  “I’m not going in with them?”

  Kee shook her head. “They each have ten years’ experience as recon and shooters. If you were in the middle of the situation, it would defeat the entire purpose of this exercise.”

  “Which is?” Michelle planted herself halfway up the flight and Kee didn’t resist her stopping. From here she was looking down on Ricardo and Hannah.

  They were poring over the sheet Kee had given them.

  To the south, the shooting range stretched out for more than a thousand yards. Beyond it stood a high berm. From even this slight vantage point, she could see a maze of dirt roads twisting across the fields beyond the berm of dirt. A convoy of trucks and armored vehicles were racing along them in tight, twisting patterns. She could see gunners firing from turrets as the vehicles rocked and bounced.

  A big explosion sprayed mud aloft; some of the vehicles veered badly, then tried to get back on course. When she heard a loud thump five seconds later was when she figured out that they were a mile away.

  “It’s like counting lightning and thunder.”

  Her telepathic link with Ricardo had let them talk from San Antonio to Honduras as quickly as if sitting side by side. If their gift didn’t travel at the speed of sound, did it travel at the speed of light? Or faster? Was that even possible?

  Now she began to understand Colonel Gibson’s orders to everyone to not ask her team any questions. If the wrong people found out about her and Ricardo’s telepathy, the team would become instant lab rats. Which would totally suck.

  Kee was waiting for something. To see if her attention drifted as she sent a message to Ricardo?

  Wasn’t gonna happen.

  “So,” she veered back to her original question. “What is the purpose of this exercise?”

  Kee studied her intently for a moment longer before shrugging to herself and beginning to climb the metal staircase once more.

  “Ricardo and Hannah are listed as reconnaissance specialists. Ms. Tucker specialized in solo work. They need to be reminded that they are a team. At least that is Colonel Gibson’s instruction.”

  Any other questions she might have were knocked out of her by what she found at the top of the staircase. She’d simply followed along, expecting to end up on the roof of the building for reasons unknown.

  Except the building had no roof.

  It had walls, doors, and windows. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of rooms were laid out before them, but no roof.

  Instead, there was a massive grid of aerial catwalks that allowed people up here to walk almost anywhere above the layout.

  “It’s a giant shoot house,” Kee waved at the expanse of interior spaces. “In here we can practice room clearing in complex interior scenarios. It’s big enough that we can throw multiple twelve-person squads at it simultaneously and they’ll never trip on each other. It’s a chance to safely practice enemy identification and takedown in a rapid, live-fire scenario.”

  “Live fire like…real bullets?”

  Kee didn’t bother answering, instead checking her watch. “Ten seconds,” she shouted down to Ricardo and Hannah.

  They both nodded tersely. They already had their rifles up with the stocks propped against their shoulders, though the barrels were still aimed down and forward.

  :Good luck!:

  Ricardo didn’t acknowledge.

  Then, in an eyeblink, he and Hannah were gone in through the door.

  Chapter 10

  Stepping out onto the catwalk, Michelle looked down at the labyrinth of rooms the others had just entered.

  Instantly, Ricardo’s rifle zeroed on her for a half second, then swung away.

  “Could he have—” Michelle couldn’t form the rest of the words.

  “Yes. I wouldn’t move or speak again if I were you. Not when they’re in mission mode. Though it is encouraging that he identified us as friendlies rather than shooting us.”

  Michelle swallowed hard but couldn’t seem to breathe.

  Below, Hannah hugged up close to a doorway.

  Ricardo kicked it in and Hannah slid through the door.

  One! Two!

  Two armed targets were shot.

  The only sound was the sharp spit of Hannah’s silenced rifle, then the hard metal clang of the bullets hitting the target dummies.

  Ricardo, a half step behind, shot them again as Hannah double-checked behind him.

  He flipped both targets face down on the ground.

  “Shows they’re dead to any team that follows in behind them so that they don’t waste a shot,” Kee whispered softly enough that her voice wouldn’t carry into the room below.

  “But they’re alone in ther—”

  Kee’s scowl cut her off.

  Be quiet. Right.

  Before it should be possible, Hannah and Ricardo flowed back out the door more like a single person than a team of two.

  “Did you notice Hannah’s hesitation as Ricardo shot?” Kee said softly. “She’s not used to having a backup.”

  It had all looked like a well-oiled machine to her.

  A long hallway.

  A dummy leaned out from a door at the far end. It had one arm around the throat of another dummy and the other arm back to throw something. Perhaps a grenade. As Ricardo shot him twice, Hannah spun to check the hallway behind them.

  They knocked down the dead dummy and l
eaned the innocent dummy up against a wall—one watching ahead, but the other keeping a careful eye on the dummy.

  “Never know who to trust. Normally a backup team would remove the hostage.”

  Michelle tried to ask her question without speaking, which apparently Kee understood.

  “They can’t split up. Room clearing, which is what this exercise is called, as a single person is a death sentence. Probably even for people as skilled as they are. Instead, they will now have to guard front and back just in case the ‘innocent’ was a ruse and may now attack them from behind.”

  They quickly moved out of sight among the tall walls.

  Kee walked away and Michelle followed. They moved well along the catwalk, then stopped again.

  Michelle could hear repeated shots as the two shooters moved in their direction.

  There was a small explosion and she saw a bucket dump a load of debris from the catwalk down into the maze.

  “That didn’t go well,” Kee was smiling.

  “But the shots are continuing,” Michelle whispered.

  “Yes. Nothing short of mortal injury will stop them. A trainer has probably marked one of them as partially disabled.”

  Sure enough, Michelle caught a glimpse of them several rooms away. Hannah had one arm that appeared to be tied behind her back.

  “Look down.”

  Michelle looked.

  And gasped!

  “That’s unfair.”

  “No one ever said war was fair.”

  Michelle considered shouting out a warning, at least to Ricardo.

  “Don’t distract them.” Kee had turned to stare directly into her face from inches away.

  Michelle bit her mental tongue, but didn’t like it one bit.

  Kee frowned briefly, then turned to watch below.

  The room might have been a kitchen.

  Three hostages sat in a line along one side of the island facing the door. Their hands were tied behind their backs, but a rifle lay on the counter in front of each one. As if they were armed.

  Villains were located behind the entry door, behind a swung-open refrigerator door, and a third squatting behind the trio of hostages.

  One more sat in the center of the room on a stool. His hands were behind him as if he was bound, but he was actually holding a pair of handguns.

  Michelle never could quite explain what happened next.

  One moment she was staring down at a terrible, devious trap.

  Then a bright flash and a loud bang had her closing her eyes in pain and slapping her hands over her ears.

  When she dared open them again, all four villain dummies were down.

  All three hostages were still upright.

  Ricardo and the one-armed Hannah moved among them, kicking aside weapons and shooting the bad-guy dummies an extra time.

  Then they paused and glanced at each other.

  In that instant, someone stepped into the kitchen’s doorway and shot them both.

  Michelle screamed—then didn’t remember anything else.

  :I can’t believe you fainted.:

  Michelle opened one eye to look at him. “You’re dead.”

  “Only technically.” Ricardo rather liked the idea that she’d fainted when she’d seen him shot.

  “But I saw that man shoot you.”

  “It’s called Simunitions.”

  “Like…” Michelle pushed herself up slowly, using the railing of the metal walkway to help. Then she reached out and tentatively touched his chest. He’d scaled right up the kitchen cabinets and then rushed across the thin top of the walls the moment she’d gone down.

  “Like simulated ammunitions. See how most of our weapons are blue? It means they’ve been retrofitted for Simunitions and can’t fire live rounds.”

  “So you’re not dead.”

  “Well, technically we are. We dropped our guard and the trainer shot us in the backs. Got both of us.” Which never, ever should have happened. He’d let his guard down for just milliseconds. Hannah was technically injured and it was his job to have her six. Instead, he’d thought about the woman up on the catwalk watching him.

  He hadn’t looked. He wasn’t that far out of practice. But he’d let himself be mentally distracted in a battle scenario at just the wrong moment.

  “Welcome back,” Kee’s tone was drier than week-old toast before she looked Ricardo in the face. “Too long out of the service.”

  “God damn it, Kee. You think I don’t know that?” Never should have been here in the first place, not after a year out of the service. Not ever again!

  “Doesn’t matter. You were both sloppy. At corner three and room seven you both should have been injured. Swinging your rifle through the tripwire and setting off the explosion in corridor four is a trap you never should have fallen for. If you’d kept your formation tighter, you would have avoided that. Never, ever push ahead without your teammate.”

  “But—”

  “This isn’t solo recon, soldier. Keep it tight.”

  Nothing more useless than a broken soldier. And it hurt like a knife had been driven into his gut.

  He’d lost everything of who he was.

  And Michelle’s look of pity didn’t help a thing.

  Chapter 11

  After Hannah and Ricardo had turned in their weapons and changed back into their street clothes, the soldier who’d given them their IDs had returned. She was leading them toward a low building beside a big hangar for a briefing.

  A briefing?

  All Michelle could picture was like in the movies when hero pilots were all lined up in ridiculously comfortable armchairs facing some wall of big screens and speaking in cryptic messages like “Split-S” and “Go to guns.”

  It was weird to realize that most of her understanding of what her brother and Ricardo did came from movies like Top Gun. Except her brother flew helicopters rather than fighter jets and was a foot taller than Tom Cruise. And Ricardo had been a soldier for Delta Force—which was so low profile that it took the government almost forty years to admit they even existed despite a couple of low-brow 1980s Chuck Norris movies.

  “Nothing more useless than a broken soldier?”

  Ha!

  A fashion flunky turned EMT who was a friend of a movie star. That’ll one-up you, Ricardo.

  Or one-down.

  She sighed; she was in so far over her head. Maybe Colonel Gibson was right about leaving civilians like her behind.

  The briefing only made that all the more true. The six of them and some intelligence officer, who never offered a name or rank. A blank room on metal chairs at three folding tables set up in a U shape. Not the least bit Top Gun. And without some Hollywood scriptwriter to dumb it down for her, the briefing might just as well have been in Greek. Scenarios, incursions, technology she’d never heard of…It shouldn’t be possible to feel so out of place. Even Isobel appeared to be asking relevant questions and Michelle couldn’t follow any of it.

  :Is this what you feel?:

  :What?:

  :Like you totally don’t belong, not even a little?:

  Ricardo turned from the screen that hung on the wall at the head of the U of tables to look at her. The sadness in his eyes was all she had to see.

  Ricardo’s shrug said no, but maybe yes.

  No, his shrug said to go the hell away. As if she could.

  “Are there any questions?” The briefing officer looked around the table, and Michelle noticed that his eyes pretty much skipped over her. She’d tried to look attentive, but she was so out of her league and it must have been painfully obvious. Multi-unit task force, base and field security risk analysis, infiltrate-exfiltrate tactics…words, words, and more words.

  :What am I doing here?: Michelle knew she didn’t belong.

  Before Ricardo could answer, the briefing officer spoke up. “I don’t know what you’re all doing here.”

  :(Laugh).:

  :Go find a cliff to jump off, Manella.: She did her best to smile at him
to show that it was a tease, but then the briefing officer caught her doing it and his expression went particularly dark.

  “I know several of your records and I can’t help but recognize Ms. Manella.” The briefing officer’s eyes finally skittered away from Michelle’s face to focus on Isobel. Like Michelle needed even more proof that she was the misfit.

  “I’ve been told to ask no questions. But I’m supposed to say the following: ‘If you are unsure of this mission at any time, just back away.’ Why I’m wasting my breath saying that to a team that includes an Army pilot, a Night Stalker, and two Delta, I have no idea. Your flight has been refueled and departs in fifteen minutes. Best of luck.” Then he was gone and the corporal reappeared as their guide.

  “No rest for the weary,” Michelle joked as they headed back out to the refueled plane. She hadn’t slept much on the flight here and the time zone had jumped ahead two hours. The coffee was battling the breakfast of fried chicken on a biscuit smothered in gravy.

  And everyone else on her team all got it. Focused. Determined. Ready.

  But she was—toast.

  :Where are we going again (query).: She sent to Ricardo.

  :Weren’t you listening?:

  :Gibberish quotient equals a hundred percent.: Even with the half-off, season-end discount.

  Ricardo dropped into the seat at the very back of the plane. When she took a step to follow, he scowled fiercely at her for reasons she couldn’t fathom. That left her no choice except to sit in the front four across from her semi-brother. Isobel rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment before trailing Ricardo all the way to the back

  When Ricardo still didn’t answer, she leaned forward and whispered to Anton, “Where are we going?”

  “Weren’t you listening?” She hated that he echoed Ricardo’s question; this time she could hear the peevish disbelief.

  “Just answer the damned question, Anton.”

  “Honduras.” He didn’t say it like anything special, but Michelle felt a shiver right down to her boots.

  Honduras was where they’d found and rescued Ricardo.

  “We can’t!”

  Anton shrugged. “Not like we’re going back into the jungle. Just a US airbase. In and out, no problemo.”