The Leah Chronicles_Andorra

by Devon C. Ford

  This was where I took different things from different people.

  Neil always goaded me for being a mini-me of Dan, only with long hair, but I was very much my own person. I took military bits from Mitch, plucked a little of the coolness from Steve’s head when he had first taught me how to respect a firearm and how to be precise; as a helicopter pilot precision had been something so natural to him that he took it for granted. From Dan I took a lot of things, like how to fight dirty to make sure I won. I took the little bits that everyone did really well and I made them my own, and for planning missions it was actually Marie who had taught me the best way. Mitch did his seven questions thing which was an army method, but that seemed just to help solidify the question in my head, whereas Marie’s method helped me give the answers so that anyone could understand it.

  Her way, and people often forgot that before she became our counsellor and leader that she was a professional investigator; a detective sergeant dealing with murders and things. She had researched, planned and overseen more operations, more missions, back in the world than most. Her way laid it out nice and simple for everyone to understand, and I hoped that it would resonate with Dan because he hadn’t seen me do this yet. I think Marie liked giving me things I could use against him, maybe to take away some of that mystical hero aura that people thought surrounded him.

  Walks around in a cloud of unicorn farts sprinkling rainbow dust everywhere, that one, Mitch often said of Dan when people seemed to idolise him. He was just a man, an extraordinary one, I’ll allow, but all he did was think it through and execute it with precision and meaning. Maximum effort.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Information,” I began, “is that there are survivors in Andorra. I presume you know the details and you don’t need me to break that down?” I asked, guessing that he would have learned the detail of this tiny, almost unknown country which was one of the smallest independent states in the world.

  He smiled.

  “No, please lay your knowledge on me.”

  Bugger, I thought, but pressed on anyway.

  “Small landlocked principality,” I said, having only recently learned what that meant but not willing to let him know that. “Pre… event population was around eighty thousand but with a regular tourist attendance of up to ten times that number over a one-year period. Estimated survivor population given Emma’s immunity percentages put the expected number of people there at one hundred plus. Predominant economical source was tourism, but exports of tobacco and some livestock, er…” I glanced at my notes as I’d lost my train of thought. “Geographically it’s a bowl surrounded by impassable mountains. Two roads in, one east and one south. They have made radio contact requesting trade and have stated that they have suffered thefts. Now,” I said, looking up and fixing him with an intense look, “translation issues have been raised to say that thieves may not be accurate as the Spanish and Catalan dialects can differ. A more correct assumption is that they mean highwaymen.”

  I knew I’d struck a chord there and hit on something he didn’t know because he couldn’t hide an emotion on his face if his life depended on it. It was like he’d just smelt one of Ash’s silent farts in polite company and was trying to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “Intent,” I went on, seeing the corner of his mouth prickle upwards as he finally recognised that I was using the police format for giving a mission briefing. “The intent is to travel there and open a dialogue with the survivors. The message was directed from the General Council, which is what their form of government is called. From this we can assume that they have established a form of co-operation or hierarchical command.”

  Dan was impressed, even though I still stumbled over the word that Marie had given me.

  “Method,” I said, glancing back own at my notes, “Land Rover with the extra fuel tank is available and the route planned. Myself and one other to act as interpreter if required, who also doubles up as trained.”

  “Rafi?” he asked, no doubt having either seen us together that day or else one of his little spies had told him. It didn’t matter; Rafi was the obvious choice. “He’s about your age, isn’t he?” Dan asked me, not even bothering to hide the lift in his eyebrows.

  “Four years older,” I said, “almost twenty-two.”

  “The route should take a day unless detours are needed due to blocked roads. There is enough fuel to do the trip at its longest including detours without having to find any more.”

  I looked at Dan who just nodded, telling me that either he had sought out Neil or else Neil had found him and told him what I had asked already. Thick as bloody thieves they were, despite constantly ribbing each other whenever they spoke. They had been that way ever since they’d found me, and I was proud to be one of the very first few still alive who had started our little group.

  “Full personal loadout,” I went on. “I want to take a four-one-seven too,” I said, meaning that we would both be fully armed but that I wanted to take one of our bigger calibre HK417 sniper rifles too, which was the bigger, meaner brother of the gun that Dan carried now. His was the short-barrelled version, the CQB which someone said was the gun that had shot Bin Laden. That was back in the world where I’d never seen a gun, let alone owned a few.

  “Admin?” Dan asked, prompting me to move to the next section of the established briefing order. I ignored it.

  “Five days rations each,” I said trying not to show any annoyance, “full BOBs. Dog food for me. Ability to survive without scavenging if we had to walk back.”

  He nodded, evidently happy that I had considered the worst-case scenario.

  “Risk assessment,” I said as I looked into his eyes, “risks are road conditions and hostile action. I’ll drive carefully and avoid people with guns. Communications,” I went on before Dan stopped me.

  “You don’t want to take anything heavier?” he asked, one eyebrow up a little.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like an AT4.”

  That surprised me. I knew we had a few, and I guessed that Mitch probably visited them from time to time in private, but I’d never used one or even considered learning how. Blowing shit up wasn’t my thing; it was Mitch’s.

  “Anything requiring that kind of firepower,” I said carefully, sensing a trap, “and I’d be looking to withdraw. There’s only two of us so not enough to use flanking manoeuvres. I’m not looking to tangle with anyone.”

  Dan nodded, happy with what I realised was the correct answer. “Comms?”

  “None to speak of really,” I said, knowing that the CB would be useless after about ten kilometres from Sanctuary because of the high peaks. “I was thinking of trialling one of the pigeons for an SOS?”

  Dan nodded, shifting in his seat. “Good idea. Take two though in case one doesn’t make it back. If you get in the shit just release them and we’ll follow your route in force.”

  My turn to nod, my mind being forced to consider failure and risk.

  “Human rights,” I said as I tried not to smile. Marie had been laughing when she told me this part, knowing that Dan would find it funny. “I don’t foresee any collateral intrusion on the rights of people not directly linked to the operation,” I said, parroting what Marie had written down for me and keeping a straight face, “and all relevant sections of the European Human Rights Act will be carefully considered before any of those rights are engaged.”

  Dan stared at me, a smile beginning as he spoke. “Leah, I fully expect you to engage and breach Article Two should you feel the need. If you meet anyone willing to do you harm and they don’t want to tell you the information you want, then you bloody well engage Article Three.”

  Okay, smartarse, I thought to myself, you’ve got me there.

  He knew he had me, probably as certainly as he knew that Marie had helped me with the wording of the last bit. He held up his thumb again like he had when we spoke to Victor.

  “Right to life,” he said before holding up another digit,
“and freedom from torture.”

  “So… I should kill people and torture them?” I asked, sensing another trap.

  He shot me a shocked look.

  “No! Not unless you need to, but what if you do have to?”

  “Do it like you mean it,” we chorused, bumping fists again as we both called jinx for the second time that day.

  ~

  I spent the rest of the daylight getting what I needed together with Rafi and Nemesis flanking me. I went with him to his quarters, shared with a few other young men of the militia in a room with roughly constructed wooden bunks. The others in there smirked and tried to embarrass him at being picked by me, which I ignored because men are just big silly boys and aren’t worth acknowledging when they snicker and giggle about girls. A soft snap of my fingers brought Nemesis to my heel and she let out a low, throaty growl before I loudly admonished her, although gently, telling her that the silly men don’t mean to be rude, but they aren’t capable of good manners and that she should bite any of them.

  The snickering stopped abruptly after that and a few of the others found that they had somewhere else to be.

  I helped Rafi empty out his backpack, finding it too small for the job so I used my eyebrows to suggest that someone else lend him theirs. He ended up with a hardy black canvas-style bag with tactical loops on, not too dissimilar to my own one but a little bigger. I helped him pack it, tossing out the things he didn’t need. One of those items was a roll-on deodorant and shaving kit, and I saw the horror on his face at the thought of not being groomed in the presence of a girl.

  “Trust me,” I said, “after three days in a car in this heat with a dog, we’ll both smell bad.”

  We didn’t need to consider food and water as I knew Neil would load the truck with those things. We’d have to transfer that into our bags before we set off, because there was no point in having a bug-out bag if you had to pack it before bugging out.

  He carried a sidearm, a mass-produced Glock as they were so widely available to European law enforcement and military. I carried the same one and knew there was a reason why they were so popular. They were easy to use and handle for a sidearm and were relatively simple to maintain.

  “What about your main weapon?” I asked him.

  “I have been trained with the H&K,” he said, his accent forcing me to hide a smirk.

  “Good, follow me. Nem!” I snapped, waking the dog up from where she had helped herself to a vacant bottom bunk.

  ~

  One of the benefits of being the daughter of the town leaders, as well as one of the trusted lieutenants along with Neil and Mitch, was that I had both keys for the armoury. Only four of us could access the guns alone whereas the militia had to have two people present who had a key to one lock only. It was the safest way to prevent anyone getting their hands on the good stuff without us knowing about it, and Dan was ever suspicious of people who lingered too long near the heavy door. Dan probably knew that Mitch’s room was a small armoury in itself, but he kept them locked up tight too. The sidearms that the militia carried when on guard duty, only a few at a time, were handed from person to person when they took over the watch.

  I opened the door, unlocking one heavy mechanism at a time, and pulled it open to flick on the light and smiled as it sputtered into life. Stacks of looted 5.56 ammunition stood tall to my left, with racks of new HK416s sporting different attachments. There was still enough daylight left to sight one in, so I took one of the ready guns, the ones not smeared with packing grease, and looked it over.

  “Holographic sight,” I told Rafi, seeing him smile widely, “line up the red dot on what you want dead.” I handed him the gun, first showing him that the breech was empty and patting the empty magazine housing. He held it comfortably by the foregrip and trigger housing, making a show of keeping his finger away from the trigger to demonstrate the discipline he had been taught. I liked that.

  I took a baker’s dozen of loaded magazines and put them in a bag as I left him holding the rifle. I took a Glock and another half-dozen loaded mags to put them in as well, pausing to add another one for luck before I handed Rafi the bag and ran my hand over the old MK14 and newer HK417. I picked up the HK, pulling back on the mechanism and smiling. I took four magazines for that, more than enough to do a lot of damage, and popped two of our remaining flashbangs in the bag. Flipping off the light and seeing Rafi scurry to follow me out of the door I locked it up and led the way back to the keep.

  Taking the bag and the 416 from him I said, “I’ll keep these until tomorrow.” Mostly as Dan wouldn’t approve but more because I knew they would be playing with it all night in their little barracks if he kept it and I wanted him alert after a full night’s sleep instead of dying from a stray bullet negligently discharged by unpracticed hands.

  “See you at dinner,” I told him before heading for my room.

  On The Road Again

  Now I didn’t think for one second that Dan was just letting me run with this. I know he’d done his own plan, checked it against mine, probably spent all night picking apart both plans until he had boiled it down to what he thought could work.

  And then he just trusted me.

  I didn’t want to think it, I certainly didn’t want to give voice to my opinion, but Dan had softened since Marie had the baby. He was running around and jabbering away with both French and English words now, always up to something and never seeming to grow tired, but his birth had somehow changed Dan. He wasn’t quite so rough and ready any more, somehow. He wasn’t the physical presence in the room whenever he walked in and he didn’t intimidate people, whether he meant to or not.

  I knew he had been through enough before. How he had come close to the edge and been knocked out or beaten up or shot or blown up or stabbed and should have died twenty times over in the last five years but somehow, he always came out the other side. The battle for Sanctuary, along the healing and the aftermath, had left him exhausted. He had changed after that, and with a new baby he withdrew from his chosen role. He blamed his injuries to begin with; asking others to organise a guard and take a watch when he would have volunteered whether carrying an injury or not.

  He was different, and I suspected that he had lost his edge. That was fine, understandable even. He’d got us this far, solved the existential crisis of humanity and led us to safety and a solution to our continued existence on earth. As far as career highlights go, he had done enough.

  By the time my brother was a year old, Dan had started to make a reappearance. He began exercising and working Ash. He wore his weapons again and moved with purpose, and spent long hours talking with Marie and Polly until the expected happened and she stepped down to leave them in joint charge of the care of Sanctuary.

  The mundane day-to-day, the training of the militia and the selection of leaders among the others, fell to Mitch and Neil. And me.

  I was up early, doing the old trick of drinking an extra two bottles of water before sleep and waking up to a nagging bladder. Not as accurate, but just as effective as an alarm clock. I walked Nemesis up to the parapets and watched the daybreak over our bay having missed the sunrise, but watched the line of glowing orange creep down from the watchtower on the opposite side until it hit the level of the cliff it sat on.

  I wasn’t hungry, I never was when it was a morning like that, but I forced myself to eat and went to get ready.

  I brushed Nemesis, which was a far easier task than Ash because of his thick double coat. Her fur was darker, with patches of brown at her paws, belly and muzzle, and the short fur took the brush easily. Balling up the dead fur, I tossed it into the fireplace in my room as the last few years had taught us all never to waste any resource no matter how small and seemingly inconsequential.

  I pulled on my black combat trousers, made of a lighter material and designed for hill walking in fair weather, and the new pair of breathable walking boots which I had only recently broken in. Knowing the weather would be warm, I finished the outfit with a v
est top with wide shoulders that wouldn’t rub on my equipment. The boots and top were my usual style noir, obviously.

  I shrugged into my vest, black and heavily padded to absorb any impact to the ceramic plates front and back, and tightened it.

  Like Dan, I was always messing with my kit and tweaking it out of some obsession to find the perfect loadout or through simple boredom. A Glock went into the holster stitched horizontally on the chest ready for my right hand to draw it. Under it sat two spare magazines and beside that were four loaded magazines for my carbine. A small sheath knife sat on the front of my right shoulder and a larger one on my back. As excessive as that might have seemed, I still carried more. A rig attached to my left thigh and connected to my belt with a large clip held two loaded magazines for the 417, and my right thigh held the Walther with the suppressor I had borrowed from Dan about a year before and never got around to handing back. That gun fitted my hand better than the Glock did, but having only two magazines for it I had to hold it in reserve as a secondary, secondary weapon.

  Dressed for war, and feeling as tough as I looked, I left my room and headed for the courtyard near the gatehouse where Neil was fussing over the Land Rover’s engine bay as the engine ticked over to warm up. Rafi was lounging near the tailgate. He had already separated the food and water into two piles, filling the remaining room in his bag with half.

  I passed the bag of weapons over to him, unslinging the 417 from my back and laying the long rifle across behind the front seats. He loaded the Glock and holstered it at his right hip before taking the 416 and resting it in the passenger footwell. I finished loading my bag and shut the back doors, turning to find a small farewell committee waiting for me near the open driver’s door.

  Victor was among them, strange for him as he rarely left the tower, and in his hands was a wooden crate with wide slats. Inside, I knew, were the two homing pigeons which had been reared as a hobby of his and had all come back when they were put to the test.