Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2)

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Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2) Page 8

by Barnes, Colin F.


  ‘You’re an electrical engineer,’ Jim said. ‘Could those skills be in demand for some project?’

  Another sigh of exasperation, then Tom said, ‘I guess so. It’s all just conjecture. I have no idea what the project is. But one thing I do know is this changes things.’

  ‘Oh? How so?’ Jim asked.

  ‘If Gracefield and his cronies are at the base, we can’t trust them. We don’t know if they’ve been infiltrated by more spies, and given that this Banshee Project seemed to be a personal project of Gracefield’s, we have to assume he was doing it outside of the official channels – he was the one who issued the kill orders, after all.’

  ‘Then it’s business as usual,’ Jim said. ‘I didn’t come on this journey to make friends with those we find. I’m here for the truth only. Whatever that might be.’

  ‘Then we’re united,’ Tom said. ‘It’s all I want too. I swear to you, Jim, I’m not involved with all this stuff. I want the same things as you and the others.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Jim said. Having been saved by Tom on the Excelsior, and considering the help he had given the flotilla with regard to the vaccine and the training in the sub’s operation, Jim personally wasn’t convinced Tom was involved – but that wasn’t to say Marcus and the others would have the same view. ‘We need to be careful about this,’ he said. ‘Stay away from Marcus as much as possible. Don’t give him any reason to think you’re not on our side.’

  ‘That’s easier said than done,’ Tom said. ‘Let’s just keep things professional. I think you should look after these.’ He handed Jim the papers. ‘If you find anything else of use in them, come speak to me, but I don’t want to make this a big issue. I don’t want to be accused of knowing more than I do.’

  Tom checked his watch and stood up from the bunk. ‘You’d best get off,’ he said to Jim. ‘Your shift’s over. Ahmed and Eva should be here shortly to relieve you, Patrice, and Bernita.’

  Jim pocketed the papers and nodded to Tom. ‘I’ll just say goodnight to the others, then head off,’ he said. He left, not saying anything else, already feeling bad about the whole situation. He did trust Tom, that much was true, but, in the back of his mind, he still wondered what the implications of this so-called Banshee Project were, and what they’d find when they finally got to Mt McKinley.

  Back inside the command centre, he checked over his responsibilities. After a few moments, Eva entered.

  ‘Morning, everyone,’ she said, smiling as she stepped through the doorway. Ahmed was close behind, rubbing his eyes and mumbling his greetings. The small, dark room seemed to come alive with the changeover as it always did when the previous shift brought the next shift up to speed on their progress and any concerns.

  Jim held back a yawn and patted Tom on the back. ‘Okay, I’m going to get some sleep. Give me a shout if you see that mountain of ours.’

  ‘Will do,’ Tom said. ‘Enjoy the rest.’

  ‘Night, Jim,’ Eva said, but Jim just gave her an impassive look before heading out. Duncan had told him about the whole sorry affair with Marcus. Although he didn’t want to get involved with their relationship, he couldn’t help but see Eva as someone who was hurting his son – not that Duncan was completely innocent, of course. Jim knew his son had trouble communicating with people properly. He was too highly strung for his own good.

  He had got only a few metres down the passageway when Eva called out to him.

  ‘Jim, wait!’ She rushed up to him. Jim stopped and was about to tell her that he didn’t want to talk right now, that she should give it all some time to settle first, when Duncan called out from the opposite end of the central passage.

  ‘Dad, you need to come with me,’ Duncan yelled, racing through the corridor from the aft of the submarine.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s Li . . . She’s . . . She’s dead.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  11:35 a.m.

  The smell of blood and sweat made Jim gag as he opened the door to Li’s cabin.

  Annette, wearing a face mask and gloves, knelt over Li’s still body. Li’s face was already gravely pale, the shadows creeping into every crack and wrinkle.

  ‘I can’t tell if she’s smiling or grimacing,’ Duncan said over his father’s shoulder.

  ‘Smiling,’ Annette said. ‘This . . . ended her suffering.’

  The overhead light created a glossy sheen across the clotting blood pooled around Li’s body. She lay there, her arms by her sides, palms up. Her wrists had been slashed lengthways, the skin ripped as if some feral creature had torn it.

  Jim remembered to breathe; his lungs burned from holding his breath too long. Annette looked up at him and blinked. Through her mask she said, ‘We need to move the body soon.’

  ‘I know,’ Jim replied, remembering Tom’s training.

  A dead body would normally have to be moved to one of the submarine’s large freezers to prevent the decomposing corpse from releasing bacteria into the air circulation system.

  But not in this case, Jim thought. They would be better off burying her at sea immediately. Send her body out through the lockout trunk and let the sea take her. She had no family to mourn her, and other than her friends on the sub, no one else would grieve for her.

  ‘We should send her out,’ Jim said.

  The others simply murmured their agreement, probably already coming to the same conclusion. Jim would make sure that when they sent her out, they would pause a moment for her, say a few words, as they had always done for the deceased on the flotilla.

  Thinking over these points helped steady his heart rate, though his legs wobbled beneath him to such a degree that he needed to lean against the doorway to remain standing. It wasn’t really the tragedy of it that was getting to him; he’d seen a lot of that over the last few years. Everyone had. Rather, it was the nature of this particular one that was getting under his skin.

  The poor girl had barely said a word to anyone while she was on the flotilla, or even on the sub. She had shared so little about herself that it was difficult to grieve. There was no connection beyond them being two people on a submarine.

  He hated himself for not feeling something other than disappointment that she had decided to take her own life. He wished he could have got to know her better, so that he could feel something more for her – sorrow, maybe, or loss. She deserved that much at least. She had given up a comfortable life on the flotilla to join the others on their journey.

  Even with the episode with Marcus and Eva, and Li’s consequential imprisonment, she didn’t deserve to have her death go unacknowledged, with so little feeling. Annette waited patiently, giving Jim time to . . . what, exactly? They knew what they had to do. Still, Jim appreciated the moment of quiet, the time to consider Li, be respectful to her memory, and acknowledge the loss.

  ‘We failed her,’ he finally said, quietly, as though she might still be able to hear his words if he spoke any louder. ‘We should have done more to include her.’

  Annette bowed her head. ‘We can’t blame ourselves,’ she said. ‘It was her decision and her decision alone. At least now she’s at peace from whatever suffering she was experiencing.’

  Duncan spoke quietly. ‘Annette’s right, Dad. Nothing we can do now other than remember her and be thankful that we had her in our company for as long as we did.’

  Although Jim knew they were right, it still felt insufficient. But what else could he do?

  ‘Okay,’ Jim said. ‘Let’s get her prepared and moved to the trunk. Dunc, give me a hand, will you?’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  With Duncan’s and Annette’s help, Jim moved Li’s corpse through the narrow passage of the sub into the lockout trunk. They wrapped her respectfully, using some of their bandages made from cotton clothes, placing her damaged arms over her chest. They closed her eyes so she looked even more at peace, even though Jim knew that was a lie. But it was the best they could do for her.

  It chilled him to think she had had
to go to these lengths to find peace. Would this be the case for everyone else too, once they knew the truth of the drowning – assuming there was a truth to find? For the first time since they had left the flotilla, Jim felt a deep sense of trepidation about the base and what they might find there. Could it be a situation where knowing the truth would actually make things worse? Would Stanic, or Benedict, be proved right?

  Time would tell.

  Brad and Ahmed had come to lend a hand with Li’s body. They stood within the sub’s airlock system and waited as it filled with water, their faces obscured by their scuba masks. Li’s body hung suspended in the water as though she were an Egyptian pharaoh buried at sea.

  Jim placed his palm against the trunk’s door, the metal surface cold against his skin. ‘Rest in peace, Li. I hope you’re in a better place now.’

  ‘Amen,’ Annette said in a low tone. ‘I’ll actually miss her,’ she added.

  No other words were spoken. Several minutes of silent reflection passed while Brad and Ahmed took Li’s body out of the sub and into the sea. After Brad and Ahmed had returned safely, they headed back to the command centre with Jim.

  Duncan and Annette returned to Li’s room to clean it up, wash away yet more blood.

  If Jim were a superstitious man, he’d think this boat was cursed.

  Or perhaps we are . . . Perhaps we shouldn’t have survived at all.

  Those considerations continued to spin around in his head until he joined Eva and the others in the command centre. They looked up at him expectantly, and he told them everything that had happened.

  ‘That’s awful,’ Eva said. ‘Despite what she did to me, I’d never wish this on her.’

  Tom and Ahmed nodded, mumbling their agreement.

  ‘I had a bad feeling,’ Ahmed said, ‘we might not all make it back, but I didn’t think we’d lose someone so soon, and in that way.’

  ‘She was troubled,’ Tom said. ‘I should have seen it during the training. This is all my fault; I should have brought someone else to work alongside Karel.’

  Marcus appeared in the doorway of the command centre. ‘You can all blame yourselves as much as you like, but it ain’t gonna change a damned thing. She’s gone. It was her choice, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it now. Besides, if anyone ought to be blamed, it’s me.’

  Eva spun round from her position at the sonar console to face him. ‘That’s bullshit. Sure, you were stupid, but it takes two to tango, and it’s not like you put the knife in her hands.’

  ‘I know, but still . . . Listen, I just came up here to tell Tom the engines are working to ninety-five per cent efficiency and all is fine with the reactor. I’ll go back to my post.’ Then to Jim, ‘It would have been nice to have been told about Li directly, instead of finding out through Karel.’

  ‘It’s not all about you, all the time,’ Jim spat.

  Graves tensed his jaw. Jim steadied his legs, ready to defend himself, but Graves just shook his head and sighed.

  ‘You’re not worth it,’ Graves said, and, turning his back, headed off back to his station in the engine room.

  ‘He had a point,’ Eva said. ‘He was the only one of us who was close to her. He should have been the first to know.’

  ‘You his advocate now?’ Jim said. He’d heard from Duncan how she had been spending more and more time with Graves. It was clear to Jim now where her loyalties lay, and it wasn’t with Duncan.

  ‘The arguing stops now,’ Tom said, his eyes sharp and focused on something on the video screen. He ordered Ahmed to change their trajectory, to point the nose of the sub higher so they drew up closer to the surface. Jim moved up next to Tom. The video feed was blurred for a moment, obscuring the view.

  ‘What is it?’ Jim asked. ‘What did you see?’

  Tom didn’t answer the question immediately, his attention caught by something on the screen . After a few tense moments, the video feed resolved, sharpened, and Jim saw it.

  ‘The mountain!’ he said, pointing as though no one else could see it. Eva joined them and Ahmed craned his neck from his position to the right of the screens.

  ‘Holy shit, that’s it,’ Eva said. ‘Mount McKinley. It’s really there, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom said, a shallow smile on his face. ‘It’s really there. We’ll be in position in a few hours at this rate. Jim, can you go wake everyone and gather them in the mess, please? It’s time to plan our approach. I’ll be there shortly, as soon as I’ve charted our final position.’

  An excited buzz rippled through Jim’s body. For the first time in three years, he was finally seeing another piece of land, even if in that moment it resembled a small, jagged pyramid on the horizon, its grey tones barely discernible in the monochrome palette of the sky and the ocean.

  Eventually, he pulled himself away from the view and dashed down the passageway, informing everyone they had arrived. He went all the way through towards the mess, and, as he did so, all he could think about was Li.

  If only she could have just held on long enough, she would have seen this too, and perhaps it would have convinced her to stay alive and discover the truth with the rest of them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Arrival at Mt McKinley

  In the freezing darkness, Eva braced herself against the howling wind. Even with her mask on, the cold spray, blown off the surface of the sea, made her shiver.

  They had chosen to wear masks as a preventative measure in addition to the vaccine. Annette had suggested that there could be different forms of the bacteria in different locations and that it was wise to take precautions.

  Tom gunned the outboard engine on the F470 – a combat rubber raiding craft, known as a Zodiac in general terms, although Eva was unaware of this. She just thought of them as rubber dinghies. Her grandfather, Jerry, had owned one, which he would take out fishing. She had only gone with him the one time and decided she wasn’t a fan. It hadn’t helped that she’d fallen into the freezing water, after leaning too far over the side of the dinghy in order to bring in her grandfather’s catch.

  ‘Hold on,’ Tom yelled as he powered the craft determinedly into a harsh swell of cascading waves. All around them, the jagged peaks of Mount McKinley breached the storm-gathered sea. White water crashed into them, sending a cloud of spray into the dark air like thousands of diamonds, backlit by the sparse stripes of silver moonlight.

  Inside the boat were five of the sub crew: Jim, Eva, Marcus, Tom, and Annette. The rest were back on the submarine, keeping it close by but not so close that it could be spotted – or, worse, crash into the mountain and wreck their chance of returning to the flotilla.

  The inflatable craft had once been part of the SEAL delivery system, along with the single, powerful outboard engine.

  When they had left the submarine and climbed aboard, Eva hadn’t been convinced it would be agile, or strong, enough to navigate the various peaks and outcroppings around McKinley.

  Tom had assured her that it’d be fine.

  Now, she didn’t doubt him; she did, however, doubt her ability to avoid being sick, as the harsh waves battered into them with no sign of mercy.

  Jim leaned into the lashing gale and rain at the stern of the stealth-black boat, holding aloft a flashlight the size of a trashcan. Its beam penetrated the early morning gloom, a white light guiding them through the shifting collage of debris and garbage.

  Marcus sat to the right of Eva on the bench seat, an arm tightly wrapped around her waist, holding her in place as they rode the oscillating waveform that conjured memories of going to a Six Flags amusement park as a child and riding the twisting, turning roller coasters.

  The fear she felt now, however, wasn’t a thrill like it was back then.

  Annette, to Eva’s left, clutched her medical bag until her knuckles cracked. Her skin reflected the brief caress of silver moonlight, the heavy, dark clouds above splintering as they stretched like pulled taffy.

  That memory again: Eva with her mother and father,
eating taffy from one of the food vendors, arguing over which ride they would go on next. All good-natured, though. She knew she’d get to go on them all eventually. Her father had loved roller coasters as much as she did, which in hindsight seemed incongruous with his hard-line work ethic.

  Every day of the seventeen years she had lived at home, her father would be up at 04:00 a.m. to tend to the farm. As gruelling as the work had been, rounding his shoulders and petrifying his muscles into tree roots, he had never once complained. Quite the opposite. Eva would often wake early in the morning to the sound of her father’s singing.

  He’d sing all day – to the animals, while driving the tractor, and when he finished work and joined Eva and her mother in the kitchen for their evening meal. The memory gave her the strength to ignore her fear, to face the hard times so they might get to reap the rewards. In this case, shelter, and, perhaps, answers.

  ‘Watch out for the rocks on the port side,’ Jim shouted, shining the massive light over the broken teeth of McKinley’s ancient rock.

  ‘I see them,’ Tom yelled back. With deft skill, he manipulated the F470 to slice between the outcrops and the floating debris of some long-dead ship. A ten-metre-long piece of rusted metal hull floated alongside them, a ghost relic of a past era.

  The tips of Eva’s ears stung in the cold wind. She gritted her teeth and hung on, as Tom continued to manoeuvre the crew closer to the main peak. For a full thirty minutes or so, they circumnavigated the mountain until, finally, they saw it.

  ‘Up there,’ Marcus yelled. He leaned forward and pointed up a few degrees to starboard. ‘I saw something. A square edge protruding from the rock.’

  ‘I can see it too,’ Eva said, squinting. Although she couldn’t make out any of the details in the darkness, a thin slice of moonlight reflected off a hard, straight corner, a shape that did not belong naturally to the rocky formations of the mountain.

  Jim raised the flashlight as Tom brought the boat around a swirl of plastic trash. The white beam tracked a course straight up the rock until it found a surface that appeared to be corrugated steel. A triangular antenna assembly, in front of the structure on an outcrop, whipped back and forth against the battering gusts.

 

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