Tap-Dancing the Minefields

by Lyn Gala

  “He’s a missing man.”

  “I hate to point this out, but there’s nowhere for him to go,” Lev said. Clyde wondered if two aliens had shared some version of this same argument after the three of them had gotten off that slave ship.

  “And how often have we found a way to do the impossible?” Clyde turned and headed for his office. He was in no mood to spend one extra second inside alien walls.

  Lev ran after him. “He would have told me if he was going AWOL.”

  Clyde snorted. “You’re the last person he would have told.”

  “Will you stop assuming that we’re just fuck buddies, that we don’t have feelings for each other?” Lev ran to get ahead of Clyde and cut him off, and for one second Clyde actually thought Lev was going to take a swing.

  “I’m not assuming anything. If he truly cares about you, Tankersley is going to keep you out of the middle. He’s not going to tell you anything, and that way you won’t get hurt. That’s the only thing Tankersley has done that I actually approve of!” Clyde shouted back. He hated that it was Tankersley who had slipped into such a vulnerable spot in Lev’s psyche. Why couldn’t Lev fall for the small woman in the computer programming department, or the guy with the big glasses who did their inventories? Either would be perfect for Lev. Nerdy, attentive, careful with their work. But no, Lev had to fall for the battle-weary warrior.

  Shaking his head as though denial could change reality, Lev asked, “How could he get off the base?”

  “How the hell would I know? However, I’m going to my office, and there’d damn well better be some people waiting for me.” Clyde detoured around Lev and headed for the balloon-lift things he hated. He always feared falling off, but Lev insisted he didn’t have a way to attach a handrail. Who the hell made lifts without handrails? Aliens were morons.

  “Maybe he’s in the bathroom,” Lev said hopefully. Sometimes the man’s optimism was really annoying.

  “What did you say to him?” Clyde loved Lev like a brother, but sometimes the man could annoy a saint. And Tankersley was no saint.

  “Nothing!”

  Clyde stopped on the lift platform and faced off. “I know you. You always lead with your heart, so what did you say?”

  “And I know you. There’s no way I’m getting into the middle of a military issue. I offered to listen to him, that’s it. I didn’t mention Hoffer or that horrible video or the fact that he watched someone he loved kill a friend.” Lev’s voice broke.

  Clyde reached out and grabbed Lev by the arm. The man was too emotionally open. In a perfect world, Clyde would rotate him off the front lines and let him go live in Kansas and tinker with solar panels or something. Unfortunately Earth needed his reverse-engineering skills. Clyde hated that this job made him prioritize the man’s skills even when he had no place in a war zone.

  “Lev, I want you to imagine you were talking to me an hour ago. You know what a suspicious bastard I am. What would I have gotten out of that conversation you had?” The lift had reached the top, and Clyde tugged on Lev’s elbow to get him moving.

  “I really didn’t say anything. I asked about hobbies, and yeah, I brought up Dungeons & Dragons, but I also asked about sports and school. I just wanted to give him an opening. I know he wants to tell us the truth, and after seeing that video….” Lev cringed.

  Clyde started walking faster, and Lev had to double-time it to keep up. “Did you mention any other topic that came up during the briefing?”

  “You’re blaming me?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what happened. If Tankersley managed to get off this base, I’m not blaming anyone but him.”

  “What if he went to the surface? What if he wants to die up there?” Lev asked, panic in his voice. They’d had one soldier suicide that way, but it had been years before Clyde had taken command.

  “No one gets outside without an officer escort. He isn’t upstairs,” Clyde made a mental note to double-check the access logs and see if Sadler could program a drone to check the area. The kid was not going to die—not on Clyde’s watch. “Focus on your conversation. Did you bring up any other topics from the briefing? Did you notice any point when Tankersley’s emotions seemed to change?” Clyde was grasping at straws, because Lev didn’t notice much unless it came wrapped in alien technology.

  “He wanted to know why people called it knowing someone biblically when they meant sex. It wasn’t the sort of conversation that made me wonder if he was planning to go AWOL. Then we talked about science fiction and Neil Gaiman, and since he’d brought it up, I mentioned Good Omens, and how I didn’t believe in the whole good-and-evil model of the universe, but we were talking religion, so it wasn’t strange or out of place.”

  Clyde stopped just outside the hall that led to his office. This was the last door anyone could access without a security card. Weapons, the transport portal, VIP quarters, and Sadler’s surveillance unit were all behind locked doors. “Lev, do you have your security card?”

  “Did you forget yours again?” Lev sounded exasperated as he reached for his pocket. He froze, and Clyde closed his eyes. Tankersley had lifted Lev’s card.

  “I just had it.” Lev sounded confused.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No, really.” Lev started checking all his pockets while Clyde used his card to open the door.

  Two men were waiting for him outside his office, and since they’d waited together, Clyde assumed they had already swapped stories. That wasn’t great on an investigative level because they could influence each other, but Clyde didn’t care at this point. Getting Tankersley back was priority number one. They didn’t even have nondisclosure forms from him. What a clusterfuck.

  “Report,” Clyde barked.

  Lieutenant Begay quickly offered up the information. “Private Tankersley informed Corporal Sanders that he was being transferred back to the mainland via the transport portal and that he was unhappy about it. Sanders suggested that Tankersley not jump to conclusions as the transfer might be temporary or even an improvement. He left the kitchens unhappy but not upset. When I saw Private Tankersley, he was entering the portal room with a rolling cart full of older equipment. He reported that Staff Sergeant Powell had ordered him to take excessed equipment back to Picatinny for Sergeant Longtower to sort out. He did not have the paperwork, but he seemed so panicked about losing the forms and insistent about knowing what forms he needed when he took shipments through, that I thought it was a case of a young private who was overeager to rush into his duties. I apologize for my failure to follow protocol.”

  Clyde sighed. Here was one more idiot trying to fall on his sword. There were too damn many martyrs around lately. “And of the last twenty transports, how many have lacked the proper paperwork?” Clyde asked.

  Begay blushed.

  “Yeah, yeah, exactly,” Clyde said. “If someone’s tail is going to end up in a sling, it’ll be mine because I didn’t enforce the rules.” In his own defense, Clyde had never expected a fucking private to outsmart base security.

  “Sir, I think I provided some of the intel Tank used to bluff his way through. He asked me who ran logistics on the other side,” the corporal added.

  “Both of you, go over protocol with your teams, but this is not going on your records. Dismissed.” Instead of saluting them, Clyde chased them out with a hand wave. He officially sucked as an officer. That left Lev standing there.

  “How could he know? How could he know we had a transport device?”

  Clyde rarely got to see Lev bewildered, but now that Clyde had a better profile on the kid, he could guess. “We had fresh food. You were asking about topics related to his life in New York. Hell, for all I know, he saw someone with dried leaves caught in their cuff. You’re looking at him like he’s an average American kid. Start thinking of him as someone closer to John.”

  Lev wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know about that.”

  “He may not have the genetic enhancements, but he’s got the survival instincts. An
d I’m betting he found a way out of Picatinny. At least I’m not the only one with egg on his face.” The general was going to kill Clyde. He was going to quarter him and feed Clyde’s entrails to the gulls.

  Clyde stood a little straighter as he considered ways to clean up this mess. “I’m taking beta team to New York. Find Sadler and John and give them an update. I want Sadler trying to track this kid’s movements.”

  Lev narrowed his eyes. “I’m going with you.”

  Clyde advanced on Lev, but Lev didn’t back up even one step. “No, no you aren’t.” Clyde used his most colonelish voice—the one that made junior officers snap to attention.

  “Yes, yes I am. And since I’m a consultant and not military, you can’t order me not to.”

  “It’s going to be hard to go to New York when you’re in the stockade,” Clyde warned.

  Lev put his hands on his hips. “The guards down there know your puerile sense of humor. If I ask them to call the general to check whether the detainment is legal, they will.”

  Okay, that was true. Clyde changed his tone. “This isn’t just about an incursion. You are personally involved, and that is never healthy.” Clyde would accuse John of being just as emotionally attached to the kid, but that man had attachment issues. He could like Tank and still gut him without changing his feelings. Lev wasn’t built that way. If he had to choose between their work and Tankersley, he’d save one kid over protecting the planet.

  “I’m not staying behind, and you really don’t want to know how unpleasant a pissed-off engineer can get. Unless you want the water filtration system to completely fail, driving everyone to use ship facilities, or maybe a central-heat failure, leaving the ship the only warm spot in thousands of miles, I would suggest you reconsider your position.” Lev was usually the laid-back one, the guy who smiled and made everyone at home, but every once in a while, Clyde ran headlong into Lev’s steel core. Worse, Lev knew Clyde well enough to know how that sort of asshole move would affect him.

  “I can’t risk you in the field when you’re compromised,” Clyde said. He wouldn’t do it. If he had to deal with raging nightmares from living on that damned ship, he would.

  “Clyde, I’ve followed you into hell and put my faith in you to get us out. I trust you now, and I’ll obey your orders, but I can’t sit this one out. I can’t, Clyde.” The raw fear and need were all there, etched in Lev’s face. Clyde’s duty as an officer and his responsibility as a friend were in direct conflict. Clyde sighed. After the general quartered him, he was going to send Clyde’s head to a shrink to have it pried open and studied for signs of rot.

  “Fine. Get Sadler and John ASAP. I’ll call out the backup on a quick response. Now I have to call the general and let him yell at me in that quietly intense way he has. Get lost so I can get dressed down in private.”

  Lev turned and practically dashed out of the office. Hopefully he would be forgiving when Clyde stranded him at the base. Clyde needed to pin Tankersley down and figure out what was in his head, and Lev would get in the middle. Clyde couldn’t allow that, not when he had a unit to protect.

  After picking up his phone, Clyde sank down into his big chair. This day just kept getting better.

  Chapter Sixteen

  TANK PUSHED the doorbell and shifted nervously. Mr. Peterson’s brownstone had crumbling front steps, and nothing in the place had been updated since the sixties, but he was more worried about the people inside than the potential for termite damage. He looked around, wondering how much time he had before Colonel Aldrich tracked him down.

  The door opened, and Mrs. Peterson stood there. For a minute or so, she just stared at him. “George,” she finally said, disapproval and pain in her voice. Ellie had always been her favorite, and now Ellie’s death stood between them. Not that Mrs. Peterson had ever liked him.

  “I need to talk to Mr. Peterson, and if they’re here, Marie and Zhu.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “They aren’t,” she said. A long lock of gray hair escaped her messy bun, and she shoved it behind an ear.

  Tank had no idea if she meant none of them were home, or if she just meant Marie and Zhu. However, he couldn’t afford to stand on the stoop forever. “Is Mr. Peterson here?”

  She pressed her lips together and turned to walk into the house. Tank followed. The dark front hall had runes painted on either side, and a spell mirror that would reveal Tank’s true nature if he looked in it. He only saw himself. Average. Tired. His hair was not quite as close cut as it had been during basic, so his natural curl created a pattern of brown swirls.

  “George.” Mr. Peterson started coming down the narrow stairs.

  “Mr. Peterson.” He looked older than Tank remembered. The deep lines on either side of his mouth made him look almost like one of those fancy puppets that worked on strings. He had always looked younger than his wife, but he didn’t anymore.

  “I didn’t realize you were going to get leave this quickly.”

  Tank looked down at his uniform. “Um, that’s the thing. I kinda didn’t.”

  Mrs. Peterson harrumphed, but when her husband looked over, she turned and walked into her studio. Mr. Peterson sat on the bottom step. “This has been hard for her.”

  Tank nodded mutely.

  “Why don’t you explain what’s going on.” Mr. Peterson gestured toward a small box sitting in front of an overstuffed bookcase.

  Tank sat carefully, not sure if it would hold his weight. He could go with two stories, and he still wavered about which to choose. Behind Door Number One, he could tell Mr. Peterson all about aliens and how they used Earth as a testing lab. And then he could say he wasn’t sure if their five years of hell had been real or some elaborate show of smoke and mirrors. Door Number Two was to assume that demons were still real. They could be. If humans knew about aliens, demons would too. And in the end, it didn’t really matter who was trying to kill them. Tank didn’t reach his decision until he opened his mouth.

  “The government knows about demons.”

  All the color left Mr. Peterson’s face. “How much do they know?”

  “They have computer-information people. I think they found Brian, and they were asking me questions.”

  “You ran away.” Mr. Peterson’s voice was flat.

  “I had to warn Marie and Zhu.”

  Mr. Peterson gave him a disappointed look before pulling out his cell phone.

  “I don’t know if they’ve found you. They may track that,” Tank warned miserably. He’d brought this down on his friends. The look Mr. Peterson gave him made it clear that the other man agreed.

  “I’ll have them meet you at center stage,” Mr. Peterson said, using their code for the playground closest to the high school. It had a big climbing ladder that led up to a platform where Tank, Roger, and Zhu had staged productions of pirate theater when they were kids. “If I’m about to be invaded by the men in black, I would rather do it in the comfort of my own home.” He stood up and gave Tank one of those looks that invited you to get lost. In the past, Mr. Peterson had always been there in the middle, rushing in to protect them or offer some sort of help or advice, but clearly that had changed. Maybe he’d been different even before Tank left for basic. After Marie’s father died, there hadn’t been much reason to get together, and lots of reasons to avoid each other.

  Tank nodded and headed for the door.

  “George.”

  When Tank turned around, Mr. Peterson said softly, “Be careful, and keep your head down.”

  Tank grinned. “You know me. I’m always careful.” The words were ash in his mouth, and Tank left before he could say anything even stupider.

  Walking the familiar Bronx streets was a surreal experience. There was the bodega where Tank and Zhu had stolen candy bars as kids. Over there was the shop where Roger and Tank had stolen chain for that sophomore-year battle against the snake demon Marie’s father had summoned.

  Tank still thought it was weird that they had never gotten a name for
the creep, but Mrs. Peterson insisted that was because knowing a demon’s name allowed a witch to summon and banish it. She was the one with the background in the occult. She’d come up with the spells, and now Tank wondered if she was part of it. Maybe. Then again, living with Mr. Peterson for forty years seemed a little extreme for a cover story, so she probably believed what she told them. However, she was full of shit.

  When Tank had reached the Bronx, his first stop had been one of his weapons caches, and now he fingered the carved and blessed silver knife in his pocket. If demons were real, the knife would burn their cursed flesh and force them to either retreat or abandon the body. However, if aliens were real and they knew that you knew about the demon experiments, would they still honor the rules of the game they’d set up? Would a blessed knife do any good?

  Tank suddenly felt disarmed, and he walked faster. Even this late at night, people wandered the streets, although it wasn’t as crowded as Manhattan. Thank God for that. Tank was fairly sure his nerves weren’t up to crowds, not without flailing and ending up on the news as some knife-wielding attacker on Fifth Avenue. The playground wasn’t far, and Tank could already see two figures standing near the climbing set in a pool of yellow light created by the closest lamp.

  It was like he could breathe again. The tight band around Tank’s chest eased, and he allowed himself to feel a little glimmer of hope. Yeah, maybe their perfect pentangle of evil-fighting goodness was gone, but there were still the three of them. They had a triangle of anti-evil goodness.

  “Tank!” Zhu called out first. He rushed forward and caught Tank in a stiff-armed manly hug, but at least it wasn’t any more awkward than normal for Zhu. “Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

  “I dumped my phone.” Technically the Army had taken it away, but same result.

  “What’s going on?” Marie asked as she came up behind Zhu.

  Zhu was a manly man sort, tall with broad shoulders and a square chin. He looked more like a football player than someone who practiced karate katas, which was ironic because Zhu avoided all activities with physical contact. However, Marie was taller. She had to be over six feet. She stopped behind Zhu, her hand on his shoulder. At least that horrible night hadn’t ruined their relationship. Tank was grateful for that even as his heart shriveled a little more at what he had lost.