“Toast?” Zeke said, handing me a Styrofoam plate with buttered toasted bread.
“How did you know?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Wanna sit with me?”
I followed him to a table, and he placed his plate in front of him, a fork already in his hand, hovering about the mountain of food on his plate. “You can have anything you want. I’m going back, anyway. Did you see they have a waffle maker? I’m in heaven.”
“Don’t they feed you between fires?” I teased.
He grinned. “Carb loading. We hike miles up into the mountains. We don’t eat a lot up there, so I stuff it in when I can. I try to stay under a certain weight, though, so I only eat like this just before I go up.”
“To fit into your uniform?”
Zeke burst into laughter. “No. No, because if we take a helo in, there are weight limits. If you’re bumping the max, you can’t take anything with you. Not a blanket, not playing cards, nothing. They’re pretty strict, so I like to stay plenty under, even though it’s not hard with all the trekking we do.”
I bit into the toast, chewing slowly and hoping it stayed put. I would have to tell Stavros about the baby sometime, but not until I had to, and I didn’t want him to hear it from someone else. He didn’t seem like the type to fire me so he didn’t have to deal with maternity leave, but I didn’t know him that well, and couldn’t take the chance.
After every bite, the nausea subsided. Zeke chatted about Estes Park and his older sister’s upcoming wedding. While he spoke, I wondered when he would go out, and if what Stavros said about some of them not coming back crossed his mind. He had plans and loved ones. It didn’t seem right.
“When are you going up?” I asked.
“Usually, it’s fourteen on, two off, but this is a political fire. Alpines are second in the rotation. We relieve the current crew every seventy-two hours,” he said, chewing.
“For how long?”
“Another seventy-two hours.”
“You be careful up there, okay?”
He stopped chewing to smile and then to swallow before he spoke. “I will. At least we’re not helitack. They work fourteen on, two off, no matter what. Not as many of them, but they get paid more. Think when I get back we can see that space movie? I’ve been dying to see it, but the guys think it’s a chick flick.”
I tripped over my words, my upbringing to be polite sword fighting with my new superpower. “I can’t. Thank you, though.”
“Oh,” Zeke said, embarrassed. “You have a boyfriend. Of course you do. That was stupid.”
“No, I’m just not…”
“Oh,” he said, a glint of recognition in his eye. “A girlfriend.”
“No, I just got out of a relationship,” I said, trying to get the words out quick before he interrupted me again.
He nodded slowly, trying to process what that meant. “Well…what if it’s just to go? We don’t even have to sit together. There’s always a seat between when I go with one of the guys.”
“That’s…weird.”
He shrugged. “I know. The only one that doesn’t do it is Taylor. He doesn’t care if anyone thinks he’s on a date with a dude.” He took another bite.
“Just as friends?” I asked. He stopped chewing to wait for my answer. “I mean, yeah, if it’s just a movie. How much is it?”
Zeke waved me away. “I got it. It’s like eight bucks.”
I shook my head. “I’d better not. I’m trying to save money.”
He chuckled. “I got it, silly.”
I pressed my lips together. That would mean I’d owe that Trex guy and now Zeke. “I’d better not.”
“You won’t go with me over eight bucks?” He seemed disappointed instead of indignant.
I breathed out a laugh. He was right. It was ridiculous. “Okay. But I’m paying you back.”
He nodded once. “Deal.” He used his thumbnail to pick something out of his teeth quickly before standing for another round. He pointed to the buffet with his plastic fork. “Want anything?”
“Actually,” I said, standing, too, “I have to go pick up a few things downtown. Thanks for the toast.”
Zeke waved at me with his fork, and I squeezed the leather loop of my wristlet in my palm.
I used a map from the stack we had at the front desk to find my way to the Pikes Peak library. The walk wasn’t as long as I’d thought, less than half an hour, and the doors were open by the time I arrived. A tiny, gray-haired woman pushed up her glasses with her free hand as she held open the door for me with the other. I peered around the room, then headed for the Pregnancy and Childbirth section. Even though it was just the librarian and me, the urge to peek over my shoulder became too intense to ignore. In a book with a pink cover, I found a due date wheel. Moving the bottom section to the first day of my last period, the top part showed me an approximate due date. I wasn’t even six weeks pregnant. I remembered the night Bean was conceived, with Shawn’s hand around my neck, squeezing it so tight I could barely breathe.
My knees felt weak as I stared at the month and day Bean might come into the world. Suddenly, it was real. On February 1, everything would change.
The small stack of books fit into the thrift-store backpack hanging from my shoulders, and I followed the map back to the Colorado Springs Hotel, thinking about who to call to help me find prenatal care, worried Shawn would be able to find me if I signed up for assistance and was logged into the system. I would need to pay cash, and I didn’t have anywhere close to the amount I would need.
What am I going to do?
Adoption was the only option, but as the thought entered my mind, an overwhelming sadness came over me. I imagined holding the tiny baby that I’d carried for months, then giving that precious bundle to the nurse and the silent pain burning through my body as I watched my son or daughter being handed over to strangers. It would be selfish to keep Bean just because the alternatives would hurt, but the images made me sob all the way home.
A group of hotshots, dirty and covered in soot, trudged from their interagency trucks to the front doors with me. They looked exhausted but happy, some of them already with room keys in hand, ready to wash the wilderness off and crash into their beds.
Stavros waved to me as I passed, and Tilde had already replaced Ander, standing behind the front desk with a bright smile on her face.
“Good morning, Darby,” she said, her voice sounding like she’d scrubbed the inside of her throat with sandpaper. Her smile faded. “You okay?”
“Morning,” I said. “I’m fine, thank you. How are you feeling?”
“Oh, you know. All right. You’re out and about early.”
“Walked to the library,” I said in passing.
Hotshots waited for the elevator, filling the hall with the thick stench of smoke. I could still smell them when the stairwell door opened and Taylor stepped out.
“We’ve got to quit running into each other like this,” he said. He looked happy, his buzz cut and clean-shaven face a contrast from the other hotshots. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “Are you going up today?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got a date with a waitress.”
“You’re still chasing her?” I asked.
“Still chasing her,” he said with a grin.
“Good luck,” I called over my shoulder. When I reached my door, I was sure to unlock and close it quickly behind me to try to keep the lingering smoke from seeping into my room.
By the time I reached my bed, I was already tired and wondering how I would make it through an evening behind the check-in desk. A nap was necessary, but I wanted to crack open at least one book before I fell asleep. I wanted to see what Bean looked like, and one of the books I’d borrowed from the library was full of in-color pictures of babies in utero.
I flipped to the first chapter and squinted. Bean, five weeks and four days, looked more like a lizard than a baby. I turned the book to one side and then the other, trying to
make out features even though the caption of the picture was A Face Emerges.
I stared at the lizard baby until my eyelids grew too heavy to keep open, and just as I drifted off, jerked awake. A mental check scrolled through my mind, that everything in the house was in place, the dishes clean, the laundry folded, ironed, and put away, and dinner was planned for the following night. Just a second later, my muscles relaxed against the mattress. Shawn wouldn’t be home to yank me out of bed if something set him off, he wouldn’t spit in my face while he turned red and the veins in his neck bulged. The panic I’d felt every night for more than half a year was just a knee-jerk reaction, but as I remembered where I was, and that Shawn was more than eight hundred miles away, the fear subsided, and I drifted away, at peace knowing Bean and I were safely alone in the dark.
Chapter Six
Trex
The clip snapped shut on the front pocket of my shirt. The picture in the ID seemed pointless, pixelated and grayscale, but it was the bar code that would get me inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex and from one section to another. Everyone seemed on edge about something. I theorized it was possibly because the Air Force had moved back in not more than a year before. The guards were quiet, and most of the employees and military kept their heads down.
“Is it because General Tallis is coming in?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
Bianca smirked, her short legs taking two steps to my one. “General Tallis is here every day. Everyone is nervous about the new head of security.”
“Me?” I asked. I wasn’t exactly known as the easygoing one in my unit, but not someone to be feared unless you’d shot at me and were on the wrong side of my rifle.
“You’re surprised,” Bianca said, more a statement than a question. “It seems your reputation precedes you. You’re the man who took down Jabari Tau and his entire entourage.”
I looked down and pretended to scratch my nose while taking in the expressions of those we passed. Most were trying not to stare. “It’s not what they think.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I was waiting for my team to come back. That is exactly the kind of shit that happens out there.”
Bianca wasn’t fazed. “You weren’t waiting. You were wounded and sent them ahead to catch up with the militants on their way to massacre the next village. You killed twelve of the most ruthless killers in South Sudan, including their leader. You stopped a coup. Jabari’s death created instability and infighting within his militias, and that rippled throughout the region, setting free hundreds of child soldiers.”
I breathed out a laugh—from disgust, not pride. Bianca made me sound like a superhero. My knee was blown out by a kid barely big enough to hold the Soviet-made assault rifle that was forced into his hands. The damn thing misfired, crafted two decades before his father raped his mother to create him. I was wounded because I couldn’t shoot a kid before he shot me. I was waiting because I commanded my team to go on to search for the rest of the boy’s unit while our blood mixed and pooled beneath us. He stared at the ceiling and exhaled for the last time in my arms, and I’d set him down gently when Jabari’s men crept inside the first of a line of shacks I’d holed up in.
“The only thing I did was not die,” I said, irritated the memory still had the power to catch me off guard. Even when the fighting stopped and I came home, my heart still warred with the images in my mind.
“And he’s humble,” Bianca said to herself. “If you wonder why the general chose you—”
“Fuck me in the ass,” Martinez said, standing from the long, rectangular table he was leaning on when I stepped through the door.
The boy’s dark, vacant eyes faded from my mind as Othello Martinez opened both arms wide and took me in for a hug. He slapped my back twice and then squeezed, as happy to see me as I was him. The darkest hour before sunup, somewhere on the South Sudanese border, was the last place I’d seen him, his face appearing and reappearing as I blinked in and out of consciousness. Martinez went south after that. Drug cartels were easier to aim at than kids. He hadn’t changed much, maybe five more years of squinting against the South American sun evident around his eyes.
I turned to hug Kitsch, Sloan, and then shake Harbinger’s hand. He couldn’t stand to be touched much; he saved the effort for his kids.
“You were all in the same squad in Sudan?” Bianca asked, even though she already knew the answer. I nodded. We’d survived a night stranded in a rebel-controlled area on the Sudan–South Sudan border, full of bullet holes and half starved, trying to head off a small but particularly bloodthirsty squad mowing down any vulnerable village in their path, and were ambushed by a bunch of kids. Nights like that cemented brotherhoods, and we were exactly the team the general wanted to run his security.
“Looking dapper, T-Rex,” Naomi said.
“Nomes,” I said, bringing her in for a quick hug. She was hypersensitive about appearing too emotional or weak in front of anyone else—a symptom of being a woman in the military. She slapped my scruffy cheek once and grabbed it before Bianca cleared her throat and checked her watch.
Sloan wrinkled his nose. “Does this place smell like mildew and dirty socks to everyone or is that just me?”
“We should start the tour and meet the general. There will be plenty of time for greetings and opinions on the distinct odor of a man-made cave dwelling later,” Bianca said.
I traded glances with my team and gestured for them to follow. Bianca described each section: hallways with men and women in white coats sitting in front of tech I’d never seen, labs, doors thicker than I was tall, airmen with patches on their sleeves that read CMAFE, doors guarded by soldiers in uniforms I didn’t recognize. The further we dug in, the staler the air.
The painted walls became steel tunnels. Pipes ran along the curved walls and ceiling, our feet clanged against a metal grid that made up the floor. A low hum churned throughout the corridor, interrupted by the intermittent dripping of water sliding down the already damp rock walls.
“Doesn’t feel right,” Sloan said.
“Easy,” I whispered back.
“What you’re feeling is a combination of frequency and vibration experiments and the way it affects the mountain. You’re not wrong,” a woman said from behind us. We turned to face her, a mess of blond, frizzy hair and square, peach-hued plastic glasses sitting on the tip of her nose. She held her hand out to me. “Dr. Sybil DuPont.”
Kitsch sniffed. “Doctor of what?”
“Astrophysics,” Dr. DuPont said.
My team traded glances.
“What’s an astrophysicist doing here?” Naomi asked.
“It’s classified,” Bianca said.
I shifted my weight. “I’m the head of security. I have top security clearance.”
Dr. DuPont smiled, amused about something. “For the facility, Mr. Trexler. Not government programs.”
“What’s this?” a man asked, stepping next to Dr. DuPont. He was barely taller than her shoulder, the light glaring off the deep umber skin of his bald head. Tight, white curls clung to the section above his ears, as if his hair had run away scared from the top, clinging to his ears in groups for safety.
“Dr. Angus Philpot,” Bianca said, “this is Mr. Trexler, our new head of security, and his team, Harbinger, Sloan, Kitsch, Martinez, and Abrams.”
I didn’t miss that Bianca said Naomi’s name like a dirty word she couldn’t wait to set free from her mouth. There was more to it than trust, and I got the feeling it was likely Bianca, not the general, who didn’t trust Naomi.
I shook Dr. Philpot’s hand, but he seemed to be more interested in Sloan—arguably the lankiest member of our squad. He was six feet two inches of solid lean muscle, but he was still the thinnest of us, no match for Naomi’s curves.
“Just Trex,” I said, snapping Philpot from his preoccupation.
“Oh. Very well, then,” he said. The lenses of Philpot’s round, wire-framed glasses were so thick, they accentuated every time his telesc
ope eyes would blink. He was no more than a half-pint, swallowed by his white lab jacket. He was too close to the size of a child, and I knew my team was as skeeved out about it as I was.
“You’ve got uh…” Sloan said, gesturing to his own tactical vest.
Dr. Philpot looked down.
“Jesus, Angus,” Dr. DuPont said, taking a step back.
“Oh, it’s uh…it’s Sriracha,” he said, wiping it with his finger and licking it away.
Dr. DuPont looked revolted. “I hope so. You could wake up with parasites burrowing through your brain tomorrow.”
Martinez scanned the hall. “What the hell kind of place is this?”
“Lock that down,” Kitsch growled.
“Mostly, it’s a scientific facility,” Dr. DuPont said. “But if you ask the general, it’s a military operation. Upstairs is NORAD, downstairs is off-limits.” She flicked a small, plastic octagon on Naomi’s vest. “Keep those on.”
Martinez pulled his own octagon a half inch off his vest. “What is it, anyway?”
“A dosimeter,” Bianca said.
“A doe what?” Sloan asked.
Dr. DuPont seemed charmed by our ignorance and flicked her own. “Dosimeter. A measuring device for radiation.”
Naomi sighed. “That’s why this job pays so well.”
“Why don’t you have one?” Martinez asked Bianca.
“Because I’m rarely beyond the blast doors or labs,” Bianca said, matter-of-fact.
“What’s downstairs?” I asked.
“It’s classified,” Bianca said.
“How can we secure the facility if we’re not allowed in every section?” I asked.
Bianca seemed bored with our questions, but still expected them. “Those sections have their own security.”
“Another security unit? When do I meet them?”
“You won’t,” Bianca said. “They’re deep in Echo and their quarters are there.”
“Echo?” Naomi asked.
“The lower corridors,” Bianca said, checking her watch. “Let’s continue the tour. We have eight and a half minutes before we turn back to meet the general.”
From Here to You Page 6