by E. R. Torre
“You don’t say?”
Warren offered Samantha another smile. He noted her arms were tight around his naked waist.
“Something tells me you have a real hard time letting go of things.”
“Just certain things,” Samantha said.
“Your passengers are waiting.”
“Let ‘em.”
“That’s all well and good. But if you take any longer, I might just get a call from brass.”
“Oh? You’re going to arrest me?”
“We M.P.’s take our duty seriously.”
“Spoil sport.”
“Go on. I’ll be waiting when you come back. Just don’t take too long, OK?”
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
Samantha gave Warren a final kiss and ran down the stairs and to her Humvee, which was parked a few feet from the cabin’s driveway. The vehicle’s tires squealed against the pavement.
In her rearview mirror, she saw Warren, still standing by the door in all his nude glory, waving as she drove away.
“I must be crazy,” she muttered. “Who in their right mind voluntarily leaves something like that behind?”
The buildings of Bad Penny passed quickly as she drove south though the small town. Several more officers exited the weight room building at the center of town, every one of them also heading south toward the Mess Hall. Samantha felt a pang of hunger and wished she had awoken early enough to join them for supper. Unfortunately, there was no time.
After passing the Mess Hall, she entered the dense tropical forest separating the town from the airbase. Halfway through that forest she stopped at the base’s only four way intersection. Roads leading east and west to the beaches on either side of the island and were rarely used. They were covered in nature’s debris: dead leaves, mud, and palm fronds. Samantha nonetheless looked to her right and left and held for a second. In the distance, beyond the bushes and undergrowth to the southeast, she spotted a small building almost completely hidden among the trees. It was an old, rusted one story tool shed. Or at least that’s what the higher ups claimed it was.
Few believed it.
Despite the fact that the building was small and showed the ravages of age and weather, there were always at least two guards sitting in equally weathered beach chairs before its entrance. Every time she passed the intersection, they looked like they were engaged in a particularly intense game of cards, yet never once did they fail to notice her. Their very mean looking M16A2 assault rifles were always close beside them, ready for use. Such weapons seemed like overkill considering the rusted shack they were guarding.
Few visited it, but those who did, Samantha noticed, carried a curious yellow ID badge. She spotted similar badges in other bases a few times before. The people who carried them were often high ranking officers who were not known to fraternize with grunts or pilots. Whatever the people with the yellow badges were doing in this particular shack and on this particular island, Samantha was pretty certain it involved things requiring considerably more than a Phillips Head screwdriver.
Samantha shook her head. She was far from a seasoned military veteran, yet knew almost all the bases had their very own “special” or off-limits areas. In her sometimes fertile mind, she imagined the people who frequented these places were engaged in equally special operations. Or, as her friend Eleanor told her a very long time before, they were spooks.
Spooks. The words conjured dark images. Images that—
With a start, Samantha realized she was still parked at the intersection staring at the shack. Had she been in a real city, she would have had a pile of vehicles with very angry drivers stuck behind her.
“You picked some time to daydream,” she muttered while stepping on the accelerator. Her Humvee drove past the intersection.
It was pure luck. Pure bad luck.
Or so Michael thought when the Humvee came to a stop at the intersection. He had only a second to fall flat on his stomach and lie among the weeds. Because of his haste, he couldn’t be sure how well covered he was, and feared just enough of him was exposed for the driver to locate him.
Take it easy, he thought as he tried to check his anxiety. See how it plays out.
So far, it played out very badly. Very badly indeed.
The Hummer came to a full stop and didn’t move. A second passed, then another. And another. The vehicle remained still.
What is he waiting for?
Michael moved his head just a little, until he had a view of the Humvee. To his horror, he realized the driver was looking in his general direction. Through the weeds, he spotted the driver’s –her– stare. She was gorgeous, and in any other place and at any other time he would have been flattered to see such a knockout look his way. But not here. Not now.
With great care Michael released his handgun from its holster. With even greater care, he slowly aimed it at the vehicle’s sole occupant. If she spotted him, there was little he could do. His mission dictated he could not be found. It dictated he absolutely could not be captured. That left him with few alternatives. If the driver of the Humvee did indeed see him, he would have to take her out, simple as that.
He aimed his gun higher, until the silenced barrel was lined up directly at the driver’s head. She still hadn’t moved. She was still looked in his general direction.
Fuck.
Michael took a deep breath. She spotted him. She had to. There was no other reason for her delay.
Michael gritted his teeth. The gun was aimed directly at her. All he needed to do was pull the trigger. That was the easy part. Afterwards, he’d have to dispose of the vehicle and the body, all of which would take precious time. Time he simply didn’t have.
This mission is good and fucked.
Michael released the air in his lungs and took another breath.
Now or never, he thought.
He was about to press the trigger but, at the very last second, paused.
She’s looking in my direction, he thought. But not at me. She’s looking past me.
Michael eased his finger from the trigger and slowly lowered the handgun. Very, very carefully he turned his head to follow the lady driver’s stare. He spotted the weathered shed in the near distance, some twenty five meters off his right shoulder, and immediately recalled seeing it on the daytime satellite imagery Intelligence brought him.
He never thought much of the structure. It was just a small nothing surrounded by larger, no doubt juicier targets. But as the seconds passed and the lady driver continued to stare at the shed, Michael realized there was good reason for doing so.
He spotted the two guards sitting before the shed’s entrance pretending to play cards. Pretending. The movements of their eyes gave them away. They were focused on everything around them but the card game, and increasingly curious about the Humvee stopped at the intersection.
Michael drew another breath.
What are you guys guarding?
Behind him, he heard the Humvee’s engine roar to life. The vehicle moved on.
Thank you for your guidance, he silently told the departing female driver. Maybe my luck isn’t so bad after all.
The guards by the shack relaxed once the vehicle was gone. Their “card game” was momentarily forgotten as they took several minutes to check their surroundings. Michael, for his part, followed suite, examining the shack and the forest beyond. It took him seconds to spot another pair of guards. They were on either side of the shed’s entrance and some fifty feet deep in the woods. Like Michael, they were dressed in camouflage fatigues and almost completely invisible. They carried rifles with scopes –standard sniper gear– and had a laser-like focus on everything going on around the shack. There was little reason to pretend otherwise.
You’re a very lucky fellow after all, Michael thought.
Not only had the Humvee and its driver pointed out his target, but because he was forced to fall to the ground and hide, he had also escaped imminent discovery by the snipers. Had he continued
walking only a few more feet, he would have passed the cover of the trees and been spotted by the snipers.
Michael scowled. It was very possible there were more snipers out there, and a near certainty that the shed had even more levels of security.
Michael assessed his options. There was no way he could approach the shed from the front. Despite the forest, that area was too well guarded. Going in from the rear was possible, but that meant dealing with the snipers. Once he made it past them, he had to find a way into the shack. He couldn’t use the front door, obviously, so his hopes rested on finding an alternative entry. Given the shack’s size, it seemed unlikely the structure had a back door. Yet he had to get information on whatever was going on in there without alerting anyone to his presence.
This was the key to the mission and it was the reason the Avenger was launched in such secrecy. Michael’s superiors had to know what the Americans were up to in Bad Penny. They were equally adamant that no American know of his arrival or departure.
Michael frowned.
This last fact was the only truthful thing he told Captain Elliot after showing him the very real bullets in his weapon. Michael’s superiors knew it was impossible to keep Captain Elliot completely in the dark about the mission, especially when their inside man was released just off the coast of Bad Penny, a well-known, if small, American military base. Michael’s superiors authorized him to tell the Captain a cover story, should his curiosity prove difficult to contain. The story was simple: The mission was designed to test the British Navy’s stealth capacity. It was a dry run for future operations involving penetration and insertion directed at hostile governments. Only a select few in the U.S. Army and the British Navy were aware of this test. This meant the Avenger and all aboard had to take this challenge as if it were the real thing.
In all respects.
Captain Elliot was furious, of course, both regarding the secrecy of the mission and the potential danger he put his men in. He swore he would file a grievance with the Admiralty when the mission was over. Taking real weapons with real bullets into a training exercise was beyond the pale. Before leaving Michael’s quarters, Captain Elliot pulled out the envelope Michael wanted sent to his mother.
“If this mission is bullshit, why the hell would you fear for your life and ask me to send this letter?” he spat.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Michael replied. “Only a few people know this is a practice mission. To everyone else at Bad Penny, I’m an intruder.”
“Why carry live ammo? Why risk hurting someone?”
“Believe me, I’d rather not,” Michael replied. “If I’m spotted by any of the U.S. forces on the island, I give up and let them take me prisoner. I have no such option with the island’s wildlife, some of which are quite dangerous.”
Despite his anger, the Captain kept Michael’s letter to his mother. He exited the agent’s room, only to call him a few minutes later. He was very happy to report the submarine was in place and ready to lose the SIS agent, at least for 12 hours.
A little later Michael was on the beach, examining the top secret thermal images released through the Intelligence Collection Group. It showed the heat signatures released by Bad Penny’s secret underground base during that night a couple of months ago, but it was impossible to discern the entry point for said base.
The Americans were very clever for a very long time. To everyone else, Bad Penny was a small military facility used solely for training and, given the recent world-wide conflicts, a place for much needed rest and relaxation. It seemed everyone on the island was living between far more grueling assignments.
British Intelligence gave Bad Penny no thought until they happened upon these particular thermal scans. The Americans kept their base relatively “dark” each night. All electronic or thermal activity was minor, up until the “event” happened.
The “event” might well have been the result of a fire, a blown fuse, or some other unexpected glitch. Maybe, some thought, foreign powers had penetrated the base.
British Intelligence might never know. But whatever happened that night, the underground base lit up and sent faint electronic and heat signals that showed a broad and, until that moment, completely unknown underground structure. The signals lasted exactly five minutes and twenty seconds. A very, very short time. Yet long enough, especially if you’re lucky to have someone intimately familiar with the previous satellite imagery around to see the difference.
British Intelligence, it turned out, was very lucky.
The United States is our greatest ally, it is true, but even best friends hide secrets from each other. The SIS was curious what the Americans were hiding at Bad Penny. A flurry of information sifting followed, and it was found that the leading minds in several U.S. Intelligence Agencies, from the DIA, ONI, MCIA, and SIGINT had at one point or another visited Bad Penny. Their trips were top secret of course, even though the method of transportation proved shockingly casual. These personnel entered the base via standard helicopter flights in the company of groups of very green cadets.
It was the very definition of hiding in plain sight.
Still more investigation revealed Intel officers from the Navy to the Air Force to the Department of Defense to the CIA had also made discrete visits to the lonely island. Their stays were often lengthy, at least a week or more, and whatever they accomplished remained completely unknown. It was truly unusual to see so many different intelligence departments converge upon this one, relatively small base.
As if this wasn’t enough to pique the British Intelligence’s curiosity, an official logged on to Google Earth and made a quick check on the satellite imagery of the area. When he found that most of the buildings in Bad Penny were Photoshopped out and those that remained had their positions significantly altered, there was no longer any doubt that the Americans were hiding something worth investigating.
Michael took another look at the camouflaged snipers on the perimeter of the tool shed. They remained in place, ever vigilant. He bit his lower lip.
It was time to move.
CHAPTER FIVE
Samantha passed the intersection and drove deeper into the thick woods. A chilling shade covered her vehicle. The road was a straightaway so Samantha hit her lights and floored the accelerator. Base higher-ups and the MPs were never happy with speeders, but since they weren’t around to see her...
“…it never happened,” she finished the thought out loud.
The Humvee was doing fifty when she spotted the radar dish and antennae jutting over the forest. She was only moments away from the landing pad and slowed. The forest was gone when she reached her destination.
The outer perimeter of the landing pad was encircled with a tall wire fence. At the entrance was a guard gate. Samantha brought her vehicle to a full stop before the gate and produced her papers. Steve Cibos, the M.P. on duty at the guard gate, eyed her.
“Going a little fast back there, weren’t you?” he asked as he wrote in his log book. It was standard procedure to catalogue all the comings and goings within the island, and Steve’s face reflected what a mundane chore that was.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Samantha replied. She pulled a fresh pack of cigarettes from her chest pocket and offered it to Steve. The M.P. made sure no one was watching before snagging the pack.
“You’re a bad girl,” he said. “You know how hard I’ve been trying to give up on this shit?”
“I’ve just about kicked the habit myself.”
“How in the world did you manage that?”
“By giving away my smokes to people like you.”
Steve let out a laugh.
“You’ve got other distractions, from what I hear.”
“What could you possibly be talking about? We pilots are always level and clear.”
“That’s not what Warren says.”
A smile worked its way onto Samantha’s face.
“Maybe the vision gets a little foggy when it comes to him,” Sam
antha said and offered Cibos a wink. “You take care of him while I’m gone.”
“If I take care of him anyway like you do, I’ll be marched out of the service,” Cibos said. He waved Samantha on. “Now get going before they blame me for your being late. Again.”
Samantha offered a mock salute and drove into the landing pad area. In front of the one story control tower was a small parking lot. Samantha parked her Humvee in one of the handful of spaces and hurriedly exited the vehicle. She couldn’t see through the tower’s reflective glass but nonetheless waved at whoever was inside. She’d be talking to them soon enough.
In the distance, on the pad itself, sat the Little Charlie, an SH-60 Seahawk helicopter. It was her current assignment. Standing to the side of it were five officers, two men and three women.
Small group today, Samantha thought. Some days she carried more gear than passengers. Today looked like that was the case.
Samantha recognized only one of them, a tall, muscular, light brown haired woman named Becky Waters. Samantha knew her only because so much gossip surrounded the soldier. Becky Waters was considered an excellent recruit and drew high marks from her superiors in almost all aspects of her training. But she was a quiet loner who didn’t care much to keep company with any fellow soldiers. Perhaps it was inevitable, given the relatively small size of the base and the chatter among the personnel, that wild rumors and innuendo developed around her. Fellow soldiers questioned almost every aspect about her, from leering sexual gossip to concerns about her sanity. The last person to openly question her on either of these topics, a burly private from Southern Command, lost his two front teeth.
Becky Waters and the soldier were reprimanded, but so too was the entire company. The higher ups, obviously, were aware of the gossip and would no longer tolerate it. For the time being, the rumors stopped and Becky Waters was left alone.
Samantha grabbed her gear from the passenger seat of her vehicle and jogged to the Little Charlie. She saluted the group as she walked by them. They had already been processed by the M.P.s and were ready to go.