by Kari Nichols
“Perforated?” she asked, confused.
“Morrison tossed a frag grenade in there,” Tate explained.
Emily didn’t even want to think what her apartment was going to look like. When Tank snorted with laughter, Emily scowled at him and then turned back to Tate.
“Any chance you visited Tank’s place in Boston?” she asked, with a smirk for Tank, who was no longer laughing.
“No, I didn’t go to Tank’s place,” Tate said.
“Good, then I’ll come to live with you for a while,” Emily said to her brother. He smiled and pulled her closer to him.
“Me, too,” Gibson said. When Tank raised an eyebrow, Gibson continued. “Tornado Tate swept through my place, too.”
“It needed remodeling anyway,” Tate snickered.
“I’m never inviting you over for dinner,” Emily said.
***
Con Son Island – South China Seas
The helicopter banked low over the water, coming in to land on the island’s east side. Tate looked out the side window at Godin’s island off in the distance. The Sector wanted a thorough search of the place and the US military expected to be kept in the loop. For now, Tate’s objective lay elsewhere. She followed the markers to the tiny airstrip and gently rested her bird on the ground.
The doors opened and four soldiers exited the helicopter, with Tate right beside them. A small man in white shorts and a Batman t-shirt greeted them. He was a local, his name was Amad. He escorted them to his truck, motioning to the back for the men and the passenger seat for Tate.
Tate hopped into the cab of the truck while her men filed into the bed. Seats with seatbelts had been bolted into the truck bed. A roll cage had been added for some protection, but the soldiers still had to be wary of animals crawling in from the trees as well as the branches slapping at them.
Amad led them through the village, to a small house at the far end. “This is the doctor’s house,” he explained to Tate. He stopped outside and gestured for everyone to follow him. Amad walked up to the doctor’s house and knocked on the door.
A young woman answered and showed everyone inside. The house was dark, to keep the heat down. Shutters were drawn against the windows. Amad led them through the house and out the back door. Tate and her soldiers were armed, but they kept their weapons holstered. Behind the house was a larger grass-roofed hut. Amad walked in the main door of the hut and directed Tate to the room at the very far end.
She walked down the hallway and flipped back the curtain. Inside, on a bed, lay Hillman. His eyes were closed and his chest had the remains of a few ugly wounds. Tate gestured for Gibson to come forward. His bag in his hand, Gibson sat on the stool next to the bed. He pulled his stethoscope from his bag and placed the cold end on Hillman’s chest.
Hillman’s eyes popped open. He stared into Gibson’s eyes, but he didn’t recognize the man. Gibson looked behind him and gestured for one of the other soldiers to come forward. Hillman’s eyes flicked to the newcomer and a flare of recognition lit in them.
“Warp,” he whispered.
Warp smiled at Hillman. He stepped around Gibson to the head of the bed. Gibson continued his examination while Warp explained what had occurred while Hillman had been out of commission.
“It was your locator signal that caught HQ’s attention. If you hadn’t disappeared for as long as you did, Godin wouldn’t have unjammed your locator. Who knows where we’d be now.”
“He’s in good enough shape to be transported out of here,” Gibson confirmed.
The two remaining soldiers brought the backboard over. Gibson and Warp hauled Hillman out of bed and strapped him to the board. Warp and the two soldiers hefted Hillman out of the hut and back to Amad’s truck. Tate and Gibson handed out medical supplies and money in appreciation for Amad’s people’s assistance with Hillman’s rescue and recovery.
Hillman’s locator had been steadily pinging his location to HQ, but with the upheaval of Emily’s departure and with the untrustworthy Trina taking her place, the signal had been largely ignored. Once Trina’s replacement had arrived, the GPS coordinates were traced. Tate put a small team together to recover the missing soldier. A representative from a local Sector office had gone ahead to smooth the way for Tate’s arrival. She had suggested the supplies and money as the gifts that would be the most beneficial.
Amad had explained to the Sector representative that Hillman had been found floating in the water off the coast of Godin’s island by a couple of local fishermen. He’d been pulled into their boat and brought to the doctor for treatment. He’d suffered a severe fever for days. The doctor had feared the wounds and infection would kill the man, but he had passed through the rough patch and started to heal.
Hillman was loaded into the helicopter. Tate’s team piled in after him and she got the bird back in the air. Some of the village’s children came running when the bird took off, their little arms raised and waving to the departing soldiers. Tate banked the helicopter away from the island and headed out over the South China Sea, toward the mainland.
Epilogue
The Sector, HQ
Tate walked through the halls on sub-level 7. Gibson kept pace next to her. Outside Tommy’s door, Tate waited for his security system to scan them. Evan opened the door for them, allowing Gibson to pass and pulling Tate into his arms.
“What did Ogilvie tell you?” Tommy asked.
Tate took a seat on the couch next to Gibson. Evan sat on the edge and held onto her hand. Tate appreciated the comfort. Tommy offered coffee and Tate welcomed the extra strong brew. She didn’t bother to warn Gibson about it and enjoyed the expression on his face after his first sip.
“The General told us that we were about an hour away from having a platoon of US soldiers arriving on Severny and blowing the shit out of anything that moved.”
“Not that there was much left to blow up after Tate got through with that place,” Gibson said.
Evan snorted in amusement. Tate ignored them both. “Emily worked with the new Signals tech and created some sort of blind for the locators. I don’t get the tech, mostly because I don’t listen, but basically it means this thing won’t get detonated and ruin my day.”
“Emily’s relay stops all signals from getting through,” Tommy explained. “We can still check your GPS if needed, because her system requires that your signal be active all the time. It’s a stopgap until we can determine a way of extracting it without hurting you.”
Or the one hundred thousand other soldiers who had the damn thing, Tate thought. “What has Emily done to guard us against sabotage?”
“We have a triple redundancy system factored in. Your locator is being accessed from three separate locations. If one fails, say due to a power outage, there are two other locations still blocking your signal.”
“How many people know where these redundancies are located?” Gibson asked.
“Ogilvie, Emily, the new Signals Head and me. We’ve passed the relay blocking information on to the US military. Their security measures are up to them.”
It would have to do, Tate thought. For now.
***
Bailey’s skin was paler than the white sheets beneath her. The machines told him she lived, but not if she would wake. The doctor said she was breathing on her own and that was a good sign. Now she just needed to open her eyes.
He sat down in the chair next to her bed and took her hand. Leaning close to her, he started to talk. He didn’t know what he said. He didn’t think it mattered. He just wanted her to hear his voice. He was with her for eight hours that day and then the night nurse had shooed him out the door. He returned earlier the next day and continued to talk to her.
On the fourth day, her hand twitched in his. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, encouraging her to wake. He watched as her eyelids fluttered. Leaning over the bed, he whispered to her. “Come on, open your eyes. You’ve slept long enough.”
He repeated the words three times before her eyes parted an
d she looked at him. He smiled when he saw that she was awake and her eyes were staying open. “That’s it. Come back to the world, Bailey.”
Bailey tried to speak but her mouth was dry. Swallowing what little spit she had, she tried again.
“Simon,” she whispered.