Terry didn’t have to think long. No one they’d met was better armed or better trained. “Plan on multiple missions, working your way closer to the center of town each time, that’ll help you blend in. The mission is a go, stay in constant comm contact with the remainder of the teams and stand them at one hundred percent while you and the others are engaged. If the shit hits the fan, I want everyone running to the sound of gunfire. Call me when you go and as soon as you’re back.”
“Roger, out,” Kimber replied.
Terry looked at his comm device. He hadn’t thought of Kimber as his daughter except in how proud he felt that she was heading the team going into town. His hopes were that Kingston would become a trading partner of sorts. If not with North Chicago, then Cancun, or even New York City, if they weren’t already.
Terry started to call Kae, but stopped himself. Marcie was the ranking member of the two teams at Gitmo. He pressed the right buttons.
“Corporal Marcie,” she replied formally. She had refused to call Terry and Char anything other than their names. Kim and Kae still said mom and dad in front of the troops. Sometimes it made things difficult, but it was what it was. Terry knew that he’d never correct them for it. Their abilities would earn them the respect of their teams, not who their parents were.
“What’s up?’ Terry asked informally.
“Not a goddamned thing,” she replied. “This is the most alive dead place I’ve ever been to.”
“I get what you mean. We’re on the north coast now where we went ashore for a little hunting. Let me guess. You’re seeing no signs of people?”
“None and they haven’t been here for a long, long time. Kae is going to do a night recon around the entire facility tonight,” Marcie added.
“Sounds like a plan. If he finds that there are no people at all, then the mission objective is changed from recon to search and recovery. Search the base and see if you can find any unopened bunkers. We’re looking for weapons and ammo that we can use. And then secure a dock or other place where we can tie up. We’ll be bringing our boat right up the bay like we own the place. And we’ve got pork for a mega barbecue.”
“Stop it! You’re making me hungry, but it’s hard to think about eating. This place is hot, humid, and filled with bugs. It’s kind of nasty,” Marcie complained.
“If they ain’t bitchin’, they ain’t happy!” Terry declared louder than intended. Char and the deckhands looked at him. Terry shook his head. “No, not you.”
Marcie laughed into the microphone. “Of course. It’s not quite the tropical paradise you described. In any case, we’ll be ready to flex based on what Kae finds. Marcie out.”
Terry looked at the device again, ready to call the other teams, but then realized it had only been a couple days since they’d last been in touch. They were going to call after one to two weeks. He’d have to wait.
He placed the device in a breast pocket and buttoned the flap. “Slop boy is back! Bigger and better than ever,” Terry declared as he started shoveling. His exuberance caused him to slip, and he almost fell into a pile of intestines. “Sumbitch! That would have been nasty. Wait. How about Heywood?”
Char rolled her eyes. “Tell me you’re not serious,” she said, although she knew he was. “You’re going to call our boat Mister Jablomey?”
“Heywood, my man!” Terry chuckled.
“I married a teen boy,” Char lamented, continuing her hog butchering without pause.
“Yes, you did,” Terry declared proudly as he sent shovelful after shovelful overboard.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Petersburg, Russia
Gene and Fu were walking hand in hand, earning furtive looks from passersby.
“So beautiful here, my Fu!” he told her. She shivered in the cool air. It had been much warmer where she’d spent most of her adult life. Gene saw her and felt bad.
“We buy coat for you right now!” he told her. She nodded.
“Yes. I will need a coat. How long will we be here?” she asked.
He stopped walking. “As long as we need to be,” he said softly, in a voice that he used only with her.
“Need to be?” she asked.
“I want to stay here, Fu,” he replied without answering her question. “These are my people. I love my friends in Chicago, but I am still outsider. Always will be. Bogdan came and went. Then you came. Stay here with me, Fu.” The big man gently held her dainty hands as he looked adoringly at her.
“I stay with you, wherever you are,” she said simply. “Maybe I cook Russian style?”
“You love of my life, Fu!” Gene threw his head back and laughed. “My very long life.”
They continued into town to find a shop that sold dublyonkas, the Russian women’s coat that would withstand the harshest cold.
Tianjin, China
Aaron and Yanmei stood outside the school. They wanted to learn which companies hired the students gifted with multilingualism, knowing languages other than Chinese.
With the port and the desire for trade, the language most in demand was Japanese, followed by English as the Chinese were vying to break back into the San Francisco market.
Yanmei was gifted at extracting information from the unwary. Her questions seemed innocent, and men spoke freely with her, even when Aaron was standing right there.
Armed with the information, they sought employment that would best expose them to the things that a Forsaken might need when building an army.
Manpower.
By inserting themselves into the middle of the trade industry, they’d see the production side as well as the manufacturing and import/export side. It was the bulk of the people working outside of farming where they were more spread out.
No. Forsaken would hunt where the population was the highest, where the people were most densely packed.
Aaron and Yanmei would wait for their eventual arrival. It was inevitable that they’d show up.
“We have a noodle cart owner to see,” Yanmei suggested now that they carried a small number of tokens. They’d done hard manual labor to earn the coins on the trip back to Tianjin. They’d kept them secure as they hunted and ate as Weretigers, changing back into human form when they were sated.
But now, in the midst of the big city, they needed to blend in fully. Be human, work to buy food and shelter.
“Of course we do. We leave no debt unpaid,” Aaron agreed.
Manhattan
The superintendent was casually walking around the foundry floor as the crew was cleaning up. The smelter was running but the next pour would be done by the second shift. The night crew was coming in early, meeting with the day shift to talk about what went right and what to look out for.
The superintendent talked with some of them, but was more interested in watching what they were doing, and listening. He’d found that he learned more by listening than anything else. He was too old to spend time trying to think for people, to know everything that went on. He only had to know the people who knew the details.
It was both a gift and burden for someone in his position.
Butch and Skippy were going over paperwork in the foreman’s office.
The superintendent made his way to the doorway and leaned against the frame with his arms crossed.
It took a few moments before they realized he was there.
“Boss! How’s it hanging?” Skippy said in greeting. Butch looked sideways at her mate and shook her head.
“Amazing. I’ve been in this business a long time and never seen anything like it,” the superintendent stated. They couldn’t tell if he was happy or not. He had one of those faces.
Butch had to ask. “Is that good or bad?”
“It’s amazing. I’ve been here since we started restoring the plant fifteen years ago. In such a short time, you’ve made the foundry sing. Even though this is a decent job, paying well, we had high turnover. Fights all the time. That crap stopped the second you came here. And you didn’t know anything about foundry
work when you started here, did you?” The superintendent raised his eyebrows when he didn’t get a response right away.
Skippy looked to Butch to answer.
“Fine,” she replied to her mate and then turned to the super. “We didn’t know anything about the foundry, but we work hard, and we’re a quick study. We’ve been around long enough to know how people respond to the right encouragement, that’s all. We may not know all the details about foundry work, but on that floor are the people who do. All we have to do is ask.”
“I need you to do that with the whole mill,” he told them.
“I don’t understand,” Butch replied, looking from Skippy, who shrugged, back to the superintendent.
“I’m promoting you both. I know, you’ve been here less than two weeks, but you’re clearly New Yorkers and we need you. This is a turning point for the mill. We finally have the logistics chain in place, all the stuff we learned from our grandparents when we started to put the mill back together. Those people are all gone now, but we’ve taken their knowledge and moved forward.
“If we are to rebuild this city, then we need the best from every single person, and not just today. We need the best every day. And that means we need you. I need you.” The superintendent finished his speech.
Butch and Skippy looked skeptical. More work without any promise of more pay. They liked what they did, but it also had a value.
“We don’t mind, but it’s a great deal of hard work. What’s in it for us besides doing right by the city?”
“We’ll double your pay, but then we’ll take half of that back to pay for the house next to the mill in the row of mansions for the mill’s senior people. You’ll get security, a cook, a maid, and of course, easy access to the plant. All your food will be provided. We don’t want you to worry about anything outside the plant.”
Skippy whistled. They’d make the same vouchers they were making as foremen, but live like kings.
“I don’t think we can turn that down. When do we start?” Butch asked, offering her hand to shake on the deal.
North Chicago
Lacy stood at the edge of the Weathers stockyards, a place where they culled the cattle to be turned over to the buyers, mainly Claire’s Diner. But many families who lived away from the old naval base were trading directly with the Weathers family, usually in labor or feed like hay, alfalfa, or other products for the cattle.
The oldest of the Weathers sons and the mayor wanted Terry, Char, and the rest of those who lived in the before time to talk about how to introduce currency as the community grew beyond a barter economy.
Those conversations were on hold while the others were gone, but they remained forefront in the minds of those most affected. Mainly the mayor and the Weathers family.
Lacy watched the two squads working, yelling “encouragement” every now and again when people started to slow down. They’d been too lackadaisical in the most recent round of training and exercises, and they were already losing their edge. Not being deployed with the others had been a crushing blow to morale.
She understood, but not being ready wouldn’t help their case for deploying on the next active mission.
Her comm device buzzed, startling her. She wasn’t used to getting calls. It was the colonel.
“Gunny Lacy,” she answered, coming to attention automatically, before realizing what she was doing and relaxing.
“I’m sorry we haven’t checked in, but I wanted to give you an update.” Terry continued briefing her on what he and Char were doing, and then he told her about the pod and current missions.
“Holy crap,” she whispered as she contemplated the implications.
“Yeah. A bunch of crap, but we only lost two. We could have lost everyone. Keep that in mind as you move forward. We can lament our fallen, or we can celebrate their sacrifice as part of a higher ideal. They died so all humanity can live better lives,” Terry said passionately.
“And remember,” he continued, “if anyone dies, it’s always my fault. There’s something that I could have done better. Everyone else is following orders to the best of their ability.”
“If I can speak frankly, that’s bullshit,” Lacy shot back. “Every single one of us has a hand in what we do, from the first day of training to our last breath. We’re responsible for our own actions, our own level of preparation. We as the leaders of the FDG provide the opportunities and then help our people to do what has to be done. And then there are the times when a fucking pod falls out of the sky, something that’s never happened before, so how in the hell were we supposed to be ready for that?”
“I get you, Gunny. I want everyone to believe that they can control their own destiny through their actions and their attitude. Thanks for stepping up, but that wasn’t why I said it. I don’t want anyone to feel survivor’s guilt. They were left behind, and they lived. Talk them through it and then step up the training. Make sure they eat well. A full stomach goes a long way.”
Lacy could hear the positive support in the colonel’s voice, and she understood only too well what it felt like to be left behind, what it was like when the pods returned and the warriors brought the bodies out.
She was old enough that she no longer wished to go neck-deep into the shit, but she knew the youth of the squads longed for it to gain legitimacy in their profession.
She thanked the colonel for the information and clicked off. “Bring it in!” she shouted, waving at the warriors she could see. They passed the word and soon they huddled around her, sitting on the ground and drinking sparingly of their water.
“I won’t beat around the bush. I heard from the colonel and we lost our pod. It crashed into the ocean and it’s gone,” she told them in a low voice, not trying to be dramatic, but that was how it came out. Many gasped, while the expression froze on the faces of others. “Almost all our people got out, but two didn’t. We lost Jack and Bonzo, but Akio provided two pods to pick the rest up. They were picked up and continued on both missions.”
Lacy waited, giving the warriors time to process the information. Some looked to their fellows for support, share their pain. The realization that their chosen profession could be deadly without ever having seen an enemy dawned on them.
“The colonel wanted me to make sure that no one felt survivor’s guilt. That’s something you get when someone else dies doing something you think you should have been doing, when you wonder why it didn't happen to you, why you get to live when they died. We can’t answer any of those questions. All we can do is work hard, be better today than we were yesterday. Do everything humanly possible to be ready when the call comes and we go into harm’s way. You think I’m hard on you? The real fucking world is a right bitch. The colonel shields you from the worst of it.
“You all know my story. I was born and raised in New Boulder. I was happy working as a mechanic in the power plant, but then Terry Henry Walton showed up with his confidence and his integrity. We fought in the Wastelands as we tried to save people. We lost people out there, too. We fought our way here, and when we arrived? We fought to keep this place. On the road outside the power plant, we fought a battle, killed some fifty attackers. Right fucking there.
“You know what the colonel and the major did? They turned right around and went back to New Boulder, riding horses for weeks to get there. They returned with the whole community straggling along behind them. You want some real shit, add hundreds of civilians into your tactical plan.
“But move we did, even though it was a huge pain in our asses, and we’re better for it. The sacrifices made it worthwhile. We celebrate every single day that we’re alive because of those who have paid the price for us. Never forget. You are a building block in a whole new civilization. We can’t have a strong foundation without filling in those bricks at the base. That’s us people. That’s the Weathers family. That’s the people working at the diner. Everyone has a role to play and if someone falls, we fill in the gap and keep moving forward.
“Now rally up, w
e’re heading back to the house. The colonel ordered us to eat well, raise a glass to the memory of our brothers both fallen and still in the field.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Kaeden and Camilla left their positions when the moon rose. They skulked through the brush, taking their time. Kae stayed on point, using his heightened senses to see the way ahead and listen for unnatural sounds.
The jungle grew denser the further they went, forcing them to turn toward the base ruins. No longer skirting the edge, they traveled through a town and villages. Kae had left the military base far behind, but was certain there was nothing to fear.
No one had been there in decades, if not longer.
They remained in the moon’s shadows until they reached the eastern side of the base. They turned south, checking all the way to the water. They walked the shoreline on their way back. Kae signaled for Camilla to stop as he stepped into the nearest brush to use his communication device. He didn’t want his voice carrying over the water, just in case.
“Marcie? There’s nothing out here. We’re crossing the northern point of the bay and will be turning south again. We’ll turn toward your position when we reach where the bay meets the ocean.”
“Sounds good, Kae. I’ll let my people know to expect you. The pass phrase is ‘my wife is ridiculously hot,’ over.”
“That goes without saying,” he parried, smiling. He could not have agreed more. “I’m going to say, ‘Kae and Camilla coming through.’ See you in a while. We have a couple miles to go to get to you, but we’ll stick to the shoreline where the going is easy.”
Kae returned to the beach. He leaned close to Camilla and whispered in her ear. “Marcie’s squad is expecting us. I didn’t want a nasty surprise.”
Nomad Omnibus 03: A Kurtherian Gambit Series (A Terry Henry Walton Chronicles Omnibus) Page 38