Ellie looked at Joe again, still trying to decide whether to trust him.
She was hesitating, which made her pause. Her hesitation meant she had some doubt in the back of her mind. It might just be ordinary distrust. She always had trouble trusting hired locals. It seemed to her that they all ought to be infiltrators, enemy operators, only sneaking into her good books so they could turn rogue and hurt her later. She assumed that, because she didn’t understand why anyone would work against their own people, even though she’d spent her entire career alongside people who did.
She looked at Joe, thinking. She stared at him while she did, on the off-chance her stare suddenly got him all guilty, and his face changed or something. It didn’t. He just stood there, looking back at her, waiting, and that helped convince her too.
She was starting to accept him, but she still wasn’t quite ready to trust him. She decided she had to ask about loyalty. She had to, for her own peace of mind. Joe was cleared by the company, and was probably not lying, but Ellie still had to ask. Not hearing he was loyal from Joe himself was probably why she was still feeling a little distrustful.
It was tricky, though, asking. It was rude, very rude. Loyalty wasn’t really something people talked about any more, rather, they just assumed it wasn’t there and everyone could be bought and sold. But people like Ellie and Sameh and Joe, they had to have loyalty. To one another, out here in the field, if to no-one else.
Ellie needed to ask about loyalty, and to do so she needed to point out Joe’s social identity, the set of markers of his genetic heritage like skin color and language and dietary and sexual preferences that might lead others to make assumptions about him, and which polite people didn’t mention, or even notice, about other polite people, not ever.
Ellie needed to mention Joe’s, if only to explain why she was asking about his loyalty. In effect, she needed to say that she didn’t trust him just because of the appearance of his face, and doing that was tricky. Asking about such things, even mentioning one’s assumptions about another’s social identity, that was just impossibly rude. It was rude to a degree that Joe would be quite entitled to climb in his SUV and drive away, but Ellie still needed to ask.
She needed to know, so she could be sure in her own mind that she could trust Joe. She decided she would just have to do it.
“I need to ask something,” Ellie said.
Sameh looked up, and saw Ellie’s face, and sighed.
“Stop it,” Ellie said to Sameh. Then to Joe, she said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask.”
He shrugged. “Go on.”
“Doing here what you’d be doing there,” Ellie said. “That isn’t quite true.”
Joe looked at her for a moment, and didn’t seem to understand what she meant. Of course he didn’t understand, Ellie thought. Probably no-one had pointed this out to him in years, just like no-one had to Ellie. When Joe obtained his company clearance, his background would have got him investigated incredibly thoroughly, but no-one would have actually said that to Joe, and no-one would have said why. People did what they needed to, but they were polite about it while they did.
Everyone except Ellie. She wasn’t going to be polite at all.
“You said you’re just doing here what you’d be doing over there,” she said, feeling awkward.
“I did. I am.”
“But not quite, though,” Ellie said. “Is it? It’s not quite the same.”
“It’s the same.”
“No,” Ellie said. “Because these aren’t just hajjis, here. They’re people like you.”
Then Joe understood. Ellie saw his face go tense. He stood there, and didn’t answer, and thought about what she meant.
“Same names,” Ellie said, to be clear. “Same language. Same faces.”
“Their faces are like mine. But they’re still not my people.”
“So you say.”
“I’m not completely sure what you mean,” Joe said, tightly.
He looked uncomfortable. He looked like he’d rather Ellie had asked him when he last had a shit, and in some ways Ellie would rather she had too. She felt awful. Anyone would feel awful, talking about this. It just wasn’t pleasant for either of them.
“I mean, convince me,” Ellie said. “Make me believe you.”
Joe looked at Sameh. He didn’t say a word, but Ellie understood. If the concern of divided loyalties was so great, he meant, why were Sameh’s loyalties not being questioned too. There were still hajji revolutionaries around Měi-guó, seeking to establish their caliphate. Sameh could as easily be sympathetic to them as Joe was to the debt resisters.
“I know her,” Ellie said. “I love her. I don’t know you.”
Joe nodded.
“And more important,” Ellie said. “I need to know there aren’t any tangled loyalties that might make you pick a side that isn’t me.”
“There aren’t. I won’t.”
“And again…” she said.
“So I say?”
Ellie nodded. “They’re still your people. And I’m sorry, but that bothers me.”
“They’re not my people.”
She kept looking at him.
“What’s my people?” Joe said. “This county? This town? I don’t know anyone here any more. Everyone I grew up with has left or died, all except my parents.”
Ellie nodded. This was helping. “Keep talking,” she said.
“The country?” Joe said. “What used to be America? I never agreed with the debt settlement, I never wanted it, and I’d have fought rather than accept it, but that wasn’t my choice. So fuck that, but America’s gone now too. I don’t have a people.”
Ellie looked at him, thinking.
“My family is my people,” Joe said. “That’s all I have. So I’ll do what you need me to do to help my family. That’s all there is to it.”
“Even against someone you know?” Ellie said. “Someone who’s from here?”
“Of course.”
“Even against your old best friend from school, say, who’s now my enemy?”
“Is she?” Joe said.
“What?” Ellie said, puzzled.
“Do you know something about her?” Joe said. “Is that why you’re asking me so many questions?”
“No,” Ellie said.
“You are asking me a lot of questions, though,” Joe said, still thinking. As if he’d rather be talking about anything except social identity, which he probably would.
“She’s always like this,” Sameh said. “She did this to me, too, back in the day.”
“I’m careful,” Ellie said. “That’s all.”
“You’re rude,” Sameh said.
“Hush,” Ellie said to her.
“She’s Australian,” Sameh said to Joe. “That’s why. They’re all like this.”
“Stop it,” Ellie told her.
“But about my high-school friends…” Joe said. “You don’t have specific intel about anyone particular from my past?”
Ellie shook her head.
“That’s the truth?” Joe said.
“Yes,” Ellie said. “It’s the truth. I’m just asking what would happen. Hypothetically. Just in case.”
“Rudely,” Sameh said.
“Quiet,” Ellie told her, and looked back at Joe.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “You’ve hired me. Or your employer has. So I’ll do what you need me to. I don’t know what else to say.”
Ellie thought a moment longer, and then decided he seemed honest. The way he was talking about this was reasonable. He was offended, a little, but only the right amount. His voice sounded truthful, and his story all made sense, and Sameh was still glancing at her tablet, which hadn’t said he was lying.
Ellie had begun with a feeling that Joe was honest, and that feeling was part of why she’d been so suspicious. She didn’t like to just trust her instincts, because instinct could be manipulated, but now she had her instinct and she had some evidence too. She dec
ided she would trust Joe, at least for now.
“Okay,” Ellie said. “That’s fine. What you’ve said’s enough. Sorry to be nosey.”
Joe shrugged.
“Sorry to be rude,” she said again.
“It’s fine.”
Ellie thought about holding out her hand, and offering to shake his, but she didn’t in the end, because assuming he’d want her to, or care, was just as bad as assuming he was a criminal because of his background.
“You pass,” she said instead.
“Good,” he said.
Then they all just stood there for a moment. Sameh put her tablet away, but nothing seemed to be happening.
Joe was waiting, Ellie realized. She was supposed to be in charge.
“We’re good?” she said.
He nodded.
“So let’s go,” she said, suddenly impatient. “Come on. Let’s move.”
To Ellie’s relief, Joe grinned.
*
They got ready to move out, but before they did there was one last thing they needed to do.
They had to dress local. Everyone always dressed local when they were in the field. It was safer. It made them less noticeable as a team of foreign operators off on a mission, doing something interesting.
In Afghanistan Ellie had worn a keffiyeh and longish tunic to blend in. Here, to do the same, it looked like she would need a woolen hat and loose jeans and a thick checked-cloth shirt.
She hadn’t thought of that until now, and was a little annoyed with herself.
Ellie hadn’t thought of it, but Joe had. He’d brought a large soft-sided bag of spare clothes with him, in the back of his SUV. He showed it to Ellie, and asked if she and Sameh minded changing out of what were obviously military coveralls, and Ellie said no they didn’t mind, and she was glad he’d thought of it.
She was glad of the clothes, and it made her feel a little better about Joe, too, since he’d had the sense to remember, when she hadn’t.
She and Sameh hunted around in the bag, and each found something that fit. The bag held a mix of men’s and women’s clothes in different sizes, but mostly older clothes, which mostly smelled clean. Ellie was glad of the cleanness. It made her think this was a bag Joe carried around specifically for his clients, to make them less conspicuous, and not just his dirty laundry which he’d decided to have Ellie and Sameh wear.
They found new clothes, and changed in the darkness beside the car, pulling jeans and shirts on over the light first-layer body armor they were both wearing under their coveralls. The security team who had come with them from the helicopter landing base were around them, forming a perimeter.
They changed, and Joe looked around watchfully as they did. Not completely trusting the security team, Ellie thought, as well as being polite.
She decided she liked that about him too.
Ellie threw the coveralls she’d just taken off into the back of Joe’s SUV, since rolled-up they just looked like any other cloth. Then she loaded in the bags of equipment that she and Sameh had brought with them. She tried to cover those bags, so the new black cloth wasn’t as obvious, pulling Joe’s bag of clothes, and an old rain-jacket she saw, over the top of them.
While she was doing that, she noticed Joe had a large gun case in the back of his SUV too. Something long, probably a rifle or assault rifle of some sort. She assumed it was a rifle, and that he had other weapons as well, but she decided that to be sure, she actually ought to check.
“Are you armed?” Ellie said to him. “Do you have something on you now, I mean?”
Joe hesitated, probably still thinking about Ellie’s distrust of him. “Should I be?” he said, in the end.
“I would,” Ellie said. “In case anything happens.”
Joe looked at the gun case.
“Not that,” she said. “Be discreet for now.”
He nodded, and opened one of the SUV’s back doors, and took a handgun in a holster out from under one of the seats. He tucked it into the side of his jeans, in beneath his jacket.
Ellie was pleased. That was discreet. In fact, everything about them was discreet now. Joe’s SUV was old and dusty, and they were all dressed like locals. Ellie and Sameh’s first-layer body armor wasn’t obvious under their clothes, not the thinner under-layers they were wearing at the moment, without the heavy tactical outerwear they had in their bags for actual fire-fights. The clothes were discreet, and their weapons were discreet too. Ellie and Sameh were wearing their sidearms like Joe, with their shirts untucked, and pulled out over the holsters. Their submachine guns they could keep down beneath the windows of the car, or on the back seats, with something thrown over them. A towel or an old shirt, something like that.
Ellie looked at the car, and decided they would do. She reached over, and pushed some of Sameh’s hair back inside her hat, then grinned at her.
Sameh grinned back. She was happy, excited to be setting off, and probably a bit buzzy still from a vague sense of danger, and from relief that they’d finished flying.
“All right,” Ellie said. “Are we ready?”
Joe nodded, and Sameh did too.
Ellie looked over at the local security team. “Thank you,” she said, “Give us five minutes, and then go.” They said they understood.
Ellie got in the front of the SUV, beside Joe, and Sameh sat in the back. She nodded at Joe, and he started to drive.
*
They drove for three miles, looking back with image enhancers as they did. Three miles was far enough that anyone following ought to have stood out on the empty road behind them, Ellie thought.
At least they would if it was low-tech following, in a car on the ground, rather than with trackers on their comms or with drones. Because of that, Ellie leant forward sometimes, too, and looked up through the windscreen, and opened the side-window as well, and looked upwards out of that. She looked up, knowing she wouldn’t see anything, even if there was a hostile drone up there. That was what the corporate overwatch drones were for, to catch any such incursion, but it made Ellie feel better to look as well, so she looked, even though it was a waste of effort.
Her worry wasn’t really drones, though. Instead, it was idle curiosity. That they might be being impulsively followed by some bored locals who’d happened to see Joe waiting, or noticed the big corporate SUVs which Elle and Sameh had arrived in, and decided to find out what was happening.
She didn’t actually expect any trouble, but caution was a habit, and one she wasn’t going to break now. She kept glancing around as they drove, and glancing backwards, keeping an eye out for ambushes or followers. Sameh was concentrating on the road behind them, too, keeping watch through the image enhancing goggles, studying the road carefully as it twisted and turned. Joe had a radio scanner on as he drove, and was flicking through the channels the local border guards and smugglers used, and that all seemed quiet as well.
After three miles on Joe’s odometer, Ellie decided they weren’t being followed.
“Is there a side-road somewhere ahead?” she said.
“In about half a mile,” Joe said.
“Turn into it, then turn around and stop and see if anyone’s behind us.”
In half a mile, he did.
“Switch off the engine for a second,” Ellie said.
He did that too, and Ellie opened her door and listened. She heard the night. There was wind, and a river in the distance, and a lot of stillness, and not anything else. No vehicle engines, getting closer. No propeller sounds from the sky.
She looked up again, anyway, and still couldn’t see anything above her.
She tapped her comm, and said, “Are we clear?”
“We think so, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Ellie said, then, “Keep driving,” to Joe.
He drove back to the intersection, and turned back onto the road they had been following. There still seemed to be no-one else around.
“Can you drive and talk?” Ellie asked Joe.
He nodd
ed, so she briefed him while he drove. She told him they were looking for someone, but not who or why. For the time being she just said she had some locations to check, locations where financial transactions had taken place, and she had some coordinates the target had visited. She held out her tablet, and Joe looked at the icons Ellie had left on the map. The area she was interested in was south and inland of them, several hundred miles away.
“That’s fine,” he said. “I can’t see any problems.”
“Is it safe to go there?” she said. That was the first thing to check. “I mean, to get from here to there by road.”
“Mostly safe,” he said.
“Mostly?”
“There’s militia here,” he glanced ahead, then reached over and touched the screen, at an area where a highway seemed to cross some hills. Then he touched another place to the north of the highway. “And here it’s best not to go,” he said. “There was some kind of chemical leak there years ago.”
The chemical leak they could avoid, judging from the map, but the militia was between them and their destination, and right across the only marked highway. Ellie looked quickly, but couldn’t see any alternative roads. Not major ones, which still looked usable on her satellite image.
“Is it a dangerous militia?” she said.
The Debt Collectors War Page 8