Late morning and the camp rippled with activity, an increased focus Rakkim hadn’t seen before. Nothing definite, but the squad of troops moving from their tents to a nearby staging area had an extra kick to their step, trucks rumbled past more often than usual, and soldiers sat around outside the mess hall cleaning weapons that were already maintained. Rakkim wasn’t the only one who noticed. The miners leaned against their machines, bleary-eyed and covered in dust, watching the proceedings.
“What’s happening?” Rakkim asked a sergeant barreling past.
The sergeant barely glanced at Rakkim and Leo, both of them in civilian work clothes, and walked on.
“Does the Colonel know we’re here?” said Leo.
“I sent word.” Rakkim spotted Baby on horseback at the edge of camp, ran toward her, waving his hands to catch her attention. She must have seen him, because she turned her horse, a huge white stallion, and trotted over, her movements graceful, perfectly attuned to the stride of the horse.
“There you are, handsome,” said Baby, tall in the saddle, the reins in one hand as she patted the horse’s neck with the other. The sun turned her blond hair bronze. Her boots creaked in the stirrups. “Colonel’s looking for you.”
“What’s going on, Baby?” said Rakkim.
“Oh, trouble somewhere in the kingdom, like always,” said Baby. “Never a dull moment. Bores me to tears, if you want to know, but the Colonel’s sending off some boys to settle things down.” She nodded at Leo. “Who’s this big fellah?”
“I’m Leo, ma’am,” said Leo, stepping away from the horse. Probably allergic.
“Nice to-” Baby pressed a finger to her earpiece, listening. “I’m talking to him right now, sweetie.” She looked down at Rakkim. “Colonel says to meet him at the east lookout and double-time it.” She patted the horse’s back behind the saddle. “I could give one of you a ride, but I’d be hard-pressed to choose.” She spurred the horse, dirt kicking up around them.
“Wow,” said Leo. “That’s the most beautiful girl I ever saw…except for Leanne.”
They found the Colonel peering through binoculars down the east access road. A half-dozen guards stood nearby, assault rifles tracking Rakkim and Leo as they approached.
The Colonel turned, beckoned them closer.
“Colonel, this is Leo-smartest man you’ll ever meet, just ask him,” said Rakkim. “Leo’s the Ident tech wiz that the Russians hired to check out your weapon.”
“You make me feel old, son,” said the Colonel. “You started shaving yet?” He glanced at Rakkim. “Still haven’t found the weapon. Still haven’t decided if I’m going to share it with the Russians when I do.”
“Come on, Colonel, you didn’t win all those battles by overthinking every decision,” said Rakkim. “You’re going to do what your instincts tell you, and most of the time, you’re going to be right.”
“You’re just saying that because I took a liking to you,” said the Colonel, bright blue eyes sparkling in the morning light. “So did Baby, and I usually trust her judgment. Only thing that prevented me from throwing in with you that first night was I can’t abide a man who betrays his country, even the republic.” His eyes crinkled. “Turns out you’re not a traitor.”
They turned and watched a couple of loaded troop transports roll past, the Colonel’s expression serious for a moment before his good humor returned.
“You told me you had betrayed your Fedayeen oath when the Russians made you a large enough offer. Nothing special, just another tough guy gone outlaw.” The Colonel wagged a finger. “Not so.”
“Heck, Colonel, if you only deal with honest men, you’re going to be awfully lonely.”
“Let’s just say I like to know who walks in my house. So I had some folks do a full workup on you.” The Colonel tugged at one of his sideburns. “Turns out you’re not just another outlaw, you’re Rakkim Epps. Orphaned at nine, raised by Redbeard himself, a Fedayeen shadow warrior until you abandoned your calling to consort with lowlifes in the Zone. Damn, you must have been a disappointment to Redbeard, ’cause I know it would tear me up to see a pup I raised to hunt end up with his snout in garbage.” He seemed amused. “I put a hacker on you, real smart lady in Columbia City-she dug up your true background.” He inclined his head toward Rakkim. “It seems sometimes one can find a needle in a haystack.”
“You reach into a haystack, be careful you don’t draw blood,” said Rakkim.
“You’ve been playing a role since you were a child,” said the Colonel. “You’re not a renegade, and you’re no Muslim either. You’re a patriot, a Russian sleeper agent.” He gently turned Rakkim’s wrist, touched the crucifix burned into his palm. “Born-again Christian too. I wondered about that the first time we shook hands.”
Rakkim felt the breeze off the mountain wash over him, felt clean to the bone, pleased. Spider had done his job, planted the false background so deep that only another top hacker could find it. Best way to make certain the lie would be believed.
“Nine years old and set out on the street,” said the Colonel, shaking his head. “Hell’s bells, boy, you’re the deepest sleeper I ever heard of. Gave up your childhood for Mother Russia.”
“Wasn’t like I had a choice.” Rakkim shrugged. Offered his hand. “We have a deal?”
The Colonel shook his hand. “Screw the Chinese.”
“Screw the Chinese,” said Rakkim. “How did you find out about me?”
“Evidently there’s some kind of back door at a KGB database that this little gal in Columbia City discovered. She only found it because of some new wormware developed last year.”
“Lucky girl,” said Rakkim.
“Goddamn, the boys in Moscow must have been proud of you.” The Colonel clapped Rakkim on the back. “I’d love to know what it was like growing up with Redbeard. Most of them running the show in the republic are useless as tits on a bull, useless as our own politicians, but Redbeard…he seemed like a real man.”
“Redbeard didn’t cut slack, Colonel, not for himself or anybody else, but the things I learned from him saved my life more often than I can count. You and Redbeard…I think you would have liked each other.”
“I take that as a high compliment.” The Colonel leaned forward. “Did he ever have any idea…ever get a hint of who you really were?”
Rakkim shook his head. “Not that there weren’t times I wanted to tell him.”
“Probably just as well. Head of State Security nursing a Russian spy to his bosom, teaching him all his tricks…might have been too much to bear.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“That we do.” The Colonel looked down the road below. “I even made a few myself.”
“You waiting for something, Colonel?”
The Colonel kept his face turned away. “Got word yesterday of some bandit activity in Hattiesburg and Marston, ugly business. Last night I sent Alpha Company to bolster the local defense units. That left me with just two companies, which is a little shorthanded, but things have been quiet. Until now.” He turned to Rakkim. “You ever hear of a gang of trash called the End-Times Army?”
“Some kind of hopped-up maniacs, right?”
“That’s them. Run by a fellow called Crews. Calls himself a preacher”-the Colonel spit-“but him and me must be reading a different Bible. He’s outside my authority, but I’ve been meaning to pay him a visit anyway, and clean out the whole nest. Couple hours ago I got a report of End-Timers around here. Nothing credible. Rumor mostly. Still, it made me wonder if the attacks around Hattiesburg and Marston were just feints to get me to split my force.” He smiled but there was no humor in it. “Maybe this Crews figured he’d get to me before I got to him. Always somebody wants to find out if the old dog still has teeth.”
“Might not be you Crews is after,” said Rakkim. “Maybe he wondered what you were digging for these last few months.”
The Colonel looked into his eyes. “Hard to keep a secret, isn’t it?”
Rakkim looked away from the path up the mountain, focused on the treeline in the distance. You could hide a whole division there and no one would know. Or there could just be trees. Hard to imagine that Malcolm Crews could have gotten his men into position so quickly. They’ll do whatever I tell them to do, that’s what Crews had said last night, already knowing that the Colonel had divided his forces. He had agreed to attack in four days, on the night of the new moon, but Crews had made other plans, because either he didn’t trust Rakkim or he didn’t trust his own men. Either way, they were on Crews’s timetable now. Not bad for an English professor. Rakkim had never intended for Crews to be a threat to the Colonel’s forces, never thought that Crews had that sizable a force-he just needed a diversion so that he and Leo could escape with the weapon and take Moseby with them.
“Might be time to send up that Chinese bird,” said Rakkim. “Thermal imaging should be able to tell you what you’re up against, and there’s more than enough firepower in the Monsoon-”
“Chopper’s down for maintenance. Temperamental piece of shit.” The Colonel touched his ear, listened. “On my way.” He looked at Rakkim and Leo. “Come on, boys, let’s see what Moseby found in the lake.”
The three of them piled into a nearby jeep. The Colonel raced up the mountain road, skidding on gravel, leaning on the horn to blast laggards out of the way.
Leo hung on with both hands, eyes squeezed shut.
“The information you must have fed to your people when you lived with Redbeard-” The Colonel banged against Rakkim as he hit the brakes, sent the jeep into a controlled spin around a switchback. “When you were in the Fedayeen. Why did the Russians want you to give up your commission?”
“They didn’t. I decided to be my own man.”
“Dangerous decision.” The Colonel bounced off the seat as they hit a pothole too fast. “But I expect they weren’t too surprised. You got the look of a man who has to dance to his own tune.”
“You fortifying the eastern slope in case you’re attacked, Colonel?”
“It’s the easiest approach. Got to figure that’s the way Crews’s men would come. From what I hear, his men are poorly trained…it’s the dope that gives them courage. Dope and some crazy-ass snake-handling mumbo-jumbo.”
“Don’t neglect the southern route either,” said Rakkim.
“Too rugged,” said the Colonel. “I’ve got to place my forces at the most likely choke points.”
“I studied every engagement you ever fought, Colonel. Battle of Big Pines, the rest of the Belt commanders concentrated their men at the shallows of the river, where it was easiest to cross. You-” Rakkim almost flew out of his seat as the Colonel accelerated. “You sent your men downstream, where the river was deepest, and fastest, and enough of them survived the crossing to circle behind the Second Army of the Republic. You surprised them…then annihilated them.” He hung on. “I’m just saying, maybe I’m not the only one who studied your strategy.”
The Colonel drove on, his knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel. He touched his earlobe. “I want you to move four squads along the southern approach. Heavy machine guns…Do it, Lester. Goddamnit, Lester, you disobey another one of my orders, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Another ten minutes and the Colonel parked outside the entrance to one of the many tunnels into the mountain. He got out, saluted the guards inside the entrance, and kept walking. Rakkim and Leo followed. The tunnel was barely lit, rock debris everywhere. It smelled like sweat and engine grease.
“Hang on,” said Leo, voice reedy as he struggled to keep up.
Neither the Colonel nor Rakkim slowed his pace.
Leo was gasping for breath when he finally caught up with them a hundred yards later, the two of them waiting for him outside a cleft in the rock. He clung to the wall, bent over. “I…I’m claustrophobic,” he wheezed, shaking his head.
Rakkim grabbed Leo by the hair, dragged him into the opening.
“Intellectuals,” snorted the Colonel as Leo banged his head against a rock outcropping. “Always a reason they can’t do something. The porridge is too hot, the porridge is too cold, but it’s never just right.”
Rakkim dropped Leo on the other side. “Careful, Colonel, he’ll give you some fancy math problem, then laugh at you when you can’t solve it in your head.”
“I wouldn’t waste my time,” said Leo, scrambling after them. “Might as well try to teach a chimp particle physics.” The kid did okay. He kept up, even though he’d put his shirttail over his mouth, trying to cut down on the dust they were breathing.
It took longer than Rakkim anticipated to get there, the barely lit tunnel gradually sloping, down, down, down, until even he found himself slowing his steps, feeling the weight of the mountain closing in on them. The Colonel felt it too.
“Almost…almost there,” said the Colonel, his voice too loud.
They rounded the bend and there it was…the lake. Even with the floodlights spread along the rocky shore, the surface was the color of an oil slick. They approached cautiously, stood blinking as they looked out.
“This is what the hour before creation must have been like,” Rakkim said quietly. “Darkness moved across the face of the water…” He took in the oxygen bottles littering the shore, the single thermal blanket. “You let him dive alone?”
“Moseby insisted,” said the Colonel, not taking his eyes off the black lake. “I told him to wait…he’s been pushing himself for days and-”
“I see something.” Leo wiped his nose. Pointed.
Rakkim saw a light deep below the surface, coming closer…brighter now.
A diver burst out of the water, sent spray into the air. He paddled toward shore, almost invisible in a full black dry suit and black dive hood. Only the flickering halogen penlights on either side of his face mask made his position clear. The diver paddled crookedly, exhausted, his gloved hands barely clearing the water. He left a wake…he was towing something.
Rakkim splashed into the shallows, immediately felt his legs go numb from the cold. He stayed there, took another step. “Moseby!”
Moseby turned his head awkwardly, barely able to stay afloat.
“This way!” shouted Rakkim, teeth chattering as he moved to deeper water. “Here!”
Moseby swam toward him, arms flopping as he kicked himself forward.
Rakkim reached for him, dragged him closer; then he fell backward, head underwater for just an instant, but his ears felt like they were going to burst from the cold. He scrambled up, pulled Moseby partway onto the shore, slipped on the wet rocks. He tore off Moseby’s face mask. “J-John…” he gasped, shivering. “It’s…it’s okay now.”
His eyes bright red from exploded capillaries, Moseby tried to speak but couldn’t. He just lay there, trembling like a hooked fish.
Leo ran over, looked down at both of them, unsure what to do.
The Colonel bent down, grabbed Rakkim and Moseby by the collar, and pulled them farther up onto the stones, then sat down beside them. The sound of their breathing echoed off the rocky cavern. Echoed. Echoed.
Rakkim raised himself up and stared at the gray graphite canister resting along the shoreline, “72/106” stenciled on the side. He was looking at both the past and the future, and it gave him no pleasure. None at all.