chapter 35
TEAM 1 & 2, YEAR: 1200
Time Remaining: 98 Days
Owen closed the door to his living quarters and pulled on his sweater. The night had grown stormy and he could hear the wind whipping around outside the WeatherShield. After the heat of the afternoon, he assumed the weather would turn bad. Some of the biggest thunderstorms he had ever experienced had followed hot, picture-perfect days. He looked up at the sky and saw nothing. No stars, no moon. Owen found the WeatherShield difficult to get used to; it seemed unnatural to be outdoors and to hear the wind and rain but not feel it. Walking back to the fire, he saw a darkened figure standing in the trees just outside the edge of the camp. Owen chuckled. If it were he who needed to relieve himself after a couple of drinks, he would have at least walked a little deeper into the forest. He sat back down at the fire again and gazed into the hypnotizing flames. After a moment, his trance broke at the sound of raised voices on the other side of the fire. Tyler and Clint’s political discussion had become heated.
“Okay, guys. No more politics,” said Lexi. She speared a marshmallow with a stick and handed it to Tyler.
Riley had taken to most of Jake’s team immediately. Lexi reminded her of herself when she was younger—driven and enthusiastic. Maya was a sweetheart and Ben, like Jake, was few on words but very observant and insightful. Clint was the hardest to read. She watched him intently over dinner; now, after a few drinks, his behaviour began to flip-flop from hot to cold like a broken tap. While cheery through dinner, he had again become moody. His comments bordered on childish and were so petty that to say something seemed equally trivial. The group seemed to be accustomed to this behaviour and she followed their lead and ignored it. The casual nature of the op was intentional as to combat burn-out as a result of being understaffed. Although Riley had never participated in an op with marshmallows and folding chairs, she knew with absolute certainty that Finn would know where to draw the line regarding appropriate conduct. She hoped Clint had the same sense.
Finn, as usual, fit in with everyone. His gregarious and approachable personality naturally drew people to him. He stabbed a marshmallow with a stick, leaned forward in his chair and challenged Lexi’s marshmallow roasting prowess to a roast off. As Finn loosened up with a few drinks, the funnier he became. Riley noticed that this seemed to needle Clint; not even the fire could melt the icy glares he shot at Finn, who talked animatedly to Lexi and Tyler.
As the night progressed, the topic of conversation turned to stories about past memorable ops. Lexi and Tyler being fairly new, had no remarkable stories and listened raptly to everyone’s experiences. Owen explained how he studied rocks and meteor craters and was unsurprised to hear crickets at his conclusion. Riley laughed at the straight faces waiting expectantly for the exciting part. Finn launched into one of the ops he and Riley had been on together. While the operation had actually been very routine, Finn was a master story-teller and had a way of making the mundane details seem like scenes from an action movie.
“And so Riley kicks in the door, and there was what, five?” Finn asked, looking at her for confirmation and she held up four fingers. “Okay. Four, massive, burly men standing on the other side pointing their guns at us, standing between us and the hostages. We were pretty much out of ammo after blasting our way through the cargo bay and all we had left were our runty-ass plasmaqs. It was crazy. Riley had a plasmaq in each hand and took out two of them, kicked the third guy in the marble sack, and the fourth she cold-cocked with the butt of the gun. All four were on the ground before any of them knew what happened.”
Owen made a mental note to ask Riley for a few more details about her work. He was getting the impression he may be sleeping with a contract killer.
“So what happened next?” Lexi asked, looking at Riley in awe. She sat on the edge of her seat and hung on every word.
“Nothing really, we rescued the hostages and got the hell out of there,” said Riley.
Finn laughed. “Yeah, but not before setting the broken leg of one of the hostages, making a splint out of one of the terrorists’ guns and shredding his pants to make ties for a splint. The guy still hadn’t recovered from being kicked in the coin purse and you should have seen the look on his face when Riley walked up to him with a hunting knife the size of a goddamn machete. I thought his eyes were going to bulge out of his head!”
Riley rolled he eyes. “It wasn’t as crazy at Finn makes it out to be.” She tried to engage Clint, who had not spoken in over half an hour. “How about you Clint? Any unusual field stories?” she asked.
Clint ignored her and she asked the question again assuming his mind was elsewhere. Again he remained silent and stared at the fire. Jake leaned forward and waved his hand in front of Clint’s face.
“What?” he asked.
“Riley was talking to you. Did you hear her?”
“I heard her, I just had nothing to say.”
Ben rolled his eyes, recognizing the signs of an imminent Clint meltdown. He stood and tapped Clint on the shoulder. “Okay, let’s go. I think we should end the night before we say something that we’ll regret.”
Clint looked up at him innocently. “What? I didn’t do anything. I can’t help it if she’s got a problem with something I didn’t say.”
Riley had never encountered a sub with such erratic behaviour. Although he was Jake’s sub, she outranked him by four levels and that meant something. She suspected that this may be his beef with her and his resentment toward Finn resulted from their solid relationship. She was grateful that Jake took charge. She did not want to get involved in Team One’s dynamics, let alone on their first day.
“On your feet.” Jake barked and Clint took his time standing up. “Riley is your lead and you’d best remember that.”
“Respectfully sir, she’s not my lead, you’re my lead.” The light of the fire did not play well off Clint’s defiant expression.
“We’re both your leads, so show some respect,” Jake growled. He was both infuriated and embarrassed that he needed to explain this.
“Fuck this.” Clint threw the stick he had been poking the fire with onto the ground and strode into the forest. The team watched in silence as he disappeared into the darkness.
Tyler shook his head; he clearly wanted to say something but thought better of it. Instead, he stood and stretched. “Well, I think I’m done for the night. Another fantastic night comes to an awkward end, thanks to Clint.” He left the group and moments later they heard his trailer door slam. The rest of the team sat in silence and listened to the wind and rain outside the protective bubble.
Owen broke the silence. “How does the perimeter alarm work? Is it only on at night?”
“No, it’s a twenty-four/seven thing,” supplied Ben, grateful for the change of topic.
“So how come it doesn’t go off when we walk through it, like when we all left and went to the lake?”
“The system is preprogrammed with your DNA, so it doesn’t trigger the alarm,” Ben explained. “The system was preloaded with Finn and Riley’s DNA. We entered yours when you arrived. Jake saw you guys coming and I had the system scan your DNA when you stepped through the invisible barrier and then added it to the ‘allowable’ category.” Owen was intrigued as Ben explained the finer details about the perimeter system’s data analysis modules like facial recognition or general health analysis, all of which were unnecessary due to the isolated nature of the camp.
Without notice, the fire moved abnormally, like a gust of wind caught it. Jake felt rain drops on his head and stood as rain and wind poured into the camp. Leaves blew past them and one stuck to Riley’s side as she, like the others, stood and looked around in alarm.
Jake took control. “Darren, Maya, put out the fire then hit your trailers. Finn, Lexi, check Mole Control and see what’s malfunctioning. Riley, Ben, Owen come with me.”
It seemed to Owen that everyone was getting a little bent out of shape over a bit of rain. However, if he
had learned anything from the time he had spent with Riley and Finn, it was that there was a lot about the future he knew nothing about.
Jake instructed Ben, Owen and Riley to fan out and walk and inspect the camp’s perimeter for anything abnormal. The search revealed nothing. They joined Lexi and Finn in Mole Control to see if anything had been registered by the sensors. They were all surprised to learn two of the WeatherShield sensors were offline and one was terminated. With nothing to be done until morning, everyone went to their respective trailers for the night.
Time Remaining: 97 Days
Jake woke at the crack of dawn determined to get to the bottom of the WeatherShield incident. He checked where the sensors should have been, but as Lexi had reported, they were gone—ripped from the ground. A third sensor lay in pieces. As he picked up the pieces, Jake wondered how this could have happened. All of the team members were sitting around the fire when the system went down, except for Tyler and Clint. The only three explanations Jake had so far were Tyler, Clint or something else. When Tyler left, everyone heard his door close. Clint, on the other hand, walked into the forest. Jake knew both these points were circumstantial. Tyler could have just as easily left his trailer with no one knowing. Unfortunately for Clint, the events of the evening and the reputation he had established as being difficult did not work in his favour. Tyler’s quiet, hardworking nature made him less of a suspect, but it did not eliminate him. Clint, conversely, had repeatedly alienated everyone. Because he could not prove it was Clint or Tyler, he could not rule out some alternative explanation.
Jake took the broken sensor to the work shed and found Ben searching through crates for more sensors to get the WeatherShield back up and running. He emerged from the back of the shed holding two matching stakes.
“Bad news, Boss,” he said. “We’ve only got two backup sensors.”
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Good news is that I found one of them. The bad news is, it’s the broken one.” Jake set pieces on the workbench.
Ben looked over the pieces of the broken sensor. “If we don’t find at least one of those sensors, we don’t have the WeatherShield anymore. We need a minimum of six.”
Riley came into the shed. “Jake, can I have a word?”
Jake nodded appreciatively. Ben sensed he should find something to do elsewhere and left the shed. When the door had closed behind him, Jake filled Riley in on the sensor situation, but Riley had more interest in the Clint situation.
“I have no patience for anyone who undermines a team,” said Riley, matter-of-factly. “It’s dangerous and unfair to the people who work hard around him and I won’t tolerate it. I’ll help you try to keep him functioning as part of the team, but if I get attitude like that again, he’s going to find himself restricted and possibly in court when he returns.”
Jake was unsurprised by Riley’s reaction. In her line of work there was no room for egos or poor attitudes. Otherwise, people got killed. He suspected that if Riley broke into Finn’s trailer in the dead of night, kicked him out of a deep sleep and told him to drop and give her fifty pushups, he would roll directly onto the floor, no questions asked. The legendary Riley Morgan had been on more ops than most old-timers; an old-timer being about thirty-eight in her line of work. She was decorated and had levelled up higher and faster than most people her age. Rightfully so—she was an excellent leader, known for highly effective teams, a zero-percent failure rate and an even lower tolerance for bullshit. Her subordinates were highly-trained human weapons, trained to follow orders with no hesitation. The operations Jake supervised were never the high-risk, life-or-death ops that Riley executed. This accounted for their differences in leadership style. Many of his subs were new, fresh out of the academy. Mechanical and Infrastructure Recovery was a good first op for new subs to cut their teeth on. As a result, Jake had become a master of organizing chaos and was sympathetic to bumbling, under-confident subs.
Jake found Clint sitting alone in the dining room eating a bowl of cereal and he sat down across from him. Clint did not look like the moody and angry guy he had been the night before and the thought occurred to Jake that he might have a problem with alcohol. His mood swings seemed far more pronounced after several drinks. Jake opened his mouth to talk, but Clint beat him to it.
“I know what you’re going to say. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m difficult sometimes. I just get frustrated with people.”
Jake took advantage of the opening. “I’m seeing a pattern here, Clint. This behaviour is becoming a problem and we can’t afford another outburst like that. And Riley Morgan is not someone you want to test.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?”
“You can’t afford to alienate everyone more than you already have, and I can’t afford to have you benched for the rest of this op. We need your expertise in that tunnel. That’s why you were picked for this op.”
“With all due respect, sir, don’t bullshit me,” said Clint. “I wasn’t hand-picked because of my expertise, I was one of the few idiots that applied.”
Sick of the drama at every turn, Jake laid out his expectations of Clint’s behaviour. Clint apologized again and sat silent, pushing his sogging cereal around the bowl. He spoke after a few moments.
“What happened to the WeatherShield?”
“There’s two sensors missing and one is broken beyond repair.” Jake felt as though he and Clint had found a balance and he did not want to disrupt it by making it seem like he was accusing Clint of something. Assumptions? He had a few. Gut feelings? Yes. Irrefutable proof? Not a shred. “I was hoping you would be able to tell me if you saw anything unusual last night.”
Clint stood up quickly and bumped the table. Milk and soggy corn flakes sloshed out of the bowl. “You think I did it? Just because I wasn’t under your thumb when it happened, you think it was me? Well, I didn’t. I went for a walk up the shoreline. I was so pissed at all of you I wandered for two goddamn hours before I turned around. You can ask Ben. I came back to the trailer around three in the morning.”
“Clint,” Jake stood slowly and spoke firmly, “I’m not accusing you of anything. Tyler wasn’t there when the system went down either and I’ve already asked him these same questions. I just wanted to know if you saw anything unusual.”
“Oh.” Clint’s voice returned to conversational volume. “Well, now that you mention it, when I was north of the camp, I thought I saw someone skulking outside the boundary. I assumed it was one of you guys looking for me, but I didn’t feel like being found.” He left his bowl and spoon on the table for Darren to clean up.
Jake tried to avoid being judgemental, but he found Clint’s story disturbing. It seemed as though Clint had devised a flimsy story to deflect suspicion. However, with no physical proof, Jake’s hands were tied. Innocent until proven guilty.