Shadow Hand Page 2
“They’ve booby-trapped it. Or maybe planted the explosives on the periphery. Let me check it out. If they’ve just left a few IEDs in the road, I can find and avoid them, and we might yet be able to drive out of here.” This was one of Cleo’s areas of expertise. She’d developed an instinct for it. For all kinds of explosives, in fact, even guns; she knew when a gun was about to fire, and from roughly what direction. Just something you picked up from experience, she figured, if you were wired like that. So she was sure there was no gun aimed at them from behind the jeep—and equally sure that there were explosives nearby.
She led the way slowly, carefully, focusing intently on the terrain, not even looking away at the sound of another vehicle coming fast.
“Ours,” she said briefly. “Signal him not to come too close.” She knew which vehicle it was by the sound, and who’d been driving it in the convoy. Somebody must finally have noticed that they were missing and sent Corporal Jones back to check on them. Not a good choice. He was new to the country, ignorant of the terrain.
Cleo didn’t need to look to make sure Ash would signal, but the new arrival was speeding faster than he should, and not braking soon enough. Ash shouted. Cleo looked up and shouted too, but of course he couldn’t hear them.
“Stay back!” she yelled at Ash, and began to run right toward the oncoming jeep. Jones braked at last, went into a spin, slid toward their disabled jeep—and suddenly the earth fell away under Cleo’s feet. Or, no, she’d been lifted high by some strong, invisible hand, then set down hard against the ground at least twenty feet from where she’d been.
Jones’s brakes squealed. He slowed way down in a cloud of dust, but there was no way he was going to escape a collision. Cleo, still holding her rifle, lurched toward Ash to protect her, to shield Ash’s body with her own. The lieutenant evaded her and extended her right hand toward their jeep, which leapt suddenly high into the air, flying at least fifty feet while a series of explosions shook it. And then a surging mass of flames erupted, far more than the gas in the tank could account for.
Yeah, it had been booby-trapped. Cleo’s head pounded with the frantic beating of her heart, or the explosions echoing off the stone walls of the distant fortress. Or maybe both. She found herself crouching on the ground at Ash’s feet, and noticed the lieutenant beginning to slump just in time to catch her and ease her down.
Jones, staggering out of his undamaged jeep, hardly registered in Cleo’s consciousness. Ash in her arms was all that mattered.
“I don’t know how…” Ash muttered. “I thought she was gone, but it’s not over after all.”
“Shush. It’ll be all right.” Cleo stroked her back. Being able to do what Ash could now do might not be such a bad thing. This didn’t seem like a good time to say that, though. Cleo’s arms tightened around her. The hell with what Jones would think. Technically it wasn’t illegal anymore to be lesbian or gay in the Army, but they could always get you for something. Fraternization between officers and enlisted was high on the list.
Ash pulled free and stood. So did Cleo. By the time Jones started toward them with questions, Ash was every inch Lieutenant Ashton, and Cleo was Sergeant Brown.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked.
“Just a little shaken. How about you?”
“All in one piece, I guess, but what…”
“That was really something, wasn’t it?” Ash said casually. “Those guys are getting mighty creative with their explosives.” Then, sternly, “You’d better learn to approach any possible booby trap situation more carefully. If they’d buried IEDs out at a distance from the disabled vehicle you might not be all in one piece.”
“Yes, ma’am. But what…”
She ignored him, moving off toward his jeep. He turned to Cleo.
“What was all that, Sergeant?”
She outranked him, but he’d had a big shock, and was honestly curious, so she let him get away with questioning her.
“My fault. Clogged air filter. I always check, but didn’t today, so I had to stop to clear it, and then we saw a gang coming fast on motorcycles. Lieutenant Ashton and I managed to hide over in the wadi until they were gone. The rest you’ve seen.” She turned away and followed Ash.
She’d actually fiddled with a different system to disable the jeep, but nobody was ever going to find out anything from that still-glowing hunk of twisted metal. A hunk of twisted metal that had been her jeep. Her responsibility. She knew better than to get sentimental about machines, but this was the one she’d driven the lieutenant in for two years, the closest thing to a home together they’d had.
Her eyes stung, but it couldn’t be tears. She hadn’t cried in twenty years. Well, except that once, in Paris, with Ash, but that wasn’t the sad kind of crying. Anyway, she wasn’t crying now. It was just all that sand and grit getting into her eyes.
But it was her fault. She shouldn’t have believed the all-clear report, shouldn’t have given in to the lieutenant’s obsession with ancient ruins, shouldn’t have let their mutual desire to steal some time alone together make her expose Ash to such a risk.
Guilt kept her quiet on the ride to rejoin the convoy. Cleo generally couldn’t stand to ride with somebody else driving, but this time she put up with it. She deserved it. The lieutenant sat in front with Jones, while Cleo sat in back, simmering with guilt and trepidation. How much had he seen? Had he believed Ash’s quick-witted story about the enemy having “creative” new explosives? Who might he tell?
Above all, what was happening to Ash? Would the kind of power she’d shown, if it lasted, turn her into somebody entirely different? Somebody who wasn’t the Ash who was closer to Cleo than she’d ever thought anyone could be? Wasn’t the Ash who could love her? The Ash who could sometimes read Cleo’s mind, as Cleo could read hers.
Ash turned a bit to look over her shoulder. “Hot enough for you?” she asked.
They were going to be all right. “Hot enough for you” was their private code phrase, almost the first thing she’d ever said to Cleo, just a casual, clichéd remark that had come to mean so much.
Cleo had been sent to pick the lieutenant up at the airport in the capital city, and yeah, it had been hot, but it was always hot. Cleo was used to it. Her sweat and foul temper had been due to a hit-and-run fender-bender on the way and then an altercation over a parking space, not the temperature. It hadn’t helped that even travel-worn and jet-lagged, Lieutenant Ashton was all too attractive. Not beautiful, exactly, except for the swallow-wing curve of her dark eyebrows, but definitely intriguing. That didn’t matter, couldn’t matter. As an officer she’d be strictly off-limits even if by some miracle she were interested in dating women.
The greeting her and schlepping of luggage had gone okay, but Cleo had been overly forceful heaving the duffle bag into the jeep, and had to wipe the sweat from her face before turning to open the door. At her passenger’s casual, “Hot enough for you?” Cleo had decided she was too dumb to care about one way or another. But some perverse impulse that got her in trouble now and then had made her want to see if she could shock the new lieutenant.
“You bet. Hot enough to steam my clams.”
One eyebrow had gone up. “Sounds like you must come from near the ocean. Where I come from we have prairie oysters, but I’ve never taken much interest in those.”
Cleo’s mouth had dropped open. Somewhere in her varied past she’d heard that term for fried bulls’ testicles, but coming from this woman it was a shock. She’d just mumbled something about being from upstate New Hampshire, not exactly on the coast. Lieutenant Ashton had said that she was from Montana, and they’d conversed sporadically and impersonally all the way to the base where they were stationed.
Just as she was getting out, though, while Cleo was handling her luggage, the lieutenant had said casually, “I’ve heard that clams are good raw, too, with just the right tangy sauce.”
Chapter 2
The sun set in a shimmering red haze well before they approached the multi-national base. Under a crescent moon, the desert lay still and serene, as though never swept by storms of war or nature. The land sloped gently down toward a river flowing from distant mountains, a mere trickle at this time of year.
From a distance, the rows upon rows of tents inside the walled perimeter of the camp glowed golden with interior light. Ash and Cleo had been stationed there for three months before the mission they’d just completed but had never approached by night before. To Ash, nearly dozing, it looked like a palace from some fantastic Arabian Nights tale. Or like a futuristic outpost under an invisible dome on a far-off planet like Mars.
Once through the gates, they were back in the military world they knew so well. Corporal Jones dropped them off in front of Headquarters, one of the few permanent buildings in a city of canvas. Staff and vehicles were coming and going in spite of the late hour; there was no chance of a private conversation.
“I’d better go file my report with the motor pool office right away and face whatever I have coming.” Cleo sighed. “I’m responsible for letting my jeep be destroyed.” It went without saying that she wouldn’t bring up the flying-through-the-air parts, either hers or the jeep’s.
Ash nodded. They knew without discussion that Corporal Jones was a problem. Had he been distracted enough not to notice Cleo being raised so far and dropped? Or Ash with her arm outstretched toward the jeep as it lifted? He’d certainly been jittery during the rest of their journey back, casting all too many sidelong looks at Ash, but that could have just been a reaction to seeing Cleo’s arms around her. He hadn’t actually said much of anything beyond comments on the weather.
“Good luck, Sergeant. I’ll take some of the blame if it comes to that.”
“No worries.” Cleo’s flashing grin said more than any bystander could have understood. Her guilt was fading, and she headed for the motor pool with a jaunty stride that would have convinced anyone else of total confidence. Ash watched her go, wishing they’d dared at least a quick hand clasp. Her arm twitched. If she really tried, could she just yank Cleo back to her? She suppressed the urge, but barely. Impulse control was going to be a problem.
Ash did worry, but not about Cleo’s standing in the Army. Nothing short of a dishonorable discharge would bother Cleo much, and that wasn’t likely. Nobody could handle motor vehicles like Sergeant Brown, or diagnose their problems, or come up with creative ways to fix them. Command had been pressuring her to rethink her decision to quit as soon as her current (and fourth) tour of duty ended in three months.
Ash was getting out, too, in about eight months, when the obligatory years of service for her Army ROTC college scholarship were completed. Both of them had thought about making the Army a lifetime career, but that was before they met, before sparks flew between them as intense as whatever had happened to Ash in that cave. Laws or no laws, being a lesbian couple in the military would be uncomfortable, to say the least. They had other plans. Cleo could easily get a civilian job with a contractor in the capital to keep her in the country until Ash was free, and then they’d be off to make a life together.
But now, in spite of Cleo’s reassuring grin, Ash had other worries. If this mysterious new power turned out to be permanent, what would that do to their plans? Their lives? Everything they thought they knew about the world? She didn’t even know if she was the same person she’d been all her life. There was something new going on inside her, something she could feel if she focused on it, a buzz verging on a burn in her joints, her skin, her mind.
“Lieutenant?”
Ash had stopped at the foot of the walkway to Headquarters. She swung around and stepped aside. “Sorry!” She’d been standing in the path of two men trying to carry a load of long steel pipes up the walkway. A truck bed on the roadside was half-full of similar pipes. Looked like something to do with heating, hard as it was to imagine that this desert could get cold. The load was heavy, and while trying to work his way around her one of the guys stumbled. A couple of the pipes began to slide off his shoulder, down his upper arm, totally out of his control. He let out a loud curse, and suddenly, impossibly, the pipes retreated back into balance. It wasn’t until then that Ash noticed she’d raised her arm. The realization shook her. Impulse control, damn it! Get a grip!
She followed the men through the door, then turned to the office on the left, steeling herself to report to Colonel Rogers if she was still on duty this late—and hoping she wasn’t.
This time luck was on her side. No report possible tonight. And tomorrow all she’d really be expected to report on was the successful mission they’d completed before joining the convoy for safety on the way back. Their all-female squad of Army nurses and doctors from the capital city, along with escorts and a mobile medical facility, had gone from village to village in a district where a UN relief worker had persuaded the tribal leaders to let their women be treated by other women. Ash had plenty to say about that, and the explosion near the end could just be tossed in casually. Remembering it all, though—if you could call it remembering, when she’d scarcely been conscious of what was happening—set off a burn in her right arm and side and, in fact, her whole body.
Just an effect of all that riding with no chance to limber up, she told herself. After grabbing a bite at the Officers’ Club and then strolling briskly along the walkway inside the perimeter wall, she did feel better, mentally and physically.
There were manned watchtowers at the four corners of the wall and at regular intervals in between, and a walkway all along its top, with now and then an angle where the terrain was especially uneven. In some of those angles, sandbags were heaped, ready for filling gaps in case of explosive attack. Ash had a favorite shadowed spot where occasionally at night, feeling unbearably penned in, she climbed the sand bags, hooked her fingers over the edge of the wall, and scrambled up. It was no harder than some of the obstacle courses where she’d trained.
Being on the wall wasn’t strictly forbidden. Ash had trained, in fact, for back-up status as a leader of extra observers in case of emergencies. Whether she could be there whenever she chose was a gray area, regulation-wise, and the closer she got to leaving the Army, the more inclined she felt to push the military envelope. Sure proof that she wasn’t career-officer material. If all her duties were like the successful medical mission, she might have reconsidered, and so would Cleo—but that wasn’t going to happen.
From her position on the wall, Ash could look behind to the bright ant-hill bustle of the camp and enjoy an illusory freedom from it all, but more often she’d gaze out over the darkened desert toward a horizon where, if the moon were full or a faint glow still lingered from the sunset, she could see an irregular line of mountains.
Cleo knew about the place on the wall, and had joined Ash once, but the apparent privacy was deceptive. Resisting temptation was too hard, and Cleo hadn’t come again. Tonight, though, after Ash had been there for half an hour practicing tossing pebbles in the air with her mind and making them move in unlikely ways as they fell, Cleo came.
She hauled herself up, sat cross legged several feet away, and eyed Ash’s progress. A pebble left Ash’s hand, hurtled toward Cleo, stopped just short of her nose, then slowly returned to Ash. Cleo never flinched.
“Nice yo-yo effect,” she commented. “I thought you might be up here figuring out how to move mountains.” She gestured toward the range far to the northwest. “Moving them pebble by pebble might be the best plan, though. Sneakier. Stealth terraforming.”
Ash flipped another stone toward Cleo, who caught it in the natural, old-fashioned
way, then hurled it outside the wall. It fell, in the old-fashioned way, and could be heard hitting the sandy earth below.
“Try that again.” Ash dug another pebble from her pocket and tossed it to Cleo. “Surprise me.”
Sitting high above both desert and camp, bantering with Cleo, accepting everything about themselves, loosened the knots of stress that had been binding her. The tension of watching for Cleo to throw the stone wasn’t stress, it was just play.
Cleo tossed the pebble upward over and over, keeping the timing between flips as random as she could, whistling softly all the while. Her actual throw, when it came, went straight up over her own head, fell back toward her, and veered off into Ash’s hand at the last nanosecond. Cleo didn’t look up to watch it coming. “You could be handy to have around,” she said lightly. Then, as if it had just occurred to her, “Hey, they finally got that enclosed firing range finished while we were gone. Want to meet up there tomorrow afternoon? Shooting under a roof without getting sand in your eyes or your gun barrel. Pure luxury.”
“Sure. I’ll call you when I know my schedule. The colonel wasn’t in tonight, so I have my whole report to get through.”
“I figured. Nobody will read mine until tomorrow, and then I may get hauled over some coals. Or maybe not.” Cleo shrugged. “Whatever.” She shifted toward the inner edge of the wall “I’d better get back before somebody comes looking for me. They’ve been saving all the most fucked up jeeps and trucks for me to diagnose all the time we were gone.” She flopped on her stomach, swung her legs over the side, and poised facing Ash with her weight on her elbows and arms. Ash moved swiftly on hands and knees until she was close enough to get her lips on Cleo’s, gently, not wanting to knock her off the wall, but Cleo raised herself into a deep, passionate kiss, held it for half a minute, then slid down out of sight to the sandbags below.