Shadow Hand Page 5
“Sit down, Sergeant,” Colonel Rogers said calmly. “We have a good deal to discuss.”
Cleo pulled over a metal folding chair and sat on its edge, unable to relax.
“I’ve read your report, and heard Lieutenant Ashton’s, and had confirmation from someone trained in these matters, so certain things are not in doubt. I’d still like to have the benefit of your expertise on one point. Do you consider it really possible that the odd behavior of your jeep was due to technological advances known to the enemy?”
Cleo’s mouth opened. No words came out. How much to say?
“Let me rephrase that, Sergeant. Do you consider it at all likely that that could be the case?”
Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. “No, ma’am. Not at all likely.”
“Thank you. That’s all I needed to ask.” She hit the intercom button and ordered coffee brought in for two.
“Now, on to the subject of missions. I’ve been thinking along those same lines. With only three months left in your tour, it would be a shame to waste your skills.”
An aide brought in the coffee, poured it, and left. The colonel shifted gears. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to rethink the matter of re-upping?” Cleo could almost hear the omitted words—“under these changed circumstances”—meaning now that Ash had gone. “I understand you’ve already been offered promotion if you stayed on. I might even be able to arrange one of greater magnitude.”
Cleo’s curt, direct “No, ma’am,” brought an understanding nod from the colonel, who returned to the previous topic.
“There may be a mission in the works. I’ve had a dozen messages this morning already that lead me to think that what happened to those children yesterday, common as it unfortunately is, has been some kind of tipping point. Come back at 1700 hours and we’ll see what’s developed.”
Cleo’s stride was as brisk leaving as when she’d come, but her mood was less grim. A mine-clearing assignment was just what she needed. Humanitarian mine-clearing—as opposed to the military kind that used big machinery to clear routes for troops to advance—worked best with manual detection, something she was as good at as anyone she’d ever met. At least, anyone left alive. Metal detectors are sensitive enough to pick up most mines, but they also yield about a thousand false positives for every correct identification, and minimum-metal mines are almost impossible for them to detect. Areas that had theoretically been cleared by machines were the most dangerous of all to villagers, especially children, since they’d think the area was safe.
Cleo returned to Headquarters at 1600 hours, a bit early, and was called right into the colonel’s office.
“Pack your bags, Sergeant. You’ll be leaving at dawn with a combined UN/US Army demining squad.”
“Bags already packed, Colonel.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Colonel Rogers grinned, and Cleo mustered something closer to a legitimate smile than she would have thought possible eight hours earlier.
Fourteen hours later, she was behind the wheel of a new jeep, part of a convoy of deminers and their gear. Quite a few of the guys were old friends from the days before she’d known Ash, when she’d done demining most of the time. So much territory had been cleared—and the use of whole fields of mines largely discontinued by the enemy in favor of roadside IEDs and targeted rockets—that demining hadn’t been high priority any more. She’d been reassigned. This was like a high school reunion, with explosives instead of a cash bar.
The first day, in the province where the kids had been injured, they found and detonated six mines, a couple so old they might have been there for fifty years. Cleo found those two, buried deeper than the others, and signaled to her partner.
“Hey Cleo, still got it, I see.”
“Both still just as crazy, right?”
“And lucky,” Mitch said, but as the sapper who did the detonating, he was the one who needed the most luck. Cleo could detect a concealed explosive from far enough away to keep mostly out of danger. She’d tried to teach others her methods, but it seemed to be an instinct that couldn’t be passed on.
They moved across the province slowly, thoroughly, then on to another further south, eliminating hundreds of deathtraps, not that Cleo kept score.
She did keep score of the erratic mail deliveries—the post office back at base always knew where she was, and would forward any mail—but nothing came from Ash. Not that she’d expected anything.
Two weeks before her tour came to an end, she was summoned back to base, and to Colonel Rogers’s office. The colonel wasn’t alone.
“Major, this is Sergeant Brown. Sergeant, Major McAllister is with the PsyOps division. She escorted Lieutenant Ashton to one of their training facilities.“
Cleo’s first thought upon meeting the major was, No wonder Ash went off with her! I might have done it myself. Her next was to wonder why she was being questioned, when they already had Ash and must know what she could do. A glance at Colonel Rogers assured her that there wasn’t any tragic news involved, so she just waited in at-ease stance to find out what was what.
The major greeted Cleo warmly, commenting on her excellent performance as a mine detector, but that was clearly just a prelude to whatever she’d actually come for.
“Colonel Rogers was telling me that she hasn’t heard from Lieutenant Ashton since leaving her at the PsyOps facility,” the major said conversationally, “so we were wondering if you’d had any letters.”
So Ash had gotten away! And hadn’t contacted Cleo. “No, nothing. Nothing at all.” Cleo let her pain show through. “I figured you folks were keeping her too busy with whatever it is you do.”
“As a matter of fact,” the major said, “she hasn’t been seen since a few days after she arrived.”
“You mean she’s either gone AWOL, or been…been…” Cleo pulled herself together. “What happened?”
“I was away on other business, so all I know is what I’ve heard, but there isn’t any doubt that she left on her own accord. Apparently she literally “lifted” documents and a military ID from a staff member who fit her description closely enough to get her on a commercial flight to Amsterdam. From there she transferred multiple times, and effectively disappeared.”
Major McAllister watched Cleo keenly as she spoke, obviously to see whether she knew the details of Ash’s escape already. She might even have deliberately changed details to see Cleo’s reaction, in case it revealed that Ash had communicated with her in some way.
Cleo didn’t try to conceal her hurt that she hadn’t—or her happiness that Ash had pulled off the caper. Served them right. Any agency claiming to specialize in paranormal powers that didn’t realize what someone with telekinesis could do to evade them clearly had nothing Lieutenant Ashton wanted to bother with.
Neither did Cleo Brown, she thought, then mentally kicked herself. What she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell. And even though she’d never tell, she might follow, and be followed.
Major McAllister switched the conversation back to Cleo herself, showing an interest in her uncanny talent for detecting even the oldest, most deeply buried mines, and in her record of extraordinary skills with all kinds of machinery. She even made a subtle reference to the possibility of promotion if Cleo changed her mind and stayed on, just as Colonel Rogers had.
Something about the major’s voice, her expressions, her apparent warmth, was dangerously appealing. Cleo didn’t think she could read minds, and suspected that what she did owed more to intuition and presence than to any paranormal ability, but whatever it was, she was damned good at it. If Cleo did have any idea where Ash was, or even where she might be, would she be able to hide it from this woman? Yes, Cleo thought, she would, but it was just as well she didn’t have to try—although that battle of wits might have been highly enjoyable.
By the time their meeting was at an end, Cleo had an odd impression tha
t Major McAllister had discovered things about her that she didn’t even know herself.
Cleo spent that night at base, her last before rejoining the squad of deminers and heading toward the capital city, where she’d officially part ways with the Army. She lay sleepless on her cot for a long time, wondering if things would have been different if she’d suggested to Ash that the two of them together could make a big dent in the landmines and IEDs endangering, among many others, children herding their goats. With Cleo’s instinct for pinpointing camouflaged explosives, and Ash’s power to move them to a safe area for detonation, or disarm them at a distance once Cleo explained exactly how to do it, they could have covered twice as much territory as most squads. Would she have stayed around longer? Would that kind of mission have satisfied her determination to do great work with her new power? Would she have been allowed to? Not likely.
Cleo twisted and turned on the hard bed. The squad’s route would take them right past that same ruined fortress, that same wadi. The place where her life had been changed, and Ash’s, and the lives of who knew how many people in the future. If only she could find that damned statue, smash it, grind it into tiny specks of sand! But it was too late now.
Better, she reasoned, to do what she could with what basic talents she had, and wish Ash well on her crusade to do big, important things—more important, at least, than Cleo ever would.
Reason didn’t cut it, though, when she was tossing on her cot in the desert heat, mind spinning through endless loops of memory. She was fixated on desperate longings for what might have been, and useless speculation on what might be happening now. Was Ash safe? Did she think of Cleo at all, or had power made her so full of herself that there was no room left?
“Stop it!” Cleo told herself severely, and eventually managed to obey. She must have slept, because dreams came—dreams of Ash, in the little room in Montmartre, where the whole world had contracted into just the two of them, together, touching, loving. Ash’s hand stroked Cleo’s cheek, moved down over her neck, shoulder, all the way to the warmth between her thighs, and Cleo was brought to a shuddering peak. She woke slowly to a sense of joy. A good dream. And what harm was there in thinking of how it had felt when Ash had probed her pocket for the keys with her mind, and said she’d felt it, too?
Only a dream. Cleo knew that. Ash wasn’t dreaming of her at the same time, wanting her, touching her. It might not even be night where she was. Cleo put herself back to sleep trying to compute what time it was in various zones in the world, while still, down deep where reason and common sense couldn’t reach, a lingering memory whispered, “Just like real touching.”
The squad stopped for a lunch break in sight of the ancient ruins. They’d all heard the story about what had happened to Cleo and her jeep there, or at least a small part of the story, and they humored her when she said she’d lost something over in that wadi and wanted to take a look to see if she could find it. Alone.
Down in the dry river bed, the area where they’d hidden was pretty much all rubble now. The air was still, but every now and then dust swirled around her head, and pebbles slid and bounced from the bank, some even hitting her. She had a definite sense of being unwelcome, even though her rational side knew it must be her imagination fueled by memories.
Ash thought the damned statue still kept an eye on her. Did that mean the goddess would know where she was? Cleo had about got over wanting to smash the figurine, but why not give in to imagination and try making use of it? Not so easy, since the bitch had taken a disliking to her, but Cleo had been wondering for a while whether that was a case of mistaken identity. Maybe the goddess had been fooled by her boyish looks.
A quick glance up at the rim of the bank showed that her privacy was being respected. “Look, you!” She unbuttoned her shirt and wriggled out of her sports bra. The dust stopped threatening to get into her eyes, at least. She cupped her small breasts in her hands and turned in a circle to display them, torn between laughing at her own absurdity and longing for the touch of Ash’s hands instead of her own. “Look, you,” she repeated, “whatever you are, I’m a woman, and Ash needs me whether she realizes it or not. If you know where she is, tell me right now!” She unbuttoned her belt and let her pants drop. “See?” Then she thought all those words again as hard as she could in case the goddess didn’t speak English. After all, why should she?
A very small opening appeared right about where they’d been able to see out when they were hiding, and no more pebbles rolled down the bank. Cleo stared, wondering whether it would expand, what might come out of it, until she began to feel dizzy. Her vision clouded, darkened, then suddenly cleared, but what she saw wasn’t the wadi. It was an opening, like an airplane window. It was an airplane window! She could look down through a widening gap in the clouds and see the earth beneath, close enough that the plane must be planning to land within the hour. The landmarks below—the oxbow of a river, a short, low line of green hills, a sprawling reservoir—were as familiar to her as any in the world.
The vision faded slowly, and before it was gone completely Cleo had pulled up her pants and buttoned her shirt. There was no way some ancient piece of stone or bone far in the Middle East could have made up that scene. She needed to believe, had to believe that it was what Ash was seeing right now—which meant that Cleo knew exactly where Ash was, and where she was going, and where she herself was going to go as soon as she possibly could. If Ash was going to Boston, it could only be because she hoped to find Cleo there. Because Ash needed her.
Chapter 4
As the helicopter rose from the base and headed west, Ash twisted and turned, keeping Cleo’s straight, still form in sight for as long as she possibly could. The hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach was standard for the rising aircraft, but the emptiness in her heart, her mind, came from leaving Cleo behind. And there was more to it. Ash suddenly felt that she was leaving herself behind, the self she’d always known. All the selves she’d been. The young tomboy on her grandfather’s failing ranch. The teenager working nights and weekends in a diner and summers with horse trek outfitters guiding tourists up into the Absarokee Mountains, where she would look out over the seemingly endless plains and long to discover the world beyond. The student struggling to hold a job and still keep her grades up enough to get and then keep her scholarship to Montana State in Bozeman. The newly-fledged lieutenant off to see the world, and the seasoned soldier who’d seen altogether too much, without flinching, so often with Cleo at her side and in her heart. All of those were herself, the self she knew. But who was she now? Had part of her been left back in that dratted wadi, or changed forever? More to the point, what had been added, and what could she do about it? How much could she do, if she only knew what that should be?
Major McAllister sat on the right side of the chopper, with Ash on the left. Two officers behind them were riding along to the airfield on their own business. The major stared through the small window toward the north, and just before the chopper banked again to turn southwest, Ash caught a glimpse past her of the distant mountains. Then they were out of sight. The major straightened, an intense, brooding emotion lingering on her face that quickly vanished when she saw Ash watching. Those mountains meant something deeply personal to her. Ash was sure of it. She was no mind reader, or—what was the term, empath? Still, you couldn’t be a good officer without learning to read your companions’ moods to some extent. If a young soldier under Ash’s command had looked like that, she would have reached out, and listened if they needed to talk. Had she herself looked like that while she watched Cleo’s straight, lonely figure shrink into invisibility? If so, the major, so intent on those mountains, couldn’t have noticed, which was a relief. Ash had no desire at all for sympathy from this woman. What she did have was a need for information. What was their ultimate destination? “On our way to Berlin,” McAllister had said, but that might not be their last stop. Wherever it was, how restricted would she be?
Ash nodded. She was about to reach out across the narrow aisle between them when the major deliberately tossed the stick of gum too far forward for her to easily catch.
Ash didn’t even try. What a stupid trick, with other passengers behind them who might notice if the gum moved toward her on its own, although a quick glance over her shoulder showed both officers leaning back and apparently dozing. She stared stonily across the aisle. The major shrugged apologetically, unbuckled her seat belt, and leaned forward to retrieve the gum. Ash waited a few beats to make her point. Then, with McAllister straight in her seat again, her body blocking the view of those behind, the gum blinked out of existence in her hand and back into existence in Ash’s. It didn’t take spoken words to get the message across: Screw your little tricks.
After that, Ash pretended to concentrate on the land below, in all its monotony. She’d traveled much of that sandy earth, breathed it in and coughed it out when sudden winds sprang up, shaded her eyes against its glare when the sun was high, and come to find an austere beauty in its sweeping vistas. But the view from above held little interest, she’d had very little rest last night, and the noise of the rotors, annoying as it had been at first, was so unrelentingly regular that she soon dozed off like the others.
More than dozed. She was deep in sleep when the regular throb of the rotors altered enough to be noticed. As she rose slowly toward wakefulness, resisting, resenting the noise, she fuzzily envisioned the rotors, wanting to make them stop. The muscles of her hand began to tighten…
“NO!” McAllister was instantly on top of her, pressing her hands down with a savage grip. “Wake up! We’re about to land at the airfield!”