“Are you sure? I can’t see a damn thing, man. Come on, they may be the footprints of the boy we found earlier, right?”
Hawk shakes his head slowly.
Not a boy…
“May be, but I’m not sure.”
USA BASE CNT222
The fluorescent tubes’ cold light concurs to generate a sterile, impersonal environment. Long white tables filled with advanced medical analysis tools run along the walls.
Emily Moore is bowed at work on blood samples taken from Ahmed and the wounded soldier.
Macready and Ironside are awaiting the outcome of the analysis, whispering softly a few meters behind her.
“I’ve sent a team to check south-west, at the place indicated by the boy. They found the bodies of three men and four dromedaries.”
“This means that the boy said the truth”, says Ironside.
“I had no doubt about this”, Macready goes on. “The nomads of the desert have a honor code and a very rigid behavior. Our guest had a targui, a headdress given to males when they make their official entry into the adult world. He’s just a boy, I’d bet that’s the first time he leaves his village. In short he isn’t yet corrupted by the outside world, and he is careful to behave as a wise and impeccable man. However”, Macready makes a gesture with his hand as if to dismiss that parenthesis. “Our boys identified the tracks of two jeeps, they are after them. The robbers seem to have headed to the rocky hills area.”
Macready ends up his update, and both turn their gaze watching Moore. She’s placing a slide under the lenses of a microscope. The Major looks thoughtfully and lingers for a few moments watching the scientist at work. Her red hair tied behind her back, the speckled skin with freckles.
Who knows how she may look without those nerdy glasses…
Then the soldier turns back to Ironside. “How do we handle the whole thing with the media?”
Ironside makes a face, to point out how the matter is a quite bigger fish to fry. He finished updating Thompson just a few minutes back, and his superior has been very clear on this aspect.
“Listen to me John”, he said. “Officially the plane has just disappeared. Our intelligence services broke into the radar plotting and satellite database, altering the data so it’s impossible to reconstruct its route. Actually, the only thing that the media know is that the Boeing has just disappeared after takeoff from Cape Town. This will give us valuable time to try and fix everything. When the situation settles down, we will decide how to move.”
Ironside guessed how things will go. With a good chance some scrap will reappear somewhere else, even considering the possibility that it’s necessary to impute responsibility for the disaster to someone who’s going to be a scapegoat face. The data will be altered again, they will spawn names of potential hijackers and a large group of journalists, writers, blogger and trolls on the government payroll will help direct awareness of the masses in the most appropriate manner. Alternatively, it may become another case of a missing plane. After all, Africa is a huge continent. That’s it… real truth hardly reaches the people.
“And what about the remains of the passengers or any survivors?”, Ironside asked Thompson, already knowing the answer.
“In the event they find any survivors, report it immediately. We will study what to do. However I don’t think that you will find any. As for the remains… There aren’t any, John.”
Long moments of silence had ran after Thompson’s last words. His voice had taken on a mock fatherly tone when he continued : “We can’t take chances, John. There’s too much at stake. Handle it on the site, that’s why you’re there. I have full confidence in you.”
Macready clears his throat, recalling Ironside from his thoughts and bringing him back to the present. The soldier looks at him quizzically.
“Major, your men must clear everything from the area of the crash. Retrieve the black box, place it in a container able to block its signal and make sure that no one can find it or get his hands on it until further orders. Be sure to gather the remains of the bodies of the passengers and their luggage, as well as the crew, and burn them to ashes. There will be no media side, at least for the moment. May God understand and forgive us all.”
After about thirty long minutes, Emily Moore takes off her gloves and glasses, laying them on a nearby white table. She spends some moments with her eyes closed.
When did I sleep the last time?
Macready approaches behind her, handing her a cup of hot coffee poured from a thermos. “Any news about the analysis?”
“Nothing, apart from a slight dehydration in the boy’s blood, there is absolutely nothing. The same for the wounded soldier. At first glance, both fit as a fiddle.”
“So in your opinion they don’t show any contamination?”
“I did not say that”, she replies, amazed by her own abrupt voice, then her face relaxes. “I’d say there is nothing apparently wrong. However, if you don’t mind, I’d rather hear Dr. Ivanov’s opinion.”
Macready just nods, and leaves the lab without another word, when a young soldier arrives in a hurry, almost slamming against him.
“What happened?”, exclaims the Major, noticing the short breath of the soldier. Moore and Ironside join them.
“Sir, we have lost contact with one of the helicopters!”
Macready doesn’t seem perturbed by the news. His voice is unnaturally calm. “Try and localize its GPS signal. Take standard fire-fighting measures in advance. I will be right there on the surface.”
Then the base commander takes a left hand to his ear, activating a headset intercom. “Vasquez, take Ivanov to the main lab. Stay there at the disposal of Dr. Moore, and do not lose sight of that man for a single moment.”
ALGERIAN DESERT
Sergeant Seagull observes the yellow and vast expanse of sand that stretches endless in front of him, fading in the warm horizon. His clear green eyes explore the desert looking for strange elements. He holds a cigar between his teeth, a gift from the chef Ugo, a still intact El Rey do Mundo.
The sun is already high in the sky and the dunes seem to tremble, roasting in the scorching heat.
The team, consisting of eight men, moves on two Humvee traveling side by side, leaving a small swirl of dust and sand behind them.
Suddenly the man next to him, visibly a body builder with Latin facial features, points at something in the distance on their right.
A slender dark thread of smoke hovers in the heat.
“Christer, two o’clock”, says Seagull to the driver of the other vehicle.
Acting in sync the two trucks slow to a stop. From the roof of one of them a trap door opens.
A soldier dressed in a camouflage suit pops out to peer into the distance with binoculars.
At the same time another soldier pops out from the other vehicle’s roof, staring in the same direction through the lens of a Barrett M82 sniper rifle. His viewfinder moves, overlapping the sight with a numbered grid, while the marine checks the noteworthy items.
“It looks like a makeshift camp, I see broken wooden boxes and the ruins of a shack. There is something a few meters ahead… It’s the carcass of a jeep. I can see no hostile, the site seems an abandoned camp, but those assholes may have seen us and hidden somewhere nearby to ambush us.”
The two soldiers drop inside their respective vehicles, which resume their pace. They shortly reach their target.