A man in a suit stumbles, going to his knees and then falls forward to the floor. He frantically turns his head, looking at something, or someone, within the room from which he just fled. Nahmer walks out and stands beside him. Looking down at the man, she raises her pistol and fires. The man slumps to the ground.
I sense the tension coming from Lynn and the others.
“Hold your fire,” I tell them, still watching the scene ahead.
Nahmer looks in our direction and very slowly places her weapon on the floor. With her hands raised, she walks toward us. We escort her back into the conference room where she takes her previous seat.
I begin asking questions about the systems in place, but she forestalls me with an upraised hand which brings an almost violent response from both Lynn and Gonzalez.
“Before we go any further, the man you have, Harold I believe, will be able to figure them out,” Nahmer says. “Plus, you have the technicians.”
“Harold? You know about him?” I ask.
“Yes. We photographed him in your compound and ran him through our system. He was the one who disappeared after we caught him in our network. I assume that’s how you figured this all out,” she answers.
“Wait, you sound like we’ve already made a decision about you,” I say.
I catch Lynn’s nod in my peripheral.
“No, but I have made a decision that will save you from having to make one,” Nahmer says.
“You didn’t?”
“I did. I’m afraid that I made a wrong choice many years ago, and it has now caught up with me,” she states. “And I’ve continued making the wrong choices when I should have made the right one. I should have approached you long ago but I became caught up in the game. There is no place for me in this world anymore.”
“Jack, what is she talking about?” Lynn growls.
Nahmer’s eyes clinch from pain and a trickle of blood streams out of one nostril. Recovering, she wipes a hand across her face, smearing the blood across her upper lip and part of her cheek.
“I see that I don’t have much time left. I’m sorry for your losses, Captain Walker.”
Her eyes clinch tightly shut once again, then her whole body relaxes and her head falls to the table with a thud. Blood slowly trickles out of her nostril, forming a small pool beside her head.
“Holy shit!” Gonzalez exclaims. “Why in the fuck would she do that?”
“Because she’s been dedicated to her cause for so long that it meant everything to her. She knew we couldn’t keep her around so she opted to make it her choice,” I say, looking at the body lying on the table as if napping. For all of the wrongs she did to us, the woman was once a legend.
“Good. She just made it easier for us, that’s all,” Lynn says, checking Nahmer’s pulse.
Harold arrives with Alpha, who leaves him in our care before heading back to the aircraft. Even though we have things under control here, it’s still nighttime and anything can happen. It’s possible that night runners could be heading in our direction, following the sound of the 130 landing. So far, we’ve been lucky with that and we may be too far from any of their lairs for them to be a factor. Robert is keeping the aircraft locked up and can sense them should any draw near, but there may be others around besides night runners. Doubtful considering where we are standing, but not impossible. Seeing as we may be here for a while sorting through documents and files, and feeling nervous about Robert and Bri being outside with only one team to guard them, I call and have Alpha escort them and Craig inside.
On arriving, after a brief, Harold sits at a console in the operations center and begins going through manuals and documents. I have a few technicians, under guard, released to him to answer his questions. With the leadership gone, they become helpful without any attempts at evasion. I still don’t trust them or the soldiers but, from what I observe, they are being compliant.
Harold takes to the ops center like a kid in a candy factory. He’s a frenzy of activity that seems disjointed to me but I’m sure it makes sense to him. Soon, the desktop at the console is spread with papers, files, and notebooks. I’m thankful for the time we’ll have to spend here as it puts off any decision about the soldiers. The survivors, of which there are close to three hundred, outnumber our entire group back at Cabela’s. That could make for problems down the road if they take it in mind to be troublesome. I’m sure they are viewing themselves as prisoners, and as such, it means that we are still viewed as an opposing force. With the training they’ve been through, they will see it as their obligation and duty to escape and/or be disruptive. Perhaps seeing that we have regular duty soldiers with us, they’ll change their perspective. I’ll talk it over with Lynn and the other team leads to see what they think.
After giving Harold some time to give things a cursory scan, and knowing it will more than likely take days or weeks to compile everything, I head into the operations center with Lynn. We may not have all that much time with the 130 just sitting out there. I’d like to clear out of here and get back to Cabela’s soon as we still have a very big threat infiltrating from the north. It may be that we have to either come back later or leave some teams in place. The prisoners are a sticky issue though.
I take a seat next to Harold, who is so completely absorbed by his work that he doesn’t notice me arrive. Getting his attention, he looks up startled to see me.
“Well?” I ask.
Harold transitions from his absorption to the present. I fully expect him to launch into a series of statements that have nothing to do with each other, like when he found the files on the CDC Director’s hard drive. But he takes a minute to compose himself.
“There’s a lot here, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of it. One thing, the information we found on the hard drive is correct. They…” he sweeps his arm to indicate the entire facility and those within, “…initiated this whole thing but things went wrong almost immediately. Like I originally thought, they didn’t anticipate the night runners and that interfered with the staffing of the other sites. From all appearances, none of them made it into operation. There’s more but I’ll have to dig deeper.
“I also found the reason for the failure of the satellite comms. According to the few logs I’ve read so far, they discovered our means of communication with the Santa Fe and had the comm channels blocked.”
“Can we unblock them?” Lynn asks.
“We’re fixing that now,” Harold indicates, pointing to a technician at a nearby console.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, letting them have access like that?” Lynn asks.
“I’m monitoring it. I’ll know if they tap into something they shouldn’t. So far, they’ve been nothing but helpful. I don’t know if this Nahmer gave them different orders, but they’re being cooperative for now,” Harold answers.
Restoring the satellite communications, I try contacting Leonard to no avail. I’ll keep trying at intervals, but at least I know that we have the ability to do so without having to conduct a search for him.
“This,” Harold holds up a notebook, “is a list of other survivor camps that they’ve found. They have them designated according the number of people and capabilities.
“You can see ours here,” he opens to a page.
Each of the lists has numbers, capabilities, and observed activities, to include increases and decreases in population and contacts with other groups. It’s a fairly comprehensive listing. Our camp includes high-res photos of our group, listing the leadership structure. Looking over the notebook, I’m impressed with what they were able to derive from just photographs. Of course, Nahmer had mentioned they ran some through a system they have in place.