<<Don’t be foolish. You still have a part to play.>>
<<Jim, you’ve pissed me off now. You know what happens when I get pissed.>>
Michelle transferred her concentration to the convoy that was still chasing a fox. The front vehicle’s engine blew up, and it slewed violently to the left. The next vehicle’s engine seized as all the oil mysteriously vanished.
The next three suffered terminal electrical failure, and the others’ tyres blew up. The eleven vehicles just sat on the sand in the dark. No one was hurt, and she allowed sufficient air-time on the sat-phone for them to report in and then she destroyed that.
<<Satisfied Colonel?>> she asked.
<<You don’t know what you’ve done.>>
<<The aliens are willing to negotiate a coexistence agreement. But it will be only with a global representative body. No one nation will have precedence over any other.>>
<<You know that won’t wash with the NSA.>>
<<You don’t understand, do you? You’re the weak ones here. You have no bargaining power, and what they propose to give to the world will relieve suffering for millions worldwide.>>
<<I’m currently with two NSA men, and they don’t give a shit about the suffering millions. I am instructed to tell you, we want their technology, or they get creamed.>>
Both NSA agents suddenly suffered serious bladder dysfunction, and complete short-term memory loss, neither could remember anything from one moment to the next.
<<Jim, don’t you get it, you have no beads to bargain with. They are everywhere, not just in the USA, so it’s you that will have to come on board, or be left out completely. Get me the president, and I’ll talk to him alone,>> Michelle tried to coerce him, but he was fighting her. His national pride was deeply ingrained.
<<I can’t do that.>>
<<Jim, you said you wanted honest government. How do you think the Average American would react when he or she discovered that the NSA is going to make the USA lose out? Everyone else in the world will get free access to medical technology that has the potential to alleviate 90% of the existing suffering!>>
Jim was silent.
<<Jim?>>
<<Bottom line, Michelle?>>
<<Yeah>>
<<I’m a colonel in the US Air Force. I just do what I am told.>>
Jim then fell asleep, and so deeply that nothing could awaken him.
<<Kyle.>>
<<Here, Michelle.>>
<<Okay boy, I’m getting pissed now, which side are you on?>>
<<You have to ask?>>
She smiled.
<<Just contact the President. Tell him that I’ll be dropping in on him.>>
<<How?>>
<<That’s my problem, just do it.>>
“Well, Sergeant, how do you fancy a long jog?” she asked Red.
“How long?”
“Washington D.C..”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
He pulled out the map.
“D.C. ain’t quite on it.” she joked, and he grunted.
“There’s a town, if we keep up a good pace we could reach there by dawn.”
“What town?” Michelle asked, a cold feeling in her stomach.
“Stillswood. Why?”
She smiled.
“No reason,” she lied.
“Okay, if we eat some concentrates, our packs will weigh less, and we should be okay.”
They ate on the march, and then she broke into a gentle jog. He matched her, so they kept it up for an hour. Red began to feel his muscles, and glanced at Michelle. She was running with clockwork precision, looking very relaxed.
After two hours, Red was breathing hard, but still she kept going. He forced himself to keep her pace, yet it was proving too hard. She glanced at him, slowing to a brisk walk. Gratefully, he matched the walk.
“Do you want a piggy back ride?” she asked.
He grinned.
“Very funny,” he said, drinking some water.
They walked for an hour, but then she broke into a jog again.
Red was one of the fittest men in his company. Yet she was way fitter than he. After five hours, she was still going.
She smiled and encouraged him, yet he knew that total exhaustion was not far away.
He felt light headed and his legs turned to rubber. He passed out, but didn’t even feel himself fall.
He came to lying under a tree beside a road. She passed him a canteen, so he drank.
“Thanks. Where are we?”
“Stillswood is a quarter mile down there,” she said, pointing into the very familiar valley.
“But we were fifteen miles from the road when I passed out,” he said.
“Yeah, look, you need to diet, I almost got a hernia carrying you,” she said, holding out her hand. “Feeling better?”
Nodding, he took her hand and was pulled to his feet.
Her strength was incredible.
“Us super-heroes come in all sizes,” she joked.
He looked back into the desert, seeing one set of footprints stretching back a long way. She had tried to keep to rocks to confuse any aerial search.
“You really carried me?” he asked, feeling ashamed.
“No, sort of kept you going. The last bit was the worst,” she said.
He looked at the map, and calculated that they’d have broken several world endurance records. He looked up at her, but she simply smiled.
“Don’t worry about it. I promise I won’t tell any of the guys. We need to get into town and grab some breakfast, I’m starving!” she said.
They walked into town, Red was only too aware that he was armed, so he was unsure how the locals would take to two dusty service personnel.
Michelle felt weird, walking down the streets that had been home not that long ago. The pain of what had been left behind was very acute. She almost found it unbearable. She wondered if Carol and the kids were still here, or whether she had moved closer to her parents.
There was Marv’s Diner, unchanged, and with a Sheriff’s dept. cruiser parked outside. She looked at her watch, nine a.m., probably Steve having breakfast. She smiled because Steve wasn’t allowed to eat high cholesterol food by his long-suffering wife, so he came here and ate all the wrong things.
Steve McGuire was in his usual seat in the diner sorting through some bills. One of the Deputies ran out of road in a car last week and totalled the damn car. It was insured, but there were tow charges and stuff that needed sorting.
Hannah poured him another mug of strong black coffee, and he smiled as he folded the papers up and put them into his pocket.
“Say, it looks like the military are in town,” observed Hannah, as she glanced out of the window.
Steve watched as the two figures in desert fatigues entered the diner, taking off their hats. She was surprised, for he had judged them both to be male, due to their very tall statures, but one was a blonde woman, and she had Major’s insignia on her shoulders.
The other, a sergeant, was carrying a sidearm in a holster.
The major saw him and approached his booth.
“Sheriff McGuire?”
Steve nodded.
“Hi, I’m Major Carter, US Air Force, and this is Sergeant Skye. I understand that you were in contact with my colleagues Colonel Robertson and Major Bennett a few months ago?”
Steve felt that sinking feeling, but nodded, waving them into the spare seats at his table.
They sat, and Hannah arrived and gave them a menu and some coffee.
“Sheriff, we have been investigating various reports of incidents in the desert, and were wondered if you had received any reports of similar occurrences recently?”
Steve shook his head.
“Did anything come of the face mask, the one that I found near Mike’s body?”
“The construction is not familiar, and the substance used is not known to man. Tell me, did anyone come asking after Sergeant Dunwoody?”