Chapter 3 - Ghost SignalThe first bullet punched through the drywall six inches above Kane's head.
The second tore into the metal frame behind us.
The third struck a training dummy and sent it spinning onto the floor.
Then silence.
Real gunfire creates a different kind of quiet than blanks.
Everyone knows.
Even recruits who've never been shot at know.
Training ammunition carries expectation with it. You anticipate whistles, commands, someone eventually calling “end exercise.”
Real bullets erase that certainty.
I pressed one hand against Kane's shoulder and kept him flat.
“Don't move.”
For once, he obeyed immediately.
Major General Weller crawled behind an overturned table while Colonel Cole pulled one of his aides behind a concrete support column.
Captain Shaw stared at the holes in the wall.
“That wasn't simulation.”
“No,” I said.
Another shot struck the door latch.
Someone outside was firing single rounds.
Controlled.
Patient.
Not trying to storm the room.
Trying to keep us inside.
I crawled to the opposite wall.
Cole whispered, “Side exit?”
“Covered.”
“You don't know that.”
“I would cover it.”
He understood.
Twelve years had changed his hair and added weight around his eyes, but Nathan Cole was still a field officer underneath the stars and ribbons.
He looked toward the ceiling.
“Roof?”
“Maybe.”
Weller stared at me.
“You recognize the signal.”
“Yes.”
“You said somebody knows you're here.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“No idea.”
That wasn't completely true.
I had an idea.
I just didn't want to say it aloud.
Kane edged closer.
“What signal?”
I ignored him.
The building’s electricity remained dead, but afternoon light entered through the narrow windows.
Enough to move.
I pointed at one of the younger soldiers.
“Your weapon.”
He hesitated.
“It's loaded with marking rounds.”
“I know.”
“That's not going to—”
“Your weapon.”
He handed it over.
I removed the magazine.
Training cartridges.
Useless for penetrating much, but still capable of creating confusion.
I looked at Kane.
“You know this building?”
“Yes.”
“Every exit?”
“Yes.”
“Utility access?”
He nodded.
“Maintenance crawlspace under the southeast stairwell.”
“Where does it go?”
“Mechanical yard.”
“Locked?”
“Usually.”
“Usually gets people killed.”
He swallowed.
“There's an emergency release.”
Good.
I handed him the training rifle.
“You're taking Weller out.”
His eyes widened.
“Me?”
“You wanted to prove you could operate.”
“This is different.”
“Yes.”
Something shifted behind his expression.
Embarrassment, maybe.
Then he took the rifle.
“Tell me what to do.”
That was the first intelligent thing he'd said all day.
I turned to Cole.
“We need the shooter looking north.”
He immediately understood.
“I'll create movement.”
“No.”
“Mara—”
“You're a colonel.”
“And?”
“And you're more useful alive.”
“So are you.”
“That hasn't been established.”
For half a second, he almost smiled.
Almost.
Then another bullet entered the building.
A scream followed.
One of Weller's aides had been hit.
The round entered high in his arm and exited through the triceps.
Not immediately life-threatening.
But blood darkened his sleeve.
I moved to him.
“Name?”
“Lieutenant Morris.”
“Any numbness?”
“No.”
“Move your fingers.”
He did.
“Good.”
I tore a strip from what remained of my shirt and pressed it against the wound.
Kane stared at me.
Five hours earlier he'd dumped chili on that fabric.
Now it was stopping an officer from bleeding across the floor.
Life enjoys irony.
I tightened the improvised pressure wrap.
Cole crawled beside me.
“Local security should have responded by now.”
“Unless they're dealing with something else.”
As if on cue, an explosion sounded in the distance.
Not large.
Maybe a transformer.
Maybe deliberate.
Weller cursed.
“They're isolating the compound.”
“Looks that way.”
“Why?”
I looked toward the bullet holes.
“Because whoever planned this knows the base.”
That worried me more than the gunfire.
Fort Redstone wasn't a civilian facility with unlocked doors and predictable security.
Someone had cut electricity to a restricted training zone, disrupted communications, triggered a false alarm signal from a defunct special operations unit, and placed at least one shooter with sightlines into the building.
This had preparation behind it.
Shaw crawled toward us.
“There's an armory seventy yards east.”
“Too exposed.”
“There are live weapons.”
“And whoever is outside knows that.”
He glared at me.
“You're acting like you're in command.”
“No.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Then stop listening.”
That shut him up.
I looked at Kane.
“Ready?”
He nodded.
The arrogance was gone.
Good.
Fear can either sharpen people or destroy them.
His seemed useful.
I explained the route.
At my signal, Cole would break one window on the north side using a fire extinguisher.
Shaw would throw two smoke-training canisters from the equipment cabinet.
The shooter would adjust.
Kane would take Weller and the wounded lieutenant through the crawlspace.
“What about everyone else?” Kane asked.
“Second group.”
“What about you?”
“Last.”
He stared at me.
“You always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Put yourself last.”
The question caught me strangely.
I looked away.
“Go when I tell you.”
We moved.
Cole smashed the window.
Shaw threw the canisters.
Orange smoke poured outside.
Immediately, gunfire shifted north.
“Now.”
Kane disappeared with Weller.
The next group followed thirty seconds later.
Then Shaw.
Cole refused.
“You first.”
“Nathan.”
“I left you once.”
That sentence froze me harder than the bullets.
I turned toward him.
He was no longer Colonel Cole.
For one second he was Major Nathan Cole again, standing beside a helicopter twelve years ago while I screamed that two members of Chimera were still missing.
He had been ordered to evacuate.
I had called him a coward.
I had never apologized.
“You followed orders,” I said.
“So did everyone who left you in that valley.”
The old anger returned instantly.
“This isn't the time.”
“Maybe there isn't another.”
A shadow moved beyond the southern window.
I raised the training rifle and fired.
The marking round struck the glass, breaking it.
The figure ducked.
“Move.”
Cole entered the crawlspace.
I followed.
We emerged behind the mechanical yard into chaos.
Sirens screamed across the base.
Military police vehicles raced along the perimeter road.
Black smoke rose from an electrical substation.
Weller was already being moved toward an armored truck.
Kane saw me and shouted.
“Vance!”
Then I heard an engine.
A maintenance van burst through a service gate.
It accelerated toward us.
People scattered.
The passenger window lowered.
A rifle appeared.
I shoved Cole behind a concrete barrier and rolled.
Shots struck gravel.
Military police returned fire.
The van swerved, struck a fence, then corrected.
Before it disappeared between buildings, something flew from the passenger window.
A small black object landed near my hand.
The van vanished.
I stared at it.
An old military challenge coin.
Black enamel.
Sword.
Serpent.
Five broken stars.
My stomach dropped.
Cole approached slowly.
“No.”
I picked it up.
The reverse side contained numbers scratched by hand.
4-17-09.
Cole saw them.
His face drained.
“What is that?”
I already knew.
April 17, 2009.
The night Task Unit Chimera ceased to exist.
Kane came closer but didn't touch anything.
“What happened that date?”
Neither of us answered.
Weller returned with two military police officers.
“We've secured the perimeter.”
“You haven't,” I said.
His expression hardened.
“What do you mean?”
I held up the coin.
“Whoever did this wasn't trying to kill us.”
Shaw looked incredulous.
“They shot at us.”
“They missed six stationary targets from forty feet.”
That stopped him.
“They're sending a message.”
“What message?”
I turned the coin over.
Something else had been etched beneath the date.
Two words.
Very small.
WELCOME BACK.
Colonel Cole whispered, “That's impossible.”
I wanted to agree.
Instead I closed my fist around the coin.
Twelve years earlier, Chimera had entered the Kandar Valley with eight members.
Five came home.
Three were listed dead.
One body was recovered.
One had been identified from remains.
The third was Lieutenant Elias Rourke.
Our communications specialist.
My best friend.
The man who had designed the Chimera emergency signal.
We never found his body.
I had spent years wondering whether that meant something.
Eventually, I learned to stop.
Now I looked at the message carved into the coin and felt twelve years disappear.
Kane asked the obvious question.
“Who are we talking about?”
I stared at the smoke rising beyond the compound.
Then I answered.
“A dead man.”
That evening, base security discovered the maintenance van abandoned near a drainage ditch.
There were no fingerprints.
No weapons.
No driver.
Only a photograph taped to the steering wheel.
A photograph taken twelve years earlier.
Eight people stood in front of a battered helicopter in a desert valley.
Seven faces had been scratched out.
Mine hadn't.
May you like
And written across the bottom in black marker were six words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE COME BACK FOR ME.
Related Stories
