Fog (17 page)

Thick fog begins to waft through the forest an hour before sunrise. My night-eye automatically cranks up the infrared signal because the image amplification can’t see through fog. Sweat beads on my forehead when light-green shapes step out of the camp and into the forest.

‘Two guards at twelve o’clock, five metres from the sandbag wall,’ I whisper. Runner answers by tapping the earbud once.

Mesmerised, I watch them leaning back against a tree. One man lights a cigarette. It flares up like a torch in my finder. I blink and hear another tap in my earbud. ‘Yes?’ I whisper before realising he taps because he can’t speak.

‘Do you want me to change position?’

Two taps. That means no. Oh shit, I asked the wrong question. ‘If I can only tap to alert you, always ask first, if you are in immediate danger. Second question is, if I am in immediate danger and need help. Third question is, if we must retreat.’ That’s what he taught me.

‘Someone close by?’ I grab my rifle harder.

One tap.

Fuck.

I scan the area, but the only men I see are the two guards smoking close to the wall. My breath comes in sharp bursts, my vision flickers.
Breathe, Micka,
I tell myself.
Breathe.

Fidgeting won’t get me anywhere but shot. Pressing myself as flat as possible against the branch, I scan my surroundings again. Nothing.

‘Do you need help?’ I whisper to make sure he’s okay.

Two taps.

‘Are we retreating?’

Two taps. With that, I’m out of questions.

Then, a series of taps sounds in my earbud. Nine taps. That means nine o’clock. Odd, because that’s where I checked only moments ago. Slowly, I shift and bring my rifle in position. The night-eye shows me nothing but shrubs and trees. A few birds begin their morning songs and soon the air is filled with their blaring. The fog is thickening even more now, covering the forest floor and everything that grows only five or six metres tall. And then I see it — a subtle movement not twenty metres away from me. There’s a leg folded casually over the other, his back is leaning against the tree, a rifle pointed to the ground. I’m in full view of a BSA guard and I didn’t even notice him.

‘Thank you,’ I breathe.

One tap.

That leaves only one other question.

‘Do you want me to engage the target?’ I can’t bring myself to ask if I’m to kill a man. Target sounds much easier.
Target
isn’t human.

Two taps. I exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

When we climb the last twenty metres to the crest, there’s no tiredness in my bones. I’ve been so close to the enemy and they had no idea I was there. I’ve never been so happy to be alive. I feel like a conquerer, survivor, warrior, all in one. My chest seems too small to contain all these personalities. I can’t stop grinning, my cheeks hurt, and Runner tries not to laugh at me.
 

He drops his ruck, and crawls to the edge of the cliff. I join him and we scan the gorge, and the crest with the BSA camp on the other side, through our night-eyes.

Odd, how different the camp looks from here — protected by a sheer rock wall that sharply drops down to a river about five hundred metres below us; a death trap. The clearing, with its tents, huts, weapons, and sandbag wall, lies sheltered in the arms of the thick forest Runner and I left just before midnight.

We keep our scopes trained at the camp until, not half an hour later, the first sunlight touches the canopy.

‘Retreat,’ Runner says, and we crawl back to our rucks. ‘They picked a good spot, but it has two main problems. One: access to water is cumbersome. Two: they can’t see us and it’ll take them a long time to reach us by foot. As long as we don’t give away our location, they have no reason to fire the rocket launcher in our direction.’

Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. The main problem with our location is that the BSA can blast the entire crest off the map and us with it. No craftsmanship needed; just some rough pointing with one of their big guns.

While I extract the last two handfuls of roasted chestnuts from my ruck, Runner says, ‘The distance to the nearest hut is eight hundred and thirty metres. Within your shooting range. We can pick them off like ripe plums.’

‘Which would give away our location,’ I say.

‘That might be part of our plan. Hmm. I’ll think about it.’ He sounds as if I’d made a suggestion. But all I do is chew my dry chestnuts and stifle yawn after yawn. Exhaustion hit half a minute ago and it feels as if a wall has come down on me.

We debrief, drawing lines on the forest map of Runner’s SatPad, marking locations of the guards and where we’ve set our feet or prone bodies — all proven clear of explosives. No one has seen us, and no one seems to have guessed their heads were in our crosshairs. They’ll be pretty surprised fairly soon.

When I yawn the umpteenth time and a piece of food drops from my mouth, Runner says, ‘Sleep now. I’ll wake you in four hours.’
 

———

A hand touches my shoulder and I jerk awake.
 

‘Breakfast.’ He nods towards a ditch covered by pines. Smoke curls up in small and pale wisps; it travels along the tarp and netting cover and slowly thins, disappearing into the treetops.
 

He briefs me when we sit down to eat a bird he must have shot earlier. The meat is tough and weasels itself in between my teeth.
 

‘I counted fifty-six men and thirteen children aged approximately eight to fourteen — two of them are mothers. All individuals are armed at all times.’ He pulls his ruck closer and places the SatPad on it. ‘Here’s the layout; camp, cliff, forest. I’ve measured the distances and adjusted the position of the wall and the buildings.’
 

He must have spent more than an hour switching quickly between SatPad and the IR laser of his scope. As Runner talks, his fingers point and slide across the screen. I can see the wall of sandbags in my mind’s eye and on screen. There are a few details that I didn’t notice last night.
 

‘Erik exited this hut at oh seven hundred. He doesn’t appear to have slept tonight. Several men exited these tents and huts here between oh six hundred and oh seven hundred.’

He describes the movements in the camp with precision: who left when, where the guards were located at what time of the morning, and what weapons they carried. ‘I’ll sleep now,’ he says. ‘Wake me in four hours. Keep track of who’s doing what and when. Pay special attention to the outer areas of the camp, areas in the forest everyone seems to be avoiding — those might be rigged. Try to find patterns in their actions, and anything that’s outside these patterns.’

‘Okay,’ I answer and fetch my toothbrush.
 

‘I’d also like to know if all of their heavy weaponry is under these tarps or if they have more hidden somewhere else. I want to know where they keep the explosives and if they move them — watch the kids, they’ll give it away. I want to know if what’s underneath that tarp really is a helicopter, and where they store the fuel. Erik kept his SatPad on him at all times; maybe he doesn’t trust his men; I need to know this. It’d be too good to be true.’ He touches his knuckles to my shoulder, crawls into his hammock, and covers it with a blanket to shut out the light. I spit my tooth powder on the ground and toe a bit of soil over it. My rifle leans against my ruck. I pick it up, grab a canteen and my ghillie, and make my way to the edge of the crest.

———

Three days and nights of surveillance and we know how and where each of them takes a dump, where they fetch water and who has to fetch it, which areas of the camp’s immediate vicinity they avoid, what weapons they have and where they keep them, and that Erik is at the top of the command chain. The bad news is that he left yesterday, has taken two men with him, and we don’t have the slightest idea where they have gone.

Kat is sending long text messages, telling us about Kogi and Lake Baykal — now surrounded by vast stretches of land devoid of human civilisation. There’s no one left to tell what happened, no traces of explosions, poison, disease, or radioactivity, which would indicate what weapons have been used. For thousands of square kilometres, the human species is wiped off the face of Earth.
Right now, she reports activities along the coast lines of the former United People’s Republic of China. A ship that looks like a salvaged four thousand tonne destroyer — more rust than solid steel, but equipped with guided long-range anti-air and anti-ship missiles, and a high-accuracy railgun that can blast even MEO satellites out of the sky.

‘What’s MEO?’ I ask Runner when I read over his shoulder.

‘MEO means medium earth orbit, satellites that travel at several thousand kilometres above us.’

Our satellites don’t show the rusty destroyer. They show only a peaceful blue ocean, a quiet green coastline dotted with happy little Chinese settlements, and an empty Taiwan.
 

We eat, then check and clean our equipment. When Kat’s next message appears on the screen, I almost choke.
Two of our aircraft surveyed BSA movement at sea; one was shot down,
she types.

Ben and Yi-Ting?
Runner replies hurriedly.
 

They are fine. Flying now,
she answers and I draw a deep breath.

We are not outnumbered?
Runner types.

I don’t think we are, but the situation doesn’t look good, either.

Any news from the man who calls himself Cacho? Any comms from the observatory?

The observatory is silent,
Kat answers.
“Cacho” had nothing insightful to tell me. Not that it surprises me. I decided to not answer his calls for two days. Let him cook a bit.

He’ll grow suspicious.

Do you want to tell me he was - up until now - a completely unsuspecting old man?

Good point,
Runner types.
Okay. Anything else?

No. Not at the moment. Stay safe.

You, too.

He swipes the screen and turns to me. ‘We’ll terrorise them, with a little help from the fog.’ His mouth tugs to a devilish smile that makes me glad I’m not on the receiving end of his rage.

When the next window opens, the SatPad displays more of Kat’s messages. She’s our information hub and now I’m glad she’s on our team. The mission is organised by a handful of Sequencers experienced in warfare. That includes her and — despite the distance and the delayed flow of information — Runner. They work like a hive-mind. A hierarchy, he told me, is not forced on anyone. It grows with trust. You take commands from someone you’ve learned to trust, and that person isn’t necessarily your senior. I get that. It’s the same with Runner and me. I trust him because he knows his shit. He trusts me because he knows I’ll risk my life for him. We listen to each other.

Kat says they plan to send in a second aircraft within the next forty-eight hours to scan the sea east and south of Taiwan, to make sure no enemy vessels slalom through the Philippine islands undetected. Should there be any, that is. The run-down destroyer the Bullshit Army is bringing across the ocean must look quite pathetic. I wonder if they even have a second ship, let alone a fleet. Runner seems to be impressed by the weaponry, though. As long as the ship stays afloat, can manoeuvre and launch missiles, it’s a serious threat. A thick layer of rust could be camouflage, something to make your enemy feel safe, because they think you are weak.

I don’t know. Maybe the rust is just that — iron oxide.

‘What about the question? I’d like to know why Cacho sent me here. If it’s him, that is.’

‘He didn’t send you out here, I did,’ Runner says. ‘He merely pointed at you, and I don’t think it’s relevant any longer. We have more important things to worry about.’

Unconvinced, I give him a tiny nod.

I watch Kat’s and Runner’s exchange on satellite controls and about Erik, who seems to have access to all of our satellite clusters. They are not sure how far his control reaches. He seems to be feeding data from Chinese satellites to other clusters — for example, every single satellite control cluster of the former European Union — forcing even them to show us fake visuals. How he managed to hack into the offshore servers that store the ESA’s raw data, is a mystery. Kat’s “friend,” whose identity she’ll not reveal, is convinced that the BSA is in the process of hijacking every satellite control system, every cluster, the Sequencers have access to. I tap Runner’s shoulder to ask a question. ‘Does that mean we never controlled all the satellites?’

He types it for me.

Of course, not. Not all of them. We don’t have the US American satellites, for example. We want their military strategic and tactic relay, and their defence communications systems very badly, but that’d be suicide,
Kat answers.

Why?

A few years back, we tried to hack their satellite control centres in Guam and Oahu, but soon realised that we needed to get to their central control unit in Colorado Springs. And that’s out of the question. North America is dead. Ask Runner for details. Anything else?

He looks at me and I shake my head.