part0010

Graves let his eyes roam over the gray hills surrounding the shallow valley. It was strange how the ash softened the edges of the destruction, almost like a frosting of snow. Twenty-four hours ago, this area had been a neighborhood of close-packed single-family dwellings and row houses centered around an area school.

The place smelled like the inside of an incinerator, a complex mix of burnt plastic, wood, and something softer, organic in nature.

Graves pointed to the flat fields next to where the school had stood. A few spikes of metal poked out of the ground. What was left of a backstop for a baseball diamond, he realized.

Behind him, Estes called in the air transports. There would be three ships landing in the next fifteen minutes with food, shelter, and a medical team. They would take away any bodies that remained. Not usually an issue in this kind of natural disaster.

A few solitary figures trudged along the ridge, kicking up billows of dusty gray. The sun peeked through a smoky cloud, ready to irradiate the planet for another day.

“This town wasn’t hit so badly, sir,” Estes said. “Most of the people either had fire shelters in their homes or managed to get to the community shelter in the city hall. Looks like eighteen dead, twenty-seven missing.”

Fire shelters … when he was growing up, his grandfather used to talk about bomb shelters to protect against nuclear attack. Now citizens used shelters to protect them from fire attacks. Graves sometimes felt like people today spent more time sheltering than living.

“Never heard of it,” Graves said. And he probably never would again. Once these people got a night or two in the government shelters and ate a few meals of field rations, they’d decide to take what little they had left and move inland. Denver, maybe, or Bend, Oregon, or Chicago. Anything but wildfire country.

But those inland cities harbored a different kind of fire danger. Political fire. Masses of people pushed to the edge and more joining them every day…

Graves drove that line of thought from his head. He was here to help people. Politics was not his problem.

“Let’s get a move on, Estes,” he said, turning back to the command ship. Once inside, he passed through the compact ops deck comprised of a central holographic map display and ringed by half a dozen workstations.

“At ease, people,” he called. They had standing orders to stay working when he transited the ops deck, but there were always a few rookies who leaped to their feet every time a general appeared.

Graves entered the cramped restroom and splashed water on his face. The smoke had pinkened the whites of his eyes and his eyelids were raw and red. He wiped the water away and studied his reflection in the mirror. “What are you doing?” he muttered.

On days like this, depression lurked around the corner. His job felt hopeless, like he was trying to heal an amputated limb with a Band-Aid. There was so much need out there and growing by the hour.

After a final stern look at his reflection, Graves snapped open the washroom door to find Estes waiting for him.

“Well, who is it, Estes? And why am I receiving visitors in the middle of a relief op?”

Graves’s head snapped up. “Olga, you said? Make preps to reposition the command ship to the next site and don’t disturb me.”

Graves whipped open the door to his office. Major Olga Rodchenkov stood when she saw him. Her blonde hair, with streaks of silver now, was drawn back into a thick braid and she was dressed in jeans and a fitted khaki shirt. He kicked the door shut behind him and enveloped her in a tight hug.

She barely reached his shoulder, but her former gymnast’s body was all muscle. He buried his face in her hair and breathed deeply. It was her smell he remembered the most. A warm scent, like vanilla sugar and jasmine. Delicate and intoxicating.

She pushed him away. “And you smell like someone pissed on a campfire.” She laughed and kissed him on the cheek. If he listened very carefully, he could still hear a trace of her native Vladivostok in her voice.

Graves tried to check the rush of emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. There was a time when he’d almost abandoned the United States Army for this woman and seeing her brought back a flood of memories of stolen nights together in Germany.

They’d been younger then—and stupid. There was no way on earth for a Russian FSB officer and a US Army officer to have a life together. They’d ended it before it ended their respective careers, but Graves sometimes wondered what his life might have been like if he’d just married this woman when he’d had the chance. He certainly wouldn’t be delivering aid to victims of wildfires, that’s for sure.

Olga’s cheeks colored slightly. She reached out and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. “You look like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders … I heard about the Neo space station. That was a brave thing you did, Will.”

Graves shook his head. “It was a suicide mission and I’m lucky to be alive. We lost a lot of people that day.”

Olga pulled her chair close to his and took his hand. “It needed to be done. You were the right man for the job.”

Graves twisted his fingers into hers. Recalling the attack on the Neo station sobered him, which was probably Olga’s intention. She knew how to push his buttons.

She withdrew her hand. “I’m not with the FSB anymore, Will. I’m freelancing, you could say.”

Graves studied her. The woman would not meet his gaze, unusual for her, and she seemed to have drawn back into herself.

Instead of responding, Olga reached into her hip pocket and drew out a slim disc. She placed it on the edge of the desk next to her elbow and pushed the center button. It glowed a soft blue. Graves looked at her incredulously.

Olga gripped his hand again, the pressure of her fingers insistent. “Please, Will, listen to me. I represent a group of like-minded people—military people, professionals. We think there’s a war coming. Not with the Neos, but with Anthony Taulke’s council. We’d like you to keep an open mind, and when the time comes, make a decision.”

Graves’s first reaction was anger. He reached for the jamming disc, but Olga held him back. “You know me, Will Graves. I’m not some cockeyed reactionary. The Sentinels are serious. All of the major world militaries are represented, even a few brave politicians. There’s a war coming, and no one sees it yet. We will be ready.”

“The Sentinels? That’s the name of your organization?” Graves tried to make a joke out of it, but Olga was having none of it.

Olga moved so close he could feel her breath on his cheek and lowered her voice. “I volunteered to come because I know you trust me. I’m asking you to trust me.” The crystal blue of her eyes would not let him go.

She pressed a silver chain and medal into his hand. “Wear this one instead. It’s got an emergency implant inside. If—when—you need me, I’ll find you.”

Olga turned off the jamming device and slipped it back into her pocket. He stood with her and was surprised when she kissed him again. On the lips this time, and she let it linger. “I never found anyone after you, Will Graves. Part of me still wonders what might have been.”

She smiled. “If we never see each other again, I guess that means I’ll never know for sure.”

It was good to be home. That’s what Fort Hood felt like now: home. In his nearly three decades in the army, Graves had learned to use that term loosely. For him, home was where the work was.

He stepped off the transport into a wall of late afternoon Texas heat. The stifling humidity seemed to push against him as he made his way to the command center. A shower, an update on the disaster mitigation efforts, and some grub. That was the plan for the evening.

Sergeant Ortega was waiting for him, his crisp BDUs already starting to wilt in the heat. He returned the young man’s salute. “How are our guests, Sergeant?” he said, referring to the Neos and Corazon Santos.

“The well on the south side of the camp ran dry, sir, so we’re trucking in water. We received another eighty thousand refugees yesterday.”

Graves whistled. Eighty thousand new refugees put the camp well past the planned limit of one fifty. He hoped again Teller knew what he was doing with this new open-borders policy. “How are we doing on logistics?”

Ortega shook his head. “Barely keeping up, sir. The last food shipment came in late and we’re already looking at half rations later in the week. But that’s not why I needed to see you, General.”

Graves stopped. The heat settled on him like a wet blanket. “What’s the issue, son?”

“She wants to meet with you, General. Soon. Says she has information she needs to tell you.”

Graves thought of his meeting yesterday with Olga. For a confirmed bachelor, he was getting an awful lot of attention from the fairer sex these days.

“Fine. Schedule her into my morning calendar somewhere for fifteen minutes.” He turned to go.

“You want her to come here, sir?” Ortega gestured at the command center building looming behind them.

“Yes, I want her to come here. Is that an issue, Sergeant?” Graves felt the three days on the road and his lack of sleep making his tone sharp.

Graves turned on his heel. “Tell Corazon Santos to call my office and schedule an appointment like the rest of the free world.”

He stormed into the building and climbed the steps two at a time, already regretting losing his temper with Ortega. The kid was a marine, not a goddamned secretary, and he knew how Cora could get into someone’s head.

With a sigh, he closed the door to his quarters and rested his back against the wall, fighting the urge to lie down on his bed in his dirty uniform and just take a nap. He removed his uniform shirt and stripped off the T-shirt underneath. The silver Saint Christopher medal unstuck from his sweaty chest and swung free.

Olga … it had been good to see her after all these years, but the circumstances were troubling. She was a bright woman with a hardheaded intellect, not one given to flights of fancy. But the idea of a transnational military corps ready to protect the planet? He considered reporting the contact. The idea seemed beyond farfetched, and she hadn’t actually asked him to do anything specific. Maybe he’d just wait and see what developed.

He scanned his fingerprint for his three-minute ration of shower water. Technically, as commander of the Disaster Mitigation Corps he didn’t need to install a water rationing device, but he’d insisted. It was the little things that let the troops know he followed the same rules as they did.

He cleaned his body from the top down, making liberal use of the valve to temporarily stop the flow of water so he could soap up the next part of his anatomy. He pinched some excess flesh around his beltline and resolved to restart his daily PT regimen. Olga had aged well. She was just as fit as she’d been back in Germany.

Graves and Olga had met at an embassy party of all things. Such a spy novel cliché. He had been a captain on thirty days temporary duty to the US embassy in Berlin and she was a low-level staffer at the Russian embassy. He noticed her across the bar. Her blonde hair was short then, cut in a severe bob that showed off the defined muscles of her neck and shoulders.

Before he knew it, Graves was standing next to her, asking her name in terrible Russian and her replying in much better English. She told him she was an FSB agent their first night together and he said he didn’t care. They spent his three remaining weeks sneaking around Berlin, screwing their brains out in a different hotel every night.

They both knew it was stupid. They both knew it couldn’t last. Neither of them cared a whit.

Graves stood in the center of his apartment. Naked, dripping water on the floor, towel slung over his shoulder, lost in his past.

Now he was a gray-haired general packing a few extra pounds, reliving his glory days with the one who got away. He shook his head at his own foolishness.

As he turned back to the bathroom, he spied his data glasses in the breast pocket of his dirty uniform on the floor. The message light blinked. He wrapped the towel around his waist and retrieved the glasses.

The message was from Helena Telemachus, better known as H, special assistant to the President of the United States. General Graves was to report to the United Nations headquarters in New York City immediately. A White House vehicle was en route to retrieve him. No further details were provided.

He knew one thing. If H was involved, then Teller was involved, and if Teller was involved, this job was not going to be the kind of job he wanted.