Chapter 51

 

After leaving the BERR building empty-handed, Raven had paid a visit to Lola’s. Now, sitting on a bus bench a block south of Colorado Springs only government-sanctioned tattoo shop, she was thumbing through the manual to the Nikon D90 in the camera bag on the bench next to her.

The tattoo shop was occupying a space on the corner of Tejon and Moreno formerly home to Missing Link Motorcycles. Facing west on Tejon, the recessed entry to the ground-level storefront was an inky black hole in the building’s two-story brick facade.

Above the door was a sign bearing the former store’s name and its motorcycle-riding Cro-Magnon mascot. Tattoos ran up and down the arms and legs of the caveman. Whether the shop’s new owners were responsible, Raven had no clue. Someone had also altered the sign so that it now read Missing Link Tattoo.

Sun warm on her face and forearms, Raven set the manual aside and removed the digital camera from the bag. Next, she swapped out the stock lens for a telephoto item nearly the length of her forearm.

Flicking the power switch on the top-mounted dial to On, Raven felt a slight tremor in the camera body as its screen flared to life. As Lola had promised, the camera’s battery held a full charge and its installed SD memory card was empty.

She hefted the camera to her eye and trained the lens on the tattoo shop. Even with the lens magnification dialed all the way in, she could only see the front door and a small slice of the sidewalk out front.

Policing up her stuff, Raven walked the beach cruiser a half block south and set up shop on an outdoor table on the sidewalk in front of a coffee shop shuttered long ago.

When Raven again framed Missing Link Tattoo in the viewfinder, she was able to see the shop’s front door as well as the majority of the sidewalks and streets coming in from all four directions.

As she settled in to wait for the late risers to open up the shop, she heard a car horn sound far away to the south. Then, drifting in from the north, well beyond the wall, she detected the soft purr of a helicopter.

In the trees directly overhead, birds called back and forth, their sweet song foreign to her after a long fall and winter spent mostly inside.

Now and again she caught snippets of news being delivered by the Town Crier, positioned on a corner near the Pioneers Museum, a full three blocks away.

***

Ten minutes into her wait, Raven was struck by the fact that every once in awhile, when the wind kicked up from the south, she caught the sweet scent of colorful wildflowers growing in a planter nearby. It was the first time in a long time she could remember not being able to detect the stink of death so prevalent since that last Saturday in July when her world changed forever.

***

The first person to arrive in front of Missing Link did so at a quarter to two, riding a woman’s ten-speed, and caught Raven completely by surprise.

By the time Raven had powered on the Nikon, trained it on the sunlight-dappled doorway, and snapped a dozen photos, she knew three things for sure: The pixie-like person working a key in the padlock on the door was female, she was short and thin, and she was of Asian ancestry.

Once the woman—or girl, Raven couldn’t be sure—had walked her bike inside the store and closed the door, Raven confirmed her first impressions with a quick review of the shot footage.

Two more people on bikes showed up at a quarter past two. “Fashionably late” was what Sasha called it. “It’s what important people do to set themselves apart from the common man” was how she had framed it.

All of which led Raven to believe the pair were the tattooers.

The photos she had shot of the pair arriving and dismounting their mountain bikes were way better than those of the person first to arrive. The crisp images showed that both riders were of Asian descent and likely in their twenties or early thirties. Unlike the person who’d opened the shop, these two sported a plethora of visible tattoos. One man had what looked to be a king cobra coiled around his neck, with the serpent’s hood dominating one cheek and its long, forked tongue encircling one eye. Snake was well-muscled and wore his dark hair high-and-tight, like her dad.

Both men sported tight leather pants that looked like they came off the motorcycle shop’s racks.

The second man’s taste in tattoos centered mainly around things found at sea: multi-masted sailing ships, ornate anchors, and bare-chested mermaids. His dark hair was slicked back and glistened in the sun. A cruel mouth was framed by a neatly trimmed goatee. Both ear lobes sagged under the weight of multiple gold hoop-earrings.

After pausing in the doorway and looking down the street in the direction he’d come from, the wannabe pirate followed Snake into the shop.

Over the next forty-five minutes the shop attracted a handful of people. Most were already tatted up. All but two were Caucasians, the exceptions being Daymon and Tran—arriving together right on time.

At three sharp, her head swimming with questions, Raven packed up her camera, mounted the Schwinn, and pedaled off southbound.

 

In the hour since the briefing concluded, Cade had gotten a lot done. During the drive over from the Mission Support building, with call signs and tanker rendezvous times and situation reports of what to expect on the ground in his old hometown all competing for attention in his head, he had composed the body of the letter in the sealed envelope on the table before him.

Over the years he’d penned his share of death letters. Until now every one of the envelopes he stuffed those letters into were addressed to Brook.

The Sharpie seeming to weigh a ton in his hand, he wrote his daughter’s name across the front of the envelope.

The Bunker was quiet, the air still and cool; nevertheless, as the pen’s felt tip squeaked against paper, he felt his neck go hot.

All of the members of the various teams sharing this space—Pale Riders included—had already donned their body armor, gunned up, inventoried their rucks, and rallied to the flight line.

Alone with his thoughts, Cade rose and made his way to the Pale Riders’ cage. He put the letter on a shelf in his partition and closed the door.

After ushering the escaped emotion back into the imaginary lockbox in his head, Cade hefted his ruck, slung the suppressed M4 over one shoulder, and set off to rejoin his team.