A waxing moon illuminates the round top of the observatory. Two broad solar wings spread on either side, its base held aloft by a thin cushion of fog: a monster insect about to pounce.
Runner and I are high up in two different trees about fifty metres from one another, so we get two different angles and cover more area. The small button in my ear receives his voice and transmits mine. Tonight’s mission is to observe only. But both our rifles are loaded and ready to engage the enemy. This would be my first encounter with the BSA and the prospect makes me nervous. But I try to control myself. There’s no room for fidgety girly shit. Besides, this observatory appears as if no one has been here for days, if not weeks.
‘Tell me what you see, Micka.’ Runner’s voice sounds in my left ear. ‘Main entrance.’
My night-eye has been pointed at the observatory’s main entrance for more than an hour now, and I see absolutely nothing conspicuous.
‘A door, the locking mechanism appears broken. The handle has been taken off and put on again, it seems. There’s a blackish stain around a new-looking lock. So obviously, this too, has been blown off and then replaced.’
‘Describe what you see in the immediate vicinity.’
‘Do you see something? Because then you can just tell me, you know.’ I wonder if he’s at his teacher-pupil game again.
‘I’m not sure if what I observe and conclude is correct.’
‘Oh. Okay. Door frame and adjacent building structure, twelve o’clock: no damage, not even the vine that grows there seems to be touched. Going down to nine o’clock and six o’clock: no damage, no obvious disturbance of that same vine and wall. Going up from six o’clock to three o’clock: black stains at about three thirty, possibly from ricocheting bullets. No apparent blood stains, though. Three o’clock to twelve o`clock: nothing notable, just clean white plaster and a sign with Taiwanese letters and underneath in English, “Jin-Shui Observatory.”
‘Moving on to the stairs in front of the main entrance,’ I continue. Runner’s calm breath is barely audible in my earbud. ‘The ground is concrete or some other solid material, so there are no footprints to see, no signs of explosions or blood stains. They might have washed it off, though.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘No idea. Rain could also have washed it away, if there was blood at all. But the monsoon isn’t due for another month, maybe two.
‘Possible. Go on.’
I gaze at the entrance and can’t brush off the feeling that something is not quite right. The steps leading to the observatory seem normal, the landing, too. No sign of a fight except for the two black stains at the door and directly next to it.
‘Micka?’
‘Give me a moment.’
The vegetation. What’s wrong with the vegetation? ‘Runner, you said this happened two months ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can a plant grow one metre in two months?’
‘Some can, reed for example, bamboo can grow even faster. A few vines, maybe.’
‘Okay. Nothing suspicious about that entrance, then.’
‘Tell me what you see.’
‘Several vines stretch across the landing,’ I answer. ‘The plants are approximately one metre to one metre twenty long. Another two or three stretch across the second step below the landing. When people use stairs, they make sure it’s clear so they don’t trip.’
‘Funny,’ Runner says.
‘Why is that funny?’
‘Because I see the exact same thing here at the side entrance. They are probably rigged.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shit. How do we get in?’
‘We won’t. If they put trip wires on the stairs, chances are that they rigged the doors, too. We’ll install our earbuds on the outside of the building, so we can at least listen to their conversations when they approach. Then we pick the tallest tree at a crest and install the amplifier.’
‘Hmm.’ I shift my rifle and scan the white walls of the observatory. ‘I’m a pretty good climber. We talked about it. Why don’t you want to give it a shot?’
Runner hesitates. ‘The walls are too smooth. No hand- or footholds.’
‘I see one here and there. I think I’ll manage. Only problem is…’
‘What?’
‘Can’t do it at night. I need to see where to put my hands and feet. The night-vision goggles are too clunky; I can’t press my face to the wall, or see anything that’s less than ten centimetres from my eyes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, dude. Listen to your apprentice.’ Does he think I’m an imbecile?
‘Okay. Retreat now. We’ll discuss this back at our camp.’
Well past midnight, after we’ve gone through our plans for the following morning, we are huddled up in our hammocks and I find myself exhausted, but unable to sleep. The night is not as black as the previous one. The foliage gently sways back and forth over the clear and starry sky. My mind races around the briefing, the texture and surface of the building’s walls I’ll be scaling in a few hours, the vines that really are traps, and the possibility of blowing us up. My first mission and I tremble like a poplar leaf.
Experience tells me that it’s not always a good idea to start a conversation with Runner when my nerves need calming. But lying here silently, listening to my own fidgeting, the tapping of his fingertips against his thigh is unbearable. ‘Do you miss your daughter, Ezra?’ I ask cautiously.
The tapping ceases. ‘Yes,’ he answers and begins to hum a lullaby. I watch the leaves play with the wind and listen to Runner until my heartbeat grows calm.
‘She was eleven months old when I saw her for the first time — a chubby and happy child just learning to walk and talk and grasp what it means to be one’s own person. When Kaissa sang her to sleep that night, I wondered… I wondered what sense my life makes, being so far away from her.’
‘You love her,’ I whisper, surprised.
‘I do. She’s my daughter.’
‘I meant Kaissa.’
‘When I was young, I thought I loved her. But I soon learned it wasn’t love, but something more akin to teenager hormone derangement. She and I like each other. We are friends, most of the time.’
‘Why don’t you stay with her? With your daughter?’
‘Because she’s happy with what she has. She doesn’t need me. I would make her life complicated and not one bit better.’
‘I cannot picture you as a father,’ I hear myself say. ‘I’m sorry. That came out all wrong. What I mean is—’
‘I can’t, either. I am…very much attracted to violence.’
His voice chills me, and I decide to shut up and never again poke around in his private life. Runner is silent for a long moment and I’m about to pull the blanket over my face and try to sleep, when he says, ‘I grew up in Ghazni province, a plateau in Afghanistan.’
I hear him take a deep breath, and another one. Then, he continues. ‘We were a small group of people, no more than fifty. We herded cattle and hunted small game, constantly on the move from one dirty water hole to the next. We evaded the BSA for years and it was only the elders who remembered ever seeing signs of war. It must have been the desert that protected us. Until this one morning when our camp was hit by mortars. It was cruel. Tents burst apart, spilling out dead people.’
He clears his throat and I close my eyes and shake my head, because the images I see are not pretty. Flying bodies. Blood.
‘They were upon us only a moment later. My two brothers and my father were killed on the spot. My sister and my mother were taken away. They took the girls and women, while I… The shells had torn open one of our cows. I hid in it.’
Aching, I bury my face in the bend of my elbow.
‘When night fell, I dared to move. The cow was stiff and cold by then and I couldn’t get out. I believed that I would die trapped inside that cow’s stomach, stuck in blood and guts. The stench was enough to drive me mad. But my fear for my mother and my sister made me strong enough and I clawed myself out. Then I took one of the elders’ rifles and as much ammo as I could carry in my pockets. I dreamed of killing every single man who had touched my sister and my mother, who had killed my brothers, my father, my friends, and all the others I called family. I was a deluded boy. I could barely hold the weapon.’
He falls silent and I fight the urge to reach over his hammock and take his hand in mine. ‘What happened then?’
‘Nothing. They’d left. The wind had wiped away their footprints. I never found them. I walked through the desert without water and food, knowing I’d failed my family because I was too scared to get out of that damned cow carcass. When, after two days, I found a water hole, I tried to drown myself. I tried and tried, but the thing was too small. I don’t think I’d ever wept that hard. The rifle was too long for my arms to shoot myself in the head or even in the stomach. I’d lost my knife. The only alternative was to lie down and wait for death. The next day, an old man found me. He made me drink and eat, and then he took me on a long journey. Years later, I realised that I could have used my toes to pull the trigger and shoot myself.’
He pauses again. His body lies perfectly still inside his hammock. ‘His father used to be a British soldier — one of the last before all military organisations fell apart. His name was Elmar. He taught me most of what I know about tactics and sniping. I owe him my life and my name.’
I can’t stand it any longer. Without asking, I slip out of my hammock and into his. ‘Just give me the word and I’ll piss off.’ Then I take his hand and hold it as gently as possible. ‘I’m so sorry. Oh shit, Runner. I feel stupid for saying “I’m sorry” while having no clue how to help. I don’t want you to drag this around, but… but… Can I make it better?’
‘Ssh. It’s okay.’ He speaks into my hair. ‘It was long ago. Go back now and find some rest. We have a long walk ahead of us.’
I peel myself from his hammock and lie down in my own. Something is very different, but I can’t put my finger on it. I think of the night he’d pressed his body to mine, his hand hot on my naked stomach. I was sure he would die. His skin was burning with fever and his whole body shook with it. We had been crossing the lowlands in the deepest winter and were attacked by a large pack of starved wild dogs. Three had broken through his defences, and he was able to kill only two of them with his knife. All I had was a stupid air rifle that could barely pierce their hides. So while I raced to help him, the third attached itself to his throat. My stomach still clenches at the thought of the large wound, the great amount of blood he’d lost, and how I tried to save him and very nearly failed. That winter, we shared our warmth whenever necessary and it never felt as if…as if there was an invisible wall between us. Where does this come from so suddenly? Is it because he’s trying to toughen me up so I have a better chance of surviving whatever may come? I blink up at the Milky Way. Maybe I overreacted. Maybe I shouldn’t have slipped into his hammock. What do people typically do to comfort others? Babble? I have no idea. My hand wanders up to where his breath touched my hair.
As I drift off to sleep, understanding hits me. Runner and Yi-Ting. I’m far from the woman he wants in his hammock offering comfort. I’m such an idiot.
* * *
I’m covered in the thick white clay we found near the river bed. I rolled in the stuff until my back, my front, and my hair was plastered with white.
When I find Runner chewing on his toothbrush and staring up at the white-and-blue bowl of the morning sky, he appears as if nothing happened last night.
I can’t help but think of a small boy sticking the barrel of a rifle into his mouth and crying in despair because his fingers can’t reach the trigger. I wonder why he’s told me this. He never talks about himself.
Now, he looks like a corpse and his black eyes are demonic. He wraps a roll of white bandages around his bare stomach to fasten his pistol to his body. The gun’s butt will be covered with a dash of white in a moment. I’m wearing my pistol at my chest, the bandages covering my breasts and — more importantly — part of my back. There’s also a length of line wrapped around my stomach, my climbing clips dangling from it.
The only other piece of clothing each of us wears is a pair of short white underpants. All our other clothes are brown, green, or black, and would be too visible against the observatory’s walls. Clay sticks to fabric well enough, but it dries and cracks too quickly, and would fall off as soon as we started moving.
My half-nakedness makes me nervous. Not because of my awkwardly concealed breasts, but because of how my back looks and the risk that part of what’s written there might be visible. But for now, the clay covers this and all other scars well enough, and I have no time to worry about it anyway. Besides, the thing that bugs me the most is that our only weapons are two pistols with eight rounds each. If the entire BSA troop shows up, we’ll be very dead very soon.
Right now, the morning sun is behind a thin sheet of scattering clouds. We are as white as the observatory’s walls and roof. With the light overcast, our shadows will be blurry and soft, hard to see from high above. We have to be quick getting in, though. Despite the slight moisture of our skin, the plaster will crack once it’s dry and come off in small flecks. If the haze clears during the day, we’ll have to wait till nightfall to rappel down the building. But that problem will be solved once it arrives.
Runner walks ahead, making sure our conspicuously white bodies are covered by our leaf-hats and the treetops. When it’s time to step out of the jungle and approach the observatory, he doesn’t hesitate. He takes off his hat, stuffs it underneath a shrub, and walks out into the open.
Watching my white three-toed foot take a step forward, I swallow and push my body into full view. Runner comes to a halt just in front of the vines trailing across the steps. ‘Well made,’ he says. ‘They wrapped a green wire around the plant. It’s visible only where it goes in and where it comes out. Small packages of…let me see…C4, I think, on either side. Enough to rip you, me, and the stairs to pieces.’ He points to the landing and both sides of the stairs, then steps over the vine. ‘I assume the device has some way of distinguishing between a heavy human and a small animal. Else it would have detonated weeks ago.’
He bends down and investigates the landing’s top and all of its three sides, before he presses a hand on the cement.
‘Clear,’ he says, walks to the entrance and leans his back against the wall. ‘Your turn.’
My eyes scan the smooth walls. There’s very little to stick my fingers or toes in. ‘Help me reach the first handhold.’ I point to a crack far above his head.
Runner moves to the spot I indicate, then folds his hands in front of him and nods. I put my foot into his hands and push myself up, place my other foot on his shoulder, reach up to a too-small crack, and push up farther. My left hand finds the handhold and I jam my fingers into it. Standing on tiptoe on someone’s shoulders sucks, I realise, when his muscles flex and I begin to wobble. ‘I need a good push to reach the second handhold, up and slightly to the right. Um…my right. Count to three. At three, push my feet up as far as you can.’
‘No need to count and be hasty. I can do it slowly and you can take your time to find whatever you need.’
‘Shit,’ I huff when Runner takes both my feet into his hands and slowly pushes me up as if I weigh nothing. My right hand finds a new crack, then my left hand and right foot do, too. I push away from him and hang on the wall like a spider on polished glass — one wrong move and I’ll slide. I press my stomach against the plaster and crane my neck to find the next handhold.
There’s a ledge about a metre above me and only one small protruding brick between it and myself. I remove my left foot from the wall and push my right leg straight, reach up to the brick and feel that its upper edge is tilted toward me. That’s one shitty handhold if I’ve ever seen one. I look down to find something I can use to support my dangling left foot but see nothing. ‘Runner,’ I grunt. ‘Do you see anything on my left?’
After a short moment he says, ‘No. But slightly to your right is a crack large enough.’
I manoeuvre my left foot to my right, carefully inserting it between my right shin and the wall. I’m kind of awkwardly twisted, but the climbing seems to go forward. I jam my toes into the crack, then let go with my right foot and begin to press myself upwards. That’s when my hand begins to slide off the stupid brick. With merely a second left before I drop off the wall, I tense all muscles and leap the remaining twenty centimetres up to the ledge. My hands are grasping the ledge tightly, My feet are dangling in midair. I allow myself to breathe.
‘If you shift to the right, about two metres, you can put one foot against the wall quite comfortably, then push yourself up,’ he says.
I know. I remember that crack and already start moving. Runner’s whisper is only half audible in my one ear, but clear in my other ear where the earbud is.
I find the foothold and push myself up. I’m glad I’m covered in clay for another reason now — my palms are sweaty and rubbing them across my stomach helps to maintain my grip.
I keep climbing, always focusing solely on what foot- or handhold comes next, ignoring the drop and the too-close trigger of the booby trap the BSA set up.
When I reach the first level, I unwrap the line from my stomach and tie it to the bottom of a post. The other end of the line falls down somewhere close to where Runner must be standing. ‘The rope is secure. You can come up,’ I say quietly.
The line tightens at once.
I keep a close eye on post and thin steel rope. Soon, one hand reaches over the ledge, drops the first climbing clip he used to pull himself up, then the other hand and a clip, and then the whole Runner pushes into view.
‘That was impressive. Where did you learn to climb walls that well?’
‘I grew up in the mountains.’ I shrug, pretending I don’t care that there is one thing I can do better than he. I’m sure I blush scarlet under the white. ‘Your turn, I think.’
Runner pulls in the rope, drops it on the roof’s ledge, and walks the few steps to the satellite dish. The thing is massive — silvery and gleaming, spanning five or six metres across, and standing on a thick foot. Two joints allow it to rotate in any direction. Behind it is a white hemisphere that looks like a humongous wart to me. Runner told me that’s where they used to keep a telescope until a few decades ago when some idiots disassembled it and sold the parts.
He crouches down and finds a hatch, opens it, and squeezes into the room below the dish. He walks up to a door at the far end and presses his ear against it. I hold my breath. After a long moment, he turns the knob.
‘Interesting,’ Runner says.
‘What?’
‘No stench. They cleaned up and secured it.’ He nods at me. ‘From now on, no talking — no noises, until I tell you it’s okay.’ Then he slips into the dark. I take a deep breath and follow.
I find him standing on the stairs, holding up a hand. He points at me, then at himself, and at our feet. I look down. There are small white crumbs. Shit, the clay has come off faster than I expected. I nod, reach for his stomach and undo the bandage that holds his pistol, careful to not drop the curved needle he put there earlier. We’ll need it in a moment. I tear a piece of fabric off with my teeth and tuck in the remaining end at his back. I make a sign to tell him that I’ll use the fabric later to wipe off all traces of our presence. He nods at me and we descend into the main control room.
Without touching anything, he takes in the slight damage that has been done to the interior, the cleanliness of the room, the bleeping of the control system and the flashing lights, and the array of black screens. He pulls out the needle, takes his earbud out and inserts the sharp end where the small antennae pin is. He wiggles it and I hear a soft crackle in my ear as he makes sure that we can hear them, but they can’t hear us. Then he kneels and hides the black button under a control cabinet.
He stands and waves at me to take my earbud out. I do as he asks and place it in his outstretched hand. It, too, gets pricked. He puts the needle back into his fabric wrapper. The little poker will go back into the MedKit in his ruck once we’re out of here. I hope we’ll never need it to stitch up wounds.
We leave the control room and walk down another set of stairs and into a large hall that looks like a combination of common room and entrance area. He points at the door. A steel plate is bolted to the wall, covering most of the entrance. We take a careful peek behind it. Wires, light grey packages that must contain the explosives, and a controller that looks harmlessly small. Runner nods, satisfied.
We walk to the side entrance and see the same scene. He squats down and hides my earbud behind a tall shelf, then stands and waves at me to clean up and follow him. I spit at the cloth and take great care to wipe away our clay traces while we walk back up the stairs, into the control room, and higher up and out to the satellite dish.
Runner slides the door shut, turns to me, and says quietly, ‘Both doors were connected to the frames with a thin copper wire. If we had opened them, the wire would have disconnected and the resulting explosion would have killed anyone in front of that door. The thick steel plate is to direct the detonation away from the common room. The force of the blast would rip apart the door and everyone outside within at least a twenty metre radius. You can get in unharmed only with the remote for the small control box you’ve seen at the door. Now, the question is why have they set another trap so close to this first, very effective one? The vines they’ve prepped are connected to an amount of explosives that would kill the person who steps on the vines, but that wouldn’t damage the doors beyond repair and wouldn’t set off the door bombs. The door bombs are constructed so that only minimal damage will be done to the interior. This control centre seems to be of great value to the BSA. Which is…unexpected.’
‘Why? Don’t they need to come here for…controlling satellites? Or communicating? Or something? And didn’t Kat say they might be able to control another satellite cluster? Ours? So isn’t it logical to do it from here?’
‘No. To answer your first question: The communication can be done from afar, they don’t need to sit right here in the observatory. We don’t do that either, do we? And no one says that whoever controls satellites for the BSA has to be here in Taiwan. That man can sit anywhere on the planet.’
True. I’ve never been inside a satellite control centre until today, but I’ve been using satellite data and imagery for months now. I tip my head at him.
‘If they don’t care about maintenance or long-term use of this particular control centre, they don’t need to come here again,’ he continues. ‘About your next question: Why would the commander of this BSA group be the same person who controls satellites for them? If they had any brains, their satellite control centre would be far from any Sequencer’s base. I expect the BSA to leave Taiwan soon, in a month at the latest. They’ve killed most or all of the people here already. But…’ He squints up at the sun. It stands clear and bright in a blue sky, yet he doesn’t seem to see it. His mind is racing. ‘Why would they want to…’ He takes a step back, his hand shielding his eyes. ‘This is not good.’
‘I know,’ I say, nodding towards the sun and the shadows cast sharply onto the white ground before our feet. Our own shadows would give us away in no time.
Runner’s jaws are working, his eyes taking in all details of our surroundings.
‘That cloud might give us two minutes to rappel.’ I point my chin to the largest of the few white blobs in the sky. ‘Tell me what you are thinking.’
‘It seems… There are indications…’ He exhales and looks at me. ‘I’m not sure. I have to think about it more. But it seems as if the BSA is setting up headquarters here, if one can call it that. If they ever… I’ll explain in a bit. Now, let me think.’
‘Okay. I’ll find a way to get us out of here within two minutes.’
We watch the cloud drifting closer to the sun. My mind is full of the rappelling procedure: undo the line, re-tie it so we can take it with us once we are on the ground, clip both clips to the line, set both to rappel mode, grab and jump.
‘Thirty seconds,’ I tell Runner. ‘I fix the line. You make sure we don’t jump on the booby traps.’
He nods.
‘Ten seconds.’ We are standing at the very edge of the shadow — black against white. Then the contrast blurs, softens some more, and is gone entirely. ‘Move,’ I say and rush to the rope. My fingers fly over the knot and I curse myself for not having untied it when we came up here. I use my teeth and nails, but the knot doesn’t budge.
‘Let me,’ Runner hisses. His strong fingers extract the loops from each other and I begin pulling in the line while he keeps an eye on the cloud.
‘Less than a minute,’ he says while I re-tie the line.
‘Go!’ I slap his shoulders, and he fastens his clips to the line and jumps from view. I grab my clips and position myself at the roof’s edge. My knees clack against each other. I turn to face the wall and push myself off, then drop. My hasty and incorrect grip on the clips becomes evident instantly. The friction of the line sears my palms, biting my skin until I think I can’t take it any longer. Then my feet hit the ground and Runner’s hands grab the line, yank at one end, and pull the length of it down to the ground.
I can see the light rushing in from the jungle. The cloud is moving away from the sun. Our leaf-hats are far out of reach and we are two extremely white humans on a lush green surface.
‘Run!’ he growls and my legs obey while my mind is still in line-wrapping mode. Runner is right behind me. The rustling tells me that he’s dragging the length of line behind him.
We race to the forest’s edge and press against a thick tree, breathing heavily. Runner pulls in the rope. There’s a satisfied grin on his face.