Holding Their Own IV: The Ascent (5 page)

After I finish this run, I’m going to go visit
the colonel
, he thought. Bishop was unsure of how his ex-boss would react to everything that had happened the last few days. As he came to an intersection, his current train of thought was interrupted long enough to recall the directions the MPs had given him. He took a left and accelerated his pace just slightly.

Thinking of
the colonel brought on mixed emotions. Bishop respected the man immensely, more so than anyone—other than his father. The colonel had been his boss for almost 10 years while working for HBR. The job involved a lot of travel to remote, dangerous locales, and the man always had Bishop’s back. 

Bishop’s job was to protect HBR assets wherever the international firm decided to explore for gas or oil. Remote jungles, the deserts of Iraq, Pacific Islands, and South American mountains were all on the travel itinerary. If there were someplace dangerous in the world where there might be energy below the earth’s crust or ocean’s surface, HBR was the company to call. When HBR answered, they protected their people and equipment by hiring guys like Bishop, training the hell out of them, and then sending them along to keep the peace.

Even though he was beginning to breathe hard, Bishop had to laugh at the phrase “keep the peace.” He once told Terri his job was like playing outfield on a baseball team. “You go through hour after hour of absolute boredom until some guy gets lucky and hits a screamer your way. For a few short moments, life becomes far too exciting,” he had explained.

The tiny picture generated by the thermal imager depicted Bishop as a red and yellow blob. The blurred image wasn’t due to a lack of capability, but rather the device being a victim of its own advanced technology. As Bishop ran, the passing of his arms and legs heated the surrounding air for just long enough to be detected by the sensitive instrument. The resulting outline was blurred, creating an effect more closely resembling a 70s lava lamp than a state-of-the-art observation scope. The machine was so accurate, even Bishop’s footprints showed yellow, the result of his running shoes creating minute amounts of friction-heat on the pavement.

The man holding the FLIR, or
Forward Looking Infrared,
lowered the monocle from his eye and turned to his partner. “Deke, Bishop is going for a run. He just had a quick discussion with two patrolling MPs and then headed into the desert. Make a note in the log for me, would ya?”

Deke pulled a tablet computer from his bag, and soon, the vacant third-story office was filled with the pecking taps of a keyboard. “Done.”

The observer stretched high, the sleeves of the Army uniform pulled below his wrists. While the insignia on his shoulders was that of a major, he hadn’t been an officer in the United States Army in a long, long time. The rank had been carefully selected. Majors were a dime a dozen on a base of this size and wouldn’t be noticed. Yet, they held enough privilege for most activities to go unchallenged.

The man raised the FLIR again, tracking Bishop as he faded into the distance. “I’m off my shift in ten. Anything good for breakfast down at the officers’ mess?”

“Same ol’, same ol’, Moses. You can tell what day it is by the menu, just like when we served Mother Green.”

Moses laughed, his eyes never wavering from his vigil. “It’s got to be better than that garbage down in Columbia. My
gawd—I had the shits for a month of Sundays.”

“Nothing was worse than Chechnya. Did anyone ever figure out what that meat really was?”

The observer grunted, “No one wanted to know. That was a good haul though. I’ll never forget that Russian’s face. You would think a big-time international arms dealer would have a larger pair of nads. I thought he was going to cry like a little girl.”

“People tend to react oddly when they realize they’ve just been had for 1.2 million cash.”

“Naw, I think it was your .45 up against his temple, Deke. That’s what upset him.”

The two men chuckled briefly, enjoying the type of humor shared by long-time comrades who had witnessed much together—sometimes too much. It was an air of confidence with each other, an atmosphere of unspoken respect for the other’s capabilities. 

As Bishop’s image faded smaller and smaller, Moses pulled his eye from the monocle and sighed. “I’m ready to get out of here. If our employer had left any tracks, we would know by now. I think we’re wasting someone’s money here . . . being a little over-cautious.”

Deke chuckled, “I bet no one ever described you as ‘subtle’ in your status reports, did they? The client says we need to make sure our previous mission goes undiscovered, so that’s what we’ll do. It’s only another day or two, and then we’ll be out of here.”

The man holding the FLIR set it down, Bishop now out of his line of sight. The lookout glanced over at his relief and flatly stated, “I’m still not for sure why we’re here in the first place. We did our job and protected the client. Now we’re acting like a bunch of high school kids trying to clean up after a party before mom and dad get home.”

Deke smiled. “Money, power, weapons, favors … it’s just a job, dude. It beats the
pay grade of an E7 and the eventual half-pay after 20 long, hard years. I don’t know about you, but waiting three weeks before landing an appointment with a VA dentist isn’t why I humped all those courses and busted my ass through all those schools. I didn’t deploy over a hundred times to live out my old age bored to tears and barely able to feed myself.”

“Why
did
you do it then? It’s not like the Army promised us anything special.”

“I did it for God and country
, partner—just like you and all the rest of us stupid bastards.”

“And when did God and country stop being enough?”

Looking at his watch, the man waiting for his shift sighed. “I don’t know. It wasn’t like somebody threw a switch, and I suddenly stopped giving a rat’s ass. I think it was Mexico that was the final straw. You remember that op—the one where we went in with the DEA teams and snatched Julio Mendez-whatever-his-name-was?”

“Oh, yeah. I remember that one. Gawd, what a palace that guy had. Too bad he didn’t spend more on improving his security forces.”

“I remember walking around that guy’s crib and thinking about my little one-bedroom shithole outside Bragg. I remember all those women and cars and that pool table that cost more than what I made in a year. We found over three million in cash downstairs in the counting room. It took five of us two trips to haul all that money to the trucks. Who would’ve noticed if a couple hundred grand went missing? I mean, after all, I was the guy who put my ass on the line taking out Mr. Drug Lord’s little private army.”

Moses shif
ted his considerable frame, staring away into the distance. “For me, it was when the Secret Service dudes got busted with the hookers down in Colombia. I had just finished 13 months in Kandahar, and my wife’s lawyer hit me between the eyes with divorce papers the day after I got back. Those agents and rear echelon pussies were down in Colombia partying their asses off while I was eating dirt and dodging Taliban lead. When the chance came to move on, I didn’t even hesitate.”

“Maybe when there’s a change in leadership, somebody will fix all that. Your shift is up. Why don’t you head down and get a bit
e to eat? Hunger makes you a cynical fuck.”

Handing over the FLIR scope, Moses replied, “Look … dude … this is just a job. Guys like us, we always do the dirty work and then get thrown under the bus. Bush did it after Iraq
; Obama did the same when he came into office. Visions of grandeur are only going to lead to disappointment. My
only
expectation of this job is to get paid.”

“You left out living long enough to take the next job.”

“Oh, yeah. That, too.”

Bishop began to notice more of his surroundings as he progressed further from any sort of man
-made structure. He was now running through the open New Mexico desert … or maybe the Texas desert. The base resided partially in both states. The road he was traveling started to weave around low mounds of hard-packed, yellow sandstone streaked with a burnt tint of red. Small bunches of scrub cactus dotted the landscape here and there, accented by varieties of pincushion and ladyfinger.

Every now and then the pavement was crossed by dirt trails, most of which were announced via road signs warning of a “Tank Crossing Ahead.”
Gawd that would be fun
, he thought,
busting around in one of those tanks, shooting at targets with that huge gun. What a job.

It occurred to Bishop that perhaps the tank drivers would think his job was the cat’s ass.
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side,
he mused. In truth, Bishop had liked his work for the most part. Like everyone else, he would bitch and grumble about this, that or the other, but he had known a lot of people out of work and suffering badly. The depression had been vicious and long, with the country barely hanging on. This fact wasn’t lost on the nation’s old enemies, who used sleeper cells and wreaked havoc with strategically planned attacks. The results were horrific, and the country slid over the edge of a deep void.
At least I had a job
, he thought.
So what if people shot at me every now and then—I was getting paid.

I’ll run and then bring Terri breakfast in bed
, he thought.
I’ve been such a pain in the ass lately; it’ll be a good make-up gesture.

Today’s visit with
the colonel was going to be the first act of what promised to be a very stressful day. After paying his respects to his old boss, there was a second necessary evil—a visit to the general. A few days ago, he and Terri had sat through depositions, recounting their time with the now-deceased leader of the free world. After the legal interviews were over, General Westfield had offered Bishop a commission in the United States Army. The offer was tempting.

He and Terri would be afforded quarters at Bliss. The base had electrical power, running water, and a goodly supply of food. While no specific duties had been discussed with the general, Bishop imagined he’d still be involved with some sort of security or base operations.

Comparing life on the ranch to the amenities available at Bliss made the decision difficult. Terri’s due date in five months compounded the assessment even more. To practically anyone still alive in North America, the base would be an oasis of luxury.

Bishop tried to imagine their li
ves here. Any duties the general could throw his way weren’t the concern. Life after the downfall was a never-ending cycle of hardship that included gathering enough food and providing security. Anything the Army could dream up would probably be like a vacation compared to his workload at the ranch.

Security.
Bishop grunted when he thought of the connection between the rule of law and the moral conscious of the human animal—both had evaporated faster than anyone had ever anticipated. Society now required a man to carry a weapon to protect his family and property. It wasn’t easy. The necessity of maintaining a constant vigil, of always being on alert, was a distracting, unproductive use of time. Any noise in the middle of the night required effort. Mundane activities, such as walking, gardening, hunting, or gathering were all polluted by a constant shadow of fear—fear of other people. But not here at Fort Bliss.

Observing the awakening base as he ran, Bishop considered the well-manicured streets, immaculate grounds, and general image of an orderly existence that surrounded him. Passing a platoon of soldiers, young men hustling into formation and preparing to exercise, the organization of the place seemed to fill a void inside of Bishop. No, he thought, it wasn’t a need—it was a craving, a desire for structure, a hunger for the way things once were.