'I've been looking for this girl since the Epidemic began,' Clark said. 'Now you find her and you forget to tell me for most of a day?'
The Civilian stared straight ahead. He was strapped so tightly into his crewseat that maybe he couldn't turn his head. 'I can be a wrathful god sometimes, Bannerman. But sometimes I throw my favorite pet a bone. You don't ask questions, not of me.'
Clark knew to back off. This fury was new'he was used to the Civilian's cynicism but his anger was new and growing. Unfortunately that left him with his own thoughts for company.
So close'and something had to go wrong. Well, something always went wrong, that was the general rule of warfare. Clark had even made room for something going wrong in his plans, bringing along far more men and materiel than he should have needed to pick up one prisoner. Still.
This was a monumental cock-up.
The Civilian had presented Clark with the opportunity of a lifetime. An individual associated loosely with the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce had captured the girl. He was willing to turn her over to Clark in exchange for free passage east'with a military escort'and fifty thousand dollars. The Civilian had set everything up. Those were all the details Clark had'and all, it seemed, the Civilian was willing to give him. It should be enough, the Civilian insisted.
Only when they arrived the girl was gone, having apparently murdered all of her captors. They didn't know how long it had been since she'd escaped. They didn't know which way she went. They didn't know where she was headed. But she knew they were coming for her and would therefore be on her guard.
'There's two dead in here, sir,' the soldier said, leaning in through the open door of the helicopter. Clark closed his laptop with a click and nodded. He looked past the soldier and saw the entrance to a cave. An iron-barred gate swung open on its hinges. 'One of them looks like a drug overdose,' the soldier continued. 'The other body is partially consumed.'
Clark breathed out a long sigh of dissatisfaction. To get so close' 'I take it there's no sign of any females. That's not a question that needs an answer.' The girl had literally been right there, right there no more than an hour prior, probably even less. Clark was almost ready to stage his offensive on the mountain location, the Epicenter. He had the troops, he had the supplies. Until he understood the girl's place in the Epidemic, until he knew what she meant, he would never be psychologically ready, though. You didn't go to war without all the facts. The girl was one last question and he needed an answer. 'You don't have any good new for me, do you? She didn't leave anything behind that might help us find her?'
'No, sir,' the soldier responded. No one had expected there would be. 'Except' permission to add something, sir.'
'Granted, of course.'
The Guardsman bit his lower lip. 'There's no vehicles here, sir. I don't know how these two bodies could have got here without a vehicle. Maybe somebody dropped them off, but I wouldn't want to be stuck out here so far from town without a way out. Not with dead people wandering around loose out here, and all. Sir.'
Clark actually smiled at the young man. Not very professional but he couldn't help it. He jumped down from the helicopter body, slapping the Guardsman on the shoulder, and jogged into the AO. Soldiers were busy sealing up the bodies in type II human remains pouches and sifting through the sand looking for forensic evidence. This had been a standard mopping-up exercise following a failed rendezvous. It was about to turn into something quite different.