Page 24 of Duty Preserved

Andrew’s breath found my ear. “His shirt. Run it up in the middle of camp.”

“Now you’re thinking,” I breathed back.

We stripped it off his back, his eyes gone wide over Andrew’s hand, the fight already out of him. Andrew settled his weight to keep him pinned and quiet, and nodded me on.

I crossed the emptied camp on my own, past the abandoned watch, past the boy with the built-up boot who watched me go and said nothing, to the water tank standing over the middle of it all. I went up the leg of the stand and ran Baraka’s shirt to the top, where the last of the light caught it and left it hanging over the whole camp for anyone to see.

Their leader’s shirt, flying where we’d planted it.

When the runners came straggling back, winded and empty-handed, that was what waited for them. Their leader in the dirt between two painted strangers who hadn’t existed an hour before, and his own shirt flying from the top of the water tank over the middle of the camp. And a sixteen-year-old with a built-up boot standing exactly where he’d started, the one among them who’d called it before it happened.

Nobody said anything clever. We didn’t have to, and we didn’t try. We let them stand there and understand, all at once and without a word, exactly how dead every one of them would have been.

“Okay.” Baraka’s voice came up from the ground with something gone out of it. “Okay. You’ve made your point.”

We let him up. There’d be time to build on it in the morning. Tonight, the lesson was enough on its own.

I looked for the boy at the edge as we went. He was still watching us, the only one who hadn’t been surprised.

I walked back toward the cabins with the paint still on my face and the grass still down my collar, and that was when I saw her.

Sarah stood outside the vet facility in the last of the light, and she wasn’t alone. A knot of village children had gathered around her, five or six of them, drawn to the red hair the way I’d been told they always were, reaching up to touch the braid of it like it was a thing that couldn’t quite be real. She’d crouched to their level and was laughing at something one of them had said. Whatever she was in that moment, I had no defense built for it.

Then she looked up and found me.

I saw it land on her. She took in the paint and the gear and the shape of a man who’d spent his evening turning himself into something that moved through the dark, and the ease drained out of her all at once. Whatever version of me she’d carried out of Paris, it wasn’t this one, and the sight of me like this put a wariness in her face I hadn’t seen her wear.

I held her eyes a beat longer than I had any business holding them. She held mine.

Then one of the children pulled at her hand, and she looked away.

“She’s not admiring the camouflage,” Andrew said, arriving at my shoulder. He’d wiped his face on his sleeve and mostly made it worse.

“Leave it.”

“I’m only observing. Professionally.” He followed my line to where she stood and made a low sound. “For a man who swore up and down that Paris was nothing, you’ve got an awful lot of nothing on your face tonight.”

I didn’t answer him. Across the camp, she rose, drew the children in against her, and steered them toward the dining tent without once looking back my way.

I’d just walked into the middle of twelve armed men without making a sound. The only thing in this whole camp that had managed to rattle me was a hundred pounds of veterinarian who wouldn’t hold my eye.

Chapter 7

Donovan

Cole had them formed up outside the bunkhouse right after breakfast.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “In order for you to solve complex problems, you need to know what tools you have available. That is why we will take account of all your gear. I want every single piece of gear you were issued laid out neatly in front of you so we can conduct an inventory.”

They looked at one another. Nobody moved.

“Now,” I said.

They ran. Back to the bunkhouse, through the door, and out again, hauling rucks and loose gear in their arms. They were slow about it and loud about it, but they got there. Twelve tarps went down in a ragged line, and the contents of twelve rucks came out after them in varying states of organization.

Cole stood at the front with the list. Andrew and I moved through the line, walking among the rangers, reviewing their layouts as we went.

“Here’s how this works,” I said. “We’re going to call out each item on your issued gear list. When you hear it, you hold it up at arm’s length in front of you. If you don’t have it, you stand there with empty hands.”