Hindsight (32 page)

She did need his help, though, to lace up the boots. She’d never worn anything like them before.

‘The smallest on base,’ he said, sounding amused as he crouched at her feet, ‘and still a little too big.’

Mira sighed. ‘They feel like concrete.’ After a life mostly barefoot or in light slip-on shoes, she felt awkward and clumsy. He slid her soft-soled sandals into deep pockets below her knees, and when she teetered despite the evenly distributed weight, he set her steady on her feet; her whole balance thrown out by strapping such weighty boots around her fine-boned ankles. No doubt it looked silly to him as a sighted person, she thought, but since she relied so heavily on balance to function with an invisible body, the boots instantly became the worst part of the uniform. She stumbled on her first step.

Lockman caught her and stifled a chuckle. ‘Perhaps you’d better practise a minute, before we leave. You look like I did when I got my first pair as a kid.’

‘Oh, and how old was that?’ she sneered, trying to hate him for laughing at her. ‘Same time you were learning to walk?’

‘Ten actually. When I hit double figures my grandmother decided it was time I stopped running around the bush barefoot. First day I wore trousers too, come to think of it, but she had to knock me out first with a belly full of her famous birthday cake, or else she never could have caught me. Come on,’ he added, taking hold of Mira’s elbow so gently that he reminded her unexpectedly of Ben. ‘First turn is the hardest.’

M
ira sat in the deepest corner of the refrigerated delivery truck with her eyes closed.

Lockman had supplied her with an arctic jacket to keep out the cold, but as a small team of canteen staff loaded light crates of cold goods and empty cardboard boxes around her, the bulky warmth provided no comfort. She couldn’t stop thinking about Ben and his mother, who must surely dread the slightest thought of her by now.

Mira rubbed her temples, feeling another headache coming on. Perhaps if she could explain to Mel about how much effort was being put into getting Ben back safely? Or could apologise and explain how it wasn’t entirely her fault? Events had been in motion for years before Mira had even met him.

A detour to the hospital was impossible, she’d been told, since Mel could be cheese in a trap as a test to see if Mira was really ‘dead’. So for Ben’s sake, she needed to stay well away from all the places that Greppia might expect her to be. In that respect, leaving the airbase at all was a risk, but Mira felt a certain degree of safety in seeking out the heart of the problem while the Greppias would be avoiding certain hotspots themselves. For her, it was much like a tactic she’d often employed at Serenity with staff while attempting to escape — attack when and where they’d least expected it.

The purr and chilly breath of refrigeration made her shiver. Then she remembered the secure phone that Lockman had loaned her, which was still in her shirt pocket, inside the uniform. She wondered why he hadn’t retrieved it. He must have seen it.

Outside, she heard him coordinating a rendezvous with another vehicle in a way that, to any goons with the benefit of a long-distance eavesdropper, would have sounded like arrangements to meet a mate and go fishing — just as soon as he was finished escorting MPs back to the scene of the ambush. That gave her a few more minutes alone before he assigned someone to ride in the back of the truck with her.

Calling the hospital to check on Mel was impossible, however, since she couldn’t figure out how to navigate the screen menu. She needed a phone with braille keypads. Hearing Pobody and Patterson climb into the truck with her, she stashed it back inside the uniform.

‘I thought you guys were on a break?’ she asked.

‘Break’s over,’ Patterson replied. ‘Time to make money.’ He snapped a clip on his weapon, which Mira pictured to be the size of a cannon, but as he slumped against the wall beside her, she realised it must have been much smaller.

‘Is that your Desert Eagle?’ she asked, trying to determine how he felt about taking orders from Lockman after being so deftly disarmed by him.

‘Don’t remind him.’ Pobody chuckled. ‘It was under his arse the whole time. Bloody idiot.’

‘That’s Staff Sergeant Bloody Idiot to you, Sergeant Nobody. Don’t think marrying my sister-in-law gives you any privileges.’

‘Yeah, well you should have known you can’t sell a weapon over the net without licensing delays and proof of purchase.’

Mira frowned, realising they were talking about the internet — a technology which remained as alien to her as mobile phones and TV.

‘You try arguing with a Glock up your nose!’ Patterson punched the side wall of the truck to end the argument.

Roller doors rattled as the back closed up and the engine jolted to life.

‘Do you still have the taser?’ Mira asked. ‘You should sit on it. Take turns, and consider it penance.’

‘Lockman did that already,’ Patterson complained. ‘Last thing before he took off with you. My balls are still blue.’

‘Mine too,’ Pobody said. ‘No hard feelings for a while, that’s for sure.’

Mira grinned, but as the invisible truck jarred through gears and she hovered towards the main security checkpoint, she wondered why they’d come back for more. ‘Why volunteer to work with me then? Surely Garland would have kept you on the case at a distance anyway?’

‘Brownie points,’ Pobody replied. ‘Garland offered them to everybody.’

‘She bribed you?’

‘Bribes are illegal,’ Patterson said. ‘Nothing wrong with bonus pay, or cushier assignments after a dirty job, though.’

After almost an hour, the truck pulled into a warehouse behind a ghostly convoy of other military supply trucks that were already loading for a long trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Lockman was there too, waiting for her, and explained the whole scene of his double-ruse to her as he retrieved her from the truck and led her to a smaller passenger vehicle.

‘It’s a khaki van with army plates,’ he explained as if that might make her feel safer.

‘What about Ben’s car? Where is it?’

‘Back at the base. Turns out there was a talking watch and walking stick in the trunk, both of which had GPS features that Patterson used to track you after your friend’s little switch-a-roo. Greppia might have a bead on them now too. In any case, it’s parked in the open as a kind of sign that nobody’s come to collect your body yet.’ He slapped a cap on her head and hurried her into the front passenger seat of the invisible van. ‘You’re now hiding in plain sight. There’s a clipboard in the pocket of your door, so you’ll have an excuse to keep your head down as if you’re reading or jotting crime-scene notes for the real investigators.’ He handed a pen to her too, but as he greeted Corporals Lyn Cinq and Davit Uno, she noticed the pen was much thicker and heavier than most.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, hearing Lockman still close outside her open window. ‘Has it got a GPS built in?’

‘Nah, that’s an inventory pen. Anything you write is digitised for transfer to PC, but today it’s just a prop for show with the clipboard. No need to get out of the car at all — at least until I meet you at the beach and give the all clear.’

‘You’re not coming with me?’

‘I’ll be right behind you in my truck with Pobody and Patterson.’

Doors opened all around her and the van rocked as three more people climbed in and someone who smelled strongly of floral deodorant started the engine.

Lockman’s footsteps led him away, sounding slow and reluctant.

‘Hey, Lieutenant!’ Mira called. ‘Don’t sound so worried. I dare say you’ll still earn your brownie points if you lose me.’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Ask the sergeants,’ she scowled at him. ‘They’re the ones who explained it to me.’

‘Glad to see you’re okay,’ Uno said as the van pulled into traffic.

It took a moment before Mira realised he was talking to her. He sounded genuine, and Cinq did too as she chimed in, yet Mira didn’t bother responding with anything more than a nod. She fully intended on keeping her mouth shut all the way to the beach.

Not her eyes.

She trusted Cinq and Uno least of all, since they’d already confessed to playing both sides of the surveillance game while assigned to Kitching’s team in order to watch him. They’d also expressed a keen interest in knowing more about her. Suspicious, she thought, since security teams, as best as she could guess, were supposed to be keener at keeping secrets than discarding them — unless they really were double agents, which didn’t do anything for bolstering her confidence. They might dart off with her as a gift for Greppia.

Keeping her hand in her pocket on Lockman’s phone, she wished she could use it but also tried to tell herself not to be paranoid. She tried to focus on the motions of the truck travelling through traffic — stopping at lights while trucks and other vehicles burst through her. It wasn’t long before she began to dread the slowing down motion for any corner.

She imagined the indicators ticking softly and counted every second at every intersection as far as the entrance to the beach car park, where she couldn’t get out swiftly enough. She ran to the nearest palm tree and threw up, while behind her, she heard Cinq and Uno stifling their laughter.

Lockman came to her side within moments with a clean rag and patted her back. ‘You okay?’

She nodded, still bent against a palm tree. ‘Just travel sick.’

‘They have to laugh,’ he whispered. ‘It’s what we’d do if you were really one of us.’

She wiped her face and stood up, glad to hear they still thought of her as different, despite the uniform. Scratching her collar where it itched her skin, she retrieved the clipboard and pen from the van and binned the rag, hearing Cinq and Uno set about their own investigations amidst the other invisible MPs who were already on duty, hunting clues on the beach.

Lockman rubbed her arm. ‘What can I do to help?’

‘Just keep them out of earshot, and stop me from tripping. I hate falling more than anything.’

Looking back through the haze of twelve hours, the pain of processing slow light was comparatively bearable for short periods. At ten hours ago, less so, but it was at minus ten she caught a glimpse of Lockman behind the wheel of a Hilux that was kitted up for fishing and camping. He came past the mouths of the derelict and new bridges to Likiba Isle, and turned into the beachside car park, driving past all the many vacant spaces until he swerved into one that served him with the best view of the new bridge.

Beside him sat Tarin Sei’s ghost; a pretty-faced brunette in a man’s checked shirt, who raised a set of binoculars to her eyes and panned the bay before passing them to him. In turn, his attention panned the bay, but settled on the bridge.

He seemed surprised moments later when Ben drove past the bridges too. The Camaro swerved to a halt only four spaces away with Mira’s ghost in the passenger seat.

Bodies had littered the purple sand, she remembered, but looking that way now, the slim crescent beach was clean with barely a footprint. The footpath was nearly empty too, except for a sprightly spectre of an old man with a leashed terrier.

Mira saw herself emerge with the joey from Ben’s ghostly Camaro, looking even sicker than she’d felt at the time as she’d steadied herself with one hand against his car.

Mirage. Lockman was right. The name did now seem appropriate, but she couldn’t allow herself to be distracted. Ben needed her, and she focused as best she could to keep her thoughts straight.

Is he here?
she read from her own lips, realising how insane that would sound if she ever had to explain it to anyone.

Ben’s ghost pointed to Lockman’s truck.
Overtook us back there,
he said, then pulled in his arm as if remembering that she couldn’t see him.
Must have thought we were headed over the bridge …

Mira watched the argument that followed, feeling guilty now at how hurt Ben looked when she’d suggested that Greppia couldn’t get to them through Lockman. The pained expression on his face was almost too much for her to bear — and worse. If Greppia’s people had been watching too, they would have seen that Ben was fond of her, which made him a soft target.

Lockman’s ghost seemed to recognise the danger too.
If you prefer us to hang closer, we will
, he said as he hurried over in faded jeans and a black t-shirt — just as he’d described himself. Except she had been shaking by then, taking ill.

Lockman’s ghost noticed and made the lunge for her first, shortening the distance and catching her from falling a full second before Ben, who’d been right beside her, looking the other way. In seconds Sei was at her side too, lifting Josie’s pouch over ‘Mirage’s’ head to relieve her neck of the weight, then together, the two men propped her in the shade against a palm tree, while Sei provided a picnic blanket rolled up to support her back, and set the joey’s bundle on the ground against her leg. Many hands then made swifter work of cooling her down using ice packs that Lockman fetched from his first aid kit.