Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier-ARC (pdf conv.) (2 page)

A little ways out to sea, his people are drowning; those he loves, those in his charge. There is his wife, Julie, his daughters Kelly and Sarah. There is Sergeant Pinchot, who has made him coffee and given him his messages for the last three years.

Beyond them are the thousands of men and women whose pay and housing he ensures. They wave their arms, gurgling salt water. The green of kelp mixes with the sodden green of their uniforms.

The ocean reaches his waist. He ignores it. He cannot save them all, but maybe he can reach one of them. Kelly screams, Schwartz’s head disappears under water.

The water is freezing, it reaches his chest, his neck. He paddles furiously, but his charges are no closer. The current resists him; he slogs forward as if he moves through molasses.

Pinchot surfaces briefly, vomiting water. Crabs dance on her head. She vanishes beneath the surface.

Bookbinder pushes forward, chest and arms burning with the effort of paddling. “Julie! Hang on, bunny! Sarah! Daddy’s coming!”

But now the water is over his head. The exertion of his rush into the ocean has emptied him of breath, he must draw air.

He draws seawater instead. The light of the surface is gone.

He is too far, too deep.

His lungs sag, heavy with brine. He drags to the ocean floor.

Drowning, drowning. He has failed them all.

Colonel Alan Bookbinder snapped awake, still freezing. He’d kicked the sheets aside, his body plastered with drying sweat.

Beside him, Julie murmured, her slim body gone to the padded comfort of middle age but still beautiful.

“Just a dream,” he whispered. It came out as a croak. He couldn’t breathe.

Dream or no dream, he was still drowning.

He threw himself out of bed, hands flying to his chest. His veins felt too narrow to contain his roaring blood. He paced a circle at the foot of his bed, panic rising. Was it a heart attack?

The doc had given him a clean bill of health just last month. No tingling in his extremities, clear vision. No faintness or weakness.

Just a sensation of being . . . swamped. The panic mounted.

Can’t breathe, can’t breathe!

“Stop,” he said out loud. “Get ahold of yourself.”

He opened his mouth and filled his lungs, felt his head swim with the intake of oxygen. He could breathe just fine.

He looked around his room. His officer’s saber, never drawn, hung over the nightstand. The television’s screen reflected the moonlight. Julie reached for his side of the bed, snagging a pillow in his absence. Harvey, their fat, ancient beagle, lay beside their bed. He lifted his head drowsily at the sight of his master awake and thumped his tail happily against the floor briefly before putting his head back down.

Everything was as it should be. But the drowning feeling didn’t subside.

This is ridiculous,
he thought.
You don’t need to be awake for another two hours. Normal behavior would be to go back to sleep.

He would act normal until he felt normal. He took a step toward the bed and banged his shin hard against it. He swore, Harvey chuffed, and Julie came awake with a start.

“Oh, bunny. I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said, rubbing her eyes, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I had a bad dream and . . . I think I might have come down with something. I don’t feel right.”

“Did you go to the bathroom? You know how sometimes . . .”

“No, bunny, it’s not that.”

“How bad is it, do you need me to . . .”

“No, no, sweetie. I’ll just talk to the doc tomorrow.”

Julie flopped back down on the pillows and extended her arms. “Well, come to bed, then. Bunny needs snuggling.”

Bookbinder smiled. She had put on a few pounds. She talked incessantly about his bowel movements.

But bunny needed snuggling, and he loved bunny very, very much.

He nuzzled her neck and kissed her earlobes. She grunted affirmatively and drifted back to sleep in his arms.

But the tide stayed with him, and he drowned, wide-awake, until the alarm went off.

Kelly and Sarah squabbled over breakfast like only sisters could.

Harvey sat expectantly beside the table, vigilant for dropped crumbs. Kelly’s dark ringlets bounced in frustration as she pointed at her younger sister. “Dad! Sarah finished the good cereal!”

Bookbinder stared at the paper, not reading it, consumed by the current roaring through him.

“Don’t bother your father, Kel,” Julie said, putting another cereal box down in front of her. “He’s got a busy day ahead of him.”

“I don’t want shredded wheat!” Kelly groused.

Bookbinder put down the paper and hugged his daughter, who leaned away, wrinkling her nose. “Shredded wheat loves you, and so do I,” he said. “And I promise to pick up more of the cereal you like on the way home.”

The drive to work rankled, the drowning feeling making the traffic more unbearable than usual. Even with his privileged spot, it was a long walk across the Pentagon’s north parking lot.

He fell in with other soldiers making their way toward the entrance. With only generals outranking him, his arm was tired from returning salutes by the time he’d gone twenty feet.

He navigated the maze of hallways, rife with historical displays lauding heroes. The army’s sole criteria for heroism was time spent behind a trigger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shot a gun, and they didn’t give purple hearts for paper cuts.

He stopped by the building’s central gazebo, squatting amid a swath of green in the midst of the concrete maze. . The cafeteria inside buzzed with uniformed personnel, sharp-suited civil servants, and contractors. Bookbinder stood on line for his morning coffee, then fought his way out of the crowded entrance.

“By your leave, sir,” said a navy lieutenant. He hesitated at that last word, his eyes searching Bookbinder’s chest for something he could respect. No combat infantryman’s pin. No expeditionary medals. No jump wings. Bookbinder was a high-ranking administrator, and his record screamed it from his uniform.

There were soldiers and there were
soldiers
, and it was clear which category this lieutenant felt he fell into. Bookbinder read the lieutenant’s record on his ribbon rack—surface warfare qualified, Horn of Africa campaign medal. But he was still just a company-grade officer, and he owed Bookbinder respect. This he rendered as coolly as possible, the salute cracking so sharply that his hand vibrated.

Bookbinder made his way to his office and pushed through the doorway reading army materiel command on the Pentagon’s E ring. Sergeant Pinchot greeted him with a wave from behind her desk just outside his office door. She looked like she’d been stuffed into her immaculate uniform. He paused, seeing her in his dream, drowning in freezing ocean water.

“Oh.” She frowned, noting his cup of coffee. “I just made you a pot.”

“Well, I appreciate that, sorry. Good morning, by the way.”

She shrugged. “Good morning, sir. Everything okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m just a little off. Can you do me a favor and see what the doc has open today? Put the appointment under your name and rank, I don’t want them kicking other people out of a time slot because a colonel called down.”

“Will do, sir. Speaking of medical . . .”

“Did you email me the body weight waiver?”

Sergeant Pinchot nodded. “It’s in your inbox.”

“I’ll sign it, but this is the last time. You’ve got to start taking physical training seriously.” He glanced down at his flat belly, due more to genetics and no great love of food than any commitment to exercise.

“Hooah, sir. I’ll take care of it.” She wouldn’t take care of it, just as she hadn’t taken care of it the last two times he’d warned her. He should have given her a command referral to the weight-control program already. He scolded and scolded, but he knew that deep down, Pinchot sensed that he would never do it. He wore a commander’s uniform with a commander’s silver eagles on his shoulders, but he lacked a commander’s heart.

Bookbinder sighed and went into his office, closing the door behind him. The office radiated official dignity from its dark-stained cherrywood furniture to the walls completely covered with the trappings of a long and storied career; plaques, folded flags, challenge coins, trophies. Framed posters depicted dignified scenes. Washington accepted Cornwallis’s surrender in one corner. On the opposite wall, the Continental Congress signed the charter creating the army. There were no battle scenes.

He settled into his leather commander’s chair and brought his computer out of sleep mode. The huge split-screen monitors were overkill, but they helped with keeping track of the giant spreadsheets that were his stock–in–trade. He’d left at 1900 hours last night. Three hundred emails already awaited him.

He sighed, the current battering him unsparingly.

The phone rang.

He picked it up. “J1. May I help you, sir or ma’am?”

There was a brief pause as the caller took the line off speakerphone.

“Colonel Bookbinder, sir? This is HS2 Wainwright in Lieutenant Colonel Thompson’s office. We’ve had a cancellation if you’re free to stop by.”

The doctor’s office had taken exactly three minutes to get him in. There was no cancellation. Pinchot had not used her own name and rank as he’d instructed. Who knew what poor soldier with a more urgent problem had just been bumped so the lofty colonel could be accommodated. But with the drowning sensation dogging him, he was grateful for the chance to get examined.

Bookbinder massaged his temples and stood. He passed through the outer office and tapped Pinchot’s shoulder. “They’re taking me now,” he said, meaning it as a remonstration for her failure to follow instructions.

She tapped away at her keyboard, ignoring him. “That’s great, sir. I’ll take your calls.”

The trip to Lieutenant Colonel Thompson’s office took longer than he’d expected. The elevator was being repaired, and there was a snarl of contractors on pedal-driven carts running cable down two of the usual thoroughfares. He passed flat-screen monitors dedicated to the perils of unauthorized magic use.

Slick electronic posters featured grizzly digital photos of Selfers gone nova, their burned carcasses scarcely recognizable as human. It was followed by a Ten Most Wanted slide. Oscar Britton continued to hold the top spot.

Bookbinder entered Doc Thompson’s and stiffened as half the waiting room got to its feet. “Good morning, sir,” they chorused.

“Good morning, everyone. Sit down, please. That’s not necessary.”

“Good morning, Colonel. Doctor Thompson is waiting for you,” said a young orderly in blue scrubs.

Bookbinder glanced an apology at the assembled convalescents.

More than a few met his glance, irked at having their wait lengthened by the system’s tendency to jump whenever top brass needed something done.

But there was nothing to be done about it now. The tide was insistent, and the doc was waiting.

Bookbinder sat in the exam room for a few minutes before Thompson came in.

“Good morning, sir!” The doctor said, pumping his hand vigorously.

Thompson was mustachioed and bull-necked.

The silver oak leaf cluster and gold caduceus pinned to his white doctor’s coat were the only things that marked him as a soldier.

“Your admin seemed worried about you. Everything okay?”

“I feel ridiculous,” Bookbinder began, “there’s really nothing wrong with me.”

“Describe it.”

“It feels like I’m drowning. I can’t breathe. Well, I can, actually.”

He demonstrated, spreading his arms and filling his lungs with air. “I just feel like. . . I’m underwater. I can’t shake it.”

Thompson stroked his moustache with the butt of his pen.

“When did this start?”

“Last night. I had a nightmare.”

“Does it get worse when you lie down? Are you having trouble climbing stairs?”

Bookbinder shook his head. “It’s constant. Always the same.”

“You haven’t started smoking, have you?”

Bookbinder frowned. “Come on, Doc.”

“Okay, well, let’s have a look at you.”

Having a look at him took all day. After Thompson found nothing abnormal with his blood pressure, he went at him with the stethoscope with similar results. He shined lights in his eyes, looked up his nose and ears, took blood. Bookbinder tried to leave after an hour, worried about the men outside whose days were being wasted waiting, but Thompson wasn’t going to let a sick O–6 out of his sight without making damned sure that everything was all right.

The big tests began. Chest X–ray, CT scan, echocardiogram.

By the end of the day, Bookbinder was exhausted, sitting naked in a blue examination gown, his skinny butt freezing against the stainless-steel surface of the examination table.

Thompson entered the room, shaking his head.

“Nothing?” Bookbinder asked.

Thompson shrugged. “Nothing. We still have to wait on some lab results, but I don’t expect to find anything.”

But the current was there. Bookbinder gulped air, feeling the drowning sensation more acutely than ever. “Jesus, Doc. What’s going on?”

“If I had to put my finger on it? You’re having a panic attack.”

Bookbinder cocked an eyebrow. “That’s ridiculous. I’m forty-five. I’ve never had a panic attack in my life.”

Thompson shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing physically wrong with you, sir. And there’s no age limit on anxiety issues. You said it came on right after a nightmare, correct?”

Bookbinder nodded.

“Must have been one hell of a nightmare,” Thompson said.

Bookbinder shuddered. “It was.”

“Well, look. I’d take the rest of the day off.” He handed Bookbinder a small plastic bag full of white pills. “This is a generic zolpidem. It’ll help you sleep. Eat something, piss, then pop one. Go directly to bed, do not pass go. Give me a call in the morning and let me know how you feel.”

Panic attack.
The thought ate at him. He was supposed to be a commander. Panic attacks didn’t come with that territory.