The Last Run: A Novella (3 page)

As he got to his feet, he checked the civilian news feed. A pair of Russian attack jets had buzzed a carrier group in the North Atlantic, and either fighter jets or anti-aircraft defenses aboard the USS
George W. Bush
had shot them down. Benchley shook his head.

Things were getting tense out there.

***

“
H
EY, BABY.
What’s doin’?”

“Same as always,” Mulligan said, back in his office now. He was due in the SCEV prep area in ten minutes, for another training run, and he had taken the opportunity to call home and check in. His wife and two daughters lived in a small house just outside of Scott City, a town not much larger than a postage stamp in the middle of the Kansas plains. It was maybe thirty minutes from Harmony Base’s outer marker, and it had no air conditioning beyond the single window unit in the living room, but Tess preferred it to the sterile, military-drab confines of the base. She and the kids had tried living below ground there for a year, but they’d all gone slowly stir-crazy, developing uncharacteristically short tempers while pining away for sunlight and scenery that wasn’t found in the immediate surroundings of the base’s topside area. It wasn’t mandated that duty personnel have their dependents confined to the base—that was something reserved for the “selects,” the people who had been identified as high-value individuals, like the doctors and physicists and educators that made up a significant portion of Harmony’s population. Folks like Mulligan’s family were welcome, of course, but they were not necessarily compelled to stay. For that matter, neither was Mulligan. Even though he was senior staff, his position at Harmony was a non-hardship duty station, which meant he could lead a fairly normal life and go off-post whenever his work day was done. And, truth be told, he didn’t much fancy living in Harmony full time, either. So to give his family and himself some peace, he had moved them out to the small rented house. After receiving Benchley’s blessing, of course.

“Are the girls home?”

“They sure are,” Tess said, and sure enough, Mulligan could hear Chastity and Erica arguing about something in the background. Their voices were distant and muffled, and judging by the sounds of running water and the clink of dishes, he figured that Tess was in the kitchen while the girls played about in the back yard. “It’s hot as heck out there, so I’m going to break out the kiddy pool and set it up for them in a bit. You’ll be home on time?”

“No reason for me to be late at the moment. The base isn’t in lockdown or anything, and our status hasn’t changed. Which has me a little surprised.”

“Things are getting crazy out there,” Tess agreed. “I turned off the TV earlier, because I’m getting kind of agitated about Russia. You hear about the Navy shooting down some Russians?”

“I caught that. Listen, Tessie—”

“‘Tessie?’ Sounds like you’re about to ask me to do something I’m not going to like.”

Mulligan sighed. Years of practical experience in Army Special Forces still hadn’t provided him with enough skill to be anything less than completely transparent where his wife was involved. “Yeah, yeah, okay, Doctor Freud. You got me there.”

“What is it, Scott?”

“I want you to pack up some stuff and get ready to come to Harmony for a while. We still have reserved quarters, and things are very, very
weird
out in the world right now. I don’t think it’s going to lead to anything, but I want you and the girls over here, where I can keep an eye on you.”

Tess groaned, and Mulligan could imagine her running a hand through her honey-blond hair, her green eyes narrowing in consternation. One of the things that had come up during their short stay at the base was that Tess Mulligan was something of a claustrophobe. She’d never encountered it before, but weeks of living beneath the surface of the Earth had exposed her psychological weakness. And even though Harmony was a big installation—it had been designed to support more than a thousand people, and the base was hardly even half-staffed most of the time—things could still feel tight and cramped, especially at night when the noises of habitation faded and those of working environmental machinery took over. Tess was an outdoors girl, a woman who was more at home on horseback or on a motorcycle than anything else, and cooping her up in a controlled environment for more than a couple of days made her edgy. And weeks in Harmony had made her
more
than just edgy—she had been ready to scratch Mulligan’s eyes out.

“Is that really necessary? It’s Friday afternoon, and the girls want to go see that new Pixar movie—”

“Hon, would I even bring it up if I didn’t think it was a good idea?” Mulligan asked, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “I know how much you hate it here, and the girls don’t really dig it that much, either. But there are other kids for them to play with, so we won’t have to worry about them not having anything to do.”

“For how long?”

“At least over the weekend, but count on a week,” Mulligan said.

“A
week
? Scott, are you
sure
about that?”

“No. I’m not sure. But plan on it.” Mulligan leaned back in his office chair and cradled the phone against his ear with his shoulder. “It’s probably going to be nothing, hon, but let’s take some steps to make sure we aren’t caught in the cold. Just in case something does go down.”

“Do you know anything you’re not telling me, Scott?”

Mulligan thought about that. Other than a vague premonition of doom that was doubtless caused by the overly-agitated news broadcasts and articles he’d seen over the past several days, he had nothing tangible that had driven him to have this conversation with his wife. And he’d reached out through his friends in the special operations community. Lots of troops were spooling up, getting ready to do their jobs, but no one had any missions yet.

At least, none that he knew of.

“No,” he said finally. “I don’t have any inside tracks on anything. But something about this just feels bad. The Russians are being too assertive, as if they’re trying to provoke a response that no one wants. It doesn’t make any sense, and the only answer I can think of is that the Russkies have gone absolutely bat-shit crazy for no particularly good reason.” A reminder of his training appointment popped up on his workstation, notifying him that he had five minutes to un-ass and get up to the SCEV prep area. “Look, just fill up the pool and toss the kids inside, then pack up some clothes and things. I’ll come home, and we’ll all ride back together in the truck. I’m just acting out of an abundance of caution, so don’t flip out. Just accept that you’ll be spending some time in Harmony. This’ll blow out really soon, and if it doesn’t, we’ll be in the best place on the planet.”

There was a long moment of silence on the phone. Mulligan was about to prompt her when Tess said, “I’ll give you a week, Scott. Then the girls and I are going back to a normal life. Understood?”

“Hooah, ma’am.”

There was a trace of a smile in her voice then. “That’s a good soldier, Sergeant Major. What do you have to do now?”

“Final check ride in One Truck with Pete and CJ. CJ gets her rig certification today, provided everything goes well.”

“Oh! Well, tell them I say hi. Is CJ any good at driving those things yet?”

“One good thing about the final practical exam in an SCEV is that you don’t have to parallel park in them. Since that requirement was formally removed from the syllabus, she should have no problems.”

“Ha-ha. I’m going to pass that on to her tonight.”

“Thanks a mil, hon. Okay, you good to go? I have to run. It’s never a good thing when the senior instructor is late.”

Tess sighed. “Good to go here, Sarmajor. But I’m warning you, if you intend to keep me underground for more than a few days, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

“I have my checkbook. Love you, Tess.”

“Love you to, babe. Call me before you leave, so I can make sure the girls are ready to go.”

“Roger that,” Mulligan said, and then he hung up.

***

T
HE
S
ELF
C
ONTAINED
E
XPLORATION
V
EHICLE
P
REP
A
REA
was on the uppermost level of Harmony Base, but you’d never know that, since the plains of Western Kansas were still almost a hundred feet overhead. It was a large room, the third largest in the base, right after the SCEV Maintenance Bay and the Core. The prep area was designed to hold three rigs at a time, where they would be provisioned and fueled prior to jumping out into the field, or be decontaminated and subjected to post-mission checks after returning from an operation. Currently, there were two rigs in the bay, SCEVs One and Seven. Seven had just returned from a training mission, and its crew was just starting the post-mission breakdown. SCEV One—also known as “One Truck,” as it was the queen of the fleet and the designated primary trainer—was parked in the middle of a large yellow circle on the steel-planking floor. Already more than five years old, the rig had been the training workhorse of the ten-rig fleet, and its dull, scratched white paint showed its age. But One Truck was still a fully operational rig, even though it didn’t have any munitions aboard. Mulligan had already conducted the live-fire exercises last week with his current trainees, so there was no need to load the rig with actual, ready-to-launch Hellfire missiles and full magazines of 7.62 millimeter rounds. Instead, inert weapons that weighed the same as their active brethren had been slipped in place, so the rig would have identical acceleration and handling performance during training as it would in a real operation.

Peter and CJ Lopez were waiting by the rig when Mulligan stepped into the prep area. He checked his watch and found he was two minutes late. Judging by CJ and Peter’s smiles, they knew he was late, as well.

“You making a class one download?” Peter asked, using some Army slang for making a visit to the latrine for a long, delicate moment alone. What made it funny to Mulligan was that Peter Lopez was a civilian employee of the base, who made his living fixing SCEVs and, if a part couldn’t be replaced, would design a new one to be fabricated from the copious stock of raw materials stored in any number of warehouses inside the installation.

“No, I was busy filling out a form ID 10 T,” Mulligan said. Of course, there was no official Department of the Army or Department of Defense Form ID10T—it was a fake designation usually employed only when embarrassing new soldiers, by sending them to their headquarters to secure said form, which would doubtless cause much mirth and merriment at the HQ level. When a mild expression of confusion crossed Peter’s handsome face, Mulligan realized he had just missed an opportunity at playing the gag on the senior maintainer.

CJ laughed. Unlike her husband, she
was
Army, a sergeant first class who was also a wheelhead with the SCEV detachment. Unlike Peter, she would be prime-time field personnel should the world come to a screeching halt, and she had been the primary candidate for vehicle training. And since every rig needed a crew chief aboard when it departed Harmony Base, Peter had been filling that role, as well. Even though he was an instructor himself, Mulligan had been very careful to explain to him that CJ was not his student, and his job was to just maintain the rig. Peter had gotten the message right away, and he had assured Mulligan that he would keep his opinions to himself as long as they were in the vehicle. As far as he was concerned, CJ might be his wife, but she was Mulligan’s to mold.

“I don’t get it,” Peter said, confused.

“ID ten T…write it out, and it spells ‘idiot,’” CJ told him, brushing back a strand of dark hair from her face. Her features were a bit sharp and severe, and at first glance, one might think CJ Lopez was a hundred percent ball-buster, all day, every day. The reality was quite different. Mulligan found her to have an arch sense of humor, something he enjoyed tremendously during their off-hours. The Lopez and the Mulligan clans had become friends, and even though Tess and the girls lived off-post, they still socialized with Peter and CJ and their daughter Rachel regularly.

No slouch in the wit department himself, Peter turned to Mulligan and glared at him sternly. “And just why the hell were you looking for my personnel file, Sergeant Major?”

Mulligan chuckled. “All right, enough of the small talk. CJ, you ready for this?” Today would be her final qualification run, and if she passed it—which Mulligan had no doubt she would—she would be eligible to serve as senior NCO aboard one of the Self-Contained Exploration Vehicles. Like her husband, the majority of her duties would revolve around maintenance, but she would also log time as pilot-in-command. In Big Army, she had the skills to command a main battle tank, but Harmony’s mission was different; the SCEVs were viewed more as strategic assets as opposed to tactical ones, so only officers commanded them, but CJ would have more than enough time to grow into a command role if the shit hit the fan and the base went into its ten-year lockup cycle.

“You know I am, Sergeant Major,” she said, her dark eyes blazing with that peculiar ferocity they always seemed to contain. When they had first met, Mulligan had mistakenly identified her as one of those female troopers who had something to prove. He’d been way wrong about that, she didn’t have to prove a damn thing. She was more capable than many, many male soldiers Mulligan had served with over his career. He almost—
almost
—would have been happy to have had her serve on any Special Forces alpha detachment he had been assigned to.

Just the same, Mulligan screwed on his No Nonsense Instructor face. “Then let’s get the walk-around started.”

***

T
HE TRAINING GROUND
was located four miles to the east of Harmony’s vehicle elevators. CJ had the right seat, while Mulligan sat in the left—as CJ was qualifying as a pilot, she would spend most of her time in the right seat, so Mulligan assumed the role of Pilot in Command. Peter was in the rig’s second compartment, seated at the engineering station, watching over the vehicle’s various systems as CJ drove it across the gently rolling grasslands that surrounded the subterranean base. Ahead, a clump of cattle could be seen, watching the SCEV’s passage with a communal, disinterested gaze as they chewed their cuds. The Army had purchased the land from a cattle rancher in the 1980s, and the remaining parcels still under civilian ownership continued to function as an honest to God ranch, albeit a small one of only two thousand head or so. When the rig made its first waypoint, CJ steered it away from the long fence that separated the cattle from the base’s territory. The cows were quickly left behind as the rig bounced over the terrain at thirty miles an hour, its big tires clawing up the dry earth as they rolled along.