The Soldier

Caitlin slowly opened her eyes and listened for a moment to Larry’s gentle breathing as he lay next to her. It had been too long since she had been with someone who had been this tender with her and she savored in the warmth. She thought briefly about rousing Larry for a bit of morning delight, as her mum used to call it, when her eyes rested on the radio equipment on Larry’s desk.

She got out of bed and quietly put on one of Larry’s shirts. She walked over to the desk and ran her hands over the dials, wondering just how sound a sleeper Larry was.

“I really wouldn’t do that,” he said, his voice muffled somewhat by the pillow. “You don’t know the codes we use, and besides, last I heard the South Carolina unit was on the move and can’t be contacted. You did say South Carolina, right?”

Caitlin smiled “Yes.”

Larry smiled again and sat up in bed, the blankets just covering him. “Trust me, I know Max. As soon as they arrive and Jon gives the OK, he’ll have an antenna strung up between two trees and be back on the air. Then we can get in touch with your . . people.”

Caitlin noticed the pause as Larry searched for the word as if he didn’t want to say ‘friends.’ But she chose to ignore it.

“I know, but I also know Logan the others will be worried about me.”

Larry reached over and pulled Caitlin back to him, his hands going around her waist, underneath the shirt. His touch sent a tingle up her spine.

“I really should get back,” Caitlin said softly, sliding down to sit in Larry’s lap facing him. “If I’m going to start being the ‘good girl’ and straighten out that tangle of the mess they call computer code, I should get started. And wasn’t that just a 12-hour pass?”

“True,” Larry said as he glanced at a wall clock. “But as long as you show up and aren’t too late getting back it’ll be OK. So I figure we have a couple of hours yet.”

Caitlin giggled “Well, just remember, if I get in trouble and we can’t get another pass, it’s all your fault.”

“Agreed,” Larry said as he pulled Caitlin close and kissed her.

After a short stop at her barracks to change clothes, Caitlin walked into her office. She turned on her computer and settled into her chair as she watched it power up. Then she brought up the programming environment which displayed the last bit of code she had been working on.

Previously, she had only been doing as little as humanly possible so it would appear she was making an effort without actually helping the Americans too much. But after her conversation with Larry, she decided to try and different tack.

“This whole section will need to be completely rewritten,” Caitlin muttered as she made a few notes on a legal pad. She opened a new window and began keying in lines of code, using a few snippets she had used back in England, the lines of code flowing onto the screen as fast as an experienced writer can type prose.

She had been at work for nearly two hours when she heard footsteps echoing in the nearly empty room.

“At work on a Saturday, I’m impressed,” Alicia Cox said as she walked up behind Caitlin and looked over her shoulder. “And writing original code instead of just making cursory patches to the old stuff. What caused the change of heart?”

Shit busted again, Caitlin thought. This one is not to be messed with. I’ve got to watch myself.

“Let’s just say I’ve done some thinking and came to the conclusion that I’m stuck here and ought to get on with making the best of it,” she said. “You might say I slept on it and woke to a different outlook.”

“Well,” Alicia said as she moved behind Caitlin, “Whatever was the cause I’m glad to see you’ve come around.”

" Please don’t,” Caitlin said as Alicia moved to put her hands on Caitlin’s shoulders. “I’d just rather you didn’t do that.”

“As you wish,” Alicia said. She turned and left the room without another word. Caitlin sighed and returned to her work.

Caitlin had hit a serious roadblock. She had tried several different approaches to the guidance problem but still ended up with the software locking itself into an infinite loop, and despite going over the code line-by-line, she couldn’t find where things kept going wrong. She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her face with her hand.

“Problem?”

Caitlin looked up to see Larry walking into her cubicle. He had two mugs of coffee, one of which he handed to Caitlin.

“Oh bless you,” she said. “I was just going to go for a cup.”

She took the coffee and sipped it.

“You know, for a country that’s fallen apart, you can get a pretty decent cup of coffee here,” she said, smiling.

“Like I told you, some things bad,” Larry said taking a sip from his own mug. “Some things good. One pleasant side effect of the so-called downfall of America combined with a little help from Global Warming, we can now grow coffee in these parts. These beans come from a plantation that is on land over in Central Florida that used to grow oranges.”

“This is really good,” Caitlin said. “Why don’t you export this? Most of what we get in England is, well, it’s not this.”

Larry grinned.

“Well, that’s one part of things that is very true. The government and most of Americans are really the uber-isolationists the rest of the world thinks we are. It’s the reason that wall still stands and we have nothing to do with the rest of the world.

“Anyway,” he said, obviously wanting to change the subject. “so what’s the problem?”

“Just a glitch I can’t figure out, but I’ll get it,” Caitlin said. “Actually, I could use a break. Do you think we’d set off too many alarms if we took a walk or something?”

“Not at all,” Larry said. “Scuttlebutt has it that you’ve been impressing the ice queen enough that you may actually get off the ‘prisoner’ list and make it all the way up to ‘indentured servant’ like the rest of us.”

“Oh, I’m honored,” Caitlin said. “One of my life’s goals, well since getting here, has been to impress Alicia Cox. I just want the old lesbian to keep her paws off me.”

Larry raised an eyebrow.

“Really? She’s been hitting on you?”

Caitlin playfully slapped Larry

“Don’t get yourself all excited. She hasn’t said anything specific, she’s just too touchy-feely for me, always trying to rub my shoulders and such. Trust me, nothing in that vein is ever going to happen with her or any other female.”

“Well, what about with a certain male?” Larry asked.

Caitlin moved closer and brushed lips against his ear.

“Why do you think I want to go on that walk?”

Later that afternoon, Caitlin was back at work on the guidance software, still feeling the warm afterglow of her ‘walk’ with Larry. There was a soft knock on the wall of her cubicle and she looked up to Alicia Cox standing there and was relieved to note that the American officer wasn’t alone. Standing next to her was another Air Force officer, a tallish black man of 45 with a close-cropped head of gray hair.

“Caitlin, this is Colonel Brad Saunders. He’s with our Air Defense Unit.”

“Colonel,” Caitlin said as she stood up and offered her hand.

“We’ve heard good things about your work,” the colonel said as he shook Caitlin’s hand. “What we’ve seen is very good, very good indeed.”

“Thank you, sir,” Caitlin said, continuing to play the part of the converted former spy.

“Thing is,” Saunders said as he pulled up a chair and sat, motioning for both Caitlin and Alicia to do the same. “We need to see more, and rumor has it you are the one woman on base who is capable of giving it to us.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” Caitlin said, feigning ignorance of the rumors she herself planted.

Saunders smiled. “The best are always so modest. Word on the street is that back in England you were quite the hacker and spent most of your time cracking code rather than writing it.”

“Your spies over in England must be very good,” Caitlin said. “Not many people know about that part of my skill set.”

“Actually, our information comes from people over here, not from our sources over there,” Saunders said.

“Damn,” Caitlin said. “I knew I had one too many at that pub last week. So, what do you need hacked?”

“I think it best if I show you. If you’ll come with me?”

“Of course,” Caitlin said, wondering why Alicia had remained so completely quiet through the entire conversation. Just sitting there, her face fixed like stone. When Caitlin and Saunders walked off, Alicia walked silently behind them.

Saunders stopped in front of a nondescript door at the end of a hallway Caitlin was sure she had never seen before.

“I’ll take it from here, Major, you’re dismissed,” Saunders said. Alicia Cox said nothing before she saluted and turned on her heel and walked off.

The Colonel punched a security code into a keypad then looked into a device that Caitlin assumed was scanning his retina as an additional security precaution. Two seconds later there was a beep and the door slid open.

“Follow me.”

Caitlin walked through the door, her curiosity mounting with each step. They passed through three additional security checkpoints before stopping at one final door. Saunders placed his palm on a scanner which glowed red for a moment. Saunders opened the door.

“After you,” he said.

Caitlin walked slowly into the room. There were banks of computers with programmers hunched over their terminals. In the center of the room was a glass-enclosed clean room. Caitlin walked up to one of the glass walls and peered inside. In the center of the clean room was a table, and on the table was a computer chip sitting in a what appeared to be some kind of modified universal chip testing apparatus. Wires ran from the apparatus out of the clean room and to a hub to which each of the workstations was connected

When Caitlin got close enough to the glass, she could see the Union Jack still embossed on the chip’s case.