The Soldier

“Good morning, Mr. Logan.”

Logan looked up to see a tall black man in civilian attire walk into the room.

“I’m Chris Newhouse, Federal Investigation Bureau. How are you?”

“I’d be better if I had not been escorted in here at gunpoint and had my horse and rifle taken from me. Oh, and sitting with my arms handcuffed behind my back is not the most comfortable of positions.

“I assumed this is a military installation, judging from Captain Dixon’s explanation.”

“It’s a government installation, Kennedy Space Center always has been,” Newhouse said. “Despite what you may have been told during your journeys in the wilds, the United States is not any sort of military dictatorship.”

“Is that so?” Logan said. ” From what I’ve seen, I think I would respectfully disagree. And isn’t it the ’Federal Bureau of Investigations?”

“We will save that discussion for another time,” Newhouse said, ignoring Logan’s query. ” For now, we would just like to know why you decided to take a camping trip in the middle of a federal installation?”

“As I told the captain, I’m looking for a friend your government has captured.”

“Captured? The Federal Government doesn’t capture people, Mr. Logan, we have employees. You’re from England, right?”

“Is it obvious?”

“So, can I assume you are part of the group of terrorists that shot its way out of the South Carolina docking bay earlier this year?”

Logan said nothing.

“Your group killed a lot of good men and women, including a friend of mine.”

“If your government wasn’t so bloody paranoid and allowed normal trade and travel, that would not have been necessary.”

“We are entitled to protect our national security. The Wall was built to protect our interests. It was either that or World War III.”

“Is that what they are teaching you lot in school over here? That The Wall keeps us out?”

Logan shook his head in disgust.

“Though I shouldn’t be surprised. Let me clue you in, friend. Walls work in two directions. That damned thing keeps us out, sure, but it seems to me its main purpose is to keep you Americans in, to keep you cut off from the rest of the world so your so-called government can keep you under control.”

Newhouse stood and backhanded Logan across the face, knocking him down. The guard who had been standing at the door brought his rifle up and aimed it at Logan’s head, then looked to Newhouse for direction. Newhouse raised a hand to stop the guard from going any further.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Newhouse said.

“Stop and think about it, mate,” Logan said as a drop of blood moved slowly down his face. “I can’t imagine any policeman from a legitimate government that would do what you just did.”

“Perhaps,” Newhouse said. “But I’ll bet those countries aren’t under the constant threat of invasion like the United States.”

Logan simply stared at the man as realization dawned. Whatever the United States once was, it was no more. The bastion of freedom and opportunity was no more than a petty dictatorship.

“Now,” Newhouse said. “Let’s start again. Why are you here?”

“I told you, to find someone, rescue her if possible.”

“OK. Tell me her name and I’ll see that you can meet her so you can see for yourself that she’s OK and doesn’t need the rescuing you think she does.”

“You say that, mate, but trust me, even if you tried to arrange a meeting it would be shot down by someone higher up the food chain. I know my friend was captured as well as I know this government of yours won’t allow me to see her, because despite what you might believe she, and I suspect others, are not employees here they are prisoners. Forced to work on your government’s rocket program under threat of some kind.

Oh, and that rocket? It’s not launching a weather satellite, it’s a good old-fashioned ICBM.”

“A what?”

Logan sighed. “ICBM – Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. It’s designed to deliver a warhead during an attack. Your government, with all of its talk of defending itself, is planning to attack England, and then who knows where after that.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Newhouse said.

“You say that a lot.”

Logan couldn’t tell from the man’s face if he were angry, frustrated or both.

“Because it’s true,” Newhouse said. “You are completely misinformed.”

“Am I? Do you even have weather reports? I haven’t even seen any evidence that you have television or radio over here at all. And the fact is, my friend, that there are still plenty of weather satellites in orbit with their data free for the taking, we use them in England all the time. There is no need for an additional satellite.

“Think about it. In all of your time here have you seen anyone actually working on a satellite?”

“They tell us it’s being prepped in another facility and will be brought here for the launch.”

“Which is when? Logan asked.

“Three days,” Newhouse said as he stood up. “This has gone on long enough, I have other things to deal with.”

“Take him back to his cell,” he said to the guard, then turned to Logan. “We’ll talk again.”

“Looking forward to it,” Logan said, thinking he had least planted a few seeds of doubt in the man’s mind. “Seriously.”

Caitlin walked into the space center office complex, clocked in and went to her cubicle. She activated her computer terminal, read some reports on the preparation for the test launch in two days and then settled in to her current task, finalizing the schematics of the PK-47 chip. She actually had two sets of drawings on her computer. One set represented the actual workings of the chip, the other was the chip as she had told the Americans it worked.

Caitlin was fairly confident that the Americans could never find the file on the computer and even if they did, they would never crack the multi-variant encryption she used to secure it from prying eyes.

“Yo, Caitlin, what’s up?”

Caitlin looked up to Jennifer, a petite blonde who was probably the closest thing to a friend she slowed herself to have at Kennedy.

“Not much, Jenny, how are you?”

“Just fine, so how was the date with Larry, last night?”

“It went well.”

Jenny looked at her.

“More than well, I’d guess, you’re glowing. Oh my God! You slept with him, didn’t you?”

“None of your business, my dear,” Caitlin said as she stood up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

Before Jenny could say anything, Caitlin headed off for the lab where the chip was kept. Mostly she wanted to avoid any more questions, but also because she realized just how normal it was all becoming, and she didn’t want it to become normal. She was here on a mission, she had friends out in the wild that she had to help, and she really didn’t want to get tied into a life in America – even a life that included Larry.

Once in the lab, she retrieved the chip from storage and put it on her workbench. She hooked several leads to it and began running some additional tests. It wasn’t that the tests were necessary, but she wanted to appear to be busy while she thought her situation through and tried to come up with a plan of action. That’s what Logan would be doing in her situation, she assumed, planning the next step, which she knew should be to find a way to escape from Kennedy, a task that had become decidedly easier since here “Success” with the chip which earned her a level of trust from the Americans and some increased freedoms. Caitlin thought she could take advantage of the lighter leash the Americans were keeping her on to affect an escape.

But to where? She knew Logan, and she assumed Jon and some other minutemen, were in the area, but she had no idea where, and it would probably not be safe to just go wandering aimlessly about to try and find them.

“Hey Caitlin, hear the latest scuttlebutt?”

Caitlin looked up to see Franklin Scholtz approaching. Caitlin liked Franklin, as the older, slightly portly man of German descent was always kind to her.

“No, what?”

“They nabbed someone trying to sneak on the base. A Brit. The security teams caught him camping out by some of the old launch facilities.

Caitlin tried to keep her response even.

“A Brit? How’d he get here?”

Caitlin was fortunate in that no one she worked with knew her true story. The Americans had not announced it, and she had adopted a passing American accent that sometimes bordered on a southern drawl.

“Who knows. They say he was going to try and stop the launch.”

“One man?” Caitlin asked with a grin. “How could one man stop the launch.”

“No idea,” Franklin said. “Just passing along the gossip. See ’ya.”

Franklin walked off and Caitlin turned to her computer.

“Logan, you old sod,” she whispered to herself. “You came to rescue me and now it turns out that I will be the one to get you out. But first I have to find you.”

Finding Logan turned out to be not quite as difficult a task as Caitlin anticipated. In order to facilitate her work with the chip, she had been given a certain amount of security clearance, not enough to create any mischief for the Americans, but they did allow her access to what was left of the Internet in America. What the Americans didn’t realize is that level of clearance also got her into several low-level systems, one of which included the records of prisoners throughout America, including those at Kennedy Space Center.

But as easy as it was to determine the location of Logan’s holding cell, figuring a way to get him out posed more of a challenge. Caitlin knew she couldn’t just blithely walk into the holding area and ask to take Logan for a stroll around the grounds. She knew she would need some help. And there was only one person who could provide it.

“You want me to do what?”

Larry stared at Caitlin as she sat on the couch in his apartment, unsure if he heard her correctly.

Caitlin took a deep breath. “I want you to help me get Logan out of security lockup on base.”

That part I understand, and can probably help you with, it’s the rest of it that I’m having a bit of trouble getting my mind around.

“Yes, the rest of it,” Caitlin said. She knew from the beginning that Larry might not be fully comfortable with the full extent of her plan, and that Caitlin was not really 100 percent sure of how Larry felt about her. It was asking him to take a huge leap of faith in their relationship.

“Well, it seems to me that if you help me with the first part of my little plan, you ought not remain at Kennedy any longer. And the fact is that no matter how this all plays out, I’ve grown quite fond of you and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to give you up.”

“But you’re asking me to give up a lot,” Larry said. “I’ve got it pretty good here, you know.”

“I know,” Caitlin said. “But I think we have ‘got it pretty good’ as well.”

“We do,” Larry said as he moved to sit next to her and put his arms around her.

“We talked about this possibility coming up some day,

Caitlin said.

Larry nodded.

“True, but ‘some day’ arrived way sooner than I was anticipating.”

“I know,” Caitlin said. “But this has to happen. Now.

“You don’t have to decide about going to England right away. We don’t even know if that’s possible yet. But there is a life out there that’s free and easy. The Minutemen could use someone like you, and you know that this society can’t last. It’s already struggling.”

“That much is true,” Larry agreed. “There’s a lot of chatter on the ’Net and something is going to happen eventually.”

“Then help me and come with us,” she said. “And if the time comes and you don’t want to go with me, you can stay with the Minutemen. Or I suppose you could always come back and tell them we captured you and forced you to come with us. I think they would believe that without too many questions.”

Larry was a silent for a moment as he turned Caitlin’s proposal over in his mind. Then he sighed and leaned over to kiss her.

“Then you’ll help?”

“I’ll help you get Logan out of here, at least that much,” Larry said. “Anything else, we’ll see how it goes. I’m really not sure I’m cut out for the wild man in the wilderness thing.”

Caitlin kissed him. “Thank you, you have no idea how much that means to me.”