The Soldier
Chapter 21

“Nothing. Three damn weeks of looking and not a thing to show for it.”

Mandy walked over to where Caitlin was working and put a hand on her shoulder.

“We knew it was a long shot from the beginning, so don’t sweat it.”

“That’s easy for you say, you’re not the one stuck in another country with no way home.”

Caitlin’s voice was sad and angry at the same time.

“Well, we may be home, but we’re sure as hell stuck,” Mandy said. “Come on, take a break. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

Caitlin looked at her computer.

“Oh why the hell not,” she said as she stood up and stretched. “Maybe it’ll replace something if it’s not being watched.”

The two women walked out of the abandoned relay station and headed up the path to the campsite. They had walked in silence for several minutes before Mandy said anything.

“So, why did you sign up for this one-way trip? Do you have the hots for Logan?”

Mandy looked evenly at Caitlin, not quite sure if she really wanted to hear the answer to that particular question and not wanting to let Caitlin know just how she felt about Logan if Caitlin had feelings of her own.

“You know, under different circumstances, having two people in the space of a week or so ask me the same question about my love life might actually be amusing.”

Mandy laughed, trying to make it seem natural.

“Oh, who else asked? One of our people?”

“Yeah, Max,” Caitlin said. “He wanted to know if I was, how did he put it, ‘sweet on’ Logan.”

“And you said . . .”

“Well, of course no,” Caitlin said. “Logan is the leader of this team of mis-adventurers and nothing more. He just sold me on the ‘For Queen and Country’ thing.”

Mandy couldn’t keep from smiling, visibly relaxing at Caitlin’s answer.

“I know that look. You are interested in him, aren’t you?”

Mandy smiled again, this time a warm “between us girls” kind of smile.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” she said as they reached the camp area. Mandy grabbed two cups and reached for the coffee pot. “But I just wanted to make sure, for whatever else I am, I’m not the type of girl to break up someone else’s relationship. I just don’t do that.”

Caitlin chuckled.

“What?” Mandy asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Caitlin said as she walked over to take one of the cups Mandy was holding. Maybe it was the hard life Caitlin faced in this new America, but she looked more like a seasoned frontier woman, not really fitting the description of ‘girl,’ at least not how Caitlin would use the word. Maybe it was an American thing that unattached women still used the term when referring to themselves.

“How do you take yours?”

“Black,” Caitlin said. “Thanks.”

She took the mug from Mandy and sat down. She took sip. She allowed herself to relax as the hot liquid moved towards her stomach, warming her as it worked its way down.

“I didn’t quite realize how badly I needed to take a moment away from that computer.”

“We all get that way at times,” Mandy said. “Sometimes you just have to force yourself to take a step back. We’ve been wrapped up in this so long over here that many of us have forgotten what down time even is.”

“How long?”

“How long what?” Mandy was obviously puzzled by the question.

“How long has there been a resistance? It must have taken years to build the wall, and America didn’t fall apart over night.”

Mandy nodded.

“Absolutely. Actually, for quite some times things were great, because the construction of the wall generated a lot of income for a lot of people – but it pretty much bankrupted the government. So once completed, there was nothing left for pensions, social security, anything. And that’s when the bottom dropped out.

“It took about 20 years after the completion before the first whispers of opposition began to surface. The minutemen were formed, or I guess you could say re-formed in a sense, about 25 years ago. My father was in one of the first units down in Georgia. I grew up in a camp not unlike this one.”

“That’s some story,” Caitlin said. “Whatever problems we have over in England pale compared to what you’ve been through.”

“How so?”

“For starters. .”

Caitlin stopped short when a device on her belt began to beep. She dropped her cup and sprinted for the door.

“What’s wrong?” Caitlin called as she ran after Caitlin.

“We’ve been fingered.”

“Gotcha!”

Victor Davis looked up from his computer.

“What?”

“I finally nailed him, got a return and location on that intruder,” James Larson said.

“Where?”

“Working on it. I only had the link for a couple of seconds. I’m sure whoever it is had some kind of warning subroutine and pulled the plug almost as soon as I made the hit.”

“But can you trace it?”

“Give me a minute.”

James ran the brief signal through his own special tracing protocol, one of the many little projects he had been working on while “doodling.”

“What are you doing, exactly?”

“This is one of my pet projects,” James said with a hint of pride in his voice. “One of the things you’ve seen me working on. It attempts to trace a signal by looking for its electronic footprint or signature. Kind of like a latent fingerprint or DNA trace left on a wall or piece of furniture. Even when a signal is pulled, it leaves its mark for a several minutes until the ’Net writes over its path with a new signal. The trick is to replace, isolate and stabilize the footprint so it isn’t permanently lost.” “I’m calling Jacobsen,” Victor said as he reached for the telephone.

James said nothing, but continued to watch his program try to follow the fading signal to its origin.

“Come on, nail it down,” he said, more to himself than to the computer.

The computer screen displayed changed to display a world map. On the globe were thousands of lines that showed the possible routes of the signal. The view began to zoom in, first to an outline of the United States, again literally crisscrossed with lines.

“You are so very, very good,” James said as he watched the process.

“Meaning?”

“Whoever this is had the signal for the spiders bouncing literally all over the blasted planet to keep the signal hidden,” James said.

“But I thought we couldn’t access the worldwide ’Net?”

“We can’t,” James said. “But she clearly isn’t interested in our laws. Ninety-nine percent of the traces I’m following are turning out to be rabbit holes.”

“Rabbit holes?”

“Dead ends. Looks like you’re getting somewhere and then bam, nothing. Like going down an abandoned rabbit hole. OK, we’re getting somewhere.”

Victor looked over James’ shoulder at the computer screen, still holding the phone. The dial tone changed a rapid beep-beep, and Victor but the phone back in its cradle, thoroughly engrossed by what was happening on the monitor. As they watched, two things began to happen at once. The view began to zoom in to the United States and the number of lines began to decrease. The screen shifted to a view of the eastern portion of the United States and the number of lines halved.

“We’re getting there,” James said softly. “Come on, sweetey, nail the bastard.”

The view zoomed in to the Southeastern United States. Some lines dropped out almost immediately while other pulsated in different colors as the computer considered millions of trace possibilities a second. Another zoom centered the South Carolina District with only a few hundred lines. One more zoom and a red box appeared that circumscribed about 25 square miles. A beep signaled that the computer program had come up with the most precise estimate it could.

“That’s it?”

“That’s as close as it could get before the signal became too degraded,” James said.

“That’s still a large area to search, a lot of places to hide.”

“I’m not done yet,” James said as his hands flew over his keyboard. “There aren’t many places left where someone can tap into the network. The WIFI systems went down years ago, so they would need an actually hard tap into the network. And those are few and far between in the wilderness. So I’m cross-referencing with all known hard taps.”

A few more keystrokes and information began to scroll rapidly across the monitor. Then a list of three locations appeared. Clicked his mouse and a sheet of paper came out of his desktop printer.

“Give that to Jacobsen, or whomever.”

“And these are?” Victor asked.

“Those are the only three places in that area that our intruder could possibly be using to tap into our system. They’re old relay or maintenance sites. But if you want to nab them, you’d better hurry. If this dude’s as good as he seems to be, he already knows we found him.”

Caitlin ran into the old relay station, yanked the Ethernet cord from her laptop and slammed the lid down.

“What happened? What do you mean we’ve been fingered?”

“It means that somebody, a very good somebody, spotted my spiders crawling around the ’Net and tried to trace it back to us.”

“And did they?” Caitlin asked.

“No way of knowing for sure, but to play it safe I’d say we should assume that they did and beat a hasty retreat. We need to talk to Jonathan and I mean now.”

“Talk to me about what? What the hell is going on?”

The women turned to see Jonathan entering the room, somewhat out of breath. Right behind him was Logan, who took one look at Caitlin and knew what was wrong.

“They nailed you,” he said, a statement, not a question.

“I think so, yes,” Caitlin said.

The question is, do they know exactly where we are?”

Caitlin thought.

“It’s possible.”

Logan stopped talking for a moment while he considered the possibilities.

“So what do we do about it?” Logan asked, looking at Jonathan.

“We do what we always do,” he said. “Ease up my British friend. This isn’t the first time they Federals have gotten a bead on us and it won’t be the last either. We make ourselves scarce.”

He reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a small radio.

“Frasier this is Kelley.”

“Yo, Jon, what’s up?”

“Our new friends think the Feds were able to track their computer signal.”

“Some friends,” Frasier said.

“Regardless, our location may have been compromised, so we need to bug out of here immediately.”

“Where to, boss?”

“Not sure yet, probably back to Fayetteville. We haven’t been back there in three or so years, it’s probably cooled off by now. Let’s head for the old camp by the Cape Fear River. Always liked that location.”

“Understood. I’ll get the ball rolling immediately.”

“Great. Kelly out.”

“Bug out?”

Logan looked completely confused.

“It’s an old military term,” Jonathan said. “Picked it up from a history book. Back in the day, the Army had these mobile hospitals that they would set up as close to enemy lines as they could. If the bad guys got a bead on them they would “bug out” -- load up and get moving in 24 hours. It came from how roaches scurry away when you hit the lights in your kitchen, I think.”

“I swear, you Yanks have the strangest terms for things,” Logan said. “Why can’t you just call it an emergency departure?”

“Style, my friend. It’s all about style.”