how he had interrogated her.
Captain Wei of East Lightning began typing fabricated answers, turning dead guerillas into American commandos. It was clear by Wei’s false answers that some Americans had escaped with knowledge of Blue Swan. The leak of the convoy’s route and time of travel—it had occurred according to what Wei wrote because of a traitor on the Occupation Staff. Wei hated the Chinese Army, the way many soldiers looked at him with distain when they thought he wasn’t looking. Yes. Wei grinned as he typed. The Americans had suborned this person because of his relatives living in North America. High Command would devour that, as they feared Chinese-Americans infiltrating their ranks.
Wei became thoughtful. How should he word this? Hmm. In his zeal to uncover more, there had been an accident. Yes, he had injected her with—
“No.” He needed a doctor. There would be an autopsy. Wei considered ordering the body incinerated, but that would be a risk. He had already broken protocol ordering the operative away. Any more deviations would invite a full-scale investigation, just the thing he was trying to avoid.
Wei stared at his answers, checking them, looking for flaws or red flags. Returning to his office first and fortifying himself with another blue pill, he returned to the corpse and called for the resident doctor. He would say little, waiting for the doctor to tell him why the patient had died. Then he would concoct the end of the story and hope no one ever dug too deeply into what had really happened.
A defeated Stan Higgins sat in his base house at his desk. It was in a small cubicle and blocked by a closed door. He could hear his wife in the other room watching
Stan stared at a computer screen, studying the judge’s sentence: induction into a Detention Center until someone posted a ten thousand new-dollar bail. Stan massaged his forehead. Where was he supposed to get enough money to pay for his son’s bail? Why had the young fool gone and protested? Why couldn’t Jake stick to his engineering studies? It had been hard enough gathering the tuition costs.
In his day, kids got student loans from the government. With the Sovereign Debt Depression that had gone the way of the dinosaur. Now, people had to scrape enough together to send their children to college. It meant fewer people went to college, making high school more important again for a person’s future.
Stan closed his eyes. He felt the weight of his years. Three weeks ago, he’d turned fifty. He couldn’t believe it—fifty! He still lifted weights, played basketball, ping-pong and ran occasionally. More than anything, the trouble was recuperation. He didn’t heal like he used to and his left knee bothered him. He couldn’t play basketball on cement courts anymore. Even blacktop hurt the knee. Wooden floors were the best. The truth, he should give up basketball. Otherwise, he was begging for a ripped tendon or a torn muscle.
Yet even ping-pong pained the bad knee when he lunged to slam the ball. If he slammed the ball too many times in a game, it made his shoulder hurt for the next two days.
Who would figure that ping-pong could hurt a man, even an aging athlete? It was ridiculous. Maybe he could learn to play like some of those experts he’d seen in Las Vegas last year. One old man with white hair had hardly moved. He had been an old geezer in every way except that he’d hit the ball just so and it did magical things, spinning off at bizarre angles, making the younger players leap around like fools. The trouble was Stan had never played that way. He liked speed, to drill the ball as hard as he could.
“Ten thousand new-dollars,” Stan muttered, attempting to focus on the computer screen. His son had been accepted to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. That was one of the best places to earn an engineering degree. Now Jake had gone and openly protested the President’s state of emergency. Even if Stan posted the bail, Jake would probably get kicked out of Cal Poly. Losing his Student Status, they would likely draft him into a Militia battalion.
“I don’t have ten thousand new-dollars,” Stan told himself.
Lines appeared in his forehead. Should he have remained in Anchorage? On his teaching salary and with the extra pay from the National Guard—
Stan blew out his cheeks in depression. So much had changed since the Alaskan War. What had that been, seven years ago now?
He had a theory about why time moved faster the older you got. When you were ten years old, a year represented one tenth of your life. When you were fifty, one year represented one fiftieth of your life. Therefore, one year was shorter the older you became. But none of that was going to help him post bail.
Laughter rang out from the TV, sounding like a drunken hyena. No doubt, it was over a joke that wasn’t even funny. Shows still used laugh tracks just as when he’d been a kid. Stan wanted to yell at his wife to turn down the TV. She knew he was in here thinking about how to free Jake from the Detention Center. If someone spent too long there, officials stamped their driver’s license with “Resister Status.”
Stan massaged his forehead. He’d always wanted Jake to succeed. He wanted to give Jake every advantage he could. It wasn’t like the old days. Good jobs were hard to come by now. An engineering degree from Cal Poly would have gone a long way toward making sure the boy avoided the Army, whether Regular or Militia.
Stan bared his teeth. The Army: fighting… killing… running from overwhelming odds, from enemy tanks. He’d never told anyone about his nightmares, not his wife, not Jose and for sure not the base psychologist who diagnosed each of them in the experimental unit, seeing if they were still mentally fit for duty. About once a month in his dreams, he relived the worst horrors of the Alaskan War. He dreaded the nightmares: the screech of Chinese shells, watching long-dead friends burn to death and fearing the terrible tri-turreted tanks rumbling toward him, knowing that every shell he fired would bounce off the incredible armor.
Lately his wife had begun asking if he was okay. He’d wake up in the morning hollow-eyed, or he’d start up from sleep sweating. He made up all kinds of excuses. Now, sitting here, Stan wondered if he was going the route of his dad. Old Mack Higgins had gone around the bend—crazy in the head. These days, Stan had a greater appreciation as to why it might have happened.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Stan quoted to himself. He dreaded the idea of going crazy. For sure, he wasn’t going to tell the base psychologist anything she might use against him.
Stan blew out his cheeks. He was a captain in an experimental unit. Seven years ago, he had been a captain in the Alaskan National Guard, in one of the few tank units there. He had received the Medal of Honor for helping stop the Chinese Invasion into Anchorage. Some people said his actions had been critical for victory. Afterward the Army Chief of Staff invited Stan to accept a commission in the Regular Army. Since Stan’s expertise had been Armor, he’d entered that branch of the service and had soon found himself in the experimental department.
With that kind of start—even though he’d been old by Army reckoning—he should have risen in rank. Allen had just received a promotion from captain to major. Stan had been counting on getting the promotion. With better pay, could he go to a bank and finance ten thousand?
“Seven years of service,” Stan muttered, as he rubbed his forehead. Now that he thought about it that was too long for a man of his age and expertise and with the Medal of Honor. He knew what was wrong. The colonel in charge of the experimental unit disliked him and his methods and Stan wasn’t good at politicking, at butt kissing.
Stan slammed his fists onto the desk, jarring the computer screen.
Once, the TV volume would have lowered if he did that. His wife would have asked if everything was okay. Now, the volume increased. She didn’t want to think about Jake being in the Detention Center.
“Ten thousand new-dollars,” Stan whispered.
Maybe he could call Crane. The man was a former National Guard Colonel who belonged to the John Glen Corporation, a military-funded think tank in D.C. Crane had known him during the Alaskan War. Crane knew his nickname of “Professor” and Crane had said many times that he appreciated Stan’s military historical knowledge. “John Glen could use a man like you, Stan.”
The last offer had come two years ago. Stan had been too absorbed then in the experimental unit, in the Mark I Behemoth battle tank. The Behemoth dwarfed all known tanks. It was a three hundred ton monstrosity, three times the size of a Chinese tri-turreted tank.
Stan flexed his hands. Two years ago, the possibilities of the Behemoth had excited him. Now he needed ten thousand new-dollars. Besides, the Army had passed him over yet again. He had learned that the Chief of Staff who had invited him into the Army—President Clark had twisted the officer’s arm. The truth was the Army didn’t want a man they considered a maverick at best and a hotheaded, insubordinate fool at worst. Which was funny really,
