Chapter 5

No way I was going back to sleep, not now. Damn Surfer anyway! He could have waited until morning!

I grabbed a towel and my bag of shaving gear and headed across to the bath unit for a quick shave and shower. Finished, I hung the towel on a rack in my CHU to dry and tossed my dirty uniform at the laundry bag. It missed, so I reached out with my Talent and picked the uniform up. That part was easy, but stuffing it into the laundry bag was impossible. Finally I brought the bag over and bagged the uniform by hand. It would have been easier to do without the PK; everything is very close in a CHU, but you get lazy after a while. It’s worth a small grin, picking up a dirty uniform and laundry bag without having to take the three steps to where they’re lying.

Using PK for innocent fun is not the same as tangling a jihadist’s foot or yanking on his rifle while he was trying to shoot one of my guys. Not the same as picking up dead and wounded kids after an attack, either. Wonderful stuff, psychokinetics, but also very limited. Thousands of basketball players can pick up a basketball. I can too, even across a court. For that matter, I can pick up the basketball player if he’s close enough. But that player can spin the basketball on his fingertip and I can’t spin it at all. Whether balanced on a fingertip or hanging in the air, the most I can do is cause the basketball to rotate. Even then, it’s slow and it takes enormous concentration.

There was no logic to the resentful thought I’d had about Surfer. He’d commed me on his schedule, not mine. I knew that, but logic wasn’t my strong point after waking up from the best sleep I’d had in a long time. Where was he now? In hiding, probably, after finding out about the missing people and the implant in his neck. Was he still in California? It didn’t matter, a TP can work from anywhere. California, New York, anyplace in the world for that matter; the only reason for thinking Surfer was in California was because that’s where he’d been. Distance isn’t a limitation; it takes concentration, but a TP can comm another TP on the far side of the world.

What had made him wary? On the surface, he was just what the School wanted, a strong telepath. But maybe it was that same Talent that had made him suspicious. If he was as strong as I now suspected, he might have picked up stray thoughts just from being around the agency’s people. For that matter, all the things he’d told me about that unnamed ‘friend’ might have been a lie; Surfer might have read the information directly from someone’s mind. Now he was on the run, planning to disappear so that not even the agency could find him. It takes money and preparation to do that. It’s far too easy to track someone nowadays, and Surfer would know that. Disappearing nowadays is next to impossible, so how was he going to do it?

People almost always leave a paper trail. Even if they pay cash and don’t use a cell phone registered to them, there are surveillance cameras. Every cell phone is a camera, and electronic images can be searched by computer. Some phones even have built-in GPS. Had Surfer planned far enough ahead to have everything ready when he made his escape?

We hadn’t been close, Surfer and me. I’d liked G-man because he was as impulsive and playful as I was, but as for the rest of the people at the School, we were just too different. My growing PK strength had set me apart even before I began to follow a different path. Even if I had tried to interact more with the others, they wouldn’t have understood. As a result, I became even more of a loner than I’d been before the School recruited me.

Having no close friends, I’d concentrated on developing my ability to move objects instead of trying to improve my telepathy or precognition. Those other abilities were there, but I instinctively knew I’d gone as far with them as I could. The PK ability kept growing, I worked to improve my strength and control. The only thing I had in common with the others was that all of us spent hours each day under the helmet while the computer pushed us farther apart.

Mind-over-matter exists; I’m the living proof, and I’m far stronger now than I’d been when the administrators sent me to the Army. But even with my new strength, how much good had I done? What could I do that two or three normal humans acting together couldn’t accomplish? For that matter, just one normal using a machine could do so much more! Even in combat, what unique qualities could I bring to the fight? Simple answer, almost none. The Navy and Air Force did so much more than I could! They had ships and bombers and fighters, the Army depended on tanks, armored trucks, and robots.

That being said, there was still a place for boots-on-the-ground, boots with a soldier in them. Especially a soldier who could occasionally protect other soldiers by triggering a bomb before the jihadists intended. The infantry rarely marches into battle now, but there’s still a need for foot patrols. A man on foot can see more, can use his senses in ways that soldiers in vehicles can’t. He can go where no vehicle can.

There are comparatively few roads in Afghanistan anyway, and some of them go through terrain that’s almost impassable. Consider the Korengal; it’s all narrow gullies, steep canyon walls, and a few primitive tracks masquerading as ‘roads’. The canyon walls are where the enemy hides, waiting to ambush those foot patrols, so it’s still an infantryman’s war when you’re out in the shit.

So yes, I had done some good. My Talent had helped, unquestionably; there were men alive and healthy today because of what I’d done, and a fair number of jihadists who were not. Army engineers use robots to trigger an IED, but I needed no robot. I could also reach out during a firefight and disrupt an attack, at least some of the time. Logically I understood these things, but sometimes doubt is stronger than logic.

When that happened, I got that feeling. The one that said I was special, that I should have done more practicing, should have been able to do more than what I’d done! Because I hadn’t, people had died.

Survivors feel guilty for no good reason, but I had earned my guilt.

I didn’t want to try to scrounge something from the dining facility, not yet. There would be people around, and one of them might be an assassin. This was my new reality. So I measured the coffee beans, ground them, and set up my small percolator.

I probably was being paranoid by not wanting to go to the dining facility, but even paranoids have enemies; if Surfer was correct, I had at least one. Not to mention a few million locals that hated all foreigners on general principles. There is never a shortage of enemies in Afghanistan.

I considered my options. A killer might be stalking me right here in the compound. No place in Afghanistan was safe, no one could be considered ‘friendly’. If my PreCog worked, I might have time to do something. Emphasis if. Would I have time to identify the guy with the controller before he was close enough to off me? For that matter, it might be a ‘her’; women worked in the compound too. My bubble wouldn’t stop radio waves from a controller. I would have to kill the assassin before he or she killed me.

Suppose I made a mistake and offed some poor schlub who was reaching for a cigarette and about to ask me for a light? I was scared. An IED couldn’t kill me, but a guy could do it just by pushing a remote control button. Attitude ... my attitude could get me killed! I felt a chill at what might have happened, what might still happen as a result of my going into the Colonel’s Club. What if he’d been the one with the controller? What if he’d had a remote or something on his desk? All he would have had to do was point it at me and push a button. Just that easy, he could have changed me from on to off, permanently.

Even knowing the thing was in my neck, what could I do? I could leave the compound, but I wouldn’t be able to blend in with the locals. Getting back to the states without orders would be nearly impossible. If I had enough money and a false identity, I might be able to charter a civilian aircraft. Then all I’d need to do was fly to a western country where I could do what Surfer was attempting, go into hiding. But I was in Afghanistan with very little money and no civilian clothing. I was trapped, a tethered goat just waiting for the tiger to pounce. What does a mouse do when it finds itself in a maze? It runs the maze, always searching for a way out. But maybe there would be an out for me, if I could just think of a way because I’m not exactly a mouse.

Mice don’t have the option of killing the one who put them in the maze, and they can’t knock holes in the walls.

I finished my coffee and started another cup while an MRE heated in the microwave. It was late afternoon; where had the time gone? There was another way to release the tension. I could go on another late-night patrol, just me and the night and with no assassin waiting nearby. I’d done it a dozen times, and after every patrol I slept well.

So I hung out in my CHU the rest of the day, drinking coffee and when I got hungry, munching on an MRE. Finally the sun went down and the compound grew quiet, so I gathered my gear and slipped out the door.

I had once suggested going out alone and patrolling the trails leading into the village, but that idea hadn’t gone beyond Major Stevenson. “Patrols have to be strong enough to hold until reinforcements can arrive, Chief! You should know that! Dismissed.”