Chapter 11

“T?”

The two were sitting at a table, still recovering from the morning’s involvement with the texting driver. Shezzie switched to using her Talent. <That man at the table. Just glance around ... yes, that one. Don’t take note of him, but he’s more interested in us than I feel comfortable with. I saw him at the accident scene, but didn’t pay attention at the time because I thought he was just another bystander. Do you think he’s following us?>

<I don’t think so. Still, it won’t hurt to wait until he looks away, then leave. I’ve got the books I needed and I made copies of other documents while we were in the library. The rest of what I need I can order through a bookstore or buy through the library at New Mexico State.>

They continued to observe the man at the table surreptitiously until he finally appeared to lose interest and looked toward a noisy card game going on at a table across the room. T and Shezzie quietly got up and left, and the man paid them no attention as they walked out.

<Did you read anything more from his mind, Shezzie?>

<He was curious, but I couldn’t get more than that. Maybe he was just interested because of the little girl. A parent really needs to watch a child that small, don’t you think?>

T agreed and the two walked westward to where they’d left his truck.

After considering a used vehicle, they’d finally decided that a Ford or Chevrolet pickup truck would be anonymous and reliable transportation. They chose a new Chevrolet Silverado 1500 for no better reason than that they liked the salesman more than the one they met at the Ford dealership. The Chevy was now parked across Mesa Street on a side avenue. Parking was, as always, a problem around UTEP. The school was known as a commuter school; most students lived at home and commuted by car. Even if you had a parking pass, it could be a chore to find an empty space on campus, which was why the pickup had been left a few blocks away and they’d walked to the library.

They’d spotted the child on their way back to the truck and T had intervened, almost without thinking. He’d had a quick image, almost a flashback, and reacted. The image of a child dying needlessly because he couldn’t save her had haunted his dreams ever since. It wasn’t going to happen again, not if he could stop it! A fast step, then another, taken without thinking had put him into position beside the child. After the girl was pushed to safety, he had protected himself by quickly forming his bubble, and as soon as he stopped rolling he’d collapsed it and picked himself off the street. He felt good about what he’d done, better in fact than he’d felt since leaving Afghanistan. There had been no certainty that the child would have died had the car struck her, but it was better to be safe than sorry. As for any aftermath, it was likely that no one realized just how he’d escaped injury. He’d not even picked up road rash; he was unmarked from the mild impact or the ensuing roll down the street.

T drove north on Mesa and followed the signs to the freeway. He would take I-10 west, then switch to I-25 at Las Cruces. The interstate highway passed through Socorro, then Albuquerque. North of Albuquerque he’d take the Bernalillo exit and head west on NM 505. A final turn north at state highway 4 would take them to their cabin a short distance north of Jemez Springs.

They had rented an apartment on the west side of El Paso soon after arriving, and they’d kept it even after buying the cabin. T considered whether he wouldn’t be better off seeking the aid of a surgeon, but decided it would be too dangerous. The doctor would talk, and questions would be asked.

They hadn’t yet made a final decision regarding whether to seek help from a Mexican surgeon or do the extraction themselves; in the meantime, preparations went on. The more knowledge each of them had, the better.

It might be possible to cross into Ciudad Juarez or Palomas and find a competent surgeon who would also keep his mouth shut. Equally, it might not be possible or advisable to try to find such. Even a Mexican surgeon might talk, if not to newspaper or television reporters then certainly to his medical colleagues. That report could then find its way back to people that T and Surfer didn’t want to learn what had happened, about removal of explosive charges from necks. For that matter, many surgeons practicing in Juarez also had offices in the US, negating the very reason for going to a Mexican physician in the first place.

They had no clear plan as yet, but working to learn as much as they could before making the attempt seemed wise. T would do the surgery on Surfer with Shezzie’s assistance, and Surfer could then do the same for T. The procedure looked to be fairly simple, and neither an MD nor a license to practice medicine would be necessary. Surfer now lived in the apartment. It was accepted that at some point Surfer would join them at the cabin in the Jemez Mountains and they would then attempt to remove the charges from their necks.

Surfer had signed up for several premed courses including Biology, Statistics, and by virtue of a waiver, Anatomy and Physiology. Thanks to his Talent, he’d had no problem convincing the dean that he could do the work. T had intended to do the same, but a problem had immediately surfaced. His purchased identity documents, while sufficient for ordinary needs, had originally belonged to a New Yorker who’d dropped out of high school in his freshman year to work for a gang.

He had other identity documents that might work, but as soon as UTEP sent off for a high school transcript questions would be raised. In the meantime, T had gotten a driver’s license and bank account, then bought a cabin and rented an apartment using the identity that had originally belonged to the low-level gang member. If he abandoned his current identity, he would have to start the whole process over and always, with each transaction there was the possibility that something could go wrong. Conceivably, fingerprints would be required, and after that who could say where the fallout might lead?

So far as the Agency knew, Surfer was the only one still alive. He had last been seen in California, so there was no reason to suspect he was hiding out in El Paso. T was presumed dead or a captive of the Taliban and no one knew of Shezzie’s Talent. The three were as safe as it was possible for fugitives to be, but in reality safety was an illusion. Like a house of cards, one mistake could bring down the whole edifice.

There was a solution, admittedly not the best but it seemed the only one they had. T also studied anatomy, but privately. He read extensively during the day and Shezzie worked with him and Surfer in the evenings. Between what Surfer learned in class and what T picked up through his readings, they hoped to find a way to safely remove the implants. While admittedly no doctor, Shezzie had spent considerable time in operating rooms, assisting those who were surgeons.

They had decided that the implant was located next to the upper or lower junction of the C5 cervical vertebra where it fits between the C4 and C6, in the deep curve that’s found below the atlas bone and above the thoracic vertebrae. Removing it would be technically easy, but detailed knowledge of nerves, tendons, and muscles was necessary in order to avoid collateral damage. Even a slight mistake could leave one or both paralyzed, even if they succeeded in removing the implant. Balancing the head also depended on precise control of the neck muscles, and if one muscle was unable to respond there would be difficulties holding the head upright.

T had acquired a plastic model of a spine from a supply house that sold primarily to schools and chiropractors. He worked with that, concentrating on the region of the cervical vertebrae where they thought the explosive charges had been planted. He’d gotten the best teaching prop they had, surprisingly expensive, then bought models of each of the cervical vertebrae. He learned to sketch them and pencil in tracks where the nerves exited the spinal cord. Shadowy outlines indicated the location of muscles and the long tendons that held the head upright.

He’d been at the college library that day, copying articles from periodicals to supplement the books he’d already bought, when they’d found themselves at the scene of a developing accident.

Colonel Peter Paul Henderson, formerly Brigadier General and Commandant of the School, looked ruefully at the bumper of his car. It never failed to annoy him. Instead of the blue star of a general officer (which would have gotten him a lot of perks when visiting a military installation, even as a retiree), there was a blue eagle. Granted, that got him most of the same perks, but it grated nonetheless. He’d done his best, and for what?

He’d been detailed to intelligence duty early in his career and had worked with a variety of agencies thereafter, first with Defense Intelligence, then a stint with the NSA, from there back to the DIA, and finally to the CIA. In each case, he’d been attached to the agency as a military officer but not an employee. In a sense, he had been the perfect commandant, someone outside the recognized intelligence community who could be disavowed if the story leaked.

He had always maintained his Army affiliation during his years working in intelligence, even hoped at some point for a command. He was too senior as a lieutenant colonel for lesser postings, but possibly a battalion? There would be no regiment without successful battalion command, and even then, attendance at one of the schools for senior officers would be required. He’d taken the Command and General Staff College course by distance learning, a bone for his service in intelligence, but he soon came to understand there would be no War College.

But then had come the offer to command the School; it carried with it a promotion to brigadier general, so he’d jumped at the opportunity. Who could say? A successful ‘mission accomplished’ might lead to other assignments, and anyway retiring as a BG was better than retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

But for it to be permanent, Congress would have to approve. It might be only for show; intelligence agencies did that. But the Army might bump him to colonel. That wouldn’t be unheard-of.

For a while, it had been golden. The School was not like a normal military base at all. Instead, it resembled the campus of a junior college. An obscure junior college to be sure, but that was to be expected since it was wholly controlled by the intelligence community. A number of academics had been employed to design the curriculum, and Henderson got along well with them.

Computer feedback, little known at the time, had been developed into an effective training tool. As for employing computers to search for potential recruits, that might become the norm in future for US intelligence agencies. Early successes could be emphasized and surely, the agencies they worked for would notice. Graduates who could communicate long distances without being intercepted or jammed would be seamlessly integrated into the Operations Directorate as a separate branch. This would blend conventional operations, already ongoing, with special intelligence. The new branch would gather information via human intelligence assets trained by the School. The communicators would read the thoughts of locals, information that could not possibly be gained in any other way. The information would then be instantly sent off to Langley for analysis. It would then be included in the daily intelligence summaries provided to high officials.