Chapter 14

Peter Paul Henderson, Colonel, US Army retired, had become known to his friends as ‘Paul’. That was the way he signed the register at the Downtown Holiday Inn. Paul Henderson, with a credit card from USAA and an address in San Antonio, was just one more visitor to El Paso. He attracted only ordinary attention from the clerk when he checked in. He was uncertain how he should proceed, now that he’d arrived.

Boredom, a nagging sense of unfinished duty, and simple curiosity had brought him. Now that he was here, he decided to review the newspaper article and the YouTube video again. After that, he would look around the bustling city and perhaps visit Fort Bliss.

The post had changed from the days when it hosted the world’s air defense students. Back then, Fort Bliss had supported the sale of American missiles and gun systems to whomever thought they needed such and could pay. The defense industry had sold the weapons, earning good profits, while the Army had helped by training the mechanics and crewmen who would employ the systems. A plus for checking out Fort Bliss was that Chief Tagliaferro had been a soldier. It really was ridiculous, making one of the former students an officer, even if he was only a warrant officer! What could such a person possibly know about soldiering? Could he even behave properly in the Officer’s Club? Whoever had made that decision was likely deranged! But perhaps he was still associated with the Army in some way, if indeed that had been Tagliaferro in the video. There was also the UTEP connection to explore. The incident in the video had happened on the UTEP campus near one of the parking lots. There might be no connection, and it might not even be the man he remembered. Meanwhile, the trip broke the routine of golfing and reminiscing with the other veterans who’d settled around San Antonio. If this turned out to be no more than an impromptu vacation, so be it.

He plugged in his cell phone to charge the battery, then used his laptop computer and the hotel’s WIFI connection to check for email. There was nothing of importance, so he clicked on the Facebook link; he had a number of friends and associates who shared his moderately conservative views. After clicking the ‘like’ button a few times, he took the time to study the video and article he’d saved on the laptop; this occupied him for the next half hour. The connection that had seemed to be a lead now looked unlikely; this trip might, in fact, be no more than a wild-goose chase. The evidence from the poor-quality photo in the Times article and the video, likely shot using a cell phone camera, just wasn’t conclusive.

Still, he was here now. He would visit UTEP, then Fort Bliss. There were museums there, weren’t there? And UTEP’s buildings used architecture that wasn’t common anywhere else in America. The university called it Bhutanese, or perhaps faux-Bhutanese; anyway, it was interesting, so he would explore and perhaps during his visit discover information that had not been on the video. Extra information might help him arrive at a decision.

Tagliaferro, or not Tagliaferro? That was the question. While he waited for the cell to charge, he used the room phone to call the Times. There was no name associated with the article; the byline read ‘Times staff writer’, but perhaps there had been something that hadn’t made it into the original article? He spent the next two hours trying to track down the reporter who’d written the article. Most of that time had been spent cursing the newspaper’s labyrinthine voice mail. But he’d finally gotten through, which spoke more to his powers of concentration and endurance than to the navigability of voice mail.

The reporter admitted that he had written the short article, using information taken largely from the video but also from cursory interviews with people around when the traffic incident had occurred. No one knew the young man who’d pushed a child from danger, and no student had shown up for treatment of scrapes or road rash. There was indeed no certainty the man was a student at all; he might have been an employee, a visitor, or some sort of independent contractor. He might even have been a tourist who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. No one knew, so the reporter had written a short filler piece and sent it off to the editors before moving on to other assignments.

The unedited video was a bust. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to visit the university and Fort Bliss before starting home. Henderson drove the short distance to UTEP and, after half an hour’s searching, found a place where visitors were permitted to park. From the parking lot, he strolled down a gentle slope. He passed through the heart of the campus, simply looking around in curiosity. The buildings were striking, but after a time they took on a sameness. There were the rock outcroppings on campus to be seen, and a deep gully or small canyon near the entrance off Mesa Street. A number of students were doing something down in the gully, supervised by someone Henderson though was likely a teaching assistant. Examining the rocky outcrops, perhaps?

This had once been a school where students had come to study geology, then gone on to work around the world as mining engineers. There was less demand now for hard-rock miners but the school still maintained an excellent geology department. It was also a good place for a student to study any of several sciences. Biology of the surrounding desert region was a favored branch of study, and the university now owned a sprawling parcel of west Texas land called Indio Ranch. Henderson had driven past the exit to the old ranch, located back in some of the roughest, most God-forsaken country in west Texas. Rough or not, the ranch had become a living laboratory. Not so much for ranching, but for experimentation and study of the desert ecosystem. He picked up a brochure and found it interesting, but he would not leave San Antonio for El Paso. The two cities simply did not compare.

Paul Henderson finally had seen enough and left the campus. He picked up his car from the parking area, swore at the parked-overtime ticket he’d acquired from a zealous enforcement officer, and consulted his map. Tomorrow he would look around Fort Bliss; today had been interesting, but not productive.

Behind him, he left a very alarmed young man, a man who now sported a beard and longish hair. Paul Henderson had passed within twenty yards of Surfer, but hadn’t noticed him. Surfer was not the man in the video, so Henderson simply hadn’t been looking for him. But Surfer had felt that tickle of familiarity from Paul Henderson’s mind and had been momentarily frozen with shock and fear. By the time he’d recovered, Henderson had strolled on, never noticing the anonymous bearded man sitting on the concrete steps that led from street level into the SUB.

Paul Henderson, studying the architecture of the buildings, had paid no attention to one who was in appearance just one more young man sitting on the walls by the building’s entrance.

<T! Shezzie! It’s him!>

It took a moment for the two to answer.

<It’s who? And calm down. It’s not easy to understand you when you’re agitated.>

<It’s Henderson! He’s here, at UTEP. I just saw him!>

<Are you sure? Why would he be here? Maybe you’re mistaken.>

<No, T, I felt his mind! I might make a mistake about appearances but I wouldn’t mistake anyone’s mind. It’s him!>

<Did you pick up his thoughts, Surfer? Any idea of why he’s here? He may not be looking for you, probably isn’t. How would he trace you to UTEP?>

<I don’t know! All I got from him was something about the buildings. Maybe he’s decided to come here to study or something. It scared the crap out of me, I’ll tell you that!>

<OK, you saw Henderson, but you don’t know why he’s here. Did he see you?>

<I don’t think he noticed me. He was just walking past at the time and looking up at the building’s roof-line. They all have those Bhutanese roofs, and maybe he’s interested in architecture or something.>

<Well, it would probably be better not to take chances. Why don’t you come up to our place and just disappear for a while? Nobody much comes to Jemez Springs. There’s no way he could track you here.>

<Maybe he’s after you, T, not me! But you’re right, I don’t see how he could track me either, but he’s here and I think he’s dangerous. I was looking at a directory of medical services to see if there was a doctor in Juarez to take this thing out of my neck. I wanted to see the list for myself. And now he’s here and I’m just a walking target, waiting to be blown up! >

<Calm down, Surfer, I’ll think of something. In the meantime, you head for New Mexico and plan to lay low for a while. He can’t find you at UTEP if you’re not there. And be careful! The way you’re thinking, Henderson won’t have to kill you, you’ll do it yourself! Drive slow, take it easy, and calm down. You’ll be safe once you get out of the traffic. What’s he going to do, chase you down the freeway pointing a TV remote at the back of your head? Start thinking!> Even as I tried to settle Surfer down, I was trying to decide what to do about Henderson. If he spotted me, I could suddenly be as dead as the others already were. So could Surfer, if Henderson found him before he found me. Henderson might not be a superman, but we had to think of him as walking death for the two of us.

If he was indeed here, then it might be his life or ours. I’d faced that decision before, in Afghanistan. Henderson was just as much my enemy as any Muj in the Middle East, and Surfer was certain the man he’d sensed was Henderson. I felt no inclination to sacrifice myself. The School had essentially tried to do that already, sent me off to a war zone because they had no better use for my newly-awakened Talents. For all the things I could do, they hadn’t really been any more effective than grunt infantrymen would have been, and I was barely more immune to the IEDs than the mine-resistant armored trucks. For that matter, the School had no idea I had that immunity. They had sent me away because they had no other use for me. I had discovered the bubble after I joined the Army.