Chapter 9

Going to the dining facility for breakfast was just like the last time. I was so nervous I had a difficult time even tasting the food. I managed to stuff in enough calories to dull my hunger before the tension became unbearable. I was still trying to watch everyone. I kept turning my head, and if anyone was watching they surely noticed me. Maybe they thought I was just one more infantryman, recently come in from out in the shit; those guys are as nervous as a bowl of Jell-O during an earthquake! Being safe inside the wire takes time to sink in, not that anyplace over here is ‘safe’. Unable to stand it any longer, I got a second cup of coffee and slipped out the door. Hopefully, the other diners chalked it up to spending too much time in the field.

People get the twitches when everyone and everything is a danger; women and kids might be wearing a suicide vest under their clothing. The land, the roads, even trash can hide improvised explosive devices! Training prepares us to an extent, but IEDs take us by surprise and there’s always the possibility of ‘friendly fire’ or blue-on-blue engagements. Not to mention that walking behind you is a squad of nervous soldiers with loaded M-4’s! If you think accidents don’t happen, you’ve never been in combat.

We’re always tense out in the field, what the troops call being in the shit. It’s an apt description, because there’s no such thing as a safe rear area, not in Afghanistan. The grunts have it worse, much worse, than the ones who don’t go outside the wire. Even tanks get blown up, crewmen get killed, and as for the infantry? They had body armor and ceramic plates in the vests, but trust me, whatever can blow up a tank can kill an infantryman. Plus when the troops are inside the wire, meaning they’re back at the compound, they don’t usually wear armor. If the local walking past ever decided you were his ticket to paradise, well...

US units had picked up considerable experience since the first war ended. Ambushes still happened now that we were back, but they were rare, especially out in the countryside. Artillery, attack helicopters, and fighter jets could be used out where there were few bystanders but senior commanders were wary of causing collateral casualties in cities. If there was to be an attack, that’s likely where it would happen.

Afghanistan II was an infantryman’s war. Defending convoys from hit-and-run raids, conducting patrols, manning fortified outposts on remote hilltops where the armor couldn’t go, that was where the war was being fought. No ‘Green Zone’ this time. The Compound was as close to that former enclave as anywhere was this time around.

We were more skilled at detecting IEDs. There were more robots around this time to disarm them or blow them in place. Taken together, this meant there were fewer casualties. Suicide bombers still got through, still killed people, but their victims were almost always locals. Kill a few hundred, maybe even wipe out a leader using a drone strike, and the losses were quickly replaced.

We won the battles, but just like before, we weren’t winning the war. I had lived in this environment for more than a year now. I doubt that anyone spends an entire tour over here without being affected, and unlike others who’d been doing what I did, it appeared that the people who’d sent me here had no intention of letting me leave this place alive.

I didn’t realize it until after I left the dining facility, but I was picking up a lot more background thoughts. Before, I understood in general terms what people were thinking but I just wasn’t used to this much detail! I hadn’t yet learned to winnow what was important from all the other things I was sensing, hearing, feeling. I now understood what Surfer had once tried to explain, back when we were still students.

The change had to be something I picked up from Shezzie. The overlay I’d gained by merging her Talent with mine was amazing! There was a painting on the wall, and suddenly I could pick out colors I’d never seen before! I caught more background emotions too, even whole thoughts. More, I knew Shezzie was due to start menstruating in a week. She wasn’t thinking of it, but I knew. Weird; there was just no other word for it, although maybe amazing worked better.

Nobody in my immediate vicinity was paying me undue attention--I knew! I had far greater sensitivity now to the thoughts of others. So I went back to my CHU and commed Shezzie, and just like that, I picked up her thoughts! ‘Amazing’ really was the word that fit best. By the time I got to her office, we’d caught up on new developments. I told her about the new sensations I was feeling and my increasing paranoia regarding the killing charge in the back of my neck; she told me she felt that she now had much more control of her own Talent.

She also knew about my decision to leave the country, and why. It was based on logic, not precognition, but I knew that remaining here, where I couldn’t blend in except when I was on base and where being on base might get me killed, was no real choice. I had to leave, and I couldn’t let the Army know; they would notify the agency, and that would be the same as my doing it. I suspected there was an assassination attempt in the works, but if there wasn’t then my intention to leave whether I had orders or not would trigger one.

One person intent on killing me, I might be able to deal with that. But a squad? My bubble might protect me for a time, but eventually I would have to relax it in order to breathe. It was my personal fortress, but if surrounded it became my prison and all they’d need to do would be to wait.

I wondered briefly why they hadn’t already come for me, then understood; they’d go after the telepaths first, because they could alert any who survived about what was happening. My poor comm ability was well known, which would have put me at the bottom of the termination list. I was also out of the country and surrounded by soldiers. They knew where I was, I wasn’t going anywhere, meaning that they could let me wait while they finished off the others.

I suddenly realized that even if orders back to the US came through, I couldn’t follow them. Someone might be on the plane, and if not they’d be waiting at the airport when I arrived.

But would the assassins be willing to wait until I returned to the US? They might, but I couldn’t count on it, and a wrong guess would get me killed.

One good thing, the School’s administrators were operating in the dark. They didn’t know that my communication skills had improved essentially overnight. They also had no way of knowing Surfer had told me about the missing telepaths. But if I made a wrong move and they found out, they’d suspect. The hunt for me would be on.

There was a simple solution to that; don’t make a mistake.

Shezzie and I soon found out, by accident at first, that there had been more changes than even I realized. She had somehow picked up my other abilities through the link. She didn’t have my skill at PK, not yet, and she was still shaky when using the ‘bubble’, but the ability was there. I didn’t know if she had any PreCog, since she hadn’t mentioned the kind of hunches I get. But she might have picked it up from my subconscious mind when we linked, or maybe she was now holding things back from me; heh, she might have caught some of my paranoia as well as my Talents!

Well, if she was keeping secrets, why not? Everyone is entitled to a few of those.

We tried that close, intense link where our minds intermeshed under more controlled conditions, but this time it had no effect so far as we could tell. Whatever changes the melding had caused, it appeared that future improvements would depend on development of the Talents within the person based on what had already occurred.

A breeze had sprung up and there was a light haze of blowing sand in the air when I walked over to the medical section. I didn’t have any duty scheduled, now that I was off the patrol list, and Shezzie had finished whatever paperwork she had to do. She also wasn’t scheduled for surgery unless casualties started coming in, and so far as we knew there were no engagements ongoing.

We spent the afternoon in her office, talking about what had happened and exploring her new Talents. I coached her through a few PK exercises and let her practice bringing up her bubble field. I also had a few warnings for her. “The trick is to expand the bubble field to the point where it begins to fade out. Air will then leak across the barrier so that you get gas exchange, oxygen in and carbon dioxide out. You also get small pieces of shrapnel and maybe even bullets penetrating the field, but if anything does get through it won’t travel in a straight line. It’s like light passing through water, it doesn’t keep the same course. Even weakened, the barrier is enough to deflect particles. But even when the bubble is at full strength, if the force impacting your field is strong enough you’ll be the one that gets bounced. Newton’s physics still work.”

She was silent while I went through this, then said, “So if you were in water, you might be able to keep water out but you wouldn’t have air to breathe? You might kill yourself or drown when the field collapsed?”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “Best not to test it! There’s something else; your concentration right now isn’t great, and if you lose concentration the field might not protect you. I was caught in an explosion when an IED blew up. The bubble formed, but the blast bounced me off a wall. If I hadn’t kept the bubble in place while all this was going on, the impact would have killed me.” I smirked at her and said, “I know an exercise that will help your concentration; how would you like to go for a tumble?”