Exodus (The Exodus Trilogy) (8 page)

They were s
omewhere in the Sonora desert. Captain Tina Hammer felt weak, her throat parched, head throbbing, legs resisting her every movement. Whoever said black people don’t get sunburned was an idiot. Her face showed a deep red from sunburn, and there were signs of blisters developing on her nearly shaven head. She didn’t sweat anymore, even in the sweltering heat and being physically exhausted from days of trekking across the desert; she was too dehydrated. Her companions, Navy ensigns Dean Johnson and Kim Leffard and Army Lieutenant Henry Carroll, were still hanging on by sheer willpower, although Leffard was now slowing them down due to a sprained ankle.

“
You should go on. I’ll catch up,” Kim said, while breathing heavily. “I just need a breather; you guys won’t get far without me anyways!” She was about the toughest woman Hammer had ever known, but sprained ankle or no, she now looked like she’d spent the last of her strength. Henry slumped down beside her, coughing heavily.

“
Yeah right, and let you off that easily, eh?” He tried to pry off his right boot, but lost his balance, even sitting. Then he managed to slowly take it off, and saw that blood had seeped through his socks.

“
I guess we’re both fucked good and hard now, Leffard. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk on this again for a while.” He shook his head.

“
So damn close … It must be …” He took a pebble and put it in his mouth, an old trick. After a couple of seconds he spit it out again.

“
Humph, never worked,” Henry continued. “Whoever made that one up never spent a week in the desert.” He licked his cracked lips, and grimaced. Then he lay back and closed his eyes.

Tina
held up her hand and squinted to the east. They’d walked quite a ways since being dumped out of the chopper a few nights back, blindfolded and with only a couple of water bottles to share. She had no idea how far they had come, but the first few days they had walked a good twelve hours, daytime, before deciding it would be better to walk by night and rest while the sun was at its highest. That worked for another couple of days. After that, things had moved more slowly. Fatigue, blisters, hunger, and eventually thirst had slowly taken their toll. They had no idea how long they had to go, or whether they would be picked up if they decided they’d had it. Tina was deeply concerned. As the senior officer, she was in charge, and although she suspected they were being monitored somehow, in the back of her mind she worried that they were too far off the grid. Or that the instructors had dropped them out here to see how many would survive, and that losses were expected. She’d seen it before, and the situation was definitely extreme; in fact, you couldn’t get more extreme than this. It could be that this was the kind of situation where such extreme training and selection were deemed necessary. She rose to her feet, deciding such thinking was useless, and reached out for Kim’s hand.

“
Let’s go. It can’t be far now. And if we don’t get there today, I’d like to find some shade. Come on, you too, Dean. Henry, you’ll just have to suck it up. You know that the pain numbs after a while. Now get that boot back on while you can. And no more of that ‘carry on without me’ crap, Kim.” Tina put her concerns away for now; the group was her responsibility, they were her team, and by far the best she’d ever worked with, and there was no way she’d let them down. She would not show her doubts.

They reached a dried out riverbed and decided to rest for a few hours. Somehow, they were still standing, but dehydration was now becoming a real danger. If they didn’t find any water soon
… At least they had some shade; there were a few large scattered boulders that gave them some respite from the blinding white sun. Tina’s concerns had grown steadily over the last few hours, however hard she tried to suppress them. Of the four, she was probably the one in the best shape at the moment, although she felt the pain and exhaustion in every part of her body. She knew that, unless their instructors decided to show up, or they found some source of water, which didn’t seem likely now, her worst fears would come to life. She stared up at the cloudless sky, watching an eagle circling overhead, slowly, watching them, undisturbed by the human presence. Sleep evaded her, although she was so tired, oh so tired.

They had been split up into groups of twenty to twenty
-five within the first weeks after arrival, and those groups seemed matched so that candidates with similar intended roles were grouped together. She’d been put in a group of experienced officers, Navy, Army, Air Force, even a couple of astronauts, which surprised her, as those were a rare breed these days. They were diverse in a lot of ways, but all had the common denominator that they were used to command on at least company level, or some equivalent. She knew other groups were similarly put together, and inferred that from each group, only one or two would be on the final list.

There had been all kinds of activities, from arctic survival training to physics projects, mechanical training, basic to intermediate surgery, military exercises of every variety
; it was hard to quite see how it all made sense. At some point during the first year, she’d discussed it with a colonel whose name she couldn’t remember.

“
Redundancy,” the colonel had explained. “What happens if you lose half your crew on final descent?”

“
But you wouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket,” Tina had argued. “You’d split the crew according to competencies, so you’d always have someone left who could do the job.”

The colonel had nodded
, then scratched his cropped black hair, while chewing on some kind of nuts he had this weakness for.

“
Of course, but what if … What if you had to split your crew differently? This is nothing like we’re used to; you know that. What if the crew had to be split according to demographics? What if you had to make sure there were enough men and enough women on each landing craft to be able to breed? What if you had to choose between sick and healthy? What if not half, but most of the crew were wiped out by some freak accident?” It was probably at some point during that conversation that Tina really began to understand the nature of what this mission was all about. Of course, it wasn’t until the news about Devastator had leaked that she’d truly fathomed the finality of it all, that this was probably humanity’s only chance for survival. But it was the conversation with the colonel that had opened her eyes to the fact that this was so much more than she’d expected when she was picked for Selection. If she could only remember his name …

The colonel had washed out during one of the weeding processes that happened
at irregular intervals, just a few months after Tina’s conversation with him, and she’d never seen the man again. Rumor had it the rejects were moved to detention centers so that they were unable to reveal anything, for security reasons. She wouldn’t normally believe such rumors, but under the circumstances, she wouldn’t rule it out. The fact was, no one really knew.

The eagle
circling above seemed to be closing in on them. What does it want? Tina thought. Somehow, she was vaguely aware that she was delirious, a weird feeling, kind of what she imagined an out-of-body experience must be like. The eagle landed and opened a door on the side of its belly. It was huge! Out of the door, little people jumped out, some in white, others in desert fatigues. A funny eagle, Tina grinned, whoever heard of an eagle with doors, and people inside. She passed out.

Tina
woke slowly to murmured voices in a white, cool air-conditioned room. Ensign Johnson was standing next to another bed, where a middle-aged doctor and a tall, suited man were standing beside a sleeping Henry Carroll.

“
He’s been through surgery, seems his leg was worse than we thought,” she heard Kim Leffard whisper quietly. “Some kind of infection. It’s a wonder he made it that far. Tough bastard.” Tina nodded in agreement. They were quite a team now: herself, Kim, Henry and Dean. They’d been in different groups throughout most of Selection, and had been put together as a team only six months ago. Now they were a tightly knit group, and she expected their experiences in the desert would bond them even tighter. Perhaps that was the whole purpose, she pondered.

The ma
n in the suit turned toward her.

“
Ah, it seems our pilot is back,” he said, revealing a broad smile, and a hint of pride in his eyes. He was clean-shaven, with dark blond hair, and couldn’t have been more than forty, although it was difficult to tell. The eyes, deep blue, seemed older, somehow.

“
You, ma’am, have just made one hell of an impression. The Board has had their eyes on you for some time, and with good reason. Your team held on the longest of all, and you pulled everyone through till the end. You should be proud. I know I am.”

“
Proud?” Tina said weakly. She still didn’t quite understand; she felt quite weak.

“
Yes, damn proud. You don’t know me, but I’ve followed you for almost two years now. I’m on the Selection Board and you, ma’am, have been one of my favorites almost from day one. And I’m also happy to see that your team is ready to start your next phase of training.”

Trevor Hayes
was a man of few words, and his appointment four years ago as national security advisor had surprised a good number of Washington insiders. The media had also been taken by surprise, and they’ve been digging ever since to find background on this largely anonymous man. So far, very little had been found, except what was available from official sources. He had attended Harvard Law, and then served with the notorious Black Berets for close to ten years, before leaving the service to work for Pegasus Inc., a medium-sized company that provided security and private military services, a growing industry in the age of terror. The official file on him said he had worked in both the legal department and in several managerial and executive positions, and, although unsubstantiated, there were rumors that he was also involved in the company’s more clandestine operations. Within seven years, Hayes had become a partner, which meant a more public role. He had been involved in several of the lawsuits following the growth of the industry, but somehow they had escaped the media radar, being overshadowed by larger scandals, such as the royal wedding drug scandal in England and the Louisiana governor’s involvement in trafficking, which had covered the front pages for weeks. When the Supreme Court had dismissed the cases, there had been some stirring and talk of a shift in the checks and balances, assigning greater powers to the executive branch, but still Hayes had been just one of the many lawyers involved, although it was well known that he was one of the figures emerging as a leader of an industry growing steadily more entrenched with the sitting administration. And as America was evolving more and more each year into a one-party system, Trevor Hayes steadily rose in the ranks of the establishment.

And now, in the
Oval Office, sitting in a lounge chair opposite from him, President Andrews absently swirled a wide glass of whiskey, while considering Trevor’s latest proposal. The president hadn’t touched his drink once, which, to Trevor, meant he shouldn’t touch his either. The president gritted his teeth, still not meeting his eyes, obviously considering both the news he’d been given and the solution brought to him by one of his most trusted advisors. Hayes knew this very moment would either ruin his position with the president and severely damage his chances of success, or bring him a lot closer to one of his main objectives, the one he’d been working toward ever since his gradual involvement in the schemes of the charismatic and persuasive Thatcher.

“
You’re sure about this?” the president asked him, his mask impossible to read.

“
Yes, sir.”

“
You want me to dump the one man that’s gotten Project Exodus this far? Is that your recommendation? That I replace him with a man I’m less sure about, one that I actually, to be frank, trust less?” President Andrews was often considered a man who valued loyalty over competence. Trevor Hayes would never underestimate him that way, although he saw that the question of loyalty would matter here, as the project was the president’s most important issue these days. And his only hope was that Senator Buchanan’s years of political maneuvering and the way he’d become a close ally of this administration through years as a party insider would deem him loyal enough to be entrusted with this project.

“
Mr. President, we both know Senator Buchanan doesn’t agree with every one of your policies. But I think this only strengthens his candidacy. You know he will tell you his honest opinion, and you don’t need another sycophant that only tells you what you want to hear. That could be devastating when it comes to the project. When it comes to loyalty, I’d say that having someone who’s stuck with you through the years, despite occasional differences, is the kind of loyalty you’d want in a person who also needs to make tough decisions. And you don’t want someone who needs to be micro managed because he’s afraid of not always agreeing with you on every little detail.” Hayes knew this would strike a chord with the president, since for the past few years that had become a very real difficulty, but he couldn’t be sure that would be enough. The stakes were extreme at this point, and he had no way of knowing whether President Andrews would be persuaded by arguments or fall back on his tendency to demand blind loyalty from those closest to him.

The
president got up from his chair, put his glass back on the table, still untouched, and walked over to the windows. He stood there for a moment, his back toward Hayes, staring out the window, where fallen leaves now covered the lawn outside. Hayes could see he was troubled, but didn’t interrupt him. This was the turning point, the point where he would see whether the plan had worked, whether or not the movement would gain access to the one position of influence, except the presidency of course, where they could seriously affect the outcome of the biggest gamble of all time. If it worked, they would actually stand a chance of success. If it didn’t, well, they would be back to square one, with no time to pick up the pieces.

Then the
president turned.

“
I trusted Mr. Shaw, you know. Apparently I didn’t know him well enough. I will have him removed immediately. I have no choice in the matter; I cannot keep that perverted, sick …” President Andrews stopped before his anger got the better of him, then walked briskly back to the table, picked up his drink, and emptied it.

“
All right, Trevor, set up a meeting with Senator Buchanan first thing tomorrow. Tell him to put everything else aside. And prepare a briefing, in which he will be fully informed. He needs to know what he’s getting himself into. From now on, he is to be treated as one of us.”

Later, walking through the hallways of the White House, Trevor Hayes had that weird feeling that everyone he encountered could see his exhilaration, that every emotion that raced through him w
as clearly visible on the outside for everyone to see. Of course, that was just how he felt. After all, he was a professional, and he’d been in the cloak and dagger business for years. He knew how to put on a blank face and hide his natural, biological reactions, such as heightened heart rate and pumping adrenaline. He had succeeded. Tomorrow, Senator Joe Buchanan would be appointed by the president to manage the Exodus Project. Ironic, Hayes thought, President Andrews just gave his greatest enemies the weapons needed to destroy his legacy. He will have no idea what hit him.