Anne Fox - Camp Chaos

Kat took the document, her stomach knotting a little at the title: “Last Will and Testament of Katheryn Hanko.” It wasn’t the first time she’d had to make out a will. The Bureau insisted agents keep their wills up-to-date. But this one seemed much more imminently necessary than the one she had for the Bureau. She read it through, trying not to be distracted by the sound of footsteps entering the room. “Looks fine,” she said, signing at the bottom of the last page and passing it back across the table. Clara said, “And I will sign as a witness, and Spud, if you will do the honors as the second witness?”

Kat reflected a moment. “Wait. If you don’t have an identity until you resign or retire, how can you sign this?”

Spud put his signature at the bottom of the will and held it out for Kat to see. “Can you read that?” he asked.

She looked. It was the same swirly letters-over-letters signature she had seen him use on the plane. “Fuck no.”

“Neither can anyone else. When there needs to be a name typed down here,” pointing to a blank spot under the signature line, “they’ll give me a name that could reasonably go with this signature.”

“Is there anything you people don’t think of?” Kat asked.

Spud thought. “Not that we know of. You’re all done here, so now I’m going to escort you to your quarters so you can get yourself settled in and relax a bit. I’ll collect you when it’s time to meet the rest of our base personnel and eat.” He turned toward the door and said, “Come with me.”

While they walked, he handed her a sheet of paper. Looking at it, she saw it was a floor plan of the headquarters. “You’ve got five days to memorize this,” he said. “I suggest you actually walk around with this and make sure you know where you’re going. It’s the easiest way to memorize the unit’s building. You’re going to have a tough time if you don’t get it memorized, because in five days this goes into the incinerator.”

“You got my gun. Why didn’t you take my cell phone?” she asked.

“Because it stopped working the minute you arrived. For all intents and purposes, it’s a brick. This building is electronically sealed, with the exception of our satellite link. Like a big Faraday cage. Someone trying to find it by looking for electronic signatures is going to come up with nothing. Same for signals coming in. They don’t. It’s pretty old school. When we get an assignment, it comes in with the newspaper.” He smiled. “Ours is a special edition. Gets dropped into the mail box up in the common area of the BEQ. Voice goes through it for any coded messages that might be in there. By the way, we’re headed here,” he said, pointing to an area of the floor plan. “No time like the present for starting to learn your way around, so use the map and get us there.”

She stopped and looked over the diagram. Entrance here, legal office here, we’ve been walking this way, so that puts us right about here right now. She put her thumb at the area where she figured they were, and looked to where he’d indicated they were going. “Right, left, all the way to the end, door on the right,” she muttered. He smiled.

“So now I’ve got a question. You said Agent Dunbarton’s body was burned beyond recognition. If nobody dies, where do the bodies come from in cases like that?”

“You know how people will donate their bodies to science or medical schools? There’s even a few forensics labs◦– body farms◦– that get donated bodies for forensic anthropology studies.”

“How they can tell when a person’s corpse that’s been found actually died,” she said. “I heard of that during my academy training. Never have seen one of those body farms, though. Thankfully.”

“We get a donated body when we need one. In your case, we’re not going to need one, because you’re going to die right here at Quantico when you take your death not-so-defying fall. So, what will get shipped back to Albuquerque will simply be a weighed down casket. No cadaver necessary.”

She walked to the right. “You also told me that you don’t kill people. So, what’s the punishment if I break the rules? Say, talk to an outsider about the unit?”

“We’ve never had a unit member do that, and I don’t expect you to do it, either, but given you’re curious,” he said, “you get to go to Leavenworth and spend the rest of your life in solitary confinement. And when I say ‘solitary,’ I mean solitary . The only person you’ll ever see is the one who brings you your meals, and that person will literally slide it through a slot in the door, turn around, and leave. You don’t want to go there. People who don’t get any human contact go insane, and that’s what would happen to you.”

“That sounds like cruel and unusual punishment.”

“That sounds like a necessary evil. Any information that gets out about the unit endangers everyone in it, as well as compromises everything we do. Any contact with someone not knowing about the unit risks compromising the unit. It’s a matter of national security, so you will go to Leavenworth if you do anything that compromises the unit.”

“So, you’ve never had a rogue in the unit?”

“Nope, and I’m trusting we won’t be starting with you.”

She turned to the left. “Are there more people in the unit than the six of you I’ve met?”

“Not for the field team. The remaining people who work with the unit are support personnel. We have our medical team, legal, quartermaster, and Luigi, our gunsmith, who will probably end up being your best friend. We have a couple of couriers. You’ve probably heard the name Dave Garino already? He’s one of them. The seven of us are the only ones who actually live here in this complex. The rest go home at night, unless there’s a mission. In that case, a medical team goes with us. If someone gets hurt on a mission or at a field training location, we can’t just send them to the local hospital. So, the medical team sets up a mobile hospital at our nearest safe location, and the injured person gets evacuated there for treatment.”

“If all these people go home at night, how do you keep people from being suspicious about the activity in and out of the BEQ?”

“The BEQ above us would ordinarily house sixteen Marines. We have fourteen support personnel. We always have some of the medical team here, around the clock. So, some of the personnel come and go at odd hours. You may have noticed that Clara was dressed in cammies, and that her hair is short? That’s so she looks like a typical male Marine when she comes and goes. You’ll find out that all of the other support personnel also dress in cammies and have short hair. And yes, we’re going to cut yours, too. As far as any of the Marines in the nearby BEQs know, we’re just another bunch of Marines. Though occasionally,” he added, smoothing his hand down the shirt and pants of the business suit he was wearing earlier, “we dress up and go out. Just like the regular Marines. So far, no one’s caught on to anything unusual about us.”

She stopped at the end of the hall and turned to the door on the right. Spud took out an access card and held it to a sensor on the door. The door unlatched and swung open a crack. “For now, you’re going to need this,” he said, handing her the card. “But in the near future, the door will just open for you when you approach it.”

“Yeah, and I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, too,” she said.

He grinned. “Bum ticker. When you get yours, the door will open for you, as well as the hidden access above and a few other doors that, frankly, you’re not allowed through at the moment.”

“Secrets, secrets,” she said.

“You shouldn’t expect to get the explanations for everything all at once, Kat. You’ve got some hoops to jump through still. You’ve got an extensive medical evaluation, a psych evaluation, they’re even going to examine your teeth. Anything that could prohibit you from performing to the required level for inclusion in this unit and you, Katheryn Hanko, stay alive and go back to Albuquerque. That’s why you don’t die right now, but rather five days from now. We need time to find out if you’re cut out for this.”