Lee CHILD - Better off Dead

I said, “What is this place?”

“My hotel. Where I’m staying. Where we’re staying, I guess.”

I looked around all four sides. “Where’s the office?”

“There isn’t one. The place is unmanned. It’s a new concept. Part of a new chain. They’re in five cities. Maybe six now. I don’t remember.”

“So how do you get a room?”

“You book online. You don’t see anyone. You don’t interact with anyone. That’s the beauty of it.”

“How do you get a key? They send it in the mail?”

Fenton shook her head. “There isn’t a physical key. They email you a QR code.”

I said nothing.

“A QR code. You know. Like a two-dimensional bar code. You display it on your phone and the scanners by the doors read it. It’s excellent.”

“It is?”

“It is. Particularly if you happen to book with a false ID. And a false credit card. And a made-up email address. That way, no one can ever trace you.”

“This isn’t going to work for me. I don’t have a false ID. I don’t have any kind of a credit card. Or a phone.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Well, never mind. We’ll figure that out later.”

“There are cameras.” I gestured to a pair of them. They were mounted on the wall near the Jeep’s parking spot. A mesh cage protected them. “Someone could trace you that way.”

“They could try. The cameras do appear to be working. But if anyone tries to access their files, they won’t see anything. They’ll just get snow. That’s the beauty of the training they give you at Fort Huachuca. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

Fenton fiddled with her phone then held its screen up to a scanner below a sign that read Carlisle Smith, Wheelwright . The door clicked open. I followed her inside. I couldn’t picture any hard manual labor taking place in there now. The room was all pastel colors and throw cushions and nostalgic black-and-white photographs. Plus the standard hotel stuff. A bed. A couch. A work area. A closet. A bathroom. Everything you could need for a comfy night, except for a coffeemaker. There was no sign of one of those. But there was a suitcase, neatly squared away, sitting on its own by the door. Fenton saw me looking at it.

“Old habits.” She wheeled the case across to the bed. “Always be ready to move.” She turned to look at me. “I figured I would be moving again today. I hoped it would be with Michael. But really I knew. There was no chance. I was always going to be leaving alone. I just had to be sure. It wasn’t a surprise. But still, back there, at The Tree, it hit me. Harder than I expected. Pushed me close to the edge for a second or two. I’m sorry you had to see that. It won’t happen again. Now, let’s focus. Come on. Make yourself at home.”

I figured it was a minute after 3:00 p.m. I was hungry. Breakfast was a long time ago. I’d made an early start, back in El Paso. I didn’t know if Fenton had eaten at all that day. But she must have burned plenty of adrenaline. I figured food would help both of us. I suggested we order some. Fenton didn’t argue. She just pulled out her phone. “Pizza work for you?”

Fenton took the chair from under the desk and tapped away at her screen. I sat on the couch. I waited until she was done summoning up our food, then said, “I told you why I’m here. Now it’s your turn.”

She paused, like she was marshaling her thoughts. “It started with Michael’s message, I guess. We were always close, like most twins are, but we lost touch. He wasn’t the same. Not after he left the army. I guess I should explain that. He was in a thing called a TEU . A Technical Escort Unit. They’re the guys who are experts in bomb disposal and chemical warfare.”

“I’ve heard of them. If another unit is clearing an area and they find chemical ordnance, they call in a TEU.”

“They’re supposed to. But that doesn’t always happen. A grunt doesn’t always know what a chemical artillery round looks like. In Iraq the enemy didn’t have any, remember. Not officially. So they’re not marked properly. Or they’re deliberately mismarked. Plus they look like other shells. Signal shells, especially, because they also have a separate chamber for the precursor material. And even if the guys know chemicals are involved they sometimes try to handle it themselves. They don’t want to wait. With the best will in the world it can take twelve hours for a TEU to respond. Sometimes twenty-four. That’s up to an extra day of exposure to enemy snipers and booby traps. And an extra day they’re not clearing other areas. That leaves other caches for insurgents to find and raid, or for civilians to stumble across, maybe getting hurt or killed. So quite often Michael’s team would arrive at a scene and find it contaminated. Like the first one they ever responded to. It was a brick chamber, underground. Some infantry guys literally fell into it. They busted through the ceiling. They started poking around, then got cold feet. The shells in there were old. They were in bad shape. The guys must have cracked one without realizing. It contained mustard gas. One of Michael’s friends got exposed. It was horrible.”

“Did he make it?”

“By the skin of his teeth. They medevaced him. The hospital induced a coma before the worst symptoms set in. That saved him a lot of agony. And probably saved his life.”

“Did Michael get exposed?”

“Not on that occasion. But he did later. You see, however they come by chemical shells, the TEU has to dispose of them. If the area they’re found in is inhabited, they have to move the shells before they can blow them up. And if there’s some unusual feature, they have to recover them so they can be studied. That’s what happened to Michael. He was transporting a pair of shells that the pointy heads wanted taken back to the Aberdeen Proving Ground. He had them in the back of his Humvee, heading to an RV with a Black Hawk. One of them leaked. It made him sick. He managed to get back to base but the medics wouldn’t believe his symptoms were real. He had no burns. No blisters. No missing body parts. He was accused of malingering, or treated like a drug addict because his pupils had shrunk. Anything to put the blame on him, not the army. He had spasms. Chest pain. He couldn’t stop vomiting. His whole GI system was messed up. They finally sent him to Germany. To a hospital there. It took him weeks to recover.”

“That’s harsh.”

“It was. The way they treated him was bad enough. But the real kicker? Michael, and his friend with the mustard gas, and a whole bunch of others who got hurt – the army refused to recognize them. There was no Purple Heart for them, either. You know why? The poison didn’t leak out during an active engagement, so their injuries weren’t deemed to have been caused by enemy action. It was like the army was telling them they did these awful things to themselves. And you know what? In the exact same circumstances, the Marines do decorate their guys. It just wasn’t right. Michael was demoralized. He left the army at the end of his next tour. He drifted for a few years, and I guess he went off the rails. I kept trying to reach out to him. But then I had problems of my own.” She patted her leg. “And I was busy with my work.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a lab technician. In a place near Huntsville, Alabama.”

“That the job that sent you to Afghanistan?”

She nodded. “I went to supervise some sample collection. Stuff we had to bring back and analyze. My boss knew I was ex-army. He thought I’d be OK. I was out of action for a while, afterward. Surgery. Physical therapy. And then I was a bit down. A bit self-absorbed. But when I got Michael’s message it shook me up. It was something I just couldn’t ignore.”