Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

“Tanner for you,” Reggie says.

I take the phone, wishing more than anything I could be back drinking beers with Mia and Africa and Schmidt. Especially Schmidt.

“What does she need me for?” I ask. But Reggie’s face gives nothing back.

I lift the heavy sat-phone to my ear. “Teagan here.”

The line shaves the top and bottom off Tanner’s voice, but it loses none of its menace. “You’ve been busy, Ms Frost.”

“You know what? Moira? I’m sorry, but I don’t have the energy for your enigmatic agency operative bullshit right now. It’s been a really long fucking day.”

A while ago, I might have started off a little more polite. After all, I was planning on asking for permission to go to chef school. I needed to make sure Tanner was feeling well-disposed towards me before I asked. Not exactly a priority any more. Not when there’s no longer a chef’s school to attend.

“I see,” she says.

“I bet you do. So, are you gonna catch this kid, or what?”

“I’ve been speaking with Ms McCormick, and Mia Wong, your volunteer from the Meitzen Museum. I understand the threat.”

She makes everything sound so simple. I want to tell her that there is no possible way she could understand, not unless she saw it herself. “Good to know. What are you doing about it?”

“Ms Wong has agreed to speak to my analysts here in Washington. What we’re going to do is use her seismic data, and combine it with the data we have here: road conditions, traffic patterns, audio and visual input. As I understand it, there are only a few of these ETS hotspots that this boy might go to – we’re going to crunch the data and work out his most likely destination.”

“OK. But how is that gonna help find him before he gets there?”

“It’s not.”

“I’m sorry?

“There’s no point. We’re stretched thin as it is. I don’t have the manpower to set up roadblocks, even if we knew what route he was taking.”

“You can’t just figure it out?”

“Not with the available data. And not without people asking awkward questions.”

“So you’re just going to let this… this monster wander up and down the West Coast? Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“And what would you like me to do, Ms Frost? We are trying to find a single, tiny fish in a very large ocean. This isn’t a normal manhunt – we are working with a shortened timescale here. We could spend hours hunting for the child, or we could—”

“Just start looking in vehicles.” The cabin swims in front of me, as if the beer has gone right to my head. She can’t seriously be suggesting this. She can’t. “He’s not exactly going to walk there, right? He must have… gotten a ride from somewhere, or…”

“Is he in a car? A truck? What if he somehow managed to talk his way onto a supply helicopter? Is he taking the Interstate, or sticking to the back roads? Perhaps he stayed in Los Angeles, or even found sea transport. We don’t know . All we can do is make an informed prediction about where he’s going to be. That’s much more effective than trying to spread ourselves across an entire coastline. From what Ms Wong says, he’ll almost certainly want to be deep into an ETS zone before he triggers Cascadia, which means we have a little bit of room to play with.”

An uncomfortable thought surfaces: why is she telling me this? Not to be blunt, but why does she need me at all, right now?

“But you’re going to stop him?” I say. “Right?”

“Yes.”

“Kill him?”

A long pause. “I trust Ms McCormick. And I’ve been told what happened to Mr Marino.”

And there it is.

“Look,” I say slowly. I don’t even know how I should phrase this, but I can’t let it happen without at least trying to stop it. Not after what happened with Carlos. Not after I couldn’t save him. I’m not letting someone else die on my watch. “He’s just a kid,” I say. “He’s bad news, but you can’t just kill him.”

Annie snaps her head towards me, her eyes narrowing in fury. She has every right to be angry, but I can’t just agree to murdering a kid. It’s the worst thing I can imagine.

“If I could just talk to him…” I say.

“Ms Frost.” And now there’s something else in Tanner’s voice. Something I haven’t heard before. Not frustration, or fury. A kind of thin desperation. “We don’t have a choice. With the evidence in question, we have to act. I’m not going to risk thousands of lives—”

“But we don’t know where he came from! This isn’t like Jake. This wasn’t one of my parents’ mistakes that turned out to have worked after all. This is something new . What if there are more kids like him?”

“That’s a secondary consideration. Neutralising him is our only job here. Please understand that I don’t take decisions like this lightly. I can’t afford to.”

Oh.

Oh, hell no.

This is why she wanted to talk to me.

It makes me want to throw up the beer I just drank. Either that, or go back to the galley and down the rest as fast as possible.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me .”

“If your information is accurate—”

“Do you understand what we’ve been through today? What we’ve had to deal with?” I do everything I can not to look at Annie, but it happens anyway.

“I know what you think of me,” Tanner is saying. “I am aware you find dealing with me unpleasant, and that you disagree with my methods. I don’t care. I am in my current role because I have the capacity to make extremely difficult decisions without regret, or remorse. This is one of them.”

She takes a breath, as if steadying herself. “But if that decision involves taking the life of a child, then I have to do everything in my power to make sure that the person who pulls the trigger is aiming at the right child. I will not risk shooting an innocent boy – not for anything, not for one second. Can you understand that, Ms Frost? Whatever you think of me, will you at least believe that I want to do this right?”

“And you want me to… what, identify him?”

“You and Ms Cruz, yes. You’re the only ones who’ve seen this boy – well, Ms Wong too, but I believe you and Ms Cruz will suffice. Wong’s a civilian, and I would prefer her involvement to be limited.”

When I don’t respond, she says, “We’ll be sending tactical teams to all four locations, but I want you and Ms Cruz at the most likely one. You will both confirm the target. After that, my people will do the rest.”

“Why both of us? And why not… do video, or something… have us confirm from here?”

Silence. And I know exactly what it means. The bitch is debating whether to tell me her reasons, or just order me to do as she says. Well, she can get fucked if she thinks I’ll do that without hearing why.

She speaks in a monotone. “It’s the logical approach. Having you both there in person ups the chance of you correctly identifying the boy. It eliminates the risk that you’ll have to rely on video, especially when communications in some areas are still sketchy.”

My mind races to catch up with her. “So why not… shit, I don’t know, send me to one zone and Annie to another? Aren’t we putting all our eggs in one basket here?“

“Not at all. There’s no advantage in splitting you up – all it means is that one of you may have to use a video link. That adds in another element, when I want to reduce them. It gives us the absolute best chance of eyeballing the target. That means both of you, on site, at the most likely location for him to trigger the fault. If it turns out our data was inaccurate, then – and only then – will we rely on a visual link with one of the other tactical teams. I’ll be monitoring the situation from here, and adjusting tactics accordingly. Am I clear?”