Free Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery Page A

in others, and a giant hole had been burned away in the middle of the Alleghenies. The field commander’s notes scrawled across the paper in a frantic hand, the ends of words vanishing into a thicket of scratches.
    “As you know,” he said, “the front is moving along here.” A thin finger tracing the line of I-81 through the middle of the state, up from Harrisburg to Binghamton. “The reasoning is obvious, Sergeant. Our operations are at a critical juncture. After years at war, we are poised to strike a final, decisive blow to the enemy”—he said this as if he believed it, Sergeant Foote noted—“and so we are moving with great swiftness, through Scranton and Wilkes-Barre up to Binghamton, where, we believe, we can subdue the resistance at last. But it all depends on speed, momentum. We cannot have our plans disrupted.”
    His finger returned to Harrisburg, then followed the Susquehanna. Traced how the river bent from the highway for over a hundred miles, reconnected with it at Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, fled north into the mountains, then joined it again at Binghamton, sixty miles later. “We have conflicting reports as to where your targets might be. Some suggest that they are moving north on the highway, perhaps just ahead of the front, so they can receive support. Another report suggests that they are traveling by water, where our forces are underrepresented. Now, your targets, these two men, are responsible for some of the most effective sabotage against us in the Central Pennsylvania campaign. Communications lines disrupted that cost us entire units of men. Spottier intelligence suggests that they were involved in a series of very effective bombing campaigns across the greater Harrisburg area. We do not know that this is true, but we have our suspicions. We believe that they may mean to do us more harm, and that we cannot tolerate. Not at such a crucial moment in our cause.”
    Foote found herself echoing his speech. “So I am to find them and figure out what their purpose for traveling north is. And if they intend malice toward us, I am to prevent them from acting upon it.”
    The commander frowned, seemed to grow almost wistful. “There was a time, Sergeant, when the men of our army could have covered the highway and the river, brought everything before us under our dominion. No more. We had to make a choice, and having made it, we have to live with the consequences. One of which involves you. We are sending four soldiers up the highway, to move ahead of the front and perhaps intercept our targets. But we are sending you, incognito, up the river itself. Only one craft we know of is still moving north now, for reasons that should be clear—” and here he faltered. So he knew about what was coming, Sergeant Foote thought. Just could not get his head around it. She did not know that she could, either. It was too hard to imagine, a storm that would not pass, thunder that moved above your head and never left. “—and you are to board it,” he continued, “and investigate for the presence of your targets. If they are present, ascertain their reasons for being there and assess the level of threat they pose.”
    He stopped, turned his head a little away from her. “Of course, the world is not a court, Sergeant,” he said, “and we are not lawyers. What I mean is that establishing their motives beyond a doubt is not, in the strictest sense, necessary to the mission. Or to taking effective action. No one will know the difference.”
    “I understand.”
    “Do you accept?” the field commander said.
    “Of course.”
    “Another question first.”
    “Sir.”
    Another surge of electricity seemed to move through him. His eyes clenched shut, his lips quivered. Then: “What are your thoughts on the meteorological phenomenon that may or may not be occurring to the north and west of our operations?” It was happening, it was coming.
    “From a personal or a professional perspective?”
    “Please speak with