Free Skinner by Charlie Huston Page B

over that ridge. Some trails come west from there, continue about two klicks west of what we’re looking at. Cuboid. And joins a road. Dirt, but well traveled. For the area.”
    Jae steps back, squeezes herself.
    Her mental peripherals are picking up too many signals of ambient warfare. These young men and women are not playing video games, they are looking for things to blow up and/or kill. The longer she’s in here, the more a vision of this work is forcing its way into her mind. Waking in the morning. A trip to the bathroom. Peeing, washing up, brushing teeth. Breakfast with the family while still in PJs. Check email. Look at a few sites. Shower. Put on the uniform. Car. Stop for coffee. Burning your tongue with the first sip. Driving out to Creech. Situation updates. Into operations. Whoever had your chair on the night patrol uses something in his or her hair that seeped into the headrest. Smells like Aquanet, but who the fuck uses Aquanet anymore? A prayer to the lord that the fucking ground crew listened to what you reported about that balky aileron. If you have to fly that crate today and keep it in the air for twelve hours it’s gonna make your head split in two. And hours of boring your eyes into the screen, safe as houses, trying to give some poor fucking grunts on the ground twelve thousand kilometers away a little fucking air support that doesn’t cost the taxpayers too damn much.
    “I need to get out of here.”
     
    Exit procedures, and then the desert sunlight. Gooseflesh melted in an instant. Eyes sun-dazzled blind.
    Jae puts on her sunglasses.
    “Kontsern-Morinformsistema-Agat.”
    Cervantes is pulling his Randolph Engineering aviators from his right breast pocket. He pauses.
    “Ma’am?”
    “Your cuboid. It’s a Club-K cruise missile system made by Kontsern-Morinformsistema-Agat. Russian. Package fits in a shipping container. Targeting, launcher, missiles. Move it on rails, ships, trucks. Prep to launch in under five minutes.”
    Cervantes slips the dark lenses over his eyes.
    “Land to air?”
    Jae extends her index finger, launches it in a short arc, finds a target, her other fingers popping open in a silent and harmless explosion.
    “Yes. But the marketing videos tend to emphasize the fact that it can deploy four carrier-killers. In case you’re ever attacked by four aircraft carriers, I suppose.”
    He touches the arm of his sunglasses.
    “Shit.”
    “Could be bullshit. The marketing. But it’s there.”
    “The Lincoln is in the Arabian Sea.”
    “Too far.”
    He tips his head at the closed door of the command center.
    “Yeah, but the container isn’t there anymore. That was two days ago. When we expected you.”
    “And now?”
    He looks back at the sky.
    “We lost it.”
    With her knuckles, she wipes sweat from her upper lip.
    “Can we even do that anymore, lose things?”
    “Yeah. It takes effort, but we can.”
    She looks at the sweat on her knuckle.
    “Just about anything can get into Afghanistan from Russia using the reverse opium routes. And since Pakistan signed the APTTA, trade agreement, anything in Afghanistan can get across the southern border. That box could be buried fifty meters from where you saw it. Or it could be on a freighter docked at the port of Karachi, headed for a well-financed pirate enclave in Somalia.”
    He looks at her.
    She shrugs.
    “Far fetched. But possible. I get paid for the bad news.”
    She wipes some sweat from her forehead.
    “Could we go someplace out of the sun. Where the AC is set a little higher than fifty. I’ll be able to think better.”
    He looks at the H3 Tritium watch on his wrist.
    “We can debrief in the Warren. We’ve got a SCIF. Where your guy is supposed to meet you.”
    Jae looks at her boots.
    “My guy?”
    Cervantes points toward the electric cart he used to ferry her here from his office.
    “The one Kestrel is sending for you.”
    He walks to the cart and stands next to it, waiting.
    “We should shake it. I have to