not have a ready word to describe it.
‘It’s beautiful,’ the soldier whispered, his shaded eyes taking in the lines of the rivers snaking away across the dust. Behind him the truck’s engine fell silent. It rocked on its springs and other men emerged, dropping down one by one to the ground, six of them, all wearing the coffee-stain camouflage of the US military. Liv was reminded of the welcoming committee she and Gabriel had encountered crossing the border from Turkey what seemed like a lifetime ago. Three more uniformed men climbed out of the Humvee. And though they were wearing uniforms and carrying weapons, there was nothing threatening or hostile about them. They just seemed like a bunch of cautious guys edging their way into a party they weren’t sure they were invited to. Tariq must have sensed it too. He raised his hand to the man in the guard tower and the .50-cal cannon swung away as the man stepped back.
‘Where you from?’ The soft-spoken corporal removed his shades and squinted at Liv with pale blue eyes that looked like they should be peering out at a wheat field from beneath a faded starter cap.
‘I’m from New Jersey,’ she said. ‘You?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m from all over, I guess. Illinois originally but I wouldn’t exactly call it home.’ He looked back at the spout of water shooting up from the ground, like a kid watching a firework. Then he smiled. ‘Did you feel it too?’
Liv frowned. ‘Feel what?’
‘The pull to this place. We all felt it. We all volunteered to stay behind when orders to ship out came through – the rest of the men were off like rabbits, they been pining for home for weeks, never seen homesickness like it. But none of us have any real homes to go to …’ His hand clenched into a fist and tapped on his chest above his heart. ‘But then we felt the pull to come here. So we came.’
Liv looked up at Tariq. ‘Why don’t you come on in,’ she said.
Tariq glanced down at her then back at the row of soldiers. ‘How many are you?’
The Corporal shrugged. ‘Just what you see here.’
‘The vehicles stay outside the fence,’ Tariq said, ‘and you need to hand over your weapons. We’ll keep them over there, locked in the armoury,’ he pointed to the nearest guard tower. ‘If you want to leave you can have them back again, no arguments, but no one walks around with a weapon inside the compound, understood?’
The Corporal stared hard at Tariq for a few long moments. Asking a soldier to hand over his weapon was like asking him to surrender. ‘How come you get to keep your AK?’ he said.
‘I don’t,’ he replied. ‘You lock up your weapons, I lock up mine. Everyone’s the same.’
‘But who gets the key?’
Tariq nodded at Liv. ‘She does.’
The Corporal smiled. ‘Well in that case it’s a deal breaker. In my experience you can never trust a Jersey girl with something of value.’ His face broke into a laugh and she saw the boy in him again. ‘I’m only kidding.’ In a few well-practised moves he made his M-4 safe and held it out to Tariq. ‘Hey man, no problem – your house, your rules, though you might want to reconsider letting the vehicles in, or the truck leastways.’ He turned to it as one of the other men climbed up and raised the canvas siding to reveal the truck was full of boxes and crates of food. ‘We just got a re-order in at the same time as all the other guys were shipping out. There’s K-rations in there and enough food to feed a battalion for about a month. We thought we’d bring it along, seeing as we had no idea where we were headed. The only thing we don’t got much of is water, but I see you pretty much got that covered.’
Tariq nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘You can bring the truck in, but the Hummer stays outside.’ The gate clanged like a bell as it was unlocked and then swung open to let the new arrivals inside. They filed in quietly, handing over their weapons to Tariq as if they were just checking in coats at a nightclub and Liv watched them closely, sizing them up. They were foot soldiers, enlisted men who more often than not joined up to escape jail or the crushing boredom of a dead-end life with no job and no prospects. Back home they joined gangs and fought to create the families they’d never really had. In the army they did pretty much the same. They were nomads, homeless, just like the guys from Ortus. Just like she was.
‘Where were you stationed?’
‘East of Baghdad,’ Williamson said, still staring up at the water fountain.
Liv nodded and walked over to Tariq who was checking weapons and making them safe.
‘It’s spreading,’ she said.
‘What is?’
‘The pull of this place – it’s spreading. The guys from Ortus felt it yesterday at Al-Hillah, these guys felt it today in Baghdad.’ She looked up and scanned the horizon all around, thinking of the whole world that lay beyond it. ‘We should get ready for more people,’ she said. ‘Lots more.’
It was early afternoon by the time Franklin and Shepherd finally eased onto the I-26 going northwest into a flurry of fine snow that drifted out of a light fog. The traffic was solid heading into Charleston, a three-lane parking lot, inching its way into the city. The outbound lanes were almost empty.
Franklin drove. Shepherd sat in the passenger seat, studying a series of maps he’d borrowed from the highway patrolman who’d ‘loaned’ them his Dodge Durango with about as much grace as someone handing over a personal credit card, pointing to a mall and saying ‘Knock yourself out’. For the first twenty minutes or so the only sound was the rumbling of thick wheels on blacktop, and the occasional rustle of paper as Shepherd unfolded the maps one by one and studied them. They were topographical maps showing the border region between South Carolina and North Carolina, with the Smoky Mountains rising up in the west. His finger traced each winding track, searching for a road he had only travelled once before, nearly twenty years previously.
‘Find what you were looking for?’ Franklin asked from the driver’s seat.
Shepherd stared out at the whiteness, the road disappearing into the fog within fifty metres either way so that it felt like they were moving but not going anywhere. ‘Hard to tell from these maps,’ he said. ‘Guess I need to be there and see what looks familiar.’
‘You won’t be seeing much if this fog doesn’t lift. The snow will make everything look different too.’
Shepherd wondered if this was all a waste of time. ‘We could always turn around and head back, follow one of our many other leads,’ he said.
Franklin chuckled. ‘Man you sure got cynical awful quick – normally takes a couple of years in a field office to wear the shine off a new agent.’
Shepherd said nothing. He kept thinking about the photograph of the dead woman and imagining how he would have felt if it had been his Melisa lying there
