Riders (2 page)

Cordero waits. “Okay, Gideon. We’ll try again in half an hour.” She pauses at the door. “I can do this all day. Can you?”

After she leaves, I let my head fall forward where it wants to be.

Breathe, Blake. Breathe.

I could’ve handled that better. But was I supposed to tell a stranger what’s going on? Who I am?
What
I am?

No way. Cordero would’ve panicked. She’d have lost her mind. But the words are still on my tongue. They’re right there.

I’m War,
I want to say.

I am War.

C
HAPTER
2

It takes me less than a minute to realize that I have to answer Cordero’s questions. The drugs have wiped out my entire arsenal of abilities. I’m stuck in this chair until I give her what she wants. There’s no other way. I have to talk.

The taller guard, Texas, leaves to get her but she waits the full half hour before coming back, like a parent making a point.
Don’t test me, Gideon Blake. I mean what I say and I say what I mean.

She brings a black file with her that makes a slap when she drops it on the desk. My military record. It’s pretty thick considering I only shipped off to Basic a couple of months ago after high school, but I’ve already had a notable run in the Army.

Cordero tucks herself under the desk. “I’m glad you came around.” She flips open the file, then waits like she wants me to say thank you.

“You should’ve covered the electrical outlets,” I say instead.

Her dark eyebrows go up. “Excuse me?”

“If you didn’t want me to know I’m back in the States. Just a tip for the next time you unlawfully detain someone.”

“Noted. Any other suggestions on how I can do my job better?”

“Yes. As soon as we’re done, Nat, the
second
we’re done, you untie me and get Colonel Nellis.”

Cordero’s mouth lifts at the corners. Not a smile, exactly. More like a close cousin to a smile. “Stop calling me ‘Nat’ and we have a deal.”

I nod, but I’m actually not sure it’s going to work. Everything I said sort of just slipped out. My thoughts are still up in arms, tired of being stuck in my head. I have to keep consciously beating them back and hoping they stay there.

A muffled voice in the hallway draws my attention to the door. Sebastian, Marcus, and Jode left Norway with me. Only Daryn didn’t. The guys must be here. Probably in adjacent rooms being interro-questioned by their own Corderos. I bet Marcus hasn’t said a word, but I can just imagine the verbal diarrhea Bastian and Jode are slinging. Neither of those guys needs drugs to spill.

Thinking about them reminds me of Daryn again. This time I really sink into the memory and she’s twisting her long hair over one shoulder and smiling at me.

What are you looking at, Gideon?

You. I’m looking at you.

How am I looking?

Perfect,
I should’ve said. But I didn’t.

“Gideon? Are you with me?”

Whoa. Not at all. How long did I just zone out? Priority one: Get these drugs out of my system. They’re slowing me down too much. I won’t stand a chance against the Kindred doped up like this. I need to get this debriefing done, find the guys, and get back in the fight.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m with you.”

“Good. Let’s start with the accident at Fort Benning.” Cordero reads from the folder. “The last record we have of your whereabouts is dated six weeks ago. You suffered extensive injuries during a training incident. The report states that you fractured your femur, radius, and ulna … cracked ribs … severe concussion. It says here you were unresponsive for over two minutes. You had just been declared dead when you resuscitated.” She looks up from the file. “Tell me what happened during that exercise. You were parachuting?”

I nod. “But it didn’t go right and … I bounced.”

Behind her Texas and Beretta exchange a look.
Dumb boot,
I bet they’re thinking.
Incompetent little turd.

“Bounced?” Cordero asks.

“Hit the dirt at a very high velocity.”

“Yes. I have that here, but I’d like to hear the full account in your own words.”

Right. My own words. But now I can’t seem to start. Going through this from the beginning will use up precious time. How can I sit here, talking, when the Kindred are out there hurting innocent people? On the other hand, if I tell Cordero the situation without any lead-up, she’ll either panic and make hasty decisions, or think I’m crazy and refuse to believe me—neither of which I want, so. The fastest way out of this room really is to tell the whole story, and that jump was definitely square one. The beginning. Or the end, depending on your perspective. Death usually is the end.

“Walk me through it, Gideon. Moment to moment,” Cordero says, like she’s sensed I’m finally ready.

“Okay. The accident.”

C
HAPTER
3

You have my military record, Cordero, so you know the lead-up: how I’d literally boarded a plane for Fort Benning, Georgia the day after I got my diploma in May. It’d been a long senior year, not a lot of fun for me, and I couldn’t wait to put high school behind me and start doing something I actually cared about.

I spent the summer going through Basic Training, then Advanced Infantry Training, then Airborne School, finally ending up where I really wanted to be—the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. RASP is the gateway for becoming a Ranger, a soldier in the 75th Ranger Regiment. My dad had been part of this elite combat unit once and I was determined to become part of it too, even if it killed me—which is actually what happened, but I’ll get to that.

RASP, in a nutshell, is eight weeks of pure punishment meant to weed out anyone who’s not supposed to be there. The program puts you through constant physical and mental tests on almost no food and even less sleep. Intense
.
But my Ranger buddy and I were both in it for the long haul. Cory was from Houston, a couple of years older than me, and relentless. He’d face a twelve-mile run in full combat kit with a grin and his personal motto:
Nobody ever drowned in their own sweat.

Four weeks in, our class had been reduced by around half, to fifty guys. We were pulled away from the steady stream of road marches and weapons drills for a parachute jump. Most of us had just gotten our jump wings in Airborne School, and they wanted to keep our training fresh in our minds.

We loaded into an Air Force C-130 just after 10:00 a.m. Cory and I took our seats side by side, how we’d pretty much been for the past month. As the plane’s propellers fired up, the anticipation of the coming thrill erased the aches that had been piling up in my body. By the time we were in the air, I found myself grinning. Like every other five-jump chump.

My first jump a few weeks earlier had required a leap of faith just to get out the door. But then the canopy had opened four seconds later, right on time like it was supposed to, and I’d relaxed, and it had been amazing. It was real quiet and peaceful on the way down, and you couldn’t beat the view.

This jump would be my sixth. Since it was only intended to refresh our training, we were jumping Hollywood-style, which meant we weren’t wearing our weapons, rucks, or combat load. Without all the gear, I felt more comfortable, and I knew it would also give me more time on the descent. Jumping from a thousand feet, the whole thing never lasted much longer than a minute—combat jumpers need to get on the ground fast—but without all the battle rattle weighing me down, I might get a few more seconds in the air than normal.

I sat back. Compared to the stuff I’d been doing, this was going to be a treat.

Listening to the drone of the engines, my eyes moved over the guys sitting in jump seats against the outside skin of the aircraft and in rows down the middle. It’d been a long time since I’d felt like I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

Then Cory dug an elbow into my side. “Good, Blake?”

The question sounded casual but I knew it wasn’t. The week before, we’d been pulling an all-night march on Cole Range—acres of Georgia woods reserved for our training—and we got talking about the worst things we’d ever been through. I was so sleep-deprived, hungry, and sore, I let slip that nothing had ever felt tough since my dad had died August 2nd of the previous year. Which happened to be a year ago, that very day. I was sitting on that plane on the anniversary of his death—and Cory had remembered.

But I had it under control.

“Good, Ryland,” I replied. Then I flipped him off as a thank-you for asking.

In the center aisle, the jumpmaster started going through the jump sequence.
Get ready, stand up, hook up, check static line, check equipment, sound off.
I went through each check, along with the fifty guys around me. Airborne School put thousands of soldiers through this process every month and every part of it ran like a well-oiled machine.

As we approached the drop zone, the jumpmaster opened the door and cold air rushed into the plane. Sweat rolled down my back as the adrenaline buzzed through me. The feeling of toeing right up to the edge of my limits was familiar. I’d leaned pretty hard on it over the past year because it made me forget exactly what Cory had just reminded me of.

The jumpmaster gave the go command and the guys at front of the line started exiting, one after another, handing their static lines to the safety by the door and launching into the sky.

We moved quickly. In seconds it was Cory’s turn. He jumped through the door and disappeared, and then I was up. I took my last steps on the plane and threw myself out. As the air current grabbed me, I locked my feet and knees together and hit a good exit position. The plane’s engine noise receded rapidly behind me. As this was a static-line jump, my chute would autodeploy. My job was just to make sure that happened properly.

Setting my hands on my reserve chute, I counted off like I’d been trained to do. “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand.”

What the…?

Where was the tug?

I looked up, searching for an open canopy like I’d seen in my previous jumps.

It wasn’t open.

What I saw above me was a twist of pale silk. The canopy had rolled into a tight line. I instantly recognized it as a parachute malfunction—a streamer, also called a cigarette roll because of the way the parachute looked.

It offered no lift capability at all so I was still in a dead free fall. I shot past Cory, then saw him above me, suspended by his canopy and looking the way I was supposed to be looking. In the rush of the wind, I thought I heard him yell my name.

Then time went into slow motion and my training kicked in.

I ripped at the handle on the reserve chute and watched in disbelief as the reserve went straight up into the main, still streaming above me, then as the two wrapped and twisted together.

At this point, I knew I had a real mess on my hands but I stayed right with my training. It’d been drilled into me that the proper reaction to a reserve that failed to inflate was to reel it back in hand-over-hand and throw it back out, away from the main. As many times as it took. For the rest of my life. So I did that. I pulled and reeled in my reserve like I was in a tug-of-war for the ages.

I hadn’t missed a beat in my reactions, everything felt like instinct, but some part of me was stunned that I was suffering a double malfunction, every jumper’s worst nightmare. They were incredibly rare—but not rare enough for me right then. The drop zone was coming up fast. Really fast. I finally bunched my reserve into a ball in front of me. With a heave, I threw the reserve down and away as hard as I could and
wham
! My harness yanked against me, digging into my groin.

My reserve had finally opened. The main flapped next to it, still in a twist but no longer causing problems.

This should’ve been great news but as I looked down at the earth, coming at me like a planet-sized bullet, I knew it was too late. My velocity wouldn’t allow for a safe landing. Or even a survivable one.

I had moment’s thought about my father and the coincidence that was happening, the two of us falling to our deaths on the same day, then I reminded myself of the correct parachute landing fall position.

Feet and knees together. Tuck chin and elbows. Land on balls of feet, then roll to calf, thigh, arc body—

I hit so fast it felt like I landed everywhere at once—feet, ass, head.

The last thing I remember was hearing the crunch of bones in my arm and my legs breaking. And that was it.

I was done.

C
HAPTER
4

“What happened after you fell?” Cordero asks.

There’s a new intensity in her eyes. Same with the guys guarding the door. They’ve been indifferent so far. Almost bored. Not anymore.

“After I fell?” I say, buying myself a second to shake off that fall and get my heart to settle back down. Did I just say everything I think I said? Did I tell her about my
dad
?

Stay on topic, Blake. Answer the question. Only what she asks. But even that’s not so simple. What do I say here—the truth?

I fell, then my bones snapped, and then everything went quiet and I was floating in the stars, surrounded by them, breathing them, feeling them, dead, I knew I was dead, but I still heard guys yelling, felt Cory doing chest compressions, keeping my heart going, then something cinched tight to my left wrist and the life surged back into me?

No way. I’m not telling her that. She’s not ready yet. But these drugs in me are wicked.

I think it.

Words come out.

That’s dangerous.

And my recollection feels too sharp. Too real. Just now it felt like I slipped into the past. As I was talking, my mind dove much deeper. I could see every detail. Feel every sensation. I literally just relived my death.

“Gideon?”

“Yes?” I was droning again. Basketball brain is bad news. The fact that the Kindred are out there and I’m stuck in this chair is even worse news. The radiator’s going again. I didn’t even hear it go on.