Matt Archer: Blade's Edge (20 page)

Maps dotted the walls and had multi-colored pins stuck in various countries. In Montana, China, Peru and Australia, the pins were all green—threat eliminated. Africa’s were yellow, meaning unknown threat and ongoing investigation. Afghanistan’s were red—active operations with hostiles. Hostiles that looked way too much like us.

Uncle Mike had projected a picture of the aftermath from one of Parker’s recent incursions while hunting for Ramirez. I stared at the screen, feeling sick to my stomach. Three skinny, white bodies lay sprawled on a rocky cave floor. Dark ooze bled from bullet wounds in their foreheads. One of the dead guys was about my age. One was much younger, maybe ten or eleven.

“As you can see,” the colonel said, pointing at the wounds, “gunshots are effective against the Taken. But only headshots. The team clipped a few, even shot one full in the chest, and it only slowed them down. We have to shut down their nervous systems to stop them.”

“But they used to be people,” I murmured. “They were kids once.”

Johnson sat next to me. “Those folks died a long time ago. We’re just putting their bodies to rest so they aren’t in pain anymore. Like Wynn, understand? We stopped the pain before the bad guys could take him away.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Would you want to be used like these people?”

“No, sir,” I said. “No, I wouldn’t.”

I knew I was being stupid; I’d killed one of these “Taken” people with my knife, but that didn’t ease my mind any. There was something about shooting them that didn’t sit right with me. And what would Mamie say if she heard I’d shot a kid? Would she believe the “put them out of their misery” argument, or would she call me a baby-killer? I shuddered, wondering when push came to shove if I’d be able to defend myself against a pack of zombie preschoolers.

I closed my eyes, trying to erase the sight of those crumpled bodies. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do whatever it takes to get Ramirez back.”

“Good man,” Johnson said.

Colonel Black went back to the screen, outlining the plan of attack. We’d meet up with Parker’s team and scout a series of caves, hoping my knife would put us on the right track—but there were lots of caves in Afghanistan.

We will find him,
the knife-spirit whispered.

She sounded confident. Good, considering she’d barely spoken the first trip. Maybe we’d have better luck this time.

Uncle Mike was shaking his head, though. “Does anyone think this could be a trap? That the demons are luring us into the caves? I mean, what Matt ‘saw’ last month—that might have been a trick to make us come to them.”

“It’s entirely possible, but those things have a knife wielder,” Colonel Black said. “Risky or not, we have to go after the knife even if we can’t recover Ramirez. We can’t let dark forces keep one of our weapons.”

“Except they couldn’t use it,” I blurted out. Everyone turned to me with “you’re not helping” expressions on their faces. I held up a hand. “The knives only work for their wielders. It couldn’t be turned.”

My knife hummed in a tentative way and she sounded apologetic when she said,
Light and Dark are family. We bleed together at times. With enough power…

I rubbed a hand across my forehead, feeling a headache coming on. “Are you kidding me?”

It depends on the will of the knife’s partner. For now, I feel no change—my brother is still whole—for now. His wielder’s will is weakening, however, so time is of the essence, or he’ll be lost.

“Matt?” Uncle Mike asked.

“The colonel’s right—we have to take this mission,” I said, finally understanding the knife’s urgency. “My knife-spirit is saying the blades
can
be turned if the wielders are broken down enough. The spirit says they’re still whole, which means Ramirez is probably alive, but if we don’t get him back soon, the enemy will win a knife.”

Chapter Twenty-One

S
chmitz rousted me out of
my bunk at oh-four-hundred the next morning. I packed my gear in a sleepy daze, feeling like I’d hardly slept at all. I couldn’t remember having any nightmares, but I had the jitters for sure—I tied my boot laces into knots by accident and it took me two tries to button my camo jacket correctly.

Uncle Mike poked his head through the door. “Ready?”

I ducked under my bunk to retrieve my duffel bag. “Nearly.”

He nodded, then disappeared into his room. Already packed with a few minutes to kill, I sank down on my bunk and pulled my phone from the front pocket of my duffel bag. The colonel had given me one to talk to my tutor and check in with Mom. But now…now it was time to use it to say my goodbyes.

My text to Mamie was short and sweet:
I’m being careful, and we’ll find him. Don’t worry.

Mom’s message was a little more gooey—I figured she’d like that:
Uncle Mike is taking good care of me. Home soon. Love, Matt.

Now for the hard one.

I knew what Ella wanted to hear—she’d reminded me when I’d called to let her know I was being deployed. Worse, she’d been distant with me the whole time we talked, almost like a wall had gone up between us. I tried joking with her to get a reaction, but she seemed to be wearing some kind of invisible armor. The whole thing worried me, but all I could do was what she asked and hope she was okay when I came home.

I tapped my fingers against my phone, trying to work out just the right message.

I have the medal and I promise to keep it close. I love you, and now I’m forgetting about you.

I sighed as I shut off my phone. Forgetting her wasn’t going to be easy.

Schmitz pounded on my door again. “Daisy, let’s go!”

I banged my bag against the walls as I came out to meet him, making more noise than necessary. If Schmitz could wake up the whole base, so could I. Uncle Mike was hanging out in the hallway, talking on the phone with Aunt Julie, murmuring all manner of sappy crap to her. That only stood to remind me that my own girlfriend hadn’t wanted to talk last night, so when Mike told Julie, “No,
you
hang up first,” I pretended to gag.

After he ended the call, Mike strode over, giving me a teasing smirk. “Maybe when you’re old enough to have a serious girlfriend, you won’t think I’m so gross.”

Oh, I got it just fine, and I lifted my chin to glare at him, eye-to-eye. Uncle Mike’s face fell. “Whoa, Chief. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

Without bothering to answer, I grabbed my bag and stomped outside to the helipad. I could hear Johnson and Mike whispering behind me, and I caught Ella’s name once or twice. Well, let them talk. I had to forget her now, anyway. It’s what they all expected.

“Don’t take it personal, Archer. The major’s just a little blind sometimes when it comes to you,” a soft voice said in my ear, coming out of nowhere in the shadows.

I stopped my angry march. “Schmitz, quit trying to give me a heart attack, okay? And what do you mean, ‘blind?’”

“Hey, take a second to calm down and listen to me,” he said. “The major still thinks of you as a kid. The rest of us see that you’re practically a grown man, and treat you accordingly, but he doesn’t see what’s right in front of him. To him, you’re still the little guy he takes camping.”

“I wish he’d figure it out already.” I wasn’t sure Mike would, though. “Thanks for teaching me to shoot, Master Sergeant. And for being really cool.”

“You bet.” He punched me in the shoulder. “Remember to squeeze the trigger. Moving targets are tough, so lead ahead with your sights.”

I punched him back, then headed to the helipad feeling a little better about the morning.

The giant Chinook’s twin rotors beat against the desert sky as the four of us ran down the back ramp onto a plateau on the mountainside. The noonday sun scalded my eyeballs and I felt like the Tin Man, needing some oil for my stiff knees. After spending the last week indoors, being out in the crisp, thin air of Afghanistan’s mountains was a smack upside the head. Johnson huffed and puffed next to me as we jogged to Parker’s encampment. Schmitz ran past us, singing a marching song to the tune of “The A, B, Cs” so filled with swear words my Kindergarten teacher would’ve fainted if she’d heard it.

“Why is he always moving?” I grumped. “Seriously, he runs everywhere.”

Johnson laughed. “He knows first one to camp gets to sit and watch the rest of us set up.”

In that case, the Master Sergeant had the right idea. Without another word to Johnson, I took off running full tilt, and passed Schmitz about a hundred feet from the edge of camp.

“I win!” I said, huffing for breath. I bent over my knees to keep from keeling over. Passing out would be worth it if I didn’t have to help put up the tent, though.

Schmitz jogged by, giving me a really weird look. “Daisy, what’s your hurry?”

“Johnson said…first one to camp…never has to…set up,” I said.

“What?” Schmitz raised an eyebrow. “I never heard that, and I’m always first.”

Johnson strolled by with Uncle Mike, both of them grinning. Uncle Mike shook his head at me and mouthed “gullible.”

They’d punked me. Dang it.

I gathered up my duffel and limped into camp, devising ways to get back at them. Two guards armed with M4s, guys I didn’t know, watched us approach. Camp wasn’t much more than several tents in a ring around a central command tent, all made out of heavy green canvas, with a barrier of razor coil surrounding the whole thing. There was also a latrine somewhere, judging by the smell, and someone had set up an open air tent with a few rickety tables as a mess hall. Boxes of MREs were stacked near locked trunks. Chow time, coming right up.

Uncle Mike, our ranking officer since the colonel was manning operations at Bagram, marched up to one of the guards, who promptly snapped to attention.

“At ease,” Mike said. “Blue team, reporting for duty. Where are our racks?”

The guard pointed us to the tent adjacent to command. I got there first and peeked inside. Small, but ready and waiting for us. Ha, I didn’t have to set up camp, after all. We stowed our gear on empty cots, then Mike sent me to check in with HQ.

Master Sergeant Murphy stood on duty outside the command tent, his blond hair washed out to a dirty tan by the harsh sunlight. “Archer, word is you might have a bead on the major.”

The worried note in his voice stopped me; he sounded like a guy on the verge of giving up. If a hardass like Murphy was this broken down, what were the rest of Ramirez’s guys like?

“I wouldn’t call it anything solid,” I said carefully, “more of a gut feeling that my knife will give me a pull in the right direction.” She hadn’t talked to me much since I’d gotten here, but maybe that would change.

The knife’s handle flashed blue and Murphy nodded. “If anyone can find him, it’s you.”

I forced a confident smile before pushing my way through the tent’s flap. Sometimes I worried my reputation as the resident master-wielder was undeserved.

His voice is clear, but faint. We hear him this time.
The knife-spirit sounded calm, reassuring.

“Why now?” I asked.

Parker, standing at a bank of laptops set up on a map-strewn table, didn’t even look up. He must’ve gotten used to me talking to myself.

Unsure. Perhaps a trap,
the spirit answered.
But a risk we have to take. Now, find us a map.

“Yes, master,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Parker laughed. “Getting ordered around some?”

“You have no idea,” I said. “Captain, can I see a map?”

He nodded. “Gotley, show Mr. Archer the terrain map.”

A lieutenant I didn’t know took me over to a large board. A map, five feet by five feet, showed Afghanistan in relief, the mountains drawn so they looked textured.

“We’re here,” the lieutenant said, pointing to a spot more than a hundred miles north of Kabul.

I reached out slowly, focused on the knife’s hum in my head, then closed my eyes as I brushed my fingers across the slick paper. My fingertips tingled when I passed a certain spot—a mountain pass thirty miles away. I ran my fingers over it again. More tingling.

Yes. There.

“Captain? Have you searched here?” I said, pointing at the spot.

He shook his head. “It’s kind of remote, no villages close by.”

“The Takers fly,” I said. “They don’t need to be close.”

“True.” Parker tapped the spot with his finger. “What makes you think this it?”

“Don’t you feel it?” I asked. When he shook his head, I said, “Let your knife talk to you. It’ll show you the spot.”

He gave me an awkward smile. “My knife doesn’t talk much.”

“Maybe you haven’t been listening the right way,” I said. “Don’t try to force it. Just drift.”

After a self-conscious shrug, he closed his eyes, resting his hand against the map. I closed mine, too, straining to hear.

Here, here.

Not mine. This spirit’s voice was faint, sounding trapped. My breath caught and I listened harder.

Another voice, like my spirit’s, but not, and much closer.
We hear him.

Yes,
my knife answered.
He’s close.

Fainter still than all the others, one last voice said,
The Maker sends his blessings.

My eyes snapped open. “You hear that, Captain?”

Parker’s hand was shaking against the map. “Was that…
Jorge
?”

I nodded, excited. “His knife-spirit, anyway. You know what this means, right? We did it—we found Ramirez’s knife, and that means we’ve found Ramirez!”

“It worry you that we didn’t hear Brandt’s knife?” Parker asked. He backed away from the map and wiped his hand on his BDUs, looking utterly freaked out. “I just heard the four.”