Torchwood: The Men Who Sold The World (13 page)

He knew he should stick by the vehicles, knew he would become disorientated out there where the wind was full of the desert and nothing could be seen. But that crackle drew him.

‘Who is it?’ came a voice. An American voice. Afraid, shouting out into the wilderness like a fool who has lost his way. It was a voice Gleason recognised.

‘Major?’ he asked. ‘That you?’

‘Sergeant?’ Rider replied. ‘Careful where you step, it’s not safe.’

Gleason looked down but it was force of habit. If there were mines beneath him he’d only know when his size twelves landed on one. ‘You stuck, sir?’ he asked.

‘Can’t reach my radio,’ the voice was close, just ahead and to the right. ‘Got turned around in the storm. I daren’t move. I think I’m stood on…’

Rider couldn’t finish that thought; it scared him too much. Gleason didn’t need him to. Gleason understood. Rider was spooked. He had either scared himself to a standstill or he really was on a mine. Either way, Gleason’s feelings were the same.

‘Why are you all the way out here, sir?’ he asked the storm, moving towards where he guessed Rider would be. ‘Were you running?’

‘I told you,’ the voice replied, and it was close, very close, Gleason would see him soon. ‘I got turned around.’

‘Thought you were running towards the enemy, did you, sir?’ Gleason asked.

Rider didn’t reply. There was a shape in the sandstorm ahead, and Gleason knew he’d found his commanding officer.

He walked right up to him, pressing up close so that he could see the look in Rider’s eyes.

‘It’s all right, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ve found you now.’

He dropped low and checked the ground. Rider was right to be scared – his boot
was
stood on a mine.

Gleason stood back up. ‘Bad news, sir,’ he said. ‘You’ve trodden in something.’

He laughed a little at that, though it was no joke, not to either of them.

‘Can you help me, Sergeant?’ Rider asked, and the look of desperation on the older man’s face gave Gleason his first sense of what real power could feel like. He had this man’s life in his hands and the appreciation of that was something that would change Gleason for ever.

‘I can, sir,’ he replied, drawing out his knife. ‘I can help you.’ He pressed the tip of the knife into Rider’s thigh. ‘How long do you think you’ll be able to stand still?’ he asked. ‘Because you really can’t afford to move.
Sir
. If you move, it’ll go off, and it’ll take everything below the belt, sir. You’ll be a hollow man, sir. Spilling his brave guts in the sand, sir. Can you be still?’

‘Sergeant…’ Rider replied. ‘Please…’

‘Were you running, sir?’ Gleason asked. ‘That’s all I want to know. Tell me the truth and I’ll help you, but I need to know. Were you running?’

There was silence between them. The wind whistled. Somewhere, dropped on the ground, Rider’s radio crackled. But there were no voices. Just for a few seconds, no words.

‘Yes,’ Rider answered. ‘Forgive me.’

‘No, sir,’ Gleason replied. Slowly, not wanting to trigger the landmine, he lifted Rider’s tunic and brought up his knife so the tip of its blade met the man’s scared, sweating belly. ‘Try and stay still, sir.’

He pushed the knife in halfway. It was a good knife, it slid in beautifully. He held it there for a moment, then withdrew it and ran.

He could step on a mine himself, he knew. But he was willing to play the odds, to enjoy a spin on the battlefield roulette as, behind him, his commanding officer, the weak and disgusting Major John Rider, tried to stay still while his life slowly bled away.

Gleason ran for twenty seconds before, behind him, there was the sound of the mine going off.

Gleason kept running, enjoying it. Loving the freedom of just pushing forward into the unknown, lost to direction and sense.

He stopped as he collided with someone else.

‘Sir?’ It was Mulroney. ‘We thought we’d lost you.’

For a moment, Mulroney saw Gleason’s real face, the wild look of a man who had found blood out there in the desert and thrived off the taste of it. It was a moment that would bond them together for the rest of their lives. Then Gleason dropped his mask back down, became the dutiful soldier once more.

‘Tracking the Major,’ he said. ‘Tried to help, but he stepped on a mine. Nothing to be done.’

Mulroney nodded and Gleason thought the storm was stopping, he certainly found his vision clearing after what felt like years, maybe even his whole life.

‘I’m sure you did whatever you could, sir,’ said Mulroney.

They walked back to the rest of the men, navigating first with their radios and then, as the storm finally cleared, their eyes.

Part of Gleason is still walking.

Waking up on clean sheets, Gleason rolled out of bed and looked down on a body that was as scarred as his mind.

He walked into the en-suite bathroom and showered. He couldn’t shake the sensation of being coated in sand, the dream clinging to him as it always did. He worked away at it with sponge,
soap and nail until his skin was scalded and held the heat of the water even once he’d towelled off and dressed in T-shirt and jeans. He looked in the mirror and saw the pink face of an old soldier staring back at him.

‘When will you just fade away?’ he asked it. It didn’t bother to reply.

Downstairs Mulroney was also up, wandering about the kitchen in his jockey shorts.

‘Want some food?’ he asked as Gleason sat down at the breakfast bar.

He noticed his commanding officer was not quite at ease with the day, a troubled look in his eyes.

‘Something wrong?’ he asked.

Gleason shook his head. ‘Just not quite acclimatised, you know how it is.’

‘Battlefield and bed roll then Colorado sunshine and French toast. I know. I’ve got juice too, unless that’s a step too far.’

‘Juice would be good.’

Mulroney poured Gleason a glass of orange juice and returned to whipping his eggs.

They’d been there three days now, and the heat of gunfire seemed a long way away. The ghost of a previous life.

Mulroney dipped bread into the eggs and laid the soggy result in the skillet. Hot oil hissed and popped, reminding Gleason of dead men’s radios.

He didn’t let the memory put him off his food.

Later, with Ellroy and Leonard woken up and
sent into town for supplies, Gleason and Mulroney stood beneath the big Colorado sky, dreaming up damage.

They took it in turns to use the rocks for targeting practice, first of all methodically working through the items they had yet to test and then just shooting off for fun.

‘You think how different things would have been if we’d had weapons like this before?’ Mulroney asked.

‘Sure,’ Gleason replied. ‘With weaponry like this, we’d own the Middle East by now.’ He let off a blast from a Sontaran handgun, ploughing a black furrow through the earth. ‘We’d be swimming in oil. Still…’ he said, dumping the gun on the grass and reaching for the Ytraxorian rifle, ‘it’s this that’s really going to make the difference for us.’

‘You love that thing,’ said Mulroney. ‘I’m not sure I see the potential myself. It seems too random. Don’t get me wrong, it’s powerful, I get that. But where’s the fear? If we want to really shake up our previous employers, we want to threaten them with something that has the world shaking. Shooting people off into the sky seems a bit low-key.’

‘Trust me,’ Gleason replied, when I really let rip with it the world will shake more than you can imagine.’

Rex and Shaeffer landed at Colorado Springs Airport, having managed not to shoot each other on the flight, although it had been a close-run thing.

‘When we get a car,’ said Shaeffer, ‘I’m driving. No way am I letting someone as highly strung as you behind the wheel.’

‘Highly strung, my ass. Motivated is the word you’re looking for.’

‘Motivate yourself into an early grave unless you learn to chill out.’

The car-hire office was doing its best to cheer them up, all bright yellows and pastel blues.

‘Hi there,’ said the man behind the reception desk. ‘My name is Albert. What can I do for you today?’

‘We’d like to order a sandwich, Albert,’ said Rex. ‘This the right place?’

‘Ignore my surly friend,’ Shaeffer interrupted. ‘He’s scared of flying so it makes him all stroppy when we land. We’d like to hire a car, something
compact but with a bit of enthusiasm under the hood.’

‘I’m sure we can help you with that.’

‘Thanks, Albert,’ said Rex giving Shaeffer a homicidal look, before wandering over to a corner of the office to kick a plastic pot plant.

Once they had their car – and a brief argument in the car park as to who would be driving it – they headed out of the city and towards the open country.

The Rockies reached up around them, and they couldn’t help but feel small as they wound their way through the landscape of dense trees and imposing rock.

‘I feel like I’m in a Western,’ said Rex. ‘The sky’s too damned big.’

They pulled in at the Garden of the Gods Park Tourist Centre and went into the gift shop to load up on maps.

‘Think we could use some postcards, too?’ said Shaeffer, browsing through a spinning rack. ‘Maybe some novelty pens?’

‘Had my eye on some of those coyote plush dolls myself,’ said Rex, pocketing a couple of maps and his change.

They drove into the next town, Harker’s Pond, and began cruising around for a place to stay. They eventually settled on a cottage motel on the edge of the town. What it might have lacked in amenities, it would make up for in privacy.

Rex rented the cabin furthest away from the reception office and they let themselves in, dumping
their bags and sitting down on the beaten-up sofa in order to really enjoy their accommodation.

‘This place has atmosphere,’ said Shaeffer staring at a damp patch on the wall that looked to him a lot like Africa. ‘I don’t know when I last experienced such comfort.’

‘It is beautiful,’ Rex agreed. ‘I just wept for joy in the bathroom, that son-of-a-bitch was so clean.’

‘Thank you for showing me this glimpse into your hallowed life.’

‘No problem, happy to share it with you.’

Rex unfolded one of the maps he’d bought and spread it out over the small dining table. ‘Hell of a lot of ground to cover,’ he said. ‘This is looking more and more like a waste of time.’

‘How can you say that when relaxing in such opulence as this?’ Shaeffer retorted, looking to the corner of the room where a throw rug was piled up as if it had been trying to crawl away.

‘And in such great company,’ Rex countered.

‘I was going to add that myself.’

‘Given that Mulroney won’t appear on any official records for the area, we’re struggling to find a place to start. What we need is a map that actually shows all the ranches and farms in the area. That way, we can start to narrow down viable places. I can’t imagine Mulroney’s sunk his money into a Duplex in town, we’re looking for somewhere remote. Somewhere he can avoid prying eyes.’

‘Plenty of scope for that around here,’ said Shaeffer. ‘There must be a local office that would have registry papers, stuff like that.’

‘Yeah… Time to spend some hours going over town records. How I love the rock and roll business of investigative life.’

Rex asked at reception for directions to the town hall before, reluctantly, heading into town with Shaeffer to do some research.

It took them the rest of the afternoon, skin grey from dust, to accept that they had bitten off more than they could chew.

‘I’m so glad I agreed to this plan,’ said Rex later as they sat in a local diner staring at a laminated menu without really reading it. ‘I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun.’

‘Just wait until tomorrow,’ said Shaeffer. ‘We can do it all over.’

‘I doubt I’ll manage to sleep, I’ll be so excited.’

‘Doubt I’ll manage to sleep either, though that will more likely be due to the fact that the bed’s made of mould and gingham.’

They ordered almost randomly, pointing rather than reading, and hoping for the best.

A salad arrived. They poked it with forks.

‘How did you get into this?’ Rex asked. ‘Toppling governments for a living.’

‘Came up through the army,’ said Shaeffer. ‘Just kept saying yes when they offered me transfers. I’ve never been a man who planned a career path. You?’

‘I planned it.’ Rex stared at a coil of onion. ‘Every single step.’

‘Why CIA?’

Rex raised an eyebrow. ‘Why not?’

Shaeffer shook his head. ‘People don’t just opt for intelligence work on a whim. I joined the military because it was easy for me, it was the path of least resistance.’

‘And you’re a least-resistance kind of guy.’

‘Kind of ironic, given what I’ve done in my life. But, yeah.’

‘If that was true, you’d still be with Gleason now.’

The waitress arrived with their entrées. If nothing else, it saved Shaeffer the embarrassment of replying.

The next morning, Rex woke with an idea. He took it outside with him on a hunt to find decent coffee.

‘Esther?’

‘Rex… Make it quick, a girl can lose her career talking to you right now. Where are you?’

‘Colorado, saving the day as usual. I need you to access satellite imagery for the area around Colorado Springs, specifically the Garden of the Gods Natural Park and Harker’s Pond.’

‘Am I allowed to use the US satellite network as a personal Google Earth?’

‘Sure you are. I need you to look for any unusual heat traces. They’ll be centred on remote areas, ranches, farms, that sort of thing. Gleason’s team are holed up around here somewhere and they will have been playing with their stolen toys for sure. From what I saw in Cuba, that stuff’s going to light up a satellite image like Christmas.’

Esther thought about it for a moment. ‘OK, but
I’m going to have to clear it.’

‘Clear what you like, but don’t set alarm bells off all across the network – the last thing we want is to scare him off again. We do that, we’re never going to find him.’

Rex hung up and walked into a promising-looking coffee shop with an actual spring in his step.

‘Well, look at you so happy,’ said Shaeffer when Rex returned to the motel with a pair of coffees. ‘You get laid while you were buying breakfast?’