The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

had nodded. “You’ll do all right, Sherman. And we’ll keep an eye out.”

I had headed back down not long after that, relieved that Hicks and I had talked, even if it had only been for a few minutes. The talk created a bond between us, however tenuous, and when your life depends on people, you want that bond.

I hadn’t heard from him since I left the Army, although he must be somewhere around here. His family lived in Virginia, and before we even left Afghanistan he’d requested a transfer to Fort Myers. I wondered if he’d gotten the assignment he’d requested, to the Old Guard, the 3rd Infantry Regiment. He had the kind of spit and polish they required, and he’d certainly earned a chest full of medals during his three wartime deployments. Idly, I thumbed through a base directory as I chatted with Bowers, but I didn’t see Hicks’ name. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t here, they didn’t print these things often. I glanced at the cover, and saw the edition in the office was printed in 2011. I slammed it shut.

As the night wore on, we played some cards, and every couple of hours I walked the company buildings, checking for unlocked doors and people who were in places they weren’t supposed to be. But all stayed quiet. At three I told Bowers to get a nap, and covered the phone. And finally, gloriously, seven a.m. arrived, and so did my relief. I waved a goodbye to Bowers, handed off the keys to my relief, and headed out the door for the barracks.

It was cold out, but not bad. And as I walked, I guess I came to a sort of peace with where I was. Until things went bad in Afghanistan, I’d actually liked being in the Army. My problem here was two things: I’d been forced to come back, and I had nothing useful to do while I was here. I couldn’t do anything about the first problem, but I might be able to solve the second.

I stopped, not far from the barracks. My path had taken me along a sidewalk that bordered on the edge of the cemetery. Before me, sweeping off into the distance to the Potomac River, was row upon row, thousands and thousands of graves of soldiers who had fallen in wars all over the globe.

Roberts was taken home to Alabama to be buried by his parents, and Kowalski’s body went to Minnesota. But Weber was here. Somewhere in this cemetery, his body had come to a final rest after a sniper ended his short life halfway around the world.

I shivered, staring out at the endless field of graves. I didn’t know why Major Smalls had brought me here. CID headquarters was at Fort Belvoir, just south of Washington. I was basically on my own here. It didn’t make any sense, other than the proximity to Walter Reed, where the investigating officer was.

That’s when the idea popped into my head. Maybe I could talk to Smalls about moving to Walter Reed. I’m sure they could find something useful for me to do there. And I’d be closer to Carrie. I checked my watch. It was 7:15, and I was meeting her in eleven hours. Time to get some sleep.

All settled in? (Carrie)

My office was directly across the hall from Lori Beckley’s, on a long hallway of glass fronted offices with glass doors. By the middle of Friday, my second day at NIH, I had a working computer and was finally wired into all of the systems there. Lori had already stopped by once that morning to check in on me, as had Doctor Moore, who seemed stiffly uncomfortable.

It was early in the afternoon when I was deeply engaged in refining my original proposal for the fellowship when I heard a thump on the glass wall of my office. I looked up and was startled to see two teenagers looking in the glass. Beyond them, a group of maybe twenty people, wearing mostly shorts and t-shirts, stood in a rough semi-circle around a woman in a suit. All of them wore NIH guest badges.

I quickly typed into the instant messenger application on my computer. Lori: what is that?

She responded: Tourists. Public Affairs brings them through once or twice a day.

Ugh. The two teenage boys were still staring in the window, and one of them had left smeared fingerprints on it. The other one licked his lips.

I typed: I feel like I’m a zoo exhibit.

She replied: You are. Don’t worry, they’re harmless. Just picture them as big friendly cows.

Harmless maybe, but having teenagers gawking outside my office wasn’t exactly my idea of a fun time. I did my best to ignore them and went back to work. Doctor Moore had given me a week to finalize the plan for the fellowship, but I wanted it done quicker than that. The sooner I finished, the sooner I could get down to real work.

My original proposal called for almost a year of data collection in the field. I’d be involved with a lot of the field research, but it also proposed research teams from three different universities, including Rice. That phase of the study had a huge budget: substantial travel, plus the cost of tranquilizers, collection equipment, DNA sequencing, and pathology studies. At the end of the first year, the second phase was all number crunching: we’d be hiring two contract programmers to set up the databases, cross reference the DNA samples, genetic drift, and hopefully identify what other vectors were allowing for the spread of MRSA infections.

The tourists finally moved on and I got back to work. And the more I thought about it, the more I could live with it. After all, I was living my dream right here.

It was almost five o’clock when the phone on my desk rang. It was Doctor Moore.

“Carrie, can you stop by my office before you leave for the day?”

“I’ll be by shortly,” I replied.

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