Heidi was up early, wiggling out from under the pile. She had barely slept. She rarely slept well and the day’s hike was nowhere near enough physical activity to exhaust her like she normally had to for sleep. She was also aware of every little sound and movement. It had been years since she had slept in the same confined space with others. Whether a tent with others or a bedroom with someone else. It was hard enough in a four person tent with just her daughter at the start of the trip. Now, curled up in a ball with two other people, one who she barely knew but was also her new boss, there was no calming her mind down enough to sleep, at most she was able to let her body rest for a bit.
She dug around the area for small twigs and sticks. Once she had collected enough, she made her little pit fire again. Once it was going, she started some water for coffee. She knew the fire was small and completely below ground and the cup covered most of the hole, leaving almost no signature to be observed. She shuffled through the pack to find a change of clothes. She was using an old trick to keep things clean and or separated. In the cool weather, she was wearing two layers, not because she was cold, but because it separated the dirt/seat and such. Her inner layer was more body sweat and grime, the pants, shirt and jacket were more environmentally dirty. This was part of the whole layer thing. She had several sets of compression shirts and pants she wore under the travel pants and long sleeve shirt. Each set was packed in its own ziplock bag, whether dirty or clean. This kept the smell from migrating. To help with this, each had a couple dryer sheets in with them. She did the same thing with her underwear. This was taught to her years ago and she had taught it to her junior troop, and later to Emilia.
She had changed the compression stuff when she wiped down last night, but hadn’t changed the outer layer. This was what she was swapping out now. She was down to her last clean set, so this meant Emilia should be as well. They needed to do a bit of laundry and soon. She also knew they were running low on food. They ate the MRE’s Doug had. They still had the left over elements from them to snack on like crackers and cheese but not much. There was still some food left from the campsite, but not much. Things were looking a bit sparse in the food department. She was also down to fifteen or so of the tubes of instant coffee. All the good stuff was gone. She was far too many years removed from survival school to remember any of the eatable plants and such. Bugs and grubs? She knew she could do it, but she didn’t know if they had enough hot sauce with them to convince Emilia to try them short of starvation.
Her mind was deep in thought when she heard a rustling of the ground cloth behind her. She whirled, hand going for the pistol tucked into her waistband. She saw it was Doug scooting out the end of the sleeping bag sandwich. She relaxed some.
Doug had tossed and turned in his mind for most of the night. His burns made it uncomfortable to move much and his head still hurt. He was worried about Angelique. Part of him raged to go down and finder to protect her. The other part knew if she wasn’t safe right now, there wasn’t anything he could do other than get himself, her, Heidi and Emilia killed. Id Heidi wasn’t here, he would have blundered right down there and done just that. Get real, he told himself. If Heidi wasn’t out here, you would have died back by the creek. He remembered looking at her resume weeks ago. It had a whole host of great training, schools, and talent represented. It also had some holes his boss asked him to dig into. This was how he came to find out about her in the first place. At the initial read, he made his pitch to his boss about maybe moving her to Backcountry. His boss wasn’t convinced and had him do some background digging.
The initial stuff revealed such things as her widowed status, the single child, age 14, and the very impressive military record. It was the later stuff in the records that worried his boss. College, followed by a high school teaching position which didn’t last very long. Many jobs of short duration followed. Foreclosure proceedings were initiated on a house in her and her husband’s name years ago that was pulled at the last minute. That house was subsequently sold for a loss, followed by her move to this area. Plenty of other jobs here, mostly things like bartender and such.
Doug did some investigating. Turns out Heidi lost her teaching gig for having an altercation with one of her fellow teachers. This was followed by an altercation with higher administration officials for failure to apologize to the other teacher. All of it was over curriculum presentation and concepts issues. This led to Heidi being ‘let go’ as well as poisoning the well for any teaching references or any teaching jobs within any of the surrounding counties.
Doug burrowed a little deeper, reached farther back. The Defense Visual Information Distribution Service has a website to get access to Department of Defense imagery and stories. He plugged her name into the search engine and was a bit surprised at the amount of results. Mostly her name was listed in the captions of pictures for things like ’30th Security Forces Squadron conservation patrolman, brushes Military Working Horse "Trooper" before their ride at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. Trooper is a 14 year old American quarter horse who entered active duty in 2010 and helps to patrol 99,600 acres of hard-to-reach areas on Vandenberg with his patrolman’, but some were more focused. One was an official portrait from where she had won an award. She was in full dress uniform with a whole pile of ribbons and decorations. She was quite stunning. One of the other pictures was older, from downrange. It was a shot of a huge guy carrying another who was half his size. The woman being carried was Heidi. Even with all the gear on, and the blood covering the front of her uniform and face, there was no mistaking that face. The caption and story was part of a write-up for the medal she received for her actions that day. Three and a half hours of continuous CPR on someone in a moving vehicle is just brutal. Doug also realized by linking up KIA info from that day, the woman she was doing CPR on was a good six or eight inches taller and fifty or more pounds heavier. With Heidi’s tiny frame, she was doing it with pure muscle and determination. That level of stubbornness and no quit attitude was something he admired. Unless he found something ridiculously disqualifying, he was going to recommend to his boss she would be a good fit for the Backcountry position if she wanted it. He got tentative approval to pitch it when she got there from FLETC.
Doug looked over. He could see Emilia asleep. He could see her mother’s features in her. There was no doubt she is Heidi’s daughter. Beyond her, Doug could see Heidi putting a linen shirt on over her compression shirt. With nothing but a silhouette, he could see some of the inspiration for Emilia’s drawing. That woman looked like she was ready to run a marathon and load a truckload of hay bales when she got there.
He was ashamed at his first thought. ‘How could I take advantage of her to ensure the safety of Angelique?’ He could hear his mother in his head.
“Vasily, this woman has been screwed over many times, all for doing the right thing! She will help you, because it’s the right thing. This is not the place for any of your father’s tricks .I did not raise you to be a manipulative bastard.”
Doug hung his head in shame for a few moments as this went on in his head. He knew it was time to get up, start the day and find Angelique.