The Preserve by Steve Anderson

Author:Steve Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510742109
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2019-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

***

A week after sailing from the Philippines, Lett was back on the Big Island of the Territory of Hawaii, inside The Preserve. Here he sat again, on the porch of his bungalow. They’d given him a day off. He was nearly halfway through it, the humid afternoon pestering him.

He broke matters down all over, and it didn’t end up clean like an M1. His assignment might have been top secret, but they weren’t even designated as a unit or even a branch of the military. They might as well have been a mining operation with hired tin badges. Why didn’t they just use local muscle? Why drag them all the way to the Philippines? The reasons sent a shudder through him. No unit designation or official postings or trip papers meant that it could all be disproved. No paper trail. No witnesses.

There was top secret, and then there was top secret forever.

Lett got another shudder, left over from being so close to Lansdale for a few days. Lansdale was simply a new incarnation of that same old rear-line player during the war who acted like a daredevil but had the game sewn up so tight he never lost. From his cocky stride to that large class ring he wore, Lansdale reminded Lett of one of those happy-go-lucky college students who belonged to every possible club and one certain revered fraternity, which, Lett suspected, gave the man a secret knowledge about how things worked in the world to benefit only a few. A fortune-favored and in-the-know comer like Lansdale only appeared to care about certain matters that fed his winnings, such as patriotism and the Red Menace and the Good Book, because he knew this was how the deal was sealed. One hell of a sweetheart pact had been struck long ago, by his father’s fathers, a backroom handshake passed down to the inheritors, each heir more fortunate. Sure, someday the mojo would run out. But that only made a possible final inheritor like Lansdale all the more reckless.

That thought had launched him out of bed and onto the porch. He simply could not sleep, and lying awake had nearly been worse than the assignment. He’d been stuck there reassessing far too much and wishing he knew more. He’d been with The Preserve a few weeks. It was now March. He was getting his cure as promised, and he couldn’t fault Selfer or even Lansdale if it didn’t end up working. But this was also some kind of secret base. It held about fifty personnel at any given time as far as he could tell. Some came and went quick, some looking shakier than others. He thought about those tunnels underneath the complex. He wondered if any personnel were down there now. He even wondered if the camp brought in people—prisoners, let’s call them what they were—who never left the tunnels, never even knew about a camp above them. The tunnels had to be operating, he figured. He had never again seen the men who had guarded him down below, but why should he? They would be needed down there.

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