something was wrong the moment her hand closed around the shoulder strap and pulled the bag towards her. It was too light. She dragged it out, unsnapped the cover and looked inside. Empty.
She looked around in panic, her exhausted mind knocked sideways by the discovery. The flat stone and pocket knife used for cutting the energy bars was on the ground beside her. She was in the right place – so where was the food? No one had said anything about it running low the last time the rations had been handed out.
Then she stopped dead, remembering the last person who had done it.
It had been Kasim.
Kasim had handed round the last rations about an hour ago.
And now Kasim was missing.
41
Joint Base Charleston served as both a civil and a military airport, hence the blunt utility of its name. It was also shared by different branches of the armed forces and the C-130 pulled to a stop now between the drooping wings of two massive C17 military transports, one painted in Army camouflage the other in Air Force blue.
‘Agents Franklin and Shepherd?’ Their welcoming committee snapped to attention as they walked down the loading ramp into a freezing wind that was whipping off the river. He was a two-chevron Petty Officer with a clipboard and a pink, scrubbed-looking face that appeared to be suffering in the cold. Franklin flashed his creds, Shepherd fumbled his from the coat he’d borrowed from Marshall after his had been destroyed by the helium blast, the PO ticked something on his clipboard and gestured towards a waiting Crown Victoria with base markings on the side and its engine running. ‘Sorry gentlemen, you just got me. We’re kind of short-staffed here. And I can’t hang around or let you have the car either. I can take you off base and into town but that’s about all. Traffic is hellacious today for some reason. You’ll have to find your own way back. I’m real sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it, son – we’re grateful for any help.’ Franklin showed him Cooper’s address and the PO whistled through his teeth. ‘Fancy. That’s south of Broad in the old town, where the tourists go and the rich folks live. Like I say, I can take you there but I can’t wait.’
Franklin held up his hands in surrender. ‘No problem – we can hook up with the local PD once we’re off base and take it from there.’
Franklin moved towards the passenger seat leaving the back for Shepherd. He didn’t speak again until the car was rolling.
‘Your staffing situation got anything to do with that floating traffic jam out in the river?’
‘You got that right, sir. We’ve had unauthorized ships arriving here for the past twenty-four hours. The Port Authority is in meltdown. They’ve drafted us in to help deal with the situation but it seems to be getting worse. We put out a general call twelve hours ago advising all shipping that the port is now embargoed but no one seems to be taking any notice. They just keep on coming.’ The PO eased out onto a broad boulevard lined with piles of greying snow. ‘Did you see the carrier when you came in?’
‘Hard to miss it.’
‘That’s the USS Ronald Reagan. It’s supposed to be out on patrol in the Atlantic but it showed up here about an hour ago. There’s all hell breaking loose over at command. They’re talking mutiny and all kinds of stuff.’
‘Anyone spoken to the captain?’
‘If they have, I don’t know about it. What I do know is that none of the ships – military or civilian – have responded to communications. We can track them coming in on radar so we know they’re headed here, but all attempts to contact them and divert them elsewhere have been met with radio silence. It’s like a fleet of ghost ships coming in to anchor.’
‘What about the crews, they sick or something?’
‘They’re all fine. Everything’s fine. There’s no engine failure or nothing like that. They get here, drop anchor and start disembarking. That’s why we’re short-staffed, everyone’s on double duty trying to deal with all the paperwork. By rights all the military personnel should be arrested for dereliction of duty and held in the brig but we haven’t even got the capacity for that. The brig holds around three hundred men and it’s full already. There’s six thousand on the Reagan alone. We also got a cruiser and a destroyer out there and a coupla frigates heading this way.