Part 33 (1/2)
”I'm leaving in the morning,” Ben put an end to it.
Chapter Twenty-nine.
Ben started sending his unit out in the darkness ofnight. As quietly as possible, running without lights. He had ordered his Rebels to bandage various parts of their bodies; to limp and stagger as if badly hurt. To be helped into the waiting trucks.
He knew Hartline had long-range recon teams watching the base camp through long lenses. And he knew Khamsin's people were close-by, watching.
Maybe they would think the badly wounded were being trucked back to Base Camp One.
Maybe it would work long enough for Ben's unit to get close to the outlaws.
Maybe.
Ben and his personal team would be the last to pull out. Just moments before leaving, Ben walked to Sylvia's quarters.
She was sitting in a chair, as if expecting him.
The man and woman looked at each other in the sputtering light of a camp lantern.
”I cannot tolerate a traitor,” Ben broke the silence.
”How long have you known?” she asked.
”I've suspected for some time.”
”But you don't know or understand why I did it, do you, Ben?”
”No. I'd like to be able to say I'm not particularly interested. But I'd be lying.”
”We had something good beginning, Ben.”
”Using vernacular before you were born: You blew it, kid.”
”It isn't too late, Ben.”
”I could never trust you, Sylvia. Not ever again.
You see, kid, I knew someone like you years ago.
Back when the nation was whole. I fell hard for her.
The only difference being, ours was a purely Platonic relations.h.i.+p. Do you know what that means?”
”Yes.”
”As a matter of fact, you look a lot like her.
You have many of her mannerisms. Perhaps that's why I felt something for you I haven't felt in a long, long time.”
”You must have loved her a great deal, Ben.”
Memories took Ben winging back over the years. She slipped into his mind, as she did from time to time. He had never spoken of her, not to anyone-ever. He had been about twenty years older than the girl-and even though she was in her twenties, she was still a girl. A girl in a woman's body.
And he loved her then, almost as strongly as he loved her now.
The tough ex-soldier and ex-soldier-of-fortune-turned-writer had fallen a.s.shole over elbows in love.
If she had asked for the stars and the moon, Ben would have somehow gotten them for her.
Yet, so it seemed, to Ben, every time he turned around, she was c.r.a.pping all over him.
Ben almost drank himself to death over a period of a few months ... until he slowly began wising up and realizing what the young woman really was.
Greedy, grasping, ungrateful, petty,petulant. A very pretty but shallow person.
And she had taken him like a schoolboy enduring the pain of first love.
And it still hurt.
Ben looked at Sylvia. ”How much have you told Khamsin's people?”
”Troop strength. Placement. Plans for the future. Everything I knew.”
”Why, Sylvia?”
”They have my father.”
”How do you know it's him? I thought you told me he was dead?”
”He fits the description. It's him.”
”Why didn't you just come to me and tell me?”
”I didn't think.”
”That's right ...” He almost called her by another name. She didn't think either. Only of now. Never of the future.
Ben felt he was reliving the past.
”You've probably gotten some Rebels killed, Sylvia. Have you thought about that?”
”I don't care about that. It's my father.”
”If he fell in with Khamsin, then he must be a sorry b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
She did not reply. But Ben saw her right hand move ever so slowly toward her right boot. She carried a knife there.