Chapter 12
It turned out Solomon didn’t need to be so nervous. Wilson wasn’t his assigned training officer. In fact, he barely saw Wilson at all. Wilson came by the airfield once in a while, but it was just to glance at them and then talk to the training officer and poke at things on his tablet. Solomon spent more of his downtime talking to the guy assigned to drive them all to the airfield. Or more accurately, he spent his downtime listening to the guy complain about how he should have never gotten licensed to drive a cattle truck because now that was all anyone had him do, transporting troops either for jumps or for literally anything else.
“And because I’m the one driving, and not jumping,” he kept saying, “I get to be the one getting the chutes and bringing them to the airfield. I get to wait at the drop zone as a chute turn-in point for all of you. I get to count the chutes after the jump. Then I get to drive everyone back. Then I’m put on chute shakeout detail. By that point it’s nine in the morning and I’ve been up all night with this bullshit.”
The jumps usually happened around midnight since they were supposed to train the way they fought, so Solomon got how the guy might find it annoying. And even if they were done in broad daylight, none of what he did sounded that fun. The militia didn’t seem to care much about anybody’s natural interests when it came to assigning them to details. It was the needs of the militia, first and only. He could see why Rithvik had needed Wilson’s help to get the position he got analyzing surveillance data. And even that, Rithvik told him, was boring.
“The only fun part is getting to work with a VR helmet,” he said. “They’re really cool. They make you feel like you’re really there. The militia is so strict about who gets to use one, though. You have to have clearance and everything to be able to even sign one out.”
Umma had used to wear her VR helmet a lot. Dad had always thought she used it too much; Solomon remembered the ban was one of the few council edicts Dad had been happy about. “VR made it convenient for people to meet anonymously in secure environments to organize politically,” Solomon said. “The council doesn’t exactly like that kind of thing happening. Not to mention VR is harder to track than phone calls or messages.”
Rithvik shrugged. “They still don’t have to let civilians use the visors, they could give them just to soldiers to train on. Even for this mission. We could be given a much better sense of what it’s going to be like in the blue zone through VR.”
“I wonder why they picked us for this,” Solomon replied. “The fifty or so of us that they’re going to be selecting from for the blue zone mission.”
“I was thinking about that too. I asked around a little, and you know what I found out? Every single soldier chosen for this program has family in this zone. They want to make sure that only those who have the motivation to come back are given the chance to go into the blue zone.”
Wow, Rithvik was even more politically cynical than he was. “Except for Wilson,” Solomon said. Since he was a defector, whatever family he had had to be in the blue zone.
“Oh, I guess so, I wasn’t counting him.” Then Rithvik frowned. “Wait, how do you know that?”
Too late, Solomon realized his mistake. “I… I met him once. Before basic.”
“You knew him before? You never said!”
“It was one time. In passing.”
Solomon could tell Rithvik was curious, but he didn’t press him. He was good like that. Instead, he shrugged. “Oh, you know the other thing I noticed? None of the fifty of us are White.”
Solomon thought about that for a moment. And then he said, “Except for Wilson.”
“Yeah,” Rithvik replied. “Except for him.”
***
Solomon found himself unable to stop thinking about what Rithvik had said. How every single soldier chosen for the program had family in the area, and how none of them were White. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. It wasn’t as if the Westsylvania militia was as racist as, say, the militias in ethnonationalist red zones. Sure, the All-Whites were annoying, but they mostly kept to themselves, and anyway they seemed to prefer constantly harassing the White guys in other factions to join up with them instead of messing with any non-White soldiers.
So why did he feel so suspicious?
There were a few reasons. First, since Solomon had gotten called back to train for this mission, he’d started working his way through any books on the blue zone he could find. There weren’t a lot. He’d been tempted to set up a VPN to bypass the firewalling that restricted their access to the blue zone nets, since he wanted to learn more about what it was going to be like there, but unfortunately that was illegal. Like really illegal, it was pretty much the one thing they didn’t want them doing. He’d of course use a server network based in another country, but even that wouldn’t protect him from a targeted attack by a militia computer security unit, and he doubted a VPN provider would hold out on giving up his information in the face of escalating demands for cooperation.
So he was limited to what he could find on the red zone nets, and what he’d learned from others. During basic he’d been taught the blue zone hated White people. That could explain why they were having only non-White soldiers go in. It still felt off, though. After all, Wilson was going in too. He was the one leading them. And could any zone that had once been part of America really hate White people that much?
Maybe this was where his second piece of reading was coming in. After he’d finished a book on how armies in ancient Rome were funded, it had started making him wonder how the militia was getting the resources to pay soldiers like him. Was it all from civilian payroll deductions? Or were there red zone billionaires who were financing the red zone militias? Were they a professional force or a private army? How exactly had the council forced the factional militias to come together to form the Westsylvania militia? Who had given them the money to make it happen?
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Maybe Solomon was overthinking things. He probably was. There was no real reason for his mind to keep returning to a theory that this mission into the blue zone wasn’t actually for zone security purposes, that the lack of White soldiers indicated it was not an officially sanctioned mission, that instead it was some favor being done on behalf of a private funder.
He tried to ignore his suspicion, but it kept growing as he moved through the rest of his training for the next several months until it was mid-June. Deep-water rifle retrieval, construction of improvised tools, terrain runs, hand-to-hand combat… out of everything, he liked hand-to-hand combat the best, or at least he was better at it than he was at anything else. Including parachute training. There was something about flinging himself out of a plane at 20,000 feet that he was just not into. He didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing when he passed his evaluation by successfully steering his parachute several miles to the drop zone. If it meant not having to do it again, maybe it would’ve been better to fail. Granted, failure would’ve just meant being given some wall-to-wall counseling to motivate him to try harder, so it was probably good he didn’t fail. It had taken them a long time to figure out Hyeon-Ju needed to be washed out.
But when Solomon received a memo from Wilson ordering him to attend a private briefing, he was pretty sure that meant he’d been selected.
When he walked in, Wilson looked up from across the desk. He grinned. Solomon saluted, stood at attention and tried to will himself not to feel as if Wilson were mocking him with his smile. “Congratulations,” Wilson told him. “You’re going into the blue zone.”
“Thank you, sir,” he said.
He studied him for a moment. “Any questions?”
Solomon knew he shouldn’t ask. This was the first time he’d been face-to-face with Wilson since basic training and it looked as if the meeting might already be over, which was what he wanted. But it had been on his mind so much that when invited to ask, Solomon did, even though he knew it was dumb to take Wilson up on it. “Why are none of the soldiers going into the blue zone White?”
Solomon could tell right away that Wilson did not like his question. And honestly, he got why. It wasn’t like he wanted to think about politics either. He didn’t want to think about treachery, didn’t want to think that something else was going on other than a simple mission into the blue zone. But the reality was that despite the old flag, this wasn’t the United States military anymore, it was a militia he’d been forced to join, and he wanted to know if he was going to get screwed over while being used for some billionaire’s personal machinations.
Solomon watched as Wilson slowly got to his feet. “What are you accusing us of?”
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” he replied. “You asked me if I had any questions.”
“What is this? You don’t want to go?” he snarled.
Of course Solomon didn’t want to go! Why did Wilson? Did he not see that if this wasn’t a real mission into the blue zone, he was going to get into as much trouble as the rest of them? But Solomon didn’t know how to tell him that. He was already regretting asking his question. He should’ve listened to the instincts he’d developed around Wilson during boot camp and kept his mouth shut.
“I’ll go wherever I’m told to go, sir,” Solomon replied. “I took the oath. I know how to obey orders. All I’m saying is that people are people, and politics are politics, and the only difference that matters between people is how they treat the person in front of them, and not what opinion they have in their heads.”
Just because the red zone militia had been good to Wilson didn’t mean that the red zone militia wasn’t made up of fallen people too, people who wanted to get ahead, people who had their own agendas that were orthogonal to your well-being, people who would happily throw an entire squad of soldiers under a bus if they thought they could get something out of it for themselves. That was what Solomon was trying to say. But Wilson didn’t seem to be taking it that way. He was literally glowering at him. “I didn’t think you were the seditious type.”
Seditious? Solomon could feel his heart start to race. He wanted to stammer out an apology but he didn’t want to say the wrong thing, and he didn’t know what the right thing to say was. With Wilson standing there, glaring, he felt as if he were spinning back to the beginning of boot camp, where nothing he did was right and there was nothing he could do to make it better. If Wilson reported him for speaking sedition, and he got convicted, that was a one-way trip to a prison labor camp.
He had to think, and quickly, to get his stupid self out of this mess he’d created.
Thank God, the words came out all at once. “I didn’t go through losing my parents and getting drafted and surviving basic training only to go to a prison camp, and if you send me to one, that’s on you. I didn’t say any of this stuff to anyone else, I told you, because if I’m in your blue zone squad, then you’re my officer. If you tell me to shut up and keep going, I will. What happens to me is your responsibility.”
Wilson sat back down. “Damn right it is.” He picked up a piece of paper from the desk and held it out to Solomon. He had to step forward to take it from Wilson’s hand. It was a briefing report but it contained almost no details; it was 90% boilerplate about how important it was to maintain operational security, with a single line stating that their exfiltration would be arranged through covert channels by an insider embedded within the enemy’s ranks.
Only one part stood out to him:
The objective of this assignment is to provide protection to a designated agent at Hershey Park. Your role is to ensure the safety and well-being of the agent. This assignment aims to prevent any potential threats, disruptions, or incidents that may compromise the agent’s mission. For this assignment, you will assume the identity of a tourist visiting Hershey Park. Your cover story will portray you as an ordinary visitor enjoying the park’s attractions, rides, and amenities with the designated agent. You will blend in with other park guests and engage in typical tourist activities to maintain your cover. It is essential to be a regular visitor and avoid drawing attention to your true purpose or affiliation. The designated agent will provide you with additional details and appropriate documentation, such as tickets, maps, and any necessary props to enhance the authenticity of your cover story. The agent will also pick you up at your drop zone wearing a neon green shirt with the letters RUN CMD printed on it. You will be going to your drop zone alone.
“Hershey Park?” Solomon asked.
“The amusement park, yes.”
Huh? “Aren’t amusement parks for children?”
“Why do you think we’re sending you?”
At first, Solomon thought Wilson was having a jab at him, but then he realized he’d meant it. Fair, it was true that he was not yet twenty, and that amusement parks were things teenagers went to. It had just been a long time since Solomon had thought of himself as a kid in need of amusement.
There was no other real information in the briefing report, other than his code name, Landon, Wilson’s code name, Wade, and the designated agent’s code name, Manal. Maybe Wilson was being careful to make sure Solomon only knew what he was doing and not what anyone else might be doing. “Okay,” he said.
Wilson held his hand out for the paper. Solomon gave it back to him. “Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
A smile touched Wilson’s face. “You’ll get issued your gear paperwork later today. Go,” he said, and for once, Solomon was happy – no, relieved – to obey.