Hagane no Renkinjutsushi - Volume 2 - Chapter 2

THE ODD TERRORISTS

THEY WALKED for almost two hours, got on another train, and then a car, and by the time they arrived at Eastern Command, it was already near dusk.

Roy invited Edward and Alphonse in for a hot drink, but when the two brothers saw Eastern Command, they were stunned: it was all they could do to stand before the doors, mouths agape.

Eastern Command was in utter chaos. Voices squawked over CB radios. Military police with their hands full of documents rushed to and fro. Roy, back in uniform, was buried in work in a flash, promises of a cup of tea forgotten.

“Colonel!” a man carrying a stack of documents like a baby in his arms called out to Roy as he walked through the door. “Over ten groups are claiming responsibility for the terrorist bombing three days ago.”

“Eliminate all the ones that are obviously lying. Investigate the rest,” Roy replied without slowing down.

“Colonel!” someone else shouted. “The guards at the gate are having to act as PR for the local residents. They want more men.”

“Fine. Just don’t put any hotheads out there. We need people who can stay cool and collected. Things are crazy enough as it is.” 

“Colonel, we received word that the commission on renovating the waterways are short on their budget.”

“Send it to accounting in Central.”

“Colonel, letter for you from Central. They call it ‘encour-agement,’ but it sounds more like they’re complaining again.”

“I already went and talked to them! Make a paper airplane out of it or something.”

Roy barked commands out of the side of his mouth, as he waded through the roiling sea of people and finally sat at his desk, hidden behind a towering stack of untouched correspondence.

Edward and Alphonse looked at each other.

“I think we can forget about our hot drink,” Alphonse whispered.

“Man, leave a place for a few days, and look what happens,” his brother replied, rolling his eyes.

“Let’s stay out of their way.”

“Good plan.”

Edward and Alphonse decided to say goodbye to Roy and then get out of Eastern Command while the getting was good. While they stood outside Roy’s office, waiting for the right time to talk to the busy colonel, they heard a voice call out behind them.

“My, if it isn’t Edward and Alphonse,” said a woman’s voice. “Long time no see.”

The two turned to see First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye standing before them.

With her long blond hair tightly bound behind her head, her already sharp features stood out even more. She was the epitome of cool composure. In her function as Roy’s right-hand woman, Edward had never seen Hawkeye betray the slightest hint of emotion, whether anger or happiness. Still, everyone agreed, deep down, she was really good at heart, and this alone saved her from being widely disliked by the men working under her. It did not save her, however, from the occasional joke about scary Lieutenant Hawkeye.

“Good evening, boys.”

“Evening, Lieutenant.”

She favored them with a thin smile from above the stack of documents in her arms. “I heard from Second Lieutenant Havoc that you had quite the time getting back here. You must be exhausted. Feel free to use the break room if you want to take a nap.”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Edward replied with evident weariness. “Not with everyone so busy …”

They were exhausted. After the long, fruitless hunt for the Stone, and then the long walk on the way home, their bodies were worn out. Edward could have gone to sleep where he stood that instant, but the slightest glance into the office reminded him how frantically busy everyone was.

“Well, we certainly are busy,” Hawkeye said. “I’m sorry I can’t stop and chat. Don’t take it the wrong way, all right?”

Edward and Alphonse nodded. “Thanks, we won’t,” Edward said.

“You know where the break room is, right? Take it easy.”

“Thank you, good night.”

“ ’Night.”

The two brothers bowed neatly. She nodded and then disappeared through the open door.

IT WAS THE MIDDLE of the night before Roy had dealt with the biggest pending issues his staff had thrown at him. He gave his last orders for the day, sat down, and rested his eyes for the first time since their return to Eastern Command. The main office, a war zone up until a few moments before, had finally calmed down, and now only a few on-duty soldiers were still there working.

“Man, I’m tired,” he muttered to no one in particular before sprawling out on his desk. The sharp rap of a mug hitting the desktop made him snap upright in his chair.

“Evening, Colonel. Good work you’re doing here.”

He lifted his bleary eyes to see Hawkeye standing in front of his desk. She pushed the mug of tea across to him.

“Huh?” Roy replied, his eyes focusing. “Oh, thanks, Lieutenant.”

“Actually …” She leaned over and handed him a file. “The report on that case you were asking about.”

“Ah. Thanks again.” Roy took the file and began leafing through the pages.

Hawkeye watched Roy read intently for a moment before she spoke again. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

Roy smiled. She knew him too well. “You mean, why am I wasting my time investigating an abduction case with terrorists on the loose?”

“Yes. I know you think you know something about it—you’ve found some key to solving it. But you know what Central would say. If you have time to deal with an abduction case outside your jurisdiction, then spend that time catching the terrorists. Don’t they hound you to drop everything else like they hound me? Isn’t that why they called you over there today?”

“I guess,” Roy said with a shrug. “You know, Lieutenant, I like to think of the folks down at Central as … twittering little birds.”

“Your commanding officers … are birds?” Hawkeye asked with a raised eyebrow.

Roy nodded. “Birds flying up in the sky don’t give a feather about the hustle and bustle down on the ground. You know why? Because they can fly free. Well, I say give them a taste of their own medicine. Why should we care what the birds are thinking? We’ve got a job to do down here on the ground, and that, my dear Lieutenant, is to catch the ringleader of these terrorists and put an end to this chaos as soon as possible. If I think investigating this abduction case will help with that, I’ll put aside as much time for it as I can.”

“So you think there’s a connection between the abduction and these terrorist incidents?”

“I do.” Roy’s fingers stopped on a page. “Look at this. First, a retired military officer’s son is kidnapped. The kidnappers want eight million cens for his safe return. The parents pay the ransom, and the child turns up, unharmed, a few days later. Next, a wealthy child on good terms with the head of a state research laboratory is taken, and now the kidnappers want ten million cens. The price is paid, the child is returned—again, unharmed. Next, the child of an officer with the military who holds a lot of authority in Central is abducted … Cases like this are happening all over the place. And they all have something in common.”

“They’re all after people connected with the military. The latest kidnapping is from a family in the art trade, but I’ve heard they donated a lot of money to the military,” Hawkeye said, nodding.

“That’s right,” Roy continued. “And there’s another similarity. When the ransom is paid, all the children come back. No deaths, not even any injuries.”

“Just like the terrorists,” Hawkeye noted, seeing the connection.

“The parents of all the abducted children all have high status. Some with less-than-perfect back records themselves. Since the kids are always returned when the ransom is paid, they haven’t been very helpful in tracking down the kidnappers. They pay the ransom, there’s a brief investigation, and we get nowhere. And what happens then? The public eye shifts from the unseen, and comparatively benevolent, kidnappers to us. What are we, the keepers of the peace, doing about all this? The utter lack of sympathy from the civilian populace makes our investigations all the more difficult. And there’s another kidnapping, and it gets worse. Just like these terrorist attacks.”

“Because there are no injuries, people stop blaming the terrorists and the kidnappers and instead vent their frustrations on the military who fails to capture them,” Hawkeye said, putting it together. “We get all the complaints, and people associated with the military pay all the ransoms.” Hawkeye looked away and thought a moment before speak-ing again. “All this negative PR … perhaps the kidnappers have some reason to dislike the military?”

Roy nodded. “Central thinks there isn’t a connection, but I think there is. Small-scale though they may be, the terrorists’ capability to place so many bombs in such a short time means they’ve got considerable funding. And the only large source of funding going to criminal elements right now that I can see is this ransom money.”

“Indeed,” Hawkeye agreed. “But the children’s reports don’t match. The kidnappers never look the same. And for that matter, none of the reports of suspicious-looking people seen at the site of the terrorist bombings have matched either.”

Hawkeye sighed, then put her hand to her mouth as though she had just realized something. “What if all these different people are being sent by one person?”

Left with no connection between the incidents, the investigation would fall apart. No one could piece together the puzzles left by the criminals. But maybe those pieces belonged not to many little puzzles but to one big puzzle. It was certainly a possibility. Roy tried to imagine the kind of criminal that would be behind such a master plan.

“We might be up against someone far more powerful than we imagined,” Roy said finally, closing the file with a snap.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Edward and Alphonse left the still-bustling Eastern Command and walked through town. Roy came with them.

“Are you sure it’s okay to walk around in uniform?” Alphonse asked with a worried glance at the colonel’s newly cleaned outfit.

“Well, at least our immediate neighbors don’t hate us yet. I try to keep up relations, you know,” Roy said, returning a wave from an attractive woman passing by.

Keep up relations, indeed, thought Edward to himself.

Roy explained that they had received some complaints, but the situation was nowhere near threatening violence. Nor could the brothers see any tension between the soldiers on guard duty and civilian passersby on the street.

“After the chaos in Eastern Command, it seems quite pleasant out here,” Alphonse remarked, his eyes following the people setting up roadside stalls for the day’s business. Everyone was going about their morning preparations like any other day. Only the extra guard patrols on the street signaled that things were not entirely as usual.

“It’s odd though,” Alphonse said. “I mean, I’ve never heard of terrorists who don’t terrify anyone. It almost seems like the military is the only one who really cares about fighting them at all.”

The faces the three saw as they walked toward the station held not a trace of fear. People were simply going about their business. The only mention they heard of the bombings came coupled with complaints about haywire train schedules. 

“Terrorists targeting the military … You may have something there, Alphonse.” Roy’s eyes narrowed.

“So,” Edward asked. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Colonel? Where’s your staff? And aren’t you on break now? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

Unlike Edward, who had spent the night snoring in the break room, Roy had continued working until just before dawn. He was exhausted. The fact that he had been stifling yawns all morning escaped no one.

“I wanted to check something with that art dealer’s family regarding their kidnapped child. It’s work, but it’s outside my jurisdiction. Thus, I go when I’m off-duty. And I can’t take any of my men with me, either. They’re too busy.”

Edward whistled. He’d never seen Roy work so hard. “You’re working up a storm, Colonel,” he said with a mischievous grin. “I guess the rumors were wrong.”

Roy raised an eyebrow. “You mean that I loaf around? Or that I’m more concerned about my dates than my work? Those rumors?”

So the rampant rumors in Eastern Command had reached Roy’s ears. Roy’s comment matched Havoc’s description to the word.

Edward nodded. “Bingo.” He was about to offer to amend the rumors, based on Roy’s performance last night and today, but Roy spoke first, cutting him off.

“Don’t believe everything you hear. I get work done too, on the rare occasion.”

Edward laughed inwardly. Roy was practically confirming that the rumors were true after all.

“Why the sudden silence?” the colonel asked with a suspicious frown.

“Oh, nothing.”

Roy glared at Edward, his eyes demanding an explanation. Edward looked away nonchalantly and thought of a way to change the topic. Alphonse walked up alongside Roy and spoke to him with a tone of hesitation in his voice. “Um, Colonel?”

“Yes?”

“Are you sure it’s all right if we continue our research? I mean, you and everyone at Eastern Command seem so busy. And now you’re taking on those abduction cases …”

Roy was silent.

“Shouldn’t we be helping out?” Alphonse asked softly. 

Roy smiled at him. “Don’t worry about it.” Alphonse was a gentle, kindhearted soul, Roy knew, but the last thing he wanted was to subject him to the grind of these last few weeks in Eastern Command. 

“You need to do what you need to do,” Roy replied kindly. “You’re still young. Worry about your own problems first.”

Even though he had to tilt his head back to look Alphonse in the face, Roy gazed at him like a parent looking at a child. “I am always amazed by how different you are.”

There was no need for him to say to whom he was comparing Alphonse. 

“Look. I just don’t wanna waste time being nice to people,” Edward said with a dramatic scowl. “I do things my own way, got it? Still, if you’re coming to us on bended knee, I suppose we could lend a hand. Of course, then you’d owe me, and you wouldn’t want that, now would you, Colonel?”

“See? That’s how mean you have to be. Never do anything for free, right?” Roy said, pointing at Edward. Then he smiled at Alphonse. “The only thing I ask of you two is that, should you happen to get involved in another incident like the one yesterday, you help make sure everyone stays safe. It’s a big responsibility, but I’m sure you can handle it. Well, actually, I might ask for your help a little later, but only when I’m sure I’m ready to be in this guy’s debt.” He jerked his thumb at Edward.

“I charge interest, you know,” Edward said with a grin.

Roy shrugged. “Why does this not surprise me?”

“Understood,” said Alphonse with a smile in his voice. He knew that, in part, the two of them were just playing up their rivalry to make him feel better about not being able to help. “If something happens, I’ll be on the job. Whatever it is that I can do.”

“Good. Just … don’t overdo it, okay? I don’t want either of you getting hurt.”

“Right, sir.”

The three stopped at a street corner lined with fruit and vegetable stalls.

“This is my stop,” Roy said, waving to the two. The strong smell of coffee drifted out of a shop nearby. “You two spend so much time off running around that I hardly get a chance to see you. And even if it was just by chance that we did meet—I’m glad for it.”

“Me too,” Edward said. “Say ’bye to everyone at Eastern Command for us.”

“Sure thing.” The colonel saluted them.

“Oh, Colonel,” Alphonse added. “Thanks for letting us sleep in the break room.”

“No problem. Good luck finding your Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Thanks.”

Edward went to return the colonel’s salute when an image of the incident on the train suddenly flashed into his mind. He stopped, staring out into space.

“Something wrong?” his brother asked, concern echoing in his voice.

“No …”

That dark silhouette against the field—he saw it again, now, in his mind’s eye. An uneasy feeling crept up his spine. He felt like it was right there, watching him, a sneer on its face. Edward shook his head, trying to rid himself of the vision.

“Something the matter?” Roy asked suspiciously, noting Edward’s furrowed brow.

“Uh, no, I’m fine. Really.”

It was just a rock, or a tree, Edward thought to himself. The train car had been rattling and shaking with the force of the emergency brake—it was ridiculous to think he could’ve seen someone sneering at them from such a distance.

“It’s nothing,” he added to the two staring at him.

Edward didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t see the terrorist responsible for the blast. It didn’t make sense. It was completely impossible. Edward shook his head, trying to clear the fog that suddenly filled his mind. 

Now he tried to sort out why he had suddenly remembered the silhouette in the first place. This was all a big waste of time. Instead of thinking about something impossible, he should think about something that might really exist: the Philosopher’s Stone. If they were going to find it, they’d need to keep searching.

“I was just thinking, Al. Let’s get going,” Edward said, slapping his brother on the back. Just then, they heard an announcer reading a news bulletin from a radio in one of the nearby shops. He sounded excited. 

“This station has just received another terrorist warning, and this time, they mean to strike here in our city! It reads as follows: ‘Twenty minutes from now, we will destroy the cargo train-loading depot at the station in the Seventh District. We mean no harm to civilians.’ I repeat: ‘Twenty minutes from now …’ ”

The three of them stopped in the street and exchanged glances.

“This station has received another warning! All those in or around the depot are asked to please evacuate as quickly as possible. In twenty minutes …”

In contrast to the almost giddy news reporter, the people inside the coffee shop seemed utterly unfazed.

“Again?” they heard one man muttering.

“There won’t be any injuries—it’s a cargo train,” said another, turning back to his newspaper.

Roy, Alphonse, and Edward stood rigid in a state of high alert. The civilians around them might not care about the oddly un-terrifying terrorists, but the three knew that anything could happen. They had no guarantee that the terrorists wouldn’t decide they’d had enough of bloodless destruction and go for victims next.

Roy glanced at his pocket watch at the same moment that Edward and Alphonse looked up at the clock tower at the station a short distance away.

“Twenty minutes from now …” Roy said with excitement in his voice. “That means we can stop this bomb. And the people responsible might still be at the scene!” He began to run. There was no time to call Eastern Command and organize a team. He was the closest to the scene, which meant that he had the best chance at catching the bombers red-handed, and he wasn’t going to let it pass him by.

“Al!” Edward shouted.

“Yeah,” his brother replied. “Let’s go!”

“Excuse me, sir, could you hold this for me? Thanks!” Edward called out, throwing his traveling trunk on the ground at the feet of the shop clerk. He and Alphonse took off after Roy.

“I thought I said you didn’t have to come with me!” Roy shouted when he heard the running footsteps behind him. He didn’t look back.

“And I believe I said I do things my own way!” Edward shouted back.

“At least let us help evacuate civilians!” his brother added.

The Elric brothers were not the type to sit back and let things happen without getting involved. Roy swore under his breath. He could tell from the tone of their voices they wouldn’t be easily dissuaded. There was no time to argue, and Roy was pretty certain the boys could take care of themselves.

“I don’t want you doing anything risky! You follow my orders, got it?”

“Yes, sir!” Edward shouted in response.

“Got it!” his brother echoed.

Before them rose the station. The needle on the clock tower moved visibly.

“Seventeen minutes left!”

Roy ran up to the main entrance of the station and then broke right without slowing. The military police assigned to guard the station had already begun the evacuation. Edward noticed that the people coming out of the station didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. 

“When will all this bother end?” he heard one com-plaining.

“They give you a press release, and you still can’t catch them?!” said another to one of the military police busily waving people out of the main station building.

You never know when the terrorists are going to change their mind, Edward thought. You always have to be on the lookout.

“I’ll help with the evacuation!” Alphonse shouted, running up the nearest staircase into the station.

“Make sure the station personnel get out of there too!” Roy shouted back to him.

“Al! Be careful in there!” Edward shouted to his brother as he turned to run after Roy.

“You bet! You two keep an eye out yourselves!” Alphonse turned to a couple walking down the stairs. “Please leave the area at once! Orderly and quick, please!” Still calling out, Alphonse disappeared into the station.

Meanwhile, Edward and Roy had been running straight along a plain white wooden wall that seemed to stretch forever from the station. Gone were the streetside vendors and passengers hurrying about the station square. It was dead quiet, save for the sound of their running footsteps.

“Colonel, is this the cargo train depot?” Edward called out to Roy running ahead of him. The wall was just about as high as Edward was tall. He couldn’t see to the other side.

The colonel nodded. “It’s a little off from the main tracks. Cargo trains that come in off the main rails are sent here to unload. Then they do a U-turn and go back to the main tracks. You can’t continue on from here to the main station. It’s a dead end,” he explained as they ran. “It’s a big place. There’s at least ten rails in there—even one for military use only.”

“Where is the entrance?” Edward asked. He had expected to reach a door, but there was only a featureless wooden wall.

“You have to follow the tracks from the station or go in through the cargo management office a ways up ahead. But there will be people at both of those places. If the terrorists really don’t intend to hurt anyone with this bomb of theirs, then they’d likely sneak into the middle here, where there’s nothing but trains and cargo containers.”

Roy continued running, looking at the wall out of the corner of his eye. “These people aren’t the kind to get caught at the scene, so they mean to get out fast, assuming they’re still here at all. If they want to get out without being seen or stopped, they’ll avoid the station and the cargo office, where soldiers are likely to be milling about. So that makes this section of the wall prime—”

“Ed!” Roy stopped suddenly and waved Edward to stop. 

Edward’s momentum sent him crashing into Roy’s shoulder. Roy grabbed his arm and pulled him down to a low crouch. “What’s the big idea?” Edward said, rubbing his arm.

“Shh!” Roy cut him off. He sat hunched on the ground, looking ahead of them and slightly upward. “You see that?”

Edward followed where Roy was looking, until he saw, atop the wall ahead of them, a piece of cloth like a white narrow band of silk fluttering in the wind.

“That white cloth?” Edward asked in a low voice.

Roy nodded. “Suspicious, I’d say.”

“You think?”

The white cloth looked like little more than a piece of ribbon that had gotten caught on one of the planks of the wall.

“Looks like the wind picked up a scrap of something,” Edward hissed.

“It does,” Roy responded. “But …” He raised his hand, pointing a finger to the bare patch of skin between his eyebrows. “I got a feeling about it. That’s a sign the criminals are using—that’s what my sixth sense tells me.”

In Edward’s experience, soldiers talked a lot about hunches and “sixth senses.” Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything you could scientifically quantify, and he didn’t trust it. He shook his head. “A feeling, huh?”

“Look, I’m a practical man,” Roy said. “Soldiers have to be. But I also know, when your sixth sense tells you something, you’d better listen.”

Edward snorted.

“You should trust your own senses a little more, Ed. Your sixth sense is your friend. You can’t see it, but it’s with you your whole life, and it will never betray you. It might not be perfect, but it’s worth listening to.”

Roy took his eyes off the white cloth and looked at Edward sitting next to him. “If you walk a harder road than most people, the friends that will come with you are few. That’s why you have to trust your own feelings even more. Hey, even if you don’t believe what your friends might tell you, you should at least give them a listen, right?”

“Friends, yeah,” Edward mumbled. He’d been thinking about his own sixth sense after seeing that silhouette in his mind’s eye again. He tapped his forehead with his index finger. “I listen to what my sixth sense tells me, but I’m not so sure it’s my friend right now.”

“Sure it is.”

Edward shrugged and looked back at the white strip of cloth. “So, Colonel, your little friend’s telling you that white cloth is suspicious?”

The strip was wrapped around one of the wall posts, fluttering with every gust of wind. Across the road from the cargo loading area stood a line of warehouses for storing cargo. Back toward the station, a few of them had been open, with trucks loading various boxes and goods, but here, they were deserted. Either they were unused or whatever was stored in them wasn’t in high demand. There was no one else in sight.

Edward crouched low, following Roy as he made his way toward the white strip of cloth. “Sure is quiet,” he remarked in a low whisper.

The sun, still low in the morning sky, reflected in a blinding white light off the sides of the warehouses. Edward squinted against the glare. When he turned, he could see the station far behind them. The people coming out of the main entrance looked incredibly small. The noise of the station grew faint and muted, the sound of a concert heard from far away. It reminded Edward of how quiet it was where they were—so quiet it was hard to imagine that, in just a short while, all hell would break loose.

“Thirteen minutes to boom,” Roy said, checking his wristwatch. “It’s too bad all of our men are busy evacuating civilians. I sure would like a few more to help look for that bomb.”

“What if it’s a time bomb? They could’ve set it and escaped a while ago,” Edward noted.

“No, they’re here,” Roy said with some certainty. “Nobody’s been harmed in any of the explosions, right? I don’t think it’s sheer luck, either. I’m guessing for every blast that’s gone off with no one around, they’ve had to stop one or two detonations because some bystander happened on the scene before they could trigger the bomb. Maybe that’s why they send warnings so close to the actual detonations. They don’t want to give authorities too much time to prepare, because they need someone here checking to make sure no one gets caught in the blast. Someone needs to be here throwing that switch, Ed. Which means they’re here. And close by.”

Roy stopped in front of the white cloth. “See?” Roy said, pointing with his finger.

“I do indeed. It sounds like your friend is trustworthy, Colonel.”

There was a clean gap in the wall where Roy was pointing. Two or three of the wall posts had been removed. 

“This is how they’ve been getting in. They probably prepared it days in advance and tied the strip of cloth up there as a marker.”

The two slipped past the gap a little farther and found another gap in the wall. The two cuts were near each other, leaving a slab of wall in the middle supported by posts that someone had stuck diagonally into the ground and propped up against the wall.

Then, from the other side of the wall came the sound of crunching gravel. Edward and Roy exchanged glances then ducked low and held their breath. They heard the crunching sound again and then a voice over the noise. They could barely make out the words. “Another ten minutes,” the voice said.

“Better go without a hitch this time,” another voice replied.

Slowly, Edward peeked around the edge of the wall. Through the gap, he saw two men standing a short distance away. They were both looking around, checking for any signs of company. They carried pistols in their hands.

“I know those guys,” Roy whispered, face pressed up against the wall. “Leftovers from a terrorist group broken up a while ago.” He frowned. “They shouldn’t have either the weapons or the organization to carry out anything like this anymore. Maybe they’ve joined up with another group.”

“What’s our move?” Edward asked. There could be lookouts elsewhere, and the men were armed. It would be dangerous for the two of them to just rush into action. Roy’s position as a commanding officer also carried a responsibility not to put himself in danger’s path unless absolutely necessary. Edward waited for Roy’s answer.

“I’m still on break,” he said at last.

What they were about to do flew in the face of protocol, but if they didn’t do anything, this investigation would sink deeper into the mire that already trapped it. Part of Roy knew that his men were competent. Even should something happen to him, things would go on as normal at Eastern Command. “I have to take action now.” He looked at Edward. “I can’t ask you to follow.”

“Don’t tell me not to, Colonel,” Edward replied.

“It wouldn’t do much good even if I did,” Roy said, shaking his head.

“You sure you’re okay with this, Colonel?”

Roy’s mouth curled into a sardonic smile. “Oh, I’m fine. As long as no one finds out.”

“Finds out?”

“Don’t want to get called down to Central again.”

“Hey, that might not be such a bad thing. We might run into each other on the train again.”

“If we do, stay quiet this time, okay?”

Edward grinned mischievously. “Oh, I won’t say more than I have to … Dad.”

Roy frowned. “Let’s go.”

Edward and Roy rose from their positions and headed forward in a low crouch, keeping close to the wall. Through the gap, they could see containers lined up against the wall farther down. The lookouts were behind them, out of sight. The two studied the freight trains in the train yard carefully. The rails ran parallel to the wall, so they could see only the side of the container cars—as far as they could tell, no one was watching from that side.

Roy put his hand on the wall to check that it was sturdy, and in one swift motion, he jumped and pulled himself over. Edward jumped up behind him and down on the other side. The two fell into a crouch, and sat silently. They heard no one coming. Roy shuffled over to one of the containers and peered around the corner. Edward scanned the side of the nearest freight train.

The sun shone on the gravel and dirt in the train yard, blanching the whole depot in a white glare. The air rippled in the heat rising from the tracks. The freight train nearest them was loaded with steel and wooden container cars, spaced just far enough apart to give a glimpse of the tracks beyond. They couldn’t see much.

From the other side of the container they hid behind, they could hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of one of the lookouts walking across the gravel.

Roy pulled back and looked at Edward. “We’ll have to distract him until we can run between two of those cars on the freight train.”

“Running across the gravel will make quite a bit of noise.”

“I know.”

The two thought for a moment, then as one, they looked down at the gravel beneath their feet.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Primitive, but certainly the easiest thing to do with what we have on hand,” Roy said, squatting down and picking up a rock.

“Which of us you think has the better arm?”

“When was the last time you played ball, Colonel?”

“Ten years … nah, longer ago than that.”

“I played last year.”

“Then take the mound, pitcher.”

Roy passed the stone in his hand to Edward and stepped back.

“So, we want the lookouts going toward those containers on the other side of the train?”

“Think you can make it to those steel boxes between the tracks?”

Edward took a few practice swings with his hand, warming up his shoulder. “Leave it to me.”

Edward raised one leg and held the hand with the stone poised behind him. Roy grabbed hold of his waist so he wouldn’t lose his balance with the throw and fall on the gravel. 

“Here goes!” he said in a loud whisper. Edward’s arm snapped forward. A whizzing noise cut through the air as the stone disappeared into the blue sky. Several seconds later, there was a loud, satisfying “bonk” across the yard.

“What was that?”

“Over there!”

One of the lookouts walked away from the wall, disap-pearing between the cars of the freight train, and the other readied his gun and walked back and forth, trying to see between the cars at the yard behind. Edward and Roy took their chance and ran between two of the container cars on the nearest train. They made a light sound as they ran across the gravel, but it was lost in the noise of the lookouts’ own footsteps.

“Good arm,” Roy said, catching his breath.

“You had doubts?” 

“Hey, what was that sound?” they heard a voice say. It was coming from farther toward the middle of the freight yard.

“Maybe just some goods shifting in one of the containers? Happens a lot,” they heard another voice respond from close by. “Just press that switch when the time comes. And keep an eye out!”

“I know, I know!” replied the first voice. It sounded as though it was coming from farther back in the yard.

Roy peered in the direction of the voice. “That rail back there, that’s the one they use for military freight.”

“So that’s where they placed the bomb. You sure it’s safe to go in closer?”

“Not at all—we don’t know where that bomb is. But I need to know how well armed these terrorists are and how many of them are operating. Let’s get as close as we can without getting too close. And if we can stop this blast, let’s do it.”

The two left their hiding spot between the container cars and ran to a gap between the cars. Roy crawled under the bed of the train and scanned the yard, counting the lookouts he could see.

“And there’s number seven. Not wearing any markings,” Roy said, his eyes on the nearest lookout. “The first two were wearing colors, but not from the same group. What’s going on here?”

When not trying to blend into the general populace, the armed groups the military dealt with typically wore markings to identify themselves. It was a matter of pride with most groups, a way of claiming a sort of twisted legitimacy. The markings appeared on their weapons, sewed onto their clothing, everywhere. None of the men they had seen here so far shared the same markings. However, from the way they were acting, they certainly belonged to a single organization now.

“If my theory is correct, this is real bad news,” Roy muttered, remembering his discussion with Hawkeye the night before. He swore under his breath. Roy had been the one to suggest they might be up against someone tougher than they realized, and he knew what kind of problems they would face if his guess turned out to be right.

From a short distance away, Edward called out to him in a low voice. “Colonel, over here.”

Roy walked over. Edward was crouching down, pointing beyond the nearest train to a space between the rails. “Look at that.”

Two large automobiles were parked out on the gravel in the middle of the depot. The cars had no roofs, leaving the seats fully exposed. The thick wheels looked well suited for driving on rough terrain.

“Tough-looking cars,” Edward said, sounding impressed. The two looked down the train. There was no one in sight. Tiptoeing over to one of the vehicles, they looked inside and gasped.

A pile of weapons had been stowed behind the front seat. Roy picked one up. It bore the symbol of a terrorist organization that had been put out of operation several years before. Beside it were handguns, rifles, even grenades. Some seemed well used; others seemed rather expensive for a terrorist organization to be using. Others displayed the marks of different groups.

“Why would all these terrorists work together? What do they want?”

Just then, they heard several footsteps coming from the next track over. Roy and Edward sprinted back to the safety of the train behind them and crouched down out of sight.

“Get ready to pull out. The troops are on their way, gentlemen. Let’s go quick,” said a loud voice. Four men appeared from between two of the container cars on the far freight train and got into the first vehicle. From the far side of the train Roy and Edward hid under, four more men came running up and got into the second vehicle. Seven lookouts and the new man, their leader. Roy committed their faces to memory.

“We’re out of here!” said the leader. At his signal, the cars backed up to the edge of the rails and drove off at considerable speed over the gravel toward the wall where Edward and Roy had come into the yard.

Moments later, they heard the wall section collapse, confirming Roy’s suspicions as to its purpose. When they first discovered the two cuts in the wall—and the sticks supporting it—he was unsure, but when he saw the cars, it all made sense. All they had to do was drive headlong into—and through—the wall at high speed, and they’d be on the open road in no time.

Roy checked his wristwatch.

“Seven minutes left.”

“Think we can stop the bombs?”

“If we can’t, we need to get out of here.”

The two broke into a run. Jumping in between container cars and sprinting over the stretches of gravel between the rails, they soon reached the train line at the far side of the depot yard. The containers on the train bore the name of a factory that produced weapons and equipment for the military.

“Here it is!” Edward shouted from where he crouched on the far side of the train. A long, rectangular box was attached to the steel framework under the train bed.

Roy peered at it intently. The bomb was on a short timer, beneath which sat a long, thin bag that held the explosives. They appeared to be tied into a bundle.

“You familiar with these, Colonel?”

“Yes.”

Roy examined the box a short while longer, then put his hand on one of the cables running from the timer to the bag, and, without a moment’s hesitation, yanked it out. The timer stopped, and the two breathed a mutual sigh of relief.

“The charge in this bag isn’t very much. Not much more than they’d need to take out a small section of the rails. Guess they really didn’t want to risk injuring anyone.”

Roy pulled the bag away from the timing mechanism and separated the charges into separate cylinders, speaking while he worked. “They seem incredibly well armed, yet they don’t attack anyone directly. They place bombs and then weaken them to lessen the damage. What are they up to?”

Edward shook his head. “Maybe they just want to shake things up a little—not do any real damage.”

“So lingering terrorist elements are getting together, making the news, getting their revenge on the military?” Roy muttered as he placed the charges down on the gravel. The look on his face said he didn’t buy it. He could almost picture the remnants of several dismantled groups coming together to get their revenge. But everything was so well planned. There had to be someone calling the shots, but what was it that they wanted?

“We have to look into this further,” Roy said, dusting himself off. He looked at Edward. “Thanks, Ed. We’ve got a little information out of this.”

“And we stopped the bomb.”

“That we did. And most importantly, we didn’t get hurt, and Central is none the wiser.”

The terrorists might have gotten away, but they had seen their faces, their weapons, and how they set their bombs. All in all, the day had been quite a success.

From the station, they heard someone barking orders over a loudspeaker. Apparently the evacuation was complete and the military operations had begun.

“Team one, seal off the north side!”

“Get the bomb squad in there, now!”

Edward listened to the sounds in the distance and yawned. “Maybe it’s time for us to head out and continue our search.”

“I’m going back to base,” Roy said.

The two stepped across the gravel back toward where they had entered, when a dark shadow fell across their feet. For a second, the two couldn’t comprehend why the blindingly white gravel they were walking across suddenly darkened to gray. They looked up to see the silhouette of an enormous man looming on top of the train next to them, blocking out the sun.

Edward swore under his breath. This train yard with its containers lying silently on their train beds was as quiet as a graveyard, and with the bomb safely dismantled, they had let their guard down. The two on the ground and the man on the train noticed each other at the same time.

“Oh, what’s this? Came back for something, and I’ve found myself two rats. Never seen a rat with blond hair before,” the man said from his perch on the container car. “Let’s see,” he continued, without a trace of tension in his voice. “One of these rats is a military man, and the other one looks to be … a child. Quite the combination.”

Roy and Edward stood dumbfounded. They would have expected a terrorist found at the scene of the crime to be a little more flustered, but this man seemed perfectly at ease. Edward squinted against the sun to get a better look at him. He was a giant of a man, with thick arms and legs. Yet he must have climbed atop the container car next to them without making a sound, meaning he was frighteningly agile as well.

The man turned and let the light hit his face. A shock of dark hair crowned his head and he sported a thick beard. Roy realized it was the leader from the car they had seen a moment ago.

“This rat smells a terrorist,” Roy said, his body tensing. The man continued as though he hadn’t even heard him. He was looking at the explosives lying dismantled on the ground.

“I go through all that trouble to place my bomb, and you come along and wreck it. Hardly civil.”

“Gael! What are you doing?” came another voice from behind the train he was standing on. “I found that gun you left.”

The one called Gael turned around. “All the way over there?”

Edward and Roy stood in shock. The man had turned his back on them. They could have been brightly colored rocks on the ground, and he would have paid them more attention.

Roy was the first to remember his duty. “Wait, you!”

Roy’s shout brought Edward to his senses.

“Don’t move!” Roy shouted, drawing his pistol. 

Gael turned and sneered at the two. “We’ll be leaving now!” he said, jumping down behind the container car just as Roy raised his gun.

“To the other side!” Edward began to run around the end of the train when a single loud boom sounded from the train they were standing under. The two froze. It sounded like something huge had rammed into the container car from the other side.

Echoes from the impact reverberated through the freight yard as Edward and Roy noticed something highly unusual about the container car in front of them. It was moving.

“Huh?!” Edward gaped.

The container was huge, with a frame of solid steel. It couldn’t move.

They heard raucous laughter coming from the other side. “This is what you get for meddling in other people’s affairs!” Gael shouted from the other side. The container lurched and began to topple toward Roy and Edward.

“No way!”

Gael must have pushed the container from the other side. But that was impossible.

“Run!” Roy shouted, finally realizing what was happening, and he scrambled away from the tracks. There was a hair-raising screech of twisting metal, and a tremendous vibration shot through the ground as the container slammed into the gravel behind them.

Edward was the first to stand, coughing and wiping the dust off his pants. “I don’t believe it!” he gasped. “How strong is he?!”

A wall of dust rose up behind them, blocking their view of the fallen container car. By the time the echoes of the crash had faded and the dust had settled, Gael was nowhere to be seen.

The steel container car lay on its side on the ground, and all Edward and Roy could do was stare at it in disbelief.