Chapter 415 — The Men Behind the Uniforms I

Chapter 415: Chapter 415 — The Men Behind the Uniforms I

It took them three hours to do a journey that normally took fifty minutes.

The M1 north of Drogheda was half closed. Every junction had soldiers on it, waving civilian cars off at the slip roads and military traffic through. Twice James and Finn were pulled in behind a column of trucks and sat there with the engine running while a line of olive-green vehicles went past them in the fast lane, nose to tail, heading north. Once an ambulance came down the other side with its lights going and then another, and then a third. None of them had their sirens on.

The Bureau had split the four of them at the processing centre in Dublin at four in the morning. Maeve and Cillian had gone to a different assessment queue. Their abilities sat in different boxes on somebody’s form, and somebody else had decided they were needed in a different place. Maeve had squeezed James’s hand once, hard, in the corridor. Cillian had said *mind yourselves* and not much else. James and Finn had been given a sheet of paper with an address outside Dundalk on it, and that was that.

The staging area was a big industrial compound off a regional road a few kilometres south of the town. Someone had taken it over in a hurry. A long warehouse stood in the middle of it, with prefab office buildings along one side and a car park full of military vehicles. White medical tents had gone up at the far end. A queue of trucks waited to get in at the gate, and a soldier in a high-vis vest stood in the road directing them one at a time with a wand.

James drove up to the gate behind the trucks.

The air through the open window smelled of diesel and wet canvas and, somewhere under that, coffee. An engine was trying and failing to start, over and over, with a grinding cough. Soldiers were unloading crates off the back of a lorry in a line, passing them hand to hand, while somebody at the end of the line shouted numbers.

Beside one of the trucks, five men sat on the ground with their backs against the wheels. Their uniforms were mud to the knee and black down the front. One of them was asleep with his head on his pack and his mouth open. Another had his phone to his ear and was saying, "Pick up. Come on. Pick up," without any expression on his face.

"Busy," said Finn.

"Yeah."

They had both half expected someone to be waiting for them with a clipboard and a cup of tea. Nobody was waiting for anybody. The two soldiers at the gate were dealing with a broken-down truck, a lorry driver who did not want to be searched and a radio that would not stop squawking, all at the same time.

One of them finally got to their window, checked their licences, checked the paper from the Bureau and checked a list on a tablet.

"Captain Farrell," he said, and pointed. "Prefab at the end. She’ll be shouting at somebody. That’s her."

---

She was shouting at somebody.

She stood outside the last prefab with a radio held up to her mouth. A young soldier stood beside her with a folder held against his chest, waiting.

"—I don’t care what he told you, I need the second ambulance at the junction, not in Dundalk, the *junction*. Yes. Now. Thank you." She lowered the radio. "Corporal. Folder."

The young soldier gave her the folder. She opened it, read the top sheet, signed it against her knee, and handed it back. "Go."

He went.

Then she looked at James and Finn.

She was in her early thirties, with dark brown hair pulled back into a tight knot at the back of her head. She wore a plain uniform with a captain’s insignia, no different from anyone else’s, and she had the grey under the eyes of somebody who had been up since the previous evening and was not going to sleep for a long time yet.

"Ganner. Hale," she said, and looked at the tablet in her other hand to check. "Right. You’re mine. Captain Nessa Farrell."

"Captain," said James.

She looked at him for perhaps half a second. He saw her recognise his face, and saw her decide that it was not important.

"You’ve both been through processing," she said. "You understand you’re operating under military authority here. Not your guild’s, and not your own. You’ve been given the instructions on the use of your abilities?"

"We have."

"Read them?"

"Twice."

"Good." She glanced at the radio, which had started up again. "I’ve got more Challenger volunteers due, but half of them have been held up on the motorway and the other half have been sent somewhere else by somebody above me. I’ve got a unit going out again this morning and I’m short. So I can’t walk you round." She pointed at the next prefab along. "Go in there. Get something to eat. Latest ops sheet is on the board inside. The other Challengers attached to this unit are around somewhere. I’ll brief everyone at ten."

The radio squawked. She lifted it.

"Farrell. Go."

They went.

"She’s going to be a laugh," said Finn, when they were out of earshot.

"I think she’s grand."

"She looked at you like you were a delivery."

"Yeah," said James. "I know."

It was the first time in weeks that a stranger had looked at him and not seen Floor 40. He found he did not mind it at all.

---

The prefab was a canteen of sorts.

There were long folding tables, a hatch at one end with a man behind it doling out beans and sausages onto paper plates, and an urn of tea. About thirty soldiers were in there, eating or not eating. There was a small television on a bracket in the corner, showing the news with the sound up too loud. Everyone was talking over it.

It was louder than James had expected, and more ordinary.

At the nearest table, two men in their twenties were arguing about a match that had happened the weekend before the invasion as if it still mattered.

"That was never a penalty."

"It was a stonewall penalty."

"He went down like he was shot."

"He *was* shot. Basically. Look at his ankle."

Further down, a man with a black eye was telling anyone who would listen that he had slept for nine minutes in the last thirty hours. Nobody was listening. Beside him, another soldier sat with his plate in front of him and a webbing strap across his knee. He was sewing it back together with a needle and a length of green thread, a forkful of beans in between every stitch.

The television said *British forces continue to advance*. Nobody looked up.

James stood just inside the door with Finn and looked at all of it.

He did not know what he had expected. He thought it might have been something quieter, more serious. Men in a war zone, staring at walls.

They were eating breakfast and complaining about the tea.

---

He was looking for somewhere to sit when someone said, "Here, you. Grab this end. My arms are going."

A man had come in behind them with a large cardboard box. It was clearly heavier than it looked, and he was holding it with his chin on top. He was older than them, late thirties maybe, with short auburn hair, a rough beard going a bit grey at the jaw, and a face that had spent a lot of time outside. He wore Challenger kit, good kit, the sort James recognised from upper-tier guilds, but it had been worn hard. The leather on the vambraces was scuffed white, and there was a patch on one shoulder where something had been torn and sewn up again.

James took the other end of the box.

The man looked at him properly over the top of it.

"Oh," he said. "Well. Would you look at that." He grinned. "James Ganner. Without a stream between us. I’d say it’s an honour, but you’ve got my box."

"I’ve got your box."

"You have. Mind the corner, it’s not taped right." He looked past James. "And who’s this?"

"Finn Hale."

"*Hale.*" The man’s eyebrows went up. "Marcus’s lad?"

"That’s me."

"Thought so. You’ve his jaw." He shifted his grip. "I’ve done a few jobs with your da. Years back. Floor 14 with the Spire, before your time. Have you talked to him since you got here?"

"Not yet," said Finn. "He’s been with the army all night. He doesn’t answer."

"No, he wouldn’t. He’s been in the ops room since the first reports. A few of the senior ones have. I saw him at two this morning and he looked like a man who’d been asked to rebuild the Tower out of Lego." He nodded at the door. "Come on. This is going to medical. It’s this way."

They went out through the side door and across the yard with the box between James and the man, while Finn walked beside them.

"Eamon Kelleher," the man said. "A-rank. Eight years. Mostly independent, a bit of contract work for whoever’s paying." He sidestepped a puddle without looking at it. "When the government put the call out, I signed up. Thought I’d spend my whole career going up a big white tower fighting things with too many teeth. Didn’t think I’d spend any of it fighting a British infantry battalion in a field in Louth." He shrugged. "Life, eh?"

"Life," said Finn.

"How are you finding it?" Eamon looked at James. "Taking orders. You’ve had your own guild a while now. Big operation. I’d say you’re not used to some captain telling you where to stand."

"No," said James. "I’m not."

"But?"

"But somebody has to be in charge of this. And it shouldn’t be me."

Eamon looked at him for a moment, with the box between them, and then grinned again.

"Good answer," he said. "I’ll tell you what, though, between us. The lads in there have enough on their plates without watching two Challengers have a row about who gets to give orders. If you’ve an opinion, you give it to Farrell, quiet, and then you do what she says. She’s sound. She’s been up for a day and a half and she hasn’t killed anybody yet. On our side, anyway."