Ranger - Sand and surf.

Sarge,

Your Autumn suspicions are confirmed. No doubt you too have noted the world service has picked up word that the French are withdrawing their special forces from Afghanistan. Resolve!

A French prison is pessimism. And that is what we have found, along with Yarborough. On our approach it was clear there was no continuing presence here. The jungle and sea air are engaged in the danse macabre with scents of heat rot and decaying fish. And over the remains of the old geol that same wind drives a tricolour.

Yarborough is not the turncoat, as I feared. We found him here, in the oubliette, chained to the wall, long dead. The heat here does horrible things to the body and there is no way for us to tell how many suns have set since he left our troupe. As if to mock us, the window above where he spent his final moments allowed the midday sun to shine into his cell, and on the window ledge a rooster statue was placed. Its shadow cast as a reminder for the dead and the living. On the wall, we were able to translate the Baudelaire:

If rape, poison, dagger, burning,
Have still not embroidered their pleasant designs
On the banal canvas of our pitiable destinies,
It's because our souls, alas, are not bold enough!

Deseilligny did this. But there is little need for me to reward his bloodlust with vengeance for we found what remains of him as well. He died thirty meters from the main entrance to the prison. I’m certain he had been moved for our benefit. We found defensive wounds of the right radius and ulna, with the hands removed. Heath discovered the plate and screws in his ankle where you long ago shattered it. Otherwise, I doubt we would have been able to make an identification. I have sent photos to Corporal of these and other conditions to see whether he has any further insight. No whit of information as to what happened, although we can discern that there was a sizeable encampment here. They make no effort to hide their numbers.

We cut Yarborough down and buried him in the Atlantic today. Not my first choice, given he was from Vancouver. He was a MARCOM man before he was called to serve in The Regiment. To his family, I believe we are closer to the eighth anniversary of his death. I hope they have work for snipers in heaven.

My unit is in need of medical attention. We will finish our reconnoiter of this area and then return to civilization. I have a man, Ramirez, already working in Mexico. He reports – the Lady Jane Gray lay in clean green sheets. Godspeed.

Ranger

In Which Sarge Traces the Bullet...

Cpl.,

Again Estonia: the old sow of a country full of guns and the smell of its occupiers, from the Swedes and the Poles to the Nazis and the Soviets. I made it into Virtsu looking over my shoulder and I knew Tallinn was next. Tallinn of the dreams and the doubts, a fog in my imagination out of which I could conjure the wonders and the terrors of what I have known. It is in the oddest places that we stash our hopes and fears, and while there is little anymore of faith, what faith there is, why does it end up where it does?

From Virtsu, its corrupted shores slick with industrial ooze and the sky above coughing with smoke, I took an afternoon train to Tallinn so I could get in before the shadows I feared, before they might meld with the night. Cpl., I tell you now, I did not want to be there but we go where the trail is. And it is the only way, after all, nobody wants to be where we end up, but we want to be the ones who go there. Ranger himself ends up in the jungles of one continent and you and I in the sewers of another. This whole time though, I feel weighted down by the oppression of a conscience that doubts I can be the tool of a righteous cause. I long now for the relative stability of my life in Africa, where Nwargo was always sure to take measure of my moods and find ways of placating me. I am over the edge here and of course, SHE is here. Well, she had to be somewhere but I thought I would be safe in Riga. That somehow in this desperate scramble, the one place I wouldn't end up was that place I dream of when I don't dream of Africa. Fate mocks however, and I'm sure the sound most of us will hear at our deaths is a soft rustle of laughter: here I am, in Tallinn.

I avoided Tallinn, looked for anywhere else I could make my way to the truth, but that time is over. The old city, the dignified port with it's twisting and cobbled roads, the undercurrent everywhere of the idea that anything here could happen. All the nations come to Tallinn, though they would like to pretend they are of other, larger, more sophisticated locales - when the fights break out at the bars near the wharves the business of nations is settled there; Tallinn itself is concerned with larger matters, and right now there are a lot of guns in Tallinn. Where there are guns, there is money, and where there are both, there are the French Separatists.

This is where the deals go down, and where I thought I might be happy one day.

Those days are no more, but there it is. From Riga I knew it would be to Tallinn because everybody there wanted to pretend it wasn't so. The informants were saying the Black Sea and the agents who sell are still insisting on Moscow. Moscow? That haunt of overripe discos and the paunches of 30 year old billionaires retreating into the infantile antics of the supremely pampered with their private armies like so many Tybalts and not a Mercutio among them? I have nothing but disgust for anybody who could convince me there is anything of value for me there at all. In the back of their voices I found the whisperings of Tallinn that, in their chatter, they desperately tried to mask, but finally, one night, by a fountain in Riga I found the one person who told me that what I heard was not my own fears and hesitancies in those whispers, but the almost indistinguishable sound of truth. To hesitate any longer, the informant said, meant discovery of my actual identity with those who could bring death. I had trusted this particular informant for years though he had never given me much in the way of usable information. I cultivated the relationship out of respect and out of hope, and now there was the pay-off, he knew I had no friends now anywhere near: he was it. No place that was not out in the cold, and he knew too the Canadians and the French both, being himself a lonely Spaniard. He is a captain of a freightor that knows its way too well around places like Vladivostick, Murmansk and the Orkneys, and of course he, like me, knows the fever of Africa.

He told me Calrissian was being filled with doubts by some of the politicos at Ottawa, particularly one, meanwhile the French are angry I disrupted the pipelines they had established in Chad that stretched out through Sierra Leone, the Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia and are working hard to pay their respects. Now, was the time, he advised, to enter into the den of the lions. It was how I found myself on a train trying to pretend it was the most natural thing in the world to look for death, and also, that it was the most natural thing in the world for a Commando, battle-tested as I was, to be tracing my tears onto the begrimed windows of a slow-moving train.

With all this information of the Spanish captain's to digest, I thought instead of an afternoon not so long ago really, spent wandering the shores and then the forests just outside Tallinn with her. I fell into sentimental reveries of what might have been, these last few weeks on the edge of my thoughts like so many darker clouds that the fog of my reverie kept momentarily at bay. Perhaps I allowed myself, in that brief moment, to grieve for the self that was lost to this calling, to this training, and finally to my own weaknesses which drive me and push me more than they should.

I never got used to the plosive sounds of the Russian-made rails though, and along the way I was finally jarred from my wandering thoughts, and now I am here in Tallinn, already the whisperings I am hearing tell me this is where I needed to be all the time. Slowly I feel the confidence of the professional, doing what he must do, returning to me. It has been a busy evening.

Tell Calrissian this, though he won't believe you yet, there is a mole. Deep and trusted, a comfortable mole but one not complacent. Tell him I am in Asia if you can. I know it is risky to you, but we risk for each other my friend. And the favor I ask now might well save both of us.

If you don't hear from me in the next week, make sure what I have enclosed here makes it to Nwargo, who besides you, is my most trusted confidant. Tell also, to Ranger, that Mercerier has a weakness for rare editions of Molière and the French Symbolists, especially Verlaine.

Wasn't it Verlaine who wrote of the autumn song? It is winter now, and my heart must steel itself, for the buffeting of fate has begun, and though I progress well and have some optimism, I know too the furies are about: my own, and theirs. My misgivings keep me in a state of sleeplessness, and I fear what mistakes in judgment I have already made.

All about us the clocks are against us, but we have been in tighter spots, and if the time for zeroes is now, the game has been a good one, and I think more than fair to me.

Cpl., I remain

your most trusting servant,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Berates the Unknown and Asks What Is It?...

Cpl.,

Was Calrissian behind the debacle that has become Klaipėda? Hardly was Newfield's body cold, guts like torn snakes mixing marrow and sinew from the carved out hollow of his belly, my own ammunition expended and the awful silence and beauty of the world suddenly like a living postcard surrounding me, Newfield's face curiously preserved, his eyes registering nothing until I shut them that I wondered and I ask again: was Calrissian behind this? It was hours later then, the sun almost up, the night a hallucination of violence, despair and rage. What was I to make of this, that was deeper than failure yet not so artistic that it could be called tradgey? Closing his eyes to the rising sun, it was the final gesture of that night of blind swords.

How could "The Carpenter" know the watchword was "Tuesday" and where was Halliday when the noise went down? The weeks of silence have been difficult but I don't know who to trust and I won't lie, I skipped out of Kretinga and hid out in Petersburg for a week before making a trip to Prague to see about the latest from Mercerier. I am afraid he is somewhere in Mexico right now and has already been to Quebec twice this month. Armed with that knowledge I know I must continue to Riga once again, where the demons are and the dangers of the flesh are equal to those of the job. Still, I think the laundering operation has been compromised and if everything runs through Riga and we push there, well...it's only a matter of time before they make a real mistake and we can shake somebody higher on the tree than even Mercerier. The Canuck menace runs hard through the veins of Canada, and the terror that they can bring to bare is awesome to contemplate, but in Riga, in Riga I think we can make something happen.

But who can I trust?

When the longshoreman calling himself Pyotr suddenly ran off leaving Newfield and I alone on the empty piers surrounded by the warehouses of this Baltic waystation, right away it was obvious, but my pleas for back-up yielded only static, and though my guns made souls that night, and my knife marked one more, I could not save that rookie of Banff. That same night, in a fury, I burned four of their delis and though I knew that my lack of subtlety would let them know they had taken the field, I would not give them those platforms and over the following week, though half of Klaipėda sought to erase me, I killed four of the owners who had collaborated so baldly in their infernal schemes. I wanted to make the soft underbelly of the complicit clench and taste fear and pain the way Newfield had. I did not hear him die, the sheer number of guns made a cacophony drowning out that solemn moment, I knew only that suddenly instead of being pinned from the north, I was surrounded, and it was then that I simply chose a warehouse and began to run, several bullets grazed me and I have two new scars, one of which should fade, I used a flash grenade as a diversion and if I hadn't had that? I don't know, but thankfully, somehow, I stumbled upon a platform where I set up a nice field of fire, gained an opportunity to withdraw and since then have seen too much of Eastern Europe with the idea that I was mere minutes away from ambush and death, and from which side?

Am I betrayed from within? Where are Halliday and Stewart? Why has Calrissian tried to call me home through Tallinn when he knows that a strong push now might weaken them to the point of desperation? It's all his people there and none of my own contacts. Perhaps I am paranoid, but the way things stand, I cannot afford to trust him, nor anyone. I have ignored the signs and the commands. I am, as they say, off the grid and it is lonely here. I have grown a beard, my hair is long and I try to look American, wear Nikes and t-shirts that advertise places that don't exist; I take pictures of buildings and eat McDonald's. If I see Halliday and it doesn't look good, do I fire? What if he was drawn away by a feint from some other source? What don't I know? These are trying days my friend. I know you must also dance with the possibilities of betrayal and even now take up a job that offers little in the way of accomplishing what we must accomplish, but I know too a mole lurks, and I know also that what happened at Klaipėda was no slip on our part, but something more sinister. For one needle now I would beg the world, but it is easier to withstand the torment, because I know that if I was to taste bliss, I would be hunted down in a minute. I know if Calrissian or anybody near him is the mole, every supplier of the sweet elixer from Petersburg to Berlin down to Athens has my specifications and promises of rewards if I'm turned in. That they would die like me, like rats, I am sure they are blind to that!

Take care my friend, I am to Riga and there I will begin to make sense of this. That I will see her? Well, if we are to make the Canucks taste fear and desperation, we must make our own plunges, we must be desperate ourselves. Not all my demons come from the sharp edge of the needle...some are sharper than even that, and go much further than the vein!

with regards and brotherhood I am

yours,

Sarge

In Which Sarge Bemoans Fate, but Bemoans Quickly

Cpl.,

I have not heard from you. Last letter worrisome, but this absence worries more. Mercerier is gone, though we killed his right hand man, you were right that Devenuelle was working with him Nwargo stabbed him in the throat and he is dead.

Mercerier got away as a sudden dust storm broke out everywhere around us. It was a war in shards and the air around us rasped about, cut through by bullets and explosions. The silent desert radiated sound and we were as shadows to each other, soon the echoes faded as guns became useless, whether by sand or by fear of killing one's own, who's to say? We hunted each other through the night, the flashes of phospherescence that lit up the cyclones of dust in which man killed man. My knife was my panache and I killed four men trying to hack my way to Mercerier, I wondered, as I stilled that fourth man, holding my hand to his mouth and easing him down gently, almost as a lover, what voice waited to answer his. I felt the deep shame again, but there was no time for that, he had entered on his own volition and probably would have had little use for thoughts of myself.

But it was not for him I mourned. Nor for myself, obviously, I am fallen and know ways to forget this horrible fact, and I can say that my ideals still stand. But for that voice that finds pleasure in his, Cpl., few know how cold the world actually is.

Mercerier was away, we got a few rounds off as he escaped, but he sacrificed five men who laid an excellent covering fire for his escape. We killed three of those men and captured two others, they were poor tribesmen paid very little, they must have sacrificed themselves for that one small moment of meaning. Perhaps they were promised much to their families. Nwargo interrogates them still.

Disappointment is keen, but this means out of Chad for now. I welcome that, the emptiness haunts and brings certain memories too close to dreams. I have not slept but that I would call it repentence.

I must go to Estonia and Latvia again. I have compensations to make.

While there, we will work to discover this mole. I must remind you of something:

The morning cat drinks good cream.

Sarge

In Which Sarge Argues that the Immortal Soul is the Ethical Soul

Cpl.,

As I scratch these hurried lines, I am in one of those trucks you only see in Africa, more rigging than rig, kept alive because it needs to be alive more than anything else, and we are looking through powerful binoculars at what must be Mercerier's camp. A Gaulic face, a circle of shadow under the large desert sun, suggests we have gotten lucky, and yet I must write, your last letter so disturbed me.

We swung back north on a hunch, I had noticed a hidden room in a storefront in Bokoro (you will recall, this is where MacFendrich got his, the poor bastard, with his "Birds of the World" guide always to be found in a random pocket - one bullet was actually stopped by that most civil of books, it was the 16 other bullets that ripped him to shreds - his face was bloody oatmeal), well, there was a nervous man there with a satellite phone and a copy of a 1974 National Geographic (a great article in there about the Phoenicians by the way), and so Nwargo grabbed him and immediately spoke in some language that was completely unknown to me. I couldn't pick up anything, but Nwargo was angry and the man shrank back and began to talk in a desperate ramble, I went over and smacked him to quiet him down and Nwargo pointed in his face. The man hurriedly began to make a map, drawing it right on a table, and we have him bound with us now.

The map has led us here.

I am nervous Cpl., we have a chance here, I shake with anticipation, or perhaps a stronger pull sways me. My mouth is dry, my pulse echoes in my retinas and I want to feel needle breaking skin, and then I want to kill Mercerier.

He is there. We will move against him soon. There is nothing here for me but the action. Nwargo too is nervous, he looks at me and looks away quickly. I know he does not trust me completely, how could he? I radiate addiction and I hold four grenades in a belt across my chest. I have a gun holstered and a rifle next to me as I write this. None of these things can give me relief. Mercerier is there, I must move soon. Yet this stillness seems an eternity behind me and an eternity in front of me. The sun trips over infinate stairs as it makes its way across the wide sky just north of the equator, I must wait. Nwargo looks over again and begins to pace. Somewhere a bullet's flight away, Mercerier looks through some papers, or perhaps receives some information from somebody somewhere. Perhaps I am a bullet's flight away.

That is the difference between Mercerier and I: I know I am always a bullet's flight away. His confidence must betray him sometime! It is only in consistency that we can measure what we are, heroes of moments rarely are heroes of years. We must fight every minute, but how I long to slip into bliss for at least mere hours occasionally. To be lost in the pleasure that feeds me, sustains me, starves me with absence when I need it most. I must leave it with the past, I am in agonies, for just a few grains of the pure stuff to make this time something not defined by this empty stretch of desert, I am afraid of what I would sacrifice.

But the mission is all. I write, I am distracted enough. As we make our way toward night, I will let this mission mean everything.

Nwargo approaches, we must make final arrangements.

I will be in touch directly. If what you say about Calrissian is true, there is a mole. And one who's lair is deep.

If they pursue me, you know you become that much more vulnerable. Try to distance yourself from me for now, and see if you cannot get some little closer to Calrissian.

I will make inquiries from others when this is over.

Sarge