Brad Zaxxon's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

By dawn the truck was hauled back to the garage, its bed still stacked with vault parts. Brad hadn't slept. The dying raider's words gnawed at him. Someone in camp had drawn the raiders their map. But he had no proof, no name, and no way to point a finger without splitting the team he needed for the trading post. Accuse the wrong Ranger, and Martinez pulls his support. Chen never forgives him. The whole plan dies before it starts. He found Donovan on the garage roof, hunched over the radio base station. Donovan was Brad's communications man, the one who tracked every signal for miles. He didn't look up. "You look like death, Brad." "I need a way to find him. The informant." Brad set the raider's map on the console. Two outposts, a main camp twenty miles north. "They knew our patrol routes. Our shift times. That's not luck." Donovan tapped a key. "Oh man. You bet it's not." He pulled a battered hard case from his pack and flipped it open. A notepad, pens, a folding knife. He tore out a page covered in scrawled frequencies. "See, I've been logging transmissions. Every night, same window. A short burst, low power, right after our dusk patrol reports in. I figured it was interference." He tapped the numbers. "It's not. It's someone in camp keying a radio to that main camp up north." Brad's ears flattened. "You can find who?" "Not from up here. But you give me a directional antenna and one clean burst, I can walk it to a tent." Donovan's tone went flat and dry. "Trouble is, it only fires when we call in. So we bait it." That night Brad ran the dusk patrol himself. Conner drove the carrier out; Russel rode the gun. Brad keyed the radio at the usual time and reported the route clear. Then he waited in the dark by the garage while Donovan crouched over a handheld unit, headphones tight, antenna swinging slow. The burst came. Donovan froze, then pointed. "There. Third tent. Signal's dead on." Brad crossed the yard alone. Inside, a Ranger sat with a field radio open on his knees, mid-transmission. He looked up. His paw went to his sidearm, then stopped. There was nowhere to run. "You sold us the shift times," Brad said. It wasn't a question. The Ranger said nothing. His silence was answer enough. Brad took the radio and the pistol. He didn't shout. He didn't need to. He had proof now, logged and timed, not a wild guess. "Donovan tracked your bursts. Every one." He hauled the traitor up by the collar. Brad walked him out under the garage lights, past Conner and Russel, who stared. The team held. No one else fell under suspicion. But the raider's main camp sat twenty miles north on the map, and now they knew Brad had cut their line. They'd come with everything they had.