Read Online Foreign Enemies and Traitors by Matthew Bracken - Free Book Online

The vehicle had been painted in day-glo safety orange.  The letters QV were written in yard-high black letters on both doors.  A gray box occupied all of the truck bed except for a little space at its front.  It reminded Carson of a portable dog kennel, only bigger.  It was made of gray metal, with a window on each side covered with heavy wire mesh.
    The driver and a passenger stepped out onto the road, and Carson stood up to meet them.  The driver was a Caucasian whose face was horribly scarred.  The other soldier was a black man with a smooth complexion and alert, intelligent-looking eyes.
    He had seen these facial scars before—on monkey pox survivors.  It was like pitting from the very worst teenage acne, twice over.  In many of the islands and ports he’d passed through, people with the scars were prohibited entry, banned like modern-day lepers.  Carson knew this was merely foolish superstition: monkey pox survivors didn’t carry the germs in an active form, and couldn’t catch or spread the disease.  The only dangerous period was the week after infection, until after the skin boils erupted and scabbed over.  Still, victims were often made pariahs, as living reminders of the horror that was monkey pox, with its 20 percent mortality rate and hideous survivor scars.
    The pock-faced driver pulled on a surgical mask as he approached, and stopped a few yards from Carson.  Three chevrons on a square rank badge on the front of their shirts meant both were buck sergeants.  Both wore holstered pistols on web belts.  On the opposite side of the passenger’s belt was a small green gear pack with a medical caduceus on it.  Instead of patrol caps, these two soldiers wore black berets.
    The driver said, “So, let me see if I got this right: you’ve got no ID badge and no vaccine shot card.  You just appeared out of nowhere, and you don’t even know who you are.”  His Southern-accented voice was slightly muffled by the filter.  He had bright blue eyes above the mask.
    “That’s about right.”
    “Empty your pockets and dump out your pack on the ground,” the driver instructed without emotion.  He seemed to be in no hurry to approach more closely. 
    Carson did as he was ordered, crouching down and emptying the pack.  He spread out its innocuous contents: water bottles, a green poncho, and other very basic gear. 
    “Any weapons?” asked the medic.
    “Just a pocket knife,” answered Carson, pulling a small folder from the rear pocket of his pants.  He had judged that having no weapon at all would not have been believable, and he was prepared to sacrifice the cheap knife, hoping this might save him from a closer inspection. 
    The driver eyed the short blade and said, “No weapons in the QVC.  Sorry, that’s the rule.  Leave it on the ground and load the rest back up.  You might get it back later, you might not.”
    Carson repacked the bag while kneeling on the asphalt, moving slowly, as they would expect an old man to do.  When he was finished, he struggled up as if he had a bad back.  It wasn’t a difficult act: after two weeks at sea, the day of hiking over broken ground had worn him out.
    The truck’s square cage stopped short two feet from the cab.  “Put your pack in the truck there,” the driver ordered, indicating the open space.
    Carson did as he was told, walking close by the scarred man and dropping the pack over the side.  The medic backed away from him, maintaining more than a yard of separation.
    “Now pull up your shirtsleeves, all the way to the shoulder.”  Carson did so, revealing on the left side a barely visible smallpox vaccination scar, more than six decades old.  Beneath the vaccination was a faded blue two-inch-wide tattoo of an open parachute with a pair of wings curling up on either side.
    The driver studied the vaccination mark and the tattoo, then looked again at Carson’s face.  “That old smallpox vaccination might have saved you.  We almost never