Reign of Evil

“It’s one thing to be killed crossing the street, or by a lightning bolt, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Like being at the Winter Solstice ceremony at Stonehenge on the exact fucking day when the Red Grove was going to sacrifice everyone there. “That’s random and can’t be helped. It can’t be planned against. Trust me, I’ve been thinking about this non-stop for the last seventy-two hours. But it’s another thing altogether when someone dies while doing something they absolutely believe in. In the case of Jerry, it was the protection of England, his homeland, and his team members. I’ve been there. I’ve been face-to-face with death and ready to give myself up for my team and country. Lucky for me I’ve never had to do it before, but there will probably come a day when it happens.”

Preeti regarded him for a moment. “If this was supposed to cheer me up, it didn’t work.”

“Preeti, if you want me to make some shit up to salve our emotions then I can do that just like any bullshit Hallmark card. I’m laying it on straight. If Trev dies in the service of his country, then it’s something proud, something honorable. It’s what he signed up for.”

“But what if I don’t want him to die?”

“It might never happen, but to be sure… well, then you have to convince him to quit.”

“He’d end up hating me.”

Walker shrugged. “There you have it. It’s what every spouse of a service member has to deal with. What we do is a service. We serve. It’s something that’s in our DNA. In America less than one percent of the population has this desire to serve the other. It’s a sad fact, but there it is.”

“It’s about the same in England.” She wiped at her eyes. “I get what you’re saying. I have to accept that this is part of him, right?”

Walker nodded. “It’s a hard thing. We had a mission to Mexico where Jen became involved to the point where she was in firefights with me. The shoe was on the other foot then and I felt terrified for her. But like me, she was there to serve.”

Preeti was silent for a long time as Walker dove deep into his memories.

When she finally spoke, her voice was full of authority. “You’re upset because she died. You’re trying to say that because she died in such a random way it’s somehow worse. Is it really? I think you’d feel the same way had she died in one of those firefights in Mexico. Don’t add to your troubles, Walker. They’re bad enough as it is.”

He nodded. “You’re right, of course. I’ve always had a tendency to take something bad and make it worse. I guess it’s the optimist in me.” He smiled weakly. “But enough of this emotion.”

She made a mock-serious face. “Right. Enough of that. Time to serve.” She flashed him a mock salute, British-style. “What can I do for you?”

“Did you manage to track the video disturbance?”

Her eyes brightened as she leaned forward and began to punch keys. “Not sure if you know it, but your NSA has nothing on our Home Office. There are almost two million closed-circuit television cameras throughout England at a ratio of about one camera for every eleven citizens. It’s such a massive network; they must be using supercomputers to keep track of everything. At times during the last few hours I felt I was going blind.”

“I doubt they have people monitoring every camera,” Walker said.

“You’re right, although I sometimes imagine a giant building with monitors and people walking back and forth as they follow the people under surveillance, traveling from monitor to monitor to monitor.” She waved a hand. “But that’s just my brain being crazy. To answer your question, yes and no. Let me explain.”

She typed in a few commands and brought up a map of Woking. Not an ordinary map, this one showed nodes, which Walker immediately deduced represented cameras. As she typed, some of the nodes began to turn red, leaving a trail. More than fifty nodes lit up, then stopped.

“It took some time, but I was able to find the disturbance. You were right. It originated somewhere else. In this case, Horsell Common where there are three barrows.”

“Barrows, as in Lord of the Rings barrows?”

She nodded. “The same… well, not the same, but the same thing. Remember, J. R. R. Tolkien was English. The barrows of Horsell Common have been dated to three to four thousand years old. But now it’s basically a public park with thousands of trees and several dozen walking paths.”

“And you traced the disturbance back to there?”

“I did.”

Walker narrowed his eyes as he leaned down to stare at the last node. “Is the Common big enough to hide a Wild Hunt?”

“Given that we don’t know how big the Wild Hunt is I’d have to say yes. But I’m a step ahead of you. I sent in a false complaint of a child being abducted into the woods. Seventeen bobbies were dispatched and searched the woods without finding anything. My guess is if the Wild Hunt was there, they would have found it.”