One night of searching in the foreshadowing of a rough and terrible storm turned into three long days of sneaking away from camp, in never ending rain, to search for any clues that would tell me what happened to John. The weather made getting away from the camp fairly easy. Everyone was holed up in their tents, trying to stay warm and avoid getting sick. Weather like this wasn't too common in Afghanistan, so when it did hit, it was extreme. However, with it's advantages, there were disadvantages as well. So was life.

The constant downpour made searching rather difficult. It was also not the best condition for my health, but I could work while being sick. I never let illness slow me down but I wasn't exactly in a position to acquire appropriate drugs and medications to improve my illness if I came down with anything worse than a cold. I hadn't really been alarmingly sick since my childhood, so it was safe to assume that my immune system would keep me safe, however I had been exposed to harsh weather for three days straight.

Each night I would return to the camp empty handed and I was beginning to get annoyed with myself and everything else. I realized it wasn't difficult for things to irritate me, but I should have found something by now. I would return to the camp each night empty handed and stuck in the troop because I had nowhere to go. If I didn't find something, this entire ordeal would have been for nothing. Not only would my time be wasted, but I would also be a failure. How could I think of John, knowing that I hadn't done enough to find him? How could I disgrace him by failing when I was supposed to be the world's most brilliant detective? There were no other options; I had to find what I came here for.

Time was not on my side though. I had spent three days searching this barren wasteland of a country and I had found absolutely nothing of importance or interest. The rain was growing lighter throughout the day and by nightfall the storm would be far enough east for us to continue our move south. If I did not find something before nightfall, I would have to make a decision to hide and stay here without the promise of any lead turning up and then figure out how to get home if I found absolutely nothing, or I could continue travelling with the troop. Neither was ideal, but the latter just wasn't logical. I would have to keep up my Stanly Cooper charade and that wasn't going to help me once we moved away from the region I needed to be in. Staying without any real concrete evidence that John was alive was also very dangerous.

There had to be evidence here, there just had to be. I had gone over the facts in my mind over and over again and John's disappearance just did not make sense. There had to be some sort of explanation offered at the scene, but I couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. Nothing looked out of place and I noticed every trivial detail on top of the evident and vital ones. There wasn't much to go on. Western Afghanistan was mostly desert and that was very much what I was finding.

"Come on, John, you were clever! You were! If someone or something caused your disappearance, you would have left something behind! You would have figured out a way to make sure that whatever you left wasn't just washed away!" I shouted at nothing with my eyes closed and my hands spread in front of my face, just to further my frustrations with hand gestures. John wasn't a genius, by far, but I would say without hesitation that John was probably the most brilliant person I had ever met as far as common people went. I always told him that he was an idiot, but that was when I was comparing him to myself. When I compared him to everyone else, I couldn't pick out too many names that I would hold higher than Dr. John Watson.

Briefly I considered the possibility that maybe John really was missing in action and maybe he really was dead. There was always a chance that I was over analyzing the situation and that probability became even more likely in this case because I was emotionally tied to finding John. All of the evidence I collected disagreed with the assumption that John really was just killed in the war. There might have been a chance that I was over thinking this, but all of the facts I had gathered were not figments of my imagination. I didn't dream all of this up. There was too much support for John being alive for me to just live with the knowledge that John was dead and that was that.

I couldn't accept that.

"All right, fine, I'll trying thinking like you," I said to myself, although I really was still thinking like myself. Speaking out loud helped me keep my thoughts clear most of the time, but if anyone else tried to talk while I was thinking, it disturbed my process. "You left the troop. That's uncharacteristic of any soldier. Why would you leave the camp and the safety that you had in numbers. You weren't on a holiday; you were in an active warzone. What would warrant you wandering off by yourself? Something out of the ordinary, a threat, maybe? If the troop were sending you to the city for something, they would not have sent you alone. Strength in numbers, that's what they all believe."

Slowly I ran my fingers through my soaked and dripping hair, pushing it back slowly just to keep it from sticking to my forehead. It was short, so it didn't hang in front of my face like it normally would have but I was drenched from head to toe. I wasn't comfortable and my growing vexations were only making matters worse.

"So you left because you felt like you didn't have a choice. You wouldn't have taken much with you. You were on the run, trying to lead someone away from the troop or trying to hide yourself from the troop. You wanted to travel light so you didn't have anything weighing you down. What would you have on you? Your clothing, obviously, probably some food stuffed into your jacket, maybe the letters I sent you for sentiment," I said, starting to build a scene in my mind. I could picture John running from the camp, leaving most of his things behind in the process. Something stopped him about a kilometer away from where the troop set up camp, which was right around where my camp was currently set up, slight room for margin, but not much.

"Now what could have spooked you so much you felt the need to leave the camp? Another soldier wouldn't have scared you so much. The only way that this was something to do with the troop is if it was the entire troop against you, but that just isn't logical. There was always the chance that you met an unfriendly face or that your captain didn't like you, but what motive would another soldier have to threaten you unless he was part of an outside job? So there's the possibility of an undercover soldier, someone who was constantly with you, watching you around the clock. You had to get away from him. Maybe he followed you. You couldn't get away and he took you or you did get away and you are in hiding now. The latter isn't likely, you would have figured out some way to get home or at least contact me because I would have been able to help you," I explained to myself.

In the scene I played before me, as if I was watching what really happened two and a half years ago, a faceless soldier appeared along with John fleeing the camp. When I had studied John's disappearance and his troop, there was another casualty around the same time John disappeared. He committed suicide because he couldn't take the pressures of war, according to the official report, but what if he never actually killed himself? What if he needed to disappear because John did? Official military reports always had room to be questioned. They were hardly ever truthful and even when they were truthful they weren't very accurate. All in all, they were very unreliable resources.

"You are resourceful, you are a soldier, trained to live in the harshest conditions. You would have come up with some sort of plan. You think best when you're under pressure…" I continued. "So you're by yourself, running from another soldier. You need a place to hide, somewhere to disappear and you're clever, you would have found something under the radar, something completely undetectable. That's not easy to accomplish in the middle of an empty landscaping, but not impossible… Maybe you buried yourself in the sand? Doubtful, you wouldn't have had that kind of time and you wouldn't have been able to stay submerged in sand for too long. You also wouldn't have been able to get into the city so quickly. So where did you go?"

I opened my eyes and mentally played the scene before me. John knew he was being watched and needed to get out of the camp. He needed to get away from whoever or whatever was threatening him, so he left the camp without much on his person. He was heading for the city, somewhere where he could get food, shelter and figure out a way to get in contact with me or someone else who could provide the help he needed. He never reached civilization. If he had, I probably wouldn't be here now, wondering what happened to the doctor. I would have helped him two and a half years ago, he would be back in our flat and it would be like he never left at all.

So something stopped him. He must have found some sort of refuge, some shelter to hide in. He was an Afghanistan veteran, he had been on these soils before, perhaps he knew of some sort of safe house or—Oh.

Oh!

The scene that I was creating dissipated. I didn't need it anymore. I had told John once, in Baskerville, that he was a conductor of light for me because he inspired my brilliance and that still held true, even though he wasn't there with me.

There was always the chance that there was a bunker somewhere near John's camp. He had been to Afghanistan. He had even been to this region in his previous tour. John was always willing to tell me about his war days. He never thought I paid any mind to them, but I remembered everything John told me, no matter how insignificant it might have been.

"A bunker John, yes?" I said. I wanted more than anything to hear him answer me, but I was too logical and rational to actually believe he would return my question with a corresponding answer. "You hid in a bunker until he found you and forced you out but you're smart, you knew there was a chance that you would live. In fact, if he was going to so much trouble to get to you, he probably wanted you alive. The other soldier could have killed you at any time and then dropped off the radar. No, he definitely wanted you alive. You knew that and you would have left something behind. Now where was the bunker? A kilometer east of your camp."

I mapped where John's camp had been. It was in the general area of our camp, not even a fourth of a kilometer south of where I had been stationed. Instead of pulling my map out to look at it, I thought about it perfectly imprinted into my mind and tossed it out before me. I was about half a kilometer too far north to be in the right spot and I didn't waste any time.

I took my false dog tags off and used an army issued pocketknife to slice my hand open, smearing my blood across the dog tags. No one would question that the blood was Stanly Cooper's blood. It was extremely unlikely that it would be tested, especially without a body to match it to. I just needed to leave something behind to make my troop believe I had been taken and that I was a hopeless cause. They wouldn't waste their time looking for me, they would just declare me missing in action and be done with me, just like what they did to John. It angered me, but for once, the military's lack of caring was a benefit. My dog tags would probably be disposed of or sent off to Mycroft anyway, nothing to really worry about.

Once my dog tags were left in a location close enough to camp for someone to find before the troop set out, I made my way to the exact location John should have disappeared according to my map. I had to be right about this because, if I wasn't, I would be at a loss and I would be stuck in Afghanistan without any real plan or course of action.

"Okay John, I've followed the crumbs and I'm here, please tell me you left something, anything behind," I said, scanning the area and pulling up every hump in the sand, every rock and every weed. The rain was lightening up, but it was still posing as quite an obstacle to overcome. It made my surrounds blurry and unable to refocus. However it wasn't enough to stop my eyes from picking out something rather odd.

About a dozen meters away, there was an outline of what appeared to be a square on a stretch of flat sand. In normal weather, it would have been hard to pick out, but the rain was forcing the sand down and the outline was probably created because the water was forcing the sand through some sort of crease underneath the surface. The closer I got, the more I was sure that it was exactly what I was looking for, what I should have found three days ago.

"Please, John, just one more thing left for me to find," I whispered quietly, kneeling down next to the odd arrangement of sand and lack thereof. "This has to be it. This is the only chance I have, John, just help me out here!"

Despite getting sand stuck to all of my clothing because not only was the sand wet, I was wet, and I dug my fingers into the groves left in the sand. I could hardly contain the satisfied smile that stretched across my lips when I found the hatch that allowed me to pull the little hidden door open. It had taken me three days but once again, I was correct in my case. The opening wasn't very big, but I could see into the bunker. There were a few makeshift beds and a couple of tables that were supposed to serve as a makeshift kitchen but not much else.

It was a tight squeeze, but I dropped into the bunker without too much difficulty. I landed in the sand that had been leaking in through the hatch (it was old and starting to falter, leaks were unavoidable), but that was hardly a concern. I didn't waste much time in searching the bunker for anything that John might have left behind. He had to have left something. If he didn't, I was at a dead end. I would have to start all over again or I would just have to accept the fact that he was gone and he wasn't coming back.

In total, it took me about five minutes to find John's dog tags buried under one of the beds. I just had to smile because he left something that I left for my troop to find and somehow it made me feel closer to him. Usually I divorced my feelings from my work and from myself but when it came to John I just couldn't…

"Thank you, John," I whispered, but it wasn't enough of a clue. Yes, John had been here, but his dog tags didn't tell me where he went or what happened to him. There was something scratched into the metal. It looked like an M or a W, depending on which way you held the tags. I would examine it further later. I needed to make sure there wasn't anything else in the bunker before I started analyzing the tags as intently as I analyzed everything of significance.

It was the last thing I looked through, the table furthest away from the entrance to the bunker and tucked away in a corner. It was missing a leg and it was flipped over on itself. No one had been in this bunker for years. John was probably the last person to inhabit this place. I pulled the draws out from the desk and I found a discolored, tattered and clearly worn envelope wedged between the bottom of the drawer and the frame of the desk.

The envelope, I recognized, was sent to John from me. Usually he ripped his mail open, but he had taken care to keep the envelope intact and tucked inside were a few of the letters I had sent him during his deployment but not all of them. There was also a scrap of paper with John's hurried handwriting scratched across it.

Sherlock,

I don't have much time. He's coming for me. I'm not entirely sure what this man wants from me. I don't believe that he's going to kill me… He seems to want something from me, or he wants me for some reason. He has been with me since I joined the troop, breathing down my neck at all times. He went by the name of Tim Grant but I'm sure that was a fake name. I really have no idea what he could want from me, other than a way to get to you. You're the only person important enough to get to in my life.

I don't know if you'll ever find this, but you are that annoying dick who never gave up on anything if there was a chance that the case was still alive. I don't believe you would ever give up on me. If you have found this, Sherlock, all I can think is that it's him. It has to be. Who else would care about me?

Someone's coming, I have to hide this. I'm sorry I can't give you more to go on.

-JW

P.S. Here are some of your letters back. I want you to have them.

I read the letter a few times even though I had it memorized from the first read. John didn't give me much to go on, just his dog tags and a letter. A letter wouldn't lead me to where John was. He could have been anywhere on the globe right now, but John was smart, there was more than just a letter and some dog tags, I just had to solve the puzzle he had left for me.