Spirit of Conquest
It was times lilke this that she really hated the fact that she had a phone. She fumbled about in the dark in search of the insistently ringing hunk of metal, squinting in the hopes that it would suddenly grant her night vision. It didn't. After a few more seconds of grabbing, groping, and knocking things off her nightstand, Lynn finally managed to grab the phone and flip it open. "Waddayawan."
"Where are you?"
Lynn sat up and pressed the heel of her palm to her left eye as she stifled a yawn. "Chicago. Who - "
"It's Brady. What the fuck are you doing in Chicago?"
She ignored that question to ask a more important one of her own. "Brady, why the hell are you calling me at three in the morning?"
"Look, this is important, okay? Listen, I'm retired, yeah?"
"Yeah, for your leg." She slid out of bed and stretched, padding silently out of the room in search of the kitchen. She really needed something to wake her up, like a cup of coffee or a giant can of red bull. Ah, fuck it - anything with a decent amount of caffeine would work. "Wow, that really was an important message! Definitely important enough to wake me up at fucking three A.M."
"Lynn, shut the fuck up and listen." Brady's voice was serious, far more serious than she'd ever heard it. "I'm a veteran, right? No longer on active duty due. Officially out of the army. The only ties I've got to it are my paychecks. So explain to me why I just got a letter drafting me back in and ordering me to come to the base in France."
Lynn frowned as she flipped the switch on the small water cooker and turned around to reach for the cappuccino powder. "What? That can't be right. There must've been a mistake."
"That's what I thought. I called Jackson, but he said everybody in the whole damn system is being redrafted and sent to the French base. Nobody's left behind this time. The retirees are redrafted, and even the trainees are going."
"Whoa..." Lynn frowned, reaching for the water cooker as it beeped and pouring the steaming water into a blue mug. She easily ignored the "Father Time Can Really Kick the Shit Out of You" writing on the side; after three years of drinking out of the same mug, the words no longer amused her as they once had. "Everybody? Seriously everybody? How about Hasselfeld?"
"Hasselfeld, Errol, Glass...everybody."
She had just lifted her mug to take a sip of the hot cappuccino, but at his words, she set it back down with a soft 'clink'. "Wow. This must be really serious."
"No shit."
"How soon should I expect my letter?"
Brady's response was simple. "Check your letterbox."
"What?" She laughed at the very thought, again lifting the mug to her lips. "I checked the mail yesterday. There was stuff for mother, stuff for Steve...nothing for me."
"Check your letterbox."
"Brady, there's no way I'm gonna find new mail at three A.M."
"Lynn..."
"Fine, fine. If it'll shut you up, I'll go look." She set the mug down and padded down the hall again, flicking on the light in the entryway of her mother's home. Sure enough, a letter that certainly hadn't been there a few hours ago was lying innocently on the hardwood floor. She stared at it for a few moments before Brady's voice jerked her back to reality.
"Hey, Lynn, you still there?"
"Uh...yeah. Yeah, I'm still here."
"You found one, didn't you?"
She swore under her breath at the smug tone of his voice but forced herself to calm down enough to answer. "Yeah. I found one."
"Open it."
Lynn rolled her eyes as she picked up the letter and slit it open with her thumbnail. She tugged the letter out and shook it lightly to remove the creases, then began to read. With each line, her expression grew more and more somber. Finally, she cleared her throat to indicate she'd finished. "Sounds bad."
"Yeah."
"Where are you, Brady?"
"Berlin."
"Don't go anywhere. I'll grab the first plane outta here and meet you there, got it?" Without awaiting his reply, she flipped the phone shut and walked back to her bedroom, her expression thoughtfully grim.
So...everybody was being drafted and sent to the base in France... why not England? If this was as important a she thought it was - and it was clearly important, otherwise they wouldn't be recalling so many people - then why didn't they just send everybody to England? What had happened in her three days of absence that was so intense that every body in the damned RAF had to drop everything and run?
She frowned thoughtfully as she pulled her duffel bag out of the closet and began throwing her things into it. She didn't have a lot of time; if they needed her badly enough to hunt her down and deliver her that letter in the middle of the night, then she needed to get there as quickly as possible. There had to be a reason behind all this.
"Lynn?" Lynn turned around to see Bryan squinting at her in the light of her bedside lamp. "Lynn, what's going on? What are you doing?" He stepped closer, eyes on her duffel bag. "You're packing? Why? Where are you going?"
"Read this." She pointed at the letter she'd dropped at the foot of the bed. He wouldn't understand - she knew he wouldn't, because she certainly didn't - but it was the only way to explain to him why she had to leave.