Chương 77: Destination: Bogotá

The moment I finished reading the mobilization notice, I zipped up my travel bag, turned in the key to my hotel room at the front desk, and grabbed a cab to Dulles Airport. The check-in area was crowded, but I headed straight for the airline counter.

"Good afternoon. May I see your e-ticket and passport, please?" the airline employee said with a practiced smile, giving my tracksuit a quick once-over.

"I've got a special situation," I said, then turned my phone around and showed her the Corps QR code without another word. She hesitated for a moment. Her smile faltered, but she obediently raised a handheld scanner to the screen. The device chirped, and a restricted protocol appeared on her monitor. I could not see the directives that popped up, but whatever they were, they wiped the professional polish right off her face.

"One moment, Mr. Ross." Her voice dropped noticeably. Without taking her eyes off the monitor, she reached for the radio on her belt and called for the senior airport security supervisor. For a split second, an old civilian instinct flared to life: turn around and walk away. In ordinary life, having security called because of you almost always meant trouble. Serious trouble. But I crushed the impulse immediately. Panic was a poor companion for an officer.

I remembered the Corps protocols drilled into us during training far too well. That encrypted code effectively granted me the highest level of military-diplomatic priority. Under a special protocol ratified by the United Nations, any airline in the world was required to get an Awakened individual to a portal aboard the first available flight. Free of charge. The law left no room for debate.

Even if a plane was packed with senators and celebrities, they had to remove someone from the passenger list or, if necessary, strap me into a flight attendant's jump seat. Either way, they had to get me where I was going. If I happened to be in Beijing right now, the local airline would quietly find me a seat to Bogotá without a single complaint. Naturally, for security reasons, civilian databases did not identify us as Awakened.

To civilian agencies, the code marked me as a Department of Defense operative carrying out an urgent mission of critical national importance. A few minutes later, a stocky man in a neon-yellow safety vest strode toward the counter. Judging by his grim expression and heavy gait, he was expecting to deal with a drunk, a disruptive passenger, or maybe even a terrorist. The employee turned her monitor toward him and whispered something while pointing at the protocol. Within seconds, all the fight drained out of him.

His face took on the disappointed look of a kid whose favorite toy had just been taken away.

"Mr. Ross," he said, staring somewhere over my shoulder as though making eye contact was uncomfortable.

"Please come with me. I'll escort you to the next flight to Bogotá. It departs in thirty minutes."

"Thank you." The security officer skipped any further pleasantries and powered through the terminal like a freight train. We moved at a near run, cutting corners and bypassing every line, customs checkpoint, and screening station in our path. Nobody asked me to empty my pockets or walk through a metal detector. Theoretically, during a mobilization, an Awakened could bring a nuclear device aboard an aircraft and the system would still wave him through. Of course, I had no intention of testing that theory.

"What's our ETA?" I asked as we walked.

"Noon Bogotá time, assuming we don't hit any serious headwinds," he replied, pushing open a service door that led onto the tarmac. Without breaking stride, I pulled out my phone and fired off a quick text with my arrival details to the headquarters coordinator. I needed one of our people waiting for me on Colombian soil. The security officer escorted me all the way to the jet bridge, exchanged a few quiet words with the lead flight attendant, and then disappeared as though eager to unload a dangerous package.

"Right this way, Mr. Ross," the flight attendant said with a strained smile. She guided me through a sweltering economy cabin packed to the brim with passengers shoving bags into overhead bins, then seated me in the cool, half-empty business-class section. The moment I settled into my seat, though, it felt as if an invisible boundary sprang up around me, one every crew member instinctively recognized. The entire flight became an exercise in polite avoidance.

The passengers beside me received seafood and champagne delivered with warm smiles and impeccable service. No one approached me once. The flight attendants gave my seat a wide berth and carefully looked elsewhere whenever I so much as turned my head. A pampered civilian might have found the treatment insulting. I found it amusing. The instructors at camp had been completely upfront about it: commercial airlines hated dealing with the Corps.

To them, we were oversized baggage they were legally forbidden to throw out. They earned no revenue from us and inherited a mountain of legal liabilities in return. Naturally, they treated us like a crate full of explosives. Carefully, quietly, and from as far away as possible. When the landing gear slammed onto the runway at El Dorado International Airport, the process repeated itself in reverse.

A flight attendant handed me off directly to a representative from Colombian airport security, who escorted me through service corridors without questions, declarations, or paperwork. We passed hundreds of tourists wilting in the heat and headed straight for the main exit. I never even had to show my passport. And just like that, I was in Bogotá. My first official trip outside the United States. The heat outside was oppressive.

Broad-canopied palm trees swayed overhead, while a solid wall of local taxi drivers lined the curb, all competing loudly for customers. Some things never changed, no matter where in the world you ended up. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"¿A dónde alojamiento, amigo?" a stocky Colombian in a wrinkled cap called out, staring at me and waving his hands energetically.

"¿Qué hotel? Yo sé todos los hoteles en la ciudad, buen precio."

"Gracias, pero yo espero mi compañero," I replied in flawless Spanish as I carefully stepped away from the car. The language module loaded into my brain produced the words without the slightest trace of an American accent.

"Tom! Damn, I barely recognized you!" I spun around instantly at the familiar voice. Leaning against a barrier near the terminal stood Danny Kim. My handler looked like he had wandered off the set of a teen surfing show: a spotless white tank top that showed off his deeply tanned, sculpted muscles, a bright bandana tied around his head, and loose shorts hanging to his knees.

"Put on some muscle. Speaking Spanish like a local, too." Danny narrowed his eyes as he looked me over.

"What happened to the pale office drone with a calculator I met on day one?"

"And you haven't changed a bit," I said with a warm smile, feeling the tension of travel finally leave my shoulders.

"Still the same eternal beach boy. All you're missing is a skateboard under your arm."

"Cowabunga, dude!" Danny shouted as he stepped forward and wrapped me in a bone-crushing hug. For a second, I felt a little self-conscious under the curious stares of the suddenly silent taxi drivers, but I still gave my handler a firm slap on the back.

"So you're my pickup detail?" I asked once we'd finished exchanging greetings.

"In the flesh." He jerked his chin toward the parking lot, where a massive SUV stood out among the compact civilian cars.

"Toss your gear in the back. If traffic doesn't screw us over, we'll be at the temporary headquarters in about an hour."

"I'll admit, I didn't expect to see you in Colombia." I slid into the front passenger seat and buckled my seatbelt.

"What is this, some new Corps policy? Long-term handler assignments? Are you going to be watching over me even inside the portal?"

"No policy, Tom. My authority as your handler officially disappeared the second you got accepted into training camp." Danny turned the key in the ignition.

"Pure coincidence. Headquarters pulled several teams for this portal operation, mine included. Technically, some private was supposed to meet you at the airport, but I snagged the assignment. Figured it'd be easier for an office guy if the first face he saw in a foreign country was someone he already knew."

"And I appreciate that. I just wasn't expecting to run into you again this soon," I said, settling more comfortably into the seat. Danny drove like he was trying to win a race, squeezing every bit of performance out of the SUV as he navigated Bogotá's crowded streets. I let him focus on the road while I watched the city slide past outside my window: chaotic blocks of development, glass towers rising beside sprawling slums, bursts of tropical greenery, and dense streams of pedestrians moving through the city.

"By the way, Tom, why didn't you call after graduating?" Danny spun the wheel and slipped into the left lane approaching a traffic light.

"Hell, until this morning, when I opened the assault team's roster, I thought you were still running obstacle courses."

"Was I supposed to?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You just finished explaining that every official connection between us was severed."

"Officially, sure. But you could've called just to be human." Danny stopped at the red light and shot me a reproachful look. I chose not to pursue the topic and simply stayed quiet. We were not family, and we were not close friends who needed routine phone calls to maintain a relationship. My career was my business. His was his. Small talk offered little practical value.

"Still, the roster already has you listed as Second Lieutenant Ross." Danny let out an impressed whistle and hit the gas the moment the light turned green.

"Officer bars straight out of training. That's impressive. Keep moving at that pace and you'll catch me in a couple of months."

"A couple of months is impossible." I mentally ran his statement through an analytical framework, weighing the variables.

"But if current growth rates hold, there's a realistic chance we could both be wearing captain's bars around this time next year."

"What?" Danny nearly jerked the wheel out of his own hands and snapped his head toward me.

"Tom, I was kidding."

"I'm not."

"Buddy, it took me almost ten years to earn these stars. How exactly are you planning to do it in twelve months?"

"Our bureaucratic system, like any other, contains perfectly legal shortcuts for people who know how to navigate paperwork," I replied evenly, keeping my eyes on the road ahead.

"The most obvious path is accelerated completion of an accredited military degree. With my current cognitive capabilities, I could absorb a standard five-year university curriculum in roughly two weeks of intensive study."

"You're a damn hustler, Tom." He shook his head, though the respect in his voice was impossible to miss.

"And your abilities would let you turn this entire city into a flat field of ash in a matter of minutes if you wanted to. No amount of rank would save me if we ever ended up on opposite sides of a battlefield. I'd say that keeps things balanced."

"Fair enough." Danny visibly relaxed and grinned.

"Call it a draw." We drove deeper into the heart of the Colombian capital, casually trading comments back and forth. I spent more time listening than talking, continuing to study the local infrastructure outside the window: roads, elevated interchanges, police checkpoints. At another intersection wedged between high-rises, a thin local man in a clean but well-worn shirt hurried over to our SUV. He flashed a broad smile and lightly tapped his knuckles against my window.

"¡Hola, amigos! ¿Les interesa visitar la iglesia? Tenemos una misa hermosa hoy."

"Hang on, buddy." Danny instinctively reached toward the dashboard, where loose change rattled inside a plastic compartment.

"I've got a few small bills in here somewhere..."

"Leave the money alone, Danny. He doesn't want your dollars." I gently stopped his hand.

"He's not asking for change. He's inviting us to a church service."

"No kidding?" Danny pulled his hand back and stared at the man in surprise.

"I've gotten so used to assuming anybody who walks up to a car at a red light wants a buck to clean the windshield. Tell him we're not interested."

"No nos interesa, gracias. Tenemos prisa," I said calmly through the partially lowered window. The man nodded in understanding and immediately moved on. A second later, the light turned green and the SUV rolled forward.

"See, Tom? And you were wondering why they loaded Spanish into your head." Danny changed lanes to get around a heavily loaded pickup truck.

"Trust me, the way deployments are assigned, about three out of every five mobilizations you'll get are going to happen somewhere in Latin America."

"So the entire Spanish course in my head exists mainly to stop me from handing a couple of bucks to a guy who just wanted to talk about saving my soul?" I asked dryly.

"That's part of it." Danny chuckled.

"At the very least, you saved me from making an ass of myself. But seriously, keep this in mind: we're going to be stuck at the base for at least three days. The assault team still has to assemble, logistics has to get sorted out, and headquarters needs to run the final briefing. Until all that's done, you'll basically be on your own. If you decide to leave the perimeter, being able to communicate with the locals will save you a lot of headaches."

"Fair point. Hard to argue with that." The SUV turned off the avenue and rolled up to a massive corrugated-metal construction fence that sealed off an entire city block in the middle of the dense urban landscape. Warning signs hung everywhere, and the boom of an aging crane rotated lazily overhead. But I knew better. Behind that fake construction site stood the operational camp built around the portal I was about to enter for the first time.