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Come to Dust III Chapter 16 - The Soldier and the Revolution

The day started out innocently enough at Tri's shop.

"There's a weapons depot on the army base at the presidio," the multicolored fox told me with a happy wag of his tail, fishing out a map from behind the counter of his shop and laying it out flat. "It's right here between these buildings."

"Wait, let me get this straight," I interrupted. I was still staring at my friend in disbelief. "You want me--the handsome, loveable, charming Simon--to sneak into an Army base and steal weapons from them?"

"Yes," Tri said flatly.

"The U.S. government."

"Yes."

"The people who shoot people for stealing from them."

"They're the ones."

"The ones who--"

"SIMON!" Tri growled at me, his ears back in, mostly, mock annoyance. "I don't understand what part of this you do not understand!"

"I'm just making sure you know what you're asking me to do. I generally have a singular rule with places I visit and that's Do not piss off the local military, because they tend to have a lot of sharp, explody things."

"You'll be fine," Tri grumbled and sat back down on the stool behind his desk. "I promise you, I've taken care of everything."

"Then why aren't you going on this clandestine adventure into the base?"

I watched Tri chew the inside of his cheek as he mulled his answer. I knew I wouldn't like it. "The truth of it is...I am too widely known in this city."

"Bullshit."

"It's true. I've been to the base a few times as a guest of the upper crust of the city, and I have a few friends there. How do you think I was able to arrange this?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, you keep revealing you're trickier than you look. The twins could probably take lessons from you."

"The twins?" Tri asked.

"My friends from New York."

I sighed as a pang of longing hit me. I missed them. I missed Gideon and Nickel and Renaldo. I wondered if I would ever see them again. I looked down at the map and moved on.

"So how am I staying alive?" I asked, bringing my attention back to the current topic at hand.

Tri reached out from under his desk and took out a folded uniform kit. He beamed. "I was able to procure this, Lieutenant."

I don't know how Tri had managed to do it, but he had stolen some poor Lieutenant's uniform for this evening. As I stood there, staring at the uniform, the fox proceeded to explain his plan. But I interrupted him again.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" I asked.

"What?" Tri said, flipping through some of the pages on the table. When he looked up at me, I motioned at the white mark on my face.

"You don't see many foxes with this on their mug, you know?"

"I guess it does stand out a bit..." Tri admitted, rubbing his chin.

I rolled my eyes. "Damn right it does! I don't mind it now, but when I was a kid, it drove me crazy. I used to hide it all the time."

After a moment in deep thought, Tri snapped his fingers and went into the back room. He came out with a black bottle and put it down on the table between us. The label was in Chinese.

"It's the black powder of heavenly beauty," the marble fox answered before I could open my mouth to ask what it was, without looking me in the eye.

I glared at him. "This is makeup. For women."

"Yes," Tri said after a slight pause, rubbing the back of his neck. "Vixens usually buy it to enhance their black fur. You know, in the homeland it's better to have inky black fur than brown for your markings, so this is really--"

"I don't wear makeup, Tri!"

The marble fox put his hands up with a shrug. "You don't have to, but do you want to be seen when you go out into the base?"

"No...but..." I growled in frustration.

Tri smiled and picked up the bottle, unscrewing it and dropping the cap onto the desk. "Good, now sit down and stay still. I need to apply this slowly to match your own black fur."

---

In all my life and in all my little adventures around the world, I had never, and I mean never, done something as stupid as this. I know that if Tin found out, I would never hear the end of it and will have myself chained to the bed. While that would be fun for a while, I think I'd be bored after a period.

I stood on the sidewalk in the dead of night rubbing my hands together in the wintry cold of San Francisco Bay and wondering how I had agreed to doing something so stupid. I sighed.

I knew next to nothing about being in uniform. Everything felt fine but I also felt...different. I tugged at the shirt and then the cuffs of the uniform that Tri stole for me to wear. I also had to make sure I didn't lay "leftenant" as my country would demand of me. My accent was mostly gone, but certain words always brought out the inflection.

When I heard the church bells toll, I stepped across the street and headed onto the base. Like Tri had said, people saw the little insignia on my uniform and saluted me as I walked by. I returned it back lazily, like I was in a hurry to be somewhere else. I was, but it was also masking the fact I probably saluted wrong.

I crunched along the gravel roads and followed the building, making sure to walk with intent. There was a lesson Gideon once taught me when I was small: the best way to be somewhere you're not is to act like you belong. It didn't work as well for kids, but it had worked wonders for me as I got taller. Now it seemed to be paying off. Usually I kept my distance from others, but I caught myself passing a coyote and tensed up.

The coyote, if he knew who I was, he didn't say. It was the first time since I had been a little kid that I had covered up my white mark. I used to hate it, I felt so different and some of the other kids used to tease me. When I was a chimney sweep I could cover it up with the soot. I forgot how adding something to it made the fur feel heavy and the skin underneath a bit dry. I had to resist rubbing my face no less.

No one said anything to me as I walked through the base, heading toward the munitions building on the far side near the road. Tri had told me that the rank he had given me was a first lieutenant, an officer. I guess the regular soldiers didn't want to risk disturbing a superior, or they thought it best to be seen and not heard. Whatever the reason, I wasn't bothered at all as I approached the depot.

There were two men standing guard outside. One was a raccoon and the other was a lion. Both looked so young, the lion barely even had his mane. They probably were younger than I, and still then, I felt young on the base!

I also was wary of their rifles.

Time to see how good an actor I could be. I made my face look impassive, bored even, and approached the two soldiers guarding the depot. One saw me, did a double take, and saluted. The lion, who looked half asleep, saluted too. A bit slow on the draw there.

I returned the salute and proceeded to walk by.

Or, tried to.

"Sir?" the lion said, covering his muzzle from a yawn.

"Yes?" I said, stopping and turning my head slightly so only one eye looked at the lion. Small, short answers. My heart pounded in my chest.

"Major Armstrong doesn't want the depot entered until the morning, sir. I can't let you through."

"Yes, you can." I said it with a growl slipping in under my voice. I watched the lion tense up. The raccoon was already wound up by the looks of things.

"Sir, if you tell me what you're doing here, I can--"

"That's a stupid question, soldier." I spoke louder this time. "Now I'm going inside, and you're going to stand there and look forward and maybe...just maybe I won't report it to the Captain that you both looked like you were napping while on guard duty."

I watched the two of them exchange a look. They weren't sure. Did I go overboard with the acting? I didn't even turn around. I had my hands behind my back. I was ready to flee if I had to but I absolutely did not want those guns going off. The last thing I needed was the U.S. Army chasing me across the city.

"Yessir," the lion said tersely and turned to face the way I had come. The raccoon stared longer but turned as well.

"Very good."

I walked up to the door and stepped inside. When I was at a safe distance from the guards, I exhaled slowly.

And almost immediately upon arrival, my senses were assaulted with the scent of oils and grease.

The lights were already on inside the large warehouse-like room, with racks of weapons, tables covered in them, various items for war and fighting everywhere. I could also smell the gunpowder. It was nearly overwhelming!

As I stood there, staring at the vast storage of lethal weapons, Tri's voice echoed inside my mind.

"When you get inside the depot, you'll see a bunch of weapons and boxes. Don't touch anything. What you'll want will be by the two large doors on the other side of the building. There will be a carriage there with all the boxes already loaded on."

When I had asked in surprise how in the world he got such information, the fox just smiled.

"A friend of a friend owes me a favor, and he arranged for the quartermaster to have the weapons crates ready to go. All you have to do is open the doors and ride out. Once you're off the street you just need to get the weapons to the following places..."

I walked around a little until I saw the large wagon on the side of the building, hitched to a horse. There were boxes upon boxes loaded onto the wide carriage with heavy tarpaulin secured over them, keeping them clamped down. You couldn't even tell they were weapons but I could smell the oil coming off them. I approached with a grin, thinking this was going to be easy.

"Ay!" a voice said loudly. "Who goes there?"

It took everything I had to not make a yelp and jump up ten feet. My heart almost shot out my muzzle as I felt my chest pounding faster than it ever did before in my life. I was already getting ready to bolt, but I managed to stay put.

I turned my head to the direction of where the voice came from and saw a bobcat approaching from around the corner. I recognized him as the racist asshole who had been bothering my coworkers at the bar the other day. I scowled a little but quickly tried to play it up.

"Are you an idiot? Don't scare me like that, soldier!"

The bobcat was not wearing his cap, and his jacket was unbuttoned. He even wobbled a little bit like he was drunk. He looked me up and down and then laughed. Hard.

"You're the one they sent? Pfft. Okay! Haha." He shook his head and went over to the large double doors and shoved the heavy latch up, opening it up. He walked over to me and slapped me on the shoulder, grinning like an idiot. "I did what I was supposed'ta, got all the boxes on the carriage for you."

This was weird. Why was a racist bastard like his oaf helping Tri? The marble fox did say this man was a friend of a friend, but...

My head tried to analyze the situation but I stopped. This was not the time to think about such things; I had more important tasks to complete. I narrowed my eyes and tried to look annoyed.

"Customary to salute a superior," I growled at the bobcat.

"Customary to not steal from the US army too, lieutenant." The bobcat grinned and fished out his flask, taking a quick nip. It smelled potent. "Ain't gonna salute a fellow malcontent like myself! Now you git. I can't cover for you if someone comes fussin' around, and I don't want to get skinned by Armstrong."

I sighed and hauled myself up the carriage, picking up the reins and adjusting them in my hands. I wasn't the best rider but I could do this job. I was readying to go when my 'friend' spoke up.

"STOP!" he said, laughing and coming around to look me in the face.

He came close enough that I could see a part of the cross pendant tied to a thin rope that he wore around his neck. The bobcat paused for a second, observing me.

"Ain't we met before?"

I quirked my brow and looked down at him. "That's a stupid question."

He stared at me some more, narrowing his eyes and taking another nip from his flask. Finally he put the cap back on and slid it into his pocket. "I coulda sworn you were familiar, but you black furred foxes are a dime a dozen, the lot of you."

I rolled my eyes. "Are we done?"

"Yeah, yeah." He said and waved me on by. "Just don't be an idiot." He slapped the ass on the horse and off we went into the cold night air.

I must have held my breath the whole time we went down the gravel road. Tri had told me that there wouldn't be any checkpoints along this path tonight, something about a shortage of personnel, and damned if he was right. When I touched the public roads, I exhaled a breath I had been holding in.

I couldn't believe that worked.

And I was never doing that again.

But now was the boring part. I had to take these weapons to various locations by the bay. Tri had said that he was going to be sending these all over China and sending them to one spot was too risky, too easy to be noticed and way too easy to be stolen entirely.

If one small shipment was hit, that was fine. But if the whole kaboodle was taken, that was another thing.

This part of the chore was, admittedly, dull. And after the rush of being on the army base, pretending to be someone I'm not, running into someone who was clearly in on the whole thing and then getting away without even so much as a strand of fur out of place on my tail...I felt tired. I felt the urge to fall asleep and fought it, hard.

I can't remember how many piers and warehouses I made a stop at that night, but the ritual was always the same--I would stop, say my nickname "Xiao-Hei," and someone would appear like magic from the shadows.

I didn't always recognize the men, but some I did. I saw them at St. Andrews or from work. These were regular men who were very kind, wonderful people, and they were risking their lives to run weapons back to their home country.

Then, I wondered if they were doing this because it was a cause they believed in or if they were doing it for Tri. Neither answer was bad, but I hoped this worked out. I didn't want to see anyone suffer.

I helped unload the carriage. Some of the boxes were so heavy that they took two or three of us to move. When the box was laid down on the ground, I always got a handshake and was told to move on. Either no one recognized me, or those who did pretended not to. I moved on as I was told.

By dawn, I was out of weapons and filthy. The boxes were heavy and dusty, and the warehouses were dirty as well. As a result, my whole body ached from the unload and I was seriously crashing from the thrill of the night now winding down.

I stripped out of the uniform I had borrowed and threw it into the bay. I wasn't going to risk being seen wearing it and walking through the city. I had a pair of trousers waiting for me that I pulled on, and then scooped up some water to rub on my face, getting the makeup off.

Looking at my own reflection in the water, I saw that the makeup wasn't entirely gone but I looked more like myself. A blast of cold air hit me and made me shiver. Walking back home without a coat would be chilly, but doable.

I was just looking forward to a warm bath and some much needed sleep. I had done what Tri asked for and did it well. Now I just had to hope he planned the rest of his little scheme as well as he did this heist.

But I would be lying if I told you that I was without worries now. There were still a few things that kept bothering me at the back of my mind. Something was off about this entire endeavor--something didn't make sense. But I wasn't able to figure out what that something was, especially not in my present state of mind when I could fall asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

Walking back to the Arc, I squinted as the rising sun shone directly in my face. I turned my head away to the opposite direction and stopped as I stared at the vast Pacific Ocean.

Out there, far beyond the horizon, was the land where a part of Tri's heritage began, the land where people were fighting for their freedom and suffering the consequences for it, the land with a government that Tri and a small group of men were trying to help overthrow.

As I stared at the line where the brightening ocean met the deep blue ocean, my body shivered not from the cold early-morning air, but from the fear that I felt for the marble fox.

What are you really involved in, Tri?