Daylight

Part 5

John walked steadily up the dune toward the dark figure silhouetted in the moonlight.

     “Oi, John?  Is that you?” a man’s voice floated down and instant relief flooded through him. 

    “Trevor, you fucker!” John said a smile spreading over his face.  He ran the rest of the way up the hill until he stood even with the man who had very likely saved his life by getting him out of England.   Trevor gave him a bear hug and clapped him on the back. 

    “How did you find me?” John asked.  Even though he counted the man as one of his allies, he wasn’t too happy he’d been tracked down.

     “All too easy, mate.  I was given directions to your whereabouts by a man named Mycroft Holmes." 

    “What?” John asked feeling his guts turn to water. 

     Trevor laughed good naturedly and then suddenly sobered.  “I can see I’m handling this the wrong way.  I’ve been hired by one Mycroft Holmes to retrieve one John Watson from the USA and bring him back to England, forcefully if necessary but relatively unharmed.”

     John glared at him, “And you took the job?  You sold me out?”

     “John, I took the job,” and here he paused and looked warmly at him.  “Because, I knew if I didn’t take it, someone else would.  They’d be far less gentle.  Mycroft Holmes has known where you’ve been for the past month.  He’s been watching you covertly for a while trying  to determine the best way to retrieve you.”

    “He’s been watching me, here?”  John knew Mycroft had reach, but New Mexico?  He’d probably been naive to think just moving away to a different country would be enough. 

     “Oh, he’s got facial recognition software of the like you could only imagine. And, every city in a civilized country has traffic cameras.  Unless you lived in a cave on an island, he would have found you.  Your habit of coming out to the dunes during a full moon was noted and we’ve been sent to pick you up out here, quietly.”

        “Tara?” John asked but he knew the moment Trevor shook his head. 

        “We didn’t hurt her or the little fella.  She’s a looker, that one,” he said and gave him a wink.  “I’m supposed to take you to the White Sands military base and put you on a small government plane from here.  I can’t let you speak to her or the boy, I’m sorry, John.”

     “What will you tell her?  I can’t just disappear.  She’ll freak out, Tommy will be devastated."

     “We’ve got that covered, John lad,” Trevor said.  He pulled out a mobile phone and entered a text.  “We’ve got some very official looking military men who are going to come to her house, collect your things and tell her you’ve been drafted back into..” here he chuckled. “Canada's secret service.” 

     “But, I haven’t told her anything about my military involvement.  She only knows me as a doctor not a solider. She's never going to believe...”

     “We’re going to tell her you’re needed on a special mission and won’t be back for a while.  Then, we’ll send her a few official updates and then well…. She might get a letter saying you’ve gone MIA.  Mr. Holmes doesn’t want you to have any more contact with them.  I’m truly sorry, John.  It’s a bitch, I know.  But, you’re coming back to England with me.  We’ve got orders.”

     John sank into the sand for the second time that evening.  Tara would be so confused.  She’d feel so abandoned and then eventually just think he’d been captured by some nameless enemy or died?  Tommy would…..It was unthinkable.  He’d become so attached to them both and now they would just miss him endlessly never knowing what really happened to him? 

     “How could you do this?” John snarled at Trevor.  “What about a life debt and owing me for saving your fucking life?”

    “Hey Doc, I paid that back.  Never let it be said I don’t square my debts.  What you did or did not do with your opportunity was not on me.  You should have laid a bit lower, if you know what I mean.  Now, if you don’t mind, I got a timetable to keep,” he said actually glancing at his watch.  “I need you to get up and walk.” 

     Trevor pulled out a military pistol not unlike John’s trusty Sig and pointed it at him.  “I’m supposed to give you a choice to go back easy or hard.  I’d rather do it easy, myself.  I like you, Doc.  I still appreciate your savin’ my life and all.  But, he’s paying me a ridiculous amount of money to bring you back, and me and the boys have been havin’ a rough go of it lately, so up you get.”

     John closed his eyes and pictured Tara’s face as it might look when some man in fatigues told her their bullshit story and felt fury rise in him.  “You bastard, I should have let you die that day!” he shouted and rushed Trevor.  While John still had some genuine military moves from his days as a solider, Trevor outweighed him by 40 pounds and all of it was muscle.  Trevor had John down on his face in the sand with his arm pulled up painfully behind his back seconds later.  “I’m not going to hurt you, Doc.  Get up and let’s do this easy.”

   He let John climb to his feet.  Tears fell down his face and he wiped them away angrily.  “Mycroft sent you because he knew I’d trust you.  He knew you’d be able to capture me without a fight.  So much for the brotherhood of men,” John gritted out as he passed in front of his former comrade-in-arms. 

       “Let’s go, Doc.  I’m doing this for your own good.  Even though you don’t see it that way, I’m still lookin’ out for you.  You wouldn’t want any of my competitors escorting you back.  Trust me on that one.  They would have just shot out one of your knees and brought you back broken.”

     John vowed he would never trust Trevor again and started walking.  “What about my car?” 

     “Give me the keys and we’ll drive it back to your girlfriend’s house.  Do you want her to have it?”

     John felt a surrealistic wave wash over him at the thought of all the flotsam and jetsam of his life with Tara.  What would she do with his stuff, his clothes, or even his bank account?  “Yes, the title’s in the glove box.  Here’s the key.”  He’d never removed it when he bought it from the used car dealer in Alamogordo.  “Give her my wallet too.  Tell her to clean out my bank account and take whatever’s in there.  She deserves it all.”  John felt it all wash away, all the tension and terror and worry.  He was back in the Holmes' grip.  Whatever they had in store for him, he'd get through it.  He always did.

     He wrote his pin number on a slip of paper in his wallet and handed it all over to Trevor.  Even though he’d been down this road before, he found that suddenly giving up on one life and moving on to another didn’t get easier.  He sighed and started walking back to the car park.  He cast one longing look back over the New Mexico landscape, dunes in the dark.  He would remember this place for the rest of his life.  Perhaps he’d leave a permanent piece of himself here forever under the stars.  No matter what happened to him next, he’d been able to fight off captivity for a while and carve out this freedom and happiness for a short time.  It had been worth the effort.

    

     A hour later, much quicker than he imagined, John sat in the belly of a small military plane heading back to England.  It had been granted clearance to takeoff from the White Sands missile base with John, Trevor and a few of his hand-picked men escorting them back to England.  He had only the clothes on his back and duffle bag full of some personal effects and a spare change of clothes they’d collected from Tara’s house.  As expected, she hadn't taken any of it well.  Trevor had handcuffed him to his seat but he left him a good deal of room to move.  John felt miserable as he laid his head against the glass of the window pane and tried not to think about his future.