Troop 18 Read online

  “What is our delinquent troop up to this morning?” Trokof said, taking his frustration down to a level of mere annoyance. Andy guessed he didn’t like to show how much this troop was wearing him down in front of the other instructors.

  “Ran them through a modified PARE this morning,” Zeb said, almost gleefully.

  “Bet they loved that,” Andy said, watching the young constable.

  Zeb grinned wider. “They were as quiet as kittens,” he said. “I think maybe we’re finally getting to them.”

  Les balanced a coffee and a plate of toast as she sat down next to Trokof. Once her breakfast was safely on the table, she looked up at Zeb and snorted in disbelief. “Either you’re naïvely optimistic or totally off your rocker, Zeb,” Les said.

  A spasm of anger crossed over Zeb’s face. He hid it quickly with a gruff response. “Neither,” he shot back. “I just think we’re starting to crack this group. Bringing them out here was a perfect plan,” he added, with an appreciative nod to Andy. She said nothing, knowing no part of her plan had ever included ‘cracking’ the group. Andy quickly jumped into the conversation, seeing Les just about to offer her own retort to Zeb. Bickering was going to get them nowhere.

  “Are the cadets in class today?” Andy said.

  “Supposed to be,” Zeb answered before anyone else could respond. “But I think we should use the day. It’s sunny and dry.”

  “What were you thinking, Constable Zeb?” Trokof said in his formal way. Andy considered Lincoln’s reasoning for wanting the drill instructor out here at Camp Depot. Decorum and structure, he’d said. Andy understood now and appreciated Lincoln’s forethought.

  “Either defence class up on the basketball court or target practice just at the edge of the forest. Or both,” he added. He looked around the room at the other instructors, as if remembering he should include them. “Anyone else want them?”

  Les waved away the offer. “They’re all yours,” she said, and Meyers nodded in agreement.

  “Wyles?” Zeb said, almost mocking.

  Andy ignored his tone. “I’ll shadow the troop today if you don’t mind,” she said, her tone a firm, professional neutral. Zeb shrank only slightly then squared his shoulders and gave a nod of assent. Not that he really had any choice. Then he turned to Kate.

  “Dr. Morrison? Want the troop for anything today, or should I just point them in your direction if one of them gets a boo-boo during hand-to-hand training?” Zeb’s tone now dangerously danced the border from mocking to offensive. Andy heard the implied, though probably unintended, insult and felt her hackles rising. She slowly turned to Zeb, taking the time to school her features and take a breath so she didn’t bite his head off. But before she could say anything, Kate had interceded.

  “Sure, I’ll take them,” Kate said, her voice calm and assured. She turned away from Zeb, ignoring his look of surprise. She directed her next question at the drill instructor. “The cadets do some kind of first aid training, I take it?”

  “Yes,” Trokof said, sounding amused. “They have an in-class component, and they also come across first aid situations in the scenarios we run.”

  “I’d be happy to run them through some scenarios this afternoon,” she said, then turned back to Zeb. “If that fits with your plans, Constable Zeb?”

  “Sure thing, Dr. Morrison,” Zeb said, his tone drifting back down towards respectful. Andy wanted to shake her head. She couldn’t quite figure out Zeb. He seemed like a kid with ADHD, but one who had learned some skills and could hide it. But sometimes it caught up to him.

  There was a brief, awkward pause.

  “Come on Zeb. I’ll give you a hand setting up the targets,” Meyers said, draining the last of his coffee and standing up. Andy gave him a brief, grateful look as he walked by, and Meyers acknowledged it with an almost embarrassed dip of his head.

  Once they’d left, Les let out a long breath. “Sorry,” she said to no one in particular, “I know I shouldn’t bait him like that. I just hate energetic people on a morning that I’m dragging my ass.”

  “Especially before your first coffee,” Kate added, laughing.

  “Exactly!” Les grinned, taking a sip of orange juice to wash down her toast. She made a face and put the cup down. “Ugh, that tastes awful. Did the cadets make it?”

  Trokof looked down at his own empty juice cup. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “Tastes fine to me.”

  “I think for a lot of reasons, I should stick to coffee,” Les said, and Kate laughed again.

  Andy watched them have a casual conversation over their coffees though she tuned it out quickly, walking back over the last half hour, sorting details and ideas in her head in an attempt to keep up with the rapidly shifting scenario she found herself in. After a moment, she felt Trokof watching her. He still seemed pale, but his shoulders were set.

  “We all need a bit of patience, it seems,” he said to Andy quietly.

  Yes, Andy thought to herself. That summed it up entirely. They could all use a bit of patience.

  *

  Andy didn’t spend the day shadowing the troop like she’d hoped. Instead she spent it mired in the details of running a camp: garbage disposal, water purification, taking laundry down to the main house, fiddling with the portable printer connection, a running toilet in one of the cabins, and the endless task of keeping enough food in stock to feed this many hungry adults. She checked her voicemail while she was in cell range at the main house, confirming that Superintendent Heath himself would be descending on Camp Depot tomorrow sometime in the early afternoon.

  Then she was back up to camp with cleaning supplies, fresh bed linens, and empty recycling buckets. Andy didn’t mind the menial work. She’d known what she was getting herself into when she’d presented this offer to Lincoln. Still, she felt disconnected from the instructors and the cadets for most of the day. Finally, with her list of jobs diminished and the late afternoon sun at her back, Andy walked up behind the cabins where Kate had already begun running the cadets through some first aid scenarios.

  Kate had broken the troop up into four groups of four, each with at least one cadet badly imitating an injured person. Andy gave a small wave to Kate, who was standing side by side with Les, having an ongoing conversation while they surveyed the activity. Kate returned the greeting and Les waved Andy over. But Andy shook her head and instead sat on a damp, old log that had obviously served as bleachers for this run down court. She wanted to survey the troop. Watching them interact, Andy could sense a quietness that had been missing in the past few days. Maybe because this wasn’t really a class or because Kate was a civilian, but as Andy watched the cadets, none of the tension or hyperawareness was present. Maybe Zeb had been right, Andy thought as she listened to Kate calling the troop back together. Maybe this was really working.

  “Okay, I think that’s about as much as we can do without fake blood and bandages,” Kate said to the cadets.

  “Or without breaking someone’s leg to see what it looks like,” Shipman said, making the other cadets laugh.

  “Or that,” Kate agreed with a slight roll of her eyes. Andy watched as Kate’s expression became serious. She could sense a question coming, some kind of test. “How do you know if someone is injured?” she challenged the cadets.

  “Blood and bones,” Shipman called out immediately, still angling for a laugh from his troop.

  “Yes. But what else?” Kate said patiently and pointedly. The troop was silent, taking in Kate’s shift in mood.

  Les jumped in. “As a first responder, you’ll need to know the signs. Even if you won’t be treating anyone, you have to know what to look for to call in to EMS or at the very least to put in your report later.”

  “Signs of shock,” Prewitt-Hayes said decisively, as soon as Les had finished talking.

  “What does that look like?”

  “Disorientation, acute anxiety, lack of response to stimuli…”

  “Yes,” Kate interrupted, “but what does that look
like, Cadet Prewitt-Hayes?”

  Another silence, the troop looking at Kate with curious eyes. She had them stumped.

  “Let me try it another way,” Kate said, glancing around the group. “What did the people around you look like after they walked out of the tear gas test?”

  The cadets immediately started talking over each other, giving descriptions of physical symptoms, expressions of pain, what it looked like when someone was having difficulty breathing. All cadets went through the OC or pepper spray test in week seven of their training program. Andy still vividly remembered the burn that instantly took over her entire head; her throat, nose, mouth, eyes all streaming with tears and mucous as her body tried to rid itself of the toxin. Kate had done her homework about the cadet training. She wouldn’t have expected anything less.

  “Right,” Kate was saying as Andy tuned back in. “So some injuries are easy to identify. We instinctually understand what pain looks like on another human being. But some are more subtle and shock is one of those.” Kate paused. “Here’s another question. How do you know when someone is well?” She motioned to the cadet closest to her to step forward. “How do you know Cadet Frances is well?”

  A quick, tight anxiety rolled through the troop. Andy could see it in a small sidestep, a drawn breath, an uneasy look. Tension. Andy controlled the urge to walk around to where Kate and Les stood so she could see better. Something had happened, some shift, something the troop didn’t like. Singling out one cadet? Is that what spooked them? Andy watched silently, cataloguing all her questions.

  “If I may say so, Dr. Morrison, I’d say that Frances kind of looks like shit, actually,” Greg Shipman said, his jocular tone breaking the strained silence. Kate looked at him, annoyed, then she turned to Frances as if seeing him for the first time. Andy watched Kate give him a quick assessment.

  “He’s right,” Kate said. “Are you not feeling well, Cadet Frances?”

  Frances shook his head, held his hand to his stomach in a terrible pantomime. “Something I ate,” he mumbled. Andy noticed he was pale, and his hand shook.

  “Me, too, I think,” Petit said, almost immediately. “Something we ate. Shipman, you’re on clean up from now on. No more cooking.”

  Kate scanned the big man, and Andy knew full well she was attempting to see past their admitted symptoms, to make her own assessment of their illness or wellness. “Then I suppose you should head back to your cabins,” Kate said evenly, talking to both Petit and Frances. “Anyone else?”

  Silence.

  Les checked her watch, and then she pointed at the two supposedly sick cadets. “We’re almost done here. Both of you can go.”

  Petit and Frances left the circle, decidedly not looking at the rest of their troop as they passed, Andy noticed. They had to walk right by Andy on the way back down to the cabins. Andy kept her eyes on them. Frances acknowledged her with a quick, polite dip of his head, Petit mumbling ‘sergeant’ under his breath as they passed. Andy considered following them down but instead she listened to Kate wrap up her session.

  “The list of shock symptoms can be completely contradictory,” Kate was saying. “And it could mean absolutely anything. A victim of stabbing could have a lacerated kidney but still be telling you his life story before he felt any pain. The human body has an incredible capacity for pain given the right circumstances and the right levels of adrenaline. If there’s even a chance someone’s been injured, you need to watch for it. Keep them talking, keep asking questions, watch their body language. A body can compensate for injury. It automatically takes whatever action it needs to protect itself. There are signs, you need to watch for them.” Kate paused and looked out over the assembled troop of fourteen cadets. “Any questions?”

  Andy was surprised she’d asked, figuring Kate would sum up and release the cadets. The sun was already beginning to set behind the mountain, and the temperature was rapidly dropping.

  “Does it always know?” Shipman blurted out the question with none of his usual jovial swagger.

  “Does the body always know what?” Kate said calmly, though Andy could tell by the way she asked that she already had an idea what Shipman was getting at.

  “Does the body always know when something’s wrong?” Krista Shandly filled in the question.

  “No. Not always.” No one said anything else, but no one moved either. Andy could tell they couldn’t get there on their own. Kate seemed to know the help they needed. “What are the symptoms of cardiac distress?” she asked the cadets quietly.

  The troop knew. Of course they knew. They listed in great detail the signs of symptoms of a variety of cardiac episodes. Kate nodded each time someone gave a response, and she began tracking their answers on her fingers, starting over again once they got past ten. Finally they’d given as much as they could, and Kate didn’t wait. She asked them the next question. The one that Andy anticipated by now.

  “Did you see any of those things on Cadet Justin Thibadeau before he died?” Kate said, her voice understanding but also not letting this go. She would follow it through, she would answer their questions. Even the ones they hadn’t said out loud. “In the weeks or days or even minutes before he went down during your training exercise, did you see any of this?” She held up her hands as reference.

  Prewitt-Hayes answered for the group. “No.”

  “No,” Kate confirmed, dropping her hands. “You wouldn’t have seen it because Thibadeau wouldn’t have felt it. Cardiomyopathy is sudden, and twenty percent of the time it results in instantaneous death. As you all had the misfortune to witness.”

  The group was silent, sad. Andy watched them intently, waiting for the moment they would shrink back into each other, forcing a barrier between themselves and the rest of the world. After a few minutes of silence, Andy had to conclude either it hadn’t happened or she hadn’t seen it.

  Kate looked up at Les. “I think that’s good for today,” she said quietly.

  Les addressed the troop. “Go get ready for dinner, cadets,” she said, sounding more maternal than instructive.

  Each of the cadets nodded silently and respectfully at Andy as they passed on their way back down to the cabins. Andy, Kate and Les followed silently. Andy didn’t want to have the cadets overhear their conversation. It would have to wait.

  The mood at camp that night was sombre. As Andy expected, Petit and Frances didn’t join them for supper but neither did Shipman or Hellman or Awad. Andy watched as Kate made the rounds through the cabin, asking questions about the absent cadets. But the troop had closed rank again, and Kate got very little beyond the reassurance that they were all fine. Dinner was quick, the cadets leaving as soon as they had finished eating and cleaning up.

  The instructors offered each other what little insight they could. Andy couldn’t help thinking that they were missing some piece. But they couldn’t reason this out, and no amount of logic could be applied to make this make sense. So the instructors took the troop’s cue, everyone turning in early, lost in their own thoughts.

  It wasn’t until roll call the next morning that Andy understood the extent of the troop’s quieted mood. The troop lined up dutifully and nervously in the pre-dawn light. But only fifteen cadets answered roll call. Cadet Greg Shipman was missing.

  Chapter Nine

  Andy hiked into the foggy morning, five silent cadets shadowing her movements on the slippery trail. It had taken only minutes to verify that Shipman wasn’t anywhere in camp. Trokof had grilled the cadets, but they knew nothing. They looked miserable and stressed, Petit and Frances now not the only ones who could pass as sick. Foster said he’d heard the door of the cabin sometime after midnight but hadn’t really thought anything of it. He figured Shipman was sneaking out for a smoke after a long day. Foster had gone back to sleep and said he hadn’t known Shipman was gone until roll call.

  Foster was at Andy’s heels now, and his tension was palpable. He and the four other cadets in Andy’s search party—Hellman, McCrae, Awad and Mancini—to
ok turns calling Shipman’s name, hearing it swallowed by the fog in the low areas or disappearing up into the sky as they crested the next series of hills. Initially, they had heard Meyers’s team as they also called out for Shipman, but that had been over an hour ago.

  Andy pulled the radio out of her belt and called Meyers. Nothing. She checked with Les who had taken a group in the other direction, down past the main house. No sign. Zeb had taken Andy’s Yukon and was slowly making his way down the highway into Kamloops. He didn’t have a radio, so Andy had to call Trokof who was waiting by the phone at the main house. Kate was alone at camp, hoping he’d show up there. Nothing from any of them. No one had heard a thing.

  Andy shoved the radio back into her belt and tried to quell the mounting concern that had moved from her stomach and up into her chest. She thought about the quick team debrief they’d had right before breaking up into teams. Shipman had seemed no more or less sombre than the rest of the troop when he’d last been seen. He’d given no indication that he was suffering or depressed or that he was considering quitting. Shipman was just gone.

  “Does Shipman have a significant other?” Andy said to the cadets over her shoulder.

  “A girlfriend back in Alberta. She’s a teacher, I think,” Cadet Chris Mancini offered, stumbling a little on the loose rocks, as if talking and walking at the same time was troublesome.

  “Have they been fighting recently, do you know?”

  Mancini shrugged his shoulders, kicked at a rock and dug the toe of his boots into the hard-packed mud in an attempt to gain purchase. Andy looked briefly at the other cadets, but no one seemed to have anything else to add. She tried to temper her annoyance. Pushing would get her nowhere. Troop 18 had made that perfectly clear.