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Colonel would like to
speak with you before you take the call.”
    “ Can you connect
me?”
    “ He’s in a meeting but he
said he would call you at 1200 hours.”
    “ Anything
else?”
    “ I’ll email the messages.
Do you know someone named Olivas?”
    “ Troy? I went to basic and
Special Forces training with him. Why?”
    “ He’s left three messages
saying that he’s at the Fort. He won’t tell me what he wants. He
just says, ‘Tell the Fey that I’m at Fort Carson.’ Sir, I ran his
profile and…. Sir, he has a reputation for being wild.”
    Alex laughed.
    “ There’s a new sim at Fort
Carson. Afghanistan, I think. He wants me to beat it.”
    “ Can you do that?” Her
Sergeant’s voice held a mixture of surprise and disbelief. “I mean,
with your injuries, you can still beat the training
simulations?”
    “ I’ve beaten every one so
far.” Alex shrugged. “I’ll call him when I’m done with Eleazar.
Have we heard from Trece or the White Boy?”
    “ They’re off the radar.
Last report, they were at working at Camp David.”
    Alex nodded. Her friends had a way of
showing up on the eighth of the month.
    “ When Olivas calls again
ask him about Trece. They’re probably at the Fort.”
    Her Sergeant nodded.
    “ Maps? We’re
cartographers. And cartographers….”
    “ Work on maps,” they said
in unison.
    “ Yes sir. The Intelligence
Center fixed the map phone.”
    When her team arrived in Afghanistan with
only aged, inaccurate Russian maps, Alex fixed, redrew and
annotated their maps out of habit. Her team passed their maps on to
other teams. Soon soldiers were begging the Intelligence Center for
copies of those ‘fairy maps’.
    After fielding international requests for
the maps, the Intelligence Center began distributing the Fey map
series. In turn, Alex requested a telephone line where soldiers
could leave their feedback. Eleazar called the ‘map phone’ every
month.
    “ Just in time to talk to
Eleazar.”
    “ The Intelligence Center
expresses its profound apologies for any inconvenience the Fey
might have experienced,” her Sergeant read from a letter. “Sir,
I’ve never known anyone who received an apology from the
Intelligence Center.”
    “ They make a bundle off
the maps,” Alex said.
    “ And then some. Do
they….”
    “ Just doing my duty,
Sergeant,” Alex answered his unasked question. No they didn’t pay
her for the maps. They were considered intellectual property of the
United States Army. Or something like that. “Iraq-Iran
border?”
    “ The map of the Iraq-Iran
border has been a great success. We’ve heard from three of the six
teams. Their messages are waiting for you on the map phone. You can
get them when Homeland returns the line.”
    Alex nodded.
    “ Sir, there’s some
question about quadrant four and sixteen. The overhang near the
center of the quadrant four? It’s about a foot wider and three feet
deeper than marked. Quadrant sixteen has a well marker but there’s
no water there.”
    “ Let me check,” Alex
said.
    Alex looked at the quadrant in question on
her computer then moved to wide table where she worked on her maps.
She pulled out the hard copy of the map from black wood cubby
tucked into the wall. Unrolling the map against the table, she
noted the overhang change, then searched for the well.
    “ I made a note on the
overhang. But I don’t have a well on my hard or electronic
copy.”
    “ It shows on the GPS
copy.”
    “ God I hate
GPS.”
    “ It’s an inanimate object,
sir.”
    Looking up from the map, Alex caught his wry
grin. She laughed when he wagged his eyebrows.
    “ Can you shoot a message
that GPS is always behind? It’s usually at least two months behind
a map change.”
    “ Yes sir,” her Sergeant
said.
    “ Anything
else?”
    “ There’s a new order to
continue in Afghanistan,” he said. “Um, three, no six identified
zones that need remapping.”
    “ Oil?”
    “ Probably,” he
said.
    “ All right,” she