The Last Good Man

by Linda Nagata

  The contrast of the cool morning air sends a shiver running through her. “I’m a cartoon superhero in a brass bra,” she agrees, strapping the shoulder holster on again. “Now move over.” She pulls on her data glove and slides on her visor. “My ass needs a cushion while I confer with the boss.”

  Their communications are set up to bypass the local cell network, relaying instead through a solar-powered surveillance drone operating at high altitude, beyond the range of casual weaponry. The drone, like much of the equipment they’ll be using on this mission, is leased from a regional company called Eden Transit that specializes in support services for PMCs.

  Lincoln confirms that everything is on track. He posts a satellite map to her display, with Red Team’s location marked—they’re in a hostel a few blocks away. Lincoln says, “The surveillance drone is set to red alert if it detects more than foot traffic at the target house. If it looks like Hussam has decided to bug out, we’ll know it—and we can launch with seven minutes’ notice, but it won’t be a clean hit.”

  “Yeah,” True says. “We’d guarantee civilian casualties.”

  “Roger that. So we’re working out the details of an alternate plan. If it comes to it, it’s better to hit them outside of town.”

  “Agreed.”

  Afterward True returns the MARC to its case, but she continues to wear her TINSL so she can receive alerts and maintain voice communication.

  She gets up again, to help Khalid, who’s preparing breakfast. A skillet of reconstituted eggs, with bread and chopped dates to round out the meal. Whether the mission goes off or not, his career as a taxi driver is over. He’ll be returning with them to the United States.

  “Are you ready to go home?” she’d asked him, when they’d been on the road only a few minutes and were getting to know one another.

  He flashed a shy smile, just visible in the dash lights. “Hell, yes. I’ve been ready for months, but I wanted to burn the last of my currency on something worthwhile.” He nodded. “As soon as I confirmed with Chris who you were after, I knew this was it.”

  Keeping Watch

  There are advantages to being nearly fifty. One of them is a face that shows some mileage. Not that this is always an advantage, but once True puts on a hijab, without the prosthetic of makeup, those features she has earned through time—the slender white scar on her right cheek, the dark brown age spot on her left jaw, her mother’s jowls that gravity insists on pulling into wrinkled relief—ensure that no man on the street looks at her twice. Not even those two youths slouching beside the gate of the house where Hussam is staying, automatic rifles in hand.

  The two young Al-Furat guards exchange terse greetings with the townsmen who walk by, but both look right past True. Really, they should know better. Older women can be dangerous too. In the TEZ they have smuggled weapons, carried information, served as spies and as suicide bombers. Perhaps these two don’t know that. Or maybe they’ve heard of such things but they don’t believe it or don’t believe it’s important. True suspects they are simply selectively blind to a woman, any woman, over a certain age who is not a close relative.

  On another day in another place, that might irritate her. Today she is cheered that not a single man takes notice as she hobbles past in her black abaya, walking with short steps as if suffering arthritic knees. If they see her at all, she wants them to see her as a harmless grandmother with a shapeless waistline—courtesy of the body armor she wears—and stooped shoulders that disguise her height.

  The two guards are watching the street through Sasszem lenses—a Hungarian version of augmented reality glasses specialized for security officers. ’Zems offer only a few options, but they’re far cheaper than MARCs, they’re not constrained by stringent export restrictions, and they’re good at what they do—which is to visually monitor a shifting milieu for weapons and for aberrant behavior. In addition, a facial recognition service is available by subscription.

  It’s likely these guards are subscribed—so there is one more possible reason they overlook True, a more excusable reason: Their software will have failed to tag her with a name, because Lincoln purchased identity restrictions from Global Asset Tracking.

  GAT is a profiling company that specializes in matching names and faces around the world. Most of the hundreds of apps designed to identify strangers work from GAT’s database and those that don’t aren’t worth a damn outside of limited regions. The faces GAT fails to recognize are nearly all of two kinds: those with the money to buy anonymity, and those at the opposite end of the social spectrum, with no choices, no money, and no future. An old woman with arthritic knees, for example, hobbling on some errand through the dusty streets of Tadmur.

  True milks the role, moving slowly, biding her time, waiting for elements to shift. When a white sedan approaches the compound’s gate, she hobbles a little faster. The sedan is new, four doors, black-tinted windows, a hood ornament. Dust hazes its reflective shine. As it noses up to the gate, the driver’s window slides down. One of the guards steps up to confer while True ambles past the back bumper, one hand in a pocket of her abaya.

  The sun’s reflection flares in the chrome, blinding her. She squints, ducks her head, stumbles—and shoves two kamikaze crabs through a slit in the bottom of her pocket. Hidden by her abaya, they strike the road’s dusty surface with a light clatter.

  They are sand-colored robots, made of two hard plastic ovals with a layer of C4 sandwiched between. Remotely operated, they have just enough processing power to move quickly on their four jointed legs. Guided by Lincoln, or someone on staff at ReqOps’ command post, they scuttle from beneath the abaya’s hem into the shadow of the car.

  As the car rolls through the gate, the kamikaze crabs go with it, using the vehicle for cover. Their targets are the two trucks parked inside. They will attach to the engine blocks and then, if Hussam decides to leave Tadmur today, it will be an easy matter to detonate the crabs and disable the vehicles in the open desert. If not, the engines will be blown up tonight after the hostages are recovered, eliminating the trucks as a means of pursuit.

  True hobbles away from the target house without looking back, an old woman, unnoticed by anyone.

  Eventually she makes her way back to Khalid’s apartment where Rohan greets her with a wolfish smile.

  “It worked, Mama,” he tells her. “The kamikazes are in position.”

  ~~~

  By afternoon, the buzzing ceiling fan in Khalid’s little apartment is stirring unseasonably warm ninety-degree air. True lies on her back, distracted by the ceaseless movement of the fan’s spinning blades just visible past the edge of a three-dimensional schematic projected by her visor, and by the weird warmth of the generated breeze, like breath against her skin.

  She occupies exactly half the mattress, refusing to let Jameson squeeze her out of her turf. He’s asleep—she’s sure he’s asleep because he’s been snoring softly for a good ten minutes, but every time he shifts position his massive shoulder presses a little harder against her. His T-shirt is damp with sweat, its scent sweet, thick. Vaguely arousing.

  Rohan has taken his shirt off. Somewhere on the other side of the mountain that is Jameson, he sleeps on the floor, head pillowed against a neatly folded jacket. Felice and Juliet share the worn carpet’s thin padding. Felice has stripped down to shorts and sports bra. Sweat gleams on her bare brown skin. She’s awake, lying on her back like True, eyes blinking occasionally behind the screen of her visor. Her hands are at her sides, her fingers curling and twitching within data gloves as she studies some scenario. Juliet, wearing T-shirt and shorts, is curled beside her. Her MARC is in its case; her eyes are closed in sleep.

  Khalid is out, rustling up fares. Nothing unusual here.

  No one is on watch. They don’t need to be, because ReqOps’ staff, half a world away, has the entire town under surveillance.

  Specific surveillance continues to be directed at the target property. The schematic True is studying is a three-dimensional proj
ection of the house showing the outlines of rooms, the layout of furnishings, and the ghostly figures of people. It was developed from a radar sweep conducted by an Eden Transit UAV. No way to know for sure which of the six figures on the ground floor is Fatima. But the three individuals on the second floor, confined in a storeroom, are certainly the surviving male hostages.

  A mosquito drone collected shadowy, low-res images of their faces. The three men are thin, haggard. But are they injured? Are they ambulatory? She hopes like hell they can get themselves down the stairs.

  “Wireless communications layer,” she says softly.

  All active devices in the target house are pinpointed. Three mobile devices downstairs are certainly phones. An additional node of activity is a first-floor room, likely an office. The video of Noël’s execution was probably sent out for professional editing from that room.

  She drops the communications layer, extends her overview to the outside of the house. Multiple images captured by wandering beetles combine to create a three-dimensional projection of the compound sheltered beneath the anti-surveillance canopy. A small fountain sits at the center of the tiled court. Around the periphery, little potted cypresses look to be thriving despite the canopy’s filtered light. The two large trucks are parked at the front of the house, to the left of the door. Two sedans are parked on the right, but those are visitors. They should be gone by the time the mission launches.

  Placed among the cypresses are eight identical boxes. They are rectangular, around ten inches long, seven inches high, and seven wide. They have a recessed handle in the top to make them easy to carry. All around the handle, tiling the top of each box, are photovoltaic cells. Tiny camera lenses glint in each visible side.

  The boxes are surely more than motion sensors. True suspects some kind of defensive system. She hasn’t seen anything quite like them before, and despite the projection’s excellent resolution, she can’t see any manufacturer’s mark.

  Highlighting one of the boxes, she whispers a note, annotating the projection: Add task: Eliminate PV boxes before we go over the wall.

  Khalid has had the house under surveillance for three nights. On each of those nights, two armed sentries stood watch within the compound on opposite sides of the house. In addition to the men, a tethered UAV circles three hundred meters above the compound. Its tether anchors it against wind gusting off the desert, ensuring it’s always in position to use its excellent optics to watch the streets around the compound. It would certainly observe their approach and sound an alarm the moment they start over the wall… if it remains operational. The mission plan calls for it to suffer a sudden, catastrophic failure just as the QRF arrives on scene. The PV boxes need to share a similar fate.

  A new annotation pops up on the projection, color-coded to Lincoln. PV boxes are on target list.

  “Hey,” True whispers to him. “It’s 0400 where you are. You should be asleep.”

  His hoarse voice mutters in her ear: “I’ll sleep when all of you are safe and on the way home.”

  ~~~

  Beetles still cling to the inner walls of the compound, hiding in plain sight thanks to their flat profiles and camouflage coloration. They upload images in intermittent, energy-conserving bursts. Lincoln studies each one, alert for changes.

  By 1500 he has observed six different men taking turns standing watch at the gate. There is also a boy, maybe eight years old, who has come twice out of the house, looking bored.

  At 1600 a local sheikh emerges from the house accompanied by four other men. They get into the two parked sedans, the gate opens, and they drive off. Only the two trucks remain.

  He has seen nothing to indicate the household is preparing to move to a different location.

  At 1620 he messages Chris and True: Conditions nominal. Final authorization is pending, but best guess is, we’re a go.

  ~~~

  Khalid returns after sunset prayer. The apartment is cooling off rapidly, while outside the wind picks up, whistling through the alley. “Are we on?” Khalid asks.

  “It’s looking good,” True concedes.

  As night sets in, they grow restless. Rohan obsesses over his Fortuna, using a soft cloth to wipe every square millimeter of its surface over and over again. Juliet is alert for footsteps, voices, or an engine in the alley outside and whenever she hears anything she moves to stand by the door, listening, even though the beetle keeps a constant watch. Felice packs and repacks her gear. Jameson taps keys on a virtual keyboard, taking notes for a novel he swears he’s going to write one day. True covers her nervousness by handing out protein bars, double-checking everyone’s equipment, insisting that Khalid lie down to rest, and generally making herself annoying.

  Three hours after nightfall, Lincoln speaks to both teams, his voice arriving over their TINSLs. “Authorization granted. Chris, initiate the operation.”

  Over The Wall

  Red Team sets out first: Chris, Nasir, Ted, and Nate, strolling together in the dark wind-scoured streets, cigarettes lit, wearing the belted, sand-colored robes that have become the affectation of so many former holy warriors, mercenaries now, available for hire, odd jobs, no questions asked. The robes ripple and snap in the frantic wind. Each man carries a weapon, either a Fortuna or Triple-Y assault rifle, balanced casually over a shoulder or resting in the crook of an arm, and they speak together softly in foreign-inflected Arabic.

  Sitting cross-legged on the mattress within Khalid’s apartment, True watches a projection of the streets, tracking Red Team’s progress. She is on edge, as she is before any mission. Her heart thuds in heavy, slow beats. A knot tightens her belly.

  She listens to Red Team talk—about women and the terrible taste of the cigarettes they are smoking and the impossibility of ever returning home. It’s a convincing portrayal of the exiles they are pretending to be, common soldiers left behind when the cause that drew them to the TEZ spun apart and the promises made to them were forgotten.

  They play the role too well, True thinks, disturbed by the nihilism behind their words. What future can there be for men like these?

  Lincoln puts an end to her melancholy spiral when he announces over comms: “Your turn, Gold Team.”

  True’s heart rate spikes. She leaves on her data glove and her TINSL, but she slides off her visor, carefully, so as not to displace her hijab. She slips the visor into an expandable pocket on the front of a lightly armored utility vest that she wears over a high-necked commando shirt. Stuffed into loops on the vest are two thumb-sized capsules containing miniature members of the origami army: mayflies in one, a spare beetle in the other.

  The vest, the shirt, and her matching trousers all have an outer layer of flame-resistant adaptive fabric woven for nocturnal camouflage. The black abaya covers it all. Rising to her feet, she fastens the last of the abaya’s snaps. Then she fetches her weapon, checks the load.

  “Right action,” Jameson whispers, holding up a fist.

  True raises a hand and their gloved knuckles kiss. Jameson has switched from the Fortuna assault rifle he carried on the way in, to a Kieffer-Obermark like True’s, with an underslung shotgun. Rohan still has his Fortuna. Felice and Juliet both have KOs but without the shotgun, making them lighter. Like True, they wear abayas over their combat gear. The men wear loose gauze tunics and trousers as an outer layer. For now, the MARCs are stashed in hidden bags and pockets.

  More fist bumps are traded, everyone murmuring, “Right action.”

  They pick up their packs. True has stashed a couple of kamikazes in hers. Khalid grabs the suitcases, now mostly empty. He exits first. The cab is parked just steps away. True holds her KO close to her body, letting her robe’s wind-blown billows hide it. She gets into the cab’s backseat. Felice comes in behind her. Juliet gets in from the other side.

  The doors close. The trunk slams shut. Khalid takes a few seconds to lock the apartment door, then he slips into the driver’s seat. Rohan and Jameson crowd in beside him, making no effort to hide their weapo
ns.

  True watches Khalid in the rearview mirror as he starts the engine. He looks tense, excited, eager. Khalid’s reputation is solid, but he’s the rookie on this operation. He’s done intelligence work for ReqOps, but none of them have worked directly with him before. She catches his eye in the mirror. “We’re not in any hurry,” she reminds him.

  He answers with a short-burst smile. “Not yet.”

  She nods tacit agreement, saying nothing else, reassured by the knowledge that Lincoln is in the loop, ready to talk him through any complications.

  Khalid triggers the cab’s silent electric engine and they pull out.

  True watches the street ahead, wishing she could observe it with the light-enhancing function of her visor. She relies on the headlights instead and the electric lights escaping the houses. Skidding trash and little whirlwinds of dust. The day’s foot traffic is gone, but knots of men still stand about despite the wind, three and four together, leaning on parked cars or in open doorways, the screens of their phones and tablets lighting up tired, bearded faces. Some look up, eyeing the cab as it rolls past. Jameson makes sure the silhouette of his KO is visible to discourage banditry and adventurism.

  True keeps her head bowed, careful never to make eye contact. It’s a posture that allows her to eye the dusty screen on the taxi’s dash. Khalid has hacked the rearview camera so it’s always on. He keeps the screen’s brightness minimized, but the shadowy illumination is still enough to show a vehicle following them.

  “Let’s change our route,” True says, her tension reflected in her voice. “Take a different street.”

  “I think it’s no one,” Khalid responds, his voice low. “But we can turn here, then go right at the next corner. It’s almost the same.”

  They turn. The car behind them—a battered old sedan—drives on.

  They turn twice more, roll past yet another group of men, and then stop, still a few meters from the target house. Khalid performs the role of taxi driver, holding out a biometric tablet to Rohan to collect payment. Rohan enters a code, presses his index finger to the scanner.