by Linda Nagata
Miles leans back in his seat, half-closes his eyes, and murmurs into the mic, “What Ryan said. You didn’t have to pick us up. Thank you for doing it anyway.”
Rohan cuts in with his usual, mocking humor. “Write us up pretty when you do the article.”
“Love to,” Miles tells him in a gruff voice, “as soon as True lifts that NDA.”
She answers with a smile: “Sorry. That’s above my pay grade.”
She leans forward just far enough to grab her backpack from the floor. As she pulls the pack into her lap, a deep, throbbing ache in her knuckles catches her by surprise. What now? she thinks, disgusted at her own fragility. She flexes her gloved hand, testing the depth of the injury, and remembers punching a recalcitrant soldier while she and Jameson were securing the second floor. No more fistfights for you, Brighton.
Moving gingerly, she gets out her tablet. Noticing Miles’s wary stare, she gives him a sideways look and a teasing smile. “No more signatures required. Promise.”
The tablet uses its camera to scan her face. Identity confirmed, it allows her in. She fishes her reading glasses from a pocket and starts checking on the mission’s digital back trail. No statement yet from Al-Furat, but three eyewitness reports have already been posted on a regional news aggregator. She starts to skim the English translations, then realizes Miles is looking, trying to read the tablet too.
A former Ranger, now an independent journalist—even in normal times he’d be afflicted with a deep, enduring hunger for information. After two months cut off from the world, he’s got to be starving for it. She shifts the screen to give him a better view.
The initial reports are understandably short on details. They describe only the explosions in the compound, the hurried exodus from Tadmur, and the destruction of the two technicals. No mention of civilian casualties—hopefully there are none—or the soldiers left bound inside the house. None of the reports identify Requisite Operations by name, which suits True just fine.
She would prefer it if the company could work anonymously. That would make security easier and make them less of a target for both retribution and for the legal reformers at home. But it isn’t possible. Requisite Operations’ name will come out, and there will be a period of intense scrutiny. Their strategy will be to direct media interest toward the rescued hostages and the good that’s been achieved. Given the speed of the global news cycle, interest should quickly fade—and everyone at ReqOps will be safer when that happens.
The intercom wakes up. It’s Lincoln, speaking to them for the first time since the helicopter lifted off. “I’ve got a status update for you all. We are on schedule. Biometric data has gone to the State Department. They will need to confirm identity of the merchandise before they’ll take him into custody, but that’s a formality. Prisoner transfer will occur. USS Keira Tegan will be waiting for you. You’ll offload the merchandise and depart for Cyprus, where the civilians will be admitted into the custody of their respective consulates.”
“Including the target?” Chris asks.
“Roger that.”
True cuts in, imagining the anxiety of the Atwans: “You notify the parents yet?”
“When you’re out of harm’s way,” Lincoln says, “I’ll make the call. For now we proceed with the interview. I want to know where those Arkinsons came from. Chris, get the merchandise plugged in.”
But True sees a problem with this. “Let’s assess our communications first. Right now we’ve got flight crew and passengers hooked in on this network.”
“Roger that,” Lincoln says. “We are sharing intelligence with Eden Transit. But good call on the civilians. Unplug ’em.”
True slips off her reading glasses as she turns to Miles. He meets her look with a raised hand, palm out—a gesture that says wait.
“Lincoln,” he says over the intercom. “It’s been a long time. Seven years since I was in Ranger School. You remember me?”
In the ReqOps command post, Lincoln receives this question with a grudging smile. “I remember everyone, Dushane. Welcome back to the world.”
“Thank you, sir. I’d like to listen in. Constrained by the NDA, if you want it that way, but I’ve been locked up in that bastard’s care for two months. It’s gotten personal.”
Lincoln understands the sentiment. And Dushane is a Ranger, one of their own, after all. “Listen, not talk,” he says sternly.
“Yes, sir.”
“Let him stay in, True,” Lincoln orders. “But get his friends unplugged.”
“Roger that.”
Rogers doesn’t object. Rodrigues can’t. The stress has gotten to him and he’s passed out.
True speaks: “Felice, confirm the target is unplugged.”
“Confirmed.”
Lincoln shifts to the video feed from Chris’s MARC. “Plug him in, Chris.”
“Roger that.” A moment later: “You hearing this, El-Hashem?”
Chris stands over Hussam, who is seated in the back of the helicopter with a blanket tucked around him, an olive-drab flight helmet on his head, and a black elastic band over his eyes. The boot sole Chris planted in his face has left him with a swollen nose, bruised cheeks, cracked lips, and dried blood in his neatly trimmed beard. Despite the rough handling, he answers Chris without hesitation, in Arabic. His voice is hoarse, strained: that of a man with a raw, bruised throat. But his words are clear: “I hear a dead man talking to me.”
Lincoln has enough proficiency in the language to understand the threat. “Not far from the truth,” he acknowledges gruffly. “Let’s talk.”
Hussam doesn’t need persuading. He looks up as if he can see past the black elastic blindfold to meet Lincoln’s gaze. He has no way of knowing Lincoln is half a world away. Shifting to English, he says, “Yes, I will talk. Because I want you to know there is a price for what you’ve done and it’s more, so much more, than the silver you’re being paid for my head.”
Lincoln notices Hayden eyeing him, reads the concern in the kid’s expression, his unspoken question: What can Hussam do? Lincoln slides his hand through the air, palm down in a dismissive gesture. Don’t worry.
Hayden nods and, forcing a smile, turns back to his display.
Men like Hussam cast spells with their words. They string words together and use those strings to bind others and make them dance to their will. Bold talk and ruthless violence. An age-old formula for those grasping at power. Right now words are all Hussam has left, so he’s eager to spend them. But Lincoln has his own agenda for this conversation. “You know you’re not going home,” he says. “Not ever.”
Hussam turns this statement around with a skill Lincoln can’t help but admire. “When did I have a home?” he asks. “Never. My father’s home was made a blackened ruin. That’s what the American occupation did for my family, my people. Nine of my father’s sons are dead now.” No fear in him. “Soon it will be ten.”
“It would be, if it were up to me,” Lincoln agrees congenially. “But we’re turning you over to American authorities. If you’re lucky they’ll put you on trial. But I’m betting they’ve got a cage ready for you at some black-site prison and you’ll never see the light of day again.”
“As God wills.” With the black elastic over his eyes, he looks like a blind prophet, pronouncing doom. “Either way I will outlive you. You know who Jon Helm is? No? You’ll know soon enough.”
Lincoln switches off his mic and turns to Tamara. She’s transfixed by her screen, her fingers ghosting over a virtual keyboard. Her two assistants are similarly engaged. “Tamara, you got anything?” he asks her.
She checks with the assistants. Michelle shakes her head. Naomi says, “The name’s too common. Must be a thousand Jon Helms out there.”
Tamara tells them, “Assume it’s a nom de guerre. Cross search on a security company or PMC.” A few seconds later she pushes back from her desk. “Got it. Jon Helm, associated with a PMC, name of Variant Forces. Black hat. Not much data out in the light.”
“Go
dark.”
“We’re on it.”
He turns his mic back on. “Was Jon Helm managing your security, El-Hashem? Did you pay Variant Forces to look out for you? I don’t think you got your money’s worth.”
“You think it’s over?” Hussam asks. He shows no fear: not in his voice and not in his manner. “No. You are marked. He will come after you. All of you.”
“Are you worth that much to him?” Lincoln asks. “He’s already lost an Arkinson. Are you more valuable than that?”
“Yes.” His lips draw back, exposing ivory teeth. “I am worth more to him than the money you will get for my head. And his reputation is worth more than that. He is… relentless. That is the word. He is one of your own. American. Special Forces. That’s what you were, right? Both of you, mercenaries now. Jon Helm is his war name. I wonder if you know him by his true name?”
Lincoln doesn’t like this thought, not at all, but he concedes to himself that it’s possible. Plenty of former operators work in military and security companies. Still, it doesn’t add up, because the Rogue Lightning emblem is stolen. He’s certain of that. And if the emblem is stolen, maybe the backstory is stolen too, and “Jon Helm” is just some steroid-soaked wannabe badass who’s concocted an ex–Special Forces origin story to boost his bottom line.
That’s what he’d like to believe, but he can’t get the theory to parse.
Long ago, he learned to trust an inner sense that perceives patterns, connections, and looming threats long before his conscious mind can map them—and that sense is telling him he’s reading it wrong.
It’s worth remembering that Variant Forces, the company behind this “Jon Helm,” has a cash flow real enough to maintain a regional fleet of Arkinsons.
Hussam shifts restlessly, seeming puzzled, and then annoyed at the lack of an answer. When he speaks again, it’s in the petulant tone of a man not accustomed to losing command of a conversation. “I think you do know him.”
“Maybe. Why don’t you tell me more about him?”
“I will tell you the kind of man he is. When I met him I saw that his left hand was crippled and scarred. I asked if he’d been shot through his hand. He said no. He said in Burma, his enemies tried to crucify him. They hammered in a spike through his left hand. Then he killed them. All of them.”
Lincoln goes cold. The Burmese mission was the worst tragedy ever endured by Rogue Lightning. Diego Delgado was just one of six men lost, but his horrific death is the one everyone remembers. Eight years out, it lives on in the popular imagination through a video that persists in the Cloud despite all efforts to eradicate it. Hussam’s story is a fictionalized retelling of what happened to Diego—same setup, better outcome—in other words, a lie. Lincoln understands now the reason for the Rogue Lightning emblem: some would-be tough guy co-opted and subverted the unit’s history in a play to enhance his own reputation. Twisted fuck.
“Nice story,” he says, determined to give nothing away, trusting his team to follow that lead. “And worthless without a name to back it up.”
“Names change when war remakes us. But he will kill you.”
It doesn’t take an effort to sound unimpressed. “He missed his first shot.”
Hussam shrugs. “You will never see the second shot coming.”
~~~
Nice story.
True gives silent approval to Lincoln’s acerbic assessment. Even now, eight years on, it’s a gut punch every time she hears another callous reference to Diego’s death. The consolation this time is that Hussam is out of the game. And this friend of his, this anonymous soldier of fortune, Jon Helm—she resolves she will not allow the idea of him to get under her skin.
Miles taps the back of her wrist—a gesture to draw her attention. He wants her to hand him the tablet. She turns it over, watching curiously as he opens a note-taking app. His fingers conjure a spell of words across the virtual keyboard. The screen is tipped at an angle that makes it hard for her to read, so when he’s done, he hands it back.
Her eyes scan the message: The American with the crippled hand is real. He led the raid when I was taken.
Her eyebrows rise above the rim of her reading glasses. She is intrigued, sensing the possibility of valuable insight into Hussam’s operation. She lowers the volume on the intercom, then with one hand types a single word: Describe?
She hands the tablet back to Miles. This time she leans over to watch the words appear: Caucasian. Late 30s. Light eyes. Lean face. Lean build. Six-two? Weathered look. Tells: crooked upper lip, scarred. And a tattoo, left forearm. Inscription
He sits back abruptly without finishing the sentence, lips parted, staring at nothing in a stunned expression that puts True on edge.
The verbal sparring between Lincoln and Hussam continues at low volume. True knows that Lincoln is trying to draw out hints and details on the status of other hostages in the region—but she isn’t really listening anymore. Miles has come to some unexpected and—going by his expression—unwelcome realization, and she wants to know what it is.
Reaching out, she gestures at the tablet, fixing him with a demanding eye, saying without words, Go on!
He looks at her with a measuring gaze. There is something of caution, of wariness in his eyes that ignites in her a nascent anxiety. He returns his attention to the tablet. Types. This time, a question: You said your name was True Brighton, right?
It’s a question so out of context it startles her. Her anxiety ramps up. That caution, still in his gaze. What the hell? And where is this going?
Fastest way to find out is to tell him what he wants to know.
She nods.
He looks down. Types a brief phrase.
She reads it—I’m sorry—and her chest tightens.
He keeps typing. She watches the note take shape: Inscription on his tattoo. “Diego Delgado. The Last Good Man.”
Prickling sweat flushes from her pores. An insurgency of emotion—anger, grief, regret—wells up, warring for the territory of her mind. She slides her glasses off, leans back, closes her eyes. She’s had years of practice countering similar assaults. It takes seconds of concentration, a few deep breaths, but she steadies herself. When she opens her eyes again, she’s back in operational mode and determined to learn more.
Taking the tablet from Miles, she types, Would you recognize him, if you saw him again?
Miles nods. No hesitation.
It’s the answer she expected. The memory of his kidnapping is surely burned into his mind. That’s the way of traumatic events. Eight years on, she still easily remembers the residential twilight, the clothes she was wearing, her breath white on the evening air as she jogged the last half-block home, and the first, vague tendril of dread when she realized it was Lincoln waiting with Alex on the porch, the two of them standing unnaturally still beneath an amber light, a few intrepid moths fluttering in the warm glow.
She shivers. She learned of the circumstances that led to Diego’s capture only because Lincoln violated regulations and told her—those words graven in her memory too—his voice gentle but matter of fact:
They were hunting Saomong CCA—the terrorists who’d brought down Flight 137. But they found far more enemy on the ground than we’d anticipated. Communication was compromised, and mechanical problems with the helicopter slowed the rescue effort. We believe four members of the team were killed in a running battle. Diego was wounded. Badly wounded, we think. He was captured along with Shaw Walker.
The Saomong Cooperative Cybernetic Army: True wasn’t even sure what their political goal had been, or if they’d even had one, beyond fucking things up. The “cybernetic” part of their name was no joke. They were brilliant but brutal, into electronic sabotage and remote-control terrorism, sowing chaos all through Southeast Asia. And they really were an army, small but effective, financed by the drug trade and supplied by outlaw regimes.
Lincoln believed that because Diego was wounded and likely to die anyway, he was picked by his captors to die first. C
rucified and burned on high-definition video. Lincoln warned her not to watch it. She watched it anyway. She wanted those scars.
Shaw Walker died several days later, incinerated when a Chinese cruise missile struck the village of Nungsan where he was being held.
What does it mean that an American mercenary with a crippled hand, who claims to have been in Burma, has her eldest son’s name tattooed on his arm? Is Diego a fetish now? A secular saint in some twisted martial religion?
The Last Good Man.
Her anger turns in a slowly expanding gyre.
Just minutes ago she had resolved to keep an emotional distance from the idea of this ambiguous persona labeled “Jon Helm”—but that is impossible now.
She flinches at another touch against her wrist. Miles is watching her with a worried gaze, as if he suspects this is all too much for her. Her eyes narrow. She has seen that expression too many times in her career, but she is not so fragile—and she wants him to know it. So she turns to the tablet and types: Thank you for telling me. We need to figure out who this Jon Helm is. Maybe there’s a bounty on him.
His lip curls. He takes the tablet and types: Let me know. I’d love to hunt that fucker down.
She gives him a sideways smile, unsure if that’s bravado or if he really means it, but she approves of the sentiment all the same. She types, We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes—scheduled refueling stop. Let’s pick up this conversation then.
He nods and leans back, closing red-rimmed eyes.
True watches him. Of course he’s exhausted. He’s been through hell, although he’s weathered it well—so far. Eventually his experiences will circle back on him. No way out of it. He’s facing rough times ahead.
She cocks her head, listening, but the intercom is quiet. Lincoln’s brief interrogation is done, at least for now. She’s grateful for it, grateful for the silence as she considers her next best move.
Refueling Operation
They set down at a small airfield on the edge of the desert. The pilot shuts down the engines—but that doesn’t mean it’s quiet. There is the low, rushing murmur of wind, the rumble of the fuel truck, the clatter of mechanics, the rustle of movement and the shuffle of boots on the floor, with Chris barking orders as he sets up a security perimeter. None of it wakes Miles, who has nodded off in the few minutes since his typed conversation with True.