The Last Good Man

by Linda Nagata

  No. He rejects the idea with a sharp shake of his head. This is not Tadmur. It’s not the TEZ. Don’t get paranoid. The worst threat his girls face is mediot harassment.

  “Dad,” Anna protests, “you’re hurting my shoulder!”

  He lets her go. Both girls stare at him, eyes wary, uncertain. “What’s the matter, Dad?” Anna asks.

  “Nothing,” he says gruffly. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  It’s the truth, and still, he’s beset with anxiety. A sense of vulnerability. It’s the way he used to feel in the weeks and months after a mission. It’s this talk of Shaw Walker, he decides. It’s the reality of Variant Forces. An outfit capable of fielding three Arkinsons on a few minutes’ notice might have a long reach.

  He parked his truck between two other vehicles. They’re both still there, and nothing has approached since. If anything had—human, animal, mech—he would know about it. One of the tiny cameras mounted around the truck’s frame and across its undercarriage would have captured the motion and sent him an alert.

  He pulls out his phone and reviews his list of alerts, just to make sure he didn’t miss anything. “We’re okay for now,” he concedes. “I want you two to move fast. In through the driver’s door. Let’s go.”

  They scamper for the truck, Lincoln right behind them. The truck unlocks for them and the girls climb in. He stashes the bags behind the seat. “Make sure you fasten your seat belts.”

  “We know, Dad,” Anna says irritably. “We’re not babies. Why are you acting so weird?”

  “Always vigilant,” he reminds her.

  She rolls her eyes and, remembering that she’s angry with him, flounces back in the seat, crosses her arms, and glares at the dash. “I wish we didn’t have to leave early. We were having fun.”

  “Sorry,” he says as they pull out.

  Camilla gets her cell phone from the dash compartment and retreats into some comforting game world—Lincoln has no idea what game it is. Anna watches her for a few seconds, then gets her phone out too. “Let’s link,” she tells her sister. They tap their phones together.

  Lincoln drives, thinking about Shaw Walker, remembering him as a man who believes in revenge. Relentless, according to Hussam. His grip tightens on the steering wheel.

  Hussam’s brother, Rihab, swore to seek revenge, but Lincoln is skeptical, suspecting Rihab will first have to fight to secure his brother’s operation. He’s far more concerned about Shaw… if it is Shaw. Requisite Operations’ name is already out in the media.

  Are we at war? Lincoln wonders. And if they are, where is the war zone?

  A memory. A mission in the Hindu Kush. Lincoln has called in targeting coordinates. A Reaper responds. It flies below them, entering the valley through a low pass. Shaw, speaking in an undertone scarcely audible over the wind: “If I was the enemy, I’d be gunning for that pilot.”

  Lincoln snorted at the absurdity. “Those pilots are seven thousand miles away.”

  “Yeah. I’d hit ’em where they live.”

  Lincoln thinks about this now, watching the red taillights ahead of him. Renata flew the Hai-Lins from out of ReqOps headquarters. Does that make her a target? Is the ReqOps campus a potential war zone?

  He glances at the girls. They’re preoccupied, plugged into their game. When he left the airfield, he planned to stop at the office, drop off the electronics, and then take the kids to their mom’s house. Now he reconsiders, deciding it’s better to take the kids straight home.

  He’s not worried. Not really. But he drives past the ReqOps exit anyway.

  Farther on, traffic gets heavy. Slows to a crawl. Lincoln is frustrated, but the girls don’t notice. They’re happy in their electronic world. That’s how kids are. Lincoln was the same. He regrets it now, thinking of his own dad. He wishes he’d known him better.

  His parents were both army: his mom a rangy blonde, the descendant of Southern slaveholders, and his dad, not quite as tall but an outstanding athlete, the youngest son of Korean immigrants. Lincoln remembers him as quiet, determined. Remembers too the longing for his return when he was deployed, gone for months at a time—and then gone forever. A stupid accident during a training exercise, when the helicopter carrying his squad clipped a rotor and went down, leaving a trail of burning wreckage. It’s a parallel Lincoln tries not to dwell on.

  His mom left the service after that, but two years later she married back into the army—one of his dad’s friends, a talkative good ol’ boy, full of philosophy. The transition was rough, but Lincoln came around. In retrospect, he should have learned more from his stepdad about what it takes to stay married.

  After he pulls into Claire’s driveway, he walks the kids to the door. She’s surprised to see them back so early.

  “Something wrong?” she asks as they slip past her, disappearing into the house.

  She’s tall, full-figured, only a little heavy. Beautiful dark eyes. Teaches advanced math at a small prep school.

  He speaks softly, his scarred voice a low burr. “We might be getting fallout from this latest mission.”

  “Come inside,” she urges. “Tell me about it.”

  He’s tempted. After six years apart, they’ve lately embarked on a slow and cautious rapprochement. But he’s got the recovered electronics in the truck and he needs to get them safely locked up. “I can’t. I’ve got to run by the office.”

  “Are you going to make it to the soccer game this weekend?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She presses her lips together and nods.

  “I want to,” he tells her.

  “I know.”

  Lincoln would like to make it work with Claire and he intends to try. But in the long term? He doesn’t give it much chance of succeeding.

  War Crime

  A war crime—and Lincoln knew.

  True ponders this unsettling revelation while Alex splashes Irish whiskey over ice.

  Alex tried for years to steer Diego away from military service, but Diego refused to be persuaded. He grew up wanting to be a warrior, a boots-on-the-ground protector, a defender of the tribe—and he wasn’t willing to wait. “Give college a try,” Alex urged him. “You can always enlist next year.”

  He wouldn’t consider it. “Dad, if I don’t go now, I might not get a chance. The army’s cutting back. Robotics are going to take over combat jobs and pretty soon frontline soldiers will be obsolete.”

  He’d been wrong about the timeline but not about the process.

  Alex hands her a glass. She takes a cautious sip, focusing on the sweet burn and her own culpability. Where would they be now if she’d made different choices? If she’d left the army early, put the military behind them. Kept Diego home those summers he’d spent with her old man?

  Pointless questions.

  She chose the life she wanted and Diego did the same. He worked hard and he took his chances—and she was proud of him. She’s still proud of him. She will always be proud of him.

  Alex is proud of him too. He looks across the great room at the cabinet with the eternally lighted shelf holding Diego’s formal army portrait. A triangular flag case, set at an angle beside it, holds the neatly folded American flag that draped his coffin. On the other side of his portrait, a black-framed case displays his medals along with an embroidered patch. The patch bears the Rogue Lightning emblem. It’s too far away to see the details, but True sees them in her mind’s eye: a half-circle, with two star-filled fields flanking a bright orange sun, lightning bolts dividing them, the unit’s name and the motto underneath: Anywhere, Anytime.

  Alex says, “I think he’d be okay with this if he was here now.”

  It’s hard for True to speak against the pressure in her chest. She breathes in the vapors of the alcohol, letting it distract her. Alex is making this hard for her. He’s doing it on purpose.

  “Just tell me,” she whispers.

  Alex furrows his brow and complies. “They were in Kunar Province. The assignment was to kill or cap
ture a Saudi radical rumored to be in the area. They were working with a contingent of highly trained Afghan National Army soldiers, supposed to be the best of the best. Except one of them tried to lead the team into an ambush. It didn’t work. The team detected the presence of enemy soldiers in time to stage a counterattack. But the ANA soldier turned his weapon on our men. Lincoln was hit bad. Two of the Afghanis were killed. This, from a man they believed to be a friend.

  “The enemy retreated but they had their wounded too, so they didn’t go far. They took refuge in a house. It wasn’t clear if the family was present as hostages or if they were collaborating. The surviving ANA soldiers insisted they were relatives of the traitor. But everyone knew there were children in the home.”

  Alex shrugs. “They were under a lot of pressure. Two dead, enemy soldiers in the area, evacuation delayed, and Lincoln bleeding out, slow but sure. Shaw let his temper off leash, turned into an avenging angel. On the terrain map, he marked the house as a known enemy position, no civilians present. Seconds later a drone strike took it out.”

  He scowls at his glass, takes a long sip, waits for the burn to pass. “Diego didn’t understand at first what had happened, but Lincoln did. Despite his wounds, his wooziness, he was furious. Swore he’d report what Shaw had done. But he never did. None of them did. Tribal loyalty won out. Five months later, Shaw and Diego were in Burma.”

  Lincoln didn’t go on the Burma mission; he was still recovering from his wounds.

  Alex fixes her with a measuring gaze. “I’m certain Shaw did his damnedest to save Diego’s life. But don’t kid yourself. He was dangerous and unpredictable even then. If he really is this Jon Helm, he’s not someone you want to get close to.”

  “Maybe not.” She doesn’t like the resentment that edges her voice. It’s real though. She doesn’t try to hide it. “But here we are, years later. Shaw’s name comes up, and suddenly I’m finding out critical things I never knew about my son.”

  “Hey,” he says. “I didn’t like sitting on this. I would have told you before, but I promised him.”

  Her hand tightens around the cold glass. “What else don’t I know? Shaw had that tattoo. ‘The Last Good Man.’ What was that about? Don’t you want to find out?”

  “No. No, I don’t. And you need to let it go. We have two living children. Just because they aren’t kids anymore, that doesn’t mean they don’t need you. Someday they’re going to have children of their own. You need to be around for that. You owe us.”

  She sips the whiskey, holds it in her mouth as she focuses on keeping her temper in check. She hates it when Alex plays the guilt card. He knows she hates it. He does it anyway because sometimes it works.

  Not this time. “I’m going to be blunt, love. There’s a creed. No man left behind. In a day, maybe a week—it won’t be long—Lincoln will remember that. And then we’re going after Shaw. He was Rogue Lightning. Still is. He’s still flying the colors. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Alex scowls, but his tone is surprisingly conciliatory as he says, “Lincoln might have things to make up for, but that doesn’t mean you need to be part of it.”

  “I’m already part of it,” she warns him. “So are you. We’ve been part of it since the day Diego died. Like you said, what happened is a black hole, and we can’t ever escape it.”

  Cold Morning

  True and Alex wake to an intrusion alarm. It’s 0432. Both grab tablets from their respective sides of the bed. True holds hers at a distance so the image on the screen is sharp. The screen shows a video feed with the source labeled Brighton-Delgado-3. One of the squirrel mimetics. The device is moving in the forest canopy, skittering through low branches, gliding when it needs to, as it works to keep up with an intruder on the ground whose slender shape is intermittently visible past evergreen deadwood and half-gone autumn leaves.

  True recognizes it. So does Alex. “It’s the mech from last night,” he says, anger edging his voice. “Heading straight for the house. Fucking mediots. What, they don’t think we have defenses?”

  True watches the feed, on edge, her heart racing after being startled awake. She is struck by the speed and grace of the device as it dashes through the rough terrain. It disappears into darkness. “Damn, it’s fast,” she says, with growing trepidation. “BD3 can’t keep up.”

  “Did we just lose track of it?” Alex growls.

  “’Fraid so, love.” She tries to be reassuring. “The gargoyles will pick it up when it gets close to the house—but I don’t like this.” She shoves the blankets off. Stiff muscles protest the movement. Chill air shocks her bare skin. She reaches for a thermal shirt and jeans. “That thing is no mediot’s toy. It’s too sophisticated.”

  He’s up too, pulling on trousers he left draped over a chair, tablet abandoned on the nightstand. “Who, then?” he asks. “Are you thinking El-Hashem’s people—”

  “No,” she says firmly, dressing as quickly as she can. “There is no way they could have tracked us down already, gotten a weapon in the field.”

  “A weapon?”

  She pulls her shirt down over her belly and considers. “I don’t think it’s a weapon. I’m sure it’s just a spy device. Fairly sure—but I don’t want it close to the house.”

  “Neither do I,” he growls. He doesn’t bother putting on a shirt, disappearing out the bedroom door.

  She grabs her tablet and follows him downstairs, leaning hard on the banister and hobbling to ease her painfully tight calves. He ducks into the office, where they keep the gun safe. A series of sharp beeps as he punches the combination on the electronic lock.

  She heads for the mudroom. Just as she reaches it, the tablet trills a second alarm. A glance confirms that the gargoyles have detected the intruder.

  Her heart rate ramps up. It’s not a weapon, she thinks, reminding herself there was no visible gun, no room to hide one.

  If it is a weapon, it’s a kamikaze. Fuck. Not a reassuring thought.

  The tablet’s screen shifts to display a video feed streamed from a gargoyle on the roof. She watches it as she steps into a pair of rubber boots. The mech is thin, lithe, and nicely camouflaged, so even with adaptive night vision, it’s hard to see as it moves slowly to the edge of the undergrowth separating the forest from their wide front lawn.

  She’s relieved to see it stop there. Its stick-thin legs bend as it sinks to the ground. Its torso can’t be more than eighteen inches long, shaped like a flattened loaf. Processors don’t take up much space, so most of that volume probably contains battery and sensors—or maybe explosives?

  The neck retracts, leaving the stereoscopic camera only an inch and a half above the grass. It’s like the mech is settling in, taking up an observation post from which it can keep the house under surveillance. Given its matte-brown camouflage, it would be damn hard to see, even at noon on a sunny day.

  The mudroom is cold. It has a musty smell. One of its doors opens into the garage, the other onto a concrete pad outside the house. The mech will be able to see that door open.

  Alex joins her. He still hasn’t got a shirt on, but he’s got a shotgun in hand.

  True shows him the tablet. “It’s at the edge of the lawn.”

  “Got it.” Not bothering with boots or a jacket, he shoves the door open, brings the shotgun to his shoulder, and fires. True watches onscreen as a spray of leaves and dirt erupts from the spot where the mech was just a moment before.

  “No good,” True says, shivering in the frosty current of air flowing in through the open door. “It must have been trained to react to the sight of a weapon. It was gone as soon as it saw you.”

  “It’ll be back,” he says grimly, coming inside and slamming the door behind him. “Probably before we get the coffee brewed.”

  “The gargoyles will let us know.”

  But the gargoyles remain quiet. If the deer mech is out there, it’s smart enough to stay beyond the range of their sensors.

  ~~~

  The sky is beginning to lig
hten as Tamara speeds along the rural road to ReqOps, passing small farms and stands of young forest. She’s heading into work early, but she’s not the first to arrive. Four compact cars are there ahead of her, parked on the road’s shoulder just outside the security gate. They’ve been there long enough to collect a sprinkling of yellow maple leaves. Worried that something is wrong, she approaches slowly.

  Five people, wearing jackets against the cold, block the driveway. They turn to look at her. It’s a geeky gathering. Two wear AR visors. The other three are recording video of her with their phones. Independent journalists, she decides.

  She edges her car into the driveway. They move back, but one man taps on her window glass, shouts his request for a short interview. Tamara rolls forward far enough to trigger the gate’s automatic inspection routine. Then she lowers the window, gives her best smile, and says, “I’m not authorized to speak for the company.”

  The journalist tries to press his case but the gate opens. Tamara makes her escape.

  She gets her second surprise of the day when she sees Lincoln’s truck already in the parking lot. As soon as she steps inside, she asks, “Friday, where’s the boss?”

  The upbeat, androgynous voice answers, “Lincoln is sleeping in his office.”

  “Has he been there all night?” she asks as she crosses the uninhabited lobby.

  “He’s been there since twenty-two hundred.”

  The security door behind the reception desk opens for her. “When he wakes up, tell him to take a shower before he comes to drink my coffee.”

  “I will do that, Tamara.”

  In the long south wing to the left of the lobby are classrooms, a bunkroom, and general storage. Tamara turns right, passes the large conference room, and approaches a second security door that also opens for her. She passes through it into a checkpoint. Her shoulder bag goes through an x-ray scanner. She walks through a body scanner. Results appear on wall screens but she doesn’t bother to look. “Find anything suspicious, Friday?”

  “No, Tamara. You are clean.”

  The system isn’t calibrated to look for weapons, which pass in and out of the secure wing all the time. It’s looking for surveillance devices. Tamara picks up her shoulder bag and heads down the hall, past the break room and suites of offices, doors closed and locked. Next is the tactical operations center for the ReqOps campus and across the hall from it, the mission command post. At the end of the north wing are utility rooms and the onsite network operations center, but Tamara exits the building through a side door before she reaches them, emerging into a section of the grounds kept secure by high fences and intense surveillance.