by Bob Mayer
Carter sat down, hands on his knees, feeling like he’d been called into the principal’s office and he’d done something really bad — like burn down the school.
The voice startled him, not only with the accent, but the suddenness. “You do know, of course, that someone has to man the walls in the middle of the night? The walls between all those innocents out there who lay their heads down on their pillows every evening, troubled by thoughts of such things as mortgages, or their pet is sick, or their child is failing in school? The normal things people should worry about. There are even those who have grave, serious worries, such as just being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given weeks to live. But the things we, here, worry about, they are far graver than any of those worries.”
Carter didn’t know if she was really asking or if it was a test, so he followed Uncle Ray’s advice and said nothing.
Ms. Jones continued. “Someone has to worry about those things that go bump in the night, and let me assure you, young man, there are things that go bump in the night.”
Like Pads going after Dee, Carter thought. He knew there were bad things in the night.
As if reading his mind she continued. “Of course you sort of do, given your background. You did very well in the test with Colonel Orlando. You did very well in the Ranger Battalion and in your combat tours. You did very well in Ranger School. Surprisingly well, considering everyone thought you had been flunked after speaking back to that Ranger instructor. You were a washout. A recycle. Yet somehow when they printed out the roster for graduation, there was your name on it. Everyone was quite surprised. Including the graders who had flunked you.”
Carter sat straighter in the chair. He’d known someone would come after him about that sooner or later. “I earned my Ranger Tab,” he said defensively, throwing aside all the advice he’d grown up with, just like he’d done that hot day in the Florida swamp with the asshole RI. “I earned my combat patch in the Ranger Regiment. There’s many who wear the tab who never served with the Regiment.”
“Oh, yes,” Ms. Jones said. “You earned the tab. The computer said so. The interesting question is how the computer could have said so when the data the — I believe they are called RIs? — put into it flunked you.”
Silence fell over the room as Ms. Jones waited. Carter fidgeted, not sure which way to go, just knowing he was at a critical juncture not only in his career but in the rest of his life.
“Truth doesn’t set you free,” Ms. Jones said. “It just keeps you alive in the Nightstalkers.”
Carter blinked in surprise. “Task Force 160? I thought they were at Campbell and—”
“Not those Nightstalkers,” Ms. Jones said with a hint of frost. “When Task Force 160 was formed in 1981, we switched our name to Nightstalkers also, because it’s always best to have a cover behind some other classified unit. As you just indicated, it works for misdirection. We prefer to be a shadow inside of a shadow.”
“What were you called before that?” Carter asked.
“That is not important,” Ms. Jones said. “And, as a bonus, Nightstalkers was appropriate. As I told you, we’re the ones who man the walls against the things that go bump in the night. Do not make me repeat myself. How did you pass Ranger School when you should have flunked?”
“I cheated, ma’am.”
“Very good,” Ms. Jones said. “How?”
“I knew they were gonna flunk me for sassing back at that RI. But he made a comment about my sister, and he didn’t even know I had a sister. Got two actually. So I snuck out the night before graduation. Everyone else was wiped out. The last night, after the last patrol, after the entire course, everyone reaches their limits and just collapses.”
“But not you.”
“I knew they were gonna flunk me.” Carter flushed as he realized he’d repeated himself. “I couldn’t flunk. I needed to graduate.”
“For the tab?” This time it was a question.
Carter swallowed, but he was too far down the alley of truth and the walls were closing in. “No, ma’am. I needed the pay bonus.”
She didn’t ask what for, which surprised him. “How did you cheat?”
“I snuck out. Went to the command shed. Stole a smartphone they use for commo. Hacked into the system. Changed my grade.”
Ms. Jones waited.
“Then I got all the score sheets. Took them over to the admin shed. Scanned every one on me. Photoshopped all of them and changed mine to passing. Took them all out into the swamp. Roughed them up and stained them like the originals. That took a while, as I had to dry them off afterward to make them look real. Put them back.”
“They knew you cheated.”
Carter remembered the uproar, the RIs swearing the forms with their signatures weren’t right, that the computer was wrong. The sheets were wrong. “Yes, ma’am.”
“But they graduated you because the computer said so and they were afraid you would appeal and lawyers would get involved and it would be a mess. Easier to move you on.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What a sad state the army is in when an RI just can’t flunk a student with his word as a soldier and that a computer can overrule him. It’s a recipe for disaster. I predict you’ll see a similar disaster like that if you say yes to my question. Which, of course, is why you’re here.”
Then Ms. Jones gave the why we are here speech. When she was done, she simply asked: “Can you live with that?”
Carter hesitated, which he knew was bad, but he had to ask. “Ma’am, I reenlisted for Special Forces. And—”
“For the bonus, not because you particularly wanted to be a Green Beret, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ms. Jones remained silent and Carter was tempted to tell her why he needed the bonuses, but he knew Dee would have told him a man doesn’t beg. He only gets that which is his due.
Finally Ms. Jones broke the silence and there was, strangely enough, approval in her voice. “You send all your money to your family. To your older sister, Dee. Correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“To look after your younger siblings.”
That was not a question.
“Your father blew himself up recently cooking methamphetamine, correct?” Ms. Jones did not wait for an answer. “And the county is going to seize the family house and land for back taxes. You need not worry, young man. Your land and house will not be seized by the government. The exact amount of money that you should have gotten in your reenlistment bonus for Special Forces will be sent to your sister. Understand, though, that unlike our Support, who are contractors — a move I was completely against but was overruled on — we are not mercenaries in the Nightstalkers. We are soldiers. You have sworn an oath.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Your answer?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
There was the grinding sound of a shredder operating in the darkness. “That was your service record. Winthrop Carter no longer exists,” Ms. Jones said. “You may go and learn what name options the team has chosen for you.”
He got up and went to the door. It swung open before his hand touched the knob and Nada was waiting for him, pulling him into the Den, the door swinging shut behind. On one of the whiteboards five names were written, each in a different color:
Slick
Know
Cheetah
Fred
Kobayashi Maru
“Gentlemen,” Moms said. “Please read your choices and explain where needed,” she added with a quizzical glance at Eagle.
Roland spoke first. “I think we name him Slick. ’Cause what he did in Ranger School was, well, slick.” The big man flushed red.
Moms was next. “I think we call him Know. Because we all know the n in Ranger stands for Knowledge.” She said the old joke with a smile to take away any possible sting.
Mac was standing next to a plastic garbage can. “Shoot, we call him Cheetah, ’cause that’s what he is. Fast and smart.”
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Nada was frowning, but that was Nada’s usual look. “Fred. Every team needs a Fred.”
“My choice,” Eagle began, “is—”
“We ain’t using two damn words,” Nada interrupted. “You know the rule. One name. An easy word. And one that won’t confuse us, so I think Know is out, sorry, Moms.”
“It’s okay,” Moms said, meaning she’d never been in.
Ms. Jones’s voice came through the door, surprisingly vibrant. She always sounded perky during the name-choosing ceremony. “What did you write, Mister Eagle?”
“Kobayashi Maru,” Eagle said. “I know the rule about one word and—”
“I believe,” Ms. Jones said, surprisingly interrupting Eagle’s attempt at explaining, “I know where you are going with this. From the old American television series Star Trek. I watched it as a child in the former Soviet Union. Yes, we had a television. The test that was lose-lose, where choosing either way was wrong. And Captain Kirk cheated on it by reprogramming the computer. Very interesting.”
There was a silence as they waited on Ms. Jones to make her ruling now that she had all the entries.
“The thing I liked about what our new team member did,” Ms. Jones said, “was not reprogramming the computer. Any fool can reprogram a computer. Even the Photoshopping of the score sheets was to be expected. But he did all of them, not just his own. So they would all look alike and his wouldn’t stand out. And weathering them. That was the nice touch. Welcome to the team, Mister Kirk.”
“Hot damn!” Mac exclaimed, a can of Pearl beer in each hand. He tossed the first to Moms, the next to Nada. He pulled and pitched until everyone had a cold brew in hand. He popped the tab and everyone else did. “To Kirk.”
“To Kirk,” the team echoed.
“I like it,” Nada said after taking a deep draft of the beer. “Short. One syllable.”
Kirk was a bit overwhelmed as his teammates came by, slapping on his shoulder, calling him by his new name. When Mac came up, Kirk clanked cans with him.
“Thanks for the brew, Mac. I didn’t think they made this in the can anymore.”
“They don’t,” Mac said. “My daddy owned a piece of the company before it got broke up and he got a warehouse full outside of San Anton’.”
“You got a daddy?” Roland said, smiling.
Mac’s face went hard. “Yeah, I do, and he’s a right mean son-of-a-bitch.”
Roland flushed red and he tried to stutter out an apology, but couldn’t gather the right words; he was better with guns than words. Moms reached out and placed a comforting hand on Mac’s shoulder, which he shrugged off angrily. She glanced at Nada and he gave the slightest shake of his head.
Then Mac suddenly smiled and the room lit up. He ran around Roland’s massive form and the big man reacted slowly, because he was only fast in combat mode, and Mac jumped on his back. “Lookie there. Roland made a funny. Someone alert the news.” He poured his can of beer over Roland’s head while the big man halfheartedly slapped at him with his massive paws.
Nada shook his head. “Fucking F-Troop.”
“What’s F-Troop?” Roland asked, Mac still on his back.
Ms. Jones’s voice came through the door loud and clear. “Another classic television show of the sixties. A western comedy. Very amusing about a bunch of misfits cast together.” She made a strange sound, and Nada started for the door thinking she was choking…and then everyone realized it was Ms. Jones laughing.
After an awkward pause, everyone started chatting again. Mac slid off Roland’s back and passed more beers out.
“What would you have done with the beer if I’d said no?” Kirk asked Mac.
Mac laughed. “Drank it anyway.”
“No one says no,” Eagle said. “That’s why she’s Ms. Jones. She picked you.”
For a surprising third time Ms. Jones cut in. “And do you know why I picked Mister Eagle, Mister Mac?”
Mac didn’t hesitate. “He’s a fucking great pilot, Ms. Jones.”
“He is indeed,” Ms. Jones confirmed. “But great pilots are easy to find. He’s also a superb navigator. The combination of those two is still relatively common in the big scheme of things.”
Moms looked at Nada questionably. Nada just shrugged.
Ms. Jones continued. “Did you know that London cab drivers have a larger hippocampus on average than most other people so they can memorize the maze of streets upon which they ply their trade? Eagle has a hippocampus that puts theirs to shame. That is why he has arcane knowledge such as the Kobayashi Maru and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch as well as his technical skills. He also has quite a bit of useful knowledge in his brain.”
Now it was Eagle’s turn to flush, the scars on the left side of his face pulsing darker with blood.
Moms stood close to Nada and whispered so only he could hear. “Something’s wrong. Ms. Jones has never spoken this much.”
“I know,” Nada said. “We’re screwed.”
Ms. Jones finished: “Drink your Pearl, gentlemen and Ms. Moms.”
Kirk stared at the can of beer in his hand. “How’d she know we were drinking Pearl?”
* * *
In the darkness of her real office, lying in her hospital bed, Ms. Jones listened through the speaker as the team wrapped up the naming ceremony with more beers. She turned off her microphone and the holographic image generated by the machine in the chair in her office.
And she worried about things she had no control over and things that others couldn’t even conceive of.
Because that’s why she was Ms. Jones.
CHAPTER 5
The Courier made it through the Rockies and just past Salt Lake City at dark. He pulled into one of those huge truck stops to get gas, pee, and grab some coffee and something to chow down on. He gassed up, parked away from any other vehicles, got out, then set the three separate locks and alarm systems on the van before heading over to the bright lights of the station.
As he was peeing he noticed the condom machine on the wall, which naturally got him thinking about the tight ass on that student at UC. Daddy probably footing her bill through school, while people like him ended up in the ’Stan. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that his father had paid for his solo year, then yanked the plug when he ended up with four incompletes.
He was still thinking about the student’s ass, and not the realities of his own life’s shortcomings, as he made his way back to the van. He laboriously pushed the codes that disarmed and unlocked the thing, then got in. He perched his cup of coffee on the dashboard. There was no cup holder. The computer that ran through the GPS display took that slot. She’d had a nice rack, too, he remembered as he unwrapped the hoagie he’d bought. He was just about to take a sip of coffee when a rap at the window caused him to slosh some over the side and onto his pants.
“Damn!”
With his free hand — his off hand, as his gun hand was still holding the coffee — he scrambled awkwardly for the Glock. He was a contortionist for a moment, trying to put the coffee back down and trying to get the gun, which was still in his holster and not in his lap, where it was supposed to be as per Protocol when in the vehicle, when he saw that the rappee was a cute young girl with long, dirty-blonde hair hanging out of a knitted wool cap and a lollipop dangling out of the corner of her mouth. If he’d thought it through, he, like anyone else with common sense, could have come up with Nada’s Yada about pretty young hookers at truck stops: They don’t exist.
He didn’t think it through. Not that way, at least.
He ceased all activity and took a deep breath. He placed the coffee carefully on the dash and pulled his other hand out from under his jacket.
“What?” he mouthed.
She indicated for him to roll down the window.
Bulletproof, he thought. Doesn’t roll down. Ever.
He shook his head.
She pouted.
He tapped the window, made a rolling down gesture, and slashed his other hand across th
at, indicating, he hoped in truck stop language, that the window was indeed incapable of being opened.
She pointed past him and looked over his shoulder, while his hand — the correct one this time — was going for the gun. But he saw no threat behind him. He looked back at her quizzically.
She smiled and slowly pulled the sucker from her mouth. Then she pointed at it at him, and then past him at the passenger seat.
It didn’t even take a year of college to figure that out.
Then she signaled with two fingers and then a zero.
Twenty bucks?
The Courier thought of that smart-assed college girl.
He glanced down at the muted GPS display. Area 51 was 429 miles away and then he’d have to debrief, fill out a shitload of paperwork, and drive two hours to get to Vegas.
Too damn far and too long.
He nodded, and she walked around the front of the van.
As she did so, he pulled the Glock out and placed it on his left side, within ready reach. He took out his wallet, removed a twenty, and shoved the wallet farther down on the left side of the seat. He wasn’t stupid, after all. Hookers were known to rob people. Let her try and she’d be in for a surprise.
Thinking of pulling the Glock on her excited him as much as watching her climb in the door as he shoved it open for her. She tossed the sucker over her shoulder as she squirmed in.
She smiled, didn’t say a word. She took the twenty and leaned over into his lap.
College girl would have still been talking, he thought.
She unzipped him. Her hand was cold, but exciting enough, and he thought once more of the Glock, of putting it against her head as her lips closed on him. He leaned back, fingers closing around the grip of the Glock, eyes half-closed.
She pulled her mouth off him with the same slow movement she’d done with the lollipop.
He looked down. She smiled up at him with wide, innocent eyes as she shoved open the driver’s door.