by Mike Maden
“I’m just asking.”
“He had PTSD.”
“I know,” she said, nodding.
Pearce saw something in her eyes. “Are you saying I have PTSD?”
“Did your dad ever admit he had it?”
“That was different. He was old-school.”
“Maybe.”
“What’s your point, Margaret?”
“I think you should see a counselor. Maybe try and sort a few things out.”
“To stop drinking?”
“No. Like I said, the drinking might just be a symptom.”
“It was just a one-off. You know I swore off the booze.”
“I know.”
“I just slipped up.”
“It’s a slippery slope.”
Pearce set his cup down, sat up straighter. “And if I don’t stop drinking?”
She shrugged and smiled. “Then you don’t.”
“And if I get worse?”
She glanced over at the mountain of bottles in the garbage. “I guess I’ll have to buy a bigger garbage can.”
Pearce felt a sudden rush in his eyes, blurring them. I don’t deserve this woman.
He stood up. Paced the floor. “I tried, I swear. I really tried. We could’ve saved them if that bitch from the embassy hadn’t shown up—”
“Then you might be dead.”
“But Tariq is dead. And so are those women. And it’s my goddamn fault.”
“You didn’t kill him or those women. Those bastards did. You tried to help.”
“And how’d that turn out?” He ran his hand through his damp hair, thinking. “Hyssop didn’t do us any favors either.”
“It’s her job. She was trying to protect the interests of the American government as she saw it.”
“So you’re on her side?”
“No, I’m on yours. Always. But I’m trying to help you see hers. She had a job to do and she did it, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m grateful. If she hadn’t been there, the Turks might have decided to kill all of you.”
“You know I had to go.”
She nodded. “Of course I do. You explained it. And you’re a loyal guy. It’s one of the many things I adore about you. But the truth is, you were conducting an illegal operation on foreign soil. It was a risk you were willing to take because you loved Tariq, but a risk is just that—you take a big chance that something might work or it might not. This time, it didn’t. But not because you didn’t try.”
“What else was I supposed to do?” Pearce headed for the living room. She followed him.
“I don’t think there was anything else you could do. We talked about Tariq’s situation. President Lane wouldn’t have helped—his ‘no new boots on the ground’ policy would have prevented any action on the part of the U.S. government, even covert action.”
“That was your policy,” Pearce said. It sounded like an accusation.
“But I’m not the president anymore. He is. It’s his administration and it’s the law. When you step outside the law, you can’t expect the government to support you.”
“Do you think I was wrong?” Pearce stood by a large plate-glass window, staring down at the morning rush hour ten floors below. She came up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist.
“You did what you thought was right, and you did it for the right reasons. But you were on the outside looking in.”
“Meaning?”
“Sometimes it’s easier to get things done when you’re on the inside.”
“You mean, go back into government service? The CIA?” His face soured. He’d left the special operations group because he’d lost too many friends in the War on Terror for the sake of political expediency. It was the whole reason why he started Pearce Systems—to pick and choose battles with a certain moral clarity, and to deploy drone technology to protect his people, and all of it without the intervention of self-serving politicians peering over his shoulder. He’d come to love running his own company and valued his independence after more than a decade of taking orders.
“No. Not that. I just think you should reconsider Lane’s offer to head up Drone Command.” Before Myers and Pearce had been dispatched on a secret diplomatic mission to Asia earlier in the year to try to prevent a war between China and Japan, President Lane had offered Pearce the chance to start a new department within his administration. Pearce hadn’t turned him down but he still hadn’t accepted it, either.
Pearce turned around and faced her. “So you want me to be a suit? Another pencil-pushing bureaucrat?”
“You’d hardly be that. You’re the CEO of the world’s best drone security company. That makes you uniquely suited to help the United States shape its drone acquisition program in the coming decade. That means you’d be changing America’s war-fighting policy more than anything. And policy is where the game is at.”
“I’m used to being in charge now. Kind of hard to put my neck back in someone else’s harness.”
“As I recall, you’d be relatively independent, reporting directly to the president. And you’d be building an entire agency from scratch. You’d be setting all of the rules, not following them. It’s about as independent as you could possibly be in federal service.”
“Except for congressional oversight, media scrutiny—”
“It would be all black budget. Minimal congressional oversight, total media blackout.”
Pearce scratched his chin. Shrugged. “I’m sure Lane has found somebody else by now.”
“As a matter of fact, his chief of staff called me just last night and asked if you were still interested.”
“Why’d Jackie call you?”
“Because she tried calling you for the last three days and you weren’t picking up.” She took him by the hand and led him to the white leather couch. Pearce remembered another white leather couch slathered in blood on a cold winter day in Moscow. They sat together, still holding hands. Pearce was still processing.
“I remember the first time we met,” Myers said. “I think we both had trust issues.”
“Yeah,” he said. He’d come to loathe politics and, by extension, politicians. Only Early could’ve persuaded him to meet with then–President Myers who had a job for him to do—off the books. But the two of them took a chance on each other. And she’d proved to him beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were at least a few good men and women in elected government service who could be trusted to do the right thing. President Lane was another one.
“So I need you to trust me on this.” She kissed the back of his hand. “You’re one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever known, and everything I know about you tells me that your heart’s desire is to serve this country. You’ve sacrificed a lot, and you’ve lost a lot of dear friends for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense.”
“My dad, too.” Long since dead of a brain tumor probably induced by Agent Orange. Or more accurately, the lousy VA treatment he never actually got for it.
“But you said that Mossa helped you find your way back.”
He nodded. It took a long, strange trip through the Sahara with a Tuareg chieftain to remember that he was a warrior and that his ultimate purpose was to fight for his country—even though his country was too often governed by half-wits and hustlers on both sides of the aisle. Fortunately, President Lane was neither.
“And you’ve been trying to do things your own way for a long time. I get that, I really do. But maybe it’s time to stop and reassess. Or at least try something different.”
“You mean counseling?”
“For a start. I mean, give it a try. If it doesn’t work, walk away. Whatever you need to do.”
Pearce’s breathing slowed. He was trying to process everything Myers had said.
“Let’s just both sell our companies and run away,” he finally said. “See the world.”
<
br /> “Sounds like heaven. I think we’d both love it for at least a month or two. But then what?”
“I dunno. Just . . . live. Like normal people. Let the world run itself for a while.”
“And the next time a friend calls and asks for your help? Will you tell him you’re too busy cutting the lawn?”
“Maybe I’ll get rid of my phone.”
“Yeah, right.”
Pearce scratched his head. Point taken.
Myers curled up against him. “The next time someone calls, you’ll be on the inside. The world’s too complex and too dangerous to try and fix it on your own.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not saying to rush into anything, but at least give Jackie a call. See what Lane is actually offering. If you don’t like it, walk away with my blessings. And if that’s what happens, we’ll try it your way. Maybe we’ll even buy a sailboat.” She snuggled in closer. He stroked her hair.
“Okay. I’ll call. But you better start looking for that sailboat.”
6
The early-morning rush hour in the underground Metro was jammed as always, even at Dupont Circle.
He could only afford to own the historic brownstone in the popular D.C. suburb because he was a childless six-figured federal administrator and his wife an administrative assistant with twenty-seven years of tenure at the Department of Labor. They’d lived there for more than twenty years, long before it became the hipster-yuppie enclave it was today. Still, it was a great walking neighborhood, with some of his favorite restaurants, shops, and markets.
He loved the Metro because he was a people watcher. Liked to size up folks and guess what they were all about. He was pretty good at it, too. He even liked the peculiar smell of sparking steel and burnt rubber and the feel of the circulated air beneath the big half-dome ceilings. It reminded him of his youthful adventures running around on the metros in London, Paris, and West Berlin on summer holidays from college.
The commuters pressed in closer as the Red Line train slowed out of the tunnel, pushing a blast of warm air onto the platform that tousled his thinning hair. Secretaries and systems managers, court clerks and tourists. The D.C. Metro was the last great democratizing institution in the gentrifying metropolis. Of course, the Metro wasn’t exactly voluntary. Outrageous parking fees, horrific traffic, and subsidized rail passes all conspired against driving a car in the city. Besides, he was just three stops away from his office on 14th and K, and the office reimbursed him for the annual pass.
The federal administrator bumped shoulders with a tall, handsome man in a custom-tailored suit, sporting a hand-tooled leather briefcase and yammering into the Bluetooth jammed in his ear. The douchebag didn’t even bother to look up or say “Sorry,” which would have been the polite thing to do. A typical lobbyist. Probably a litigator, too.
On the other side of him was a twentysomething white kid in a ball cap and dark glasses with his nose pressed against a smartphone. He wore a cheap sport coat with a narrow tie and chinos. A tattered canvas messenger bag was slung over one shoulder. Probably an intern at one of the agencies, he decided. Reminded him of himself some thirty years earlier. Might have even owned the same brand of messenger bag.
An attractive young thing was just in front of him. Her straw-blond hair was gathered up in a tight bun. He was close enough to smell her perfume, floral and sweet. He studied her fine neck and admired the lacy bra straps flashing beneath a thin silk shirt filling out with her full figure. He began to imagine the possibilities with her in an afternoon romp at one of the downtown hotels. If she worked in his office he’d tell her—carefully—to mind the dress code, but down here he was happy to survey the goods if she was willing to show them. He raised up on his toes and tried to glance over her shoulder for a better look at her cleavage, but she moved forward.
The crowd pressed mindlessly closer as the train approached the platform, air brakes squealing. The door to the last car swooshed open and just a handful of people exited. The rest of the passengers in the crowded car, especially the ones in the seats, didn’t budge. Now it was his turn to surge in. The space inside was filling up fast. The twentysomething intern with the smartphone stopped short just in front of the door and turned to the administrator. “Go ahead.”
“You sure?” he said back.
“Yeah. I’m sure.”
The administrator leaped into the car, snagging the last possible square inch of space. He turned around to thank the kid before the doors shut, but he was already back at his smartphone, thumbs flying on the screen.
Just as the automated voice warned that the doors were about to shut, a black four-rotored quadcopter marked with DHS letters on its fuselage and a Department of Homeland Security logo came roaring down the stairwell from the street. A tubular package was slung underneath the drone, marked with bright green dollar signs on both sides.
The quadcopter dashed into the Metro car just above the administrator’s head as the doors slammed shut. The electric-powered blades whirred like angry hornets in the confined space. The railcar lurched as it leaped forward heading for Farragut North station.
People next to the drone reflexively ducked. A heavyset woman screamed as she fell to the ground, knocking people down with her like bowling pins.
The administrator was smashed against the closed doors by the others trying to get away from the spinning blades. His face pressed against the door glass. He caught a glimpse of the intern still working the smartphone, gyrating it in his hands as if trying to run a BB through a maze game.
A black teenager in a hoodie in the back of the compartment shouted, “Hell no!” and took a swing at the quadcopter with his backpack. He missed.
The cylinder exploded with a crack.
The compartment filled with a white gas as the train pulled away from the station. The drone lunged forward, banging into the low ceiling and scraping along it, clouding the rest of the car as it wobbled toward the far end. Screams, panicked shouts, and choking coughs filled the air as the drone finally crashed against the far wall and tumbled to the steel floor, blades spinning, gas still pouring out of the cylinder.
—
COMMUTERS ON THE FARRAGUT NORTH platform weren’t paying much attention when the Metro train screeched to a halt. But when the doors of the last car swished open, dozens of passengers surged out like crazed zombies, gasping for air, eyes bloodshot, screaming, coughing, vomiting. Some fell to the redbrick landing while others surged ahead, scattering the startled commuters on the platform, still waiting to board. Someone screamed, and the waiting crowd suddenly panicked at the terrifying sight. More screams and terrified shouts rose up as the mob broke and ran for the escalators.
The panic swiftly spread to the rest of commuters farther up the platform, uncertain of what was going on. They soon quailed at the sight of the screaming mob. In less than a minute fifteen hundred desperate people were kicking, screaming, and clawing at one another in the manic stampede up the long, crowded escalator toward the light.
As the first of them emerged out of the escalator and into the sunshine, clothes torn, gasping for breath, passersby on the street began to notice. The human flood disgorging out of the escalator exit spilled onto the sidewalk, one after another, including a few of the gassed passengers, clothes slathered in vomit, red faces wet with tears and snot, palming their bloodshot eyes. Some cried out in agonizing pain, others gasped for breath. Others retched on the sidewalk or collapsed to the ground. A few of the passersby moved in to help, but most stood around with their cell phones held high like kids at a rock concert. Even more panicked and ran away as whispers of “poison gas” filtered through the injured crowd. Police and ambulance sirens wailing in the distance grew louder as the subway crowd spilled further onto the sidewalk.
None of them noticed the bearded young black man in a ball cap and dark glasses with a canvas messenger bag slung over one shoulder
standing across the street, snapping photos with his smartphone, grinning ear to ear.
7
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“The president will see you now.”
Pearce was ushered into the Oval Office by the young Secret Service agent. She was as tall as Pearce and broad in the shoulders like a volleyball player, only armed. Cool and professional, she wore her suit more comfortably than he wore his, his new uniform of the day. He preferred his blue jeans and ranch coat and the cold, crisp Wyoming air to the stiff suits and stultified swamp gas of Washington.
“Troy, it’s great to see you again.” President David Lane stood from behind his desk and crossed over, meeting him in the center of the famous room with his wide boyish grin and a firm handshake. There was genuine affection in his commanding voice. The former air force pilot was the third-youngest president in history and looked it. They hadn’t laid eyes on each other since the East China Sea incident the previous May.
Pearce nodded. “You, too, sir.”
Lane gestured toward the two others standing next to him.
“I don’t know if you’ve met Vice President Chandler.” Pearce and Chandler shook. Pearce squeezed Chandler’s soft hand a little more firmly than usual and held it.
“Mr. Pearce and I met several years ago, back in Iraq,” Chandler said.
“Good memory,” Pearce said. “You were kind of a big deal. I was just a grunt.”
“I was just a lowly congressman. But you made quite an impression. On all of us,” Chandler said. He was four inches shorter than Pearce and narrow shouldered, with neatly groomed silvery hair and a tailored Brooks Brothers suit that fit him like a glove. He wore his signature blue silk tie that perfectly matched the color of his eyes. His voice was soft and slightly southern. A casual observer could have easily mistaken him for a genial bank manager or a solicitous funeral director.
But Pearce knew better. Besides his own brief but personal encounter with the man years before, Myers had filled him in on the particulars of his ambitious political career. Chandler was an Atlanta lawyer in private practice before he was elected to Congress in 1998, serving four terms. He was a skilled campaigner, receiving at least 60 percent of the vote each time. Chandler ran for the U.S. Senate after the eight-term senior incumbent announced his retirement. Chandler was reelected to a second term in 2012. Always the opportunist, he resigned from his Senate seat only after he and Lane won the 2016 election.