by Glynn James
“Huh,” Abrams said. “And so what happens if we meet them? Who wins in a fight?”
Homer shrugged. “That depends on everything. I guess what I would say is that we’d better win the gunfight – out at range. Because I would not want to be in a grapple with these guys. Eye-gouging would be about as good as it got.”
Abrams exhaled and considered this.
Since he’d gotten started, Homer kept going. “We do have one thing in common, though.”
“What’s that?”
“The belief that a man’s potential is without limit.”
Abrams squinted. “Potential for what?”
Homer paused. “For strength, for skill… for resolve, being unstoppable.”
Abrams cocked his head. “Also for good and evil?”
Homer smiled sadly. “That, too, probably. But mainly that a man must first overcome himself, conquer his own fears – that the path upward is one of continual battle with himself. And that a warrior must commit his every minute, his every scrap of attention and focus, his every ounce of strength, to achieving his goals.”
Abrams nodded. “Sounds like the Stoics.”
Homer nodded. “It is – the belief that the path to victory is one of defeating one’s own mental and physical weaknesses. And that training only really makes sense, only fulfils its purpose, if it brings a man to the very edge of his physical and mental limits.”
Homer paused and looked down, before concluding. “And that the victor is usually the one for whom victory is more important than life.”
He looked up again and smiled, as if to shrug all that off. “I’ve got to go, Commander.”
He nodded and left Abrams standing in the stairwell.
To Either Side of You
JFK - 02 Deck
Ali glided silently and nearly invisibly through the lower decks, onto a ladder, up one level, through some more deserted companionway – and finally onto the surviving Sparrow/CIWS deck, out on the port side of the night-swaddled carrier.
If I’m looking to stay away from Homer, she thought ruefully, taking a seat on the cold metal plate of a protruding duct, I’m going about it in a strange way… This was his favorite hiding spot – and he was the one who had originally showed it to her.
Oh, well, she thought. Custody battles were always ugly.
She exhaled into the cool night air, and felt a shudder go through her as she remembered all that had been contained in the look that passed between the two of them just now. She’d been through a lot of extreme experiences in her life – hell, her life had been mostly those – but that one ranked up there.
She leaned back, let her shoulders sag, and tried to relax. Whatever else, she knew, without even having to think about it, that Homer would respect her choice. If she said it was over, it was over. That went without saying. His innate goodness and honor were beyond question.
No, he would respect her choice. The question was: did she? And could she live with it?
The problem now was that she found herself distrusting her own motives. That time when she’d seen Handon and Sarah together, the question that had flashed into her mind was: sure, Handon would sacrifice himself in an instant, if the mission required it.
But would he be willing to sacrifice her?
And what that question had really been was: would she or Homer be willing, if it came down to that? Could either of them choose to watch the other die – for the mission?
By indulging their romantic and sexual relationship, might the team… their mission… humanity itself… ultimately pay an unthinkable price?
If that was any kind of possibility, then staying together was madness. She’d had to break it off.
Anyway, that’s what she had told herself – convinced herself of – that her choice was about heading off that danger. But that was also exactly what she doubted now. Had she really been safeguarding operational efficiency, by keeping personal emotions under wraps?
Or was she just terrified of losing someone… another person whose loss would be too heavy to bear?
Because it wouldn’t be the first time.
And maybe it would be one time too many.
Now, staring off into the endless rolling blackness of the night-time sea and sky, her vision went slowly out of focus, and she looked back to her first hours ever at the top of the spec-ops pyramid.
Her very first days in the Unit.
* * *
Sergeant Aaliyah Khamsi felt eyes sliding off her as she moved down the hallway, in a manner that would not be described as gliding. It was actually probably more like slinking. She was trying to be invisible, despite having a gigantic rucksack on her back, and a big bag clutched in each hand, all of it pulling her shoulders down.
She was feeling like some kind of half-assed beauty contestant, surrounded on all sides by judges.
Basically, she was nothing like invisible – simply because of who she was. And what she represented.
The operators she passed in these halls were way too professional, not to mention subtle, to do anything like leer at her. Or even, really, to stare. What they all did was give her this same silent look, which then dropped off her with a bizarre kind of timing – their gazes somehow both lingered too long, and moved away too quickly.
She felt like a spectacle. She felt naked.
Sure, there were plenty of other women in this building, and spread across the whole complex – “the Ranch” as they called it. Almost all of these women were in support roles. A tiny handful had worked operationally over the years.
But Ali was making history – as the first female soldier to pass the unmodified Delta Selection course, and to be given a spot in the Unit as a fully fledged operator. She still faced six months of OTC – the Operator Training Course – which she was by no means guaranteed to complete. But, having gotten this far, she was already unique.
And everyone she passed obviously knew exactly who she was. Word had gotten around – fast.
Now she stole a quick glance down at her own shoulder insignia. The stark unfamiliarity of those three stripes was perhaps as weird as anything else. She’d originally been commissioned as a second lieutenant, coming out of ROTC at Cal Berkeley – and had subsequently risen to the rank of captain in the 1st Air Cav. But she’d been required to resign her commission, in exchange for just a shot at attending Delta Selection.
They had made her a buck sergeant.
From where Ali sat, it seemed not to have occurred to anyone that she might pass Selection. But the idea must to have been entertained by someone, as they did at least take precautions against her coming in as an officer.
She looked up again from her unfamiliar sleeve to the totally bizarre space that now surrounded her.
The Ranch, she thought, not believing it even as she was walking through it. It had been a hell of a road to get here. And she knew full well that the task was only just beginning. In every important sense, she was at square zero. Even after OTC, she’d be at square zero.
She had absolutely everything to prove.
And she also suddenly realized… she was lost.
Great, she thought. Fantastic start – I can’t even do overland navigation inside the barracks…
“You look lost.”
Ali didn’t startle, but she did look up wide-eyed at the soft but steady voice that came from a cross hallway. The man behind the voice looked kind and unassuming. He was compact and trim, wearing khaki cargo pants and a short-sleeve button-down shirt, wire-rimmed glasses, and a laptop tucked under his arm. He was probably mid-thirties, but had a boyish air. He was smiling at her.
Ali mustered a half-smile in response. “Looking for the BOQ,” she said. “C-105.”
“No problem,” the man said. “Follow me.” And with that he walked by, tossed his head, and strode off down the corridor. Having little choice, Ali followed. Four minutes and four turns later, he stopped outside a door, turned to face her, and said, “This is you.”
Ali
put one of her bags down, fumbled for her keycard, and nodded her thanks. “Thanks,” she added. “For going out of your way.”
“Not at all,” he said.
She smiled again. Polite man.
“No, really,” he repeated, “Not at all. That’s me.” And he tossed his head at the room directly across the hall. “Give you a hand with those?” When she nodded, he picked up the bag she had put on the deck, and followed her inside.
The small single billet was quiet, dim, and very clean. There was a twin bed, a desk and a chair, a wardrobe – and not much else. Ali unburdened herself of her stuff, dropping most of her worldly possessions on the bed. The man put her last bag on the chair, then leaned back against the desk.
“Tim,” he said, putting his hand out.
“Ali,” she said, taking it.
“I know. They put you across from me because you’re on my team.”
“And I’m your mentoring burden now.”
“My privilege,” he said. He put his hands behind him on the desk and leaned back. “I remember my first day here,” he said, his voice still kindly.
Ali looked up and searched his face. “You probably don’t remember being the first female operator here.”
He arched his eyebrows. “Fair point. Feeling like a fish out of water?”
“A little bit.”
“Well… maybe you don’t look much like a traditional Unit operator. But then neither do I.”
“Fair point.”
Tim smiled. “The world changes. We adapt to it. That’s the whole way we stay ahead, survive – and prevail.”
Ali exhaled a little of the tension she’d been carrying all day. “Okay,” she said, taking a look at her boots.
Looking back up again, she was filled with the undeniable sense that she could talk to this guy. There was something completely approachable about him. So she said, “I get the impression people here are reserving judgment about me.”
“Of course they are. They reserve judgment about everyone. You’re going to have a lot to prove, and you’ll have to keep proving it – every day.”
Ali nodded. She’d been doing exactly that for years – but didn’t feel the need to advertise the fact.
Tim looked at her searchingly, then seemed to draw a conclusion. He said, “But you won’t be afraid to get some arrows in your back, either. You’re tough enough to take it.”
She squinted at him through the dimness. “How do you know? We met five minutes ago.”
Tim shrugged. “There’s absolutely no way you would be here if you weren’t tough enough. Nobody gets into the Unit who isn’t. And I’m pretty sure you’ve had to do twice as much to get here as everyone else.”
Ali smiled her gratitude. They both knew that getting into Delta might actually be the single hardest physical and mental challenge in the world. And she’d just made it substantially harder, because of her gender – and then still pulled it off. There was a case to be made that nothing could stop her now.
But she must have still looked worried, because Tim said, “Just do your job, keep learning every day, perform at your peak and to the outside edge of your limits, never complain, and always be first to support your teammates. Do that and you’ll be fine. But you already know all that.” He straightened up. “I’ll let you get unpacked. I’ll be just across the hall.”
“Thanks. Tim.”
He nodded and walked out, pulling the door closed behind him.
Ali exhaled again, then reached across to pull the chain on the little desk lamp. Intellectually, she believed everything he had just told her. But some part of her still knew that if she screwed this up, she wouldn’t just be letting herself down, nor even just her new teammates. She would also be letting down everyone who had helped her to get this far.
She snorted quietly. And I’d also be torpedoing everyone with two X chromosomes who might want to follow in my path… probably for a very long time.
Over the next few years, she would come to find that, on her first day, Tim had given her every tool she would need to succeed there.
Or anywhere.
* * *
Ali’s gaze came back into focus when she thought she saw something out on the ocean. Something seemed to sparkle just below the surface, way off below her, and out to the north-east. But it was just wide Atlantic in that direction, and couldn’t really be anything but starlight. Her remarkable vision was over-reporting.
She sighed and thought one last time of the past.
When Tim got killed, that had been about the worst pain or loss she’d ever known. Right up until the fall – which was worse, but was also a loss so overwhelming that it remained kind of abstract. Nothing could be more concrete than the death of her own brother, on her own team. But what he had told her on that first day had seen her through many dark days.
And those words, his memory, had sustained her for the same reason that he had sacrificed his own life, spent it so gloriously to save others.
Not because of courage.
But because of love.
What Ali would come to understand, and only over long years of training and dozens of deployments, and only after walking through the fire many times… was that the willingness to die for another person was a special, maybe even unique, form of love – one that even religions failed to inspire. The experience of it changes a person profoundly, and permanently.
What researchers and Army psychologists had slowly come to understand, but what any grunt in a foxhole with his squad works out in five minutes, is that courage in war simply is love – nothing more, and definitely nothing less. It was love that made warriors sacrifice for each other, even give their lives for each other, in a split-second, without hesitation.
Courage was simply love made visible. In combat, neither could exist without the other. They were just different ways of saying the same thing.
An old adage had it that warriors didn’t fight because of hatred for what was in front of them – but because of love for what was behind them. Ali, however, and everyone she had ever served with, would say that was bullshit.
They fought for love of those to either side of them.
But now, somehow, Ali had decided that her love for Homer stood in the way of her job. And so that love had to be sacrificed to her duty. Or else, probably worse, what she was actually terrified of was that this love might lead to more of the kind of pain she had felt when Tim died. Either way, the decision left her very troubled.
Oh, well, she thought. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
She’d never been one to do a whole lot of second-guessing of herself. And now was probably a crappy time to start. She rose and poured herself back inside the Kennedy.
Her brothers would be looking for her.
Redemption
48°59'32" 87°40'16"
The man strained all the muscles in the right side of his body, trying to stretch far enough to reach the handgun where it lay, just beyond his reach on the cold white tile floor. The tips of his fingers brushed the blued metal, but could not gain any purchase. In fact, he was in danger of pushing the weapon even farther away. And if he couldn’t recover it in the next few seconds, he was pretty sure… that would be it for him.
He had lost his focus for only a few seconds. But that’s all it took. He’d always known, intellectually, that if he lost his shit out here, if he let things fall apart, absolutely no one would be coming to save him. But now that abstract nightmare was becoming a stomach-dropping reality. He was feeling the cold daylight crash of it happening – for real.
It’s just me here, he thought.
And the sense of crushing loneliness that this brought, even in his moment of maximum peril, took his breath away and caused a tear to roll from the corner of his eye. He swallowed hard as he realized that no one, anywhere, would even know to mourn for him.
He had never expected to end up like this.
But here he was, alone in his lab, alone on his desolate moun
tain – and now all alone with his fate. And maybe it was fate, or karma, or perhaps even God’s judgment. Maybe this terrible death he now faced was the price he would have to pay. A suitable, if inadequate one, for his infinite sins.
This man’s name was Oleg Aliyev.
And Oleg Aliyev was all alone now with his guilt, with his terrible memories, and with his crushing sense of abandonment and isolation.
But, more immediately, he was also alone with a wheezing, grasping, half-frozen, undead son of a bitch, who wanted very much to eat him alive – and to revisit upon him what he had visited upon the world. Which would be as fitting as it was unwelcome.
Well, Aliyev thought, exhaling. It’s him or me.
And he steeled himself for one last lunge.
* * *
An hour earlier, Oleg Aliyev had been on top of the world – almost literally. His facility, his Dacha, was half cabin, half laboratory – and all impregnable, self-sufficient mountain fortress. It was located way up on the inaccessible south-east slopes of Belukha Mountain, the highest peak in the Altai Mountains of East-Central Asia, and not all that far from the summit.
But very far indeed from the rest of the world.
Its location was by careful, intentional design.
The Dacha was actually just within trekking distance of what had been known as the Eurasian Pole of Inaccessibility. There was one of these for each continent, representing the absolute most remote and inaccessible points, the ones most difficult and dangerous to reach, on the entire planet.
In the case of Eurasia, and of Aliyev’s Dacha, this imaginary point, this geographical construct, sat way up in the Altai mountains, thousands of kilometers from the nearest coastline, hundreds from the nearest city, far removed from any kind of road or settlement – and a whole world away from any place any civilized human being would ever realistically want to go.
I should have built it at the AFRICAN Pole of Inaccessibility, Aliyev thought grimly, as he pulled the furry hood of his thick parka up over his short, dark, spiky hair, and zipped the coat up snugly around his still-lean, 5’10” frame. He then pushed his way through the inner door of the Dacha out into the small vestibule. There he put on boots, pulled on gloves, and finally undid the locks for the outer door. And then he stepped outside into what currently were, more or less, whiteout conditions.