The Ares Decision

ask. How’d you happen to track me down? I wiped my names from the VA computers.”

Paul Janson said, “When it all goes to hell, people go home.”

“The place where they have to take you in? Not me. I’m not asking any favors.”

“I don’t see you getting any either.”

Case’s home was the mouth of an abandoned railroad tunnel with a view of a garbage-littered empty lot, a burned-out Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the snowy Wasatch Mountains. He hunched in his chair with a frayed backpack on his lap, stringy hair down to his shoulders, and a week of beard on his face. His dull gaze flickered occasionally toward four muscular teenage gangbangers who were eyeing them from a Honda parked beside the KFC.

Paul Janson sat on an upended grocery cart. He wore lightweight assault boots and wool trousers, a sweater, and a loose black ski shell.

“Kill me and get it over with,” Case told him. “I don’t feel like playing games.”

“I’m not here to kill you.”

“Just do it! Don’t worry, I won’t defend myself.” He shifted the pack on his lap.

Janson said, “You are assuming that I still work for Consular Operations.”

“Nobody quits Cons Ops.”

“We have an arrangement. I went private. Corporate security consulting. Cons Ops calls me now and then. Now and then I call back.”

“You never were one to burn bridges,” Case conceded. “You work alone?”

“I have someone to bring along if I need a sniper.”

“Good?”

“As good as I’ve ever seen.”

“Where from?” Case asked, wondering who of that caliber Janson had recruited.

“Top of the talent pool,” was all Janson would reveal.

“Why’d you quit Cons Ops?”

“I woke up one morning remembering all the people I killed for the wrong reasons.”

Case laughed. “For Christ’s sake, Paul! The State Department can’t have covert operators deciding who to kill. When you have to kill somebody to do the job, you kill him. That’s why they’re called sanctioned in-field killings.”

“Sanctioned serial killings was more like the truth. I lay in bed counting them up. Those I should have. Those I shouldn’t have.”

“How many in total? Shoulds and shouldn’ts.”

“Forty-six.”

“I’ll be damned. I edged you out.”

“Forty-six confirmed,” Janson shot back.

Case smiled. “I see your testosterone hasn’t passed its sell-by date.”

He looked Janson up and down. The son of a bitch hadn’t aged. Paul Janson still looked thirty-something, forty-something, fifty. Who knew with his close-cropped hair a neutral iron-gray color? And he still looked like somebody you wouldn’t look at twice. Unless you were another professional and then if you were really, really good, you’d look twice and see the shoulders under the jacket and the watchful eyes and by then it might be too late.

Janson said, “We have company.”

The gangbangers were strutting toward them.

“I’ve got ’em,” said Case. “You got lunch.” The empty Sonic burger bags were neatly folded under one of his wheels. Doug Case let them get within ten meters before he said, “Gentlemen, I’m offering one free lesson in survival. A survivor never gets in the wrong fight. Turn around and go away.”

Three of them puffed up. But their leader, the smallest, shot an appraising glance at Case and another at Janson, and said, “We’re outta here.”

“The guy’s in a fuckin’ wheelchair.”

The leader punched the dissenter hard in the ear and herded them away. “Hey, kid!” Case shouted after him. “You got what it takes. Join the army. They’ll teach you what to do with it.” He grinned at Janson. “Don’t you love raw talent?”

“I do,” said Janson and called in a voice accustomed to obedience, “Come here!” The kid came, light on his feet, wary as a stray. Janson gave him a business card. “Join the army. Call me when you make buck sergeant.”

“What’s that?”

“A rung up the ladder that says you’re going places.”

Janson waited until the Honda squealed away on smoking tires. “I remembered something else. I remembered every idea I used to believe that I turned my back on.”

“You could use a dose of amnesia.”

“There’s none available.”

Case laughed again. “Remember when that happened to an operator? Forgot everything. Woke up beating the crap out of people. Couldn’t remember how he learned close combat. What the hell was his name?…I can’t remember. Neither could he. Unlike you; you remember everything. Okay Paul, if you’re not here to kill me, what are you doing in fucking Ogden?”

“Telling the truth about what I did is pointless if I don’t atone.”

“Atone? What? Like an AA drunk apologizing to people he was mean to?”

“I can’t change what I did, but I can pay back the next guy.”

“Why not just buy a pardon from the pope?”

The sarcasm button didn’t work. Janson was deaf to it. He said, “You take the skills of observation we learned and turn them into yourself, it’s not a pretty sight.”

“Saul on the road to Damascus discovers his moral compass and changes his name to Paul? But you already are Paul. What are you going to change? The world?”

“I am going to do my best to save every covert government operator whose life was wrecked by his covert service. Guys like you and me.”

“Leave me out of this.”

“Can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re my first project.”

“A million people hold top secret clearances. If one in a hundred work undercover that’s ten thousand covert agents you could save. Why me?”

“Some people say you were the worst.”

Case returned a bitter smile. “Some said I was the best.”

“Fact is, we were the worst.”

“I don’t need saving.”

“You’re living outdoors. Winter is coming. You’re hooked on Percocet and the docs have cut you off. When this month’s prescription runs out you’ll be scrambling to find it on the street.”

“Paul Janson’s famously accurate research?”

“You’ll be dead by Valentine’s Day.”

“Janson’s renowned discerning analytic tradecraft?”

“You need saving.”

“I don’t want saving. Get out of here. Leave me alone.”

“I’ve got a van with a ramp.”

Doug Case’s pale, grizzled cheeks flamed angry red. “You got a van with a ramp? You got a van with a ramp? You got shooters in the van going to help you wrestle me up your fucking ramp?”

An awkward smile tightened Janson’s face. For the first time since appearing at the mouth of Doug Case’s railroad tunnel, he looked unsure. The man they called “The Machine” was suddenly vulnerable, and Doug Case pressed his attack.

“You’re falling down on the planning end, fella. No assaulters in the van. No rehearsal. No quick-reaction