One Rough Man

“Fine.”

Lucas was sick of hearing what he owed Standish. Fucking politician. A weasel like every other politician. No honor. No belief in something greater than himself. Just whatever favor could be gleaned based on which way the wind was blowing. Yeah, Standish had possibly helped him out, but the truth of the matter was there wasn’t any proof that he had done anything wrong. The only people who could prove he had killed civilians were dead in an IED attack. He’d eventually have gotten off anyway.

He regretted having killed his teammates, but they had lost their way. It was war, Goddammit. He had killed the civilians to get information on terrorist attacks. It had worked. The team broke up a terrorist cell that had murdered at least thirty Americans and would have murdered thirty more. He didn’t understand why his teammates had chosen to turn him in, but he couldn’t let it stand. He had done the right thing. Two noncombatants for thirty Americans. How could that not be seen as a good thing?

He had been working the civilian side of the defense industry for over a year now, and was beginning to hate it. Everything was about the almighty dollar. Nothing was about a cause, a goal greater than the individual. It disgusted him, and he wanted out. Even his actions in Afghanistan, while others might not understand them, were for something larger than money. At the least, it saved American lives, even counting the two who had died at his hand. The sacrifice was for a larger effort. Now his work did nothing but cause money to exchange hands.

It wasn’t that he disliked the work. Truth be told, he’d never minded killing, any more than the average big game hunter. He didn’t draw any particular pleasure from the act itself but did enjoy the hunt. Now, though, the purpose was gone.

Since he had started contracting out, most of his employment had been nothing more than gleaning sleazy information for Standish, the greatest “success” coming when he found a political rival with a young boy. It disgusted him. He’d done only one violent act since leaving the Navy, on behalf of a foreign corporation looking to gain an inside advantage on a classified defense contract. Their only competition was a small outfit at Fort Bragg, something the foreign entity should have been able to outbid. The problem was that the competition was U.S. based, and thus the foreign company was convinced they were going to lose. Lucas had smoked the CEO of the U.S. contractor, securing a foreign win. The money had been extremely lucrative. Worth the woman and child he’d been forced to kill as well. The money Standish was throwing around was even better. Enough to quit this shit forever. He looked at this target as a blessing. The fact that two people would die caused him no angst at all. It was just work.

Lucas returned to the problem at hand. He had a pretty good background on both of his targets now and began to build a plan of attack. He would need his best folks for this one, as he was fairly sure a mistake against Pike had the potential to be catastrophic. He ran through his Rolodex of employees — all of whom worked for him on a contract basis — picking ten that fit the bill. He purposely left out the two who had worked with him at Fort Bragg. When push came to shove, they had balked at killing the woman and child. He had no idea where this would go and didn’t need anyone who might hesitate.

He gave each of the men a call, telling them he had a job and the time to show up at the office if they were interested. He then began building a target package on both Jennifer and Pike. In the back of his mind, he thought about the money he’d make and the chance to get out. To get away from people like Standish. Maybe I’ll get my check and smoke him for free. Help out the country.

67

I waited until I was outside of Fredericksburg, on Interstate 95 about forty-five minutes south of Washington, D.C., before I made the call. I had Jennifer dial the number on our new TracFone, then hand it to me. A man answered on the third ring.

I said, “Ethan, hey, it’s Pike Logan. How’re you doing?”

There was a pregnant pause. I’m sure he was getting over the initial shock of hearing my voice. I looked over at Jennifer, raised my eyebrow, and tilted the phone so she could hear.

“Pike? What’s up? How’re you doing?”

“Hey, nothing like a call from the past. I’m fine. I’m going to be in D.C. tonight, and I thought I’d drop by for a visit.”

Ethan was an analyst inside the Taskforce. As such, he was support. Ordinarily, there was an unofficial separation between operators and direct support personnel, but I had always thought the distinction was bullshit, and had hit it off with Ethan. Being a geographic bachelor whenever I was in D.C., I had dinner with Ethan’s family about twice a month. The last time I had seen him was in the mission brief for the operation in Tbilisi.

Since my implosion, Ethan hadn’t said two words to me. It would do him no good to take sides on my demise, and so he had taken the route of discretion being the better part of valor. I didn’t blame him, although I could hear the wariness in his voice as I finally convinced him to let us come by.

Jennifer, having heard my end of the conversation, said, “That’s a friend? Don’t get mad, but out of curiosity, how bad were you when you left? What happened?”

“About as bad as I was when we first met. You can expect everyone to look at me funny, like a cancer patient who might or might not be in remission. Everyone will be afraid to ask how I am.”

I was surprised to find I was comfortable talking about it. That was a first.

“There wasn’t any big blowout, like a drunk finally killing a carload of kids or something. I just sort of… fell apart. The Force did everything they could to help me, but it was all based on me wanting to get better. I didn’t. Eventually, I just left.”

Jennifer appeared lost in thought. She finally said, “You ever think about fate, or destiny? You ever think that God makes things happen for a reason?”

“I think about that all the time. In fact, it tears me up. Why’d you ask?”

She suddenly looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I just sometimes wonder.”

I let the silence go for a second, then prodded her. “Wonder what? What were you going to say?”

“Well, what’re the odds of me picking you up at the Windjammer? Me, someone who’s about to get killed, picking up you, the one person with the skills to prevent it? Think about it, what are the odds that we’d collide at all? Given the entire United States? Shit, given just the city of Charleston? It’s just weird, is all. It’s a perfect storm. It makes me think.”

“So what’s the reason for this? Besides my company, I mean?”

“Maybe saving a lot of lives.”

68

Later, after the settling in at the hotel, I decided it was time to get moving. “It looks like we have a few hours before we need to link up with Ethan. I’m going to the Taskforce Headquarters to leave a note for Kurt along with our cell phone numbers.” I paused, not wanting a fight. “No offense, but I can’t take you there. I have to go alone.”

She smiled. “Come on. I’m not that big of a jerk, am I? I understand. I’ll just hang around here. No big deal.”

No way was I going to resist that opening. “No, no. That’s not what I meant. Jerk isn’t what I’d call you. Anyway, what you could do—”

“What’s that mean?” She flicked her hand and backhanded my stomach. “Would you like to see me be a jerk? I don’t think you’d enjoy it.”

“Oww. Jesus. I don’t like it right now.” I snatched her hand out of the air to prevent her from hitting me again. “I was just kidding. What I was going to say was it would help if you went out and bought a laptop. One with wireless so we don’t have to keep searching for Internet business centers. Can you do that?”