“You know I can hear you, right?” David called from the sofa in front of the fire.
“Then quit listening!” Boxers yelled. When Boxers yelled, he caused seismic activity.
“Way to go, Big Guy,” Jonathan said with a smile. “Pretty much guarantees that everyone listens to everything.”
Becky stood from the spot next to David. “What do you want from us?” she asked. “We’ve promised to do everything you’ve asked, with the clear understanding that if we don’t, you two will hunt us down and kill us, even if it takes the rest of your lives.”
David reached for her arm, but she pulled away.
“I’m tired of being treated as if I did something wrong. I’m going on this mission because I care, and because I have nothing else to do. I can’t go home, and without home, I have nowhere else.”
Jonathan looked to Boxers. He’d made this bed, after all.
“You weren’t supposed to hear what I was talking about,” he said.
“Well, that genie’s out of the bottle, isn’t it?” Becky said. Shouted, actually, and she had a hell of a shout. “This is our lives, too, you know.”
David Kirk chimed in with “Has it occurred to you that we want to do the right thing? That we want to help rescue people who should never have been taken hostage?”
Jonathan’s first instinct was to roll his eyes. Overt statements of altruism were so rarely real that he wanted to dismiss this as ridiculous. Then he saw the look in the kid’s eyes. Boxers might have seen it, too, because he became uncharacteristically quiet.
“One of my best friends was killed by these assholes,” David said. “Then they tried to kill me and my girlfriend.”
Jonathan caught the hiccup that came with the g word, and he wondered if it was the first time it had been uttered aloud.
“Throw in the fact that the United States — the country that even us reviled journalists are proud to call our home — is threatened, and maybe we’ve decided that there might just be a cause worth dying for.”
The words hung in the air. Truth be told, the altruism angle had never occurred to Jonathan. In his mind, that gene had never been bestowed upon a reporter.
“Thank you,” Yelena said.
All eyes focused on her.
“I don’t know how to describe what this means,” she said. “That you would risk your lives for my family…” The words trailed off.
Jonathan resisted the urge to tell her that public servants risked their lives for strangers every day, but it would have been rude. The glare he shot to Boxers said, Let it go.
Big Guy clearly didn’t want to, but he did.
“Here’s where we are,” Jonathan said, turning his body to face the entire room. “I can’t predict the future, but each of you needs to know that we’ll be on an airplane soon, and on the far end of the flight is a helicopter ride that is going to insert all of you — all of us — into a spot from which there is no return. According to Wolverine’s numbers, there are forty-five people at the facility we’re about to assault, and they will not be pleased with what we are planning to do. For the plan to work, every one of you needs to perform at one hundred percent. If any one of you drops the ball, we all will likely die.”
“So why are you doing this?” Yelena asked. “Of all of us, you two are the ones who could walk away without consequence.”
It was the most obvious question in the world, yet it took Jonathan completely by surprise. “It’s my job,” he said. “It’s our job.”
“Too easy,” Yelena said. “As I understand it from your own mouth, your job was to rescue me. That job was completed, and I confess that I have not been as grateful as I should have been. But now you are pressing to do more. Why would you do that?”
It felt odd having his own questions turned back on him. Jonathan looked to Boxers for the right words.
“Hey, you’re the boss,” he said. “I just go where you tell me.”
That was a lie, of course, but it was a harmless one.
“Duty, honor, country,” Jonathan said.
It landed like a punch line among the others, earning a group groan.
“Don’t do that,” Jonathan said. He put a sharpness in his tone that was designed to startle, and it worked. “You asked for an answer, and I gave it to you. Don’t you dare dismiss it. When I say ‘duty, honor, country’ that’s exactly what I mean. It’s what I have always meant. That’s what we have always meant.”
A soapbox speech was blooming in Jonathan’s gut.
“Next time your husband talks about soldiers or sailors or airmen as pawns in some geopolitical game — or the next time you”—he pointed at David—“start thinking of them as numbers on a budgetary spreadsheet, ask yourself why they do what they do. Even back in the day, there were a hell of a lot easier ways for me to earn fifty-five thousand dollars a year. And that was after seventeen years working for Uncle. We do what we do because there is, in fact, an absolute value to right and wrong.”
He felt his ears growing hot, and, completely out of character, he felt tears pressing behind his eyes. “It’s wrong to snatch innocent people out of their beds and take them hostage. I don’t care who the players are or what the motivations are. That’s wrong. And when the motivation behind it is to harm the government of the country I love, that makes it a cause worth dying for.”
“You are getting paid, I assume,” Becky said. “Pretty well, I imagine.”
“I’m already rich. My fee is a rounding error, a test of commitment for my clients.”
“And your life?” Yelena asked.
“What about it?”
“You’re willing to risk that for people you’ve never met?”
Now his blood was boiling. “Yeah, Yelena, I am. Your family is my mission, I’m willing to die for them. And kill for them.”
He leaned in closer as he delivered the rest. “Just as your Secret Service detail was willing to do for you.”
He felt Boxers’ hand on his arm, a signal that he was a few degrees too hot.
“Tell me what you’re implying,” Yelena said.
“I’m implying that a lot of good, dedicated people died in service to your security,” Jonathan said. “Their wives and children will never see them again. I refuse to let that sacrifice be in vain.”
A long silence followed — every bit of sixty seconds and more — as no one made eye contact with anyone, except for Jonathan, whose eyes demanded a response from the First Lady.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said. “That I am sorry?”
“No,” Jonathan said. “No one gives a shit whether you’re sorry. The dead will remain dead, even if you drop to your knees and offer up a novena. What I want from you is acknowledgment that a lot of people have paid the ultimate price to protect you, and that now a bunch more are willing to pay that price for your family.”
Tears welled in Yelena’s eyes. “Why are you doing this? Did you think I didn’t feel guilty enough?”
“I don’t care,” Jonathan said. “That’s the key. Listen to it again: This isn’t about your feelings. It isn’t about publicity, and it isn’t about anything that resembles politicking or selling papers. We’re going into battle tomorrow. People are likely to die, but if we get home alive, then the killing will have been worth it. That’s what mission focus is all about.”
Ordinarily, Boxers would have driven the plane, but Austin Mannix announced that he needed his plane back later in the day. Thus, they had to accept a ride from two pilots who seemed very contented to know nothing about their passengers. It was a short flight, too. Just a little over an hour.