Miles shrugs and accepts the weapon. “I always wanted an ironic death.”
He manages not to kill himself. Afterward, his face clean, he studies himself in the mirror, startled at how much he’s aged. His face is thin, bony, reminding him of the way his father looked after a bout of pneumonia almost killed him. Miles was lean before this ordeal, but looking at his ribs, his hollow belly, he guesses he’s lost thirty pounds. He pulls his borrowed shirt back on, returns to the cabin, returns the razor to Rohan. Khalid hands him a steaming microwaved meal.
Miles wants to ask about the mission, how ReqOps located Hussam, how they got inside the building, how they pulled it all off without taking casualties. He wants to ask who hired them, and what their relationship is to the US government, and what legal basis they had to do what they did. But the smell of hot food reminds him that he’s thirty pounds underweight and starving. So he eats. Afterward he leans back in his seat, closing his eyes for just a minute—and doesn’t wake up again until the plane touches down in Dublin. A brief refueling stop. Only the pilot is allowed to disembark. Miles goes back to sleep.
True gives in to post-mission fatigue, sleeping most of the way to Dublin. She’s more alert as they set out across the Atlantic. It’s 0400 on the west coast. Lincoln has gone home to sleep, but she knows someone will be staffing the command post, so she calls in. Michelle, one of Tamara’s assistants, answers.
“Hey,” True says. “We got anything new on Jon Helm?”
Michelle answers with a low, dejected sigh. “Not really. Any outfit with the resources to field those Arkinsons should have a bigger footprint, but there’s a weird silence around his operation. We haven’t even been able to track down the provenance of the Arkinsons.”
It’s disquieting news. “Do you have any idea why that might be?”
“He employs the right people. That’s my guess. Wildcat cybertechs who make sure his name stays out of the Cloud.”
“Jon Helm,” she murmurs. “Still no idea what his real name is?”
“Not a clue.”
“All right. Keep me posted.”
On the east coast, it’s just past 0700. The day’s getting started. In a couple of hours, Lincoln will be on the phone. He has a long list of contacts—trusted friends and former associates—any one of whom might have insight on Jon Helm’s identity. But True has Brooke Kanegawa—and Brooke has straight-line access to intelligence resources in the US Department of State.
It’s a girl thing. True met Brooke when they were both pregnant—True with her third, Brooke with her first. True had been only twenty-seven—Twenty-seven? My God, was that even possible?—on temporary assignment in Washington DC, drafted onto a committee charged with producing a report on the sequence of blunders leading to the Mischief Reef incident. Brooke, a State Department employee with a master’s degree in international relations, was assigned to the same committee. They’ve stayed close ever since.
True uses her tablet to compose a brief emaiclass="underline"
Mission accomplished. But I’m trying to chase down an identity on a nom de guerre, “Jon Helm.” Associated with a black-hat PMC, Variant Forces, based somewhere in Africa. Got anything you can share?
She doesn’t expect an immediate answer. It’s too early. She waits five minutes. Nothing comes, so she gets up to get something to eat. She finds Chris awake. They talk, and then she returns to her seat. Just before 0900 EDT, a reply from Brooke drops into her tablet:
Holy F!!!! When you guys at ReqOps go head-hunting, you don’t fool around! This place is buzzing. Some not happy, to be honest. You know how it is. Toes have gotten stepped on, so watch yourselves.
Re: Jon Helm. You believe in ghosts, sister? People here do. And that’s all I can say about that.
True stares at the note. Reads the second paragraph a few more times. A shiver walks her spine. That second paragraph says a lot: Jon Helm is known to State, he’s supposed to be dead, and he’s someone True knows or at least knows of… If he was a stranger, Brooke would not have made it personaclass="underline" You believe in ghosts?
So who is it?
True thinks back over twenty-seven years of service. She’s met a lot of soldiers in that time. Some are dead, some still serve. Most have returned to civilian life. She keeps in touch with only a few.
Another email arrives from Brooke. As True’s gaze alights on the subject line, she feels a feverish flush: Diego.
True didn’t mention to Brooke anything about Jon Helm’s tattoo. So why is Brooke thinking of Diego?
She opens the email to find a photo of Diego. Lincoln is on one side of him, face unscarred, Shaw Walker is on the other. All three of them drunk and Diego with a brilliant, carefree smile. He looked so much like his father: a lean face, chiseled Spanish features, dark eyes, dark eyebrows, and skin that turned a rich brown with just a hint of sunlight.
True remembers the day that picture was taken. She remembers taking it. A Fourth of July barbecue she and Alex put on a few weeks before Diego’s first deployment with Rogue Lightning. They were bound for Kunar Province in Afghanistan. Gone three months. Near the end, Lincoln was seriously wounded. That was the first time he was seriously wounded, by gunfire. Diego took no visible wound but after he returned, he never smiled like that again.
Five months later, he was dead.
True blinks against welling pressure in her eyes. Scrolls past the photo to where Brooke has included a single line of text:
You have to wonder, if he’d lived, who would he be now?
True’s heart skips as she scrolls back up to look at the photo again. Who would he be now? She enlarges the image. If he had lived…
She lets Lincoln drop off the screen. Then Diego, because there is no “if” about his death. True read the autopsy report. She examined the x-rays. She looked on his blackened and shrunken body.
Only Shaw Walker’s image remains on the screen. He’s laughing with Diego, but his eyes are narrow, his mouth quirked. His is a cynical humor. He’s a good-looking man, with a high forehead and strong, balanced features. His eyes are light-colored. Easy to think the camera failed to capture their blue hue, but True knows it rendered them accurately: pale gray. His buzz-cut hair is dark blond. In the photograph, he’s clean-shaven.
True studies his face, the set of his eyes, the details of his expression. She strives to see through to his soul. If Shaw had lived, who would he be now?
Brooke has an answer to that: He’d be Jon Helm.
Jon Helm
True needs to be sure. She spends twenty minutes in the Cloud, going through her albums and pulling out photos of soldiers who fit the description of Jon Helm that Miles provided—Caucasian, light eyes, lean face, lean build. She dumps them into a slideshow, putting Shaw Walker’s photo sixth. The picture is eight years old. Shaw would have been in his early thirties.
They are halfway across the Atlantic when she wakes Miles. He sits up, bleary and apologetic. He looks years younger without his beard.
“We were supposed to talk about Jon Helm,” he remembers.
She says, “I want you to look at some pictures.”
“Sure. Happy to.”
“Go wash your face. Drink some water. I need to know you’re awake.”
She waits in the aisle until he comes back with a cup of coffee. He returns to his window seat; she sits beside him.
“I’ve collected some pictures,” she says. “Think of it as a photo lineup, okay? I’d like you to look at them. Let me know if anyone looks familiar.” She wakes the tablet, hands it to him.