He puts his coffee in a cup holder, then studies the first photo. “Don’t know him,” he says.
“Swipe to see the next one.”
He does, examines it carefully, shakes his head. The third portrait catches his attention. “I think I met this guy once in a bar.” And the fourth photo: “That’s Rick Hidalgo—he was an instructor at Ranger School.”
“You’re right,” True says. “That’s who that is.” She strives to keep her voice flat, to show none of the anxiety she’s feeling. She doesn’t want to influence him, even on a subconscious level.
He looks at the fifth photo but makes no comment. He swipes to the sixth, Shaw’s photo. “Fuck,” he whispers.
True’s stomach knots, but she says nothing, makes no move. She focuses on her breathing, keeping it soft and even.
In a husky voice, Miles says, “This is an old photo. The guy’s older now. He has a scar on his lip. But it’s him. The merc with the crippled hand. Jon Helm.” He turns to her. “You know him? Who is it?”
“He’s supposed to be dead,” she says in a voice barely audible over the white noise of the engines. She takes back the tablet, taps out of the slideshow, and turns off the screen before reciting the facts like a whispering automaton. “Shaw Walker. Captured along with Diego. Held with him at Nungsan. Shaw was there when they murdered Diego. They made him watch the execution. You can’t see him on the video but you can hear him screaming, pleading with them to stop, to stop…”
She’s rambling. A sharp breath, a few seconds to steady herself. She doesn’t look at Miles when she says, “Thank you for helping. That’s what I needed to know.”
She starts to get up but he catches her arm. Veins stand out on the back of his large hand as he holds her in a firm grip. “That bastard couldn’t have been Shaw Walker,” he says in a harsh whisper that escapes between clenched teeth. “Shaw Walker is a decorated combat veteran. Shaw Walker is fucking dead!”
“Let go of me,” True says.
Miles looks confused. He releases his grip. His voice is soft, husky with anger as he says, “Hey, I’m sorry. But how the fuck could it be him?”
It occurs to True that the only thing she knows about the circumstances of Miles’s kidnapping is that the raid was led by the merc with the crippled hand.
By Shaw Walker.
“I don’t know how,” she says, a tremor in her voice betraying her. She sits down beside him again. Not looking at him. Breathe. She gathers herself and when she speaks again, her voice is steady, calm, controlled. “The army identified remains found at Nungsan as those of Shaw Walker. That’s what I was told.”
She glances across the aisle to where Jameson is sleeping. This knowledge, it’s as if she’s stumbled onto the rusted shell of an unexploded bomb. Speak too loud and she might set it off. She leans close to Miles and whispers. “This is going to cause a lot of fallout among our veterans. A lot of bad feelings.” Sweat glistens on his cheeks; his jaw is so taut it looks like he’s holding back a scream. “I need to ask you one more favor.”
“Don’t ask me to keep this a secret, True.”
“Just until we’re home.” She knows that Chris is in the back of the plane with Khalid. Everyone else is in their seats. Asleep, maybe. She hopes they’re asleep. “I just think it’s best to wait until we’re on the ground.”
He stares at her suspiciously, like it’s a trap. “I’m going to be researching this,” he warns her. “Writing about it.”
She’s surprised by the fierceness of her own response. “Think about that, Miles. This is a man who does not want the world to know he exists. You want him coming after you?”
“What the hell? What are you saying? You’re going to let this go?”
“Fuck no. I’m saying you need to be careful. I understand you’re a journalist now, not a Ranger. I understand your priorities are different. But take time to assess the situation.”
“And you?” he asks suspiciously. “What are you going to do?”
She thinks about it. After a few seconds she says, “I buried what was left of my son eight years ago. I went to five more funerals—for Shaw, and for the other soldiers who did not survive that mission. I thought it was over—as if you can ever get over something like that. But if Walker is alive, I want to know why. I want to know how. I want to know what the hell he’s doing preying on innocent people like you. And I want to know what really happened at Nungsan.”
“Then we’ve got the same goals,” Miles says. “Except I’ve got one more. I want to see him brought in. I want to see him stand trial. And when he’s locked away in a super-max, I’m going to write a fucking book.”
Dangerous Ground
By the time they land at JFK, the news about the mission is out. Emails have started to arrive. Most are congratulatory but True knows that’s only because her digital assistant, Ripley, files away the toxic missives—the insults, ill wishes, and death threats from digital terrorists, half of them generated by passionless trolls working under the direction of propaganda bureaus, the rest the irrational rants of awkward kids, or of narcissistic farts who imagine they can command the world from behind black curtains. Ripley forwards redacted copies of the toxic stuff to a nonprofit troll-hunting service with an AI that tries to engage the senders, while analyzing patterns and clues in their emails that get cross-matched to billions of forum posts until anonymity melts away. True scans the weekly reports, but otherwise she doesn’t waste time on it.
As their plane taxis from the runway, she types a quick, smartass answer to a gruff note from her old man:
Yes, I know what “retired” means. It means I get to choose my own missions. I’ll let Lincoln know your opinion of his “loose cannon maneuvers.”
A new email comes in. True grimaces when she sees it’s from Tamara’s too-friendly colleague, the roboticist Li Guiying. She endures a flush of embarrassment when she reads the subject line: You are a hero among women!
For fuck’s sake.
Eyes narrowed in irritation, she skims the congratulatory note, confirming that it contains the sort of flattery she’s come to expect. In an uncharitable turn, she wonders if Guiying has trained a simple AI to write her correspondence, teaching it basic rules of echoing and praise. An easy project for someone with her skills, and it would let her maintain pseudo-friendships with thousands of potential colleagues.
True decides she likes the idea. It’s a neat explanation for what she’s always regarded as the inexplicable amount of attention Guiying has paid to her ever since they met at a London seminar… five or six or seven years ago? True’s presentation at that seminar had been a brief, informal talk on the potential lethal impact of autonomous combat systems. She’d argued for the moral necessity of a human decision-maker in the kill chain.
Li Guiying—a stranger at the time—approached True afterward, a rosy blush coloring her face as she awkwardly introduced herself as a robotics engineer formerly employed by the Chinese firm, Kai Yun Strategic Technologies, but working now for a French corporation.
Guiying was in her late twenties then, a petite, finely dressed woman who seemed ill at ease despite her sterling credentials. “I very much agree with this fear you have expressed,” she told True in crisp, Chinese-accented English. “I believe you are correct that some tragedy of machine error could occur. I have nightmares of such a thing.”