“More reason,” Lincoln says, “that we need to handle this straight up and handle it now. First we assess, confirm the identity of our enemy, and evaluate his resources. Then we go after him.”
“You’re going to hunt down Shaw Walker?” Chris asks in a harshly skeptical tone. “That’s where you want to focus our resources? And if you find him, what? You planning to bring him home?”
“Yes,” Lincoln affirms. “One way or another. We don’t leave anyone behind.”
Cross Purposes
One way or another.
An innocuous statement, but True doesn’t miss his meaning. She studies him from across the table, wondering: Are we at cross purposes?
He notices the intensity of her gaze. “Speak,” he tells her.
“I don’t want him dead.”
Lincoln crosses his arms, considers this for several seconds, then says, “I don’t either. That’s not my objective.”
“But it is an option?”
“Not an option,” he insists. “But a possible outcome? Sure. You know how it works. We’ll draw up the best plan we can, but once we’re in the field anything can happen.”
She nods. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You’re focused on removing the threat of Shaw Walker. I want that too, but more than that I need to hear from him his story of what happened in Burma.”
She feels everyone’s eyes on her, no one daring to talk until Lincoln says, “I get that. I know it’s important to you. But it’s too early to have this debate. Right now we have no idea where he is or what his circumstances are.”
“I’m going to back True on this one,” Tamara says. “That kind of closure matters.”
True hears this with gratitude. Tamara is their lone civilian voice and Lincoln respects her, seeks out her opinion.
Tamara continues. “I also need to insist that this company have a legal basis for whatever we decide to do. We cannot engage in a vigilante operation.”
“We won’t need to,” Renata says. She cocks her head, crosses her arms. She’s still spoiling for a fight. “We start by looking for an existing bounty on Jon Helm—”
Tamara shuts this down. “No bounty turned up in my early research.”
Renata shrugs. “So we be proactive. Get some puppet government to sponsor one and give us the cover we need.”
“No,” Chris says. “I am not going to play that game. If we do this, we do it right.”
Lincoln looks impatient with the debate. “We’ll work out the legal structure,” he says dismissively. “But we can’t do anything—we can’t know what’s possible to do—until we find him and understand how he’s situated. That’s our initial task and we need to do it quietly. Carefully. If we want to control the situation, he can’t know we’re coming.”
True is left uneasy, unhappy, as the meeting breaks up. Nothing is decided, not officially, but she’s worried that her concerns will be dismissed, and that this chance, her chance, to understand what happened at Nungsan will be taken away from her—if she allows it to be taken away.
It’s unsettling to feel so at odds with the people she trusts.
She’d like to retreat to her office. Instead she tells Lincoln, “I’m going to talk to our people.”
“Do it.”
She takes Jameson with her. They gather the team in the break room and True goes over it all again, laying down what’s happened and what’s known of Shaw Walker, and warning them to be careful. She listens to their disgruntled talk.
Felice lets her sarcasm spill over: “So we know the guy who burned our air force? Shit, with friends like that…”
Khalid looks to the future: “We going after him?”
Jameson eyes True. He didn’t say much in the conference room, but that look, it’s an apology. Sorry I gotta do this, Mama. He turns to the others and says, “It needs to be done.”
“One way or another,” True says coldly.
Rohan’s usual good humor has evaporated. His ginger eyebrows meet in a cynical glare. “Revenge sucks as a motive, Mama. Tell me we’ve got a major bounty in play?”
“No bounty,” True answers. “Not that we know of.”
“So it’s a question of honor?” Felice wants to know, her tone making it clear what she thinks of honor as a motivation.
“Ah, Jesus,” Rohan says with a roll of his eyes. “Fucking save me.”
“This stays within these walls,” True warns them. “It stays within the QRF. You got any concerns, come see me.”
After that she does retreat to her office, though she leaves the door ajar as an invitation to anyone with questions.
It’s not yet noon, but she’s tired: physically spent from the mission and emotionally worn by the fallout. She’s edgy, too. Now that she knows he’s out there, Shaw Walker, she can’t imagine relaxing until she finds him, gets her answers.
That’s all right. She’s got too much to do to relax anyway.
She starts by calling Miles. She wants to check in with him, see how he’s doing, and to thank him for keeping silent about Shaw. “Heads up, Ripley,” she says to alert her personal agent. “Call Miles Dushane.”
His phone rings several times, then goes to voice mail. She leaves a basic message: “Miles, it’s True Brighton. Call me when you get a chance.”
A footstep outside her office door alerts her. She looks up as Jameson comes in. At the moment her feelings toward him are less than friendly—and apparently it shows.
“Don’t give me that look,” he says in his low voice, closing the door firmly behind him.
“I thought maybe you’d get it,” she tells him.
He sits down in the guest chair. Leans forward. “I do get it. I got kids of my own. I know where you’re coming from. In your place I’d feel the same way.”
“It needs to be done,” she quotes him. “One way or another.”
He considers this, rocking in the chair while she watches him. When he speaks again, it’s in precise, carefully chosen words. “When a brother wanders off the path, it’s right action to go after him, bring him home, bring him to justice if that’s needed. But I don’t know this bastard. He’s not my brother. He wiped out our Hai-Lins and that makes him the enemy. I’ve gotta believe he’s hunting us, Mama. That fucked-up mechanical deer you saw—who you think that belongs to? He’s mapping out your life. He’s probably mapping out all our lives so he can hit us. I don’t care ’bout bringing the brother home. I want to bring the battle to him. Hit him before he hits us here at our home. I’ve got to think of my kids, True. They’re only three years old. I’ve got to think of my wife.”
True sighs and leans back, lacing her fingers together, pondering what little they know. Shaw led the raid to kidnap Miles; he had a contract to protect Hussam. Logical to assume the two were partners on a kidnapping-and-ransom gig. A criminal business, to be sure, but a business all the same. And the hit against the Hai-Lins, wasn’t that just business too?
“It might already be over,” she says. “The Hai-Lins might have balanced the scales.”
“Not a chance I want to take.”
“This is Shaw Walker,” she reminds him. “If we swing and we miss, guaranteed he’s coming after us.”