“Exactly,” Lincoln says. “We are vulnerable to anyone, anywhere, anytime.”
“Unless we go into hiding, adopt a bunker mentality. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. None of us wants to live that way. In the long run, we’re going to have to live by our reputation. We offer no quarter. We respond to every threat. So bringing Shaw home is essential… in the long term. For now though, we play along. We respect the peace treaty. We get the company back on a stable financial footing.”
“While you prepare for war.”
“Eight years ago, in Kunar Province, I was present when Shaw knowingly called in a drone strike on a house full of noncombatants, women and children. I did not report the incident. I told myself it was for the good of the unit and I stood aside. That was a mistake. Not one I plan to repeat. Everything that’s happened since, from Burma to the TEZ—”
Chris cuts him off. “You don’t get to put that on your shoulders!”
Lincoln shakes his head. “Let’s just say I don’t like loose ends.”
A Lead
Miles drives out to the ReqOps campus on a gloomy morning, with the windshield wipers of his rented car swiping at a light rain. He’s feeling jumpy, like he’s in the TEZ, going to meet an activist, knowing the local warlord might have a checkpoint set up just for him.
No warlord here, he reminds himself.
From the other shoulder: Modern warlords don’t need to co-locate to kick your ass.
The surveillance is constant and oppressive. Some of it is mediots trying to get his story before it fades from the public consciousness. He can understand that; he can handle it. It’s the raptor that bothers him, wheeling outside his window night and day, its battery recharged through sun-tracking photovoltaic feathers.
Most of the time, surveillance is surreptitious. But sometimes a watcher will want the subject to know they’re being watched. It makes them cautious. It makes them think twice. It lets them know they’re vulnerable. Whoever is flying the raptor wants Miles to know he’s vulnerable.
He assumes it’s Variant Forces, though he has no proof.
The question that haunts him: Does Shaw already know I’m looking?
He reaches the ReqOps campus. He reviewed the route before he came, so the automated gate that guards the entrance is no surprise. Lowering his window, he lets the guardian camera get a look at him. From beneath the car, the soft whirr of an electronic motor. Something moving down there. Probably a wheeled robot with a chemical sensor, sniffing the undercarriage for explosives. He starts to open the door to look, but the gate opens and he’s allowed in.
The number of cars in the parking lot surprises him. Almost thirty. He has to hunt for an empty stall. He finds one in a far corner, rain-soaked shrubbery leaning into it. Branches scrape the passenger side as he backs in.
He gets out but lingers beside the car, studying the parking lot, looking for potential hazards. Roving biomimetics, for example.
Rain beads in fine droplets on his closely cropped hair, his face, the gray collar of his coat. He doesn’t see any biomimetics.
He studies the building: two long wings curving away from a central lobby. Security cameras aren’t obvious but he knows they’re there. He feels safer under their gaze. ReqOps security is surely on alert for free-ranging autonomous devices… at least the ground-based variety.
He lifts his gaze to the gray sky. Tiny raindrops tingle against his face as he watches a raptor circle beneath the dark gray clouds.
Shit.
He tells himself, It’s not suspicious that I’m here. It’s natural to visit the people who saved his life. It’s expected. It’d be suspicious if he didn’t come.
He walks to the building. Two sets of glass doors slide open in quick succession, admitting him to a small lobby furnished with twin sofas, a low table, and several glass exhibit cases. The cases hold battlefield photos, outdated weapons, battered equipment, tattered flags. A young man—he can’t be more than eighteen—with a button-down shirt and a military haircut stands behind a long reception desk, watching him with a friendly gaze. Miles realizes he’s seen the kid before. At the reception at the airfield. Hayden. That was his name.
“Sergeant Dushane, welcome to Requisite Operations—”
“It’s Mister Dushane, but you can call me Miles.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t have an appointment—”
“That’s all right, sir. Ms. Brighton is on her way out to meet you.”
Even as Hayden says it, electronic locks hum, a security door beside the desk opens, and True steps out with a smile. “Miles, good to see you.”
He flashes back on the first time he saw her: a soldier obscured into uncertainty by her camouflage clothing so that her visor and her Kieffer-Obermark were the only solid things about her. Today she’s cast in another role: civilian representative.
She is dressed to flatter her willowy figure, tights slacks, a clingy black T-shirt, and flowing jacket. Her silver-brown hair is confined in a thick French braid and her eyes are bright, enhanced by the subtle shadowing of makeup. An office warrior, he thinks. Let the badass boys lurk in the background. The image she presents is sharp, competent, mature—an ideal public face for a private military company.
He can’t imagine Rohan or Jameson or Chris cleaning up so well. Maybe it’s something only a woman would be asked to do.
She holds out her hand and he clasps it. There’s real concern in her voice when she asks, “How are you doing?”
“Good enough. Sleeping a lot. Writing.”
“You look like you’ve gained back some weight.”
“A little. Can we talk?”
“Of course. Come inside.”
He follows her through the security door. On the other side is a glass-walled conference room with an oval table and upholstered chairs. No one’s in it. No one else is in sight, though he can hear a male voice—he thinks it’s Chris—lecturing from somewhere down a hallway that curves away to the left.
“Training session today,” True says in explanation. “That’s why the parking lot’s full.”
“You don’t work directly with students?”
“Not this round. Chris has most of the staff with him, leaving me the joy of office work.”
Behind them, the door closes with a heavy thud. Soft buzz and click of electronic locks: a comforting sound, a promise that the watchers are locked outside.
True gestures to the right, where the hallway ends at a second security door. “I’m going to take you into the restricted area. That’s where we have our offices. Lincoln’s the only one in there right now. He’s on a call but he wants to see you.”
“Hold on, just a minute,” Miles says. He takes off his overcoat and examines it, checking the lining, the pockets, the pocket flaps.
She watches him, an eyebrow raised. “Been feeling itchy lately?” she asks.
“You know how it is.” When he feels a knot of hard plastic under the collar of the overcoat, the hair on his neck stands on end. He flips the collar up, exposing a teardrop-shaped device with four tiny articulated legs hooked into the fabric. He wrests it off, drops it on the floor, flattens it under his heel, then kneels to pick up the crushed shell. He holds it up for True to see. She wrinkles her nose in distaste.
“Could be mediots, trying to scoop your story,” she suggests.