Alex helps True squirm out of her raincoat. “We okay?” he asks her.
She raises her hand, fingers crossed, a serious look in her eyes.
Miles feels his jaw tighten; his heart rate kicks up.
Alex whispers, “Shit.”
Rey glances around, a hint of worry on his brow. “Something up?”
“Let’s all relax,” Lincoln tells them. “We’ll be fine.”
Will we? Miles wonders.
Clearly trouble is coming. That knowledge scares him. He wants to question Lincoln, but not in front of Rey. So he says nothing. He returns to staring out the window, stewing over what might be going on. It irritates the fuck out of him that Lincoln wants to pretend things are okay.
They’ve gone on for maybe twenty kilometers when two chimes ring. Miles flinches at the noise. True and Lincoln react too, both reaching for their tablets. As the chimes go silent, Miles asks, “What is it?”
Alex leans over, eyeing True’s tablet. He asks her, “Is that the traffic cam?”
Miles twists around to look behind them, but if anyone is following, they’re not in sight.
“Something overhead,” True says. “A UAV. Identifies as national police.”
“Following us?” Rey asks from upfront.
“It’s a good bet.”
They’re rounding a long curve, almost back to the main highway, when Lincoln says in a preternaturally calm voice, “Rey, let’s slow down.”
Rey touches the brakes, shaving their speed. “Oh,” he says as a roadblock comes into sight ahead of them. “Oh, fuck.”
A sentiment Miles shares.
Three police cars, lights flashing, are staggered diagonally across the road, right up to the vegetation on either side, blocking all possibility of getting past them. At least eight officers armed with long rifles crouch behind the cars. More police cars wait farther down the road.
The sight brings Miles to the edge of panic, a physical memory of the last time he was waylaid on a remote road. His heartbeat ramps up but there’s nowhere to go.
Lincoln tries to reassure Rey. “Take it easy. We’re going to be okay.”
It’s not looking that way to Miles. Rey isn’t convinced either. He sounds distraught as he says, “But you’re carrying—”
“No, it’s okay,” Lincoln insists. “Just do as they direct.”
Rey stops well short of the barricade. He’s ordered to get out of the vehicle first, hands on his head. Then he’s told to walk to the police cars.
Alex turns to True and with undisguised suspicion he demands, “What the fuck?”
True responds with an exasperated eye roll, as if it’s all obvious and she is not in the least surprised. “Lincoln predicted this.”
“Predicted what?” Miles wants to know. “What is going on?”
“It’s a setup,” Lincoln explains. “Someone called in a tip, accused us of some high crime.”
“Are we guilty?” Alex asks. Nothing in his tone suggests he’s joking.
“Fuck, no,” True answers. She looks annoyed, not frightened at all. “Right now, the opposition is just scrambling to figure out what they can about the ‘American’”—her fingers move in air quotes—“and they want to take us out of the hunt while they do.”
“Take us out for how long? I have to be on that plane tomorrow morning. I need to be back at work.”
True responds to this with terse sarcasm. “I’m sure the police will take your work schedule into consideration.”
Outside, Rey has reached the barricade. He’s hustled out of sight. New orders are issued by megaphone: “One at a time! Exit the car. Hands on head.”
“Who’s first?” Alex asks, like he just wants to get this over with. He can’t go first because he’s trapped in the middle of the seat.
“Me,” Lincoln says, opening the door. “Remember, we’re here for personal reasons. That’s what we need to tell them, and it has the advantage of being the truth.”
“Step away from the vehicle! Face down on the ground.”
“Fuck,” Alex says in disgust. “If we get gunned down, the kids are going to be pissed.”
True gives him a scathing look. “Get a grip,” she says. “They don’t have any reason to shoot us.”
“They don’t have any reason to stop us,” he counters.
“I’ll go next,” Miles volunteers. Despite his effort to put up a stern front, he hears a tremor in his voice. Fuck it all. He starts to open his door.
“Miles,” True says.
He turns to her.
“This is not like before,” she tells him. “They’ll ask you a few questions. That’s all.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says softly. “I understand that.”
But what happens if the police have figured out that Lincoln printed up those guns?
Detained
Two hours later they’re back in Manila. Alex hasn’t seen True since the roadblock, when they were escorted to separate police cars. “Where’s my wife?” he’s asked more than once. “Why are we being detained?”
No one consented to answer.
He sits now at a battered steel table in an austere interview room that stinks of disinfectants. Cameras in the ceiling corners are protected by hemispherical pods. Across the table from him is a uniformed police officer, a man in his thirties, bulked up like a weightlifter, with dark eyebrows knit in a puzzled but not unfriendly expression as he asks Alex, “You are a US Army veteran, Mr. Delgado?”
Alex frowns. Not a question he expected. What the fuck is going on?
“Yes, I’m an army veteran, but it’s been a long time. I work now as a paramedic and I’m due back at work in about thirty-four hours. We’re scheduled to fly out in the morning.”
The officer cocks his head as if he’s having a problem parsing this answer. “You don’t work as a mercenary for this private militia, Requisite Operations?”
Alex narrows his eyes. “You’ve been misinformed, sir. Requisite Operations is not a militia. It’s a military contractor. And no, I don’t work for them. I’m not a mercenary. I’m a paramedic.”
“But you are married to True Brighton?”
“Yes, True is my wife.”
“Your wife, she is part owner of Requisite Operations?”
Alex inclines his head. “She has an interest, yes. But we’re here in your country for personal reasons. Nothing to do with the company.”
The officer looks suddenly stern. “Is your wife a mercenary, Mr. Delgado?”
Lincoln is in a nearby room. He’s been deprived of all electronics except for his left hand and his artificial eye, although the eye caused concern among the officers, who worried it might be capable of recording the interview. Lincoln assured them this was not the case, but they asked him to wear an eye patch anyway. He agreed to this.
He’s already answered a few innocuous questions asked by a senior officer whose sun-worn face is flecked with dark moles. Time to get serious, he thinks as she leans forward, resting her ring-encrusted right hand on the table between them, her dark-eyed gaze fixed on him. “You control your own private militia. Is that correct, Mr. Han?”
“No, ma’am. I’m the owner and chief executive of Requisite Operations Incorporated, a private military and security company. We are not a private militia. We are a United States government contractor and a signatory of the internationally enforced Military Company Code of Conduct. I can confirm for you that True Brighton, whom your people also took into custody, is my Director of Operations. That said, we are here in the Philippines for personal reasons unrelated to company business. The other members of our party, Miles Dushane, Alex Delgado, and Reynaldo Gabriel, are not employees of Requisite Operations.”