The Last Good Man

Mercenary

Lincoln stares into the cool blue eyes of his sparring partner as they commence another round. Renata Ballard is tall, fast, aggressive. She moves first, opening with a headshot that he blocks with his left forearm. He’s careful to take the impact high on his forearm, but he still feels a stab of pain at the junction with his prosthetic hand. He ignores it and, using the same arm, he blocks a second strike, this one aimed at his solar plexus. He sweeps her arm away while stepping in, stepping close.

She tries to evade but he gets his arms around her in a bear hug. His right hand locks high on his left forearm to hold her. She locks her arms around him too, tries to take his foot out from under him, but this time he’s faster. He leans back, lifts, lofts her off the ground. He twists at the same time. She holds on tight, not letting any space open up between them.

He drops to his knees, dropping her hard on the mat. She doesn’t yield her grip at all—and he doesn’t get his left arm clear in time. Her weight comes down on top of the junction between his flesh and his prosthetic hand.

“Aw, fuck!” he swears, grimacing as his arm ignites in white-hot wires of pain that shoot past his elbow to curl around his shoulder. He pulls back, biting down against a howl that wants to escape the cage of his clenched teeth.

Renata rolls clear, coming up on her knees with an annoyed scowl. “Did you break it again?” she asks.

He’s on his knees too, left wrist pressed against his belly. Sweat runs down his cheeks, his chest, gliding past his scars.

Focus.

Four deep calming breaths.

As the pain subsides, he’s able to raise the hand. The bony mechanical fingers are trembling in response to his shocked nerves. He decides this is a good sign. At least they’re still connected.

He experiments, moving each finger, tapping them against the thumb in a pattern he learned during physical therapy. “Not broken,” he concludes.

Renata rises to her feet. “Come on, boss,” she says in disgust. “This is why no one else will spar with you. You know you can’t play that hard anymore.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

His physical therapist had explained it bluntly: You have fine motor control and even a limited sense of touch because, through its socket, the hand is wired into your truncated peripheral nerves. But if you stress the junction, it’s going to hurt like hell. The pain’s a signal to tell you to back off. To be careful. Because the prosthetic is not nearly as rugged as your natural hand.

Truth.

He’s broken the hand twice already.

He tells Renata, “Next time, I’ll take the hand off. Cap the end to protect it.”

“I’ve heard that before.” She glares down at him, hands on her hips, pale cheeks flushed, eyes bright, blond hair escaping from her ponytail. Her gi is pulled open to reveal a flat belly and full breasts corralled by a lavender sports bra, white skin shining with sweat.

And it hits him again: God, she is a beautiful woman.

Early in her tenure as Director of Air Operations at ReqOps they’d twice spent the night together, curiosity on both sides, but she was a free spirit and he needed fidelity.

Just a brief liaison, but still a mistake.

He gets up. She straightens her gi and they bow to one another.

He asks, “You got time this afternoon to sit down and go over your flight schedule?”

“Fourteen hundred?” she suggests.

“That’ll work.” He tells her about Fatima Atwan and the bounty on Hussam El-Hashem.

This makes her smile. “Ooh, nice mission. I like everything about it. Action instead of flying another tedious escort job. And a damsel in distress. And money.”

“Mercenary,” he accuses.

A bold smile, a flash of white teeth. “All of us together,” she agrees.

He offers no argument. ReqOps provides services that include intelligence acquisition and assessment, regional reports, personal security, equipment leasing, and specialized training of US military, foreign military, and law enforcement personnel—in security, assault, targeting, interrogation, evasion, surveillance, and negotiation. Offensive missions are the least of what they do, but as a PMC—a private military company—they are still mercenaries by most people’s definition, no matter how carefully they select their jobs and vet their clients.

Lincoln doesn’t like the term. It carries too much historical scar tissue. But Renata happily wears the label. She’s a pirate at heart. A top fighter pilot, she’s cool and efficient, but most of all, guilt doesn’t stick to her.

Or maybe there’s just nothing she’d undo.

Lincoln wishes he could make that claim, but during his clandestine service he was asked more than once to do dirty work—someone had to do it—and he’s made some poor choices too. No setting things right after the fact. What you do, you own. What you witness, you get to live with.

As a counterbalance, he tries to run ReqOps on a philosophy of “right action”—a principle of ethical service that encompasses power and responsibility and an obligation to act at need, and to do so in the best manner possible.

Renata gives him a half-assed salute like she knows what he’s thinking. “Make this happen, boss,” she says. “I want to be in competition again, even if it’s only virtual.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

They part, heading for separate showers.

With hot water sluicing over him, he tests the hand again. It’s amazingly dexterous. A biomechanical miracle of engineering, but it’s weak. It’s not good enough to get him back in the field. And for that, he hates the damn thing.