The Last Good Man

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.”

“I got that, Mama. And that’s why I think we need to do it off the books. Do it mean. Ensure the threat is neutralized.”

She shakes her head. “You heard Tamara. This can’t be a vigilante action. He has ties to the State Department. You don’t think they’d notice?”

“They might thank us.”

This is about his kids. She makes herself remember that and adopts a conciliatory tone. “Let’s see how it plays out. Nothing we can do anyway until we know where he is.”

“Yeah. Until then, we are targets in his scope.”

Khalid spent two years in the TEZ, listening to gossip and chasing rumors. Jon Helm was one of those rumors. It was generally agreed he was an American mercenary and you did not want to be in a conflict if he was hired by the other side. But Khalid had never gotten anyone to admit that they’d met Jon Helm. Rumor insisted he was an American but nothing else was certain. He was a black guy or a white guy. He was a drunk, he was disciplined. He lived in Sudan, Algeria, Chad, maybe Mali. Somewhere far away, but he could turn up without warning and make warlords disappear.

Khalid had assumed Jon Helm was a story, the kind used to scare your rivals. Only when he heard Hussam El-Hashem’s description of Jon Helm did he begin to think the man might be real. So he listened attentively when True explained what was known of Jon Helm, and he chided himself for not following up on the rumors he’d heard.

It doesn’t have to be too late.

He takes a few minutes to consider and compose a plan. Then he goes to see True in her office—but Jameson is there ahead of him. When the door closes, he moves on to knock on Lincoln’s door.

He half-expects to be ignored. After all, he’s the new guy, bottom of the hierarchy, and Lincoln is busy. But the door unlocks.

Lincoln is seated behind his desk, a laptop open in front of him. “What’s up?” he asks gruffly. “Did Chris give you all the employment forms?”

“Yes, sir.”

He met Lincoln last night at the reception. When Chris introduced him, he stood there like an idiot, frozen in surprise, taking in the fire-scarred face with its artificial eye, the weird, semitranslucent prosthetic hand with its fingers rippling in nervous motion, and the violent colors of the tattoos on his arms, so unnatural they suggested his arms might be artificial too.

Khalid was used to seeing scarred and disfigured men in the TEZ, but there, war was a way of life. He hadn’t expected the scars to be so visible at home where war was distant—although here, too, it’s a way of life for some.

The scars no longer command Khalid’s attention, but he still hesitates before he speaks—a few seconds spent trying to read the mood behind that ravaged face. It’s not easy. He’s got a feeling Lincoln was hard to read even before his injuries.

Finally, Khalid says, “I wanted to talk to you about Jon Helm, sir. Or Shaw Walker, if that’s what it is.”

“Go ahead. You know anything about him?”

“Nothing solid. I heard rumors in the TEZ, though. I could make inquiries.”

Lincoln nods thoughtfully. “You don’t need to do this face to face?”

“No, sir. I know a couple of guys I trust pretty far. They trust me. I won’t need to tell them why I’m looking or mention ReqOps at all.”

“You’ll need a budget,” Lincoln says.

Khalid nods. “A couple grand?” he suggests. “It could be dangerous work for them.”

“Set it up. I’ll arrange for the money.”