The Last Good Man

The Hunt

Miles awakes to gray daylight seeping through the bedroom curtain. He watches the shadow of a cheap quadcopter drift past and wonders if his parents’ Internet connection has been hacked.

Probably.

He gets up, showers. His mom is in the kitchen, watching him with worried eyes. “I’m all right,” he tells her, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

She’s not convinced, but for now she’s willing to pretend. She cooks breakfast for him, eggs and bacon and pancakes, while he sits at the kitchen table and listens to his dad and his sister describe the phone calls, the government agents, the surveillance drones, and the mediots parked out front.

“I don’t want you to have to deal with this,” he tells them. He explains his plan to find a short-term rental in a secure tower.

Of course they protest, until he tells them, “I’m going to need the quiet anyway. I’m writing a book.”

This is what they expect to hear. It wins their cooperation. His sister offers to call a friend who deals in real estate; by noon he’s put his electronic signature on a month-to-month lease for a fully furnished condo.

He’s got a few boxes stored in the garage—mostly clothes. His dad’s going to drive him over to the new place, so he loads the boxes into the trunk of his parents’ car. Before he leaves, he pulls his sister aside. “As soon as I get a secure connection, I’m going to send you a copy of the manuscript so far. Don’t open it, but stash it somewhere for safekeeping. I’ll give you the name of a literary agent you can trust. If anything happens to me, forward the manuscript to him. He’ll hire someone to finish it and he’ll get you a good deal.”

Her hazel eyes widen. “Miles, what do you mean, if something happens to you? You’re home now. What’s going to happen?”

He smiles, brushes it off. “Sorry. I’m still a little paranoid.”

She wants to believe the story he’s writing is over, but it’s not. He intends to look into what happened at Nungsan and prove a connection between that event, his own brutal kidnapping, and a mercenary known as Jon Helm. If things work out, he’ll end the book with Jon Helm being brought to justice.

He doesn’t tell his sister that the real reason he wants his own place is so that she and their parents will be out of the line of fire if Jon Helm decides that the story should end in a different way.

Brooke made sure she had an official reason for her sudden visit. Since she’s served as liaison between the State Department and Requisite Operations in the past, she’s been assigned to conduct additional follow-up interviews and make recommendations to improve relations and communications in the future.

It’s busy work but True is happy to comply. She takes Brooke on a tour of the Requisite Operations campus and introduces her to Lincoln and Chris and Tamara. No insider information is mentioned and Brooke departs at 1300, in time to make her flight back to DC.

True stands beside Lincoln outside the lobby door, waving as Brooke pulls out of the parking lot. “Did you get something from her?” Lincoln asks as the automated gate closes behind the rental car.

True nods.

They retreat to the security of his office, where she tells him the unofficial story—the speculation from deep inside the State Department that the Chinese took extreme measures to ensure no witnesses survived Nungsan.

Lincoln is deeply shaken. “If that’s true, they betrayed our men. They betrayed the mission.” He looks at True. “We don’t know why?”

“We don’t know,” she confirms.

He gropes for an explanation. “Maybe they had an agent on the ground. A double agent. Someone who betrayed them and they didn’t want that fact to get out.”

True leans in to make her point. “There’s one witness still alive who might be able to tell us.”

Lincoln gives her a measuring look. “If Shaw wanted to talk, he would have come home eight years ago. He’s wrapped up in this somehow, in a way you’re not going to like.”

“I want the truth,” she says. “I know it won’t be pretty.”

She’d told Alex the same thing last night when he tried again to convince her to stay clear of any pursuit of Shaw. They’d been sitting around the fireplace with Brooke, who immediately picked up on their tension. She and True traded a look. Silent agreement passed between them. They would talk later, just the two of them.

True had waited until the morning. After Alex left for work, she asked Brooke, “Is Shaw a department asset?”

Brooke furrowed her brow, uncertain. “I don’t think so. It’s hard to know, though.”

“Do you have access to any contact information for him?”

“No.”

“You’re aware he hit our fighter squadron.”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“Those were legal aircraft,” True said. “Could we get State to offer a bounty on him against that action? Make it live-capture only, in respect for his past service?”

True thought this approach might prove ideal. Lincoln would have to respect a live-capture order. But Brooke voided the idea. “No. That is not going to happen.”

“You’re certain?” True pressed.

“Look at it this way. To acknowledge Shaw Walker’s past service would require State to admit he’s alive, and if he’s alive, then the investigation into what happened at Nungsan has to be reopened. And if Shaw is brought in, he could testify in a manner that might play hell with our diplomatic relations with the Chinese. The same thing applies to Jon Helm. State won’t issue a bounty on that name either, because they cannot take the chance that he’ll come home alive, under any name.”

An unpopular man, True thought. State didn’t want him alive and the early sentiment at ReqOps echoed that. It left True feeling protective of him. And why shouldn’t she? Hadn’t he been the last man to defend Diego?

“I need him alive, Brooke,” she insisted. “I need to find him alive. That’s the only way I’ll ever know what really happened.”

But Brooke cautioned her too. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but Alex is right to worry.”

“I understand that,” True answered. “I know Shaw Walker is a dangerous man.”

He was a decorated war hero… but Nungsan broke him. Shaw could not be seen on the video of Diego’s execution, but he’d been there. True had listened to his voice coming from off screen, heard him begging for mercy. Not for himself. Never for himself. Let him live, he’d screamed. Take me instead.

Tiny wrinkles in Brooke’s brow reflected her concern. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“Eyes wide open,” True assured her. “I can promise that.”

Now, sitting in Lincoln’s office, True recalls that conversation, distills it in her mind, and tells Lincoln only what he needs to know. “Don’t expect any bounty on Jon Helm. Not from State, anyway.”

“Noted. We’re still early in the intelligence-gathering phase. Let’s keep at it. Something will shake loose.”

A robotic beetle is perched outside Miles’s twenty-third floor apartment. It clings to the jutting rib of a slight overhang above the picture window. He noticed it the day after he moved in. Two days have passed since then and it’s still there. He tried to reach it with a broom handle to knock it down. No go.

Farther out, in the gulf of air above the surrounding buildings, a raptor wheels in suspiciously tight and consistent figure eights. It’s been there for hours, unperturbed by the steady traffic of passing delivery drones and easily outmaneuvering the occasional thug drone that tries to knock it from the sky. He watches it, feeling both anger and admiration. Biomimetic robots have gotten so damned sophisticated.

His phone rings. The call IDs to a woman he once did a story on, who works for an environmental NGO. He walks into the bedroom, where heavy blinds are drawn across the window, closing the door before he takes the call. “Hello, Elena?”

“Miles!” She sounds surprised that he answered the phone.

Wherever Elena is calling from, it’s noisy with the sounds of an open market. People chattering, yelling back and forth, pop music blaring, and the crow of roosters. “I’m heading into the field,” she says, “but I might have something for you.”

Miles began his hunt for Jon Helm with basic reconnaissance: a search of public resources, publications, and private databases. He didn’t find much—he didn’t expect to—but it was a necessary step.

No doubt the team at Requisite Operations was already far ahead of him.

He thought they were likely to focus on North Africa and the Middle East—the region where Jon Helm was known to conduct his operations. ReqOps would have intelligence resources in place, people they could hire to pursue rumors—though it would be a dangerous assignment.

Jon Helm didn’t want to be found. No doubt he discouraged people from looking.

Miles had decided to approach the problem from another direction: He would go back to Nungsan.

He knew the official story of what had happened there was wrong. Diego Delgado had died in that village but Shaw Walker had not. What else about the official story might be mistaken? What had been left out? He had only press accounts to go on—he didn’t have access to the official report—but he could find no indication that interviews had been undertaken, not with people living in the area or with surviving soldiers of the Saomong Cooperative Cybernetic Army who might have insight on the details of what happened at Nungsan. It wasn’t hard to imagine that in the eagerness to wrap up an investigation without incurring more casualties in the war-torn region, some critical fact had been overlooked.

So Miles turned to his contact list, picking out people with experience in the region. He sent them an email saying he was back, recovering, and writing a book as therapy. Given what he’d witnessed during his captivity, he wanted to document the history of execution videos and their exploitation of violence for political influence. Nungsan was part of that.

Elena shouts over the background market noise. “I had no idea what you were going through until I got your email. I’m so glad. So glad to know you’re safe at home.”

“Hey, me too. But you said you had something for me?”

“Maybe. It’s not much.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t have a source. It’s something I remembered after I got your email. Years ago—five years, six? Something like that. It was when I was working in the Philippines. I remember reading a profile about a priest, a Catholic missionary in Myanmar. He was kidnapped, held for some days, supposedly with an American prisoner. I can’t remember the details. I don’t know if it had anything to do with Nungsan, or if it was some other incident, but it would have been when Saomong was active.”

“Do you remember where the article was published?” he asks.

“Not really. I think it was a little socialist revolutionary site. It probably doesn’t even exist anymore. I’m sorry. I know that’s not very helpful.”

“No, it is,” he says, not really believing his own words. “It’s something to follow up on.”

Miles scribbles a note. They talk for another minute, then say goodbye.

For two years, Khalid worked as a freelance operator in the business of acquiring and selling intelligence in the TEZ. He made friends in that time, and a lot of connections. In his mind, he developed a complex map of who his connections might be connected to.

After getting authorization from Lincoln, he establishes an open contract for significant information on the activity, associates, or whereabouts of Jon Helm, a principal of the PMC known as Variant Forces. He sends the offer out to his most trusted friends and associates.

Khalid knows how the gossip network operates in the TEZ. He imagines pointed questions whispered here and there, and fading text messages sent to trusted sources. The queries rippling from one individual to many… and maybe disappearing?

He hopes not. He hopes to get an answer back.

After several days, he does.