The Last Good Man

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.

“That’s what I keep telling myself but it’s been ten days. I should be old news.”

“Right. Well, come with me. We’ve got a scanner set up. We’ll make sure you’re clean.”

He’s startled to discover an automated security checkpoint beyond the next door. He follows True through a body scanner, while his coat rides a belt through an X-ray machine.

“Got anything, Friday?” True asks, addressing the walls.

“No, True. You and Mr. Dushane are clean.”

A wall screen shows a slowly rotating three-dimensional image of Miles’s body. Highlighted details include the zipper on his pullover shirt, the rivets in his boots, and the titanium plate that held his left wrist bone together after a bad break—but no more hidden electronic devices. Some of the tension goes out of his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” True asks, a worried note in her voice.

“Post-traumatic jitters.”

“You getting any help with that? Counseling?”

He shrugs. “Been busy looking into things. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

“Sure. We’ve got a shielded conference room. Come. I’ll make you some coffee.”

Lincoln comes into the conference room just as the coffee finishes brewing. He’s wearing a tan ReqOps polo shirt and brown slacks—the same thing he wore the night of the reception. Miles suspects he has a closet full of the same shirts and slacks, and that he wears them as a uniform. Some guys like that strategy; it saves them the mental energy of picking out clothes every day.

Miles stands up and they shake hands across the table. Coffee is poured, pleasantries exchanged, then Miles gets to the point of his visit. He says, “I’m going to guess you’ve been hard on the trail of Jon Helm, or Shaw Walker—whichever you want to call him.”

“That’d be a fair assessment,” Lincoln agrees. “And the evidence we have from multiple sources supports the identity of Shaw Walker, so that’s what we’re going with.”

“Can I ask, have you been able to contact him?”

He watches Lincoln trade a look with True, who sits at the end of the table cradling her coffee mug in two hands. Lincoln says, “We’re not in direct contact and we haven’t been able to pin down his location.”

“He’s a ghost,” True adds.

Miles nods. “I did an initial search for him. Didn’t come up with anything. So I decided to focus on Burma, research the incident and reach out to my contacts. See if I could shake loose any leads.”

Lincoln draws back. True puts her mug on the table with a sharp crack. Miles’s heart skips with trepidation. “What?” he asks. “You know something?”

Lincoln nods at True, agreeing to some unspoken question. She says, “Friendly warning: If Chinese intelligence picks up on inquiries like that, they might not react well.”

“Chinese?” Miles is incredulous. “What the hell do the Chinese have to do with Shaw Walker?”

“We’ve heard a theory that Chinese intelligence knew Shaw was in Nungsan, and they hit the site anyway, because they wanted to make sure there were no survivors.”

“You’re kidding,” he says blankly.

“Nope.”

“Shit. Maybe that explains the surveillance.”

“Most of our people are under surveillance too,” True says. “Whoever it is, they’re not trying to keep their interest a secret.”

“It’s a threat,” Lincoln agrees. “I think it’s Variant Forces, letting us know we’re mapped, that we’re targets.”

Miles draws a deep breath, focusing on slowing his heartbeat. “Okay, well, Variant Forces isn’t going to like this next bit. A friend gave me a lead. She remembered reading a story about a missionary priest held in Burma along with an American prisoner. I finally found the piece in a restricted archive.” He turns an uncertain gaze on True. “It profiles a priest who gave up his Catholic faith after witnessing what happened to Diego Delgado.”

True shrugs. Not the reaction Miles expected. “It’s bullshit,” she says. “I’ve heard that kind of thing before. People claim they’ve talked to an eyewitness, someone who was there—it makes them feel important. But push them on it and their facts don’t hold up; they can’t produce the witness.”

Miles understands her skepticism. Diego Delgado’s horrifying death—bound and bleeding and burned on a cross of steel pipe—set the Cloud boiling with useless analyses, pointless criticisms, rebukes, mockery, and of course with posts celebrating the defeat and death of an American soldier. Millions of words spent in reaction; no value in any of it. But what he’s found is different.

He says, “I know it sounds farfetched. I dropped it to the bottom of my research list because I figured it would be a fabricated propaganda piece, if I could find it all. But when I was out of other leads, I went looking—and it was an interesting read. The village isn’t named—I don’t think the priest ever knew the name—but the details felt right. And the description of the American soldier brought in along with Diego—it struck me as a plausible description of Shaw Walker. He can’t be seen on the video. His name was never released in association with that operation, so how could anyone know about him unless they were there?

“But I wanted corroboration before I went farther. So I contacted Rick—you know, Rick Hidalgo from Ranger School. He knew Walker. I read him the description. He said it was accurate, down to the ‘infidel’ tattoo on his chest and the Rogue Lightning tattoo on his upper arm.”

True looks shell-shocked, just like she did after he’d first pointed to Shaw Walker’s picture as the face of Jon Helm. In contrast, Lincoln’s expression has gone icy. “You should have called me,” he growls. “Not Rick.”

“I wanted to make sure I really had something before I brought it to you.”

Miles eyes True, worried how all of this will affect her, but Lincoln has already moved on. “When was the article originally published?” he asks.

“Six years ago.”

“Does it name Shaw?”

“No. The priest—his name is Daniel Ocampo—he just calls him ‘the American.’”

“How did Ocampo escape?” True wants to know. “Or was he ransomed?”

“He says he was left in a cage in the forest. Left there to die. But the American escaped somehow, found him, freed him from the cage. Daniel called it a miracle.”

True looks doubtful. “I thought you said he lost his faith.”

“He’s not a priest anymore. I guess it was the kind of miracle that convinces a man to change his faith.”

“Have you found Ocampo?” Lincoln asks.

“I found the writer, Reynaldo—Rey—Gabriel. I talked to him. He said Ocampo is back living in the Philippines. I asked him to put me in touch. He said no, that wasn’t going to happen. Ocampo was in and out of trouble with the government for a few years after he got back. He was part of a leftist party, pushing for land reform, the rights of the poor, that sort of thing. He wound up in jail. He’s out now, with a wife and kid. That’s made him cautious. He’s still involved in politics but behind the scenes. He doesn’t do interviews and he doesn’t like being reminded of Burma.”

“So it’s a dead end,” Lincoln says.

“No. Rey Gabriel talked to him, told him that I was trying to learn more about the American soldier who was there with him… and that I was in touch with Diego Delgado’s parents and they had questions too. That tipped the balance. He’s agreed to talk. Rey says he wouldn’t have done this for anyone else. Even so, he’ll only talk if it’s face to face, and not for publication.”

True turns to Lincoln. “I need to go down there.”

He gives her a slow nod. “Yes. If it all checks out. I want to talk to him too. You and me. And Alex?”

“He’ll want to go,” True agrees. “And Miles?” She cocks an eyebrow at him. “Are you going? Even if you can’t write about it?”

“Yes.” He started planning the trip even before Reynaldo Gabriel interceded on his behalf. He looked at flights and drafted a schedule, knowing that if he shows up in person he has a good chance of getting even an uncooperative subject to talk—and he desperately wants to talk to Ocampo. He wants to hear what the ex-priest can tell him about the American, because Miles needs to understand how a war hero like Shaw Walker came to order the murder of innocent, inconsequential men on that day in the TEZ, when Miles knelt in the grit and said nothing.

Miles will go on this trip alone if it comes to that. Working alone is nothing new for him; most of the reporting he’s done post-army was on his own. But the ordeal in the TEZ left him scarred, on edge. Scared. He prefers reliable company if he can get it—and ReqOps will have connections, and more options for security than he’ll have alone.

Still, he doesn’t want to deceive True or encourage false expectations. “You need to understand,” he tells her. “This is just a lead. Ocampo isn’t going to be able to tell you where Walker is. It says in the article that he never saw the American again.”

It’s Lincoln who answers. “We’ll find Walker on our own. That’s a matter of time. What we need from Ocampo is the backstory. He’ll know details of what happened at Nungsan. If he talked to Shaw, he might have learned what happened to turn our men into targets. The more we know about what Shaw went through, the better prepared we’ll be when we find him.”