The Last Good Man

Hell Breaks Loose

Lincoln stands in the shadows under the trees, back to a tree trunk, perfectly still, his pistol in his right hand, watching the sentinel as it returns up the ravine, passing over their position. He’s impatient, eager to move on. But he holds his position. They all do. No one moves—but the sentinel must have detected something because it circles back.

“Shit,” Rohan whispers over comms.

“Alarm’s going off up top,” Chris says.

“Don’t move,” Lincoln breathes. “The gun barrel is still locked. It hasn’t got a target yet.”

It’s possible the onboard AI issued an alert when it noted a change in the terrain caused by the camo blankets.

Chris says, “The enemy has decided that was a false alarm. True is in position.”

“Roger.”

The sentinel moves away, but instead of heading up the ravine, it goes back down again.

Chris adds, “Be aware that Miles is with True.”

“What?” Lincoln demands in a whisper. “What the everlasting fuck?”

“Save it,” Chris says. “We’ve got aberrant behavior in the sentinel. It’s circling, coming back for another pass. We need to launch. Clear those copters so I can get them in the air.”

Nothing to do but do it. “Let’s go, Rohan.”

They both move. Lincoln steps into the open, then stoops to carefully lift away the camo blanket. As soon as it clears, the rotors hum, each set winding up into a circle of blurred motion. The starburst takes off straight up and, as it does, its gun barrel swivels. Behind him, Felice starts shooting. She’s not the only one.

Tamara has preloaded both Roach and the starburst drones with multiple instruction sets. One of these sets uses map locations and biometrics in a two-factor confirmation to delineate human targets. The team is white-listed and so is Shaw Walker. There are also instructions for distinguishing children and noncombatants.

The drawback of this instruction set is that running the biometric identification procedure before every shot is slow, even on a human scale. In the frantic chaos of battle, the enemy can pull a trigger before an AI achieves a kill decision. It’s a parallel to the situation in traffic, where aggressive human behavior puts a properly schooled AI at a disadvantage. Tamara is unwilling to let that happen. She has seen what is under the anti-surveillance canopy—the cameras on True’s MARC visor captured it. She is certain there are no women and children present. There are only torturers.

Her breathing is ragged but her hands are steady as she revises the instructions so that Roach and the two copters can operate at a faster rate. The new rule requires only an initial biometric identification. Known elements to be tracked on an active battle map.

Lincoln draws his pistol as the starburst rises into the air. It’s darting and rocking in an evasive behavior as it immediately takes enemy fire. A bullet impacts one rotor. The parts shower down around Lincoln, but the controlling AI compensates for the damage, rebalancing the load on the seven rotors that remain, even as it shifts the gun barrel to target the sentinel.

The two machines trade shots as they rise higher and higher into the air, whirling and dancing and dodging around one another in a manic duel that shares the frantic grace of a flight of mating insects. They’re moving too fast for Lincoln to get off even a single shot at the sentinel, but if they’re doing any damage to each other, he can’t see it. The buzz and whine and crackle of stray bullets tears across the ravine in every direction.

He’s peripherally aware that their second copter has darted away, up the ravine and toward the house, to join Roach in the first wave of the attack—the machine wave.

Eight seconds, maybe nine have elapsed since launch. He turns to check on Felice, remembering the sound of her pistol going off. He finds her hunched over, one arm pressed against her breast and her hand coiled into a fist as she staggers toward him, still carrying her pistol in her other hand.

“Hey! Are you okay?” He grabs her shoulder with his artificial hand, just as a flurry of shooting erupts from the direction of the house.

She straightens up, looking that way. Past teeth clenched in pain, she says, “Bruised ribs, I think. Not broken.” Her arm lowers to reveal two spent bullets embedded in the left shoulder of her vest.

“Jesus,” he whispers. “Sit down.”

“Never mind that. You go. I’ll follow. Don’t leave True up there alone.”

He hears the firefight at the house intensify, punctuated now by the screams of maddened men.

True is on her knees, bent almost to the ground, gloved hand pressed to her forehead, fighting back against the dark gravity of Nungsan and the certainty that she has been here before, seen all this before, lived it and relived it so many times in dreams and not once able to make a difference.

Ah, Diego!

This time, it’s not a dream.

In her glimpse beneath the canopy she counted eight Al-Furat soldiers. Rihab was one. He wasn’t carrying a weapon that she could see. Two of the men were armed with video cameras. All the others held assault rifles either slung over their shoulders or casually in the crook of an arm. There might be more soldiers in the house. She doesn’t care.

She eases up to look again.

The canopy shades a nearly level, unpaved pad strewn with grit and pebbles. Three dirty white goats are lying down beneath it, close to the house. Shaw is staked on the ground at the center of the pad, face up. A U-shaped steel rod has been pounded into the ground over his ankles to hold his feet in place. A second rod arches over his neck, and a spike has been driven through the palm of his right hand, pinning his arm at an angle to his body. His left hand, the hand crippled in Burma, is still tied to his vest the way she left it, to stabilize his wounded shoulder.

His face and shoulders and the surrounding ground are wet. It’s just water, she tells herself. She wants to believe that. Water poured in his face to frighten him, to get him to talk. But she smells the reek of gasoline. A red-orange container, identical to the one in the bumper rack, is stowed beside the house. She hears a conversation, strangely clear to her mind despite her rudimentary Arabic:

Someone will see the smoke.

Let them see it. We were never here.

Shaw must be listening, too. She feels sure he understands them, that he is aware of what is about to happen. Impossibly aware, given his condition, but the knowledge is apparent in the taut arch of his back, the quick sharp breaths that make his chest rise and fall, the fixed, maddened stare of his eyes focused on the brilliant perforations in the canopy.

She remembers Daniel speaking of Nungsan and the syringe used to inject Diego with a stimulant to ensure he was awake for his execution, and to make him seem stronger than he was.

Shaw’s strength is not in doubt. He is a fortress, locked up tight. He makes no plea, no threat. He asks no favors. He allows not even a groan of pain. Waiting.

At this point no one even needs to strike a match. Gasoline is highly volatile. Its fumes are heavier than air. They hug the ground and spread. All it will take is a crackle of static electricity or a spark thrown by a ricocheting bullet to ignite a flash fire.

It is surely too late to change the outcome.

Right?

She sees that one of the Al-Furat men—she realizes it is nineteen-year-old Rihab—has a fireplace lighter in his hand, the kind with a trigger and a long tube to direct the flame. He walks toward Shaw, barking instructions at the camera crew, but it seems to True that his fierceness is an act. As she aims the Triple-Y, centering its sight on Rihab’s skull, she understands that he is afraid of what’s coming. He doesn’t really want to do it. But for him, as for all of them, there is no backing out.

A breeze flows beneath the canopy. It flutters Rihab’s shirt and lifts ghosts out of the dust. She prays for it to carry some of the fumes away, and she squeezes the trigger.

Simultaneously, there is a flurry of gunshots in the ravine.

A second later, all hell breaks loose.

Miles is taken by surprise when the assault starts. He didn’t hear Chris initiate it. He only knows it’s on when True fires the first shot and Rihab crumples. The air reeks of gasoline fumes so he’s surprised when the shot doesn’t ignite a flash fire. God help Shaw Walker if that happens.

One of the armed Al-Furat soldiers yells. Miles picks him for a target, squeezing off rounds from his pistol. A streamer of blood on the man’s shoulder suggests he’s been hit but he doesn’t go down. The two with the cameras try to retreat to the house, while the armed men, including the one Miles wounded, turn their guns on the slope. They don’t know exactly where their enemy is hidden, but they start laying down suppressing fire.

Miles ducks behind the rocks. True goes belly-down too. Rock chips and lead fragments pepper them.

Another gun opens up from a position off to the side and lower on the slope. Rapid shots a half-second apart. A rhythm so precise, it’s got to be Roach.

From below, a drawn-out, agonized scream and, simultaneously, a roar of raw, guttural rage. Someone holds down the trigger on an assault rifle, chewing through the magazine, sending dust and broken twigs fountaining around Roach’s position.

True chooses that moment to stand up. She brings her weapon to her shoulder—but she doesn’t fire. There’s no return fire. Even Roach stops shooting.

A pastoral silence spreads across the slope: a breeze rustling through the brush, the muttering stream, the faraway bleating of a goat. Miles is acutely conscious of his rapid breathing. He asks himself: Is it over?

He lifts his head to look cautiously past the rocks. Under the canopy, everyone is down. Pools of red blending with dust in the filtered light. He counts six Al-Furat soldiers, plus Shaw.

There should be two more.

Behind him on the slope, the faint distant crack of a stick. Still on his knees, he wheels around, pistol raised. Motion just below the road. An electric charge erupts across his skin and he reacts before his conscious mind understands what he has seen. He dives at True, knowing it’s already too late. One of the road warriors carried an assault rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher. What Miles saw, what he reacted to, was the black mouth of that weapon aimed in their direction.

But as True’s knees buckle, as he drags her to the ground, he hears the soft hum of a starburst copter and four quick shots. Then a withering explosion as the grenade blows up somewhere high in the air above them. Miles ducks his head, hunches his shoulders against the concussion. A double punch is delivered against his ears. A blast of searing heat. He feels the pummel of fragments impacting his vest and a sharp pain in his skull.

For a few seconds after that he hears nothing but the ringing of his ears. Then Chris’s voice, sounding muffled: “Miles. True. Report.”

“I’m good,” True says, voice husky. “Miles, get off me!”

He realizes he has her pinned and rolls aside. In a moment she’s up on her knees, doffing her visor, peeling off her camouflage hood. Her face is flushed, her eyes frantic, sweeping past him to look downslope. She puts her visor back on and picks up the Triple-Y. Then she’s away, boosting herself over the rocks to charge at an angle toward the bottom of the slope.

Miles starts to follow, but Chris shouts over comms, “Stay put! Stay put! We’ve got enemy still in the house!”

True keeps moving, stumbling and sliding, dry brush bursting apart as she hits it.

True is trusting Roach and the starburst copter to cover her. They’ve owned this battle so far. She’s pretty sure the copter took out the two road warriors on the high ground, hitting one just as he pulled the trigger on his grenade launcher, sending the explosive on a wild arc.

She reaches the bottom of the slope. Cuts right to angle across the flat. As she does, Roach emerges from the brush in front of her. It’s a meter-long monster, moving with swift, revolting grace on its stout insect legs, gun-barrel head supported on a jointed mast as it snaps around to target her. She is so startled, she cuts sideways and almost screams. The barrel shifts again, upslope, where she left Miles.

It doesn’t shoot. Both of them are white-listed. True imagines a database table updated with her current position, a description of her that reads “potential obstacle,” and the instruction “do not harm.”

Roach moves on, skittering with frightening speed toward the house just as the copter buzzes into sight, appearing around a corner of the building and flying low. The copter banks around the SUVs, then cuts under the canopy, a half-second behind Roach.

Two soldiers are still in the house. With the mechs pressing the assault, True knows the firefight could erupt again at any second—but the way to the SUVs is clear.

She sprints for the one with the twenty-liter jugs. Her hands are slick with sweat beneath the fabric of her gloves as she grasps the cap of the blue jug and wrenches it open. She smells it to be sure. Water. Hauls it out of the bumper rack without bothering to cap it again and runs with it beneath the canopy, the forty-pound mass banging against the outside of her knee and water sloshing out. She runs to where Shaw is pinned against the ground.

Gunfire again. A single shot. So close and so loud, every muscle in her body tenses. A glance shows her it’s Roach, shooting into the house through the open door. The mech skitters inside. The starburst copter swoops away, out from under the canopy and out of sight.

Leaving the conclusion of the battle to Chris and Tamara, True sets the water jug down. She drops to her knees. The stench of gasoline that’s rising from Shaw is almost overwhelming. His eyes are open but he doesn’t seem to see her. She tips the jug, spilling water over his face. His eyes squeeze shut. She drenches his face, his scalp, his neck, his shoulders. She wets the ground around him and he starts shivering. He turns his head to retch, then whispers something. She leans over him to hear him better. He says it twice more before she understands: “No way back.”

She is crying. She takes off her MARC visor and drops it beside the Triple-Y, using her sleeve to swipe at her eyes. Then she grabs the steel loop around Shaw’s neck that’s helping to pin him to the ground. There’s hardly enough room to get her gloved fingers around it, but she does. She tugs at it. It’s solid, so she rocks it a little, back and forth, careful not to hurt him as she loosens it. After a minute she’s able to pull it out. She pitches it away.

Only then does she notice Miles standing a few feet away, bright red blood staining his collar as he watches her with what looks like simmering anger.