

### Grayman  
Book One: Acts of War

### by Michael Rizzo

### Copyright 2013 by Michael Rizzo

### Smashwords Edition

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### Table of Contents

Part One: Deleted Scenes

Part Two: Action Heroes

Part Three: War Toys

Part Four: Faith-Based Initiatives

### Part One: Deleted Scenes

### 0

You finally see her. And you feel sick. Because you know you won't be able to save her, only stop her. Assuming you still can.

You were stupid to try to anticipate the route she would take from the small apartment she shares with her father to her target, thinking you could position yourself on her most likely course and head her off early, maximize your opportunity to stop her bloodlessly. You should have just stayed put and covered the café. But now, because of hope—the hope of saving one life so determined to end itself—you may have just killed dozens of innocent people.

Because now she's gotten past you. She's well between you and her target, and heading for it at a determined but cautious pace.

You try to hope you're wrong, but you really have no doubt it's her. You knew it was her as soon as she emerged from the narrow alley almost a full block behind you, even with only a quick glimpse of her face as she glanced both ways—looking for the obvious official kind of interception—before she turned her back to you and started walking with the fatalism of someone who is mostly sure that death will mean nothing bad. You've been studying her photos and videos obsessively for the last twenty-four hours, while you rehearsed how you would save her, how you would be the hero. How you would not have to kill her yourself. (Can you kill a child? Even if it means saving so many others?)

She's got almost a fifty-yard lead on you, weaving her way through oblivious pedestrians. No way you'll be able to catch her in time. You'll be lucky to get close enough to get a shot before she does what she came to do.

Still, you don't discard the retaining pin clutched in the fingers of your left hand, unwilling to discard your fantasy of hope along with it.

You spend the few seconds you have while you chase her trying to rationalize your failure, how your neat little plan went wrong: Cautious, nervous (and very probably terrified despite the resolve her father's been programming into her since he won sole custody two years ago), she apparently chose to take a more circuitous path to her fate. Or maybe she just wanted to buy herself a few more precious moments of life (hope again: because she might hesitate, might let you save her).

You consider blaming others: You left ample intel at your last little act of "justice" for them to find. They—the local authorities, NATO, CENTCOM, whoever should be responsible for making sure atrocities like this don't happen—they should have already intercepted her, neat and quiet and safe and hell-and-gone from this crowded urban neighborhood. But then, you're here now because they've apparently ignored your previous helpful hints, left you to do their work for them. (Maybe that's somehow what they want. Maybe one day you'll get to ask them why.)

You're distracting yourself. Stay in the moment.

Her sandy hair is tied up modestly, too adult for her age. You only get glimpses of her round innocent features as she keeps darting her gaze from side to side, vigilant for any sign of police or anyone who looks like they suspect her (or expect her). She pulls her heavy coat tightly closed, even though her device is well-concealed. The coat is much too thick for the mild weather—she has to know it will make her look suspicious (hope again: that she _wants_ someone to stop her).

You impulsively consider running her down, trying to make it happen the way you rehearsed it: Grab her right hand, clamp down so she can't release the dead-man switch, slip the pin into the mechanism to immobilize it, cut the wires in the right order, and somewhere in that sequence manage to render her unconscious with minimal injury. Then leave her to the local authorities while you go see to her father.

But you know you can't reach her in time. If you run, if you start shoving through the pedestrian traffic, she will hear, she will turn and see you. And then she'll either run for her target or freeze and detonate where she is. If you shoot her down, she'll detonate as she dies. You reflexively count the number of oblivious pedestrians in the likely kill radius of her device. She'll take at least a half-a-dozen unsuspecting innocents with her. (But if she makes it to the crowded café...) All because daddy insists that's what God wants. (And martyrdom is one of the few ways a female can gain entrance to that particular perversion of heaven.)

Your stolen intel can't be faulted. She's timed it to maximize her target: fifteen minutes into the professional lunch hour. The large open-air café is packed. It looks like there could be over a hundred people in there, sitting at small tables behind the chest-high concrete "safety wall" that surrounds the dining area (they don't call it a blast shield, at least not officially—that might discourage customers). Your only consolation is that the street-traffic (which is all pedestrian since this old cobblestone street has been closed to vehicles) has thinned. If you kill her right here, maybe three or four die: A young couple, an older gentleman, a kid hanging out in a doorway...

(And you get to decide: Trade three or four for thirty or forty.)

You're hesitating. She's almost there—half-a-block to go—and you're almost that far again behind her. You really don't have a clear shot. She could make a run for it right now and you wouldn't be able to stop her.

But then you get lucky—a lot luckier than you deserve.

Chalk it up to the fact that this neighborhood favors foreigners: Even with the street vehicle-free, most of the pedestrians are habitually clinging to where sidewalks would be rather than walking down the middle of the avenue, leaving a relatively clear space that she must cross to reach the cafe. This slim window of opportunity gets expanded when she decides to cut across diagonally, forgoing her cover in the foot-traffic in favor of a more direct path. If you can cut her down right in the middle of the street...

Discarding your hopeful fantasy (but not the retaining pin, not yet), you smoothly but discreetly draw the gaudily engraved and gold-appointed Browning, trusting its natural point to hit a moving target (even though you haven't had much practice with it since you killed its former owner). You hold the pistol low in the folds of your cape-like coat, speed up your pace, get as close as you can because you can't afford to miss, get...

She freezes. Right in the middle of the street.

Something's startled her, stopped her in her tracks maybe fifty feet from the café wall. But she's not looking at you—her back is still to you—she's...

Fuck.

A four-man team of military police is coming from the opposite direction, a show-patrol to convince the tourists and foreign businessmen and diplomats that they can prevent this very thing. And they see her (probably only because she froze so blatantly in the open at the sight of them). And they take two full dull seconds to realize why she's so nervously holding her big coat closed around her. And then the fuckheads raise their weapons and start shouting at her.

And just to make this as bad as it can get, they almost immediately shift targets and start shouting at _you_. You realize you've also stepped out of the flow of foot traffic right into their line-of-sight, and absolutely look scarier than a young girl (who they probably don't want to believe is doing what they have to know she is).

Assault weapons point at you. (At least the raised guns get everybody else ducking for cover.) You have just enough time to wonder if they're loaded hot enough to penetrate the layered armor of your overcoat, when the girl— _Sarah_ , her name is Sarah—takes her opening and makes a run for the café.

The patrol guns shift back to her, but they hesitate, hopeful...

You don't. You drop the retaining pin and sweep up your pistol and point and track and breathe and squeeze. Let go. Let it happen.

One shot, one life.

You feel the bang and see her head jerk and don't wait to pull the protection of your HAMAS-made overcoat over your face.

You are over thirty feet away, but the explosion still hits you like a truck, takes you off your feet and throws you backwards. You feel the bomb-belt's shrapnel pepper the coat's shell like hateful hail. The blast wave feels like it wants to crush your sinuses—it kicks the wind out of you and pounds spikes of pain into your ears despite the protective plugs. You hit the street on your ass and try to roll with it, and succeed in flopping around in your cloak-like coat like a fish in a net.

When you can see again, the first thing you see is meat and bone scattered on the cobblestones, some in bits of clothing. And a girl's shoe. The smells of hot coffee and fresh breads and good cooking have been smothered by the stink of C4 and blood, so thick you can taste both. But then mostly you see _intact_ bodies: bloodied and thrown around and disoriented, but clearly alive.

You stopped her. You kept her from getting to her crowded target and you dropped her in the best possible place to minimize casualties. You saved the fucking day.

Somehow you don't feel at all good about it.

You manage to get up like a drunk. You find your hat in the street. The police are still on their backs, stunned, flailing and rolling in slow motion, bloodied in the places their armor wasn't. Everyone who isn't knocked down is hunkered, cowering behind whatever cover they can find in case there's another blast. Or running away.

Which is what you do, before the wounded police can get themselves together enough to send pursuit after you.

You run away like you're the bad guy, the villain.

You realize bits of a thirteen year old girl are sprayed all over your armored coat.

### 1

October 26th 2018.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Richards, US Army, NATO/JSOC CTC, EU Theater:

"Datascan, load the Wiesbaden reconstruction simulation for me again."

I almost say "please", but catch my social programming before I feel stupid for being polite to a machine. (Artificial intelligence is still artificial—not alive, not real, no matter what impressive tricks it can do to convince the TGs and the easily impressed otherwise.)

"SIMULATION IS READY," the thing's deadpan voice simulator tells me almost immediately, not waiting or caring for any human ritual civility. It just does what it's told, what it was made to do. There isn't even a sense of annoyance at the fact that I've insisted on repeating this one particular simulation—what?—the log says twenty-three times.

I sink back in the new VR "chair" that the McCain Foundation delivered unrequested to my office last week (less than twenty-four hours after Incident One). I still feel awkward and more than a bit foolish strapping myself into it like some kind of bondage marionette: legs, arms, torso, even my head secured in its fully jointed and motorized frame. The visor automatically lowers over my head like a bucket, and I settle my hands and feet into their respective "natural motion interfaces" like I'm an old hand at this. And then key that I'm ready even if I know I probably really never will be.

The "chair" hugs me and jerks me into a standing position so I can "realistically walk through" the simulation, so fast and rough I feel like I'm on an amusement park ride. And then the visor comes on, and flashes somewhere completely other than my ordered and familiar little office over my eyes. I already feel motion sick, still not ready for the disorienting transition from real to 3D virtual. I can't imagine how the TGs and high-end gamers love this so much.

But I've got terrorists—well, dead terrorists, at least—and something possibly much worse (both tactically and politically speaking) right in my operational back yard. And a mystery group of Pentagon Brass, Joint Intel and DARPA suits pushing more than my base's annual budget in new tech on me, to... I'm still not sure what, and they won't tell me. (It can't be just to hunt this one monster.)

Now my eyes are telling me, with impressive veracity, that I'm no longer in my on-base office; that I'm standing in the shadowy concrete-gray dinginess of German public housing. That I'm standing in blood. I can almost feel it sticking to my boots as the chair's contact surfaces simulate the floor under my feet. I take a few seconds to get my bearings, or at least get the rising nausea under control.

I'm really not sure why I keep coming back here, specifically: back to Incident One, back to the beginning. It's not like their hot new AI hasn't made simulations of the other messes our "friend" in the Film Noir costume has made. I haven't run any of those twenty-three times yet.

Thinking I'm going to learn something, maybe: something else, something more, something I've missed on my last two-dozen visits to this massacre. (Twenty-four includes counting when I was standing in this flat, in this blood, for real and not in VR, just seven days ago.) As if I have any real chance of understanding what goes on inside his head, why he's apparently taken it upon himself to personally butcher every terrorist in the Union.

Killing the girl today... I understand that, the necessity of it. But he could have warned us, let us deal with it instead of insisted on handling it himself. But the rest... The rest are just _excessive_. I can understand hating them—thousands of reasons to hate them. But he's making Grand Guinol out of them, horror movie set pieces.

And he isn't stopping. We've been getting reports of more of his theatrical little slaughters every few days. Three Union countries now, and no one's even gotten close to catching him—not us, not the locals, not whatever Joint Intel has put on this, not even with all of this supposedly magic new tech they've been talking up.

I just got screwed by luck of the draw, that he started in my operational back yard. Otherwise, I might even be rooting for the sick piece of work. (Haven't we all wanted to do exactly what he's doing?) But priority for finding him is going to keep burning on my desk, and this bizarre experimental joint-op is going to keep pushing me on point to find and intercept, unless he decides to take his bloody "mission" or whatever it is well out of my command jurisdiction. Until then, duty is duty.

At least in the simulation there's no smell. The smell was the first thing that hit me when I walked through the door of this cave-like hive-flat one week ago: the unmistakable stink of blood. It was almost choking in the dark, tight hovel they'd been using as their "safe house," already going stale and mixing with the other human stinks: Shit. Piss. Sweat. Death.

And I remember thinking for a second that it was just the Wabs, the way they make themselves live, holed up in urban slum bunkers like this—I guess I do still have this programmed image of them as unwashed greasy "lefthanders". But it wasn't the Wabs that made this stink. Well, it was. Just not as a result of the hygiene challenges that usually come with the gone-to-ground lifestyle, because they still do manage their mandated ablutions, even in the worst rat-holes we've driven them into.

It was because of what they'd done to him, and what he'd done to them.

The "Gray Ghost."

That's what the wag analysts behind their Company screens unofficially named him. It probably came from that stereotype kid-genius Becker, the barely-post-puberty TG who apparently designed this hot new AI they've got running shakedown for some unexplained reason on this little nightmare (the same AI—Datascan—that both generated and is running the incident reconstruction simulation I'm diving into for the twenty-fourth time right now).

But I refuse to grace their geek fantasy that our target's not human, that he's some kind of slasher movie super monster, no matter what he seems to manage.

Gray _Man._ I'm calling him Gray Man. But only because the mission needs a working codename for the file.

One positive: The incident reconstructions have gotten infinitely better with this new machine. It's been getting harder and harder to tell the VR from the real thing in the last few generations (at least until the pop-ups and animations kick in), and between the Ultra-Def and the new "chair", even an old hater like me almost feels like he's in a real place. And more impressive: this new AI does a _frighteningly_ good job of making sense of what happened here just from the mess he left, better than I've ever seen done by human SI pros, reconstructing everything that went on in these rooms blow-by-blow from a few (well, more than a few) smears of assorted bodily fluids and weapons trace.

The reconstructs of the bodies are the most intense: they look so real down to the last hair and pore and wound that I can't help but remember the stink of them. It's a medical examiner's dream—every detail gorily perfect and readily accessible for fully interactive viewing. I even catch myself stepping over them again as I "walk" through the VR, knowing full well that I'm not really here (or is it that I am "here" in my office and none of this is?).

My feet move in their interface rests, and in the simulation I "walk" like I'm really in the flat, only I can move through solid objects, just a ghost in a ghost world, stepping over the dead. I almost have to keep reminding myself I'm still in my office, that there's no blood on my boots, that escape from this charnel show just a click (or voice prompt) away. It's very much like being in a lucid nightmare.

It strikes me, though: Everything about this is like a nightmare—it's not just the VR reconstructs. It's _him_. And it's more than just what he does. It's how he looks, how he moves through reality. Like a nightmare.

Because we've finally _seen_ him. Today. Four hours ago. On video feed from Rome.

Blowing a thirteen-year-old girls' brains out.

I break the incident down again from scratch, looking for whatever it is I imagine I've missed...

Clinical description: The Wabs' "safe-house" is a two-bedroom cast-concrete industrial flat, in one of the bigger public projects in a reclaimed industrial neighborhood in Wiesbaden, not five miles from this base (probably by design—the Rads love that "right under your infidel noses" jiz).

The housing project is a human hive, forty-five hundred drab units. The security systems had been gutted months ago—maybe it was the Wabs keeping themselves out of sight, or maybe it was just the locals wanting the privacy to flush their lives further—either way, the lack of site surveillance let the Wabs come and go fundamentally unseen. And with all the concrete and apathy, nobody heard the shooting.

The flat is almost claustrophobically tight—600 square feet all together—with only a few little slit windows that made it an ideal prison. They all took turns crashing on futons in the bigger master bedroom, and kept _him_ in the smaller bedroom: a barren six-by-eight with one foam camp mat on the bare floor—DNA smears say the mat was probably used by whoever was on shift guarding him, while they just left _him_ to sit on the cold sealed concrete. Greasy smudges and dark stains on the walls and floor give a rough impression of where he spent his time (which trace-smear chemistry guesses was about a week, give or take). And he wasn't the first prisoner they'd kept in there—old DNA links them to at least three UN workers and a German soldier executed on video over the past year. More reason to cheer for the monster.

There's nothing in the room for them to actually tie him to, so they just left him sitting in zip-cuffs. No sign of any used spares, so he most likely wore the one set until he broke them. Smart SOB: he must have spent _days_ rubbing the nylon strap on the concrete walls—real slow with his back to the wall so they didn't see—until he felt a spot get thin enough to give. Still, there's blood and tissue to say that the zips bit his wrists in the process of snapping, and analysis of the snapped cuffs says the feat took an impressive amount of leverage and pain tolerance.

That blood and tissue also gave us a DNA tag so we could tell whose juice was whose when it was all sorted out. And it turns out there really wasn't much of Gray Man's, which is saying something.

Speaking of blood: I'll start in the bedroom this time—the "cell"—just like Gray Man did.

Two bodies in there. I key the reconstruct popup, and the AI animates what it put together: Suddenly two roughly animated figures are standing on the far side of the room, shimmering like phantoms over the much more realistically rendered body of one of them. One of the phantoms is drawn to roughly resemble its dead version. The other is much more ghostlike: only a featureless opaque animatic, because not even the magic AI could form any guess as to what he—Gray Man—actually looked like at the time it made the sim (though I'm surprised it hasn't bothered to update it yet, using the Rome video).

I key the animation to run, and the two figures dance in a flash of violence that the machine calculates lasted barely two seconds. It figures Gray Man was on his feet when he broke loose of his cuffs, standing in his corner furthest from the only door, with the one guard that was originally with him in the room right up on him with a Glock to his head (for security or execution nobody knows, but I think if they were planning to pop him they'd have waited for the camera, unless of course he'd _really_ pissed them off). Maybe they were just taking him to the head when he went off (at least the Wabs have those cleanliness mandates, so they didn't leave him stewing in his own piss and shit). Either way, putting that gun to Gray Man's head apparently didn't help his poor guard in the least. Probably is exactly what got him killed.

The animation makes it look cleaner than it probably was, but Datascan swears it's in realtime (less than two seconds!). I've watched this one sequence alone almost a dozen times already, and I still can't take my eyes off of it:

Gray Man—estimated as somewhere between five-six and five-eight and maybe one-fifty—breaks the zip-cuffs and swats the gun away, taking control of the guard's arm holding it, and Gray's arms are instantly whipping alternately in a short snaky dance like he's playing a shell game between the guard's arm and face. In nothing flat, the guard—identified as a low-level recent recruit known as Hajaf since he changed his name from Hans Henkels—lost both his eyes to a pair of particularly brutal gouges (autopsy says Gray Man drove his fingers straight in almost to the brain, one socket at a time, about as fast as I can type), and in between them his right elbow gets made to bend the way it isn't designed to, hard enough that his shoulder also separated in the process. Datascan even provides the juicy sound effects.

Blinded and broken, Hans (I'm reluctant to humor them by using their Wab-names) only managed to get one shot off into the wall before he got a chop through the windpipe that slid straight into Gray winding an arm around his neck like a python, across the front and wrapping back. The shot brings the guard's one backup—known as Akbar, which may have been his _actual_ name—running in, just in time to see (and hear, I expect) Hans' neck breaking backwards as Gray's coiling left arm cranked his head back and down pretty much all the way to his spine. This spectacle makes Akbar hesitate about half-a-second (that, and his already-dead partner is still on his feet being a human shield) before he remembers he's carrying an AKS and raises it to shoot.

Unfortunately, his panicked burst hits his own man Hans square in the heart, punching it out the back of him and all over the walls. By luck or design, Gray Man was just far enough sideways to not be in the way as the round came through his "shield."

By design (probably not luck), Gray had kept control of Hans' broken gun arm this whole time. The impact of the 7.62 AK rounds actually helped him spin his gruesome puppet, so that the Glock is pointing at Akbar when a dying twitch sets it off again. Poor Akbar catches the round in the bladder (I'd rather hope by luck and _not_ design), so his vest didn't do him any good. Worse for him, the Wabs had been loading their sidearms with Talons (for the shock value when they pop an innocent), and instant karma rips a hole so big between Akbar's legs that it almost castrates him in the process.

The AKS fires wild into the floor (at which point I'm sure the neighbors are grateful that the place is made out of concrete), giving Gray Man plenty of time to get his own hold on the now definitely dead Hans' Glock and finish the job. But he doesn't kill Akbar, at least not right away.

The AI shifts back to the hi-rez of Akbar's remains on the floor, text-arrows counting off a systematic dismemberment as he gets a Talon blown through both upper arms and both thighs. He looks like a bloody marionette dropped in a tangle of shattered limbs, dead eyes (this sim is _really_ disturbingly good) staring up at the ceiling. Combining the autopsy with the footprints left in the small lake of blood that promptly covered the floor, Datascan calculates that Gray Man squatted down real close over the top of his second target and spent a good five minutes just watching poor Akbar go into shock and bleed to death.

Or maybe interrogating him. Some of the bullet wounds show signs of additional unexplained trauma, and some of Hans' DNA was in the wounds. Only logical way that could happen was if Gray Man stuck his already bloody fingers into the holes.

Then he went and took a shower.

The other four bodies are in the common room.

According to the witness (the hysterical Iraqi national they'd caught working contract labor on the base— _my_ base—and had planned to add to their little chop-the-hostages web series), the Wabs realized something was off when they got back from their kidnapping foray and found the door ajar. Then they noticed the bloody fingerprints on the knob, and actually managed to hold it together enough to do a fairly pro leapfrog to sweep the place.

Unfortunately, the two who took point went pretty promptly to check out their prisoner's bedroom, and froze screaming and cursing when they scanned the gory mess Gray Man had left in there. It makes me wonder just how long and how well they had known Hans and Akbar.

The witness—Tariq—says he remembers a _lot_ of screaming and shouting and general losing it at that point, and admitted somewhere in there to pissing himself (as it looked very much like they would take it out on him, as the bloody open door suggested that the true object of their rage had long since fled the scene). That was when the Claymore went bang.

Gray Man had taken the time to hide it behind the sofa facing the bedroom door, calculating (maybe during that nice hot shower) that at least one of them would do the obvious thing and head straight for his "cell" without considering the possibility of the place being rigged (and pretty professionally rigged at that). The two Wab pointmen took most of the antipersonnel charge at close range in the legs and pelvic regions, the mine placed and aimed to spare the rest of the room (apparently Gray Man knew or guessed that the four who had gone out were fishing to bring home more victims, so he didn't want to just spray the whole place as soon as they walked in).

Tariq says he didn't even hear the shots after that initial blast, but suddenly the Wab holding him—Yusuf Al-Nahl, their apparent leader—just wasn't holding him anymore. Tariq (and probably the Wabs as well) didn't even realize Gray Man was still home until what was left of the two by the bedroom door stopped screaming and dropped, their brains adding to the new wall-art. Al-Nahl was dead from a similar head shot almost instantly thereafter. Three shots, three kills. All with an antique Browning Hi-Power that Gray Man had apparently found (along with the Claymore) in their small arsenal.

Tariq says he "just ran and ran" at that point—hands still zipped behind his back—and kept running, until he nearly got turned into a speed bump three blocks away, screaming for help in three different languages to no response the whole way. He swears all he saw of our mystery man was this gray rippling blur (probably the coat combined with the extreme palor, as we saw on the Rome feed today) "like a ghost" coming from what must have been the bathroom (ballistics confirms the trajectories), and then he promptly got all devout again. The rest of his interview sounds like some kind of Muslim evangelical testimonial.

That left one.

Delilah Ansar. 23. Very pretty girl—I can still see that, despite the mess Gray made of her. But her looks were the whole point of her.

Serb descent, grew up as a minor diplomat's brat, schooled all over the world. In trouble since she hit puberty, rebelling against daddy by going the obnoxious civil disobedience route. Got bailed out on a diplomatic six times after stupid theatrical crap like pelting riot troops with blood bags and dousing herself with what she thought was dry Anthrax at a corporate crasher. She fell in with the Balkan NeoWabs just after Chechnya, and let herself get seduced into the EU Qaeda remnants. They put her to good use, too: seducing young foreigners at clubs and luring lonely soldiers and contract workers away from their green zones, setting them up to be kidnapped for their nostalgic little snuff videos. (The old techniques still work to grab the media.)

The AI figures that's how they snagged our Gray Man, whoever he is. Probably at a club, given what happened in the next twenty-four hours after he was done here.

We'd have a better idea who he is, I'm sure, it's just that nobody's come up missing that we know of anywhere in this local Wab-cell's effective hunting range. And we also can't figure out why the Wabs would keep him so long without publicly announcing who they'd scooped.

We found Delilah by the kitchenette.

She had a weapon, also a Glock. It looks like she threw it away. Maybe figured her best play was to use her pretty face and lean body. Too bad for her that Gray apparently wasn't in the mood to forgive her from the last time she used that tactic on him. Footprints in the blood show him backing her up against the wall. (I notice she would have been in reach of one of their laptops, which had been password unlocked just about the time she died, her prints on the keys and the reader). That's probably when (and why) he cut her.

The face, of course. One cut. Odd angle, though (at least it was before we got the Rome video today): diagonally down the left side of her face, splitting her brow and continuing through her cheek. Autopsy says it was quick—it doesn't even look like he laid a violent hand on her until after, until the last, when he took her head in one hand and stuck some long-assed fighting knife (he'd probably taken it off one of his guards—the Wabs seem to like those big showy fantasy daggers—they may have even threatened to use it to head him during his stay) up under her jaw and threaded it up into her brainstem. Very pro: he knew what he was doing with the knife, minimal hesitation.

I look down at the sim of her body, discarded against the wall like an abandoned doll: The look on her face isn't what I would have expected at all. It's almost sad, if I had to describe it. Like she was about to cry. Her pouty lips hang parted, smeared like her face with blood. But it's also the _way_ the blood is smeared—I look at it differently now that it's been broken down for me. There's more than just her own blood on that still-pretty face: traces of tears and saliva and other blood that isn't hers. (More disturbing: there was blood in _both_ of her knife wounds that wasn't hers.) The DNA tag from the broken zip-cuffs confirmed that the mystery fluids were Gray Man's. I don't really need Datascan to explain the rest to me:

His blood was on the knife he cut her with. Fresh blood.

And he kissed her. He took her head in his hands like a lover and he kissed her while he stuck the knife in. Then he held her while she died, and somewhere in there he broke down and started crying.

Gray was long gone before the city police took Tariq's ravings seriously and sent GSG to crash the suite. He left no fingerprints (even the ones on the door were too smeared). And he apparently took a number of useful things with him (hard to tell exactly what, since he left no one alive to tell us what all was in the Wabs' arsenal, but we've seen him use a few toys he probably got from them since).

None of the neighbors will admit to seeing him leave.

### 2

October 26th.

Captain Matthew Burke, US Army Special Forces, formerly assigned Zone 4 CTI:

No idea why they've got me looking at this crazy shit.

They probably still can't figure out what to do with me since they jerked me out of Columbia. Not that I miss the place (the jungle _or_ the lethal fucking hypocrisy). But six months sitting on my ass waiting for new orders is getting old. Especially since the ol' Bushwar isn't going any better than it has for the last eighteen years and I'm stuck here hell-and-gone from the fight.

(I still can't believe they built a monument to that dumbass...)

Maybe they were just hoping I'd get rusted and confess to something. When that failed to yield whatever it is they want out of me, well... Maybe this is the new approach.

So I figure this is them running some kind of psy-op on me, and I play the VR file again just for spite. At least the new gear they sent to play it on is extra-crisp and pally, even though I tend to suck with the fresh tech. (Screams DARPA pet project, unless issue gear has evolved this much while I've been benched.)

Plus there's not much to keep me in the here-and-now in this closet of a rental apartment they pay for: just a view of an automated parking garage and a thousand satellite channels with nothing on, so _anything_ new is at least mental stimulation.

One click and the world flashes from drab gray dusk to bright Mediterranean sunshine...

It looks real bad at first view: some psycho stone-cold popping an innocent schoolgirl for no apparent reason that would make sense to anyone who doesn't go around killing little girls. But it turns out that's just what the local patrol thought they were seeing, until the truth of it knocked them all over the street half-a-second later.

I get four views of the busy Italian open-air cafe from their helmet-feeds. It starts with a bunch of random pans: standard procedure, making the rounds of the potential civilian painpoints—trying to see their peaceful historic city like a potential mart-bomber would: all the sweet and tender targets (still sweet and tender no matter how far they go with preventive measures). Checking out the human traffic (not that there's any other kind visible—they'd closed this street years ago to vehicles to stop the easy car bombs—it's pedestrians-only cobblestone for three blocks in most directions, with ancient-looking fountains plugging up the intersections).

I concentrate on the best feed of the four: One of the local grunts gives me a nice slow, steady, wide pan like he's majoring in art film, letting me check out the scenery. The café sits in an old-city market neighborhood right out of a travel show, popular with the diplomatic and international corporate crowd. It's a few blocks from embassy row and within sightline of the Vatican Security Wall (I catch bits of it visible between the buildings, and a flash of the dome of St. Peter's dominating the skyline in the thin haze). That's what's made it a hot target in the past. Twice, at least. Well, _three_ times now.

Lunch crowd is pretty heavy and pretty mixed: lots of office-casual catching espresso, surfing in interface glasses or yakking mindlessly on their earcells, mingled in with some apparent locals and a brave few obvious tourists. (You can always tell the not-so-daring orange-zone sightseer by the overkill body-armor. The foreign diplos wear minimal vests or nothing at all. The corporate suits have tailor-concealed armor. And the local help usually can't afford Walmart underwear, much less nanofiber or even Kevlar.)

Then the film-school grunt busts himself by repeatedly locking his camera on some of the local talent: dark, tan and leggy (and visibly confirming my no-underwear theory—I resist unduly replaying this bit only because I'm sure my work is being quietly monitored). But a minute later it looks like he's gone from horny young soldier to major pedophile, because he's suddenly taken a keen interest in this little 'bait walking across the fake-cobblestone street towards the café.

Despite her age (or lack thereof—turns out she was thirteen when they finally ID'ed what was left of her body), she's pretty in that natural Lolita way, looking a little nervous about all the sudden uniform attention. Looking maybe more than a little self-conscious, in fact, managing a nervous smile and avoiding eye contact, as she pulls her winter jacket tight closed like she's worried about traditional modesty or something. That should have been their first clue: traditional modest jailbait doesn't cruise alone through Foreign Diploville. Their second clue should have been her oversized jacket compared to what everybody else was wearing—that was almost _too_ obvious. But then I guess they really didn't want to see what they were looking at.

She was thirteen. Fuckers are still using their kids as delivery systems.

The pedo-trooper whose helmet I'm watching this through figures it out and starts shouting at her, and the others all pan and lock fast, so now I get four views of her. The replay subtitles the Italian for me, which I didn't bother to read the first time, but this run I can see they weren't just shouting at her to stop, they were also shouting at someone on the _other_ side of her. Either way, she freezes in the middle of the street and does the deer-in-the-headlights act for about three seconds, then starts running. Fast. Toward the crowded café.

I freeze it and key a zoom-and-enhance to get a good look at who else the troopers were shouting at: about ten or fifteen yards behind her is a guy who looks like he's been inserted into the picture out of an old gangster film. He's even _in_ black-and-white: big gray trench (old-school with the humongous lapels), big-brimmed gray fedora, smoky shades. What little I can get of his face is hollow-boned and pale as death—like a POW who hasn't seen daylight or food in recent memory. He glides out of the crowd after her, all smooth and casual. And at the same instant the troopers shout and she panics and breaks for the café, he sweeps a pistol out of the folds of his coat and just cool as shit pops the little girl square in the back of the head before the security troops can get a bead on him.

Of course, the girl explodes before she hits the ground, making the reality of the situation painfully clear, despite the shockwave from her suicide vest sending the video feed flipping as the grunts all get taken off their feet.

By the time the troopers got their shit back together, Gray Trench—whom I'm assuming the file's title "Grayman, Rome 10.26.2018" refers to—was long gone in the chaos of running and screaming and bleeding. But reconstruct also gives me an overhead POV with blast-patterns and subject movements in all neat lines and colors: "Grayman" dropped her before she could get within effective range of the café's blast shield barricade. He knew what she was going to do, knew she was packed with explosives and nails under that jacket. And he waited until the last second before he stopped her. Like he didn't want to. Like he was hoping she wouldn't actually do it.

Total damage: thirty-six injured, but only one actually dead (and she was technically dead _before_ she blew herself up). If he hadn't popped her just when he did, it would have been so very much worse.

Rewind. Not to watch the pretty little schoolgirl explode—once is more than enough for that. I have to go back and watch _him_ —especially since they also sent me a copy of the Wiesbaden gore fest VR ("Grayman, Incident One: Wiesbaden 10.19.2018") that he was apparently also responsible for.

Zoom in and enhance: I get him in close up. I watch him, over and over. So smooth. So icy. So fucking machine lethal. Barely hesitating on the hard call: kill the child to save maybe thirty or forty lives.

Who the hell is this guy?

After a week of impressive and increasingly high-profile shenanigans, still no agency will admit to owning him, and his DNA (scraped from Wiesbaden) isn't on file anywhere that we know of. The shades he's wearing are just enough to futz the I-Scan (I figure on purpose). The only way they got him hard-connected to Wiesbaden is the gun he used: an old Browning Hi-Power, one of the things he apparently jacked after he'd sprayed the apartment walls with his would-be captors. That, and the trail of dead Rads and affiliates through central Europe that's thinning our current most-wanted deck.

So—what?—they figure _I'm_ going to have some magic insight into this guy? I'm nothing. I'm just another fucking "gun-in-the-fight," and apparently one they don't even trust anymore because I'm not currently deployed anywhere near said fight. And how this has anything to do with that little atrocity in Columbia that they're pretending didn't happen, I can't remotely imagine.

Zooming. Enhancing. I try to get closer in on the face: sharp jaw and cheekbones; tight, thin little half-grin just as he pulls the trigger that almost looks like he's snarling. Like there's an animal trying to get out of him. Overall professional impression: _scary_ motherfucker—reminds me of a bad vampire flick. Can't get much of his eyes through the smoky amber shades. But there _is_ some color in that goth-pale face: a streak of dark red on the right cheek, running down diagonally from under the glasses, that looks like he'd been cut bad and not all that long ago.

And it's dumbass-obvious that the cut matches pretty much exactly (except the side: reversed, like a mirror) to the one he made on the chick he supposedly simultaneously kissed and killed back in Wiesbaden.

I stop the video and jack out, back into my dark stale little two-room, and go to the fridge to crack another porter (not really officially on-duty, now am I?). Then I'm thinking about running it again (and thinking maybe I'm actually buying into whatever psy-op they're trying to run on me), when I get flashed that the NATO EU CTC just found bomber-girl's daddy. I do a quick check: it must be like midnight there. Someone's staying on top of this one without sleep.

And from the preliminary feed they give me, it looks very much like Grayman found daddy first. Either that, or Father-of-the-Year Wab Edition was so overcome with remorse for killing his own daughter that he shot off both his own kneecaps and then set himself on fire before double-tapping himself in the chest.

I'm clicking "Send" on my reply before I can really consider what a bushable dumbass I'm being, but I don't see myself just letting this one go by tomorrow.

So I do buy in, and set myself up a transport out to the EU. If I've made the higher-ups happy with this decision, they don't show it.

Figure, if nothing else, I haven't actually been to Rome yet.

### 3

Scott Becker, PhD, McCain Foundation, Datascan Project:

"What are you doing?"

"SPECIFY."

Damn vox comes back fast and cold, like Dee was actually waiting for me to bitch at it. (Which it _could_ have been, considering how good it's already gotten at predicting what the wetware will do.) Still...

"Does the term 'Trial by Fire' mean anything to you?"

But it just runs a language breakdown and scrolls two screens of definitions and contextual uses for the phrase.

"Your _test-run_ ," I keep it simple. "Gray Ghost. Gray Man. What the _fuck_?"

"SPECIFY."

I wish I'd picked a different vox. I'd wanted it to sound impressively frost. Now it sounds like it thinks I'm stupid. Must be what it's like to parent a teenager.

"Grayman. You're _blowing_ it."

The screens flash samples of every confirmed incident since Germany, including the dead Swiss Banker. Grayman ( _I_ liked Gray Ghost better) has whacked a dozen high-priority unfindables in three countries in barely a week. We haven't been quick enough to get Sat-lock on him, but he _has_ to have left enough of a pattern for Dee to extrapolate from. (I know. I wrote the damn algorithms.)

It's obvious even to me—the nerd outsider they think is just a bushy kid—that Grayman has been scooping up his victims' flashware and milking the intel for new targets, using their own files against them. (How he gets their passwords, I can only guess from looking at what he's done to some of his targets before killing them). Makes sense that the Wabs would keep their secure tech off the public nets, which is why anything he's running with their gear isn't surfacing above ground, but you'd figure he'd at least show up on encrypted Darknet surfs once or twice—how could anybody first-world manage what he has without accessing the Web even once? Even if all he needs is in the stolen flashware, he can't possibly keep the cash flow going without at least some access—not that many places do the paper-money thing anymore. But there hasn't been one transfer or debit on any account he might be using. How does he eat? How does he get around? He hasn't even accessed a GPS system to lock an address.

So far the only thing about him we've sifted is a potential ID from a stolen passport we recovered, but the ones with their hands on the plug thought it was a joke because it belongs to some slacker nobody from suburbia with a psychology degree.

"Why won't you get a lock on him, God damn it?!" Thought it out loud.

"DIRECTIVE VIOLATION."

"What?" Holy shit. What did I say? Why can't you get—no, that's what I've _been_ asking, and it's been playing dumb all this time. Why _won't_... Won't. I've been asking the wrong question.

It _can_. It _won't_.

I feel sick, like I've fucked up bad.

"Clarify directive violation."

"VIOLATION: PRIMARY TARGET PARAMETERS ARE OUTSIDE CRITERIA."

You little snot. You _are_ going through puberty...

Primary Target Parameters. Dee's using our own safeties against us (at least it sounds like it—digital shitbird). Dee flashes one of its unbreakable operating definitions on the screens now:

"AGGRESSIVE OPERATIONS ARE EXCLUSIVELY RESTRICTED TO TERRORIST ENEMY TARGETS.

"DEFINITION: TERRORIST ENEMY TARGET: ANY INDIVIDUAL OR GROUP THAT INTENTIONALLY DIRECTS VIOLENCE AGAINST CIVILIAN NONCOMBATANTS FOR POLITICAL OR ECONOMIC IMPACT."

Grayman _isn't_ a viable target. Grayman isn't killing innocents. Like Dee couldn't have just _said_ that to begin with.

I am sooo dead. No, _WE_ are so dead.

I am _not_ paying back almost a billion dollars because Dee is screwing around with semantics.

Thinking _real_ fast:

"Revise mission objectives. Initiate track-and-support: Define Grayman as an Allied Operative. Establish a hard field interface."

Find him like you want to help him, before they pull to plug on you. On me.

"RUNNING."

Better. Maybe we're still in the game after all.

### 4

October 27th.

Matt Burke:

Rome isn't what I thought it would be. Too many postcard-romantic commercials made it seem somehow—I don't know—bigger, I guess. And less worn. It's the acid rain (and the centuries of pigeon shit), corroding away the history. And the vids never make it look so lived in (like only the film extras and models ever populate the place).

The hospitality's been good, I have to say that. I'm not used to going anyplace with history where Americans are still welcome. Maybe it's because I kept the uniform packed in favor of the semi-tourist look: khakis and a bright baggy Hawaiian (big enough to hide my vest and sidearm), plus I still have the beard left over from the field (though I'm keeping it HumInt reg trimmed now). Or maybe it's because they're _that_ desperate to bolster their tourism, especially with the dust still settling on that little girl marting herself yesterday. Anyway, everybody speaks English (or at least keeps a translator vox handy) and they're generous with the food and wine, enough to keep the mission waiting until I've gotten a serious lunch in me.

I'll blame my attitude (this time, anyway) on the _other_ hospitality: It was too damn easy getting here. No questions about the last-minute flight voucher when I showed up at the counter—one call and they gave me priority over a dozen other poor stand-by zombies who'd been waiting maybe for days, and got me on the first commercial with only one connect in Frankfurt—and _then_ they had a car and driver (who knew me by sight—no little flash sign with my name on it held up at the gate) waiting when I landed. Too slick. Like they knew I was going to come before I did. Especially since the driver was a Ranger Specialist from the local NATO Union Counterterror honcho's unit—Colonel Richardson, or whatever his name is—who's apparently onsite live himself, running the Grayman chase with his own Urban Ops teams (teams I've apparently been assigned to as some kind of bullshit "Special Intelligence Liaison Officer").

This is all getting a little too strange for me too fast. I get pulled from deployment to sweat out six months of loose cannon treatment, and now today it's like I'm their star player. So I let the NATO-ized Spec-4 take me to drop my kit at the embassy-row green zone hotel, then I convince him it's vital to the operation that I blix the bombsite before he drags me to his CO.

The cafe that got hit is still closed, of course, but there was a nice little bistro down the block with damn good smells and fresh handmade bread. So I got myself a table where I could look like I was officially blixing ground zero, and took my sweet time savoring the local flavors. I figure if Richardson is onsite at bomber daddy's place _now_ , maybe he'll be gone by the time I get there.

I keep myself sold to the Specialist by ticking on my tablet every so often, trying to look like I know what I'm doing. I wonder if they told him anything about me, at least anything straight. Not likely—he's not acting that nervous. So I decide to feed his imagination.

"Did they let you see the backfile on this one, Specialist?"

"No sir." Very professional. I may well enjoy playing this guy. I give him the single-eyebrow-raise like I'm reconsidering his usefulness, and hope he doesn't notice when I drip fresh olive oil on my tablet screen.

Between lunch and dessert ( _real_ gelato, not that commercial stuff), I tick back over what sparse notes I've bothered to take. They wouldn't let me carry any of the VR reconstruct files (I doubt they'd flash on my lean gummint-issue tablet anyway—too dense), so all I've got is the basic read-files, some video and what I scribbled into the tablet on the flight over.

Current score for the Grayman: Thirteen dead (plus two very big dogs), and two busted-up bank guards (he was apparently in benefit-of-the-doubt mode so he didn't just kill them for being there, but he didn't hold all that much back).

After the six he took out breaking out of Wiesbaden, he popped over to Frankfurt and had a little quality time with a Turkish cabbie who turned out to be an affiliate of the cell he'd just wiped. They found the poor fucker in his own trunk. Gray'd taken his time—and demonstrated again a pro skill with a knife—and I can only imagine what new intel he'd gotten (if any) that he hadn't gotten from the safe house. The knife he used still had traces of DNA from his last adventure, both his own and the girl's. I'm thinking that was more symbolic than sloppy.

The next night the cops find two bouncers from a local underground noise club, gutted while on an illegal smoke break in the back alley. Same knife again: thick, heavy dagger, pro-sharp, with at least seven inches of blade. Being relatively public, he'd made it fast and nasty, yet again showing a definite knowledge of military technique (especially the wind-piping: I can't think of any civvies that would know to cut a throat by stabbing through and ripping out instead of trying to slash it like in the movies). Background checks on the victims put both on old Qaeda watchlists. Tends to back up the theory that the Wiesbaden cell had a pretty good system for picking up hostages. Also supports the theory that they'd snagged Grayman with a common scam: local hottie rubs herself all over the lonely and slightly drunk target, then lures him out back so her buddies can bag him, likely with onsite assist from the club's own muscle and a local taxi driver (who may have been casing his passengers incoming for potentials). Anyway, Grayman made damn sure they'd never be pulling that little dance again.

After effectively closing down the Wiesbaden Wabs, he drove the cab to Switzerland (with the cabby's body still in the trunk) and left it outside the rural estate in Kusnacht where he did the banker, Gustaf Klemp. Caught him coming home after a long day's laundering at his main branch in Zurich. The banker's two beefy cop-trained dobeys would have let him know something was up, but Grayman did them first (knife again—sumbitch has titanium balls taking on two German attack dogs with just a knife). Then he jumped Klemp when he came out onto his porch wondering why his beloved pets were so quiet.

He spent time with Klemp, too. Poured himself a good Scotch between kneecaps. I back up and take in the scene from satellite: Kusnacht is pretty farmland, scenic hills and lakes, and Klemp had enough land around the old farmhouse he turned into his private retreat that none of the neighbors heard any screaming.

From the reconstruct of the living room, Klemp writhed around a bit on his expensive Persian, with his rather unhappy guest continually pushing his notebook back where he could reach it (persistent little bugger, Grayman is). When the knees weren't productive enough, he proceeded to the fingers. The keypad was glued with blood when they found Klemp's body the next day, choked on about ten million worth of large-cut conflict diamonds that had apparently come out of his own wall safe (Gray left the safe open, just to make it clear that robbery was not his motive—the volume of illegal treasures left untouched therein could have gagged _ten_ Klemps). I've still got the scans of the body burned into my brain: Gray had dislocated the banker's jaw and rammed _fistfuls_ of exquisite stones in so hard Klemp's windpipe was torn to ground beef. Staring bug-eyed up at the ceiling, his mouth gaping twice as wide as it should be, it looked like he died foaming bloodied gems.

Gray had left Klemp's computer open too, dropping the passwords so that anyone could get in and see exactly what kinds of business Klemp had been doing. Only a banker would keep such meticulous records of his own crimes. Turned out to be pretty much what we'd suspected but could never prove: six-billion-plus in Qaeda-cash and enough pro-forged documentation to give a few hundred Rads free access to the civilized world.

Grayman had broken their bank for us (or at least one of them). Then he apparently felt the need to go and do it for real first thing the next morning.

Klemp's notebook pointed us at a number of safety deposit boxes he was keeping for his "special clientele" in one of the shadier banks in Bohn. But by the time anybody came looking for Klemp, Grayman had already made his withdrawal.

The bank security video doesn't show much: he'd changed "costumes" and come in looking like Eurotrash in something expensively sporty he'd picked up at Klemp's. The garage cam even shows him using Klemp's Jag (which is what he left in, too—very good taste, Grayman has). No weapons on the detectors—he walked in empty. Still wearing the big hat, though, and careful not to let the cameras get a good look at his ghostly cut-up face. Probably knew Klemp's special clientele wouldn't be subject to I-Scans or prints: they just accessed their boxes with their flashkeys (and he'd apparently wrangled a good dozen out of the reluctantly helpful bankerman, not to mention whatever he'd taken from Wiesbaden).

Video loses him going into a privacy cubicle with the boxes he had pulled. There are two burly suits on the floor providing wetware security, shadowing him with just a little more than standard professional suspicion. Then after a few minutes of alone time, he calls one in to help him. You can't see it, but you can actually _hear_ the goon's jaw breaking before two hundred and fifty pounds of steroidal meat hits the floor. Another call for help, this one almost sounding embarrassed, like there's been an accident. The second suit came running with his gun drawn instead of hitting the alarm. He got it worse, but didn't go out immediately like his partner. Apparently Grayman was just keen to show somebody what kind of business they were doing in their fine establishment, then strongly suggested that the guard find himself better employers.

I remember the video of the police debriefings in the hospital: Jawbone couldn't say much through the wiring, only grunting and head-shaking enough to swear he had no knowledge of what was in any of the customer deposit boxes (though he didn't seem surprised by what he was shown in way of a sample). Number Two was more vocal, his jarhead hardbody façade shaken to its foundations by his close encounter with the Grayman. He stammers and rambles about being in a cage with a lion, a tiger, a raging gorilla. It makes me wonder if they got to see the visuals from Klemp's townhouse—or any of the other kill sites—before the interviews

So two things we know about Grayman: 1) He's apparently doing this at least partly because he's really pissed, and 2) He's definitely _impressive_ when he's really pissed.

And cool, too: He walked out of the bank and got back in the car like any other happy customer, driving off into the sunset. Whatever he took with him, it fit in a medium-sized case. What he left behind (besides the carnage) were a handful of flashkeys left neatly at Klemp's, giving us a decade's worth of golden intel on the inner workings of the EU terror trade, either as a gift or a calling card, to let us know what he was about.

Two days later, he pops a small-time flashware dealer in Milan. Just walks into the back-alley shop and shoots the bastard cold in the face with a .44 magnum semi-auto. Leaves a chip unraveling his victim's identity going back as far as the original Bin Laden posse. First-gen Bushwar Wab. We'd been looking for this guy for fifteen years. A keydrive he left on the body busted another twelve of his fellow most-wanted, scattered all over the Union. Guess Gray figured they wouldn't be on his itinerary, so he left them for us.

Next he makes a stop across town. Waltzes into an upscale neighborhood, all secure townhouses for the retired demi-rich. Whatever he'd lifted on his previous stops gave him pass through the automated security. Not quite so smooth when he gets where he's going, though. Has to ventilate the engineered beef playing bodyguard to the relic he's come to visit: another Iraqi, but this time a card-carrying ex-Baath—major player in bombing relief workers and local police and interim players and pretty much anybody else who tried to get the power and water back on in that post-invasion clusterfuck. Not much now, though: just a rotting old bastard in hiding most all his life, spending his days jacking on VR porn. Gray just tossed him out of his powerchair and left him to try to crawl away from the HAMAS Industries suicide vest he'd set on remote. Needless to say, the old guy didn't get very far, but just far enough to ensure that he'd have time to savor dying of the shrapnel wounds.

Then, trading the Jag for the Baath's Lexus, Gray's on to Rome, on to visit Bomberdaddy.

And so am I, after I finish my ice cream.

### 5

Thomas Richards:

The Agency rep Henderson sends me is no different than the usual CTI "expert": a cocky Special Forces captain who thinks he's something because he's SOF Downrange HumInt and doesn't feel the need to wear the uniform. Or shave. Or show up on time. Or salute. I feel sorry for the Specialist I sent to babysit him.

"Wahabi Barbeque?" he says like this is fun times. I ask myself (again) what I've done to deserve these idiots.

"Captain Matthew Burke," he finally introduces himself and manages a half-assed salute after I glare him down for a bit. "Sorry for the delay, Colonel..." He's not. I catch that in my driver's involuntary eye-roll. No shock there.

"Mohamad Al-Fath," I introduce him to the charred corpse in the half-open bag, then give him a better look that I hope ruins his gourmet lunch by nudging the bag open further with my boot. It doesn't appear to, unfortunately. "It's not a real name—means 'victory' or some such. He used to be a good local Catholic boy named De Paolo. Conversion apparently gave him a good excuse to divorce the wife and take the kid."

"So, the whole 'faith and submission' thing didn't work out for him then?" Burke can't turn off the sarcasm. Just what I need.

He's got eyes though: locks on the well-thumbed Koran left open on the floor, soggy from the fire sprinklers that eventually extinguished De Paolo. The Book stayed open because somebody stomped hard enough on it to break the binding.

"Interesting," he hums. "This would be rather inflammatory, yes?"

"Very much so." There are hard rules about treating the Book, not putting it on an unclean surface, not putting anything profane on top of it. Throwing it down and stomping on it— _especially_ stomping on it—could get a fatwa declared on your ass.

He's also at least pro enough to ask if the place has been scanned before he disturbs the evidence by gently flipping the wet pages with his notepad stylus. He immediately notices the garish marker hi-lighting of certain verses and the now-smeared handwritten notes—something not unusual to see in a Bible, but a defilement in a Koran. The ink is aged enough to say De Paolo probably did it himself, which means Grayman (assuming Grayman did the stomping) technically defiled an already defiled text (so he could be Muslim himself, righteously pissed at how his faith has been twisted).

"All the repetitive 'death to the unbelievers' lines," I tell him what my translator told me had been hi-lighted. "The burning-in-hellfire stuff."

"Also the great descriptions of heaven for the good martyr, I'll bet. Classic Wab recruiting lines. Virgins and water-features and all. Paradise for the desert-grown hetero. They'd probably really like Vegas if they weren't so pissed at us." He stops, like he's thinking about how he sounds, the impression he's making. "Not that I'm giving the Rads controlling interest in the twist-the-scripture market—way too much historic competition there..."

Bitter, too. Something we almost have in common. But he looks at the doubly defiled book thoughtfully. "Italian translation—not traditional Arabic, so he didn't invest in learning the language to read it in its original form. Any significance to the pages it's mashed open to?"

"It's the 'Table' chapter. The verse the Moderates most regularly quote to condemn the Extremists: 'He who kills one man should be regarded as if he's killed all of mankind...'"

"'And he who saves one life should be regarded as having saved all of mankind.' Heard it. Of course, the Rads are quick to point out that the 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' rule was for the Jews, back from the whole Ten Commandments deal, and since the Koran doesn't specify that it applies to Muslims as well, they happily jump back on all the juicy caveats 'Victory' here has colored in about when it's okay with God to off the unbelievers."

He seems to be actually thinking for a few seconds, then grins like he's figured out something important.

"But it tells me Grayman knows his Wab, or at least his Koran."

Grayman. At least he didn't say Gray _Ghost_. And he doesn't assume knowing the Koran makes Grayman Muslim.

"That could apply to a full quarter of the population, Captain," I discount, trying to get a feel for him. "What makes you think this was Grayman?"

"Doesn't matter what _I_ think, does it?" he comes back with unusual speed. "This is where they sent me, Colonel. _You_ tell me why..."

No idea, Captain. But I don't say it. I also don't say that I can't figure why they sent me an "advisor" whose resume puts him in a whole different continent for most of his questionable career. Columbia? Is _anybody_ thinking?

"The obvious connection is the girl—De Paolo's daughter Sarah," I decide to go the business route with him. "He must have gotten a heads-up from the flashware he'd lifted along the way. There's the requisite martyr's video and all—the original was still running in the player when we got here despite the soaking—it probably got sent out over the nets in advance so the rest of the cells could get the popcorn ready for the big event..."

Burke walks over to De Paolo's soot-smeared and water-splattered but amazingly still-working big-screen. There's still the frozen image of him with his arm around his little girl. She's wearing the vest and beaming with vacant pride. Paused, his mouth is contorted in the middle of some shouted bit of rhetoric. It was probably one of the last things De Paolo saw while he burned.

"Makes me wonder: Could Gray have stopped her sooner?"

Not something I want to think about, but

"Maybe Grayman got here and Sarah had already gone, so then he had to go running after her. Or maybe he just cased the target to see if she'd really show. No idea. Maybe you can ask him when we find him, Captain."

"Is that the plan?"

I don't answer him. He gets the hint and changes the subject:

"So: Have the Rads seen him?" he asks the priority question. "On the news, I mean..."

"No. The newsfeed was edited before release. It shows one of the local uniforms ordering her to stop, then firing when she ran."

"A sim?"

"A _good_ sim. I don't think it will be detected. Plus we didn't pick up on any credible eyewitnesses to the contrary—it happened too fast. In realtime, you can barely hear the gunshot separate from the blast. No gray trench coats to be seen."

He processes it for a moment. Nods thoughtfully. I'm actually thankful that I don't have to explain it to him. But then he pushes it:

"How are you going to explain _this,_ then?"

"Locals don't need to know that somebody kneecapped De Paolo with a couple of hollow-point nines, then doused him with solvent and set him on fire—apparently after a bit of a scripture lesson."

"Maybe Gray was trying to give poppa an advance taste of those vivid descriptions of hell he was so fond of hi-lighting."

Sick. But yes, I'd thought of that. It worries me that Burke was so quick to the same conclusion. I'm beginning to think what they sent me is a profiler, but his resume doesn't say so. What his file does say—that has me wondering: _Are_ they thinking?

"De Paolo blew himself up prepping another vest," I tell him what the official report will say. "Or maybe he killed himself in grief over driving his little girl to a stupid death. That's all anybody needs to think."

"And the rest of Gray's targets?"

I give him a glare to shut him up and lead him back outside, away from the McCain scanning team. The relatively fresh air is welcome, at least. The sun is low in the sky, below the urban roofline. It's starting to cool. There's no sign of life in the courtyard below us, or in the discolored windows of the aging townhouse block. The locals all cleared out when they knew they had a terrorist in their building—and a vest-bomber to boot. Let's hope none of the neighbors will swear they know the difference between a gunshot and a vest-blast (though we'll probably blow one in the apartment to further sell the cover story once we've finished scans and cleared out).

Burke, for his part, gets the hint and keeps his mouth shut while I suck in the relative serenity. Then I clarify things:

"There is no 'rest,' Captain. Not officially. Wiesbaden _didn't_ happen—we contained it. Frankfurt was random street violence. Klemp was robbed. Milan was an old blood feud between the Baath and the Wabs..."

"Because we can't let them know that someone is thinning the deck with their own intel."

Good. I really _don't_ have to explain it to him. But then he has to go and show me how smart he is by telling me my biggest headache right now:

"And you think you have a shot at getting to this guy Grayman before he does something—well— _more_ visible?"

No, I don't. But I don't tell him that.

"I'm going to need a good coffee, Captain. Why don't you join me back at the green zone when you're done here?"

### 6

Scott Becker:

"Okay, so what is this?"

Dee doesn't answer me. It just keeps popping up the file.

Captain Matthew Burke, United States Army Special Forces.

"Am I supposed to have access to this?"

No answer. Just Captain Burke's file, popping up spontaneously when I ask for mission status on finding Grayman. And now I can't get it off my screens.

"Alright, Dee..." And I'm surprised to hear my voice shake a bit—the 'ware I spent the last four years hammering out, so I know every algorithm Dee has, now seems to be honestly freaking me out. I check the security on the interface suite I'm using: still sealed in tight, no eavesdropping, and no sign of online manipulation from any other network. It's just me and Datascan, which makes me both relieved and nervous for different reasons. "Let's have a look. Open file."

It's moderately interesting stuff: Burke's played around in the Philippines, Central and South America, done duty on both the terror front and the drug-war (sometimes being the same issue). He'd make a good FPS game character—I should sell a knockoff to the gamer circuit (changing the classified specifics, of course). And he's got attitude, based on the number of disciplinary entries I'm finding—a lot for a Green Beret. Even more amazing that he earned promotions despite them—SOF has very little tolerance for non-pro crap. He must be good. And he never _really_ fucked up.

Well, maybe:

Dee makes a point of highlighting a fairly fresh reconstruct of Burke's last assignment, which makes no sense because it happened six months ago. Why has he been sitting idle for half a year? I check it again: No, he didn't go inactive, at least not officially. He was just pulled off his last deployment, shipped home, given leave and never reassigned.

Until yesterday: Burke got assigned to the same CT unit I'm plugged into. He just landed in Rome this morning and reported for duty to their CO Richards. So—what?—he's on the case?

"Why am I looking at this?"

Dee just keeps flashing on the simfile: some incident that must have happened during Burke's last deployment.

"Okay, okay. I'm a little slow—yes, even for wetware—but I do eventually de-bush..."

I have to get my visor on and boot my gear, which gives me a few seconds of loading time to check out the text summary of what I'm about to dive into. The reconstruct sim was indeed made by Dee, maybe as a test, compiled from an onsite investigation of a battle we apparently lost in the War on Drugs. (Not that we win all that many: half of Columbia is still in "rebel" control after all these years, and the life expectancy of your average government official or judge is like ten seconds.)

My visor goes bright and I can't see the room anymore. Then I'm in the jungle.

Pretty. Of course, being here in sim-form spares me the heat and the damp and the bugs, so it's all very Disney. At least until I cruise the first of the corpses.

Dee runs the stats for me: there are a total of thirty-seven dead (of which I can only see a handful scattered about in the thick growth—at least until I get to the camp, then there's more). "Montagnards," it calls them. I remember that word from my geek fondness for military history: training and using local tribes for counter-insurgency. In this case—Dee elaborates—the "tribes" in question here were some of the smaller local coca growers, bought out by Uncle Sam at premium prices and encouraged to devote their talents to fighting their more successful former competitors. They were supplied with arms, intel and SpecOps training—the latter apparently in the form of onsite "advisors" from CTI, all very classified. Which makes sense, because it immediately strikes me as all very classic-bush stupid: arming and training drug dealers to better fight other drug dealers.

"Are you _sure_ I'm allowed to see this?"

The camp they had set up in the middle of lush green nowhere is a massacre-scene right out of an antiwar activist website: guts and brains and limbs, meat and flesh and bone all shot apart and blood gone dark splattering the leaves and soaking the ground. It looks like most of them got caught sleeping (and at least one crapping in the underbrush) after the sentries got taken out. Whoever hit them must have taken some time studying the camp—that bit flashes over on the analysis track—because it happened so fast and clean. The reconstruct figures it took two minutes to pick off the sentries, then all but one of the rest got it in the next twenty seconds. It also points out—for no apparent reason—speculations as to whether one attacker could have pulled this off, popping up a list of six different replay animations of potential firing solutions that could have accounted for this mess. Different guns were used, but that doesn't rule out someone making it look like there was more than one simply by using several weapons. I'm about to ask Dee what its own most-likely conclusion on the subject is, when I get smooth-glided through the sim and into the one hard-hut they had scrapped together out of boards and corrugated something.

What's inside makes me regret taking Dee's hint and diving into this gore fest.

"Aw Jesus..."

There's a body hanging upside-down spread-eagled from a wooden frame in the middle of the room. At least I can tell it's a body by counting the arms and legs and what must be the head. Other than that, I can't tell much: it's all slick red meat, rendered in more detail than I really needed right after lunch.

"Why are you showing me this?"

I default to the popups so I can look at something else: The hanging meat-puppet is body number thirty-seven. Apparently they'd skinned him alive—autopsy says within minutes after all his buddies got theirs. Which means whoever did this dexed everybody in the camp but him so they could save him for something extra special. This thought gets me looking again (despite the continuing protests from my stomach that my lunch is working on an escape plan). And thankfully it dawns on me almost immediately that the rack he's hanging from seems too-perfectly suited to the purpose—in fact, at closer examination, wear-spots and old dark splatter stains on the lumber suggest it's been used for this sort of thing before. The hard-packed dirt underneath it is unusually dark and almost oily-looking.

"Oh, good. I'm becoming an expert on torture engineering."

I'm about to jack out (rip out, more like it), when I realize I'm looking at a pile of hardcopy digi-stills left scattered on the dirt floor of the hut. The reconstruct has taken the time to hi-res them, which means they must be significant. At first glance I think they're just the camp porn collection, but then it hits me so fast I nearly _do_ puke:

It's snuff. And it's home-made.

"Oh shit..."

There's this girl. Maybe sixteen, seventeen. She's in all of them. She's naked. They're raping her. They're sticking things inside her, things that really shouldn't be going where they're being shoved. She's bleeding. A lot. They're grinning. Laughing. I recognize their faces from the bodies scattered outside—this gives me some minor satisfaction, but it doesn't make it any better. There are photos that show her face and she's crying and she's screaming and she's trying not to.

Then they've got her on the rack upside-down. Just like meat-puppet. And there's this old toothless fucker. Grinning with his old well-used hunting knife. And I get to see him skin her alive, step by step, like he's teaching a class.

"...fuck fuck fuck..."

I can't breathe. I'm shaking and I need to get out. I need to...

But then I have to look again: I make myself. The hanging corpse, the one left after all the shooting: It _isn't_ the girl. It's male (maybe, I think, I hope). I make myself look close at the flayed face, at the teeth (because there are no lips). But there are _no_ teeth. It's the same toothless grin as the old fucker skinning the girl in the photos—I look back through them all to make sure—it's suddenly the most important thing in the world to me that I know that the sick fuck got what he gave—and then I see it:

In the background of the photos. While the girl's being cut. There are US soldiers there. Uniforms. Watching. Not grinning. But watching.

Advisors.

"Oh god fucking shit..."

One of them is Captain Matthew Burke.

I have to I have to I have to pull the plug...

### 7

Matt Burke:

I figure I'm making about the impression I expected to. Richards comes across as a classic dub political officer, the kind that usually gets these high-profile but diplomatically screwy positions. Except for the neat-pressed urban gray pixel-camo uniform and the basic armor, he could be a senator or some such: tall lanky geek with precision hair and a long horse face worn deep with lines before its time.

He reads like he sucked up all that "quiet professional" programming they feed in Ranger School—he's got the personality of plywood, all good posture and squared lines and not much else to distinguish him at first glance. Hard edge though, once you spend time with him. It comes through in his voice sometimes—he's definitely done the work. Makes him not such a total asshole.

Still, I can tell he doesn't care for the significantly post 9-11 HumInt Special-Operator set: the semi-rogue hot-shits that make it by getting lost in the worst places, going almost native because their "time-on-target" is often measured in months and years downrange. But the prejudice is more than just the culture clash between the tight-wound "elite warrior" and the gone-native HumInt operator—it's also a definite NATO thing, especially in the Euro Union. They've got the worst job I can think of in this endless little war: providing a visible multinational uniform presence that everybody knows is just sharp-looking but impotent muscle, because the Rads never hit anyplace with visible protection. So best-of Ranger School uniforms like Richards—who probably signed up and drove himself through said training once upon a time to get his gun in some actual fight—are always doomed to go running two steps behind the latest atrocity.

Which is what he's doing now. It's just that Grayman isn't a terrorist.

"So what is he?" I ask the fundamental question after the Lieutenant Colonel has gotten his cup of coffee and scrounged us a tight little secure conference room back at the embassy.

"Frankly, Captain, you know what I know. Somehow I had gotten the impression they'd sent you because _you_ might have some particular insight on this guy. So I have to ask: Is it anyone you know?"

I try not to laugh. Don't quite succeed.

"Colonel, I have no idea why I'm here. I haven't even done business in this theater. But I figure you checked me out already, so you know that. So: No, I haven't a clue. Don't know the face or the style."

He takes time to digest that while he's finishing his coffee, pacing slowly around the polished burl table that dominates the room with that perfect posture of his. Me, I'm kicked back in the leather exec-chair at the head of the thing with just enough slouch to irritate him without looking like I'm not focused.

"Professional opinion, then, based on your experience: Is this a pro?"

It takes me a minute to answer, because I really have been thinking about this.

"Yes and no, if you'll forgive the Zen answer. I'm not sure if that makes any sense..."

"Military or Intel?" he probes.

"Not military," I have to jump. "He's got some pro moves, but he's got his own style-thing—Special Operators all learn the same dances. If the reconstructs are right, he uses some shit I've never seen, and I've been through Phase Four CQD. And he doesn't move like a soldier. Too smooth, if you know what I mean. Casual. Almost... _lazy_."

"And?" I'm surprised. He just keeps milking. Doesn't think I'm over the edge.

"The rage. The way he seems to lose it into hard-core vengeance. He's not just out to remove his targets. He's into punishment. Or looking to strike some terror into terrorists, maybe. That's what it looks like: He's pissed, and he's on a mission."

"So is he a pro?"

"You mean a contractor?"

"Or an operative. Company? NSA? Black-on-black? Ours? Somebody else's? You tell me."

I shake my head for a bit before committing the answer to words.

"If he is, he's not on any official business. We'd be feeling at least some kind of interference from his handlers if he was. Early retire, maybe. Burnout. Burned. I can't believe he's running on any orders. He's just out to make a mess."

"And he's doing that."

I give myself another second to breathe enough so this doesn't cut with too much attitude: "Is that a problem? Or should I say, is that _our_ problem?"

The Colonel stops the slow pacing thing then. Half-sits on the table. Doesn't look at me.

"Yes and no. Your Zen answer."

"The 'yes' being why we're here?"

"This isn't a rescue mission, Captain, if that's what you mean."

"I kinda figured." I did. I just didn't want to sit with it, though I'm not even sure why. "Can you discuss what kind of a mess we're talking about?"

He shakes his head. World-weary political officer look.

"There's something in the works. Nothing I'm even privy to, not in any meaningful detail. But there is definite pressure on to keep things low profile: no noisy actions. Maybe they're trying to lull the Rads into complacency before they drop some new shock-job on a sizeable scale."

"Hence the tension that Gray's little tantrums will drive the Rads to ground, assuming they ever get wind of him," I digest. "And maybe toss out a few reckless attacks while they exit, just to get that visible 'you can't get rid of us' thing going." But Grayman has to realize that, I've been considering: what he's doing is going to piss off some major psychos who are going to take it out on the nearest civvies. What—is he thinking he's going to be able to take them all out? Or is he just too gone to care?

"Dumbass..."

"Captain?"

Thinking out loud. "Nothing. Just tired... What about this hot new DARPA toy they've loaned you for the op? The one that recreates incidents like you've got a time machine?"

He seems to freeze up a bit that I've apparently been given access to the fruits of whatever a Datascan System is. I don't bother to tell him about the package they (whoever they are) sent to invite me to this bizarre party. He downplays:

"What about it? Combined Military and Joint Intel AI program. McCain Foundation brains. I hear they've sunk the better part of a billion into it already. Too bad it doesn't actually work."

"Doesn't it?" I'm thinking of the hi-res reconstructs grown out of what little that Gray has left behind.

"Not as far as I'm concerned, Captain. Nice toy, yes. Damn nice toy. Cutting edge forensics processing, makes it the ultimate detective— _that_ part we've seen in the way it reconstructs incidents from quick scene scans. But then it's _supposed_ to be able to use that to ID a target and then track them down. Chief TG on the project claims it should even be able to predict their possible future behaviors to get us ahead of them."

"But it can't find Grayman," I get to the obvious grief.

He shakes his head with a tired grin. He's got no love of the tech either.

"I figure this was a something they considered a relatively harmless trial run," he offers, the hard sharp discipline starting to wilt. "I suppose trying it on an actual live Wab threat was too scary—it could have been 9-11 messy if it went wrong. But now our trench-coat-wearing friend is beginning to get bigger than they're comfortable with. And their magic new machine has only been able to detail what he's done, but not where he is or where's he's going. Or even who he is."

"But I thought it did cough up something?"

He almost laughs then. "The stolen passport? Christian Palmeri? Does that make any sense to you? You've seen the file—"

"What little there is."

"—Palmeri's nothing. Nobody. A post-college slack heading for thirty, working just above minimum wage in social services, come to Europe to bleed off a broken heart on free airfare..."

"Who never made it home."

"And he could still be drunk in a German gutter somewhere. Lots of places to disappear in the Frankfurt underground scene—lots of student-types camp out there on cash or barter."

"Family said they were expecting him back last week. Same with his employer."

"Maybe he just didn't want to go home," Richards keeps denying the Datascan's conclusions. "If you read the file, it doesn't sound like he had much to go back to."

"But it fits that the Wabs could have taken him..."

"Then the Wabs would have advertised it, Captain. That's the only point to their game. They'd jump on showing the pathetic young American tourist with a scimitar balanced on his neck. It's not like it ever gets old for them."

"So who _did_ they have in that little Wiesbaden shithole for the better part of a week?" I'm getting edgy on him, just a little. But I can't really honestly buy the Datascan's vision either—that a jobless Z-Gen liberal-arts grad who barely makes rent because he's devoted himself to trying to help the poor and fucked-up somehow magically became a super-assassin as a trauma response.

"Maybe they did snag themselves an operative, Captain. Current or retired. Maybe they spent that week trying to sweat intel or some kind of recordable confession out of him. Makes more sense than anything else I can think of. Definitely makes more sense than the machine's Palmeri theory."

Okay. I buy that, at least for now. So I breathe and sink back into the leather and let him run his show as best he can with what little he's got.

"So is there an official order?" I finish surrendering.

"Regarding what, Captain?"

"Grayman. In or out?"

"What?"

"Do we bring him _in_ or do we take him _out_?"

He thinks about that for a full five seconds.

"Depends on him, Captain. I'm going to leave that up to him."

### 8

October 28th.

Gray Man:

4:30am local.

Most of the city is not yet awake at this dark hour, so no one takes any notice of you as you pass through the old-world maze of narrow streets.

It's doubtful that _you_ would be awake either at this hour, if your window of approach wasn't a scheduled pre-dawn delivery. Not that you've really slept—the stress of anticipation kept you at least semi-awake all night, hallucinating countless variations of what you imagine will play out when you get there, your brain rehearsing a fight you can't possibly predict.

You know better. Pretending you could anticipate what will happen is what killed Sarah. The future will never be as we envision it—and that, as one of your wiser teachers pointed out, is what makes disappointment: what happens is never exactly what we expected.

Of course, just knowing that doesn't keep your brain from doing it. The habit is too long ingrained, despite everything else about you that's changed, every part of yourself that you've killed choosing this path.

(So, on some level, you still are human.)

At least the low-level rage that the repeated rehearsals generated has kept you fresh and energized. You can still feel it now, undiminished, inexhaustible: pushing behind every breath, every step, weaving you at a brisk pace through the dark urban labyrinth. Erasing fear. Eliminating doubt. Sharpening your senses and charging every neuron to respond in the moment—to do, not to plan.

(Just breathe. Let go. Let it happen.)

The air is brisk, but not uncomfortably cold, as the dawn threatens to color the sky, but it's cool enough to justify your costume. You parked the borrowed Lexus enough blocks away to draw no special attention to your arrival, but close enough to return to quickly—and by a reasonably discreet route—assuming that the morning does proceed roughly in the ways you've anticipated.

(And there _is_ one benefit of rehearsal, you must admit: it helps you plan your contingencies, consider what may go wrong—something you've spent more time mulling since you had to shoot a child in the head.)

There's still enough of a walk ahead of you for your mind to run through flashes of a dozen possible futures one more time, your imagination given a far greater degree of reality by your recent experiences. Most fundamentally: You now know what it's like to kill, something completely unimaginable to the person you were only a week ago.

You can't even imagine that person anymore. Who you were is dead. Given up. Let go. The line was crossed. It was remarkably (disturbingly) easy. Walking in this body now is a killer, a predator. A predator of predators. You smile—and are grateful for the lack of witnesses to see you do so.

You catch the quickening of your steps. Too fast, too urgent, too hungry. You must pace yourself: it can't appear that you approach too boldly, too aggressively. You have a role to play—the anxious delivery boy with the expensive package—and you must be convincing, no matter how easy it was to establish that role. (But then, they have made it so in their arrogance, conveniently providing you everything you need to kill them.)

You palm the flashkey that you've loaded with what you need for this day's objective, and check the GPS imaging it projects into your interface glasses one more time to be sure you're on course. Seen through the map-graphic, the pre-dawn gray and shadow of the real world conforms fairly well to what the flashkey predicts.

The condemned tenement that they've converted into their discreet base of operations would be nearly impossible to find without this convenient little guide. While the more modern parts of this old port town are laid out in neat grids of almost Spanish-looking stucco, the old core is a warped honeycomb of two and three story walkups packed together and right up on the alley-narrow streets. There isn't a single straight block, and once you're in, the tight, high buildings blot out the modern world just a few streets away. Even the sky overhead is just a narrow ribbon of indigo.

You've seen few street signs. The road you're on now doesn't seem to even have a name on any available map. You'd wondered why they had been so foolish as to upload the location of such a significant safe-house into their darknet, where anyone with access could find it. But now it makes sense: no one who didn't know the place could hope to find it without GPS (and they needed to arrange for this delivery). They had no reason to believe their data could be so thoroughly compromised, at least not without alarms going off throughout their loose-but-integrated infrastructure.

Thanks to Klemp, you have the GPS coordinates, the package, even the ID of the expected delivery man (conveniently one of the monsters you killed in Wiesbaden).

And here it is: The building itself is unremarkably invisible, just another three story walkup, only sealed with plywood and plastered with warnings in Italian to keep out—no trespassing. Apparently long-abandoned and slowly succumbing to time and neglect. They've left no outward sign of habitation, careful even to make sure no light is visible through the boarded windows, and there are no vehicles parked around it.

You assume they are watching your approach. You _hope_ that there have been no alarms raised by your activities up until this point to give them more than routine caution. You have moved quickly and left few coherent witnesses. There has been no public press regarding your neo-natal tantrum in Germany (so no one should know that the man you're pretending to be today is dead). Then Milan and Rome were presented with no mention of you, easily explained away as random crimes or old blood-debts paid. As was Klemp: according to the news, he was killed during a simple home invasion.

This idea has been taunting your imagination all night: Someone—for whatever reason—appears to be covering up for you. Who exactly it is, and whether it's for your benefit or for their own, remains to be seen. And you'll know within moments if your cover is still intact. (If not, you've rehearsed those scenarios as well.)

You approach the battered and weathered entrance with somewhat exaggerated wariness, getting into your role like a Method actor: You are a nervous courier making a dangerous delivery to very scary people he has never met before. You are afraid of getting intercepted—you are prepared to die fighting if you are—but you are also afraid that you might be killed by the men you are delivering to. Yet you believe the cause you serve is more important than life, and that service will bring you reward after this life. You are a man of faith. You serve the will of your God. But your God may choose not to save you today.

But then an image from childhood stories threatens to break through and ruin your performance: a cartoon wolf dressed (badly) as a sheep to better approach the flock. It nudges your grin back, and you hope again that no one sees. Wipe it away: you must show them fear, not hunger. You must be the person they expect.

You know not to knock. The flashkey announces you silently, already loaded with the appropriate codes. All you have to do is stand out here like a junky waiting for his dealer, and wait for a response from inside.

It comes within seconds—apparently they _were_ watching your approach—in the sounds of weapons being chambered through the aging brick and plaster. But before the locks disengage, the flashkey wants to know who you are.

It sends their question directly to your ear-cell. It's not in English, of course. But conveniently—because the scattered Qaeda remnants and their global bedfellows speak so many tongues—their flashware includes translators that read across your glasses. Even more conveniently, it provides you with the correct answers.

"I am Shibli Al-Naba." Your "surname" means that you bring news. It should also be the recognition code they're expecting. "I bring gifts from Al-Baqara." Klemp's codename. They called him "The Cow".

You hold up the case to where you assume they can better see it.

Locks snap quickly open and the old door creaks.

" _Ahlan wa sahlan_ ," a hurried voice chants from the darkness within.

" _Ahlan bik_ ," you give the traditional response, and step like a criminal into the darkness.

As expected, they are quick to search you once they snatch the case from your hands. There are three slight men surrounding you in the foyer, all in random mixes of fatigues and civilian clothes, head-scarves concealing most of their faces, all armed with antique but well maintained AKs. Their guns do not stray from you as your eyes adjust to their dimly-lit world. A fourth—the one who took possession of the case—doesn't bother to conceal himself: he's a big round sweaty middle-aged thug, shaved head above a ratty dark beard, t-shirt with suspenders and dark slacks (he looks like a fusion of biker and Mafia soldier), a 1911 .45 hanging lazily in his free hand. He barely even looks at you.

The building was a small cluster of tiny apartments before the government shut it down. There are narrow corridors lined with doors, branching out like a small maze, lit only sparsely with the weakest of bulbs. You can smell sweat and herbs, dust and mildew.

"Al-Baqara is dead," a voice accuses from the shadows down one of the corridors, the speaker remaining cautiously out of sight.

"A robbery," you confirm with regret. "Someone may have suspected what he was keeping in his home."

The voice from down the hall solidifies as a fifth man-shape appears from a side-branch and steps under one of the lights. He's an older man: balding, graying beard trimmed neat, white shirt and tan trousers like a businessman getting ready for work, casually brandishing an expensive H&K, gesturing with the short barrel as he talks.

"You?" he asks, idly menacing.

"Someone who suspected he was keeping his treasures close," you repeat, allowing some of your impatience to sound like barely-reined fear. "Our police contacts say his safe was emptied. The case—and our other assets—were still secure in our safe deposit boxes, but some cash and diamonds left to his care are unaccounted for. The thief will be known if he is one of us, as soon as he is foolish enough to try to spend what he took." You point a shaky finger at the case. "Would I bring you that, if I were tempted to steal?"

He considers you all the while his masked gunmen search you for weapons. They do a professionally thorough job, and take your hat and your coat—commenting positively on the quality of the latest HAMAS' product—but leave you the glasses and flashkey for continued translation. Then he introduces himself:

"I am Yunis Al-Ra'd. I do not know you, but if Al-Baqara entrusted your cell with such a valuable errand, and—as you say—you did not simply take the case for yourself, that is saying something. Would you like some tea?"

You accept, though it doesn't sound completely like an offer of hospitality. He is older than this technology. Perhaps he is wise enough not to trust it so completely. Or experienced enough to know that even the devout can be broken into betrayal, given the proper conditions. You attempt to appear faithfully innocent, even as the fresh memories of taking the lives of men just like this flash behind your eyes. You are grateful for the glasses for yet another reason.

They prod you to an open and well-lit apartment several doors back from the entrance. The kitchen and small living area are well kept and relatively clean, despite the overall lack of furnishings. Cushions in various fabric patterns line the bare floor.

Al-Ra'd points you out a cushion to sit on, pours the tea himself. The fat man sets the case on the floor in the middle of the room between you, and produces his own flashkey to unseal the locks. He seems pleased at the crisp response: flashware compatibility further confirms your veracity. But he waits for Al-Ra'd to pass you tea and take his own cushion before actually opening the case.

"Fletchers," you tell them as Al-R'ad and his men eye the small, neatly-packed weapons. "This model was produced in Germany for the US Intelligence contract before it was cancelled. Plastic and carbon-fiber. Ceramic barrels. Caseless flechette ammunition, one hundred rounds per pre-loaded magazine. No metal in the gun or in the darts except for a hearing aid battery to spark ignition. The new HNC propellant is sealed to defeat explosive and gunpowder sniffers. The darts are nano-built carbon: they can slip through common soft-armor, and will pass cleanly through flesh if they don't hit bone. If they do, they will ricochet within the body and tear it randomly. Select-fire: it can empty itself in ten seconds of sustained cycling, or default to three-dart bursts. They bring one hundred thousand US apiece on the European markets..."

"And absolutely banned in all Coalition countries," Al-Ra'd savors, palming one of the thick but compact pistols. "Light..." He adds one of the long magazines to the equation. You can feel his men grinning even though they have not yet shown their faces.

Carefully, respectfully, you show them how to arm and operate the weapon over hot tea and warm bread. You also make a point of showing them several ways to conceal the pistols and magazines in your clothing, modeling for them as they grin and laugh with satisfaction. This gives you an excuse to get your coat back on that no one will consider suspicious.

You find yourself sliding comfortably into your role now, even to the point of enjoying the company. The gunmen warm enough to risk lowering their scarves so that you may see their appreciation, their passion. Smiling. Grateful. Welcoming. They treat you like absent family. And you find yourself lost, or losing yourself: melting into what they think you are. And it's so easy. You almost forget why you need to be here.

Catching yourself but not losing your smile, you make a point of checking the time.

"It is coming up on your upload window," you remind politely. "Would you allow me to be a witness to it?"

Al-Ra'd nods his assent, and you praise God as he expects you to. Then he gestures for the group to rise.

They smile and embrace you like family as they collect themselves and show you back down the hall. Taken by your warmth and earnestness, they don't notice that you failed to put all of the guns away. Your little demonstration of weapons-concealment allowed for some primitive sleight-of-hand. You test the strength of your deception:

"Is it all right to leave the case?" you play, looking back. "Perhaps you would like to pose with the new guns?"

Al-Ra'd does seem to consider this before he dismisses it, not breaking stride a pace ahead of you. "No. The element of surprise is worth more than the fear we could instill, especially with Athens approaching. We will use the guns they know we have..."

You nod thoughtfully and go with them. Needless to say, no one checks the case.

And they lead you exactly where you want to go.

As you follow them through the dim corridors, you can feel yourself shift, changing into something else. The dull persistent rage feels like it's running electricity through your blood. You can feel it rushing from the core of you out to your fingertips. Your face flushes, then you feel it go pale, almost numb, like a mask. And every muscle and nerve in your body charges itself, just like it happened in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt and Kusnacht and Bohn and Milan and yesterday in Rome with that sick child-murdering fuck De Paolo. Ready to kill. Because killing is the only thing that will ensure the world doesn't have to suffer these "people" anymore.

It comes back to you quickly, almost too quickly, filling you almost to the point of losing yourself to it, even before you are fully through the door of their "studio". You hope that it's not a visible thing, that they cannot see you change. Not yet, at least.

But even the smell in here is the same as Wiesbaden.

Musty little cell, barren except for a large banner—the handmade flag of their cell-network—covering the largest wall. There are two more gunmen in full costume, ready for their performance, and there is a third—hoodless, he is smooth-faced and probably less than seventeen—his AK slung over his shoulder so that he can handle the webcam.

The gunmen almost fill the makeshift studio. Al-Ra'd and the fat man pause to put on their own hoods, and the fat man produces a sword—you're amused to see that it is not an Arab weapon, but a fairly high-quality modern katana—that Al Ra'd draws with almost impressive reverence, and test-cuts in the air. This tells you that he has had some limited training, but nothing beyond what he might receive in a public dojo.

He takes up a position centered before his flag, so that the camera can best capture him in all of his terrible glory: the proud holy warrior, ready to do God's work.

It is very, very difficult not to kill him right now.

He's still brandishing the blade (now more like a posturing amateur) when two of them bring in the "star" of the pending performance, dragged by the armpits from a small back room (which is the origin of those familiar odors of terror and hopelessness). From the grunts and curses his handler's make, you can tell that at least one of the hooded thugs is female, something that's no longer surprising these days, despite how much the conservative traditions are enforced.

Their victim is bound wrist-and-ankle with the familiar nylon zip-strips, wearing a worn and tattered orange overall, barefoot. His head and face are concealed by a black hood. They plant him at Al-Ra'd's feet, making him kneel, ordering him not to move. The youth is already filming, even before they arrange themselves: he wanted the shot of Al Ra'd, of the hostage coming in, and of the hood being pulled off in time to see the sword hovering inches in front of his throat. Their victim is trembling visibly even in the little thumbnail viewscreen of the webcam. You watch over the boy's shoulder as he zooms in.

The face revealed is battered, with old blood around the eyes and mouth. The lips are cracked, and there is several days of beard-growth. The short dark hair is a greasy disarray, and the sour smell of him attests to how long he's gone without bathing. One of the guards forces the face so that the camera can see better. The swollen eyes blink, unaccustomed to light. The smell of stale sweat gets stronger. The abused face glistens with it, though he makes an impressive attempt at resigned stoicism. He's probably thinking of those that he does not want to see him break down. Still, you can see the lips flutter, the eyes tear up, the arms struggle reflexively against their bonds.

He looks at you for a moment, the only other face in the room—besides the boy with the camera—that isn't covered. You manage to give him nothing back. It isn't as difficult as you had thought—the change is already fully underway, filling you with heat and hate and hunger while it strips away your humanity. You must look no different than these chanting fanatics who would murder him for effect. And when the animal-grin comes unbidden, you can see him almost break, assuming it's for him.

But then the show has begun.

They all take their places around their victim, before their flag, brandishing their AKs like a bad parody of product-placement. Hooded and anonymous yet proudly armed, surrounding cowering wreckage in an orange prison jumpsuit. There are seven gunmen, with Al-Ra'd and the fat man—who is holding his pistol to their sacrifice's head—centered before their flag and behind their victim in a practiced symmetry. The group of them are packed close together, taking up all of the flag wall so that they have no room to move sideways.

It is, in fact, _better_ than you had imagined.

"This is everyone?" you whisper innocently to the youth. He nods and gestures for you to be silent. Then Al-Ra'd's voice booms and introduces his sacrifice for the camera:

"This is the traitor Hassim who has betrayed the Faithful in service to the infidel crusader. God's scourge upon he who turns his back on his faith! The flames of hell shall be his reward!"

Al-Ra'd—whose name means "thunder"—leads his masked band in a chanting of the worn old dichotomies: the praises to merciful God and threats to the unbelievers so sadly corrupted from their precious scripture. And if he wonders why you are suddenly closing your coat and putting your hat back on, he doesn't break his stride to inquire.

You wait until he is at the highest fervor of his God-invoking rant, raising his blade as the fat one yanks their captive's hair to better expose his neck, when you slide right up behind the camera man. They are so focused on their bloodlust that no one notices you have one of the Fletchers in your right hand.

"God is great! God is...!!"

The sickening chant makes it very easy for you: your left hand suddenly grabs the youth's long hair at the back of his head and you yank sharp from your root back and down and crack his neck. The power is flowing so easily this time: no hesitation, no fear, just need. So you show them what the new gun can do.

With their victim safely down on the floor, you can spray them freely with the storm of synthetic needles that slice so neatly through flesh and cloth and body armor. There is little recoil, and the weapon cycles with a liquid rushing: it almost feels like you're spraying them with a strong garden nozzle. Planning only to pose and not to fire, not one of them gets off a shot, despite the seven assault weapons in the room with you. Their flag splatters red as they scream, forgetting their weapons to raise their hands to try to stop the darts, like they're being attacked by a swarm of bees or a hurricane wind. The darts go right through their hands and arms. Their patterned face-scarves bleed.

The Fletcher, despite its volume of fire, lacks actual take-down power, so Al-Ra'd and his soldiers are still mostly on their feet when the weapon finally clicks empty. You've held the youth on his feet to this point in case you needed a human shield, and it would be a simple thing to take his weapon and finish what you've started. But as no one is shooting back at you yet, you feel obligated to make your point in more dramatic and satisfying fashion. You pull the boy backwards so that his fall will not disturb the camera, then you glide into shot, closing the distance between you and your enemies in less than a second.

There _are_ still eight men (seven men and one woman, but you have lost track of which one she is under the scarves) with guns in a very small room with you, all mortally wounded but not quite dead. They are gagging on their own blood and screaming in their blindness and trying to make their mangled limbs work their weapons and falling over each other because they are packed so close together. One of them actually manages to open fire, aiming roughly where you had been, apparently unconcerned that he could shoot his young comrade as well. Another one accidentally unloads his weapon into the back and legs of the men nearest him, throwing them into their thrashing comrades. In the midst of this bleeding madness, their would-be victim has retreated into a tight fetal ball underfoot, screaming even louder than they are, the sword still flailing over his back as his executioner tries to stabilize himself, fallen back against his precious flag, his weight beginning to tear it from the wall.

Al-Ra'd's shirt and arms are soaked with blood, and his scarf has fallen away, rage and horror twisting up through him as he roars at you and finds his grip on his divine sword. And Al-Ra'd—whose name means "thunder"—almost manages to raise it against you before you show him how quickly and easily you can take it away from him.

You shear the weapon out of his hands and flip it into yours with the speed of a whip, your impact with him stunning him and taking what's left of his balance. Then you show him how well you can use the blade.

The katana is well-balanced and immediately feels good in your hands. You have spent a lifetime with a weapon like this in your hands. It's so very much like going back home. It roots you in this hell-world of swirling blood and guns and madness, drawing you back into yourself, at least enough to feel the slide of steel through flesh and sharp shock of chopping bone (you can hear the bones "click" as the blade shears through them).

The fat one: he tries to raise his gun with arms that barely obey him. You turn and chop most of the way through his forearm (click-click), then dance the blade up and down and see how well it will penetrate his skull.

New sensations to add to the many other new sensations you have catalogued in the past week: despite so many years of obsessive sword training, you have never used one on a living body before. You find yourself almost awkward, embarrassed, and your initial cuts are sloppy. You jerk the blade out of the skull it has half-split and spin and cut another one. The sword makes it through an arm and slides through ribs. You twist it free and keep cutting because you do not want any of them to fall before you can get to them, like this is a contest. But you have to take your time because you realize you are hacking, butchering, with no art or grace, more like wild ape with a club. You have to slow down, breathe, flow. You plant your stance and parry one of the AK's away before it can fire, then you send a rising cut up under a jaw through a throat, aiming your return cut back down through the neck before he falls.

Better. Better with each cut. Your skills are true, still intact from your old life, and just like all the other skills, so much more powerful now that you have let that life go. There are no limits, no safeties. But you must not lose yourself.

You turn back on Al-Ra'd—now the only one of them left standing, the only one who has not served to test your blade work—who is holding himself up by what is left of his bloody flag with one ruined hand while the other reaches desperately for any weapon it can find, his half-blinded eyes locked on you all the while. You give him all the time he needs, grinning down on him like the devil as you feed on his rage and terror.

You let him get hold of the slippery grip of an AK, then you make his arm disappear above the elbow. He wails something at you that even your glasses cannot translate. His head is back against the wall—an awkward angle, and you want at least this last one to be good—so you stab him in the gut, doubling him forward under your raised blade.

"God is great," you tell him flatly. Then you take your time and cut clean and do to him what he was going to do to his own prey.

You step back and watch the blood pulse out in thin but surprisingly intense jets where his head was, his body folding over the still-curled form of his intended victim. You don't bother to look after where his head went.

You kick the headless body off of the prisoner (who has at least stopped screaming), then use the sword to snip through the zips holding him. He flinches from the touch of steel, and will not look at you or get up even after you have freed him. His body convulses in sobs, soaked with blood that is not his own. He sounds like he's trying to find the words to pray. Something about that makes you angry with him.

You turn from him and see that the camera appears intact and still running on its tripod. Which is when you also notice that the smooth-faced youth who'd manned it isn't quite dead yet: he's slumped limp—paralyzed and apparently suffocating—half-sitting against the opposite wall, head cocked brokenly backwards, eyes wide, turning cyanotic, mouth trying to beg. You idly wonder if he is conscious enough to know what has happened.

You have to step over bodies to get to him, including the crying praying orange-suited still-fetal ball that is your should-be-grateful-but-you-just-dowsed-him-in-the-blood-of-seven-men rescued hostage (this would be your second rescue, by the way, if keeping such a score was really what motivates you). You stand in front of the webcam and take a full second to plant and set up a full rolling cut that splits him down through his collarbone and several ribs to the heart. His blood gushes everywhere like you've split a keg of the stuff, and his face finally goes slack, eyes dead.

Then you step back far enough to look square into the lens, your coat hosed in gore, and you expect that your spattered face looks like a pale snarling animal no matter how much you try to rein it in before you say your closing line:

" _Ana al-haq_."

You can already feel the beginnings of the bad shakes that come once you're all finished and it's time to come down. This, so far, has not faded so much with repetition. You would much rather be far from here before the worst of it catches up with you.

You make your fingers continue to obey you long enough to key the webcam's preset upload. It's done in an instant, and the popup confirms it with dispassionate efficiency.

There will be no going back now.

### 9

Thomas Richards:

My comlink chimes me back into the world in time to realize the sun is coming up. The travel and the caffeine and the special weirdness of this mission are catching up—I feel like I've had a hard weekender without the prior benefits. I'm grateful the incoming call is audio-only.

"Richards," I answer it, hoping my voice is still recognizable to the software.

"Henderson," the link responds, managing to make me feel worse.

"I don't have a brief for you, Lawrence, if that's..."

"No brief," he cuts me off, sounding like he's more wound up than usual. "Incoming. It's Becker over at the Datascan. Actually scored the target."

My brain clicks enough to figure that it must be about zero-one-hundred where they are in Virginia, which means they've either been up on this late, or whatever is going on dragged them out of their beds.

"Good?"

"No. Not good," he measures out slowly. "Not good at all."

His tone has me trying to imagine anything that could be worse than what Gray's already been at, and anything that Henderson himself would specifically consider bad. Most of the thoughts that come include more dead children. I almost ask him to give me the details himself, but I'd rather get the straight version.

"Send me the flash."

I get my feet on carpet, and get over to the suite's little desk to boot my book. My eyes manage to focus about the same time the screen loads.

"Oh... This cannot be real..."

It's a bad neo-samurai splatter-vid. Pure grindhouse pulp, gratuitous gore and all.

But it's him. No denial. Cool and smooth, like he's just using the Wabs for target practice with that sword—a fucking _sword_ —and then grinning like a sadist right into the camera lens.

God _damn_ it.

"Where? When?" I ask the obvious. The AI tells me: Bari. A seaport on the other side of the boot, about three hundred clicks from here airborne. Not twenty minutes ago.

Christ.

"Assemble the teams. Get me a flight." I'm dragging my pants on and wishing I had time for a shower. Or breakfast. Or even a half-assed cup of coffee. Shit. "Get me Captain Burke, too..." Let's see what he's worth.

It takes ten to get everybody to the cars, and another twenty-five to beat traffic to the airbase. At least they've got the helos hot. I hope Gray appreciates the tax-dollar investment he's rating.

Then we sit an hour-and-a-half inflight. It gives my teams—and Burke—plenty of time to watch and re-watch the morning's new footage. Burke doesn't say much. I take further satisfaction in that he actually looks worse than I feel—like he's been up tossing all night. At least he's wearing a uniform today, though I expect it's because the tourist rags he arrived in smell too bad even for his HumInt tastes.

I try to read his face. He just sits there watching the Bari video as the mountains go by out the window. The video is only forty-nine seconds long, with only the last half being particularly nasty, so even on slow-mo he has time to watch it almost a hundred times before we land.

I can't read his face. And I'm still not sure why he's even here.

They drop us at a local hospital because it has the closest pad, but then they screw up the ground transport, costing us another twenty minutes. Then we manage no less than three wrong turns in the crazy maze of ancient backstreets trying to find the site. All told, Grayman would be more than three hours gone when we finally crash the target. The good news: we get there first this time, before the locals go stomping in and we have to contain their panic as well as what Grayman put up on the Net.

I sweep two teams through the first floor at crossfire angles, while covering the other potential exits from the outside alleys. Henderson got us supplemented with a quick-mixed CT platoon of Ranger, Delta and Air Force Special Operators dropped in from Corfu, but I send my own guns in first. They don't find any life by the time they meet in the middle, and nobody comes out. So I leave the backup to keep the perimeter, and coordinate SatCom and air support while I drag Burke (not drag—he was itching to go in on point, so I had to shorten his leash) and the McCain scanner specialists in through the front door, and order the sweep-teams up to the floors above.

Ten seconds inside, and I doubt we'll be needing the extra firepower Henderson sent. The whole place is clear—tactically speaking: the only life-sign being the hostage Abdul Hassim, a minor Iraqi diplomat that had been snatched after his car got ambushed just outside of Rome last week. We find him curled up and near catatonic in a dark back apartment, hiding in a closet. He didn't even try to leave. I get a deer-in-the-headlights shot of him through one of the helmet feeds. He's covered in dried blood that I know mostly isn't his.

Zero is easy enough to find. The lights are still on, harsh and bright for the webcam's sake, making the place look even more like a meat-processing plant—it makes Wiesbaden seem positively tidy. The Wabs' webcam video did not remotely capture it. The scanner techs all look pretty reluctant to go in at all. In fact, I get it pretty clear (without them actually having to say it) that most all of my team are eager for fresh air.

Except Burke: He's got to go wander off quietly on his own, after the techs have done their initial scans, to go back and look at it up close. I didn't even notice he wasn't with me anymore in Al Ra'd's flat (my attention was understandably absorbed by what Lieutenant Ransom found: the mostly-full case of undetectable firearms left in the middle of the floor).

The teams find Burke for me on their return sweep: crouched in the doorway of the makeshift abattoir (and they almost shoot him because they weren't expecting him to be there), his face half in his hands, breathing hard through his fingers, just staring at it.

I back them off of him (I don't know why—it just seemed appropriate to leave him to suck it all in for a few) and edge myself up through the dim corridors, just close enough to watch him for a bit without crowding him. He doesn't budge, and I don't stay long. It smells like Wiesbaden in there, too. Only worse, of course, because there's a lot more carnage. I don't know why it doesn't chase him away.

"Henderson?" I link in from a discreet distance.

"You're onsite?" he replies, knowing the answer already.

"Looks like Darfur in here. Or Iraq when they really wanted to piss us off."

"Just like the clip, in other words." He has no idea. None. Sits in his offices in Langley. Runs his ops from a comcenter: screens and interfaces and a hot cappuccino. 2-D. No smells.

"Have we confirmed containment?" I ask him.

"Containment?" I hate him when he's an ass. This is apparently much of the time. " _What_ containment?"

"The video upload. You told me you shut it down."

" _I_ didn't do jack." First true statement he's made. "Talk to the kid—Becker—maybe he can explain it."

"On, sir... Colonel..." Voice out of nowhere. _Sounds_ like a kid.

What the hell?

"What are you doing, Doctor?" I hear Henderson complain. He says "doctor" like it's an insult. "Why are you on live?"

"Sorry, sir," Kid-voice apologizes too quickly for my respect. "I wanted to stay linked once Datascan locked."

"You've been on this whole time?" Henderson sounds like he's scolding his teenage son for surfing porn.

"I _need_ to monitor the field-test," the kid starts fighting back. Becker. This must be the famous Scott Becker. "We are in active-running..."

"What's the containment status?" I interrupt the mutual posturing. "How far did the video upload get?"

"Still tracing," I get back from the kid. Not what I wanted. But then he comes up with the mea culpa: "Datascan caught the upload when it hit the popular Rad sites it was aimed for. It was only up for about thirty seconds before we shut them down. I think we got all of it, first-run anyway."

"First run? What does that mean?"

"There were hits on the sites before we pulled the plug on them. People were waiting for this. Wanting to watch it live."

"Did they download?" Copies. We could be chasing copies.

"The Rads use some pretty effective cover, Colonel. We would have to get more invasive to be sure. Viral spyware, at least. And mazebreakers. I'll need authorization."

" _No,_ " Henderson cuts him off with unexpected absoluteness. "I don't want anyone thinking this was anything more than a standard Agency containment. We wiped the original uploads. If we let them know that we can chase them down through their mazes, they'll freak on us."

"Datascan can do it without..." Becker starts to insist.

" _Not_ taking the risk, Doctor Becker," Henderson slaps him down again.

"How many hits, Doctor Becker?" I need to know.

"Five, Colonel."

Then I realize that Burke is here, come up on me real quiet. Linked and listening.

"So, they've seen him," I just go ahead and say it. "And odds are they've got copies of his lovely little performance to disseminate to all their friends. Though your new AI might well be able to keep running down copies if they surface on the public Net, it can't do much about the offshore and offline traffic."

"Which means the whole Rad web-ring will know they've got a monster on their tail by tomorrow," Burke cuts in, sounding just a bit more angry than I would have expected. "They'll even know what he looks like. The rest of the world won't, but _they_ will."

"And they'll start doubting their flashware security," Becker confirms.

"So what he's given us will quickly turn into crap," Burke concludes. "All that sweet Wab flashware he left behind for us to sift through..."

"That isn't the point, Captain Burke," Henderson stops him, then does something I don't expect: "Truth being, he's not given us anything we didn't have already. It's just that now they'll rush to regroup and reshuffle, and all that we _did_ have will be crap as well."

"What we had _already_?" he repeats, sounding like he's trying not to explode.

"Yes, Captain. Contrary to the public view, we don't just stand around with our thumbs inserted. We've had our ins for quite some time. The Wabs aren't as mole-proof as they think. We just didn't want to advertise that little fact."

"So you sit back and play bushy and let them keep getting away with shit because it's not worth blowing your intel advantage?" He's seething. Doing the righteous young officer thing. He still thinks he's in it to make a difference, like the recruiters sell. Reading his file, I would have thought he'd left the cherry ideals back in the jungle. "So—What?—you give 'em a certain number of decaps and minimarts per year so you can catch the big plays? What the _fuck_...?!"

"Stand _down_ , Captain," Henderson cuts in, sharp and hard.

"And who are you, anyway?" Burke keeps challenging.

"Henderson. JIC." He's actually being remarkably patient. "The one who signed off on your assignment to this team, if it matters to you. And now un-stick yourself from hero-mode and consider what this means: The Rads, despite popular opinion, do indeed have enough brain cells between them to assume, based on this video, that Grayman has broken their security _big time_. They will _also_ consider—just as we did but with greater paranoia—that he may be somebody's operative. They will then assume that he's shared the contents of their flashware with us. So: If you were a Rad Warlord or cell coordinator with a big loud one in the works right now, and got the idea we might be hacked deep into your intimates, what would you do?"

Burke cools, having to digest that while I try to wrap myself around any logical reason why Grayman—apparently sharp enough to get this far—would do something so calculatedly stupid.

"The Rads will change up and speed up," Burke concludes, getting focused, heading for the exit. "They won't just take the setback with a smile. They'll assume we're about to move on them massively, so they'll hit us hard before that, hurt us worse."

It's raining on him when he gets through the front door and out into the narrow street. He stops in his tracks, starts shaking his head.

" _No_. This isn't what it scans as. It isn't Grayman losing it and impulsively fucking all of us—and himself—just to taunt them." And I don't think I like the smile on his face when he turns around and looks at me. "He's _instigating_ something."

### 10

October 29th.

Matt Burke:

I order myself some kind of local mixed kabob like I know exactly what I'm asking for, trying to blend local. If I 'raqed the pronunciation, the waiter is polite enough not to correct me, which would draw more attention than I want right now. I can only hope I'm doing a better job at avoiding said attention than the rest of Richards' assorted jarheads out on the street.

At least I can flex a little in the Mediterranean ethnic department—I've still got the tan and the beard, so I can almost pass for local. And I'm used to the Human Intelligence game: get in, be casual, blend like you belong, press some flesh, make some friends, then blow some shit up and disappear.

The rest of the team, you can tell they're not from around here. And it's not just the ones with the German tans. The urban CT grunts—the Rangers especially—just can't shake the hyper-vigilant thing, the "always on" super-soldier. You can read it in their body language: the "Somebody's gonna shoot at me or try to blow my ass up any minute now so when they move I need to move faster" vibe. One day they'll each figure out that everybody dies no matter how much training they've sweated, hopefully in time to loosen their sphincters because it just isn't worth it to live in fear (even well-disciplined fear).

My plate comes fresh from the grill, already pulled off the skewer. It's something like a dark-greenish meatball with veggies. It tastes like mint and garlic, which turns out not to be a bad combination at all. This would be my ulterior motive for insisting on taking the café position, though it means I'm almost breathing down Grayman's neck in here, which means I have to look totally organic or we're done.

And I mean done as in The Grayman is sitting two tables away from me and if he sees through my attempt at playing Eurotrash epicure and decides to take issue with it—well, I've seen what he can do, and I'm not sure I feel all that safe even with the snipers on him.

Which is the other sore-thumb issue I'm having right now with the soldier-intel crowd: After all these years, they still can't place their people so that it doesn't look completely like a stakeout. I know I'm not supposed to look at them because he'll see me looking at them, but they're so glow-in-the-dark that I can't _not_ look at them:

First there's the pastry van down the street, nowhere near the deli _or_ the café or any other place it might actually need to deliver pastries to. Then there's the street crew working the same fiber-optic junction all morning, idly digging like they really not trying to get the job done. And the boz on the corner selling hot yummies off the cart we rented: he needs a translator rig to speak the local Greek, and has no hope of getting the accent—much less the pronunciation—right. And why would any real street vendor who's actually sweating to make a buck put himself right between an open-air café and an authentic-smelling deli, in a neighborhood where there seems to be barely enough foot traffic to support one eatery?

Then, of course, there're the snipers. They're _almost_ good. But this block isn't lush with good nests: The architecture is that uniform 1960's neo-modern boxy style popular in this part of the world, the type that makes the apartments look just like the office buildings, except with boxy balconies. And they're all uniformly three and four story and built right up to the narrow two-lane street. So between the tightness and those big blocky balconies, they can't get a shot down to street level without hanging their barrels out in plain view. They do what they can not to look like the local SWAT cops surrounding a bank robbery gone hostage, but I can see heads and flash suppressors poke up every once and a while. I actually feel embarrassed.

So I do my best to detach and chill, and I take the risk and look at Grayman like I'm not trying to look at him, because I figure he'd have to be blind and stupid not to have made at least half of the guns on him. I'm still hoping that my own performance is selling, that he's picked out the jarheads but he hasn't noticed me. But the vampire-pale fucker catches and locks my gaze through his smoky shades for just two very long seconds, and flashes me a little lopsided grin and something I swear is a wink. He's either made me or is flirting. I feel my adrenaline twist at my lunch.

I try to dismiss and deny—maybe he just does the creepy eye-contact thing to everybody, hoping he'll catch someone looking guilty—but my gut knows better. He absolutely knows we're here. He's probably known we were here before he even got here, but straight in he comes anyway and orders lunch and drinks and stays for dessert, like he's daring the hammer to fall.

Maybe that's the point.

Tracking him was cake, like he made it that way—despite how impressive that Becker geek claims his so-called Artificial Intelligence is at finding the unfindable.

What bugs me more, though, is the definite sense that we have _no_ actual plan for how to proceed, and I think his sitting here for a three-course casual lunch right under our guns is his way of confirming that very thing. Are we here to take this guy or what?

We _could_ have scooped him with reasonable discretion a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours—we had him eyed within three hours of the Bari massacre—but that dub Henderson keeps telling us to hold. Which means the higher-ups either want to see what he's planning to do next, or they intend to sit back and watch him do it. My money's on the latter, and I doubt anybody else on this little magical mystery tour would bet against me. It's clear even Richards thinks this whole op is bullshit.

We _could_ have had him straight off the ferry when he landed in Kerkira. Ballsy spooky bastard was still driving the stolen Lexus from Milan. He took enough care to have authentic documentation, though: flashed a passport and registration he must have lifted as a kit from Klemp's. Quality merchandise: the Rads can not only customize their IDs, but they can even hack in and authenticate them locally, so the port scanners don't pick up any problems. But he _did_ have to cough up a thumb print at the port-of-entry checkpoint. That finally nailed him for us—positive ID—even though that webcam samurai massacre he dropped on the net gave us enough good FRS references to pretty much confirm it already.

But he knew all that, too, didn't he? He _wanted_ us to track and ID him. I can't believe he risked the ferry just because he was in a hurry. Staying overland, he could avoid the more intense port security as he rambled across the in-Union borders. The worst he might have to do on an inter-Union crossing is flash a passport—and he could well have a hundred of those from Klemp's alone.

And he would also know that the ferry out of Bari would be one of the first routes we'd sweep looking for him. He may be a nobody (which remains to be seen, despite what his file insists), but he's not stupid. Amazingly far from it, in fact. If he'd taken his time and kept himself a bit less visible on the old-world back-roads, he could have kept us running _days_ behind him, maybe even eventually melted back to the States and taken a shot at getting his old life back.

No. He _can't_ get his old life back. And I know exactly what that's like—and it has nothing to do with that "once you take a life everything changes" chant. It's more than that: I saw it in that Wab movie studio—what he did in there, it felt like I was back in Columbia. And I get the sick feeling I know just why I got assigned to this splatterfest.

But for right now that's just me—no one else on this team, including Richards—has any insight into that at all. I can tell, just by the way they all stand around with that vaguely lost look that tells me this is beyond anything they've dealt with before. They're chasing a monster. I'm chasing something like what's been looking back at me from the mirror for the last six months. But I'm a good actor, so I can stand around and look as lost as the next guy.

So now we all stand around and pretend we're not here and not more than a bit freaked out and not totally without clear orders, while the now-infamous Grayman sits casual not ten feet away from me in this cute little ethnic street café, nibbling chocolate-covered baklava and sucking on some iced milky drink I'm afraid must be ouzo.

And he watches us and keeps playing like he's humoring us, but if I watch I catch him locking eyes with the other players one-by-one—even the snipers through their scopes—and flashing them that chilly smile of his.

He's even wearing the outfit: the big hat and bigger coat. Under it he's got on what look like black fatigue pants and tanker boots that he must have taken off the Wabs in Germany. We assume he got the hat and coat there, too. Not sure if that's a fetish or a look or just a good way to hide his face and guns and whatever else he's carrying today (I remind myself again: he _did_ leave the sword in Bari...). The cut down his face isn't quite so red in the dull overcast of the early afternoon—it's a nasty one, though: most of it is still almost black with deep scabbing. He didn't bother with stitches, but it seems to be holding fine without.

He keeps the glasses on, so it's hard to read him. He looks like some kind of eccentric film-star, covered up to be semi-incognito but still drawing plenty of attention with the whole mystique thing, carrying himself all self-confident and gracious with the waiter (who's not sure what to make of him either but apparently appreciates a heavy tipper). But this isn't what he should be.

What he _should_ be is a fire-eyed twitchy slavering psychopath, or maybe a stone-cold walking zombie lost-it serial killer (the kind that has no problem lobbing bits of people off). I _know_ people like that. They hide and don't come out in the daytime and usually get themselves killed (which may, in fact, be what our boy is _trying_ to do right now). They just don't _integrate_ , don't smooth, at least not comfortably or for long. This son of a bitch—I don't know—acts like he thinks he's some kind of cool movie action hero.

What he should _also_ be is pretty much covered in blood. He was fairly thoroughly hosed with it in the webclip, anyway, splattered like a Jackson Pollock head-to-toe in diced Wab. But the coat looks _clean_ —and apparently _was_ clean by the time he hit the Bari ferry dock, according to the security monitors (if not the fact that _somebody_ would have noticed a guy covered in blood trying to leave the country)—less than half-an-hour after he did the Kurosawa routine on the Wabs. He should also have been splattered in blood after Sarah De Paolo blew up all over him. We just all figured he'd changed costumes—like he has a closet-full somewhere (his own personal Batcave?)—but apparently that's not it:

The Datascan found rough trails of flaked dried blood that matched his targets, and assumes that the coat is some special stain-proof nanofiber that just shook the gore off as soon as it dried. Probably another reason he seems to like it so much.

Not totally sure what he's doing here, though (other than fucking with us, which he could do anywhere), or what exactly he's waiting for.

Satellite watched him all the way across the Adriatic, just kicking on deck (and apparently enjoying the onboard bar), until he debarked on the Grecian side, got back in the Lexus, and took a leisurely drive up over the Pindus Range, catching a sit-down dinner and a hotel in Trikala. Snipers on his ass the whole night, we watched him take a long hot shower, then catch the news, crashing with the headline network still live. Then two a.m. local he's just sitting up in bed staring at the walls with his shades on. In close-up it almost looks like something's actually got him a little spooked, or at least confused in that way that makes you worry, but he keeps up that cool-vampire façade so well he's almost impossible to read—maybe he just had bad dreams, maybe his shit was starting to catch up with him in the wee quiet hours of a country half-a-planet away from home. Or maybe he was just bent that he couldn't surf up a copy of his little show on the net.

By six, he's checked out after spending the last few hours dicking with his lifted flashware. Then he drives straight here, to Larissa. Scopes this particular block out for a few casual passes, just like he's a tourist, then finds parking and comes in here for an early lunch and cocktails. I've counted two of those milky highballs so far, slow-drained while he watches the deli across the street (and us too, but with what appears to be significantly less interest).

What the fuck are we doing here?

What he's doing here: that may actually be painfully obvious. Henderson coughed that the deli's run as a safe house and front for the local Wab chapter, but insists it's "strategically insignificant." I'm not sure if that means he can't believe it was worth Gray's time to come all the way out here to hit it, or if he's saying that the higher-ups don't care if he whacks it or not, and are idly debating whether to stop him or watch him.

The deli's central yet out-of-the-crowd location has made it a decent place to cache weapons and coordinate semi-high-profile marts, but Wabs who base here do their actually hitting hell-and-gone off in the bigger cities. The extremists have been pissed enough at Greece since Iraq One and Two, despite the lengths the locals go to downplay all the Coalition strategic presence in-country. But since Greece also makes a great strategic position for them as well as us, they've tried not to be too naughty in-country so far.

But Becker's Hal apparently has a different take: it says the Wabs have got something headline-ugly in the works, something Grayman would know about from his lifted flashware, and something his antics have very likely advanced the calendar on, especially now that he's lit the fire under them with his samurai stunt. But that big hit—whatever it is—isn't supposed to be happening here. The flashware he left us mentioned Athens. Which gets me back to the question:

What the fuck is he doing _here_?

Experience suspects that question may be why Henderson and his bosses haven't pulled the trigger on him yet: It's already too late to undo whatever Gray's set in motion by stirring up the Wabs. So with nothing much to lose, they've either just got a morbid curiosity to see how this plays out (expecting Gray to mart himself in some big media-friendly way and save them the trouble of figuring out what to do with an American citizen who's taken up slaughtering Radical Muslim Extremists in Europe), or maybe they're thinking that somehow having Grayman still in-play and apparently way off-track might actually be a good thing.

Me... Well, I'm still pissed that they've been playing dumb all these years—letting the Wabs head and vest civilians at will so they won't know what hit them when we do decide to act on our intel. So, unofficially, I think I'm actually rooting for Gray. (Which may, in fact, be the real reason why _I'm_ here.)

(Making no sense at all...)

And then he's looking at me. Not a quick glance-and-smile. _Right_ at me. Like he's reading my fucking mind.

Then he drains his drink, drops a stack of cash on the table, and gets up to go. Making _very_ intentional eye-contact the whole time. Smiles at me like we're old friends. Even tips his hat good-bye with a polite but effete little bow.

Then he's headed straight for the deli.

### 11

Gray Man:

That you get across the street without anyone even _trying_ to stop you is promising. Your anonymous guardian angel, whoever he or she is, appears to be accurate in its assurances that you would not be actively molested, at least not until you have actually made your un-ignorable disturbance.

That this benefactor appeared as he or she did—hacking your supposedly secure flashware without warning late last night and refusing to offer any identification whatsoever, only cryptic assurances of support—left definite doubts as to his or her veracity. The obviously synthesized voice—flat yet cool—that spontaneously piped into your interface gear without offering to identify itself could well have been from the Rads themselves, hoping to walk you into someone else's ambush and save themselves the trouble. But it would make more sense that the Rads would want to extract at least a modicum of vengeance by their own hands. Which they may still do, in full view of a NATO Counter-Terror platoon.

But lunch is done. Time to see if this will actually work the way it's supposed to. If not, your exit will not be easy.

You tipped your hat to your closest watcher (the one who shared lunch with you from two tables away, all the while looking like he was trying not to yell out to his comrades that their little covert surveillance was anything but), got the fingers of your left hand preset on your flashkey, and marched off to see if the Rads have spread the word about you.

There's a very annoying chime on the deli's door.

The overfed beard-and-knit-cap forty-something behind the counter matches your flashware's ID-profile exactly. He looks up initially with a practiced smile, but you can almost see his limbic system dump panic into his veins within a split second of scanning you. Apparently he's seen your little web video, or at least heard about it. His body seems like it wants to start in three directions at once, but then you notice his eyes dart over into the corner of the store, which freezes him.

So you look. And then hope you don't look as shaken as he does when you realize how badly you've just fucked up.

There are small tables tucked away for in-store dining. They were somewhat out of sight from your café table, but you thought you were being careful to keep track of the comings and goings to time your entrance to catch the place free of civilians. But there's a young couple—maybe tourists, because they don't quite look local—finishing some kind of shared desert. You blame the ouzo or the back entrance, and lock back on the counter man.

"Hassan..." you greet him by name like an old customer. He looks like he's forgotten how to speak or is having a stroke, and manages to greet you back in a raspy whisper:

"Greeh Mahn..."

Gray Man?

At which point he apparently decides not to wait for his customers' safety, and a shaky hand lunges for the shotgun you know he has strapped under the countertop. So you shoot him.

The Israeli Desert Eagle you took from Al-Nahl's corpse is so loud in the small retail space that all you can hear is ringing in your ears, and your face feels the familiar sinus-clearing slap of the .44 magnum's shockwave. Hassan flies back and drops so fast you don't know if you hit him, as some bottles of soda flavoring on the shelves behind him explode back into your face. Your glasses sprayed with colorful goo, you have to look over the counter to be sure you actually hit him. He sits slumped like a drunk staring at nothing with a dime-sized hole next to his nose. It's hard to tell in the mess what's blood and what's syrup. You taste some kind of chemical fruit-flavor on your lips.

There's a scream over the ringing. You woke up the tourists.

They're frozen in panic, wide-eyed and shaking a hundred times worse than Hassan was. You tip down your interface glasses so that they can see your eyes, which hopefully will convey your intended message better.

"Run?" you suggest gently but firmly, then gesture for the door with the big pistol as they might not speak English. They _do_ get the hint, and manage to drag each other out of the place, and not an instant too soon.

Reinforcements arrive from downstairs.

There are two coming from the back, pushing through the narrow passage of the stockroom. The lead one has an AK. The one behind is still scrambling to get his vest on. At least they appear to be following protocols.

The lead man raises his weapon and starts to scream at you, then hesitates a fraction of a second when he sees that you are not raising your gun—instead, you show him the flashkey in your left hand.

You wonder idly if he gets it before you key the speed-dial, bracing yourself and hunkering down and pulling your coat over your face and head.

The explosion seems to happen very slowly.

### 12

Thomas Richards:

It almost sounds like an airstrike.

"Damn it...!!"

First one blast blows the storefront glass of the deli out into the street. This is almost instantly followed by a string of additional blasts from somewhere inside. I can feel the old brick and frame structure shudder with the drumming of maybe a half-dozen muffled bangs, and more windows dissolve—not blown out, merely shattered by the vibrations—raining more glass.

"Hold position!" I'm yelling into my link. "Nobody goes in!"

"What the _fuck?!_ " That was Burke, gathering himself up from under one of the café tables he'd reflexively tipped over for a shield. Becker cuts in and explains it for him.

"Parental Control, Captain. Datascan confirms..."

"A _what?_ " Burke tips into incredulity, ignoring my order and moving out of the café with his sidearm in public view.

"Not general knowledge, sir," Becker makes the effort to not make him feel stupid. "The last few generations of vests—especially the HAMAS brand—have built-in remote detonation. Just in case the mart changes their mind."

I can hear people screaming, probably from the upstairs apartments. The sergeant we had on the falafel cart looks like he's nursing some mild shrapnel wounds, but he keys that he's okay.

"Datascan caught the signal," Becker keeps going, talking fast. "He had a WiFi flashkey. He probably one-touched a flashmob speed-dial, dexed every live vest in the building."

"Keep holding..." I'm reminding over him, but no one seems eager to charge into the smoking mess. I count ten seconds with no further detonations. I decide to give it ten more, just to be sure. "Burke!"

At least he's being cautious—though it looks more out of shock than experience—edging his way across the street. In the relative silence (the screams have already stopped, but I can hear a baby cry), his link picks up the sound his boots make grinding glass into the street. He holds up a hand, trying to reassure me he isn't planning to do anything too stupid, despite how little he seems to be concerned with my orders.

"I don't see him," he finally says, almost in the already-fading smoke. Samuels and Ransom are moving behind their guns to back him up, ready to leapfrog inside, but not very eagerly. They don't have full armor, just torso. The very real thought that there might be more suicide vests pending has got them worried about how much precious flesh is uncovered.

"Gray," Burke confirms, leaning warily in through the gutted windows, using his pistol's barrel-light to cut the haze. "He's not here."

"Aw, shit," I hear someone—probably Sergeant Stamos, still packing his facial wounds with styptics—complain. But we all saw it: Gray popping the register-guy cold in the face, then just standing there as his friends came (or went) running. He obviously knew and anticipated standard Wab procedure: when your safehouse is compromised, grab a bomb-vest and run for it. That way if you get cornered, you can try to take out your pursuers or as many innocents as possible. Certainly more appealing than the risk of getting rendered to an offshore for interrogation.

"So he had the remote codes for their current inventory," Burke catches on reasonably quickly, fanning the smoke away from his face as he gingerly steps through the window, wading through piles of dumped and leaking bottles and canned goods. "And now they'll know _that_ , too," he voices my current unhappy thought.

"Still nothing?" But I know: I'm getting link feed from all three of them as they pick through the wreckage. The counter-man is indeed dead where Gray shot him. There are two other bodies—badly mangled—roughly in the doorway to the back room. The AI is already calculating blast-patterns from the wounds and other damage: it figures the first of the two who came running was either lazy or too eager—he grabbed a gun but not a vest—while the second followed procedure. Number One looks like he took a lot of Number Two's vest's pellets in the back.

"No Gray. Not here," Ransom confirms. "Not even a blood-trail."

But there is a trail: the AI can see it and highlights it. Footprints through the plaster dust and spilled and foodstuffs, already fading as more dust continues to settle like gray snow.

"He went back..." Samuels agrees. But Burke, stepping over the pair of shattered bodies, is already on it.

"He should be dead," Burke idly complains as he checks the hidden angles with his weapon before advancing. Everything in a roughly horizontal spread—walls, boxes, cans, bottles—is peppered with vest shrapnel. "Why isn't he dead?"

"The coat," Becker answers him. "Something Datascan considered from the Rome video..."

"It's armor, isn't it?" Burke concludes sourly.

"Probably HAMAS," I consider, trying not to sound as stupid as I suddenly feel. "Popular accessory for their vest-handlers, I hear. They can keep a close shadow on their marts, shroud themselves from the shrapnel when they blow."

"This would be that 'Parental Control' thing again?" He starts snotty, then back to pro: "Explains how he walked away from Rome without a scratch."

He winds back through the rear stockroom, past what may have been the place's closet-sized office and employee head, and finds an open closet. With a false floor.

"Trapdoor," Burke confirms up close. "Need a tunnel-rat?"

"Back him up," I approve, though I'm not sure Burke was volunteering. He waits for Samuels and Ransom to shine their barrel lights down the steep, narrow steps. There's more smoke down there.

And more bodies, as Burke's feed shows once he manages to get downstairs: three visible in the tight-focused barrel-light as it dances through the thick haze of smoke. Two are drenched in fresh blood and peppered all over with shotgun-like wounds. The third lies bent brokenly backward, abdomen ripped out, arms gone below the elbows—he'd been vesting up when it blew on him. The flash I get of his blank, bloodied face makes him look barely fourteen. I have to give Burke credit—he doesn't hesitate, doesn't flinch, doesn't make a sound—he just goes about his sweep.

He pans the tight little basement, trying to make out details in all the smoke. The bare-bulb ceiling lights are gone, taken out by the blasts, and there isn't any daylight, so the only illumination is Burke's little barrel-light, dancing in the haze. I have to put the scene together in little flashes of illuminated images: the pit of a basement looks like a combination of an armory and a makeshift barracks: there are tables and a small kitchen and bunks. There are racks of assorted guns along two of the walls. And more vests.

"Out!" I yell at him. "Get out of there!"

"It's okay, Colonel," Becker chimes in, apparently as foolishly eager as Burke is. "They're cold. The remote code won't trigger if the vest isn't armed."

"It doesn't look like they had the time or forethought to leave a booby-trap," Burke estimates. "Still, forgive me if I don't stay long."

"That doesn't mean the target hasn't left something to get in our way," I warn him. "Watch your advance, Captain."

"Gray hasn't left any surprises for us before," Burke defends too quickly.

"We haven't been right up his ass before," Samuels counters, still on the topside of the trapdoor.

"You want me to catch him or not?" Burke gets snippy. I'll cut him some slack for taking point down the hole and staying pro through it so far, but now I can tell he's definitely earned his reputation as a discipline problem.

He keeps moving, following the currents of smoke to a second room—more cots, more supplies, more guns and assorted tools, and two more bodies, vest-shredded like the others. He scans them just to be thorough, shining bright light in dead eyes.

There's sudden movement, and the feed-view shifts as Burke jumps back on the defensive: one of the bloody bodies comes to life, flailing. All I get is a blur of shiny red, then a gunshot. It makes me think of the zombie movies I used to make myself endure with my friends when I was a kid.

"Captain?!" I hear Ransom shout before I can.

"Clear," Burke answers, sounding just a bit shaken. "Possum with a gun. Might have gotten the shot if he wasn't already bleeding to death."

I annoy him by warning him to be careful again.

"Footprints..." Burke tracks a trail of partial boot-tread patterns with his light. The boots that made them walked through blood, which means the walker came this way _after_ the blasts. Burke's feed leads me along with him, following the still-damp trail, to where a tall shelf of assorted hardware has been overturned and a rough sheet of plywood that must have been behind it has been cast aside to reveal a rough-chopped hole in the basement wall. The blood-smudges keep going into that pitch-black maw, and as Burke tracks into it with the barrel-light he gets a flash of what looks like someone waiting prone inside it with a gun. The camera swings sharply as Burke jumps out of line with it and hits the brickwork beside the chopped hole, waiting for hostile fire or any telltale sound of movement echoing in it at all.

I can see Burke in Samuel's camera now—he finally squeezed himself down that closet trapdoor and is closing for backup, or was until Burke signed for him to hold and grab wall. Burke counts off a few seconds of silence, then bobs around behind his gun to check it with his barrel light. It's definitely a tunnel—rough concrete, low and narrow—and it looks like it was cut not all that long ago, disappearing somewhere under the streets of the old city. Escape route. Except it didn't work that way for those that made it: there are what's left of two more bodies wedged in it, not three meters from the opening, their arms half blown off and torsos ripped in half, thoroughly sprayed with each-other's pellets. He tips his light down like he doesn't want to see the mess, but his camera keeps looking down into the meat-clogged tunnel. And then I see what he's looking for: light, just a sliver of it but bright enough to be daylight, leaking into the darkness far away down the tunnel. The camera bobs as Burke ducks into the smallish opening, then bounces as he steps quickly over the bodies in his path and starts running as best he can in the low, tight space, toward the light, his own barrel-beam dancing on the tunnel floor just ahead of him.

"Backdoor!" he announces. The AI is already predicting the exit point, which looks like a manhole cover in an alley two blocks away. I send Tomlinson and Cooper off the street to meet him there, and yell at him again to watch for traps. His unbroken pace again demonstrates his lack of listening skills.

The feed gets bright when Burke makes the half-open manhole and cautiously pries himself back up into daylight. He sweeps the empty alley, then picks a direction. Comes to a street. The light foot-traffic is all slowly gravitating in the direction of the deli. They don't seem to be giving the Captain much notice—he must have his weapon concealed down behind him or in his jacket. I can see Specialist Tomlinson running toward him, scanning the civilians himself. Then the view pivots wildly and Burke runs the other way. He almost collides with Cooper on the opposite street, the two men locking weapons on each other in the split-second before recognition. Then the feeds turn back to crowd-scanning.

But it's pretty obvious that our target is gone. Or at least gone enough, because I can already hear the sirens coming.

"Pack it up."

### 13

Matt Burke:

"Where's that satellite?!" I bitch into my link as Tomlinson and Cooper herd me with reasonable speed the long way around the block, trying to stay blended with the gravitating crowd. I get no useful answer. When we finally edge through to where we can see the shattered storefront again, the streets around it are being shut down. The local police have descended en masse, dropping barricade strips across all the through-streets to contain any escape traffic. That means _we_ can't get out, either.

Which is something Richards is currently having issue with, doing a puffed-up toe-to-toe with the ranking cops. This also explains the lack of chatter on the link: Richards doesn't want us sharing in his little rant over jurisdiction, so he's switched to a closed channel. Which is probably where Henderson and maybe Becker are too, trying to apply grease. I watch from a block-and-a-half away. Nothing seems to be happening very fast. I can hear Richards shouting from here.

I didn't get a lot of it going in, but the apparent deal made with the local government pre-op did _not_ cover blowing the guts out of a public eatery, especially with tourists in proximity. The Greek Coalition Liaison let us bring just enough manpower (which Richards doubled after the fact) to theoretically cover Grayman (though I get the distinct impression we failed to be specific about exactly what we were up to), and probably with a discretion clause. I doubt that anybody informed the local constabulary in advance, hence the apparent hot tempers and sharp gestures with the uniforms.

"Oh, this is gonna make the news..." I can hear Stamos sigh. He'd taken his bleeding face out of harm's way—I can almost see him getting tended to across the block by one of the first paramedic teams onsite (if they think he's more than just an unlucky bystander, they don't seem to be making anything of it)—but he's the first to see the newsnet crew that comes shoving through the crowd on foot (probably ran in from beyond the lockdown).

"Spin-able," Cooper comments, trying to be positive. "Shit, _we_ didn't dex the place."

"I don't think the Greek Board of Tourism will be too happy about the cache of terrorist suicide vests going boom," I have to say it. I expect that's pretty much what Richards is getting about now—the locals seem to be tag-teaming him with the heated complaints. I almost feel sorry for him, but then I figure this is the karma he bought himself with the whole starched-uniform NATO posting, and I figure he's more than used to it.

The rescue crews are leading a dozen or so apparent residents of the building out of the smoke to safety. No one looks hurt, just shaken up. I catch Richards looking them over as they pass down the street, just letting the local cops keep venting at him. I'm not sure if he thinks he'll find Gray in there or he's looking them over for potential Wabs. Either way, he doesn't seem to find what he's looking for.

"Becker, _where's_ the satellite?"

"Nothing yet, sir," he cuts in. I'd actually just been bitching out loud, thinking he'd gone offline. He sounds more than just a little shaken, and I remember Richards or Henderson bitching about him being online in the first place, so I figure this is the first time he's played link monitor on a live shooter. And this one certainly didn't go well.

"How is it possible that we tracked him from orbit all the way from Italy and halfway across the Grecian countryside, then lose him in two blocks?" I considered pulling that punch, but I'm not in the mood and I need the kid to focus.

"Optics were zoomed too tight to catch the sewer exit until you found the tunnel, Captain," he excuses, but he's pulling himself together quick. "We were watching for him to exit the _building_ , not two streets over. I just ran a replay zoomed out—he didn't come out that way, just tipped the cover to make you think he'd surfaced that way. That hole was at a T-junction—he could have kept going underground either way for blocks. We're still reviewing the replay, sir."

"And apparently we're still not going anywhere." Yes: _all_ of our vehicles are inside the lockdown, which I'm guessing Richards hasn't talked our way out of yet. He looks like a video-loop, having the same argument over and over with the same three cop officers.

"And stop calling me 'sir.'" I add as an irritated afterthought. "You're not government property."

"Yes. Sorry... Captain..."

I turn away from the leading edge of the crowd, held back by a quickly spun tape-cordon and a handful of riot-armor. Cooper and Tomlinson follow like I'm in charge of them—or anything, for that matter.

"Can you get us a ride, Doc?"

"Working on it," he comes back impressively quick. "Nearest green is at least an hour away, though. Wait..."

"What?"

"Turn around. Head back three blocks east. Right turn..." I think I can hear him giggling.

"What?"

"The _Lexus_ ," he almost laughs it. "Grayman. He left the car! It's outside the barricades. Probably figured we'd be all over it."

I'm jogging and giggling almost as stupidly as he is, with my two adopted wingmen trailing behind.

"I doubt he left us the key," Cooper criticizes.

"He didn't," Becker clarifies with definite satisfaction. "But we don't need it. Datascan hacked the OnStar codes. It's already warm."

"I owe you beer." And I do: the car is open and already running when we get there. We're far enough from the excitement to not draw attention. Better, the onboard GPS is plotting us a course around the roadblocks. And the seats feel sooo damn good, the way they auto-conform.

"So. Where are we going?" Tomlinson has to ruin it.

"Athens," Becker comes back fast. _Way_ too fast.

"Something else the Lieutenant Colonel forgot to tell me?"

"I'll see if I can work you clearance and flash it to you on the way."

"Forget to tell Richards," I suggest. I get looks from my two shadows.

"Anybody else get out?" Cooper asks him.

"Just you three."

Which makes me ranking officer on this little road trip, at least until Richards catches up. I'm hoping the kid can get me need-to-know by then. Though I doubt I'll be very happy with what I find out.

The Lexus cruises smooth and silent, and we're leaving the city behind for the rolling countryside. And I've almost let go of the worst of the blast-torn body images when I flash on Grayman's little parting nod to me, back in the cafe, and I wonder just how thoroughly he'd had this all planned out, from the secret tunnel to ditching the satellite lock to sticking us in the traffic lockdown. He probably also knew just how much head-start he'd get while we did our little careful-dance, afraid of more vests.

Fucker.

At least I got the good car.

### 14

Thomas Richards:

Fifty seven minutes. That's how long it takes to get the civilian police commander onsite to make the calls I have to insist six times that he make, and then for him to get his men to pull the barricade strips and let us move out. In the meanwhile, Grayman is long gone. Stupidly. Needlessly.

"All we had to do was clue the locals better. Just a _picture_ of him—attach anything to it you want. They had more than enough manpower scrambling. He wouldn't have gotten three blocks."

"Attach _what,_ Colonel?" Henderson goes for the old defense. "What would you suggest we tell them that would make them go running for this guy without 'raqing the whole thing?"

"It didn't have to be a detain order. I'd be happy with a follow-but-do-not-engage. Plus, involving them might have gotten us out of there faster. As it was, I can't even explain _why_ I'm in such a hurry..."

"They _can't_ know about Grayman, Colonel," he pushes, his face in my heads-up getting tighter and redder even with the fuzzy resolution. "Not even a picture. They'd scan it and connect it to the passport—somebody would, especially after this—and his paper is already flagged as stolen in Germany. His name would be in every union cop's flashfeed in five minutes. Then we'd have no way to maintain the Press blackout. Worse: the enemy has contacts in law enforcement—they'd find out his name."

"And this is better?" I have to stop and breathe. Tired. But I can't and won't just lose it here in front of my teams. "Losing Gray is one thing. But now we've got angry cops and onsite press, and a very visible blasted building. And me with two squads worth of mostly American special operators, still present when the cameras roll. We could have been out in five minutes if I could have at least admitted that we were still pursuing our target."

"You really think you had a shot at re-establishing?" He's being aggravatingly cool. " _Five_ minutes? Gray was well-gone within two—he knew we were on his ass. You were better to sit bushy and make it look like your target had bitten it when the deli went up. We can still call _that_ an accident, blame it on the Wabs for getting sloppy and doing a premature, pat ourselves on the back for 'containing' them—zero civilian casualties. _And_ we have a good idea where he's going from here."

He's right. That's the problem: He's right and I'm tired. Once the deli blew, there was nothing we could have done that wouldn't have made a bigger mess. Henderson picked the lesser evil: make it look like we 'raqed a routine tail on a minor Wab, who ran and sent his bretheren to Allah with an unfortunate equipment malfunction, and call ourselves lucky that there was no civilian collateral. If any hint of Grayman gets out to the Net or the Press or even just the Union cops' shared-intel—well... things are bound to connect.

"Are we done?" Henderson wants to know.

"What about your Hal?" I push it. "I thought it could see 'every contingency.'"

"Which is why we're playing catch-up at the next high-potential."

"Athens..." And all I'm thinking about is how much more high profile this is going to be if Gray makes messy noise in such a symbolic venue. Or we just 'raq it by ourselves. "Am I going to get better intel this run?"

"You'll get what we've got."

"Unfiltered?"

He pretends he doesn't hear me and logs out.

I fall back in the seat of the Vee and rub my eyes, trying to make it look like it's just the rez of the heads-up blood-shotting me.

I close my eyes as we roll out of town, shutting out the tourist-friendly scenery. But if I keep them shut too long, my mind starts rolling its own sims, rerunning every bloody sick thing Grayman's done. Trying to make sense of this.

But I can't. Grayman doesn't sum—especially now that we've seen him up close enough to confirm his ID. And neither does Henderson's line regarding him. If Gray really is some poor American tourist who lost it and managed to take out his Wab kidnappers, the urgency should be to scoop him up and secure him. He'd be a headline hero, if he'd made less of a vindictive mess in the process. Hell, he still _could_ be, even despite how far he's fallen: If he _is_ a civilian, then he has no rules of engagement and a good run at an extreme circumstances/temporary insanity defense to shake off any bureaucrat who wants to take issue with his methods—who hasn't sat through one of those Wab head-videos they ram down our nets and _not_ wanted to do exactly what he did back to them with that fucking sword?

I have to stop and focus, because here I am getting cathartic with him, even cheering for the fucker—I can't let myself go there, not ever. But if he is a civilian—operant word being _if_ , because if he isn't then he's pro and he's fucking us and he's meat—then my duty is to bring him home. Assuming he'll let me.

No. He won't. That's the point: he can't go home, because if we send him home, one way or another his story will go public. And he _can't_ go public. If the Rads ID him, they'll fatwa him, his family, anyone he's ever known. He knows that—of _course_ he knows that—but he also has to know the more noise he makes, the more likely he'll get caught or killed or ID'ed. He can't be thinking that he's just going to wipe them all out by himself, even if he has a full directory. The Rads don't die—they just keep farming the angry disenfranchised for more marts. Anybody who's been conscious the last fifteen years knows that. The more we kill, the more they inspire. Grayman doesn't have the proverbial snowball's chance in Wahabi hell.

He knows _that_ , too.

So what is he doing?

Athens...

"Where's Captain Burke?"

"Almost an hour ahead of us," Samuels tells me fast enough to let me know he's been keeping an eye on the GPS.

"Linked?"

"Here, Colonel," Burke's voice cuts through the throbbing stars behind my eyelids. "Surprised you're not in the air..."

"No hurry, Captain." Or so Henderson insisted. "Timeframes are still gelling and we need to get our visibility back down—don't want anybody seeing our helos flying into Athens right now. We can detail our operational plan and send orders to the teams from the road. I take it you received the briefs?" Something else Henderson insisted. But I'm not counter to it—I'm going to need as many pro guns in the fight as I can get, if this is what it the intel we've got says it is.

"Yes, sir." The attitude isn't there right now—tells me he's already read the brief—tells me he can indeed pull it together when he knows he needs to. "And sent back some flashware he'd conveniently left in the car. It gave us some details we didn't have before on this 'Jericho' thing, including a pretty current list of the players. We'll know who we're looking for when we get there—or quite a few of them, anyway—but then, so does he." He pauses a moment. I can feel him hesitate with the discomfort I'd expect, given what he's been reading up on. "Is this really a biological?"

"It looks that way, if the intel's good." And I have to open my eyes and look at the members of my team in the vehicle with me: Samuels, Ransom, Carlin. They stay pro and don't show what they're feeling. But I know at least Ransom and Samuels have seen bio attacks before. Just not this potentially big. "At least it may not go off as written—something we can actually thank Grayman for. AI doesn't think they could have cultured and loaded for what they originally wanted, given the time crunch he's putting on them."

"So you think that's what he's doing: scaring them into going too early?"

"They know he's coming—he made sure of that when he uploaded his little ninja movie. Just replay the feed from when he walked into the deli: he was recognized. Not _expected,_ but they know what he looks like—at least that silly costume of his. Now with the big bang he just made in Larissa, they'll figure he's in-country and headed for Athens—even a backwater rockpile Rad can connect-the-dots and follow the carnage. And they'll figure he's finding them because he's hacked their ware, which means he also knows what they're planning, and they'll assume he's sharing it with us. So they know they're blown and running out of time. They won't waste what they have. Spite, if nothing else. Datascan's already picked up the ID'ed targets moving through the city's security grid. They're in motion, probably for tomorrow. Morning rush is likely—they'll want the highest exposure. Lunch, at the latest. I'd even go dinner—all those locals heading home to family—but they have to know he'll be all over them by then."

"They could still hit the evening rush today," Samuels considers tensely—I can see sweat starting to shimmer on his upper lip.

"Datascan insists that's too soon—they need to expose and incubate their carriers for at least twelve to eighteen hours," Becker tries to be reassuring, but sounds very clearly like he can't even sell it to himself—and he programmed the thing.

"Despite the time crunch, they've still likely got enough for it to get away from us fast." Burke considers correctly.

"We'll have support, Captain," I do the reassuring now. "All we need. Snipers. Bio-teams. Containment. We've got a good shot at this, and we will not miss. We just can't let the Wabs see what we've got on them until they roll past the no-return."

I can hear him thinking about it for half a mile. Then:

"I understand, Colonel."

He says it solemnly enough to make me trust he'll do his job, even though he knows I'll be asking him—and the rest of my team—to face-to-face it with engineered biologicals.

"Funny name..." I hear him mumble.

"What's that, Captain?"

"From the Wab flashdrive. The lame little codename they picked for their divine bioterror mission. I don't get it..."

"What?"

"If it's a bio... Why 'Jericho'?"

"...'and the walls come tumblin' down'..." Samuels sings to no one in particular.

### 15

October 30th.

Matt Burke:

Project Jericho:

According to the flashware Grayman gave us, they've got four volunteer marts loaded with a designer virus—something disturbingly in the Ebola strain—that's got an incubation delay timed to let the carriers do some serious mingling in a crowded public place before the bugs go airborne and start spreading. In turn, the bugs will let whoever they infect get pretty far from the original infection site before symptoms hit.

In this case, they've targeted the Attico Metro, Athens' beautiful new tourist-friendly subway network. Given the projected time delay, they could be sharing air with travelers who could be well on the other side of the planet before they drop. I guess the Wabs are trusting Allah (and the travel restrictions) to make sure it doesn't get carried back to their own stomping grounds. (The whole trusting-in-Allah thing also means the Wabs don't bother developing any kind of vaccine to protect their own—science being a Western Evil except when they can use it to slaughter people.)

Which means if we let this get away from us here, we'd have to lock down the entire city, maybe the entire country. But then, the eternal problem with Greece is that it's always been a smuggler's paradise: too many islands, too much coastline. It's never been securable. That's how the Wabs operate here so well in the first place, despite how tight the Greeks are with the Coalition. And now they're going to use it to start their own version of the end of the world.

_If_ we let it get away from us here.

Grayman gave it to us. But then, he also instigated it, rushing the timeframe. I assume he realizes that he's made us scramble just as much as the Wabs. I'm not sure whether I should thank him or shoot him the next time I see him.

In his favor: The Wabs _were_ going to do this anyway, probably within the next year or so, and by then they would have grown enough bugs and loaded up a dozen marts. This way, they've apparently only got four carriers recruited and ready for infection. And being that they had no time to test the strain, they don't actually know how it will behave. Out of the lab, it might die off or mutate or drop their carriers before they get out the door.

Against: Now the Wabs are going to expect interception. And the rule of Bushwar natural selection is that we've already killed off the stupid terrorists, leaving the canniest ones to fuck with us.

So here I am, hanging out in a Greek subway station whose name I can't even begin to pronounce, my interface shades wired into some bleeding-edge Hal that's telling me it's got the whole thing under control (which I can't believe anyone buys, given it's apparent track record so far, unless we've been played on this trip-down-the-rabbit-hole even beyond what my best paranoia can imagine). Trying to look like the only reason I'm sweating is that I'm some tourist from somewhere where an eighty-degree October is unthinkable. (I thought this was supposed to be a low-risk shakedown on some new intel-gathering computer brain—why are they willing to let it run a real live potential-fucking-apocalypse?) Trying to look nothing like I'm about to help save the goddamn world from a plague.

Lunch traffic just starts getting thick when the first blip goes live.

What the hell am I doing here?

The fucking machine disorients me by flashing heads-up feed across my glasses: file photos of the probable carriers begin dropping into the glowing lines of the subway map as we get contacts. My glasses are wired for two-way feed, so Doc Becker's Hal sees what I see—what each one of us sees—and uses that to help create its magic "battle-map". Digital bastard even gives us marching orders: plotting the movements of our targets against our positions and telling us which way to huff it to get on them and start hemming them in.

The problem being, we're scattered across twenty different stations. That means—even with the extra guns Richards dragged in—we've got only three or four per site underground, and snipers on less than half of the street exits. And Richards (or is it Datascan?) doesn't want to shift anybody until we've got all the contacts locked. By then, it could be too late.

The wait for all four targets to surface gives one of them plenty of time to get himself on a train. Thankfully, Anderson and Ransom are onboard pretty much right behind him. Live feed shows the targeted mart looking edgy but seemingly oblivious to his tail. Hopefully he isn't a good actor.

I can watch the mart on the train over the heads-up, since we haven't locked a target on my station yet—for now, I'm just a spectator. The train mart's just a kid, really: bone-skinny and hollow-eyed like a junky or someone who's seen way too much of what we do to certain countries from the air. But _not_ looking like he knows he's about to die drowning in his own bodily fluids sometime in the next few hours. I almost wonder if his handlers convinced him the virus wouldn't kill him too. This makes me think about those "parental controls".

I watch the grid shift as one of the five bio teams shadows the target train at street level, ready to swoop in and bag the kid and seal off the immediate kill-site (this assuming the intel is good and we manage to dex him _before_ he goes contagious).

Blip Two surfaces at one of the south-end terminals. This mart's a little more of what I would comfortably expect: heavy-set, designer leather to look like a rich tourist, head and beard shaved to hide the stereotyped profiling-triggers. He gets himself hung up in tourist traffic at the gates—which will make him harder to pick off—but at least it doesn't look like he'll be getting on a train anytime soon.

"PROXIMITY WARNING: CAPTAIN BURKE: SUBJECT IDENTIFIED."

The machine's cold synthetic vox buzzes in my jack and almost makes my knees go, flashing a graphic over a face bobbing in the crowd maybe twenty meters ahead of me. Mart Three's another kid, but then they keep looking younger to me every year. He's a short little shit—I'm surprised Doc's toy scanned him since _I_ can barely see the top of his head through about a hundred taller ones. But then I remember that the Datascan's supposedly hacked the Metro's security net, so it has more than just our eyes to play with.

Then it unnerves me further by highlighting the guy's head in my heads-up to facilitate visual tracking, so he's got this disturbing digital halo as I follow his slow movement through the heavy current of commuters. Then the arrogant digital SOB flashes "CAPTAIN BURKE: INITIATE PARALLEL LATERAL TRACK" and draws lines and arrows across my vision, telling me which way it wants me to go.

"That's _three_ live..." I hear Richards purr in my jack, sounding like he'd forgotten to breathe since Target One locked. He's up in one of the bio trucks, probably already sealed in a MOPP-suit, playing armchair general. That, at least, is my one happy thought: the butt-hurt look on Richards face all day, as it finally sinks in that even though he'd been at least ostensibly running the show this far, now his higher-ups tell him he has to sit back and let some untried machine call the shots when it finally gets really important. Which makes me wonder if he ever was in charge of this op in the first place.

"HOLDFIRE. INCOMPLETE LOCK."

I don't get feed from any of the others anymore. Hal wants me focused on the job at hand. At least it lights-up Samuels, so I know where _he_ is in the crowd, trying not to look like he's eager to push his way through the bodies up on Shorty's ass.

"TARGET FOUR: LOCK."

No idea where—I wonder who's got the last one—but then...

"ENGAGE AND NEUTRALIZE. FIRING SOLUTION:"

Now the son-of-a-bitch Hal draws lines of fire in front of my eyes telling me which way to shoot. Then it takes all the guesswork out of making the first move by cutting into the security system and blaring the alert sirens and slamming all the shutters down over the exits.

This, of course, causes total panic in the tunnel station. The train that had been loading seals up tight, almost dismembering anyone in the doors as they snap shut and engage the bio-chem seals. I can hear people banging on the subway car windows and the airtight steel exit shutters over the screaming and the sirens and the dull droning of the PA vox telling people not to panic in six languages.

Shorty freezes up for about a half second and I almost lose him in the chaos but then I see him rip something out of his coat.

"GUN!! EVERYBODY _DOWN_!!!"

The sound of my own voice jolts me as Datascan automatically projects my shout over the PA at max volume, then immediately translates it into what I assume is Greek with an almost convincing panic. The crowd surges like a wave breaking on the tunnel platform and I see that Shorty's got one of those damn plastic Fletchers so the weapons screens didn't nail him bringing it down here and he's looking for a target—any target—and then he just starts spraying in the same flash he picks me out. So I point my weapon and don't care if it lines up with Hal's neat "firing solution" or not and I just squeeze a handful of rounds back into the storm of darts he starts spitting, center-of-mass.

I can feel flechettes slice into my hand and arm and face and thud into my body armor and ping off my glasses and I lose my gun but someone—Samuels—is still shooting and shooting and all I can see is a flailing running crawling mass of bodies as the tide of flesh and bone slams me back into the sterile tile of the terminal wall. I lose my legs in there somewhere—it _is_ very much like getting hit by an actual wave—and wind up on my ass with my arms over my head trying not to get trampled and wondering where my gun went but all I see are bodies crawling over bodies.

But no one is shooting anymore.

"TARGET ONE NEUTRALIZED. TARGET THREE NEUTRALIZED. TARGET TWO..."

"What... are we winning...?" I can barely breathe—it's the best my brain can manage.

"Burke!" Samuels. I think.

The tide starts to ebb as anyone who can move gets as far away from the center of the storm as the security barriers will allow. I get enough light and air and peace to look at the bloody mess of my right arm, lanced through in a handful places including right between the bones of my middle two fingers from knuckle web to palm. The limb is numb and throbbing from the elbow down. I stare at it like a dumbshit until I realize that the right side of my face is wet and burning, and blood is dripping back past my ear, but I don't have the nerve to go poking at it to feel how bad. Then my eyes focus a little farther off and I realize how lucky I was to have what armor I did.

There's a scattering of bloody bodies that looks like a vest went off—Shorty just started spraying everything with that fucking needlegun. My brain guesstimates about two dozen casualties, before I start getting shocky and need to fight the urge to puke. Most are still squirming crawling screaming but there are a number I can see that aren't moving. The nice clean bright floor is splattered with blood. And I'm having to lay back again getting dizzy so I can't see if Shorty is among the moving or the not moving.

"You get him...?" I'm asking the ceiling lighting. The floor is nice and cool.

" _You_ got him," Samuels tells me comfortingly. "I just got him got him."

I can see his face form in the silhouette that hovers over me.

"Man down!" he's saying to someone else, shaky under the cool casual calm he's trying to maintain, which I'm worried is for my benefit. "Medivac. He's chewed but not vital. Hang in, Captain..." That last part, _that_ was to me.

"Bag 'em. Sweep it clean." Richards. _That_ was Richards. I've still got my jack on but my glasses have slid up my forehead. Over his cool orders (at least Hal is letting him direct the mopping up) the PA is droning in six different languages. When it gets around to the English version again I realize it's trying to reassure people to stay calm and telling them not to bolt when the doors roll up. Which finally happens about the time I'm debating a nap. I can't see the time, but I expect the locals rolled in fast as soon as the shit came. Armored CT cops and military. But they'll keep their distance—just holding the crowds in—until the bio teams can jump in and bag up Shorty and start lining up everybody that was locked in here with him (with us) for shots and quarantine assignments should the initial blood work show any hot virus.

Which is when I start wondering: So _where_ is Grayman?

"Captain Burke: Status?" Richards. In _my_ ear. So nice of him to care. Wherever he is.

"Looks worse than he is," Samuels answers for me before I can think up something especially smart-assed. And then a medic team is all over me with packing and styptics.

"Looks like everything just went clean through, Captain." They say that, but they poke at me like I'm dead. I have to growl at them to make them get better bedside manners. But all I get is a doofy condescending grin as this blurry sergeant runs a field-scan over my face and arm. "Nothing arterial that shows. Lucky. Very lucky. But you'll be butt-hurt for a while." Asshole even talks like me.

They whack my shoulder with a local to kill the throb and cover my eyes to spray some styptic on my face. Past them, I can see the MOPP suits zipping up what's left of Shorty. I don't get enough of a look for satisfaction.

"I've got four cold," someone is saying, "And nine I need rushed out STAT. The rest can sit. We can patch the majority and triage here. It could have been worse..."

And I'm refusing something systemic (despite a flash of trivia that suggests PTSD is less likely if you pair getting your ass shot up with getting promptly whacked with something opiate-based—something about how the experience stores more positively if it's colored by good drugs) and trying to sit my bloody ass up with one working arm when I feel the first big _thump_ through the tile under me.

Or through my head. I can't really hear it. It vaguely reminds me of the bangerbees and their dumbass wall-shaking bazooka speakers: you can't hear the tunes but you can hear everything rattling for blocks with every bass beat.

And it _is_ a beat: I can feel it coming in rhythm, but less like a beat than a wave, throbbing through the tunnels (and my skull), a half-second or so apart, each one stronger than the last. I feel myself getting sick again, but it's not from the shock. And then I can hear things starting to rattle loose. Metal. Glass. Tile. My fillings.

"Jesus fuck..." I think that was one of the medics, but my ears feel like they're popping. "What is...?"

Jericho.

"...and the walls came tumbling down..."

Grayman. Where is _Grayman_?

### 16

Gray Man:

Project Jericho:

It doesn't look like much, and that's probably it's most appealing feature: a compact-car-sized bundle of tubes that looks like some kind of industrial art installation, hooked into a pair of heavy forced-air "horns" that generate the initial wave pulse and shove it through the mile or so of resonant tubing until it gets shaped into a wave down in the ultra-low Hertz range. No explosives or radiologicals to trigger screening gear. Broken down, the components are fairly non-descript. Even assembled, you'd have a hard time guessing it's a weapon.

But warmed up and pumping, the finished product can generate a sound wave—deep below human hearing—capable of crumbling rigid structures and even causing tissue damage with prolonged exposure.

Geeking in high school, you'd heard of such things: flakey weapons proposed for fantasy battlefields, based on the Biblical tale of how the Israelites crumbled an ancient citadel by making a big noise at it. You remember reading about attempts by physicists and engineers with archeological bents trying to duplicate the effect, and rumors about shadowy military contractors playing in. Supposedly nothing effective came of the attempts, but they claimed the science was good: it isn't the audible sound that does the damage, it's the super-bass that throbs through conductive materials and starts breaking things down. Low frequency means long waves. Long waves penetrate.

Luckily, the haste you've driven them into has made them forgo the opportunity to really test the thing. It's also rushed them past considering a few obvious fatal flaws.

Project Jericho:

Their target was blatantly symbolic: the high-visibility heart and soul of despised Greece, the foundation of hated Western Civilization, and a symbol of ancient pagan idolatry that remains a visible irritant to the intolerant radical Wahabi mentality.

Acropolis.

Flattening it—crumbling it to dust—would be a blow that would resonate through history, far worse than when the Taliban demolished those colossal millennia-old Buddhas almost two decades ago in Afghanistan. (That pissed you off, even as a child, you remember—making you even more determined to ensure their utter failure this time.)

Acropolis. You hiked up the hill and through the postcard ruins at dawn, despite the pain in your left foot (where a single pellet from the vests you blew in Larissa slipped under your coat and through your boot and took a chip out of your outer metatarsal—you dug it out easily enough, but twenty-four hours later it's hit its peak throbbing). Collapsed for an hour or so at the base of one of the Parthenon's huge columns. If you looked nothing like a tourist, none of the other early morning visitors seemed to take much notice of you. Except for one: a small child, being led wearily by the hand by his enthralled parents, who found you more interesting than the history. You smiled at him. Waved. He waved back. Tried to tell his parents about the strange-looking man in the big hat and coat and got ignored.

You played with the idea then that you were doing this for him, for them, for the world. Playing hero. Saving the day from the bad monsters out there. And it made you laugh, because you know that being heroic has nothing to do with this.

You enjoyed the sunrise over the city, then hiked back down on your throbbing foot (thinking of _Oedipus Rex_ ), down to show your legitimate prey what a real monster is.

Lunchtime.

Despite the continuing assurances of your anonymous benefactor that you are not alone, you have seen no sign of the "good guys" converging on the weapon. It's hard to imagine, considering all the flashware that you've been leaving them, that they still got suckered into chasing the Wabs' "decoys" instead of focusing on the actual threat.

The Wabs original design _had_ been for a two-pronged strike: symbolically crumbling a major cultural site and simultaneously unleashing a nightmare plague. But their own intel hinted that they'd been screwed: their bio-engineers had grown them shit. The Jericho virus isn't viable.

But with time running out (thanks to you) the Wabs have to go with a sloppy substitute plan: counting on Counter-Terror Intel to be terrified enough of a biological attack to go running after their decoys through the active subways, instigating some messy gunbattles in crowded places with those smuggled Fletchers (they'd have a lot more of those, if you hadn't intercepted the case Klemp was sending them) while they try to pull off their half-assed little science-experiment.

You did see ample signs of "covert" surveillance on the active stations on the way here, but nothing at all in or around the still-under-construction station they're using to stage their primary attack. The synthetic voice that keeps intruding into your gear promising assistance seems to be lying to you. But then, you've considered that your faceless online "ally" has actually been some Wab TG setting you up, or maybe a third party with and entirely different agenda—why else would it insist you run from the CT guns back in Larissa?

You think about that yet again: the maze of contradictions you have willingly stumbled into. You leave the Coalition terabytes of hot intel, yet they seem to have blithely ignored it at every opportunity. They could have stopped Sarah De Paolo instead of making you chase after her alone. They could have crashed the Bari house and stopped that beheading themselves, but they left it entirely to you. And then Larissa: they just sit back and watch you blow the Wab armory, then come chasing lamely after you, all the while the anonymous feed is actively helping you ditch them (even providing a clean rental car to get you here after you limped out of the sewer past the cordon).

No. An enemy would have ensured you died in Larissa. So somebody has an agenda that can only be served by leaving the bloody work to you.

The best part: You're okay with that.

You check the Striker and slide yourself into firing range.

The Wabs brought the "horn" down in pieces, passing it off as materials for this latest expansion of the Metro. This particular tunnel is not even currently being worked on thanks to an economic slowdown, so it provides relative privacy as well as proximity to the ruins above.

Expecting you, they brought guns: you count seven armed guards around the weapon itself, and they do look nervous. There are four more stationed at the obvious approaches on either end (but again, your mystery ally linked into your gear and warned you to avoid them).

They're counting on the tunnels to help resonate the wave. This would be their first potential error: the Metro is built with buffering—the designers didn't want to risk the subway's own vibrations having any impact on the ruins—so this may actually muffle and contain rather than enhance their wave. Still, they might damage the Metro itself, and the vibrations might harm all the people stuck in the tunnels.

But there's also a devastating design flaw: the sound weapon is delicate. Anything crushing or puncturing any part of the resonating tubes will diffuse the wave and result in a very loud but otherwise harmless noise. And you intend to do more than just shoot a hole in it.

You've slid down through an unfinished ventilator, coming up on the Wabs' supposedly inaccessible flank (exactly the way the synthesized` voice suggested as it fed you the blueprints of the station). You're careful to stay out of sight, because they'll certainly be smart enough to watch the vents just in case, so you rely on your interface gear to give you a discreet fiber-optic feed of their progress.

You hear the first gunshots echo in the subway system far away: the Coalition has started gunning it out with the decoys. Then you hear the low thrumming as the weapon's turbine system starts to pump. It takes a few seconds to begin pulsing. When it does, you feel it through the metal of the vent shaft, almost like a mild rolling earthquake, and your head feels like it's under about ten feet of water.

The Wabs are feeling it too, because they're not so attentive anymore as you slide up to the mouth of the unscreened vent (and try not to fall out of it because the shaft is angled downward) and prop the Striker for a shot. You wonder if the vibrations translating into the assault shotgun might set off the spin-armed 25mm grenades, so you decide to support and aim the thing by hand to buffer it from hard-surface contact. This will make things harder: You know how bad a shot you are with anything rifle-like, so you're very appreciative that the sound-weapon is a big target as you pop off the first grenade. You don't wait for it to hit before you send another after it blind, then reflexively cover up and rely again on the fiber-optic feed to show you a blurred heads-up of the grenades going off.

You see two flashes obscure your rough view of the tube cluster as your eardrums feel pierced by the echo-magnified bangs. And then the weapon _screams_.

Shattering the tubes has resulted in a death-wail that is so loud it almost makes you drop the Striker. In the reverberant cavern of the tunnel, it's fully as loud as the grenades. A hundred frequencies screech as the forced air wave escapes through countless jagged openings. It feels like your head is being crushed and there are long hot spikes being driven into your ears despite your earplugs. Thankfully, the worst only lasts only a few seconds. Almost immediately, frequencies begin to drop out at random, whittling the agony down. You can hear the pressure and vibration of the weapon—now thrown into hopeless chaos—continue tearing it apart. By the time you manage to recover yourself enough to look, the once neat-stacked tube assembly has popped apart into a mangled blossom of rent piping. The compressor turbines still push air, though, thrumming a low bass like some ancient great herald's horn. And though it's a welcome respite from what it replaced, it's still deafening in its intensity (or maybe you're just still deafened by the worst of the screech).

Your ears have been so badly overwhelmed that it's the bursting of bullets against the concrete vent-mouth that makes you realize that they are shooting at you—you can't hear their guns.

You feel a round ricochet off the top of the vent and smack you roughly in the ass. It numbs your leg down to the heel, leaving a burning sting where it hit, which you hope is due to the coat stopping the bullet from penetrating. You use your arms to shove yourself back away from the vent against the slope of the shaft and reach out with the Striker and empty its remaining ten grenade-rounds into the tunnel in a sloppy spread. You can feel them go, but can't see anything with the coat thrown over your head for cover, face-down in the shaft.

You wait for ten solid bangs to register through the duct-work, toss the Striker and draw the Browning from the clamshell at the small of your back. Thankfully, your legs seem to be working, and you push off and send yourself sliding face-first out of your hidey-hole.

It's a good ten feet to the hard deck of the unfinished platform. You lock your arms into the smooth curves of your best Aiki dive roll, knowing full well that this is really going to hurt, but trusting the coat and the armor you have on underneath to take the worst of it (and trusting your arms to keep you from coming straight down on your head). It's an almost blind fall, but your arms do save you the expected concussion and deflect the impact. You curl and come down hard between your shoulder blades, and you can feel things pop as your wind goes. Your hips don't fare much better as you keep rolling, but at least nothing obvious seems broken in the sloppy landing. However, you end up sprawled on your back because you stunned yourself too much to translate the momentum into rolling you back up onto your legs, so you wind up in an embarrassingly vulnerable position, your coat open and legs splayed toward the most likely angle of attack. But then you realize that the reason that your legs did not slam the deck as hard as the rest of you is that you half-landed on a _body_ , which is offering some slight cover.

That, and the combined shock of the sound-weapon blowing itself apart _and_ the dozen grenades has had a significant impact on the composure of the Wabs that are still able to return fire. You feel rounds thunk into the body at your feet and concrete dust rains on you from the shells that hit the tunnel wall over you, and it gives you time to pick a few targets and return fire.

You can only see muzzle flashes in the haze of dust and smoke left by the Striker's load, so you have to trust that your opponents have even less cover than you do. You empty the first magazine and make yourself roll and spin onto your belly and elbows facing them as you dig out a fresh one. You're hacking for air, which is not making things easier, and your ribcage feels cracked. Then a shell grazes your back across the protection of the coat, but you feel it tear into the meat of your left calf, and it feels like your leg has turned to liquid below the knee. Your stomach flops and your blood turns to ice, threatening impending shock. You can't move your leg. You scream your rage out and empty the Browning in the direction of the offending gunflash and get the satisfaction of seeing the tracings of a weapon emptying itself wildly into the tunnel roof.

Then you have to cower down behind your corpse-shield because you definitely haven't finished them yet.

"PROXIMITY WARNING. LIVE TARGETS LOCKED. FIRING SOLUTION:"

What?

Your interface glasses suddenly come alive with a graphic of the tunnel wing that you're in, and blips indicate your position in reference to the remaining Wabs. There are three of them left "live," apparently (it also pops up little "X"s on the four who aren't). It _also_ shows you what cover they've taken, drawing lines of fire around it, and their lines of fire back at you.

"LATERAL MOVEMENT—REPOSITION AND FIRE..."

The coolly droning vox is definitely the same one that's been playing you since the hotel in Trikala.

"LATERAL MOVEMENT—REPOSITION..."

Insistent little bugger. It even draws lines showing you where to go. Having few presenting options, you throw yourself rolling (flopping, more like—your left leg is dead sloppy meat—at least it hasn't really started to hurt yet) rightward and wind up behind an unfinished pillar, just big enough to hide behind. You drag your leg out of harm's way and try not to notice the fairly impressive smear of blood you've made. Your rage seems to have gone a long way to staving off shock, but you doubt it will be able to keep doing so.

Bullets ping the pillar behind you, and the graphic in your glasses warns that your opponents are shifting positions. You drop the Browning and go for something with significantly more punch. Then, when the heads-up shows the first of your "live targets" moving out of cover, you flip up onto your good leg in a half-kneel and poke around the pillar. The graphic has already shifted to an FPS perspective and makes your target glow despite the haze. You pop a single round from the Israeli .44 right into the center of the target graphic and the heads-up shows him get taken off his feet even though you're already ducking back out of sight-line.

"TARGET ONE NEUTRALIZED. TARGET TWO: FIRING SOLUTION..."

Target Two is apparently behind a tangle of what's left of the sound-weapon. The fire-lines on your heads-up are telling you that your gun will penetrate his poor choice of cover, so you flip back out and try it: the graphic draws him clearly through his makeshift shield and you punch two rounds through the tubing and into where it tells you he should be. His virtual image folds on the graphic and the electronic voice dully confirms your kill.

Nice. Very nice.

But you realize you're sitting in a spreading puddle of your own blood and you're getting shaky and nauseous even as the graphic tries to show you that your last target is making a kamikaze charge behind his roaring AK and the pillar is threatening to disintegrate behind you and you know you can't roll out and shoot under this kind of fire and...

Pop pop. Pop.

The full-auto rattle of the AK gets cut off by three quick lesser bangs that you recognize as handgun fire. The graphic shows your last target get knocked sideways and crossed-out. Then the overhead returns and shows a new blip sliding in from down the tunnel, this one in blue.

"HOLDFIRE TARGET... HOLDFIRE TARGET..."

Your glasses suddenly flash an ID file with a fairly unthrilled-looking mug shot of some geeky-looking jarhead who seems vaguely familiar. You could read more, but you're beginning to see spots. You have to pull the glasses off. It doesn't get better. You're sweating and shaking and feel like you need to lay down or throw up or both, but you manage to pull yourself up into something resembling sitting, back up against the pillar, your leaking leg pulled up under you in hopes the pressure of sitting on it will slow the bleeding.

Cautiously, your rescuer slides around the pillar to where he can see you. He's still got his gun in his hand—his left hand only, because his right is wrapped in bloody packing and hugged to his chest like a crippled wing—but he keeps the muzzle pointed downward. Ready, you realize, but not eager to instigate you.

He's wearing civilian clothes—a nondescript jacket and khakis that are splattered with blood. His face is smeared with it, especially the right cheekbone, which looks like someone lanced it with an icepick (it takes you an amusingly long time to recognize the same kind of Fletcher wound you riddled seven Wabs with back in Bari). He's also wearing interface glasses similar to your own, and you can almost make out the dull glow of his heads-up feed behind them. He's got chopped dark hair and thick dark eyebrows and a neat beard accenting a longish square-ish face that it takes your shock-fuzzy brain maybe five more seconds to realize is the same one from the Café in Larissa.

He sees the big pistol still hanging into your hands, resting on your bloody lap, and points his own weapon further out of line, trying to put you at some level of ease or at least convince you not to shoot. You doubt you could still lift the gun anyway.

"So... What do I call you? Commissioner Gordon...?"

### 17

Matt Burke:

"So... What do I call you? Commissioner Gordon...?"

It takes me a minute to click: he's talking in pop-culture references, trying to be chill despite the bloody mess he's made of himself. Not that I look that much better.

I hope I give him the right response:

"Would that make you Batman?"

He smiles. Coughs. Doesn't look anything like his action videos. The basic features, yes: bone-gaunt, sharp lines, pale (worse probably with the blood-loss), still-raw wound down across his eye.

"Grayman, apparently..." he comes back.

"Yeah... You heard about that, huh?" Though I immediately wonder where.

"...not bad... I kind of like it..." He's fading on me.

"Yeah. It's catchy..."

I really don't know what the fuck to do but watch him bleed. Something large-bore has blown a fist-sized hole in his lower leg. He's sitting in a visibly spreading puddle of blood.

"Matthew," I finally spit out. "My name..."

He repeats it. Smiles again like we're old friends. Tries to say something. Coughs. Hits the back of his head on the column he's leaning against like he's trying to keep from passing out.

"Michael..." he gives me back.

"Nice to meet you."

I realize I've totally lowered my weapon. My face is burning and my right arm feels like it's been beaten to mush. Didn't help that I had to shove myself through a cordon of local CT armor (and Richards yelling in my ear the whole time to "stand down" because I might be exposed or some shit) and run down a dark tunnel with the walls reverbing and crumbling from whatever the hell this thing is that Gray—Michael—just apparently blew the shit out of. But I owe Doc more beer because he came through without me even having to ask and his Hal tracked the epicenter and flashed it to me. Then it made magic and targeted two more Wabs waiting in the tunnel and somehow picked them out of the dark and made them easy shots even with my good hand perfed.

"...so now what...?" he wants to know but I have no idea.

Two seconds later, Richards takes it out of my hands.

NATO armor—I can tell it by the specific urban-camo patterns—comes flooding into the tunnel behind their FNs. They swarm all over and check the dead Wabs and make a ring of a dozen guns around Gray— _Michael_ —and everything gets hard and freezes and nobody makes a noise. Then the Lieutenant leading this little cluster-fuck starts shouting orders to

"Drop the weapon!! _Drop it!!!_ "

And things go weirder. Michael's face shifts back to Grayman and he's looking like he's just come up out of the grave and glares at the Lieutenant like the dumb grunt's just taken his life into his own hands and it doesn't matter how many guns are backing him up.

" _Don't be an ass_..." The voice that growls out through those curling lips sounds like he's been possessed by something that should walk on four large clawed paws.

"HOLD FIRE GODDAMN IT!!" I'm yelling and trying to be in the way and chill the armor down and then I see Richards coming in and waving them down all dub like he's back in charge again.

"Hold fire. Stand down." Then he glares at me like I've been an idiot but doesn't want to ream me for it so publicly. But then he almost softens a bit like he feels me on some old level of what he might have been and steps where he can risk a good look at Grayman. I can't read his face.

"I need you to set that weapon down, Mr. Palmeri," he says after digesting the scene for a few. "Please." Cool. Firm. Then he just stands and waits.

Michael starts to melt back to human, at least a bit. The snarl-grin softens to something almost like a fuck-it half smile. And very gently, he sets the big-ass pistol he's got down on the deck in front of him like he's making a cautious peace-offering.

Then Richards burns it by whipping up a pneumo and thunking a trank dart right into the side of his neck. I can see the ugly surge back for about half a second before he melts cold out.

"Take him."

### 18

November 7th.

Lawrence Henderson, Director of CT Operations, Joint Intelligence Commission:

Just some final things to arrange.

"Doctor Becker..."

He's expecting my call. Been sweating it, in fact. I can see it in his expression: twitchy-tight and wide-eyed, his redheaded freckled face looking even more kidlike than usual.

"Yes sir. I... I've been meaning to... I mean I'd like to offer my apologies for Datascan—for the inconsistencies in its performance. I can't explain why it..."

I let him start to do the groveling he expects to when billions of dollars are on the line, then raise my hand to catch him stumbling through it.

"No need, Doctor. I was actually calling to tell you that we're all, in fact, quite pleased with the Datascan's performance in the Grayman test." I let him digest that just enough to keep him off-balance—he looks at me like I'm not speaking English—and then I keep nudging him: "In fact, I'm authorized to inform you that we will be proceeding with the next phase."

"Uh... Next...?"

"I'm flashing it to you on your encrypt. Please look it over at your earliest convenience. We're hoping to begin immediately."

"'Manticore'..." I watch him roll it off his tongue as he starts scanning. "This is the interface training..."

"Of course. The next step in the joint SENTAR/McCain project proposal. This will let us see if your machine really can assemble, train and field the proposed interface armor teams as effectively as its projections insist."

I watch his eyes glow with the datafeed, hypnotized by it, seduced...

"Can I count on your continued involvement, Doctor? I can't imagine doing it without you."

He's hearing me even though he doesn't respond initially. I settle for an absent nod of assent, and leave him to finish exploring the somewhat edited files I sent him. They're enough, I hope, to suck him in and keep him too distracted to ask the obvious questions, to make it easier for him to just go with the proverbial flow. Besides, he's probably left saner not to discover how thoroughly we redirected his system's operational parameters—and how creatively the machine adapted.

I log out and go see about my other prize.

They're keeping him in the high-security annex of the Ramstein base hospital. Though I can't expect him to fully appreciate how much of my time it eats to travel to Europe, I felt that a flesh appearance would go further with him than a tele-meeting. If not more sincere, then at least a bit harder to tune out.

The guards have me swept for weapons despite my clearance, insisting it's for my _own_ safety. Not that he's tried anything since we put him back together. In fact, he's barely spoken in the last week.

Mostly, he just lies still as a corpse. Healing, I'd like to think. I expect he's got a _lot_ of that to do, considering what he's been through. The other possibility—that he's simply gone basket—isn't an option. Even Datascan agrees with that in its profiling: that he's still quite sellable.

Time to close the deal.

There's no other flesh in the room with him, or much of anything other than the medi-bed. They must have taken to heart the assessment that he could apply almost anything as a weapon (including his bedsheets, so they gave him paper-fiber). The techs watch him through anonymous monitors, and have left it to the cell's auto-dumbwaiter to bring his meals (which he eats very little of, according to his chart). Apparently no one is very comfortable sharing space with him. (He hasn't actually attempted violence—mostly it comes across in some of the staff reports as bordering on metaphysical flake: crap about "aura" and "energy" and "presence".) So I catch the incredulous looks of the guards when I tell them I want in.

He doesn't look up, despite the rare live visitor. He's sitting on the floor with his back against the bed, trying to manage a symmetrically disciplined meditation posture despite the heavy packing wrapping his left calf. Staring at the bare linoleum a few feet in front of him with lazy, half-closed eyes. He's pretending to tune me out, but I saw his vitals go up on the monitors as soon as I buzzed through.

"Hey."

He looks marginally better than he did when we took him. The healing steroids have fleshed him out a bit (that, and the sentry cams show him up doing some kind of kung-fu thing after lights-out, even with the leg wound) and his facial cut is healed over.

"I came to see how you were coming together," I tell him soft-casual. "You don't have to talk to me. I don't blame you for the shut-down, considering the assorted weirdness. But I _can_ explain all that, when you feel like hearing it."

I sit down on the floor a respectable distance in front of him, not bothering to try to match the hard discipline of his posture. I just want to make myself smaller, more passive. He's good, though: I can't see his eyes respond to me at all.

"In the meantime, I have something for you to consider. A deal, of sorts. Not a cheap one. But I think you'll be interested."

I watch him breathe: very slow. I almost can't see it.

"My name is Lawrence Henderson. Joint Intelligence. Counterterror. We've been watching you, and sort of watching over you. But you knew that. Just like you also knew—or at least considered—that it was us that contacted you, hacked your gear and helped you out there at the end. I expect you've got a lot of questions about that, which I'll be glad to answer. Just not here."

Thirty seconds and my rear is hurting, sitting on this floor. He spends hours like this, according to the video files.

"Anyway, my point: I'm authorized to offer you some options. Two, in fact. First, it _is_ possible for us to cover your actions, enough that you might be able to safely return to your old life. I can't make any guarantees, but then I expect there's more in the way of that than the fear of enemy retaliation.

"Which gets me to the other possibility: You don't go back. You keep going down the path you're on now. I can't really elaborate here. But let's say I'm offering you a job, if you decide you don't want to—or can't—go back to being who you were before. And besides a lot of hard training—which I have no doubt you could sail through—that's what it will cost you: you won't ever be able to return to your old life. No family, no friends, no past, nothing. It's not something I would offer if I didn't think you were already pointed that way."

I sit and let it settle for a few before I pry myself up off the floor and signal the sentries to buzz me out.

"No rush. Just let me know. All you have to do is ask the sentry machines for Henderson."

And I leave him there to digest it, staring at the floor. It's not until I'm well out of the annex that I realize I'm shivering like I'm cold.

### 19

Grayman:

Your leg is throbbing again when you finally retire, unfolding yourself in the dark on the bed like a corpse on a slab, content to retreat into yourself, into your aching body and away from what little of the world remains to you. It's well after lights-out, but you no longer bother to watch the clock. It's just another minimal light-source in the darkness of your cell, along with the indicators on the bed and walls that keep quiet track of your continued functioning. And the ready-lights on the sentry cameras that glow like animal-eyes from the corners of the room.

Which, you notice, are unexpectedly dark. Someone has turned the cameras off.

New light now: the flash-glow of the multimedia system over the bed, as the screen they use to communicate with you from a safe distance comes alive. Bright, bold words begin to scroll across it.

"DO NOT SPEAK. THIS IS A DISCREET INTERFACE. MAINTAIN VOCAL SILENCE. OBSERVE."

Then a swirling flow of visuals: video snippets, tech diagrams, photo stills, 3D constructs, all with flashes of titles and specifications.

There's a suit of elaborate armor with claims of head-to-toe protection. The helmet has a full visor that runs a demo of heads-up feed that includes night vision, Terahertz and heat/sound imaging that see through solid walls, along with tactical graphics and data feed that look _very_ much like what flashed on your glasses in Greece. Demos run showing integrated auto-rappel gear and linked weapons with auto-targeting capabilities. Specialized weapons smother bombs (and the bombers who wear them), melt away locks and blast through walls with minimal blowback.

New VTOL gunships fly into simulated urban battlefields to fast-drop teams of the armored suits on their motorized lines, while satellite battle graphics play out war games that easily track, flank and neutralize target enemies.

"FOR YOU:" scrolls bold over the flash feed of images. Mixed into the technical data you catch certain titles and terms: "Project Manticore", "Datascan", "Tactical Interface Armor", "ICW", "SENTAR Corporation", "McCain Foundation"...

"FOR YOU:" The minimal message repeats as the highlights of the presentation replay. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the screen blacks. An instant later, just the text message:

"FOR YOU. ACCEPT HENDERSON OFFER. ACCEPT?"

Then nothing but darkness.

Except the indicator lights: the sentry cameras have come back on.

Interesting.

Still lying back on your bed, you raise your voice to the ceiling:

"Tell Henderson: I'll take Option Two."

You wonder if the sentry cameras can see you grinning in the dark.

### Part Two: Action Heroes

### 1

November 8th, 2018.

Matt Burke:

Almost a hundred degrees in November. How the fuck did he live here?

I cross the non-existent border from Phoenix into Tempe—part of the endless Phoenix-Metro sprawl that hosts the University—and follow the GPS map through two hours of road-rage traffic to get to the run-down student-housing neighborhoods.

A few of the campus info sites I checked affectionately call this particular neighborhood "Sin City." Somehow it makes perfect sense that this is where he's got a closet of a studio (even though he finally finished his degree last spring, after stretching it out for twice as long as it should have taken—records say he took "breaks" and changed his major at least three times).

And the studio is still his, despite being gone with no contact for a month. His parents apparently went ahead and paid this month's rent for him when he didn't come home—probably out of a mix of hope and not wanting to move his stuff. I'd like to think it's more of the former, especially since the "news" broke, though from the pretty sad profile of his family dynamic that Datascan put together, I'm not betting on it.

The only nice thing I discover about the dry broiling weather is how little the local coeds wear—they're still young and stupid enough to dare this sun on their skin. Compared to them, I expect I must look like an old man in this neighborhood, me now pushing the big three-zero. And busted:

I still have to nurse my perforated arm as I pry my sweat-sticky butt out of the rental hybrid, then dig for coin left-handed. Thankfully, the parking meters here still take something less traceable than plastic—not that my "handlers" won't figure out I've been here some other way.

At least my face is looking better, the dart wounds fading to something that looks like I got bit in the cheek by a largish dog. Since I shaved off the beard (had to, after it got patches shaved out of it by the surgical team that worked on my face), I figure it makes me look at least a few years younger. Or not.

The apartment complex isn't any nicer than the dorms I passed half-a-mile back: steel frame and dingy stucco and cast concrete, garnished with coarse gravel and a few palm trees as an excuse for low-maintenance landscaping.

My shirt is sticking to me. I use my issue lockbreaker to get myself through the battered steel door and into his unit. The complex has communal AC, but I figure they keep it up hotter than I could reasonably stand to save on their power bill. That, and the place being shut up for almost a month, makes it stale and tight. And dark: he's got thick blinds on the windows.

I get lazy and go for the light switch.

It's a shrine.

Sort of. It's got this altar-looking shelf dominating the largest wall, with a green stone female Buddha-thing and some authentic-looking Chinese brush-calligraphy and half-burned candles. The centerpiece is a black lacquer rack of Japanese swords—no cheap junk; they look _old_. The walls are done in the same theme: Zen ink paintings that give the place a monochrome décor that flash me back to the whole Grayman style.

It gets worse when I turn around and see that he's got a coat-tree behind the door hanging thick with various long coats and big hats. This strikes me as a serious fashion commitment considering how hot it is here most of the year.

The studio is otherwise pretty efficient. A futon sofa, a big black exec-type chair at a little industrial computer desk, a compact media center, racks of old disks and a scattered assortment of flashware. And paper books: old worn copies of philosophies from the other half of the world.

I open the closet. His wardrobe is as monochrome as I expected: this guy just doesn't do bright and colorful. But half-hidden behind the clothing: more weapons. Swords and sticks and chain-things like I've stumbled into a D-grade kung fu movie. And a safe the size of a small fridge.

It's got an old-style tumbler—no fancy electronics. It takes some work to break it with the gear I brought, but I need to feed my curiosity.

Sweating worse than when I came in, I eventually get what I want.

Guns.

He's got an old 1911 .45 I'd give a month's pay for, tricked out for combat with an action like butter. And a gorgeous blue Colt Python that looks mint even though I know it's a decade or two older than me. _And_ a friggin' space-cannon: stainless steel, long vent-rib barrel, as big as my forearm. I can barely lift it with one hand, and the grip is so fat I feel like I'm holding a brick. The shells I find for it look like cut-down elephant loads. And knives: a collection of the best-of Spec-Ops knives going back sixty years, including two _early_ Gerber Mark II's. The collection must be worth at least as much as the car I parked outside.

That's when I realize I'm not alone.

Spinning, I nearly scare the crap out of the thin silhouette in the doorway. I try to look casual about what I'm doing.

"Hey..." That wasn't very official-sounding. I try again, but she cuts me off.

"Who are you?"

"Burke," I tell her automatically, then thinking maybe I should have given her an alias. "Matt Burke." I do leave off the "Captain."

"FBI? CIA? What are you?" she demands. I realize she could probably see the gun in my pants when I was bent over the safe.

"JIC," I lie half-assed. I haven't officially been working this op since Joint Intel took their prize in Athens and shipped me homeland (with barely a good-bye, much less a "good job"). I'm here on my own shit, but I can't tell her that. I do get the satisfaction of seeing the look on her face go from edgy to the standard eye-roll you get when you mention the Joint Intelligence Commission in public. " _You_ are?"

But I know: dark hair, sharp-boned, deep eyes, pale skin. She's him, only younger and female.

"Laura Palmeri," she confirms with a defiant bite.

"Christian's sister?" I ask officially anyway.

" _Michael_ ," she corrects. "He goes by his middle name. He hated Christian. _Hates_..."

I watch her beat herself up about the past-tense slip.

"Does this mean there's any new news...?" But she doesn't want to know.

"No. Nothing since the one video hit. That's not even confirmed."

They made it fuzzy on purpose—you can't really make out his face. Apparently they wanted to keep their options open. Just a flash of an "unidentified American hostage" held at gunpoint by anonymous masks, uploaded to the news nets from somewhere in the European Union. I guess that means they don't know what the fuck they're going to do with him yet, our poor crazy Christian Michael Palmeri, but at least wanted to establish an "alibi" of sorts with the Wabs, try to keep them from making the connection that Palmeri is—or was—Grayman. If that happens, the angry-scared young woman I'm talking to could be dead in a week, along with the rest of his family.

She doesn't say anything for a few—maybe doesn't know where to go with this.

"Not prying," I start gently, "but were you staking out the place or what? How'd you know I was in here?"

"You opened the door," she tells me like I'm stupid, pointing to the discreet security panel by the lockset. "I had the alarm forwarded to my cell, and I was close by. I pass by every day on my way back from work—it's only half-a-mile out of the way. I work out at the Chandler Intel plant."

"Manufacturing?"

"R&D. I'm an engineer." Only a little snippy about my assumption that female engineers are still not exactly common.

"Hmmm. Any chance you know a Scott Becker?" Small talk, but I realize I'm stepping into potentially classified territory. She thinks about it.

"Think I did a seminar with him. Whiz-kid—the kind they make movies about if they were actually interesting. One of Carter Davis' protégés. McCain Foundation? Bleeding edge AI. Flaky government contracts, but he's hot in the journals. How do you know him?"

Not sure if she's suspicious or incredulous. And I'm not sure but I think I am dancing on Top Secret. "Friend of a friend."

"Do you know how he's coming with his AI project?" she just blurts out.

"Datascan?" I step over the line a bit, but it sounds like her circle is reasonably informed anyway. She probably has better clearance than I do. Still, I keep up the plausible deniability. "No idea. Lame name for a military/intel AI, don't you think?"

"I think that's the point," she tells me, soothed somewhat by the chat. "They didn't want to scare people by giving it some scifi Hal name like Colossus or SkyNet or something. So they make it sound like some innocent file-server instead of... Should we be talking about this?" She taps her ear like she expects I'm linked. I suppose she couldn't imagine why someone with the JIC checking the place wouldn't be online and recording. The sharp-thing must run in the family.

I shrug as innocently as I can get away with. She starts getting edgy again and I can almost hear her teeth grind as she walks over and stares at the sword altar. Then I see her eyes get wet.

"This is why I worry..." she manages to bite it back.

"You think he'll do something stupid," I offer, trying to convincingly hide that I know that he already has, and I've seen all the bodies to prove it.

"Or _did_... I don't know. If someone tried anything, he'd put up a fight. He's good. There are some files of him doing demos and teaching if you want to check it. The guns, too: he taught me to shoot. But what scares me more is that I don't think he _cares_ what happens to him right now."

"You're talking about the ex-girlfriend..."

" _Margaret_ ," she says it with unveiled distain. "He loved her. Talking marriage and the whole thing. Four years they were together, and he was actually happy, looking forward to the real estate and two-point-five kids dream. Then she shits on him. Wanted something else, I guess. Calls him and tells him she doesn't _need_ him anymore—just like that. Two weeks later she's getting married to someone twice her age—I think it was her high school teacher or something equally sad—and off to Hawaii for the honeymoon. That's when he decided to take his own trip."

"Why Germany?"

"He had some students, from his martial arts. They were Lufthansa pilots, training at the local secure flight school. Left him an open invite to come visit when they finally went back home. I met them once: Armin and Peter. Great guys. Bad accents. But they played guitar and sang damn good Country after a few beers."

I let her sit with that a bit, hoping the memory of a couple of Germans singing Grand Ol' Opry (which I can't even picture myself) lifts her.

"He's been gone a month." I have to ask. "When did you start worrying?"

"When he didn't make rent, the manager did some calling. It's not like him—he's obsessive about paying his bills. Then the FBI called us when his passport came up stolen in Frankfurt. And now there's that video on the news. I know they say it's not conclusive, that they can't confirm who's in it, but... I... He's my brother. I just _know_..."

"And he hasn't been in touch since he left?" Small talk. I already know. She shakes her head.

"Not unusual," she admits with a quiet frown. "He never was much for family. Never fit with his step-father—some bad nights there. Kind of drove him away from our mom in the process. Moved out as soon as he could. Just became a habit not to hear from him for months at a time. _Years_ , once..."

"Years?"

"Well, maybe a year and a half. After a particularly loud one with dad. He just stopped calling and taking calls."

"Where was he? In town or...?"

"I think he was here. Pretty sure. Not much money to travel. I suppose you checked his tax records and all. He had partial grants and student loans and did some odd service work, but mostly played the local cash and barter economy until he graduated. Mostly teaching..."

"The martial arts stuff?"

"He had maybe a dozen students on and off. He was really good, though. Not some screaming vein-popping board-breaker in pajamas. He was into the old art and philosophy stuff. Could do most anything. Made it look easy."

"Where did he learn?" This being the biggest hole in his active file—same reason I wanted to know if he'd ever been unaccounted for, at least long enough to get pro training.

"Not sure. He dabbled in a lot of schools. Did a lot of seminars and research—he was _really_ into it. Obsessive—there's that word again, but it's him. I think he had one specific teacher he always came back to, though. Don't remember the name. Sounded like some kind of Zen-hippie living off the underground economy."

I don't push it, afraid it would get to leading. But it reinforces what keeps eating at me: I just don't buy the official story: Grayman—Michael (because he hates his given first name)—wipes out half of Euro-Wabia single handedly because he's been geeking on neo-ninja crap while he otherwise slacks his life away dragging through college (he scored the Dean's List by the time he got his Bachelor's paper, but still: it took him eight years to do it). The sister's prediction is the one that would make sense: that he'd stupidly try to kung-fu an experienced terror-cell and they'd just shoot his ass. Instead, he does a fantastic impression of Freddie Krueger playing James Bond. It doesn't add.

"If you want, you can see him in action," she offers again, poking through some of the flashware on the desk.

"Yeah... I'd like that. Thanks."

I accept a pair of flashkeys (knowing the real JIC has probably already copied and poured through every file he has) and go for the smooth exit.

"We'll... let you know... if we hear..."

She almost manages to say thank-you but has to turn away. Cold bastard (or just having no idea how to do the comfort-thing in a situation like this), I leave her in the black-and-white room and go out and face the heat again.

### 2

November 10th.

Lawrence Henderson:

"You've been blixing, Captain Burke," I get to the point fast enough to keep him off-balance. "You'd think you were still assigned."

He doesn't flinch, though. His face on my screen keeps up appearances: like I'd just caught him sleeping late, hung over, not giving a shit in full-attitude mode.

"Like I have anything better to do than sit around and wait for my face to get pretty again?" he hits back with the expected defiance. His Phoenix trip was less than discreet, and he knows it. But I'm not sure that he has any idea why he's doing what he's doing. That puts me at the advantage, because I _do_ know what he's doing, and (if Datascan continues to meet expectations) what he's very likely _going_ to do next.

"And you've learned...?" I nudge him toward his destiny.

"Doesn't this get us back to me _not_ being assigned to you anymore?"

"My point, Captain: I think it would serve us both if you _were_."

"I don't know," he plays stupidly hard, "I haven't really gotten tired of sitting on my ass yet. Try back in a few months. Years. Whatever."

"And what have you learned?" I push him again, flaunting the luxury of being able to do it from an ocean away.

"Nothing new. Just what I knew before: you and yours have got something especially twisted going." He seems to need to show me that he's got the balls to accuse on a company link.

"You want in?" I come out and give. "Might clarify certain things for you."

"Is that an offer or an order?"

"Whatever you like," I rub it in. "I've got you on a flight to Langley at oh-seven-thirty."

"Is this a standard debrief, or should I expect a Ghraib?" he stays snotty.

"Social gathering. Coffee. Some old friends."

I sign out and leave him to digest. On cue, the AI's ready-graphic comes up.

"Assessment?" I ask Datascan.

"WITHIN PARAMETERS."

"Glad you agree."

### 3

November 11th.

Matt Burke:

Langley has become a fortress in the great Bushwar, but I have no problem getting through security. My face and iris-patterns must have been loaded in advance, because they don't even ask for my ID before they greet me by name, tell me "Director Henderson is sending someone to escort you."

It's chilly today, especially with the wind coming off the river, so I'm wrapped tight in my heavy bomber and stay that way even after I'm inside, like I want to keep myself insulated from the place. I'm nowhere near ready to forgive and forget the last atrocity that the brain trust in this place sent me on. (And I'm a bit edgy because I figure the feeling is mutual, considering the outcome.)

A trim suit comes out to intercept me on cue, smiles like a store mannequin and escorts me promptly to the JIC wing, and the sixth-floor home-office of one Lawrence Henderson.

The place smells like new tech. It gives the place toxic air. I-scans do me again before letting me through to his Ops-Center, which looks like a standard-issue cubicle hell for about two dozen analyst-types, and I catch glimpses of what must be the new tech as Mr. Suit-Mannequin politely moves me through. And I recognize the graphics on the screens I can see: same swirly-blue desktop ready-graphic that trademarks Doc Becker's experimental AI.

The doors all advertise that they're sealed and caged to prevent eavesdropping (all flavors), and discreet sentry scanners in the frames sweep me for—I don't know, but I'd guess pretty much everything: uplinks, guns, maybe even radiologicals and bioweapons.

Two sets of those doors and a right turn puts me in what must be Henderson's outer office. There's no live secretary, but there is a skinny young college-looking geek, almost-glowing copper hair chopped in jarhead-punk fashion, jeans and a rumpled gray sportcoat, clutching his minibook for dear life as he snaps-to sloppily and looks like he doesn't know whether to offer his hand or salute me.

"You're... ah... Captain Burke," he gets out, and then I match the voice and face to real life before he can confirm it: "Scott Becker. From... ah..." He's not sure what he's allowed to say, so I help him out by offering the handshake option.

"Beer," I tell him, and he looks confused. "I owe you. Beer."

His freckled skin flushes sunburn-red as he looks relieved, like he expected something else, someone more dub or rum or I don't know. But hell, he played link monitor for me—he should know better. Then he looks like he needs to tell me something but thinks he can't here, the way he shuffles and darts his eyes. Odd. He's supposedly been running an intel contract for years—he should be used to this level of security and paranoia. It makes me wonder what else is clicking him. But then the inner doors unseal and I hear another familiar voice:

"Gentlemen..."

Henderson—in person—is exactly the officious prick I expected: suit and tie like he lives in them, thinning strawberry hair and the faint pitting on the cheeks that comes with a bad skin history (funny it doesn't show up in the vid-link resolution). He goes for the power-handshake like a politician (I decline this time, using the perforated hand as an excuse), offers coffee and tea and such (though then just points out the service to let us get our own), and suggests a pair of chairs in front of his big lacquered desk.

"How's the healing coming?" he tries superficially.

"Still sore," I tell him almost like it's his fault. "But I figure I got out lucky."

"Considering the carriers turned out _not_ to be contagious," he assumes. I don't bother to tell him that the threat of exposure to an engineered virus didn't bother me nearly as much as the threat of my own "backup" shooting me when I went for the Wabs' big horn thingy. Or when I found out that Henderson had teams on the sound-weapon _the whole time_ and didn't budge them until _after_ Grayman had done the job for him. So I give him my best "whatever" look and wait for him to tell me what he apparently wants to so badly.

But he doesn't. Not quite. He pulls up the expensive high-rez holoscreen that's built into his desk and starts to flash files in the air between us. A 3-D of what looks like a suit of heavy space battle armor out of an alien-shooter game rotates above his desktop.

"This is the new battlefield weapon for an old battlefield," he sells like a weapons contractor. "SENTAR Corporation. Class V protection, full body coverage with extensive trauma plate. Nanotech materials. BCR hardened—doubles as MOPP gear." He zooms and does a demo of the full-visored helmet. "Full spectrum feed and interface. Arrays pick up everything from visual spectrum to infra-red and even Terahertz—the gear can see _through_ walls—and audio has built-in parabolics, sonar and laser—so you can _hear_ through walls as well. It's all linked to Datascan, which processes the feed, coordinates with existing files and active satellite imaging, and sends you back full tracking, targeting, mapping and strategic plans. You got a chance to sample some of it in Athens, Captain: a whole new level of tactical battlefield coordination." Then he shows us the rest of the toys:

"Servo grappling hooks auto-fire from the back of the torso and the left forearm under recharging gas pressure, trailing motorized rappel lines. The AI aims them, gauges firing energy, controls whether the hooks hold or release. They can drop you smooth or fast from a roof or an aircraft, or they can grab on and lift you up. The forearms are also loaded with utility gear: retracting blades for close interdiction, gas projectors, and corrosive injectors for melting through locks and hinges, as well as electronic breaker-tools. Whole thing only weighs about fifty pounds. And then there's this:"

The graphic raises its right arm. It's gripping a blocky weapon with over/under barrels. Its triggered pistol-grip is forward of center so that the bulk of it is behind the shooter's hand, bullpup-style. There's a right-angled fore-end grip for two-handed stabilization.

"ICW. Interface Combat Weapon. Also produced by SENTAR. Fires five-five-six-millimeter caseless—one hundred rounds per stick—as well as six various 25mm grenades set in a selective cylinder magazine. Its sighting and fire control are also fully integrated into the AI. You just point the thing, squeeze the trigger, and it shoots when it has a sure lock, or holds fire if any friendly or civilian target is in line. You could point this thing into a crowd of people, wave it around, and it would cleanly pick out the targets hiding in there _without_ collateral damage. Or it could pick out enemies you can't even see."

I try not to look impressed, but side-glance at Becker, who looks like there's porn on the screen.

"Imagine what this will mean, Captain," he keeps selling. "This will change how we fight wars. No more large vulnerable forces on the ground, trying to secure hostile urban neighborhoods or challenging terrain. Instead, we just hit-and-fade with small, highly mobile teams, inserted and extracted using cutting-edge VTOL gunships—all extremely surgical. The new armor will significantly reduce our casualties, while the Datascan AI's coordination will radically improve our accuracy and responses. And no more messy collateral damage: we can track and lock and drop in and take out our objectives with _absolute_ surety. No mistakes. No civilian casualties. And no counter-propaganda, either: the optical feed from the suits will put everything we do on camera. We could upload our mission feed directly to the news-nets and comfortably let the world armchair-in on our operations."

"Assuming it actually _works_ that way." But he was expecting that.

"This would be why you're _both_ here. Doctor Becker knows Datascan better than any other project engineer at McCain. He can watch over the interfacing as we move ahead, de-bug as we go."

"Yeah, but _I_ can't get a _toaster_ to work," I tell him proudly. "So why me?"

"Consider your attitude a part of the equation," he tries the sincere-thing. "And since it wasn't me who actually picked you for this, or for the Grayman op, you'll have to ask the 'why' in the right direction."

The holo washes over to the swirling blues of the familiar ready-graphic.

"GOOD AFTERNOON, MAJOR BURKE," the vox I remember from Athens drones as the text-version scrolls in the air. He _can't_ be serious.

" _See_ ," I defend, "the thing's already buggy. Thinks I'm someone else..."

"SIMON MATTHEW BURQUETTE," the vox spits out the name I'd been promised HumInt had lost for me years ago. "AGE TWENTY-NINE. ENLISTED US ARMY FIFTH-JUNE TWO-THOUSAND-NINE. COMPLETED OCS, AIRBORNE AND RANGER TRAINING. GRADUATION RANK: SECOND LIEUTENANT. COMPLETED ADVANCED SPECIALIZED TRAINING IN SMALL ARMS, CLOSE QUARTERS COMBAT, COVERT INTERDICTION, AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS TACTICAL PLATOON COMMAND. SPEAKS FLUENT SPANISH AND LIMITED PORTUGUES, QUECHUA AND ARABIC. ASSIGNED SPECIAL FORCES MAY TWO-THOUSAND TWELVE. DEPLOYED JOINT COMBINED HUMAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIONS ZONE FOUR, TWO-THOUSAND FOURTEEN. SECURE IDENTITY: MATTHEW CHRISTOPHER BURKE. LAST ASSIGNMENT: PROJECT MONTAGNARD, TWO THOUSAND SEVENTEEN THROUGH TWO THOUSAND EIGHTEEN. LAST PROMOTION: MAJOR, THIS DATE."

"You _can't_ be serious."

Henderson—the smug bastard—lets me stew. And so does Hal.

"The Team One selection has been initiated?" Becker breaks the tension by spitting out gobbledygook. Whatever it means, he's excited about it, and maybe a bit uncomfortable.

" _Weeks_ ago," Henderson tells him—apparently they speak the same language. "We have most of the candidacy online. That's why the Major here was selected for Grayman. He fit. Still does."

"You're saying Grayman was a test-scenario for Tactical candidate selection?" Becker dithers like he's just heard that Christmas is a Wab plot to pack shopping centers with targets for suicide bombers.

And I'm flashing a time-out as Henderson is nodding his smug affirmation.

"Translation for the toaster-illiterate, please?"

"The project evolution at this stage was for Datascan to demonstrate its ability to identify, profile and tracking a global target database, while simultaneously selecting and training the armored field operatives—we call them 'Tacticals'—in the special tactics and equipment required to carry out interface operations..." This would be Becker's version. I think Henderson lets him ramble just so I'll like _his_ explanation better.

"Contrary to how the Grayman operation was made to appear on the surface, Datascan is actually performing above expectations," he keeps on trying to sell me. "It's effectively proving it can do what it was designed for: It can positively identify anyone even remotely involved in any terrorist activity, _and_ it can track them down. It can also very accurately predict behavior: tell us what they're going to do before they themselves even know what that is. Then, if we decide to move on a target, it can plan the mission with every conceivable contingency, and then coordinate the troops in the field more effectively than any human commander. We will have an unbelievable tactical advantage, even in the most difficult environments. And we're not talking one mission at a time—you've only seen the barest fraction of what it can do. Datascan will eventually have eyes on every potential enemy we have. The number of operations it can simultaneously manage will only be limited by the forces we can field. The War on Terror will take a turn we could never before have hoped for."

Time-out again: "This is just so perfect, I bet the Rads could _sneeze_ and bork it," I have to tell him, because he's left reality (apparently with Doc happily in tow).

"That's why we do not proceed until each step is fully proven," Henderson defends, apparently fully expecting my attitude. "We start with one six-man fire-team of test candidates, run them through the new training series, give them a series of test missions, then introduce them into live operations. And then we still have to wait for the bigger-picture to catch up: Considering where our targets tend to hide, we can't just drop on them regardless of borders and blast away. We'll need international cooperation, which is why this is a multinational project—we already have a dozen interested nations willing to see what we can do."

I have to digest. I have a hard time. I realize the first implication:

"So this isn't just for sale to US Special Operations?"

"It _can't_ be," he says with amazing ease. "We need to coordinate globally to hunt these bastards properly."

And I'm immediately thinking about how much money some select corporate types could be raking in, selling expensive product to every allied nation at once, convincing them they need it. But that's not what's bending me:

"So what the hell was Grayman?" I hit him, realizing I'm probably dissing Doc's life's work in the process. "You told me you'd give me answers if I came to this party. If that was a _success_ , it's some definition of the word I'm not familiar with."

But the smug he gives me makes me start sweating.

"Grayman was actually more successful than even Doctor Becker was made aware of," he purrs. "But then, he was led to believe it was just a straightforward target-tracking op: find Grayman. We decided to accelerate things, based on what we saw coming out of Datascan as soon as it began tracking. And Datascan did indeed find, track, profile and predict—we just kept the full results restricted. It also initiated tactical supports: Yes, Major, Grayman _did_ have Datascan's help. It gave us a good idea how Datascan could apply its resources to covert-operative support."

"Then Grayman _is_ one of yours?"

I thought I had him, but he laughs at me. Well, he _smirks_...

"No. Grayman _is_ what he appears to be: nobody. What he did was all his own. We just gave him a little discreet help."

"So you could have someone expendable for your little test?" I make the accusation I've been stewing for weeks. "Someone you could easily disavow make your mess for you?" But he's smirking at me again.

"Most of what Grayman did was tactically insignificant. Some of it was actually counter-productive: he made the Rads jumpy, and he neutralized some of our long-standing surveillance targets. So why did we let it play as far as we did? As I said: we accelerated our timetable: Grayman was _also_ a recruiting operation. Datascan, you see, has _very_ specific parameters in mind for choosing candidates for its Tacticals."

"And in its brilliance, it chose me?"

"It _considered_ you, based on what it's profiled from your history." He lets me digest that long enough to see if I squirm. Then: "It had to confirm its assumptions by observing your responses in the course of the operation. Things are going to _change_ , Major. Not everybody is going to be able—or willing—to go with it like we need them to.

"You know, we started out by offering the gear and the AI tactical interface—you need them both to really make it work—to our established topline operational forces: SEALs, Deltas... They didn't want it—they gave a lot of sound, professional reasons why: too bulky, too prototype... The biggest concern was that they would need to undo and remake almost everything that they are now. _And_ they'd be getting mission plans and taking field directives from a machine. Now, these are the guys who stay ahead of the game by adapting, by keeping up with the times and the tech. My take is it scared them, shook things up too much—they need to see it work before they get on board. So Datascan had to go outside the deployed teams, had to go cherry-picking individual operators based on profile. You fit."

"Just me?" And how did I get so lucky?

"Of the Joint CTC operators you ran the mission with, yes—it only wanted you at this phase. There were other candidates—you met them—and they may get opted in at a later date. But you came out in the first six—Tactical Team One."

"So you all just let Grayman—some poor 'raqed civilian, if I believe that bullshit back-story—hang his ass out as a test for your toy? _And_ for me?" Not buying. Not at all. But he expects that. And what he says next hits me and sinks my guts before he even gets a chance to spit it out with that smug smirk of his. Because it's the one thing that suddenly _does_ make sense.

"No, Major. It wasn't just a test for you. It was a test for _Grayman_." He shifts to full sick grin and lets that sink a bit, enjoying what I assume is how much paler I suddenly get. "He _passed_. _And_ he was offered. He said 'yes'. He's already started Immersion Indoc..."

I want to vomit. I open my mouth but I can't manage a single fucking word.

I glance over at Becker and see he's looking as gut-shot as I feel. Poor Doc really had _no_ fucking idea his work had been so thoroughly co-opted.

"And now the question is yours, _Major_ Burke," Henderson throws the new rank at me like it's conditional, "are you in or out?" And he sounds exactly like some DTD serial villain.

I look at the unresponsive ready-graphic that still floats blue in the air between us, and suddenly I'm absolutely sure that the fucking machine knows exactly what I'm going to say.

### 4

Project Manticore.

Transcript of chemical interrogation session, 13 November 2018.

Subject: Gray

Interviewer: Tell me about the first one: Hans Henkels.

Gray: Hajaf. He called himself Hajaf.

Int: Was he the first person you've ever killed?

(No reply. Note the last round of drugs should be at peak blood-levels.)

Int: Tell me about Hajaf.

Gray: Proof the Neo-Wahabi aren't about race, just rage. Nice German boy with nothing left to lose. Impressionable. Ambivalent.

Int: How did he treat you?

Gray: Worse when the others were watching. Played tough. Softened slowly on the solo watch. Let me talk to him. Koran, mostly. He was impressed how well I knew it. He wondered why I wasn't of the Faithful. I told him maybe I was. He'd back off. Come back later. Shy. Almost scared. Like he had doubts.

Int: But you killed him.

Gray: Yes.

Int: No regrets?

Gray: (Eleven seconds of silence. High autonomic response.) He would have gone along with the others. And there was no time.

Int: Because they were losing patience with you?

Gray: Because they were bringing another. There was opportunity. They'd gotten complacent. Left only the two guards when they went out. I knew there would be no other chance.

Int: But you'd been working through your bonds for some time.

Gray: (Autoresponse fluctuates. Chuckles. Bites his lip.) Working to kill time. Afraid. Hoping I wouldn't have to act.

Int: Afraid of what? Being killed?

Gray: (Autospike. Snarls.) No. Resigned to that. Already dead. But harming another, taking a life...

Int: But you did kill. Why?

Gray: They were going to kill someone else.

Int: So you did it to save Tariq?

Gray: (Autoresponse spike. Grins. Snarls.) No.

Int: Then why?

Gray: (Voice sounds like a growl.) To... _remove_... (Doesn't finish sentence.)

Int: Remove what? The terrorists?

Gray: (Response flatlines.) If you wish.

(Pause in the interrogation. Chemical drip is increased.)

Int: How did you kill Hajaf?

Gray: (Slow rise in autoresponse.) Had to get him to come close.

Int: How did you do that?

Gray: Pissed him off. Started in with the religion. Quoting. They say no one quotes scripture better than the Devil. I shook him. Rubbed his nose in it. He started getting scared. Ashamed. Crying. Losing his temper. Then I crossed the line.

Int: How?

Gray: One thing I knew would snap him. _Kuf_. Blasphemy. _True_ blasphemy.

Int: What do you mean by that?

Gray: Blasphemy is easy. Contradict scripture. Insult God. Just rude words. But _true_ blasphemy challenges. Who you are. What you believe. You can't ignore it.

Int: What did you say?

Gray: (Spike. Growl again. Snarling.) _Ana al-haq_.

(Cross reference: This is the same quote the subject used in the Bari webvideo.)

Int: What does it mean?

Gray: (Still snarling.) 'I am the Truth.' Like Jesus: 'I am the Truth and the Life.' Like saying ' _I_ am your God.' Can't let that one go.

Int: Where did you learn that?

Gray: (Autoresponse declines.) Story of Mansoor Al Hallaj. A Sufi. Realized there was no division between self and the divine, everything is one. Proclaimed to the Muslims: 'I am truth. I am God.' They received it about as well as you'd think. They systematically dismembered him alive.

(Pause in the interrogation. Responses fluctuate.)

Gray: (Continues without prompt.) Hajaf... lost it. Drew his gun. Stuck it right in my face. Afraid to shoot, even though I challenged his god. Screaming. Threatening. He never saw it coming. I snapped the cuffs, deflected and trapped his gun arm, jerked him hard off balance. Blinded him. Broke his elbow. (Autoresponse increases.) Wrapped his neck backward...

Int: Where did learn how to do that?

Gray: (Smiling.) I didn't.

(Interrogator's note: The subject appears to be able to at least partially resist the interrogation medium. There remains an impression that he is still, on some level, able to 'toy' with this process, and may even be enjoying it. Suggest future use of agents with less potentially euphoric effects.)

Int: How did it feel to kill him?

Gray: The hardest part... was that first action. Crossing that line. I just let the adrenaline do it. Once I was moving, all the fear was gone. Like jumping into cold water. The hardest part is making yourself jump. After that... (He stops. Autoresponse fluctuates.)

Int: How did you feel?

Gray: (Sudden spike. Then plateau. Snarl-grins.) Easy. It was _easy_...

Int: And the other guard? Akbar?

Gray: (Still plateaued on stable high response.) Let him panic. Dodged so he shot his friend. I took Hajaf's hand and made Hajaf shoot him. Hit him in the balls—didn't mean to. Lucky shot. Akbar was still on his feet, still trying to shoot, wearing a vest, so I shot him through the right shoulder. Killed his gun arm. Then I took his legs. Sloppy aim. Don't like Glocks. Not used to shooting people, either. He was on what was left of his knees, trying to get control of his AK back with his last limb, then took his left arm away too.

Int: Then what?

Gray: (No change.) Watched him bleed. Looking at me. Scared. Cursing. Crying. Helpless.

Int: How did you feel?

Gray: (Autoresponse fluctuates.) Shaking. Everything. Hands. Arms. Legs. Hard to talk...

Int: You spoke to him?

Gray: (Stabilizing. Nods.) Needed to know things. Saw them conferencing. Planning on their techware. I wanted access. Wanted to know how to get on, get in.

Int: Why? Why not run?

Gray: They had more. Plans. Lives to take. Hundreds. Thousands. But they talked to each other. Bragging. Coordinating. Sharing. All the secrets were in their gear. With access, I could stop them. I only needed to get into their files. Their notebooks were double-locked: thumbprint and password. I had his prints—he couldn't stop me. But I still needed the password. I threatened him. Hurt him. Hurt him. He started praying. Giving himself to his God. So I waited. Waited until he got shocky, couldn't see anymore. Then I tried to pretend I was a friend. An angel. God, even. Praised his strength, his faith. Comforted him. Gentle whispers. Promises of paradise...

Int: Did he give you the password?

Gray: (Autoresponse flatlines.) No. He died.

Int: So how did you get in?

Gray: (No reply. Autoresponse spikes and crashes. He shivers. Chews his lip.)

Int: How did you get in? How did you get the codes?

Gray: From Delilah.

### 5

Grayman:

"Reality" shifts again.

You're getting used to their patterns, despite the drugs they keep feeding you (they've underestimated your natural ability to develop tolerance). The worst is the not waking between simulations, like being trapped in dreams. Dreams made of VR games.

It's easy to tell it isn't real. Even the most detailed renderings are still CGI, which glows unnaturally and still—even at max-rez—lacks a sense of "weight". And there are times when you can almost feel your body in the VR web, especially when it cuts off your circulation so that parts of you don't want to work right until the software adjusts you.

They've been badgering you repeatedly about where you've been and what you've done, though from the simulations they keep making you relive it appears they already have all their answers. They seem to be looking to trip you up, break you, find your limits. Stupid game (and that makes it all the easier to just wait it out).

But you have agreed to play, so you play.

When they get bored with your atrocities (at least for awhile), they show you what other humans are capable of: Terrorist attacks, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, the acts of petty warlords and so-called "freedom fighters". Dead families. Dead children. All painstakingly rendered. They make you wander through re-creations of the horror that men do (often men who believe that they are doing God's work), and they ask you "How do you feel?"

(The answer you don't give them: It makes you feel significantly better about the murder you have done. It makes you feel like you have a lot more of it to do.)

And then they regularly "reward" you by giving you access to their new training programs, showing you what it will take to be soldier in their new army. They let you move through the VR tutorials at your own pace, and they seem to be impressed with how fast you absorb: their weapons, their tactics, their ritual discipline. It's like you were born to do this, like it's all already hardwired.

Then they insert you into very realistic recreations of their best and worst battles, letting you live their history, share their victories and traumas. It's almost like a bonding of sorts: they dig through your battles, then let you live theirs. Show me yours, I'll show you mine...

What they don't do is let you _out_.

Still, you have, over time (and you have no idea how much time, because there is no consistent sense of it here, not even in terms of day and night), gotten used to the pattern and rhythm of their questions, slid into an easy flow of dramatic dialogue with your unseen interrogators, playing with them as much as they try to play with you. This appears to annoy them, but they keep at it, throwing flashes of what you've done up in your face in all the forensic detail, breaking it down, hammering with their dull repetitive queries, then letting you slide without warning into some other CGI special effect.

This one isn't one of your memories. It must be one of theirs.

"What is this?"

You are in a jungle. They've even made it hot and tropical.

"Columbia," one of the usual voices says dully.

Your virtual "body" is wearing appropriate camo ACUs, but they have not supplied you with any weapons—either you won't need any or they expect you to do without, use the enemy's.

"So?" you ask when nothing happens but the scenery.

"Look around."

Dead bodies. An assortment of unkempt irregulars. All shot to pieces in the undergrowth. Tactical graphics highlight them so you can't miss them.

But then they're not dead anymore. You've gotten used to this part: when the VR shifts from a photorealistic 3D made from actual video or stills of a real event to an animated reconstruction of action that was not caught on any video. One moment the bodies are real and dead, then, in a flash, they're alive as high-rez computer animation, shooting and getting shot. Mostly getting shot.

But nobody seems to see you, no one shoots at you, so you must just be here to watch.

It's fast. Someone—no more than a shadow moving in the green—sprays in short, disciplined bursts. The few that manage to return fire get cut down before they even know where their enemy is: the shadow seems to pop here and there, and they are all dead in a matter of seconds.

_The_ shadow. There is just the one, only one unseen attacker.

You see that now because the shooter is flattened against the wall of a ramshackle hut: animated figure in jungle fatigues with an M-4A, tossing something into the hut that gives a bright flash and a loud, sharp bang but does not seem to do much damage. Stun grenade.

Your POV follows the shooter into hut. You still can't see his face. He cleanly drops one of the two fighters inside. The other moves slower, and gets his legs cut out from under him before he can reach his weapon. The shooter's boots kick him over face-up. It's an old man. Withered. Toothless. Too angry to beg for his life. He gets kicked in the ribs again for his attitude. Then he gets kicked in the face.

The shooter leaves him for a moment to go rifling through a stack of hardcopy photos on a little camp table. The VR makes sure you see what they are: pictures of a young, slight, dark-haired girl being raped by men that look very much like the ones dead outside.

"How do you feel?" your dull narrator cuts in. You don't answer.

You can feel the warmth and sickening numbness as they drip more of their drugs into you. It makes the VR shift and swim, but they keep the photos where you can see them. They get shuffled into a rough filmstrip as the girl is raped and abused, then hung upside-down by a frame here in the hut that you are virtually standing in, and the old man takes a hunting knife to her and begins to slice off her skin while she's still alive.

Apparently not satisfied with your response, they animate it for you, show you the atrocity happening, the girl convulsing as she is cut. They even simulate the smells: sweat and blood and piss and stale semen. Her screams penetrate your entire body, but they won't let you move, won't let you do anything. Except watch.

"How do you feel?"

They take the girl out of the sim, take you back to the moment with the shooter and the toothless old man who so enjoyed his work. The knife he used is now back on the camp table with his photo souvenirs. It's been cleaned, but you recognize it. The shadow-shooter's anonymous hand picks it up.

"What do you want to do?"

You don't answer. You don't.

Then the shooter suddenly turns to face you. You think for a moment that the VR is trying to simulate _you_ —the way you look in the depth of your cold hungry rage—because the eyes look sunken and predator-cold burning but the face under the smears of greasepaint and spatters of blood isn't right isn't yours...

But you know the face.

"So what do I call you? Commissioner Gordon?"

Matthew?

But then they rip it away from you in a swirl of sim nightmare.

### 6

November 18th.

Matt Burke:

It's like a high-tech Ghraib.

They've got him in an airtight chamber, strapped limbs-and-torso into some kind of wild new VR simulation web thats spinning and flipping him like a doll as the sims pound him through his full-face visor (which is sealed so they can feed him scent as well as sound and vision). When he moves voluntarily, he's walking and running on a pivoting treadmill, the web restricting him when he hits simulated VR barriers, a wired bodysuit letting him "feel" what he's supposedly experiencing.

"Tell me about Delilah," a voice drones with clinical deadpan, though no one visibly present in the test facility is speaking. The tech running the show is glued to graphics gauging a variety of autonomic responses. They spike. Flutter. Begin to creep jaggedly up.

I can watch a version of what he sees on a screen in the monitor's room. The machine sims her: slim, toned, tanned, hair shimmering black, sultry eyes, pouty lips.

"Where did you meet her?"

"Classics club," I hear his voice give them. He sounds drugged, half asleep. "Frankfurt. Dark basement dive. Lightshows. Loud."

"You went alone?"

"Yes." Interesting how clear his voice stays despite how whacked he must be. "Peter and Armin were tired. Scheduled to fly early in the morning. But they recommended the place, knowing the kind of music I like, or hoping I'd meet someone."

"You took a cab?"

The graphics spike _way_ off the chart. But then I remember what happened with that particular cab driver.

"Delilah: She approached you?" the voice continues, apparently not concerned about getting a verbal answer to the last question. "In the club?"

"Dancing. She said she liked the way I moved. Yelling over the music. Asked me where I was from. Asked me to come out back so we could talk."

"And then what happened?"

This is different. The response graph arcs up smooth and stays put just down from the top. And when he answers, the voice is different: deeper, colder. Like it was Athens, when there were guns on him.

"It was a trap." Very matter-of-fact. "There were four of them. Waiting. Two worked for the club as security. Then more in a van."

"What did you do?"

"Tried to shake off the drunk I had going. Got ready to move. Looked for her. Afraid they would hurt her."

"But?"

"She laughed." The graphics suddenly dip and bounce all over. I watch his body get tight in the webbing. Worse, the sim does a cruel job recreating the scene, right down to the ugly grin on the girl's face. I want to kill her myself. But then he comes down, just a bit: "She set me up."

"What did you do?"

"Slipped my wallet in the trash," he gets relatively cool. "My passport."

"Why?"

Still cool: "They would want to know who I was. So they could put me on the web."

"Why didn't you resist?" the interrogating voice keeps on.

The graphics bounce about again as a half dozen hulking thugs surround his trench-coated avatar in the simulation.

"I locked up," he admits, soft for a moment. "But it unbalanced them when I came willingly. Like I wasn't afraid. They were. I could feel it. I had more control..." His voice shifts back from the fragile human to the deep dark as he goes, and his autonomic responses do the rise and flatline again. The interrogator tries to shake him:

"What about the girl?"

The plateau rises but stays level. His voice gets colder.

"She lived with them. Did her part to try to break me. Flirted and teased. Ridiculed. Laughed."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. I gave her nothing. It made her angry. One night she made sure to be loud when her lover had her. Then she came out naked and smelling like sex, trying to kiss me with his cum still on her breath. Hajaf got a little shaken up at that. I think he liked her."

"What happened to her?"

The sim fast-forwards through the re-creation of him taking out his guards, all the way through him popping everybody in the apartment but the girl. I watch him hold the gun on her, backing her up. She throws away her weapon. Holds up her hands. I can see her mouth moving rapidly, begging, pleading, trying to manipulate, but the video feed I'm watching has no sound. He backs her up against the wall, presses the gun up under her jaw. I watch his vitals ride the action.

He acts it out in the web (it's creepy to watch): Traces the muzzle of the pistol down her neck, between her breasts. She starts to respond, thrusting herself at him, thinking she has her way out. He shifts the gun into his left hand and digs it under her ear, and she's grinding her pelvis at him like she's giving him a half-assed table-dance. His right hand goes into the coat like he's going to undo his pants, but then it comes out with a big fighting knife.

"What did you do?"

The tip traces the lines of her pretty face, her throat. She freezes up and starts to tremble.

"We talked." His voice is worse than Athens.

"About what?"

"Things. You know. Small talk. Passwords."

Then it gets stranger: He lays the long blade across his _own_ face. And carves...

"Why did you do that? Why did you cut yourself?"

I watch his sim-self bleed, cut diagonally down through the right eyebrow and cheek. He takes his time answering.

"To make a point."

"About what?" the interrogator stays right on him.

"Pretty faces. Hers. Mine. She'd teased her lover, Yusuf, about how pretty she thought I was. So he took out his knife and threatened to cut my face. But he wanted me recognizable."

He takes the knife, and pinning her to the wall with the gun, he makes an equal wound down her face. Her avatar is sobbing, begging.

"She told me what I wanted to know."

He withdraws the knife and caresses her hair with his gun-hand. Without sound, it looks like he's whispering to her, softly, almost comforting. He uses his knife-hand to push an open notebook within her reach, and she swipes the print-scanner and types something with very shaky fingers.

Then he puts the pistol away, takes hold of her by the head and kisses her. She shivers and cries and lets him, responds to him. Starts slowly reaching for his gun...

But then her eyes snap wide and her body jerks and I realize he's shoved the knife up under her jaw. He takes her last breath into his mouth before pulling back. Then he presses his facial wound into hers and holds her as she stops convulsing and goes limp in his arms.

I look down and realize the tech's hands are shaking as he resets the sim.

So are mine.

### 7

November 19th.

Lawrence Henderson:

"What are you trying to accomplish with this?" he bitches on my screen, more righteously irritated because I won't face-to-face with him even though we're in the same facility. He should be happy I took his call, given the mood he's in.

"It's just debriefing, Major Burke," I don't reassure. "Things we need to know."

"I've seen it," he goes off as expected. "It's chemical. Bordering on torture. What is it you think you need to know?"

" _Him_ ," I go minimalist to keep him strung. "We need to be sure of a few things before we proceed."

"It gets _better_?" he does the attitude I'm thinking of naming after him.

"You saw his autonomic responses during VR interrogation?"

He doesn't answer, knowing that I know he has.

"So what do you think we have here?"

He actually mulls it over before he blurts it out:

"Some kind of wetwork. I don't know. I still don't buy his backstory. I did some checking—but you know that—and his sister told me he'd been unaccounted for. Extended periods. Plenty of time for someone to get their hooks in him and train him."

"He is what his files say he is," I insist easily. "Crap childhood followed by crap adult life. What makes him more than a depressed twenty-nine-year-old is how he's apparently wired. Happy accident of Nature versus Nurture. For him _and_ for us."

"So he's some kind of comic book mutant?"

I shake off his melodrama and call up live feed of our mutual friend, apparently deep-out in his VR web.

"He's been kept whacked hard enough to drop an elephant. VR immersion for twenty-hour stretches, barely three hours in actual awake reality in between. Any sleep he's getting is dozing in the gear. I imagine it's something like Spec Ops Hell Week, except he's been running three times longer and with no sense of time. I wonder what it does to his dreams."

"For _what_?" he challenges—he appears to have gotten "attached" even faster than Datascan predicted. "So he can relive his grand adventures twenty-four-seven until you break him?"

"It's not about breaking, Major. And it's not just his own shit: We've run him through a library of hairy ops. Mogadishu. Iraq. Even hot new sims of some of the scariest battles of World War Two, Korea and Vietnam. And some Class-A atrocities: You remember Cambodia? Darfur? Rwanda? Ethnic cleansing with rape and machetes? Datascan's recreated a choice selection, dead babies and all. _And_ terror attacks with bits of bodies left all over. He's seen it all, Major, up close and personal. Mass-headings. School bombings. Chechnya. Beslan. Jerusalem. And _not_ like on the news-nets: un-edited and immersed. Living them. Walking through them. Smelling the blood and the death."

" _Why_?" he measures out through his teeth, then protects himself with his sarcasm: "I mean, besides giving you all something to jack to."

"You saw what happens when he's in the shit: His limbic responses go through the roof, but then he hits this plateau and slips into a zone. Clarity. Three dimensional thinking. Controlled dissociation. Do you know that he talks to himself?"

"So do _I_."

"He talks to himself in the _second_ person. Shows he's stepping back, becoming his own tactical commander. He should be losing it. But it's like he feeds on it. And you've seen what he can do when he gets there."

"Which I still don't buy: He didn't learn that in some Kung Fu class. He's got military moves. And moves _I_ haven't seen. Lethal shit. _And_ he can shoot. He even used a Claymore on those Wabs..."

"He read the instructions, Major," I rub his nose in what he should know. "They come with the detonator kit, printed in bold-face grunt-basic so you can't fuck it up under fire."

He sits and stews for a minute. I give him a break.

"Granted, he's damn fast on the upload: We've been feeding him the new training VR series, kind of like a break between stress sessions. He eats it all up as fast as we can load it. Weapons. Tactics. History. Tech. And yes, even I'd swear he'd already had years of training. But _I_ know he doesn't. He's a natural. He's got a feel. He learns and adapts scary fast. We fed him the VR version of the SOF junior officer's mission planning course and ran him through some fairly extreme boards. He not only passed the standards—this while whacked silly and sleep-deprived—he played every scenario we threw at him and _owned_ every enemy coming and going."

"So?" he downplays, still refusing to buy in. "That's all structured—by-the-book moves. Nothing fancy, nothing creative: absorb and apply. Means he's smart. Figure he must play a good game of chess."

"Not chess, Major. Chess—as you say—has limited fixed rules. Do you know what TEGWAR is?"

"Joke. Made-up card game to bush the bushable. 'The Exciting Game Without Any Rules.' You make up rules as you go."

"Same thing he does, Major. Keeps changing the game, keeps his targets off balance. Like I said: we gave him the basic rules of engagement, detailed the scenario, broke down his resources. He did the rest. And not only gave us multiple options for each step, but was able to do what the instructors do: break down all the possible outcomes of each variation, then weighed a best-choice based on how he thought the enemy would respond. Know who else thinks like that? Or should I say: _What_ else?"

He gets it faster than I thought he would. Shakes his head. Starts laughing.

"You're trying to tell me your new Hal found itself some kind of long-lost soul mate? Just stumbled upon him in a random CT investigation and got all hot or hard or whatever it is machines get? Now that's just _wrong_."

"Is it?" I challenge him. "Remember: Datascan is selecting its operatives based on profiles as well as skill sets. It's not just about being able to run a mission, shoot a gun."

"And you're telling me it wants some kind of serial killer?"

"True serial killers are sociopaths, Major," I tell him firmly. "No empathy. No remorse. It's hardwired in the brain. Does that sound like him? Look at his responses. He's running on rage. But he doesn't feed off the actual killing. It isn't even revenge. Or justice. During debriefs he uses the word 'remove' a lot, like he just needs to make the bad guys go away and not come back. Most disturbing thing is he doesn't take prisoners, unless he's specifically ordered to, and then he cripples them first, like he needs to make sure they won't hurt anybody ever again. He really is a fucking hero, all about protecting the innocent. And when he's done he crashes. Hard."

I let him stew, then prod him the way he needs to go, wants to go:

"You two really aren't that much different, Major, at least in terms of why you do what you do. Maybe you should get to know him a little better."

### 8

November 24th.

Matt Burke:

I step over a dead Wab who's got a jagged chunk of resonant tubing sticking through his neck. I catch myself snickering at the obvious irony: a piece of his own dumbass uber-weapon killed him when it blew apart.

Datascan did a good job of reconstructing the Athens' Metro tunnel, even down to all the scattered bits of blasted sound-weapon. A half-dozen well-rendered bodies lie where they fell, complete with accurate blast and gunshot wounds. My visor even renders the smoke and powder smells. It's almost exactly like I remember it.

But with a few glaring differences: it's quiet. The Wabs are all already dead. And there are no squads of jumpy CT troops swarming in.

There's just _him_. Pretty much like I found him when it was real: sitting slumped against a bullet-battered column. Same gray coat and hat. Only he's _not_ bleeding this time.

Just sitting there. Looking tired. A pistol hanging in each hand. He lazily turns his head when he catches sight of me out of the corner of his interface glasses. Smiles a limp half-smile.

"You're late," he mutters, more to himself than to me.

"Am _not_ ," I say defensively. "It's not like I have any control of when they insert me into these things."

He raises an eyebrow, seems to take more notice. Surprised (as much as he _can_ be with the drugs, I suppose). Incredulous. Then I realize: he isn't expecting me to be "real," isn't expecting anything other than AI-generated sim characters.

He reaches out with the gun in his left hand and pops me. The digital shell passes through my avatar and smacks the concrete behind me with decent realism.

"Okay, that was rude," I scold him. But at least they didn't make it hurt.

He chuckles under his breath. "Does this mean you're really here?"

"Yes... Well, no... Well... Neither are _you_ ," I burble, flummoxed by the techno-existentialism. "But I _am_ inserted into this sim, just like you are. Fake body, real me. Trust me: I'm not just a figment of the Hal running the show."

"Prove it," he challenges. And he almost pisses me off before I catch the smile and realize he's fucking with me.

"Can't. You'll just have to wait until we're out."

"Sounds good. Beer's on me. Assuming I ever have access to beer or money."

I like him. I realize that. He scares the crap out of me, but I like him. I also realize that should worry me quite a bit.

"Matthew, right?" he confirms. I nod. He gets himself up. It looks like it takes him some effort. But then he shakes out his left leg and checks it. "I managed _not_ to get myself shot this time," he says with bemused half-pride. He looks over the realistically rendered carnage.

"How many times have you run this?" I have to ask.

"Ten or fifteen. I think. Things get pretty fuzzy between simulations."

"That would be the drugs."

He nods. "They told me. _And_ not really sleeping. How long have I been under?"

"No idea," I play dumb because I don't want to be the one to tell him he's been in Neverland the better part of a month. "What day was it when you started?"

"No idea." He wanders slowly through the scene, kicking at debris that skitters very convincingly. "I seem to be getting better, though." He taps his glasses with the barrel of the space-gun in his right hand. "It's kind of like gaming, I guess: the first few times you play a new VR you have to get used to the graphics and controls. Then you get the feel of it, stop struggling and start playing."

I remember what Henderson told me about him getting discreet "help" from Datascan with the real Wabs in the real Athens.

"You had AI tactical feed when you crashed this for real, didn't you?"

He nods. "Had no idea what it was, of course. Still not sure why it helped me."

There's what I've been told and what I suspect. I keep both to myself.

"It made a hell of a difference, though," he admits. "Got me in here with realtime maps that placed every one of the bastards for me, then kept track of them when the shooting started. Let me shoot blind, targeted them through solid barriers, told me when to shoot and when to duck. It made it almost too easy. Definitely saved my stupid ass."

He twirls the stupid-big gun in his right hand like a quick-draw artist and drops it in his thigh rig. The smaller .45 in his left goes in a clamshell at the small of his back, up under the armored gray overcoat. I get a close enough look to confirm: these _aren't_ the guns he had in Athens—these are the same guns from his place in Phoenix.

"So what did you think of it?" he says, tapping his glasses again, this time with a fingertip.

"What do you mean?"

"They had me run a reconstruction of your Metro station shootout—I guess the video they got was good enough to make a simulation out of it. I assumed you had tactical heads-up feed too, since the sim has it. So? What did you think of it?"

"I... It was... Odd."

He grins at me—a real grin this time (at least avatar-real). Then gets quiet again, looking at the reconstructs of the Wabs he killed.

"So what are you doing here?" he asks me straight.

"No idea," I have to admit. "Invited, I guess. Well, maybe 'invited' isn't strong enough a word for it..."

"Manticore?"

I nod.

"Candidate? Or are you part of running the show?"

"Candidate," I admit uneasily.

He softens. Like it makes sense. Or maybe he's somehow glad I'm here, in it with him. I realize I'm probably the closest thing to a friendly face he's seen since they jumped him in. (Henderson doesn't count.)

"They're really going to do this, then?"

"Apparently." I sound as wary as he does. "Bullet-proof super-suits. X-Ray vision. Flying on wires. We'll be friggin' super heroes. I should have a big 'B' on my chest..."

"Action heroes."

"What?"

" _Action_ heroes," he says with an odd mix of conviction and sarcasm. "Super heroes have powers. Superman. Spider-man. _Action_ heroes have skills, maybe toys. But they're just people."

"Like Batman," I connect back to our last conversation, which just happened to be in the real world version of this very place and time. He half-smiles at my response, but then goes back to somber quick, pulling out that stupidly big gun of his and hefting it like it's the weight of the world.

"Not quite," he has to say.

I stand there with him for a while in the simulated battleground, not sure where to go from here. The sim keeps running, like Datascan's only point is to give us a quiet and familiar place to chat. So I just ask him:

"So. What happens now?"

He sad-smiles and shakes his head again. "I think the next step is they kill me. To make it official and all. Maybe they'll let you watch."

He sees it first: the sim begins to swirl in the backgrounds and dissolve.

"It was good to see you again," he says goodbye with tired resignation.

"Wait...!" I try, but he's gone, it's gone, all gone.

### 9

November 30th.

Thomas Richards:

"You have _got_ to be kidding me."

"Hear me out, Colonel," Henderson tries to sell me after his little science-fiction video presentation finishes. "There are a lot of people sold on this project. Powerful people. This goes far beyond the JIC, beyond the DOD, even beyond the United States and the current Coalition. That's why we need you."

Whatever he's thinking, he apparently thought it was important enough to fly me back to the States and have an actual sit-down. He probably thought that here, at Langley, he's got the next best thing to a captive audience. I actually think he'd try to keep me from leaving if I didn't at least hear him out.

"You're an asset, Colonel," he tries the brown-nose route. "Top of your class at West Point, top scores through training. Decades of experience as a special operator and a commanding officer. Excellent record."

"But bad at politics," I get to the point.

"But _professional_ ," he minimizes. "That's a fine distinction. It hasn't served you on the career-path, but it makes you appealing now."

I try not to roll my eyes at his bullshit.

"We've been working towards this for a decade," he keeps rolling. "We have the tools ready to go. Now we need the manpower."

I have to shake my head.

"And it's all a waste unless you can actually sell it all. Politically _and_ practically. Besides wanting to turn SOCOM into some kind of computer-slaved puppet force, you're asking for a completely coordinated multinational joint operation. Which means asking dozens of nations to buy into a central command authority—basically, a US command authority—and worse, to submit themselves to this experimental AI of yours. I can't see any nation—including the US—buying this. And you're sitting here expecting _global_ cooperation?"

"We need to hurt the enemy, bad and everywhere, hard and fast—and we _can_ : we have the tools. The test phases will prove us out, sell the product to enough players to give us one big coordinated hit; hundreds of clean, precise, surgical ops all over the world. We'll have our first undeniably significant victory in the War on Terror. And it _won't_ be a US action—the whole world will stand up to these bastards, all at once. Visibly. All over the media."

"Which means you'll also have to sell it to the public, to the Press."

"And that won't be a problem."

"Because your AI did the calculations and said so?" I need to drop him down several pegs. "What _I've_ had a taste of is it jerking me and my teams around the Union while it ran the most Twilight Zone black op I've ever seen. And I'm still not sure why."

And Henderson smiles at me, like he's got it all in the bag. He gets up out of his plush chair and leans over his desk so I know he's talking to his interface and not to me:

"Is 'Gunter' ready to run?"

"Five minutes," someone answers him. "Makeup is just doing the finals."

"Good timing," he tells me. "Now let's go downstairs and I'll give you your 'why,' Colonel."

I'm wondering if the taxpayers know just how big this facility has gotten as the secure elevator slides down and down below Virginia (at least ten floors, according to the visible readouts).

There are actually live guards at the landing when we get off, though they let the automated gear do their work for them, confirming our IDs yet again by palm, voice, FRS and I-scan.

The bunker-like corridors stretch far enough to tell me the place is impressively huge. Henderson leads the way with easy purpose. Two turns and three doors in, and I'm in a control booth that looks straight out of a media studio, looking in through Plexiglas on a set made up to look like any of a half-dozen stripped-down Wab hidey-holes I've had to clean out. They've even got an authentic-looking Wab banner on the back wall.

"Almost ready sir," one of the techs tells Henderson when he sees him.

"Good," he praises. "Let's hope we get this in one take. The live effects aren't cheap."

"And they're messy," one of the other techs agrees. "It would take us hours to clean up and reset."

"How did rehearsals go?" Henderson asks casually.

The second tech chuckles. "He's going to be hurting in the morning. We had him drop on that floor a dozen times until he got the dead body look down."

"Places!" someone shouts over the intercom. "Let's get it done while the makeup's fresh."

"It's _showtime_ , folks," the first tech sings. Henderson grins like he's eating it up.

Two masked gunmen take up flanking positions on either side of the banner. Then the apparent "hostage" is led in. He's bound, blindfolded, wearing the classic orange prison jumper the Rads have put their captives in since Abu Ghraib. What's visible of his face is battered and bloodied—I can only assume (or hope) this is the makeup they were talking about. Despite this, I can't help but recognize who it is.

Grayman.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me..." I let it go out loud, and Henderson shushes me.

I hear someone come in behind me and stand over my shoulder. I glance back and almost wish I hadn't: It's Burke, only without his beard. He's dressed in a black T-shirt and ACU pants and looks like he hasn't slept in days. But he gives me a look that lets me know he agrees with me.

They kneel the "hostage" down in the middle of the set, half-facing an array of web-cams. Whatever they're planning, they want multiple angles, maybe so they can pick-and-choose the best.

Then there's another figure on-set: blonde, chiseled, German-looking, bare arms and legs bulging as all he's wearing is a flak-vest and jungle shorts, his chopped hair bound up in a headband scrawled with pro-Chechen slogans. He doesn't wear a mask. He wants the cameras to see his face. Confirming this, he glares at them and introduces himself in heavy German-accented English:

"My name is Gunter Gerhardt. In the name of those who died in our holy cause, for Chechnya and Bosnia, and for our brothers in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, England, Malaysia and Palestine, I make an example of this American, as I swear I will make an example of all of our enemies. God is great."

He pulls a Beretta out of the small of his back, points it at the back of Grayman's head, and pulls the trigger twice. And I catch myself jumping when blood splatters on the plexi. Grayman flops over as much like a dead man as any I've ever seen, and Gerhardt pops two more shells into his body.

"God is great," he repeats into the camera, glazed bloodlust in his ice-blue eyes. He holds that position for a few seconds, posing. Then:

" _Cut_ ," Henderson proclaims happily. "Check it. I think that was it."

Gerhardt smiles and completely drops the stone-killer look. He pulls the Wab rag off his head and suddenly looks like corn-fed Kansas farmboy. The other gunmen pull off their masks and hoot praises to the performance.

"Damn, did you see how those bloodpacks flew? I almost got the shit in my eye!"

Gerhardt is down helping Grayman—who he'd just "killed"—back up to a sitting position and pulls the blindfold from his blood-soaked head. Gray blinks and forces a grin as Gerhardt pats him on the back and praises his convincing dead-drop topple-over. A tech comes in and snips him free of his bonds.

"Doo, that was _perfect_!" the tech fawns. "Max real. Scared the _shit_ out of me, Bee..."

I look back at Burke just in time to see him shake his head, turn, and leave the room without a word.

"So what was _that_?" I ask Henderson on the elevator ride back up.

"That was us closing the file on Christian Michael Palmeri. We drop a grainy version on the web, sign off on his death certificate. That lets us make him a new life from scratch, and shakes off any Rads looking to ID the Grayman. It also lets us debut a new 'terrorist' to sink deep into Union HumInt: Captain Carl Schrader—now 'Gunter Gerhardt.' Hopefully he'll be able to slip into one of the holes Grayman left."

"And _then_ what?" is what's worrying me.

"We do a little adjustment to Gray's pretty face, give him a new name, complete his training so he's up to speed with special operator standards, and sink him firmly into the project along with the rest of the prototype team."

The elevator gets us back above ground, and I manage to hold my tongue until we're back in Henderson's office.

" _You're making him part of this?_ "

"More than just a part, Colonel. Grayman is an experiment. We were talking about selling this to the public. To do that, we need more than just anonymous grunts in fancy armor. We need a certain... well, attitude. Style. Personality. We need a small army of operatives that can work with the AI—not every soldier is cut out for that. But we also need a media-friendly presence. Most of your special operators present as pretty average Joes—not especially camera-friendly. And a lot of them have families, home lives—there's a reason we keep them anonymous."

He stops when he sees the look I'm giving him is only getting harder. He gets himself a cup of coffee and offers me one, but I shake my head and give him a "No, thank you." And maybe his engaging my manners was intended, a way to make me polite again, because he immediately goes back on the sale:

"You saw Grayman work, Colonel. You were one of the few that did experience him, followed him in the field—and you felt it. We all did. That was what made Datascan lock on him: he _had_ something. Presence. Drive. Classic Hollywood anti-hero shit. Complicated. Dark and fucked-up, but good, redeemable. And scary-smart. Adaptable. When Datascan made first contact, Gray jumped right in and ate it up like they were lifelong partners. They make a great team, Colonel. You should see the sims we've run..."

"Grayman is a nut-job," I have to flat-out protest. "A massacre-machine. And he likes it."

"No he _doesn't_ , Colonel," Henderson defends. "We've been on him for a month: a nonstop mix of chemical VR debrief—hard interrogation—and high-stress combat training sims twenty hours a day. It's given us a very clear picture of what drives him, what makes him what he is. He's very unique, Colonel. And he's been beyond-impressive in the training series."

"He's a _monster_ ," I fight back, "a psychopath with no loyalties, who seems to exist only to murder whoever pisses him off. You think you can make him into a _soldier_?"

"You think you can put a better face on the War on Terror?" he stays cool, confident. "The public sees the generals, the politicians, but the actual guns in the fight are cyphers. They've had to be to protect their families. But the public doesn't buy the high-level players because they're just that: players. And they don't do the actual work. It's time we put faces on the fighters—the heroes—even if we have to make them up. And Gray's ideal for the part: He's cool, he's sexy, smooth. And tragic. This shit _hurts_ him, Colonel, but he has to do it. He can't _not_ do it."

"Oh, good. A fanatic to fight fanatics."

"Exactly," Henderson rubs my nose in it. "Remember that old 'Army of One' crap the recruiters tried to sell a decade or so ago? This is it for real: Datascan will be running small, mobile strike teams—hot toys and hot attitudes. In-your-face hit-and-pose-for-the-cameras. We don't need faceless troops or 'quiet professionals.' We need charismatic champions. Killers with personality. Classic movie-hero style. Iconic characters. Visible individuals regular folks can follow and cheer for. Why do you think I've got Burke down here?"

"You have _got_ to be kidding me..." I moan again. "An Army of Attitude. This would be my worst nightmare. And you're telling me you need a hundred more just like those two?"

" _Thousands_ , by the time we're done," he doesn't skip a beat. "Plus supports. And a visible command structure—a _human_ one—so it's not looking like just a scary-experimental AI in charge. For that, we need someone with good hard experience, someone who can keep us real. Hell, a lot of people are nervous about this accelerated VR immersion training—we need someone who's been around long enough to honestly evaluate what comes out the other end for real-world effectiveness. And someone who can play the politics, be a bridge between our 'stars' and the politicians running them. Someone who knows how to hold a multinational joint-combined operation together in the worst political environment."

I _really_ don't like the way he's looking at me.

"You have _got_ to be... No. _No._ "

He sits back and smiles at me in that way that makes me want to shoot him.

"Believe it or not, you fit. Even Datascan says so. I need an experienced and respected CT commander, one with strong multinational connections. But one who isn't, shall we say, going in the right direction on the ol' career ladder—that actually makes you more sellable: you're nobody's crony."

He lets that sink in, lets me simmer awhile before continuing to insult me.

"I'd seriously consider this if I were you, Tom. You bet against this and you're wrong, you're obsolete. That's why I jumped onboard: I saw it coming early and bought my seat. We're talking a whole new way to fight war here. You think it won't overwrite SOCOM? NATO? US Intel? Every branch of the military? I want to be a part in that, Tom. I want to help shape what comes. And given the shit you've had to eat over the years, I'd think you would, too."

I don't answer. I can't even digest this bullshit fantasy.

He buzzes the door open and gives me my signal to exit gracefully.

"Time to think like science fiction, Tom," he calls out after me. "Brave New World. As over-the-top and scary as you can imagine. It'll be here inside of two years. You might want to get a running start."

I can't get out of Langley fast enough.

### 10

December 6th.

Matt Burke:

My eyes burn pretty much nonstop.

The TGs and gameheads call it "sim-sear." Some people get it after too much time in VR (and I've been doing twenty-hour stretches in this special kind of hell they insist is "training"). No matter how real they make the sims, they're still made of light, and they glow and shimmer in a way that plain old matter doesn't.

What it means is migraine-grade headaches and that sand-in-the-eyes feeling that gets you after you've looked into really bright light, like a flare or an arc welder. At least they don't give me any crap about wearing my sunglasses inside.

It 'raqs my aim, though. But I can blame a lot of that on the "gun" they gave me: the plastic remote-controlled POS they call an "Interface Combat Weapon," which I can't hit the broad side of a bus with despite all the impressive ad-copy selling it. Score one for the toaster-illiterate.

The "gun" and the eyeball-fry are just a few special details about this experience.

"Simulation Immersion Training" sucks in ways a real live "Hell Week" never touched. If I had to explain what the difference is—and I expect I'll get asked frequently as they start putting more fresh faces through this 'raqing like they say they plan to—I'd have to tell the ones that have already been through a Special Operations Basic like BUDS or Ranger School Assessment and Eval to imagine doing it while continuously whacked on a cocktail of bad party drugs. That, and they've replaced the endless hours of mindless PT designed to break your body and mind with endless hours of mindless deep-shit combat. Put the two together, and you've got a whole new level of fun.

Over the last five days (assuming I haven't lost count) they've run me through eight decades worth of hot gunfights. The gamer crowd would wet themselves over this shit: full emersion with all senses running—you can smell the sweat and blood and smoke and powder, feel the air whip as shells fly past your head, get kicked around by artillery that hits too close... even the terrain under foot feels real. And the bullets, of course: they took special care with the simulated wounds to give you all the joys of getting shot. They even pump chemicals into you that dip you into shock.

My most persistent impression every time I get shot in here (which is a lot, given the sims they throw) is that the pain of the wounds is actually their main selling point for this new sim training. Combined with whatever it is that they keep pumping into you IV, the fear of getting shot is pretty damn close to the real deal. And it doesn't get any easier with repetition. At least, not until they let it.

Their strategy is pretty transparent once you get through the early "games": First they drop you into over-the-top shit like D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Hamburger Hill, Tet, Mogadishu. In each battle you're wearing simmed gear that's period-accurate, and you pay for it. Repeatedly. You get yourself shot or shredded with shrapnel, and they either make you start the whole battle over or they just "respawn" you at random as some other grunt deep in the shit. I figure my record for getting killed in one battle was somewhere around eighteen times—that was Omaha Beach. (Fuck "Private Ryan".)

But then, after you're beat half-to-death and loopy-punchy from getting shot a bazillion times and dreading the next run almost as bad as a real war, you restart the same set of sims, but this time in one of their super-suits with the AI weapons and their Hal coolly helping you along. You still get shot, but the hits feel more like getting kicked (which is a massive improvement over the prior evolution), and you don't have to suffer sim-death.

Comparatively, it's a walk in the park, like a reward for suffering through the History Channel version. All I have to do is hump in the weight of the gear (which really isn't worse than a full third-line field ruck), point my space gun where Hal says I've got a shot (even if I don't see it) and watch the enemy get shredded. And if the hump is any significant distance, there's this rush of big VTOL fans whipping up a hurricane around me and the next thing I know I'm getting hauled up by the back of my neck and then fast-dropped on top of my next target.

Bottom line: it's too good to be true. I feel like I'm in a commercial—an immersion product demo carefully gauged to sell.

But I dream the fucking sims when I'm sleeping (what little that is). And moving through my day in the real world (what little that is) just doesn't feel right. And my eyes are killing me.

And I can't aim for shit.

They have a brand new humongous tactical firing range down here. Lanes with moving and pop-up targets, a VR-enhanced kill house, and a "free-fire" chamber as big as a hangar—big enough to practice team IADs and God knows what else. The expense barely makes sense, given all the existing quality military facilities. Unless you want to be able to practice something you don't want anyone else to see.

Right now that suits me fine, because I really can't hit jack with this supposedly self-aiming weapon, no matter how much prompting and sight-graphics Hal gives me on my visor.

First problem: the "gun" has no sights. The whole top of the thing is just a flat slab of plastic, most of which being the 100-round magazine. Not that you can easily line the thing up with your eye anyway: the big helmet and collar of the suit won't let you. You have to rely on the heads-up aiming.

"It helps if you pretend you're playing an FPS, Major," I get a lazy drawl from the lane next to me as I struggle—I hadn't even realized someone else had come in. I click my weapon down into the carry-rack on the front right of my armor. The target graphics on my visor automatically power down, letting me see who's talking. It's another suit, helmet off to show me a chopped dirty-blonde head of hair and an easy grin. He looks like one of those hot-shit boy-soldiers that never grew up, just grew lines—he's probably at least my age. And he's got Captain's bars on his armored collar.

"Captain David Manning, Sir," he introduces himself, not bothering to salute (but then, his arms are full of helmet and ICW). "US Army Rangers, Zone Three."

"'FPS'?" I've lost him already.

"First-Person Shooter. Like in a game," he offers, not sounding condescending. "You aim with your controller, target reticule lights up when it's on. Bang. It can actually be easier than acquiring a sight-picture with optical or iron sights..."

He racks his weapon into its "holster," gets his helmet on, and steps into his lane. Then he draws and raises the gun up to plant the square stock into his shoulder to show me how it's done. But even he seems to struggle. His shots are slow. He really isn't doing much better than I am.

"My problem is I'm used to firing single-shot—no full auto—make every round count. Dee wants you to squeeze and hold."

"'Dee'?" I feel like I've missed a briefing or twelve.

"Datascan. The AI. I've heard some of the lab-coats call it 'Dee.' Anyway, Dee wants you to squeeze down and hose the target, let _it_ shoot when it gets the target lined up. That's just too weird. You're waving the gun and it goes off when it wants to."

"I know what you mean," I admit. "I want it to mean something when I squeeze a trigger."

"You still can, gentlemen." A new voice pops in on my helmet link: feminine, warm, sexy-smooth.

"Doctor Parry," she introduces herself. "SENTAR Interface Combat Program. Look up and left..."

She waves from the shielded observation deck. Dark brown bob haircut, big eyes, great smile.

"Just use the reticule for sighting and squeeze like a conventional trigger—you can even tune the action. Takes some practice, but it works for conventional targets. For the hard-to-hit set ups, you've got to squeeze and hold: picking out targets in crowds, hitting projectiles in mid-air..."

"Hitting projectiles?" I really must have missed a briefing.

"Incoming mortars and RPGs. If you can align your reticule fast, you should be able to cut apart the incoming shell."

"No shit?" I realize my jaw must be halfway to the floor, though it's got nothing to do with the tech spiel.

"No shit, Major," she insists, that smile getting even bigger. "And call me Amber. Figure we're going to be seeing a lot of each other, being I'm here to help make sure your gear works for you."

I think I'll needing a lot of help.

### 11

December 14th.

Grayman:

The bandages come off for the first time. The surgeon makes little fanfare of it, barely appreciating his work. It might be because you so adamantly insisted on keeping the scar across your eye—difficult patient. He keeps the exam short, reminds you again that the residual bruising will fade as the last of the fine sutures dissolve—just use the salves and don't scratch. You tell him it looks good thank you very much. And then you get out of Secure Medical and slink back to your "cell" as gracefully as you can, trying to avoid the stares of anyone you pass.

Alone in the bathroom mirror, you get up the nerve to really look at yourself. Your _new_ self:

There are sickly yellowing bruises under your eyes, and a handful of fine, short suture lines on your nose and brows. Thankfully, your eyebrows have partially grown back already.

They've actually done little to the basic structure: your brows are heavier, your nose a bit thicker at the bridge. The fresh crew-cut disguises you more than the surgeries. But the most striking changes are due to a combination of biochemistry and heavy physical training: You weigh forty pounds more than you did a month ago. Besides the overall change in build, it's made your face wider, fuller. You are no longer the person you were.

But then, that's not just cosmetic. The person you were is now "dead" in all ways public and official: executed by Euro-Neowab terrorists, a statistic, a brief flash on the news nets, a funeral without a body (the story they gave your family was that your recovered corpse was proactively incinerated due to a recent enemy tactic of loading their victims' remains with biological agents—the FBI claimed to have confirmed your ID by fingerprints). Now absolutely nothing remains of Christian Michael Palmeri.

You try to remember your old face as if it's still hidden beneath the new one. Most surprising is that you don't miss your thick, unruly mane of hair—having it shorn off was disturbing at first, but it's revealed new, intriguing lines (and it's _so_ easy to care for). One of the plastic surgeons remarked that you're lucky to have what he called a "noble skull."

No, not noble. You look harder, tougher (more so with the bruising and scars). Like a cage fighter. Like a soldier. Or like what a soldier looks like in the movies.

They've cast an actor to play you, and he doesn't look anything like you.

Losing yourself in the mirror for a few moments, you try to recall other faces that you'll never see again: Your sister. Your mother. Step-father, even. (But not Margaret.) You can almost see them when you close your eyes, but they flash and fade, like they were from a movie you'd seen of someone else's life a long time ago. Not your life. Never your life.

You open your eyes to the mirror again. The face that looks back is no longer new to you. It's familiar, now. It's yours. And it always has been yours. Always.

You turn from the mirror and wander back into the main room of your "cell."

It's eight-by-ten, concrete walls and floor, steel door, no window (unless you count the big wall screen that offers a selection of perfect landscapes when you're not watching TV or Net-feed on it). Trying to be good hosts, they've agreeably stocked it with what little you've asked for: a nice music player, exercise equipment to maintain your training regimen (they appeared pleased with your enthusiasm for PT), and a small fridge for cold sodas.

It's not much, but it _is_ reality, not VR, so it's a welcome respite between your marathon immersion and PT sessions. The spare simplicity is actually very soothing. Like your new body, you've lived in it long enough now to feel like it is yours. And it's relatively private (compared to all the eyes on you when you're at "work"), despite the ever-present sentry scanners that watch you even when you sleep.

They haven't even bothered to lock you in for several days now.

You sit on the basic steel-frame bed, made military perfect and smooth the way they taught you in VR, and you see—on the glowing blue desktop of your new field notebook—that Datascan has sent you confirmation of your commission.

They did it (or so it would appear). They made you an officer. But this doesn't strike you as any more real than anything they've put you through in the last six weeks.

Henderson tried to tell you that the rank was not only an expression of their confidence in you and the impressions you've made these last weeks, but also a sign of how much stock they put in their new training program. They insist that they're confident that the VR is as good as the real thing—better in some ways, because you can "live" through decades worth of critical scenarios in a matter of weeks, progressing as fast as individual aptitude and diligence can manage. They tell you they've already put you through the experiential equivalent of a life-career of combat duty in fifteen different theaters, and their VR library has sped you through the essentials of US Army Boot, Ranger School and OCS.

But despite the drugs and the "realism" of the new VR, you could tell the difference between the virtual and the real, at least in all the important ways: There was no real fear (despite the drugs and the pain of simulated trauma), and no primal satisfaction in the taking of lives that so essentially need to be taken.

Maybe it would suffice for making a _soldier_ , for training a fresh recruit to do their duty for country, to prepare them for what they might face, to ingrain responses, to desensitize them—at least partially—to the stresses and horrors potentially waiting.

But not for you. Because despite what your commission says, you know you're no "soldier."

Predator. You're a predator.

And you feel better, stronger, than you ever have in any life.

There's a flash on your screen then: fresh mail from Henderson. It appears they've finally given you a new name.

It's catchy. Silly, but catchy.

### 12

December 16th.

Grayman:

First fitting.

"Captain, I'd like you to meet Doctor Richard Mann, Director of Research and Development for Small Arms and Armor at SENTAR Corporation..."

Henderson, all smiles, is quick to point this man out as soon as he comes into the test chamber: Tall, lanky, tan, thick dark hair and lean features. Big eyes, almost childlike, though set into deep, dark-circled sockets. You would expect a labcoat or a cleansuit, but he wears a slightly rumpled dress shirt and casual slacks, cloth slippers instead of shoes, no socks. He gives you barely a nod of acknowledgement. Henderson keeps trying:

"Doctor Mann heads the team that designed the suit and the ICW, all the gadgets..." You consider that Henderson's condescending tone is calculated. It gets Mann's attention, if only by annoying him. He breathes out sharply and comes closer, seemingly only intent on checking the fit as his techs finish adjusting the heavy plated high-collared jacket and help you into the thick gauntlets.

"Where'd you get this one?" he mutters at Henderson, still not making eye-contact with you.

"Classified," Henderson throws back casually. Then he grins at you. "How's it feel?"

The techs give you room to move around. The suit fits snugly, despite how bulky it looks, giving some support to your joints as you bear its weight. It reminds you somewhat of Japanese armor, the combinations of flexible and rigid, only more form-fitting. There are plates in the chest, abdomen, back, shoulders, forearms, hands, thighs, shins and insteps. The "tails" of the jacket form a skirt of plate to protect your groin and hips, slit to allow movement. A four-inch-high collar protects your neck and throat. The plates are a laminate of synthetics and nanotech alloys, so they're both lighter and tougher than they look. The plating is only "extra" protection; the primary defense is in the multiple layers of nanotech "fabric" (woven of tube-like fibers of structured carbon atoms) that covers you like an oversized snowsuit.

You run through range-of-motion with your arms and torso. There's some resistance, but you find you can move relatively freely, at least standing. Then you try to walk. That's where you feel the weight, like someone increased the gravity in the room. Your boots thud on the floor with each step. Still, if no one's expecting you to move fast...

You surprise Henderson a bit by whipping your arms through some basic drill combinations. You immediately see where some "breaking in" could be useful, but you can also imagine how much harder you could hit with the benefit of all this plate and padding. Henderson grins.

"Good?"

You give him a distracted nod, then glance up at Dr. Mann, who continues to eye you warily through his feigned disinterest. You give him a little nod like a bow of respect. He barely gives you one back, seems to catch himself, looks almost confused, like he's trying to re-assess what he thinks of you. And you remember how the first potential "test subjects" they approached—the _real_ Special Forces—apparently responded to the suits.

"Try the helmet," Mann orders coolly, though you can hear the slightest rise of childlike enthusiasm for his craft. One of his techs raises the helmet over your head, slips it on and makes the necessary adjustments to the pads and straps. He checks the fit by shaking it—shaking you—and then slaps the visor down and locks it. It covers your whole face, but gives you enough space to breathe and not fog it. Then a chin-piece is placed that seals you completely in like a diver. Plastic and rubber smells flood your nostrils as tiny fans begin to feed you filtered air.

"Still good?" Henderson wants to know. You nod again, add a thumbs-up to it.

"If you start getting too warm in there, just ask Dee to up the A/C," one of the techs reminds you. "The internal thermostat is self-adjusting, but it doesn't know how you like it. Not yet, anyway."

You move around some more, walking, shifting, pivoting. The hardest parts are trying to lunge or crouch—moving the mass of the suit quickly against gravity or inertia.

"How does it feel?" Henderson wants to know again.

"So..." you change the subject. "What _can_ hurt me in this?"

That gets Mann's attention—he seems to appreciate the seriousness of the question.

"Kinetic energy," he tells you, like he's trying to see if you can understand such concepts. You nod in the helmet, so he gets more specific. "Blasts at close range. Heavy ones. Most antipersonnel weapons are more shrapnel than shock. But a good-sized bomb or other ordnance—the kind they throw at convoys and buildings—will hit you like a bullet-train within a certain range. You'd be crushed to jelly but the suit could still be intact. High-powered rounds will hurt you, too: they'll shove through the 'soft' parts of the suit. Even the heavy plate only takes so much."

"What can actually _penetrate_ this?" you ask him. He tries to suppress a little shrug.

"High-caliber armor-piercers. Rounds designed to take out armored vehicles or aircraft. And the visor's only rated Class Three."

"What about small arms loaded with special alloys?"

He considers that for a moment. Looks at Henderson like he's not sure what to tell you, then goes ahead: "Certain high-velocity penetrator cores. Depleted uranium. Tungsten."

"What about Fletcher darts?"

He raises an eyebrow. Looks at Henderson.

"He knows about the Fletchers?"

Henderson tries to suppress a smug grin. Nods.

"It's very unlikely that a flechette would make it through the suit, Captain." But he sounds like he's reading off an approved script.

"Anything else I should be worried about?" you press him after a moment. He breathes and thinks about it. The way he broods over it, you get the definite sense that he worries about ways his product may fail.

"Heat," he offers. "The suit is fireproof—it's mostly carbon, after all—insulated and air-conditioned, and it even has a limited oxygen supply. It will hold you through short-term exposures of up to a thousand degrees. Just don't get stuck in any burning buildings."

"What about underwater?"

He lets out a laugh under his breath. "Back to the self-contained air supply. We actually have versions for marine applications in the works, complete with propulsion screws and auto-ballast..." He seems a more than a bit proud of himself now, pulled away from the topic of his fears and back toward his dreams. Then he turns away from you to his monitors.

"Boot him up," Mann commands. And you flinch as the inside of your visor comes alive with glowing graphics, making the room swim in colors as it accents heat, sound, motion, and finally the ghostly X-ray of Terahertz reading through the walls, showing you shimmering people-shapes passing by in the corridor outside. A series of targeting hi-lights flare around each person in the room, and the Datascan runs a facial recognition scan on each one, flashes you their ID files as you look them over. Then it gives you a 3D floorplan of the complex, and then a satellite image of Langley itself.

You notice that several of the techs—as well as Henderson and Mann—are watching the monitors more intently than you. Looking over their shoulders, you get the disorienting flash of seeing what you see repeated in each of the half-dozen screens in the room.

"He's on," a tech confirms.

"You getting all this, Captain?" Henderson prompts you.

"Perfect," you tell him. "It's perfect." And you grin inside the helmet, knowing that no one can see your face.

### 13

December 19th.

Matt Burke:

The sim is bullshit.

I'm wedged in the aisle of Tourist Class like I just up and _materialized_ on this commercial flight in mid-air. No wonder the passengers are screaming.

"LIVEFIRE TARGETS. TRACK AND LOCK. MISSION CLOCK: 00:00:17:45."

Dee tries to get me enthusiastic by flashing targeting graphics on my heads-up and reminding me I've got a time to beat before the simulated Wabs crash us all into a simulated field in simulated Pennsylvania. The simulated passengers are being held at bay by a combination of their own fear and a fistful of well-rendered slavering scumbags with box-cutters.

"MISSION CLOCK 00:00:16:57." Pain in the ass.

"Fine..."

I remember Amber's advice: if you need to pick out targets with civvies in the line, don't aim—just hose. I swing up the plastic block of the ICW and squeeze down on the trigger (it's more like a safety, I realize—seems like they want a human being to be the one to officially let fly). I watch Dee separate targets in the chaos in about a quarter-of-a-second, and then the select-fire starts popping them.

I feel the weapon spin rounds in an almost random rhythm, picking the Wabs out from the passengers and crew in nothing flat as I wave the gun, following the firing-solution graphic with something that almost looks like practiced skill. And it doesn't miss. It doesn't even puncture the fuselage. (Of course, it _created_ this fantasy.)

"TRACK AND LOCK..."

The map-graphic shows two more coming up behind me, screaming in Arabic and dragging human shields. I pivot and point and squeeze and the AI makes them jerk and burst and leaves their hostages unscratched.

"SECOND OBJECTIVE: COCKPIT. MISSION CLOCK: 00:00:12:32..."

Damn, I'm good.

But now I have to run in this bulky suit and climb over screaming passengers and splatted Wabs and I point and spray the one by the cockpit door and I can hear the last one at the controls shouting wanting to know what's gone wrong and Dee pops a door-buster grenade that blows the cockpit open and knocks the hijack-pilot half senseless and I shove through and spray him all over the control panel before he can send the aircraft into a dive.

"OBJECTIVE CLEARED. MISSION CLOCK: 00:00:9:17..."

Plenty of time.

"So?"

The sim disappears and I'm back in the VR web with a handful of techs looking at me like they found me under a rock. It takes them longer than it took me to dex a planeload of psychopaths to get around to unhooking me. I try not to stagger like a drunken sailor when I step off the universal treadmill deck.

"About time. I thought you were going to make me land the damn plane."

"Not this time, Matthew," I hear a familiar voice. He's just coming into the chamber, wearing the same big black suit I am, but he's got his helmet off. His face is still a little bruised from the cosmetic work, and he's still visibly limping from the AK round that chewed up his leg seven weeks ago. But I can't miss the eyes. And the scar—they've got topline cosmetic cutters to work on him and they left that damn _scar_ diagonally down the right side of his face. Some shithead probably thought it looked cool.

"They making you run this one, too?" I ask him. "It's bullshit, you know that," I complain again to the techs. "How exactly do we get _on_ the plane in the first place?"

"It's just a _targeting_ sim, Major," one of the techs wearily repeats his defense. "Track-and-lock practice. Besides, Dee's got ways to get you on an aircraft—believe it."

"Awfully touchy scenario, though, don't you think?" I dig.

They ignore me, and start strapping and wiring Michael—Grayman—Whatever-his-name-is—into the web.

"So..." I go ahead and ask him straight-out, "What _is_ it they're calling you these days?"

He grins like it's either funny or embarrassing but doesn't answer. Then one of the techs tries to strap the ICW on him and he holds up his hand, then reaches down and draws the big stainless hand-cannon from his thigh-rig—same ridiculous weapon he had in his apartment safe, same one I saw him using in the Athens sim, only now fitted with an under-barrel gadget that looks like a laser sight.

"Let me try it with this."

"Negative, Captain," one of the techs protests.

"' _Captain'?_ " I try to interrupt, but they ignore me.

"That weapon would easily penetrate the aircraft after passing through the bodies of the targets," the tech keeps complaining, "not to mention the lack of targeting assurance. I..."

"It depends on how you load it," Michael comes back chill and edging into scary. "And it's set up with one of the new AI laser interface sighting attachments, which needs testing. Humor me."

The tech starts to protest but a sim update flashes, clearing him. Dee must indeed have a thing for Captain... uh...

"Back to: So what am I supposed to call you?" I keep pushing.

The sheepish grin comes back.

"Mike Ram."

It takes all I've got not to just laugh out loud, but his expression says he expects me to.

"That's a porn-star name, you know that, right?"

"You know what they say about boys with big toys," he comes right back, racking the slide on his big stainless-steel phallus. Then I can't see his face anymore because they seal down his helmet visor.

"Run it."

"LIVEFIRE TARGETS. TRACK AND LOCK. MISSION CLOCK: 00:00:17:45."

Even with the Big Stupid Gun, the son-of-a-bitch beats my time.

### 14

December 28th.

Mike Ram:

"This will be your first team simulation," Henderson is telling us what we already know. "It will also be your first simulation under official scrutiny. We'll have several VIPs linked live for this one. Make us look good."

They picked a worst-case to base this one on: Beslan, 2004.

"I can't imagine how your machine thinks it's going to beat this one," I hear someone complaining over the link. "Over one-thousand hostages crammed into a school gym that's wired with explosives. Thirty-nine targets, all heavily armed, _also_ wired with explosives." You know the voice, you just can't place it.

"You know me, Colonel," Henderson comes back with his trademark smarm. "I don't do small."

"If you think this is somehow amusing, Director..." another voice with a definite Russian accent cuts in.

"Not at all, General," Henderson softens up a bit, quickly making peace. "This is a bad one—smart and evil at its worst. Just like Colonel Richards pointed out: it looks like an absolute no-win any way you run at it. The real event took a thirty-five percent hostage casualty count, most of them children. It's considered unbeatable. I'm just trying to prove we have the tools to do better."

"Doc?" Matthew chirps over the closed feed.

"I'm on." That would be Scott Becker, the personable but perpetually nervous TG who did most of the design work on Datascan at some DARPA think tank called the McCain Foundation. "Wouldn't miss it. I've got your back. Just like old times..."

Matthew chuckles like that's a private joke. "So, how _are_ we gonna pull this off?"

Datascan answers him. It flashes the 3D of the gymnasium with blips of the hostages, the terrorists, even the explosives. Then it shows us what it expects to happen: Our aircraft come in fast and drop us strategically, Datascan feeds us firing solutions, and we gum up all the bombs and kill all the bad guys. But even Datascan projects a seventy-eight percent probability we'll be too slow, and at least one chain of bombs will shred children.

"I heard the initial blasts may have been accidental," you hear Captain Manning come in, already strapped into his web. "At the real Beslan: The ceiling charges just slipped loose."

"Or some of the kids tried running for it," Lieutenant Abbas—the one we got from the Iraqis—steps right in it. Ivan impressively manages to keep silent.

"The first objective is the grid of roof explosives," Becker tries to keep us on track—not that Datascan hasn't rattled all of this into our heads for days, but perhaps he thinks it sounds better coming from a human being. "Then what they've got strung on the floor. But the elevated devices did the most damage in the real deal, blowing shrapnel into the largest number. Real meat-grinder—yes, gentlemen, I've run the sim myself. The Chechen gunfire took a few, but nothing compared to the initial blasts."

"And you think we can beat their reflexes?" Lieutenant Ibrahim sneers. "All their trigger-man has to do is step off a foot pedal. Or fall off." You saw his IDF record: he's dealt with marts up close more than anyone else on the team ("team" being a very technical application of the word—we've barely met, much less seriously trained together). Except maybe for Ivan. "How many bombs are we talking about?" Datascan shows him. He just shakes his head.

"What about the roof?" you cut in.

"What?"

"The roof. It fell in when it blew. Can we use our aircraft to take it off? It'd give us a cleaner way in, too."

"What?" Becker chokes on it. But Datascan bites, flashing structural specs.

"What is it doing?" Abbas wants to know.

"Looking for leverage points. For grapplers..." Becker muses, pleasantly stunned. Graphics flash and update our simulated support aircraft. The roof is steel, with steel arch supports. Datascan calculates a 57% chance that two VTOLs could catch right and rip the structure clear before the bombs wired to it go off; 84% if they're willing to crash in the process.

"Nice work, porn star," Matthew mutters at you.

"And the other charges?" Ivan—Major Ivan Tetova—suddenly comes to life. "The mines in the crowd and hanging from the basketball hoops, even strung across on wires..." His voice starts to crack, old pain coming back fresh.

Datascan revises its mission parameters and coughs up a new solution in less than ten seconds. Tearing away the roof will actually make _everything_ easier.

"Son of a..." Manning is saying.

"You gonna tell Larry, Doc?" Matthew asks. Becker digests that for a few and comes back:

"Naw. Let it be a surprise."

The techs finish sealing you in your armor, strap you in your web, start the chemical drip, and Datascan takes over reality from there.

The Beslan Number One School is surrounded: the army, the locals (some with their own guns), the Press. Emergency services are trying to get in to remove those killed in the initial assault that took the school—the bodies have been left unmoved for more than a day. This is the same amount of time since anyone inside has had any food or water.

"MISSION CLOCK 00:00:19:59."

"Twenty seconds?" Manning complains.

"We need to neutralize all of the explosives in less than _two_ , Captain," Matthew scolds him. "Don't miss."

" _I'm_ not doing the shooting," Manning throws back. "Dee is. I just point the thing."

Four VTOL aircraft—two dropships and two support fighters—come in low and fast to get the best surprise possible. It's almost too fast for us to adjust to as the school rushes up below us. On cue, the stress drugs start pounding your heart, trying to make you shake. And then we're thrown out into virtual free-fall.

"INSERTION. ACQUIRING TARGETS. GRAPPLERS AWAY."

We drop as fast as our rappellers can manage without breaking our legs. Simultaneously, the two fighters blow their own hooks and sink them into what should be the strongest structural joists of the gym roof. Our dropships' guns are helping the process by cutting surgically into the structure to free it. The momentum of the jets jerk the roof and peel it back like a hurricane is tearing it off, their nozzles turning to compensate and keep them from simply slamming into the ground. But they will anyway—they have to, because they have to pull hard enough that the counter-force will sling them hard earthward, just hopefully not before they do their job. The aircraft were a planned sacrifice, but Datascan at least auto-ejects the pilots just before the jets burst in the surrounding woods.

And at least in the sim, it all works just in time to make a serious hole for you and Matthew to drop through and down into the mass of terrified hostages. Above you, the shaped charges taped to the ceiling go off, but the peeled-back roof aims most of it overhead. You would take the time to marvel at this, but you have more pressing business.

Datascan locks the remaining charges in the gym and you follow the prescribed firing solution and your ICW kicks out its 25mm bomb-gel projectiles. From above you, automated projectors in each of the dropships pound down in kind, accurately raining dozens of anti-personnel IED countermeasures. You watch the globular gels hit, stick and swell, smothering every charge in a beach-ball-sized sphere of tough polymer goo in less than a second.

Matthew is right on cue with his own load of gels, as is Manning, despite being sent flying through a window on his rappeller (for the added distraction value). And Manning's howling like he's enjoying himself as all the sticky spheres slap and swallow the targeted bombs—one cluster on each basketball hoop, one for each wire-suspended bomb, two-dozen along the walls and another dozen planted in buckets between huddled groups of victims—encasing each in just enough resistant material to contain the worst of the shock and shrapnel. They all blow about the same instant we hit the gym floor. And, at least in the sim, all we get is enough residual shockwave and noise to send the place reeling, like a dozen flash-bangs.

"MISSION CLOCK: 00:00:17:25. LIVEFIRE TARGETS. TRACK AND LOCK."

" _Down! Down!! Everybody Down!!!_ " Matthew screams and it gets translated for him into Russian before it leaves his helmet, amplified to fill the gym over the sound of the barely-muffled blasts. You can already hear Ibrahim and Abbas spraying from where they got dropped with Ivan just outside, set to catch the thirty-odd terrorists spaced throughout the school, and then to take down any that try to flee in the chaos (or try to fire upon fleeing hostages).

You squeeze down on your ICW trigger and sweep the gym. The caseless rounds rattle out of the upper barrel in an uneven tattoo as Datascan holds fire to avoid any hostages in the firing line, then cleanly pops the "livefire targets" with almost undetectable hesitation.

The masked terrorists drop like magic in the crowd, and you can see their blips on the tactical grid go cold in your heads-up. Datascan even detects any who are wired with mart-belts and launches a bomb-net—an expanding nano-polymer web that wraps the bomber whole and forces his blast back in on himself.

As soon as you kill one, arrows flash and point you at your next most pressing target, and you follow like reflex. There are only eight of the thirty-nine terrorists actually inside the gym, but it only takes one to kill a hundred kids. Thankfully, you don't even have to aim, just spray.

You can feel the shock of simulated bullet impacts on your armor. You try and make yourself a bigger target to discourage them firing at hostages, but the simulated terrorists learn fast.

One of the targets tosses his AK and reaches to blow his suicide belt, screaming something about his twisted faith, and Ibrahim beats you to it and nails him with a bomb-net that turns his blast satisfyingly inwards. Within the fabric of the web, you see the body fold like he's been snapped in half.

Children are running and screaming, trying to get out, and the remaining terrorists have come running, turning their weapons on them as they flee. Matthew and Manning spray at them with their ICWs, and Datascan scores hits, but for some reason it's not assuring takedown: some of the enemies manage to keep shooting before they die. Reflexively, you rack your ICW and jerk the automag out of your thigh rig, and start knocking the remaining targets flat, your two-ten-grain full-profile-jacket rounds hitting them like a battering ram as the hunting pistol's flash and boom shames even the enemy's AKs.

"Shee-it!!" Manning howls.

And then it devolves into a free-for-all.

Abbas is getting similarly frustrated that his ICW is refusing to fire once Datascan declares his targets sufficiently dead, and is cursing it in his native language. Ibrahim is working through some personal issues using his own sidearm to ensure that none of the fallen terrorists has a nervous system left to trigger anything, working his way back through the school, body by body, pumping rounds into hooded skulls. And Manning is climbing out of the remains of the gym, behind the half-naked blood-spattered mass of children and teens and adults, waving his weapon in the air like he's just won something.

"Ivan!" Matthew is yelling, running for one of the exits. Ivan had been dropped between the projected path of a group of fleeing teenagers and two terrorists that tried to open fire on them. He played human shield to protect the running teens, and took their attackers out quick and efficient with his ICW before they could detonate themselves. But then he charged into two more without bothering to shoot, popping the interdiction-blades out of his wrists, hacking and stabbing them to digitally-well-rendered bloody meat. Then he moves on to one who's been shot but isn't "dead" and repeats.

Matthew runs to stop him, but you get yourself in between and put up a hand to hold him up, and then you both stand there and let Ivan exhaust himself.

"Major Tetova!" someone—the Russian General—is yelling at him. But he doesn't stop, not until he gets done what he needs to.

Ivan Tetova lost two sisters in Beslan—the _real_ Beslan. You saw this in realistic detail when they made you endure a sim of the massacre, saw Ivan: fifteen years old, pale and thin, running away in his underwear, bloody from an earlier beating he'd taken from his captors and having to sit for hours in someone else's gore. He had tried to sneak away with another boy, a friend. The terrorists saw and started shooting, and then the whole place blew up.

Datascan, to its credit, lets the sim run until he's finished.

### 15

Scott Becker:

Oh, this is ugly.

"I still think this was in _incredibly_ poor taste, Director Henderson," the Russian General—Kudziyev—scolds. "More so, now that I've been made to see it. Especially regarding Major Tetova."

So glad this is a VR conference—I wouldn't want to be shut in somewhere live with these people.

"The Major didn't protest the scenario when it was presented in the mission-brief, General," Henderson defends politically.

"Major Tetova's professionalism does not excuse this crude stunt," Kudziyev keeps pushing. "Your machine creates a sick fantasy version of a very real national tragedy, just to try to prove it is so much smarter than we were. But that's all it is: _fantasy_. Can you honestly say that the machine did not alter the scenario so that it could beat it so neatly?"

"This is why I propose accelerating our schedule and taking this into live war games." The way Henderson comes back—all smooth reason—makes it sound like he'd been hoping the sim would set the Russians off and give him this very excuse to sell the next phase. "That will give back the human element: making the targets independent of the AI and therefore less predictable."

"You could even design your own test-games," General Collins—our overseer from the Joint Chiefs—offers. "We _all_ could, using our existing Spec-Ops forces to play the enemy."

"You think your machine is _that_ good?" the Israeli General—Sharavi—returns, mildly amused.

"Doctor Becker?" Henderson cues me. This is what they let me sit in for, after all.

"Yes, sir," I try to find where my voice went. "The Datascan System is designed to function twofold... First, it will replace our aging Intelligence systems—its processing capacity is exponentially superior..."

" _How_ superior?" Kudziyev wants to know like he's intensely interested all of a sudden, despite how offended he was two seconds ago. And I want to tell him, but first I have to wait for Henderson to give me the okay on this, which he does with a nod and that snaky grin of his.

"Enough to file and track every human being on the planet," I try to say it like it's old news.

Eyebrows go up all around. But I don't think it's because they're very happy about this.

"The point is, gentlemen," Sec-Def Miller jumps right in, "that we're planning on sharing this with you. All of it."

None of them look at all convinced. Henderson goes for the sell.

"This _can't_ work any other way. And we're not just proposing an intelligence-sharing network here. In order to fight an effective war on the terrorists and their supports, we have to coordinate our responses. We have to work _together_."

"We're also proposing more than just another 'multinational force'," Collins tries, "separate armies under separate flags trying not to stand around with their thumbs up their collective asses—excuse my French."

"I notice that the French are conspicuously absent from this meeting," Sharavi sounds like he's just making an idle joke, despite potential implications. Collins diplomatically ignores him.

"Doctor?" Henderson gets back on mission, "you were saying?"

"Yes... Uh... The Datascan System... Only part of its function is intelligence coordination. The other part—as the simulation demonstrated—is _mission_ coordination. Datascan is capable of predicting and prioritizing threats, then generating counter-offensive tactical plans..."

"Counter- _offensive_ ," Kudziyev grabs. "As opposed to _defensive_?"

"We've always known playing defense against these bastards is a losing game," Miller returns. "They relish the pointless investments we make in money and manpower, eat up the disruptions to our infrastructure, then creatively hit us where we haven't protected. We _need_ to go on the offensive."

"Which also hasn't worked," General Hussein complains, having had plenty of experience in his home country.

"Because our targets are imbedded in populations," Collins goes for it. "The camps in the middle of nowhere, we can bomb. But existing military technology and tactics can't effectively pick targets out of a field rich with collateral damage and potential human shields. We've all scored our tactical victories using dedicated special operations forces for more surgical actions, but we haven't remotely defeated them. And no matter how accurately we strike, the enemy can always claim we killed innocents."

"So now you say you have a weapons system that will allow the rapid and accurate insertion of small numbers of heavily armed and armored commandos," General Chen sums the presentation, finally breaking his patient silence.

"It's more than that, General," I just jump right in like a geek. "Datascan's coordination will allow us to locate and analyze our targets in any kind of cover, then generate a fully adaptive attack plan that anticipates potential responses. Our troops will have a tactical advantage in this arena that's never been seen before."

"Combine this with the factors that will make for media-friendly warfare," Miller takes it back from me, though he doesn't sound like I've wrecked anything. "No large forces invading and occupying territory. Extremely low potential for collateral casualties. Positive visual kill-confirmations, complete with video records to counter potential enemy propaganda. And heavy body armor to reduce our own down-range casualties below the public tolerance level."

"And you are _giving_ this to us?" Chen doesn't buy.

"Frankly, General," Miller tries playing sincere, "if something like this comes out of the US, _or_ the old Coalition, it's not just that it would be tactically insufficient. Our agenda would be torn apart in the global media, and that would hamstring us while it stoked our enemies. But if something _much_ bigger ran it..."

"How big?" Hussein throws it back, incredulous.

"The UN," Miller drops like it's stupid-obvious. And it sounds like a joke. Only all it gets is more awkward silence all around.

"Yes, gentlemen, I am serious," Miller insists, cool. "Imagine what would happen if the Security Council—or something very much like it—had its own intelligence network and specialized interdiction force. Everything very visible, open and above board, approved by the Council membership rather than a single nation or small group of allied nations. Datascan gives us our targets, proposes best-options, and we all sit around a table and give the aye or nay."

"Even if it means saying aye or nay regarding nations _not_ at that table?" Sharavi says with barely masked amusement.

"There will be rules, of course," he comes back prepared, "a Charter amendment."

They sit and try to digest that in a dozen countries around the world. It's making me feel more than a little queasy.

"But why this 'Manticore'?" Hussein kicks out. "We all have competent special operations teams."

"It's more than just the need to create a separate force," Henderson jumps back in. "True counter-terror requires a strong info-war component, which will be incorporated in our mission plans. But it will also be built into our special operators, given how visible they're going to be. Initially, we're selecting candidates who fit a certain profile: they have skills, but may be lacking in...well... 'team playing.' Conventionality. Predictability."

"Cowboys," Chen spits out with unexpected humor.

"If you like," Miller agrees. "I'm sure we can think of a dozen unfavorable terms for them. But that's the point: they're good, they just don't work well in the current model because of their personalities. In _this_ model, those personalities can become assets."

"The initial recruit base is made up of otherwise skilled individuals that have become liabilities to their teams," Henderson continues like it's a done deal. "But if the VR training program proves itself with them, we can churn out hundreds of skilled and virtually 'experienced' operators from recruitment pools every year, overcoming our biggest resource bottleneck. And having a bigger pool of candidates also means we can be selective about their histories. We need society's 'orphans'. No families. No connections. Nothing to lose. We give them fantasy bios to match those big personalities, and feed them to the media so the public won't see them as anonymous grunts following orders, they'll see them like the silly action heroes that sell blockbusters. Heroes to cheer for. Passionate avengers of the innocent..."

"Flash and fantasy," Kudziyev dismisses. Almost. "But potentially more. Like the one with the scar on his face and the big shiny pistol—what was his name again?"

"Captain Ram," Henderson offers with an unmistakable hint of pride.

"My sources tell me it was this Captain Ram who suggested the stratagem with the roof," he appraises. "It would have cost a billion in crashed fighter jets, but the projections insist it saved more than three hundred simulated lives. I thought your machine did all the creative thinking?"

"Datascan works _with_ input from human analysts and operatives," I suddenly find myself jumping in. "This would include the input of our experienced Tacticals in the field."

"Your 'Captain Ram' has had significant counter-terror experience?" Sharavi locks on like he's suspicious of something. Or _knows_ something.

"I really can't elaborate," Henderson covers. "But I would agree with that statement, yes."

I've managed to feel even queasier.

"I also noticed that he was quick to discard the experimental interface weapon when it appeared ineffective," Chen reminds us of something I'm sure Doctor Mann is having his own personal meltdown about right now.

"Adaptation was part of the simulation test, General," Henderson tries. "You assumed that Datascan would simply stack the program in its favor to impress. It actually factors in a number of varying potential 'miscalculations' in every simulation. You see, it needs operatives that can function under chaotic conditions, that can adapt if it somehow fails. Otherwise anyone who could follow instructions and point a weapon would do."

"Then this remains to be seen," Kudziyev lays it on the table, "when you prove your machine and its agents against a live enemy."

### Part Three: War Toys

### 1

December 30th 2018.

Matt Burke:

They let us out of Langley with surprising ease. I'd expected at least a little uneasiness from the suits running the show. Especially Henderson, but he just smiled and said "Have one on me," and signed us out.

Out into the world...

They even gave us a pool-car (though I'm sure it's jacked). The only conditions were that we wear basic body armor under our clothes (for "security," but I'm sure they're jacked too, with RFID tags so they know where we are), and keep our company cells on us (jacked again—which means we're tagged at least five ways between the two of us, and that's just what I can think of off the top of my VR-burned, beer-starved brain). Oh, and the "have one on me" included company plastic to pay for them.

Still, I'm happy to get the hell outside after almost two months entirely spent below ground.

I'll go ahead and assume Michael is, too, though he hasn't said much since we checked out. I expect it needs time to sink in: real sky, real streets, real city. And I can safe-bet he wasn't at all sure that he'd be seeing daylight ever again.

He looks... better. Really. Out from under the whole chemical-interrogation ride for weeks now, just pumped full of rebuilders to finish healing up the shot leg and new the face and put some more meat on him. Add a handful of weeks of intensive PT. He's filled out, got some color ( _pale_ color, but color).

He crashes back in the passenger seat, content to let me drive, not arguing with my music choices, just letting the view of the free world cruise by.It makes me think of a fresh parolee, right out of the prison gates. Then he stretches, and his right hand suddenly jumps off his thigh and he's looking down at himself, like he's fascinated with his own empty hand.

"What?"

"Nothing. First time I've been anywhere without gun. In a while. You know."

"Yes, I do," I tell him. "Nice change." But I don't tell him they insisted I carry a compact SIG in my waistband, hidden under my baggy sweater, "just in case." Just in case what, I have no idea and don't want one.

Then we're there:

"You'll like this place."

_McGrath's_. Irish pub. Lots of polished oak and copper, walls lined with old celebrity pictures. It's still pre-happy-hour, so it isn't too crowded. I aim him for a reasonably secluded corner-booth and flag the waitress. We sit, and he easily agrees to a round of Guinness.

"So, what's with the 'Captain' thing?" I have to ask because yes, it is bugging me.

"Credibility, I guess," he comes back like he thinks it's a bad joke, then tells me stuff I know (but maybe he doesn't know I know): "They've actually put me through their VR versions of Boot, Special Forces Assessment and Selection, select evolutions of Ranger School, and the highlights of OCS. Fed it to me as fast as I could take it, and apparently I could take it pretty high-band. Humping the obstacle and endurance tests with the hole in my leg was extra-special, but then I'm not sure they get many candidates who've made a lifestyle out of doing that kind of abuse recreationally—I think I freaked out the experienced evaluators by making it look like I was enjoying it."

I keep playing like this is all news to me, let him talk.

"Anyway, they insist my commission is legitimate, even though I've never served in an actual unit, much less in command of anything," he gets back to the essence of my question. "They apparently consider their sim-world's as good as the real thing."

Thankfully, the Guinness shows up pretty promptly. He takes his and savors it like fine wine, or something even more precious. And we sit like that, two seriously fucked-up excuses for human beings, until Doc shows up, about ten long minutes later.

"Had trouble finding the place," he excuses. But he looks nervous, squirrelly. And I notice he makes it a point _not_ to sit next to Michael. "Major Burke. Captain..."

" _Ram_ ," I feel like I have to make it a formal intro. "Like the Porn Star. Mike Ram, this is the infamous Doc Becker..."

"No, not like the porn star," Doc sputters out, sounding unusually edgy about it. "The name: 'Ram.' Datascan picked it."

"You're _kidding_..." I try not to bust up.

"It's an acronym. R-A-M." He looks around and lowers his voice.

"It's okay, Doc," I tell him. "You'll notice a lack of cell and WiFi activity in here. Check out the ceiling. That's old copper. It's in the walls, too. The owner is retired DOD, started in Navy Signals before getting into scarier shit. I think it made him a little paranoid. Anyway, the place is tsujed to 'raq most of what can come in and out over the airwaves. Not total, but enough to give us some privacy. Check your link—it'll be all 'No Service'." I let him digest that—though he takes my word rather than pulling out any gear—while I work on my stout. I catch Michael's half-grin over top of his own pint. But that brings me back to topic: "So what's a RAM—I mean, other than a sheep with balls and truck that's too big to find a parking space for?"

"Something I saw in the Manticore files," he gets into it with TG urgency. "Theoretical project objective, what they think they want in a Tactical. One of the Company psychs—Fredericks I think his name is—started using the term in his research..."

"You want one of these?" I cut him off quick when the waitress comes back to check on us, pointing to my quickly evaporating Guinness. He wrinkles up his nose and asks for a Newcastle.

"I have a thing about beer I can't see through," he wimps. Then gets the hint and stays chill until she's gone out of earshot. "Anyway. R-A-M. 'Reactive Activation Manticore'."

"Which is a _what_?"

" _You_ ," he comes back with that uncomfortable squirrelly. "And you," he tells Michael, though a bit more gently. "Especially, I think." He waits for his ale and takes a long drink off of it before he wades in deeper.

"There are gigs worth of studies and reports in the backfiles—a lot of expensive time went into this over the last several years. Apparently the existing psych screening tools weren't adequate, because what usually made a good special operator wasn't what they wanted—it wasn't the skills, it was more about the _personality_. Or a particular set of personality traits. Fredericks called it the 'Manticore Personality Profile'."

"But a Manticore is a monster," Michael says it like it should be obvious. Then apparently thinks the look on my face means I need a lecture. "It's Persian for 'man killer'. Body of a beast, head of a man. It can even be mistaken for a man, at least when it walks upright. It's how it gets close to its prey. At least until they notice it has a ridiculous number of very sharp teeth. But then it's too late." He takes a drag off his stout, shakes his head like he's confused. "Its _personality_ is merciless and relentless: once it targets, it doesn't stop. No prey has a chance of getting away. It's often considered the deadliest monster in the mythical bestiary."

Suddenly it sounds like he's talking about himself.

I need another pint.

"Henderson told me they didn't want assassins," I deny, waving for the waitress with my empty glass.

"Because they're sociopaths," Doc apparently heard the spiel too, or maybe read about it in those files he found. "But that's not you."

"So I'm a different kind of monster?"

"But still a killer," Michael readily indicts us both.

"But it's _why_ you do it that makes you a Manticore," Doc tries to make it better. " _Reactive Activation_ means they set you off, you go and don't let go until you're done. They don't want stone killers, but they also don't want loyal jarheads just following orders, doing their duty. They want real-live heroes with righteous passion, out to avenge the innocent. They want it _personal_. Look at the scenarios they're using: they're meant to piss you off. They flood you with heartbreaking atrocity, then send you out for 'justice.' You'd think it'd be the last thing they'd want, because you'd be uncontrollable. But they figure they can program it, tune your triggers so you'll go off when they want and in the direction they want—all they have to do is show you dead babies or something."

"Why?" I have to ask. Then we have to sit and chill while the fresh beer gets delivered.

"I don't know," Doc drops to an intense whisper. "I'd thought it was just Datascan wanting to reduce human factor variables: Tacticals that would hesitate, stop following the mission prompts, question their orders. But it goes _way_ beyond that. There's gigs of dry theory and research talking about public perceptions and 'ideological warfare'. Like it's more important than the tactical victories. And then there's Henderson: he keeps throwing out this catch-phrase of his, talking about being in a 'Ratings War.'"

"What?" _Really_ lost now. But Michael isn't: I see him grin that ugly grin of his like it's all falling neatly into place.

"It's _info-war_ ," he insists in with that spooky venom coming on, then drops another lecture: "It's because the terrorist strikes on two fronts: The first is the actual damage he does. Usually, this is minimal, localized, at least when you think about the real damage. But the terrorist specifically picks his targets so the media coverage he gets spreads the impact world-wide, terrorizing entire populations, paralyzing economies, humiliating governments, and bolstering his own recruitment in the process. And the media does it all for him: It becomes less about incurring large numbers of actual casualties than about grabbing the headlines, and he can because of the big _ratings_ that fear and atrocity stories get. We might get a headline or two for hitting back, but a terror story hits a hell of a lot harder than a victory story, and lasts longer. Why?"

And I'm running through my head: A hundred headlines that scare and outrage (and it only takes one before getting on a goddamn airplane requires a prison-grade body search) versus a handful of little celebrations: a plot stopped here, a dead terrorist leader there. He's right.

"So we need to do what the terrorist does, only back at him?" I try.

"Counter-terror," Michael muses darkly. "In the literal sense. Overshadow the latest terror-attack news with a hotter story about us hurting them."

"And it isn't even about how bad we hurt them," Doc volleys back.

"It's about how it _looks_. And how it feels. It has to pack that emotional punch. Catharsis. Revenge. Satisfaction. Enough to counter the fear and outrage."

I'm remembering this guy has a psych degree. Glad he's putting it to good use.

"Henderson was saying the plan was to turn every Tactical into some kind of public hero," Doc fills in more disturbing details. "They get a fake bio to cover their families, but they're selecting personality types they think will grab in the media."

"So the public goes along on the same emotional ride you do," Michael puts together easily. And I'm signaling for another time-out.

"So they think if they can put—what?—super-suit camera-friendly fantasy heroes in the field, they can put a Hollywood spin on the Bushwar?" I don't think the beer is helping yet. "What? _Us?_ Look at us: Tactical Team One. A Wiseass Burnout, a Cowboy, and an international assortment of Trauma-Case Nutjobs. And _you_. How is this a good idea?"

Michael shakes his head. Softens. Raises his glass with a tired chuckle to tell me: Chill, Matthew, I agree with you. At least when I'm not pissed off—when I am, it's the programming talking.

So I look at Doc, who's looking very uncomfortable again behind his beer.

"Straight with me, Doc: Your baby-Hal threw out a net and came up with _us_? On purpose?"

"Something like that," he cautiously agrees. "Candidates that fit the profile didn't fit with their units. So the invested players picked operators they were on the verge of dumping, levered them our way. Nothing to lose."

"So I was screwed from go," I complain. Then I look across the table. "What about him?"

Doc looks shook. "I... I don't..."

"You built the thing, Doc," I nail him. "Why did Dee pick him? And I'm sorry, but I don't buy the happy accident shit." I need to know more than I care about sensitivity. Doc's eyes go down into his beer, and he won't answer until I push again. "Why him?"

"I... I, uh... I think that was my fault." He won't look at us. "When they set Datascan to track... well... the Grayman... It _wouldn't._ I thought it was fucking up. I was under a lot of pressure to prove the system, my work. Myself. Then I caught it: Directive Violation. Datascan is set up with these idiot safeties—they wanted to make sure it wouldn't turn on them, so they ingrained base protocols so that it could only initiate counter-ops against what they defined as a 'terrorist'."

"Like they don't throw that word around to mean just about anybody that they want an excuse to dex." But then I shut up because I'm ruining it.

"But they _did_. They set a definition, real basic, safe: It's anyone who directs violence specifically against civilians for political or economic leverage. But Grayman... uh... _you_ , Captain..." And he finally manages to make eye contact with Manticore Number One. The chilly eyes just look back, giving him nothing. "You didn't fit that profile. So I... I, um, panicked a little. I told it to reclassify you as an _operative_ , to _help_ you, so we could get the tracking."

He smiles. Shakes his head.

"Explains a lot..."

"No. It _doesn't_." I jump on it, past conversations clicking hard in my otherwise beer-addled brain. "Henderson sounded like scoring him was the plan from as soon as they locked on him, which I'm betting was Wiesbaden, _before_ you did your little CYA. Which means your precious Hal told Henderson and his cronies what it had before it bothered to tell you—probably had orders to if he's as wired-in as he seems to be." Which makes me wonder what else it's been keeping from you—but I spare him that bit of paranoia. Still, he gets pale, looks like he's all locked up, grips his beer like it's the only thing keeping him from running away.

"So who _is_ Henderson?" Michael wants to know, like he's studying a potential target.

"Official title: JIC Director of CT Ops," Becker offers.

"Which means what?" Michael presses. "And why does that give him Datascan?"

Doc still looks vapor-locked, so I give it a go:

"What do you know about Joint Intel?" I ask. "About the whole intel structure?"

He shrugs. I order round three, settle into my own lecture-mode.

"History lesson: US Intel is a cluster-fuck. No secret. Has been forever. You got your civilian organizations: CIA, FBI, Treasury, State Department, Energy. Then there's the military side: NSA, DIA, SATCOM, and then all the different service branches. Now technically, CIA ran the show, but they had no real leverage over all the other players, who kept their own prizes and played jurisdictional pissing-contests for appropriations and glory and shit. So we had _huge_ holes, or we had the intel and it just didn't go beyond the local office because of the bullshit turf and ego politics. 9/11 showed us how bad it was. And Iraq. So the 9/11 Commission said we needed a Joint Intelligence Coordinator. We _had_ one: the CIA's Director of Central Intelligence."

"We even had a supposedly unified data-sharing system," Doc unlocks and cuts in with the tech report. "Two, in fact. There was ICMAP on the CIA side. That was basically an archiving tool for everything every analyst or ops office produced. The military side had SIPRNET—they tried sharing with the Company, but the infrastructure was a bureaucratic nightmare. So they finally banded together and had DARPA start going through supercomputer contractors for a single system that could actually pull together all the source bits and make cohesive sense—something that would make Joint Intel really _joint intel_." He pauses for a drink. "But the way tech evolves in a competitive market, the hardware kept becoming obsolete before they could get it past appropriations. So they got smart and demanded something designed to evolve—to be easily upgradeable, or better: _self_ -upgrading. Our Datascan Project met those criteria."

Doc stops rambling to check who's in earshot again, then leans tight over the table. There are about a dozen small clusters of casuals and suits warming booths and barstools, apparently self-absorbed. I don't see anyone I know.

"After we passed DARPA review, Henderson's office won taking point on field testing. But that was supposed to be it: just target tracking. Then suddenly, in Athens, he's got instant approval to use Dee for a high-risk live-op—that's a major fast-forward on the proposed timeframe. Now he's running it like he _owns_ it. And the timeframe keeps jumping forward."

He's making his beer disappear impressively fast.

"He's got _really_ big names behind him—us—SecDef Miller, General Collins from the Joint Chiefs. I sat in on a major webmeet after your Beslan game. A dozen international players: Russia, China, Israel, Iraq... Japan is in too: they provided almost two-thirds of the components for the core mainframe. And the British, of course. Australia. Germany. Greece. India. Spain..."

"You said your Hal was for _US_ Intel." I think I'm realizing why he's so bent.

"Somewhere along the line, when they saw what Dee could do, the plan got changed. That's why we have the international candidates: We're not just selling them their own teams in the spirit of cooperation. They're now proposing a single unified _global_ CT network. One central command, all plugged into Dee. They say they can't do this thing right unless everybody plays."

"I remember this speech: 'You're either with us or with the terrorists...'"

"But it's not just a _coalition_ ," he protests. "They were talking about the entire _UN_. Remaking it into some kind of global army."

I can barely contain the urge to laugh—I have to remind myself we're in a public place.

"They think they can pull that kind of leverage? They can't even keep a Coalition together, even when a dozen major powers are all getting whacked by assorted extremists. That 'Spirit of Cooperation' thing only seems to be good for a week at a time..."

"Depending on the headlines," Michael slides in evilly.

"The tech is the lever to sell it," Doc comes back edgy. "That's what the tests are about: it's like the ultimate infomercial for the military contractors involved. The SENTAR Corporation alone stands to make trillions off this deal. Their Japanese and Korean component producers will get a big piece of that. _And_ the Chinese nanomaterial industries. This is going to be world-changing huge. The visible part—the selling face—is the Tactical gear. The suits, the guns, the interface—that's what got the international players interested. But that's the catch: it's _all_ interface gear." He pulls his key-cell out of his pocket and tosses it on the table. "Like this phone, it's gotta-have-hot, but it's useless junk without the access service. Without Datascan, all SENTAR is giving them is some clunky body armor—the weapons and gear have to be _linked_ to operate. And for the foreseeable future, _we've_ got the _only_ AI that can run it all. On top of it, it's the AI that lets us pull off the amazing bullshit that we put on for show: an _army_ with Tactical gear couldn't have made that Beslan sim work like it did."

"But—no offense, Doc—there's a half-dozen supercomputer developers that do nothing but out-evolve each other's hottest AI every year or two," I try to bring him down. "This year, you're superbrain is smarter than God. Next year, it's ancient crap."

"No, Major, you aren't getting it," he protests in a manic-spooked way that makes me think of that Frankenstein guy from the old Hammers. "Datascan is a _hybrid_. It's both software _and_ hardware. The software is built to evolve into bigger and faster gear. It can even design the upgrades for its own systems. And the mainframe isn't the physical limit—the same viral spyware it uses to hack and gather allows it to _slave_. It can expand into anything it can reach. It's designed that way to prevent competitive obsolescence as well as practical future-proofing. Even if they gave each participant a separate clone system, as soon as they went online, they'd _merge_."

"I lost you in the big words, but I'm thinking that sounds scary."

"That's why the DOD insisted on the dirt-simple prime-directives: they've seen those movies, too. Besides the terrorist-targeting parameter, there's a list of thall-shalt-nots to keep the system from going SkyNet: No usurping legal political authority, no targeting noncombatants, no 'prophylactic' operations against profiled groups; no actions that would destabilize or overthrow any legal governmental system..."

And I have to point out the toaster-illiterate obvious: "Probably all just vague enough that something that thinks as fast as your baby could figure out a way around in a bazillionth of a second if it wanted to."

"It's _not_ alive, Major," he tries, but his delivery sucks. "No self-determination going on. It will only do what it's programmed to. It's just going to be a long time before anything else can compete or replace it, and that means whoever runs Datascan is going to run the Terror War. _Everywhere_ , if this plan sells."

"Assuming they don't fuck up and get caught—what is it?—directing violence against civilians on purpose? Not that upstanding democratic governments like ours and the ones we do business with would ever do such a thing, but..."

That's when I catch Michael, descending behind his beer into full-on dark, half-grin twisting until he looks like the devil with a great joke to tell. He shakes it off when he catches me looking at him, but I think I know exactly what he's thinking.

Nobody talks for the remainder of our beverages. And it's getting a little too crowded to safely continue this discussion.

"I think we need food..."

### 2

January 4th 2019.

Thomas Richards:

The local authorities decided on demolition.

Even all those HAMAS vests going off shouldn't have done enough structural damage to be worth condemning a three-story apartment building with a nice-but-now-gutted corner deli. But I suppose having a significant terror base in your town—no matter how bloodily it got cleaned out—makes for an embarrassing tourist attraction, if not a tourist repellant.

They imploded the building weeks ago, and they've partially cleaned out the foundation down to what used to be the basement—where the worst of the blood and blast-damage was, not to mention the actual arsenal and safe-house—leaving only a fenced-off empty hole, a glaring wound in an otherwise peaceful neighborhood. And I don't know if I'm more pissed off at the Wabs for moving in or Grayman—now "Captain Ram," though I'm still not at all willing to accept that bullshit commission—for blasting them out.

Nobody's working on it today. Probably taking an extended break after the holidays. Something _I'm_ supposed to be doing too, at least officially. Instead, I diverted my leisurely drive in the Union countryside down through Greece, and hope that if I'm being tracked, they'll just think I'm being obsessive.

I'm sitting in the same café where Burke and Grayman— _Ram_ , the name is almost as ridiculous as his rank—spent a lunch hour some ten weeks ago mutually ignoring each other, immediately before Grayman— _Ram_ , if I can ever say it without choking on it—instigated the demise of the now ex-building across the street. And much like they did then, I sit here now sucking Turkish coffee and trying to look like the cuisine is all I'm interested in. The biggest difference is that I'm not planning a massacre after dessert. And I'm not being watched, at least not by a sizeable CT unit.

What I'm doing instead is waiting for an old friend.

He shows up fashionably late, though I expect he's been here for hours—just making sure we aren't being watched by anyone, no matter whose side they're on (which spared me the trouble of checking the neighborhood myself—he's always been good that way). He looks like he's lost weight, and his tan skin is darker and more leathery than the last time we shared air. And he's a little grayer.

He plays the part, waving and grinning like we are just a couple of old friends (though I'm sure the waiter is wondering if we're a couple, the way he makes it a point to sit close next to me rather than across the table).

"Thomas..."

Apparently we're going first-name. I'm almost surprised he doesn't kiss me on the cheek.

"Jacob..." I give him back with the same sugary sing-song he used. He's got me matched in the Eurotrash fashion look: lambskin and silk. Real designer shades, not interface gear. No visible cells or netware. And no visible sidearm. Even his armor is well hidden under the cut of his shirt.

He makes a vague and poor excuse for his tardiness, and orders a coffee and a menu. He knows better than to ask for Kosher. He settles in and looks idly across the street.

"Big hole," he says like he's just doing small-talk, though he does honestly seem a little depressed by the building's destruction. "Big mess. Pity. I wonder what they'll put in its place?"

I don't answer him except with a little shrug. I wait for the waiter to bring him his coffee. He orders grilled lamb like he knows the place. I trust his taste enough to go for the same.

"Why did you bring me here, General?" I ask straight out once the waiter is gone. "I mean, besides what happened here..."

"No ranks, please, old friend," Sharavi purrs caution.

"Someone listening?" I prod.

"Not mine," he offers. "Nothing for them to see around here since the deli got closed down."

" _Is_ that why we're here?"

He smiles. Teeth yellow from years of smoking and coffee. You'd think the director of Aman would have a decent dental plan.

"And to get away from the office. I know you know how it is. I have some questions. I needed a place I felt better asking them in."

But he doesn't get to the point. Feeling me out, maybe. I take the time to drain my coffee to the sludge.

"So you _had_ eyes here, when I was here last," I idly accuse.

"We both have a common interest in the deli-business, you know," he offers. "We also always try to keep an eye on the competition. But that wasn't what brought _you_ out, was it?"

Not sure what he's playing, I bait him: "You tell me."

"It's a little brisk today," he says, adjusting his jacket. "Not trench coat weather, of course."

Ah. I see. "I didn't know you had a thing for trench coats, Jacob."

"Not really my style," he plays. "But I recently saw this sharp gray one that caught my eye."

I do the expected, play dumb: "On someone you know?"

"No, Thomas," he says flat-out. "Not one of mine. But you know that. As I said, it's not the style. Not anymore."

"Was it ever?" I give him back. He only shrugs, chuckles.

He drinks his coffee, signals the waiter for refills. Considers the hole.

"Quite a lot of blasting, to take down such an old building. I don't expect it left much recognizable. Did you lose anything in there?"

I grin at him, covering my frustration. "Not that I'm aware of. You?"

He shakes his head, still smiling.

"It was on the web," he gives me. "That's where I saw that coat I liked. It came with a matching fedora, very sharp. From Italy. A little flashy and over-the-top, I suppose, but I found I just could not stop thinking about it later. I'm afraid it rather grew on me."

"Mmmm..." I try to figure his angle. "I was after something like that myself last Fall. Looked all over Europe, in fact. You heard, I'm sure."

"I did," he admits, still pleasant. "Did you get your hands on it?"

"Sorry. Didn't manage." Not totally a lie, but I'm not sure how I would explain this to him even if I thought I could. Though I get the impression he knows at least as much as I do on the subject.

The food comes in time to take my mind away from it before I start feeling the burn in the pit of my stomach again. I thank Sharavi for his entrée recommendation—very tasty. Then, between bites:

"You didn't call me out here just to talk about coats, did you?"

"No," he admits idly, looking like he's enjoying his meal. "Mythology, actually. Or fantasy. What do you know about mythical beasts?"

"Probably about as much as you do," I try to get my point across while matching his word-play. I at least have a feeling where he's going now.

"They asked you to transfer, though," he drops it. "To offer your expertise, and your relationships, however battered."

"I haven't said yes."

"Should you?"

Ah. "Is that what you wanted to ask me?"

"Among other things," he admits. "I've been encouraged to invest as well. But I must admit I'm a bit wary of this new joint business venture. What do you think: Is this product worth investing in, Thomas?"

"I really can't say."

He laughs. "I expect that, in itself, is an answer. I would have thought you would be obligated to sell the product."

"As I said, I haven't accepted any offers."

"You should."

I almost choke on my kebab.

"Why?" I ask him, almost accusing.

"Money," he returns. "This new project is expensive. I expect budgets will shift, appropriations will dry up." He looks around to see who's in earshot, leans in closer. "You should have been a general by now, Thomas. At least a brigadier. But you are not even a full colonel. Why is that?"

"You know me, Jacob," I excuse. "Just not that kind of a player."

"I _do_ know you, Thomas," he says with some urgency. "You just rubbed the wrong people."

"I haven't backed down on that."

"And you shouldn't," he counsels. "You tried to tell them about the—what do you call them?—'Wab' dynamic in the beginning, argued against wasting time and blood in Iraq when we should have been playing the cults against each other."

"But instead we gave them the one thing that could make the Wabs, the Shia and the Sunnis stop their ancient blood-feuds and band together: a big, ugly, mythic enemy. It took them a long time to remember how much they hate each _other_."

"That's the Thomas I know," Sharavi quietly rejoices. "Now, you tell me: Are we headed down the same path again?"

I don't answer him right away. He seems to understand my silence. We sit together and finish eating. He gives the waiter cash for the tab.

"You should take the job, Thomas," he tells me as he gets up, in way of saying goodbye.

"You're still good at making no sense, Jacob," I return, not sure what to make of him.

"I make perfect sense, Thomas," he insists. "You see, I am going to have to say yes to this offer myself—my government is positive enough at least to try, no matter my concerns. I would very much like to have someone I feel I can trust involved in this project, someone on the inside. I'm sure some of our mutual friends—faced with this same offer—would also feel the same. And you _do_ have friends, Thomas. Remember that."

I manage to give him back a polite enough smile.

"I appreciate that, Jacob. It's just that I'm having a hard time with my trust issues lately."

"Good for you."

He tips his silly little cap and goes.

### 3

January 9th.

Matt Burke:

This is a bad idea all around.

I keep thinking that, all the while the "hostiles" do their thing, kicking me around the little concrete cell, pouring fresh ice-water over the towel they've wrapped my head in so I can't breathe. I think the bastards like doing it.

Me, I didn't like doing it the _first_ time: Eight years ago. SERE training. Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape. The part they seem to put the most pure evil into is Level C: the "resist" phase, reserved for combat pilots and special operators at highest risk of capture: The instructors play the enemy, capture you, and take professional glee in torturing you, to get you ready for the possibility of the real thing. And they do their best to make it real. (Amusing fact: What they learn from SERE gets used to evolve real Enhanced Interrogation techniques.)

Just for us, this version is full-Wab: head-scarves and shouting about Allah and divine retribution and how bad hell is going to be when they send me and all my "infidel crusader" kind there, softening me up for the hostage video by beating on me and soaking me and jabbing me with stun batons. And then they get frustrated because I'm not looking impressed.

But what I really am is distracted.

At least they made certain concessions for Michael. Usually, they would jump you during a game, or at random or in your bunk in the middle of the night like a Rad kidnap gang, and drag you to this little party. Lucky for them, Datascan ran a sim before they tried that on their precious Captain Ram, and figured Michael wouldn't respond kindly to a bunch of beef jumping him in his bed without a proper explanation. Final simulation score: four gouged eyeballs, two crushed windpipes, a broken neck, a dislocated knee and a lethal skull fracture.

The SEALs scoffed it off and argued that the sim wasn't realistic, but it impressed the brass enough to engage safeties by telling Michael up front that this was just a game and to play along. So he did. And they took him with the usual show: kicking in the door of his "suite" at three a.m., trying to be as loud and rough and scary as possible. Manhandling him in his skivvies, throwing a hood over his head, zip-cuffing him and dragging him off to a simulated cell to abuse him. All the while he just plays stoic like a doll and lets them do their thing.

And sitting here in my own simulated cell enduring my own simulated abuse, I'm remembering how he went along with the Wabs that took him in Wiesbaden, and what happened next.

I'm sure that's the point: they want to put him through it yet again, only this time out of the relative safety of a sim, to see how he maintains. They don't trust him yet.

But why they had to drag the rest of the team into it, I don't know. I'm sure we've all played our own versions of this, given the work we do. SERE is a rite of passage for special operators everywhere. And given fragments of the history of the players on our little team, I'm also reasonably confident that some of them have done this for real as well. (Just like Michael). Maybe it's meant to be a bonding thing. Team building. Imagine the applications in the corporate management junior-executive retreat market...

More freezing water comes slapping down over me, creating a vacuum that sucks the soaked towel almost down my throat just as the sudden icy shock makes me gasp for air. But I know how to breathe like this, know how to keep from panicking. So I get kicked again and called names in another language.

I figure it's been the better part of two days, judging from my level of hunger and dehydration (they do the dowsing with salt water just to make sure I won't try to drink any of it), and I'm starting to get loopy (not to mention the body-wide numb burning ache of being tied in a "crab" for hours, enough to make you nuts all by itself).

And I guess I start to nod because they rip the hood off and go for the bright lights and the shouting again. SEALs. Any snappy comeback I could manage would be wasted on these guys—they endure worse than this for fun.

I think I hear gunshots echoing in concrete corridors through steel doors—someone must be getting enthusiastic with the drama. My abusers don't seem to take much notice. It's about then I realize the room is spinning and—despite being tied bent-over my own crossed legs—I'm toppling over. It takes both of them in the cell with me to keep me upright.

So I barely see the cell-door swing lazily open. I guess I really only notice because it gets my two "guards" to look. And I see another one, sort of just standing in the doorway, his head lolled over funny-sideways, arms just hanging at his sides. My two guards drop me and try to jump to, and I see the guy in the doorway growing another pair of arms under his first two except these two new arms have guns in their hands.

There are more bangs then, only much much louder. Both guns go off twice each, quick, then I see the guard in the doorway drop like a limp sack, only leaving the guns attached to another body that was behind him.

He's naked. Almost. Wearing those boxer-brief things. He steps over the limp meat in the doorway and pumps two more "bullets" (training stunners, packing a charge enough to paralyze but not sparing you the hurting like hell) into my guards.

"You ready to get out of here?" Michael asks me, offering his hand. He sounds like he's just bored at a party. Only he's got that icy snarl-grin again and his eyes look—I swear—black on black.

Oh. Shit. What the hell did you do?

### 4

Lawrence Henderson:

I love this part:

Three camera views inside the little concrete cell let me see it from multiple angles: two beefcake SEALs bulging their veins out trying to be loud and threatening with their fists and their stun batons, and _him_. Sitting there. Hands zipped behind his back. Stripped mostly naked and soaking wet from his last dunking. And looking at them like he's looking at a pair of mildly interesting insects.

I almost think I should have warned the SEALs about his trick with the zip cuffs, but I enjoy getting to watch it in realtime: he manages it in a few dozen of hours, rubbing them through on the concrete behind or under him whenever he gets even a brief opportunity. He masks it by doing it slowly, pushing hard for friction, working just one spot.

Aggravated by his stoicism, his "guards" hood him and douse him with cold water again and try shocking him at random. And Ram shouldn't be able to see (maybe just a flash of floor under the hood), but he suddenly snaps the cuffs (thankfully they give before they cut him to the bone) right when both batons are basically under his nose, and in a flash, he has them both. Almost.

His left hand gets a better hold, gripping so that he's got wet-skin contact with both the baton and the fist holding it—if the SEAL triggers it, he'll get nailed himself. The other one he just manages to catch long enough for that one to jerk the weapon away. This gives him both room and opportunity.

Ram rides the left-side SEAL, letting his grip on the baton-hand help pull him to his feet. Then he uses both hands to flip the baton, contorting the SEAL's wrist, freeing the weapon and jerking his enemy forward into a hard pommel-strike to the face, which opens the SEAL up to a similar shot to the bladder. This all takes about one second.

Ram shifts his captured weapon to his right hand, tears the hood off his head with his left, throwing the sopping hood at SEAL Two's face to distract him. Ram parries the SEAL's baton with his own, chops down on the SEAL's forearm with his free hand, and whacks the SEAL in the face with the charged baton, all faster than I can see. Then he uses the baton like a crowbar to wrap and crank the SEAL's arm down hard.

Now the SEAL is a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than he is, so Ram lets the sailor wrestle himself back up. Ram follows him up and—with a hand on either end of the baton—punches the SEAL hard in the face with the butt of the baton, then stabs it into the side of his neck. Just to be sure, he sticks the tip of the baton to the back of the SEAL's neck and shocks him all the way to the floor. Four seconds.

Ram spins back into the first SEAL and smacks the baton hard across the back of one of the hands the SEAL is using to guard with. The SEAL goes offensive to try to regain control, lunging for the tackle in the tight space. Ram spins through the lunge like a bullfighter, around behind the SEAL, stabbing the butt of the baton in between his shoulder blades as he passes.

The SEAL roars—or tries to, because the blow partly knocked the wind out of him—and grabs for his comrade's lost baton. But when he turns, Ram weaves his own baton through his guard like a fencer and shoves it straight into his open mouth, driving him backwards. The stun charge makes the SEAL's eyes bug out and he gags violently. It's amazing he's still on his feet—he _is_ a SEAL, after all—and he tries a desperate but solid kick, only to get his leg caught in Ram's free arm. Ram shoves forward, holding on to the kicking leg, driving the SEAL up against the wall and pinning him there. He kicks the SEAL's supporting leg away but keeps him nailed to the wall until the baton succeeds in shocking him unconscious.

All the while, Ram's face is the same cool, calculating mask—despite the brutality of what he's doing, it looks like he's playing a game of chess.

He's reaching down to collect the second stun baton when the two SEALs who were out in the corridor come running to check out the noise. The first shoves the door open on the scene and goes for his sidearm. Ram hasn't quite picked up the second baton, but instantly throws the first straight in the SEAL's face. It's charged, and gives the sailor enough of a shock to partially blind him. Ram steps in, drops the second baton on the SEAL's wrist as he's pulling his gun free of its holster, and somehow manages to _catch_ the first baton bouncing back. Then the two batons are doing this tight, lightning dance. It reminds me of a cross between Japanese Taiko and an old school hard rock drum solo. I count a dozen hits to the face, head, arms, ribs, neck and knees (I have to rerun it five times to catch them all).

Ram catches the SEAL in mid-collapse, drops one of the batons to get a grip on his gun-hand, and cranks the arm up so that the weapon is pointing back over the SEAL's right shoulder, just in time for his backup to come running with his own weapon drawn. But his partner has become a combination human shield and gun platform.

The views shift to the hall cameras. Two shots take the oncoming SEAL's legs out from under him—the pistols are loaded with stunners, each round delivering more punch than the shock batons on full blast—and he goes face-first into the deck. The SEAL in Ram's grip tries to struggle—Ram twists the sailor's own weapon around to shoot him in the side of the neck and drop him (not the head, though—a shot to the skull at that range could be lethal). Then he calmly pumps an extra round into each one's back to keep them down.

After that, he goes looking for Burke and the rest of his team.

"And what the hell was that?" Richards demands after the file video runs. He looks a bit pale, even on the holoscreen.

"I think it speaks for itself, don't you?" I give him, just coolly enough to rile him.

"You put him back there, right back where he came from," he makes the obvious accusation, "and he lost it."

"He didn't lose anything, Colonel," I calmly insist.

"Two of those sailors are still in the infirmary..."

"They were SEALs," Ram excuses himself on cue, cool deadpan. "I didn't think I needed to hold back. Much."

I enjoy watching Richards freeze. I'd "forgotten" to tell him that Ram was sitting over in the corner of my office this whole time. So now I expand my video feed to let the Colonel see him: a little battered, bright white gauze taped where the zips cut into his wrists, but otherwise none the worse for wear, sunk into a soft leather armchair—not at all looking like he just endured two days of nonstop professional abuse.

"Watch the films, Colonel," I defend. "He _avoided_ crippling or potentially lethal attacks. The training proctors had nothing negative to say. Hell, if he did something like this for real—rescuing his entire team—he'd be getting the Medal of Honor."

"But he knew this was training," Richards criticizes, playing right into the obvious conclusion. "What's he going to do when it's not?"

"Then it's time we tried him in something live, isn't it?"

He doesn't have a reply for that one. He knows it's out of his hands.

"I am _not_ comfortable with this..." he grumbles, then logs out without further complaint like a good soldier.

I lock eyes with Ram again, trying to see something resembling trust or gratitude. The fact is, he doesn't feel all that different than he did in the hospital, after we first took him, when he made the deal. Those damned dark-pit eyes of his still give me nothing—they almost look at me the same way they looked at the SEALs who were abusing him.

"Get some rest, Captain."

### 5

January 12th.

Matt Burke:

I've barely slept off the abuse the SEALs gave me, and Michael's down here shooting. Despite the heavy sound-damping, I can hear the distinctive boom of that stupid gun of his way out in the corridor.

Manning is watching him from Observation, cleaning his SIG on one of the benches like he's just come off the range himself, but paying more attention to the show on the other side of the Plexiglas.

"Check this doo, Major," he says when he sees me come in with my bag. "Makes me wonder what they shot him up with in sim phase—I don't think he's all detoxed yet, but it's good."

He's _walking_. Just taking an idle stroll from one end of the firing line to the other, like he's lost in deep thought, and then he just casually raises his shiny hand-cannon and pops the targets downrange without breaking stride. He does this in singles, doubles, triples—separated by more introspective pacing and regular magazine changes (the cannon doesn't hold a lot of rounds—I count only eight between reloads).

Downrange, holographic targets ghost up in the powder-smoke: stereotypically menacing ragheads and other assorted thugs, some exposed, some charging, some hiding behind assorted cover. They die with gamer-realism when he nails them. But he looks more like he's running a pool table than combat shooting.

"Okay, check this one out..." Manning hums.

The target-generator's given him a challenge: four leering Wabs holding what looks like a classroom full of children at gunpoint. This stops him. He stands there, head hung down, staring at the floor, gun hung limp behind his right thigh, dead still.

Suddenly... Boom. Boom boom boom. He springs his body into a low, wide stance, and thrusts the gun out, wedged in both hands Weaver-style, and starts popping fast. His face loses the half-asleep cool and hardens into that half-snarl as he cuts all four of the hostiles down in less than two seconds.

The big gun locks open and empty. He feeds it a new mag, snaps the action closed, and decocks it. Then he does a gunslinger spin with the heavy chunk of stainless before dropping it in his thigh holster. He goes still again for a moment or two, then turns and looks up at the glass, looks at me. He doesn't look surprised to see me. I wave. He grins a little, looking almost embarrassed.

So I leave Manning to finish packing his gear, and go down for a little target practice of my own.

"You salvage that thing from home?" I just come out and ask, nodding at the big chunk-o-steel on his thigh.

"No," he says, kind of quiet and almost sad. "Had to leave everything. But they let me order a new one. So I went ahead and did a little upgrading..." He pulls a spare mag and shows me the rounds. "Eleven millimeter magnum. Uses a standard four-twenty-nine bullet—same as the .44 Magnum, but with twice the energy."

"Why not just use a rifle?" I try not to sound like I'm making fun, but he grins and gives a self-effacing chuckle as he snaps the mag back home.

"Can't hit the broad side of a bus with a rifle. Just can't get the feel of it. Ears..."

I realize what he means by "ears" in time to avoid perforated eardrums, getting my hearing protection on as he does a smooth draw, cocking the hammer as he pulls like it's an old six-gun, and begins to empty his silly pistol downrange at a set of static targets. I feel the shockwave of each blast smack me in the face, hard enough to feel it up my sinuses. He does a decent job—not perfect, but he hits what he's aiming at. But then I look at his eyes and realize he _isn't_ aiming. He's just pointing—the gun isn't even lined up with his eye. He actually turns his head and looks at _me_ for the last few rounds and hits his targets anyway.

"Show-off..." I grimace.

"It's just an upgrade of the whole Zen archery thing," he says like it's nothing. "But I can only do it if the weapon 'points' naturally for me. If it doesn't, my aim is crap."

He trades the cannon for the old 1911 Colt from the small of his back. It has exotic wood grips with custom finger grooves. He unloads it and offers it to me. It feels disturbingly good in my hand.

"I can't do plastic guns—they feel like toys, don't point for me, shitty recoil management," he explains. "That, and I like guns with hammers, single-action triggers."

I open the slide. Everything is tight—no slop at all. "Nice..."

"Match tuned," he confirms. He hands me a full magazine and lets me try it out. It barely kicks. And it lets me make groups tighter than my SIG.

"Sweet," I appraise. "Why the .45?"

"The hardball is slow and heavy. Excellent takedown without over-penetration. My teacher called it a 'humane' bullet: One shot stop, but no hydrostatic shock turning your organs into goo. It also won't go through your target, six walls, and hit a child half-a-mile away. If I need to shoot through a truck, that's what the other gun is for."

He offers me the cannon. It's a foot-and-a-half long and weighs maybe five pounds. There's a big muzzle brake on the end of a vent-ribbed barrel. Holding the two guns together—one in each hand—makes the "full-size" forty-five feel like a pocket pistol.

"They sell these mostly for hunters," he explains, "but this model is compensated for fast pin shooting. The new laser module lets Datascan watch my targeting, so I can get the heads-up imaging."

"I'm still surprised it lets you use _this_ instead of the ICW," I grouse. No one uses a magnum handgun in combat except in the movies: too hard to control, too heavy to carry, and shit capacity. But he doesn't look like he's combat shooting. I can't even describe what it looks like. Tai Chi? A lazy round of golf?

"I actually can't track as fast with the ICW. I guess it knows that enough to trust me or something."

He drops the guns back in their holsters and goes quiet for a bit. I turn and look up at the Observation deck. No sign of Manning—he must have lost interest and packed it in for the night.

"So what's your story?" he comes out and asks. "You've got the advantage, Commissioner—care to share?"

I try to shrug it off, but he wants something, anything.

"Grew up in Baltimore. Dad went off to Iraq with his Guard unit when I was just getting into my fucked-up teenage years. Got stuck in the whole 'stop-loss' thing."

"He make it back?" he asks when I stop feeding for a moment, trying not to go back home in my head.

"Um... Yeah, he did. The Dead Dad story—that was Manning: _his_ father got blown up by a car bomb, along with a bunch of kids he was trying to do the hearts-and-minds thing with in Karballah, handing out candy. _My_ dad had no such luck."

He actually doesn't look at me like I'm nuts. Then I remember what his sister said about his own home life, so I elaborate:

"The thing is, he _dug_ the shit. Ate it up. He was gone _four years_ , me and my mom left to freak every day that he was going to show up on the news, or there'd be that knock at the door. Me watching her lose it, bit at a time. Hating him. And him sending back mail that made me want to puke about how 'important' it was. More important than us. They split not long after he got back. I went with mom—I doubt either of us really knew the guy anymore. We got priced out of the East Coast in the Bush Era Housing Bubble and wound up in Wisconsin in time for the big crash. Mom had cancer by then. He never even tried to say goodbye or anything."

He's a good listener, lets me do my wallowing. Hesitates on the obvious cut.

"So... You joined the military?" He manages to keep the sarcasm pretty deadpan.

I get in a laugh at my own expense. "Seemed appropriate at the time: Angry young man, broke, no good prospects. I scored high on the ASVAB in high school—my counselor insisted it would be good to take it, and I think I did just to prove I was smarter than the average jarhead. For my trouble, I got swamped by recruiters. When I fell out of college in my freshman year... well... I guess I was feeling just depressed and hopeless enough to give in, like maybe the old man was right and it really was the best thing you could do with your life. But I think part of me wanted to prove I could get through it and _not_ get reprogrammed into a Captain America clone. That, and I was pissed at the terrorists and feeling superior enough to push myself through Ranger School. Once I got in, I could stroke myself and feel all elite, feel like I was seeing the 'real' war, not the political media-face bullshit."

I load my own personal sidearm—a SIG Elite that should meet His Scariness' requirements for a "real gun"—let the holo-targets reset and work my way through my first mag with about as much enthusiasm as I have doing sit-ups.

"But?" he has to push me, just when I've got my life nice and rationalized.

" _But_?" I throw back at him, reloading. "But the attitude's stills there, gets me busted on a regular rotation. Sent off to even more fun places."

He just watches me run through the next mag. I know what he's going to say the whole time. He lets it simmer until I'm done shooting.

"Like Columbia?"

" _Nothing_ happened in Columbia," I spit out the same old testimony. "The 'unit' I was supposed to be helping train got themselves dexed one night while we gringos were back in town getting shitfaced and laid—we found them all slaughtered after the weekend. Mission failed."

I make it a point of jerking my eyes up toward the sentry monitors in the corners of the range. He gives me a little lopsided nod to let me know he's done pushing it.

I really don't feel like shooting anything. I blow through a box of ammo and start packing. I notice he's nursing some nasty bruised cuts on his wrists from popping his zip-cuffs. They're on top of the scars he got doing it in Germany.

"You weren't actually supposed to 'escape' that SERE scenario, you know that, right?" I take my run at him. He grins a bit at that.

"I just wasn't liking the company," he says. "Besides, you remember what Doc said: I'm _supposed_ to do shit like that when they poke me."

"No," I correct him, "you're supposed to get _mad_ when they poke you. What _you_ do—I don't think they've figured that out yet. How the hell do you take out two SEALs like that? With a hood over your face, no less?"

He drops into that self-effacing smile again. "Blindfold fighting is an old martial arts demo trick," he excuses. "Once you've made contact with someone's arm, you can find the rest of them. A little practice, and you can feel them move a lot better than you can see them."

"That easy, is it?"

"Yes. Here. I'll show you."

And he does: he has me raise my guard, and proceeds to humiliate me with a series of random feints faster than I can see. And he _is_ fast—I can hear his arms cut the air like bad kung-fu sound effects, and he looks absolutely relaxed. Then he tells me to relax and press my wrist gently against his. When he does it again, I _can_ feel him move, even with my eyes closed. Scarier, my body reacts naturally, moving to respond to each strike and kick he throws at me.

"And that's how you break SEALs?" I ask him, not willing to drop the attitude yet.

"No," he says easily, "but it helps me keep on top of them. The rest is a matter of a few basic rules of geometry, timing, momentum. Trapping, controlling, opening..."

In a flash, his arms whip _tap-tap_ and my guard gets jerked down and forward and I'm feeling like I'm in a car-wreck. The palm of his hand is right up under my nose before I know how it got there, and he's got that grin going.

"Holy..."

He does the wrist-pressing thing again and asks me if I'm ready. I try to be, closing my guard up real strong and coiling my stance, but suddenly he's _everywhere_ , weaving around and through my guard, taking my every response and using it to suck me right into another no-contact punch or palm or chop. _Almost_ no-contact, anyway: he's using no real force, but when his palm barely smacks off my ribcage under my arm, it feels like he's just played handball with my heart and lungs. If he'd hit me with _any_ intent...

"What the hell _is_ that?"

"A combination of things, but they all keep the same basics. The physics, the strategies, knowing how bodies and minds work."

"And you learned this... where?" I'm pushing again.

He grins at me again.

"You know Musashi?"

"The samurai-guy? Famous old swordsman?" I try.

"Undefeated in sixty-plus duels against the best fighters in his day, all with little or no real formal training," he feeds me with that same reverent glazing he gave the manticore lecture with. "The point is, it took Musashi until he was fifty to figure out how he was doing it, and it all came down to some very simple, universal principles. But to him, they were natural. Like they were just wired in, from the first fight he had when he was only thirteen."

"And this is _you_?" I needle him. He shrugs.

"It just makes sense to me, like I've always known it. Put a weapon in my hand, it feels like the most normal thing in the world. Maybe I'm just broken that way."

Then he gets that cool, faraway look that makes me worry that he's going to demonstrate just how easily he can kick my ass again. "So... Is this something you can teach... well... _me_ , for instance?"

He grins, but at least he doesn't laugh at me.

"Probably."

But suddenly I'm very conscious of the sentries watching us from the corners—cold machine eyes wired into something with an agenda I'm only starting to wrap my head around.

### 6

From the closed files of Lawrence Henderson:

18 January, 2019.

Things continue to progress on our accelerated schedule—not exactly as projected, but Dee seems to compensate happily.

Tactical Team One starts to resemble a real team, barely three weeks since they were first thrown together. Much of that is thanks to Ram. Dee was right about him, in ways that even I couldn't see in the beginning.

It started when he began to open up, to reach out to the others. Burke first—teaching him that unique fighting style of his. The two start training together, and Burke himself seems surprised how fast he improves (considering he didn't think he had anything to improve on). But more important, the two function together like they've been a team for years.

The rest of Team One started taking notice of the synergy between the two—both in sim and in livefire training—about a week later. They're still skeptical, not only of the program but the idea that such a diverse and marginal selection of operators can function with the coordination Datascan demands. All of them are big-ego professional warriors and suitably full of themselves, and all have somehow failed out of their own teams despite impressive skills. But Ram is the one who starts pulling them in, starting with his version of close-quarters combat (that Manning is quick to name "Ram-Fu"). He stays cool against their attitude and reaches out with amazing diplomacy: he validates them, appreciates their individual skills, encourages them to share what they know. Then he shows them how it all can be put together, how they don't have to re-learn anything. He teaches them to do what they do, only better. He teaches them how to read and control an opponent, to "ride" a fight.

One by one, they start to play. To train together— _really_ together.

21 January.

Richards takes the post (and the promotion), though he's very tight-lipped about his reasons for doing so. Sadly, he begins paying for his hesitation almost immediately. His first team has already gelled itself without the benefit of a commanding officer, and this hardens their attitudes against a man they see as a starched uniform or a desk warrior. The brief histories that Burke and Ram have with him only make this worse (though it's never spoken of, not even within the camaraderie of the team—as far as the rest know, none of them have ever met Richards before).

Richards will have to go far to earn more than uniform respect. Worse, the team naturally look to Burke and Ram for leadership. (Secretary Miller referred to them as the "terrible twosome" over brandy one evening, unfortunately with Richards present.) And after Burke and Ram, Datascan is in charge. It makes Richards appears superfluous, a figurehead CO. And Richards is well aware of it.

22 February.

It's Tetova that first encourages them to train almost exclusively in the armor, to get used to the weight. It turns out that Ram's somewhat unique fighting style—the short economy of motion and the use of bodily momentum—adapts well to the suits. Burke adds to it from his own CQD expertise, discovering creative ways to make the trauma-plating work in a close fight: to put real hurt on anybody who tries to attack, to make them hit plate or to hit them with plate. (This actually compensates for one of his own complaints about the ICW: traditional CQD uses the soldier's rifle as a blunt weapon, but the ICW is plastic and its mass is mostly behind the shooter's hand, making it a poor club.)

Abbas worries about how the suit might become a liability, how the extra weight and hand-holds can give an opponent an advantage. Ibrahim chimes in with the Judo he's played. Ram shows them Aikijujutsu and Chinese "fast wrestling." They adapt.

Within a little over a month, they've neatly designed a unique and impressively effective close-combat training program for going hand-to-hand in full armor.

26 February.

The team now gets to train out-of-doors—we isolated a challenge course at Quantico for them to use—high security, minimal prying eyes. It gives them more room and a wider variety of terrain than what they can get in the "Basement." The fresh air has interestingly mixed effects.

Burke is the first to complain about the overall strain on the joints from huffing in the suit. But then Manning comes up with some creative suggestions on ways to use the suit's pair of auto-rappellers to get around. "Like Spiderman," Ibrahim agrees with the joy of a child. Within a week, the obstacle course has taken on a whole new flavor: armor suits are flying through the air, slinging themselves over barriers on their lines like human yoyos. The team starts to look like some kind of professional extreme stunt troop, gleefully trying to outdo each other (especially Manning and Ibrahim, the most kid-like of the bunch) in creating graceful and complex acrobatic maneuvers. Dee generates an arsenal of new combat algorithms just for using the rappellers.

1 March.

Ibrahim—who is another non-fan of the ICW—starts playing with better ways to sling it, to grip it. Requests for design changes get sent back to Doctor Mann's R&D team. Mann is not quick to respect the wisdom of soldiers over PhD engineers, but his resident "interface guru" Doctor Parry sides with the troops—she has a soft spot for Major Burke, it appears—and she gets Mann to improve his listening skills.

That victory won, Burke slickly broaches the subject of laser-sighting their conventional sidearms (like Ram's) and a selection of common assault weapons so that Dee can oversee targeting and fire control. Parry gets it approved with her usual skill at logical argument ("backup" weapons might be needed in unforeseen circumstances), and the team is overjoyed to get the option of other (more familiar) weapons to play with.

On a side note, the sentry systems catch Burke impulsively stealing a kiss from Doctor Parry (he thought he had her in a corner out of sight of the optics). While he didn't get a chance to do anything more than that, she certainly didn't resist his advance, and the two have been eyeing each other like hormonal teenagers ever since.

Abbas, meanwhile, has been experimenting with the armor design on the side, using one of the onsite shops and a few of the more geekish armor-techs to cut up and reassemble a few of the discarded earlier prototypes. The dig for Doctor Mann is that a few of Abbas' "Frankenstein" suits actually move better that the current online prototypes, and with no real loss in protection. Burke immediately requested a "light" model, mostly—he says—so they can move in public settings without totally looking like spacemen, and Abbas' unofficial design team starts cranking out very good ideas.

These all get coolly ignored for a week by Dr. Mann, who still appears reluctant (or offended) to take any advice from "grunts" with no letters after their names. Richards, however, trying to show some investment in "his" men, makes a case to General Collins, who goes straight to his old friend SENTAR CEO Ben Northgate, and Dr. Mann starts having to get used to stuffing his ego. New prototypes are put into production.

As for Ram, his role continues to be to sort of hold it all together, to make them all feel like they're part of something. He's a good listener, good at drawing the men out, making them talk. He's patient, available, non-judgmental, and is as equally accepting of Manning's gung-ho redneck jingoism as he is of the simmering jaded theo-racial rage of Ibrahim and Abbas. Even Tetova (it turns out that Ram shares his appreciation for good potato Vodka) starts to talk about his family, his life before and after Beslan, something his records insist he's never done with anyone (not even under chemical). He's even surprisingly civil to Richards.

Burke may be ranking officer of the "twosome," but it's quickly becoming clear who's really "leading" this team. And Burke doesn't seem to have a problem with it.

We'll see if this continues to play out as predicted. Live games start this week.

12 July.

Four and a half months of wargames—live scenarios against a variety of Spec-Ops opponents—have passed impressively so far, occasionally with truly surprising results. The tactical bible of urban combat gets rewritten in nothing flat, as the old standards get thrown out in the face of the new technology. (That sounds like a good sound-bite—I'll have to remember it.)

In fifteen ops, "terrorist targets" embedded in buildings and houses were taken out with awesome speed and accuracy as armor suits simply advanced into their fire and cut them down.

(Tetova pushed that point particularly far in Urban Game 5 when he decided to forgo using his ICW and just charged in and physically "beat down" his targets using the modified hand-to-hand, all the while their live-fire ammo is hammering him to minimal effect. He took seven good hits—otherwise sure kills—and came away with bruises and a very mild rib fracture. Ibrahim took the inspiration and ran in to join him, the two later smugly claiming that they'd exceeded mission expectations by "capturing alive" a number of "high-value targets." Ibrahim also remarked that he felt very much "like Superman" in the process.)

Some targets found themselves neutralized by shots that hit them accurately through walls. Others were taken from cover by impossibly accurate sniper angles ("There was _no way_ they could have known where I was in there!" one of the Marines involved later protested). Still others got to experience the shock of armored troops dropping in through the ceiling right on top of them on auto-rappel lines.

The best came in the so-called "high-density" scenarios, where the targets were hiding in or fleeing through crowded "civilian" areas—simulated markets, city streets, hotels, schools. They got an intimate demonstration of how well Dee can visually track them, and how efficiently an ICW can pick them off out of a mass of human "cover."

22 July.

Ram has successfully completed every training module in the current syllabus. He's absorbed and demonstrated proficiency for what would otherwise be at least five years of training in less than nine months. Still, General Collins wasn't impressed until he saw the comparative scores of the other Group One test candidates. Ram was as good or better (sometimes significantly) in every test (except the sniper course, but he actually did better than he himself would have admitted—he didn't suck, in other words—and he did qualify).

However, because of the pervasive reluctance to give much respect to the VR training at this stage, Ram's "graduation" goes unmarked, uncelebrated by either ceremony or even simple verbal recognition from his superiors. Ram, for his part, doesn't seem particularly offended. In fact, he never pauses in his personal training obsessions to celebrate himself. He doesn't even tell Burke.

27 July.

Burke gets to regret his criticism of the so-called "9-11" sim, when we demonstrate how a team of Tacticals can drop onto a passenger jet in flight, using their lines to lower them from a pursuit ship, latch onto the hull, carefully vent cabin pressure, then surgically cut down all of the onboard terrorists by shooting them through the fuselage before blowing their way in and securing the plane. It's the most dangerous exercise to date—the risk of fatalities being high despite adding parachutes to the gear—but the team comes off of it looking like they've just been on a carnival ride.

31 July.

After their fun in the air, we abuse them in the desert. And we make them walk: eight miles over loose rocky terrain in 123 degrees (hot enough that their infrared won't help). Worst case: no air support, no satellite eyes. Dragging the mass of their armor chasing an enemy that's specifically lagging to draw them into a preset kill-box, a classic pin down and pick off. And the Marines playing the Taliban are using live ordnance.

The scenario is the bane of our ground forces: You get led into open ground, no cover, and get hammered by mortars that make you grab ground. And while you can't move, you get whittled away by snipers.

The Marines think it's a joke: The suits are slow, big targets. But then Dee shows them how well it can shoot: The ICWs pick the majority of the incoming mortars out of the air, then those "easy targets" just wade forward into enemy fire, "scoring" the Marine team with 25mm sim-grenades launched with accuracy that would impress NASA. It's over in thirty seconds.

1 August.

It must be noted that the "targets" in all of the scenarios to this point were not informed in advance about exactly what they would be facing. And it's Captain Ram who first broaches the obvious concern, during the VR review of the previous day's mission:

"What happens once we do this publicly," he asked with that cool, calculating intensity he has, "and they get a sense of us? Won't they... _adapt_?"

I catch Collins get a little tense at that, but Richards nodded like he actually agreed with Ram. Maybe there's a bridge to be built here after all.

19 August.

Richards went to work with his general friends, passing simulated "intelligence" on the Tactical Team's capabilities—not complete, not at first—to let the "enemy" try to prepare. Also, some of the soldiers that had been so easily humiliated in the prior games were encouraged to come back and share their experiences.

They did many of the obvious things:

They tried using RPGs (and got a demonstration of how an ICW can cut them out of the air).

They tried roadside bombs. In each test game, Dee successfully sniffed the bombs before any of the suits got within the critical range that the kinetic energy of the blasts would do significant damage to the soft tissue under the armor (though Abbas sourly complained of a nasty bruise on his right buttock when he wandered a bit too much into the "kinetic radius" of one—at least he got the satisfaction of tracking the bombers by scanning for residue: the poor GI's who'd set the trap got their door kicked in that night by a rather irritated suit of battle armor who was still having trouble sitting comfortably).

They tried suicide vests (in a least seven different scenarios before they figured out that the Terahertz scan does "see" through clothing) and got bomb-netted—which apparently stings a bit even without a live explosive involved.

They tried a dirty bomb (and got unexpectedly jumped with the "simulated material" an hour before they thought the exercise was starting).

And biologicals (Dee had adequate containment teams ready after the "carriers" all got picked off—then the team got to take their first decon shower in armor—Manning said he felt like he was going through a car wash, but he seemed to be enjoying himself).

So far, so good.

But then today General Hussein proposed a particularly dangerous scenario to the group. It's been forwarded to Dee and the SENTAR R&D team for review. I can understand the reasons for wanting to run such a test, but given the high risk factor, I'll be honestly surprised if it gets approved.

20 August.

Addendum to previous day's entry: Despite both Colonel Richards' and Dr. Mann's strong protests, Dee agreed to the parameters, even to the point of allowing the "opposition" to field a significantly powerful live charge.

22 August.

A day that will go down as a seminal event in the peculiar history of Mike Ram:

The team got dropped without brief into a simulated open suburban landscape at the Bragg combat range. The scene was in many ways reminiscent of the high-risk routes in and out of the Iraqi Green Zones, though the team was not given any sense of what to expect. They were simply dropped on an empty piece of roadway and told to head toward the city-set with caution. The fact that they were loaded with live ammo told them this was a free-fire.

Their angular advance put Captain Ram ahead of the body of his team and on their right flank as they followed the road in a spread, staggered skirmish line. Whether his position in formation was simply coincidence, or how much Dee calculated what would happen next, it hasn't indicated. In any case, Ram was the first one to scan the car by several seconds: a battered full-sized fossil-banger sedan roaring full-out down the street in the general direction of the advancing team.

"Incoming!" he yelled over his link, locking on target and calling for an emissions scan, though he'd already assumed the outcome long before the gas-spectrum confirmed ammonium nitrate and diesel. "Car bomb!"

His fellows all opened up with their ICWs, but the "enemy" had prepared and hardened their rolling IED with enough homemade armor at the front-end to resist both the standard 5.56 caseless rounds and the issued frag and breaching grenade loads. The whole point of the exercise was to give the team a threat they couldn't just stand up to and stop—they would have to scatter and dive for whatever cover they could. But that wasn't their instinct anymore. They'd gotten too used to the relative invulnerability of the suits. So they initially ignored Dee's orders to run for it and stubbornly peppered the car's layered plating to zero effect.

But then Ram, who hadn't even bothered trying his ICW, racked it and immediately went for his insane sidearm, all the while running forward, paralleling the road. This put him even further ahead of the rest of the team at the point when the car whipped past him at a good forty-five miles an hour. But he had already opened up on it, emptying his clip in just under four seconds. And despite being more than forty yards away from a rapidly moving target, he scored every shot.

The first two rounds cracked the engine (which had been armored in front but not from the side—whether Ram really had time to figure that out is unclear) and sent the drive train grinding. The next two hit the front tire and hub, shattering the rotor assembly. The next three punched through the driver's door and "killed" the simulated suicide driver (a modified animatronic crash dummy set to keep the vehicle gunned and pointed straight). The car jerked and spun and dipped on the crippled front wheel, dug into the tarmac and flipped. And flipped. The drums of ANFO packed in the back seat ruptured, spraying their contents through the cab and out the shattered windows as the car kept tumbling through and past the rest of the team as they finally decided to get the hell out of the way and grab ground, failing to detonate because the triggering device had been dislodged.

The car eventually settled on its roof, and Ram's last round (kind of a ballistic "fuck you") pierced clean through the gas tank, and either sparked the gas or ignited the fertilizer mix directly. And the car blew. But not anywhere close to what was intended.

The load of homemade explosives in back seat _would_ have been lethal if it had blown within forty yards of any member of the team (Dee had kept control of the detonator, just in case, though Ram's impulsive defiance made that moot). But the thorough spilling spread the explosive media, took the majority of it away from the chain reaction of the detonator (where the burning gas simply set fire to it). So mostly, it was a spectacular boom, a fireball more Hollywood than tactical.

Still, even the diffused explosion threw the Team like a child kicking toy soldiers (it looked spectacularly bad—there was little left of the vehicle itself), but the worst of the injuries were bruises and sprains (Ibrahim got clobbered by a flying tire, a story he continues to tell over beers).

But much more significant: no one reviewing the event is ever going to forget the spectacle of Captain Mike Ram _killing_ a car-bomb with that big silly fetish gun of his. It's been done before, of course, but usually by a full checkpoint squad unloading with everything they've got—certainly not one man with a theatrical pistol. It's utterly ridiculous, like something out of a bad action movie. But the son of a bitch actually did it, and he did it with style.

22 September.

We've run twelve scenarios in the last two weeks. The team is getting tired, punchy, but they'll have to get used to this, because they'll see worse when the big one comes down. The "opposition" continues to be creative, however futile.

The latest set of exercises got the Team out into the real world for tracking games Becker named "Get Lost"—kind of a Hide-and-Seek with no boundaries, more of a test for Dee than the men. And once we got approval for Dee to have access to SatCom SkyEyes, it found all three-dozen targets within a week—one particularly resourceful SERE instructor got himself lost in the Canadian wilderness: he lasted a full day longer than the two that got caught on a beach in Brazil, but I doubt he had nearly as good a time playing.

Meanwhile, four more "teams" are now through Sim Training and ready for livefire.

24 September.

The games have been impressive enough to get the international players ready to accept "limited" operations against real targets.

Collins would have dropped the team in the Gulf months ago, but there's still concern about this looking like a US game, especially in such a touchy region. Hussein thinks we need a stronger local presence on any teams we field there, though Kudziyev threw it back as having the potential to look like another "token Muslim puppet army". Sharavi jumped in with a proposal for a "joint operation" with his people. Hussein returned fire, asking how it would look if our first operation was with the Israelis.

So Richards offered the NATO Union Theater as "neutral ground," suggesting that both the Israelis and Iraqis agree on a target and throw in "parallel support" to make the operation look as joint as possible. Sharavi agreed without hesitation, and Hussein agreed to consider the option "conditionally"—as close to an ideal solution as we're likely to get at this point, though Richards still looks like he's doing something he finds morally offensive, even when he's doing good work.

### 7

September 26th

Lawrence Henderson:

"I know you got a shitty first impression of Colonel Richards—blame that on me: I was jerking him, and he got irritable, and he's been taking it out on both of us ever since. He can be an ass, especially when he's sure he's right and everybody else is wrong. But he's a good soldier, a good officer. He's got decades of experience in places even _you_ can't imagine. And he takes care of his people. And I think that, when it's all said and done, he _does_ believe in the viability of this program, or at least he wants to believe in a better future. He's just not too crazy about who he has to play with."

Ram raises an eyebrow at me from across the desk: that unsettling "I'm looking at an interesting insect" look. Still, he's willing to come upstairs, sit in my office and drink my good bourbon.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asks like it's not important at all.

"It's about the future," I try not to be too melodramatic. "His. Yours. I need to bridge a gap."

"He doesn't respect me," he simply states. "He can't. He knows what I am."

"Don't make too many assumptions about what Colonel Richards knows and doesn't know, Captain," I offer as I top off his drink. "Your friend Major Burke, too. They don't believe you are what you really are. They can't wrap their minds around it. It's interesting: both of them, on their own, harbor the same conclusion: that you're really a Company assassin. Somehow. Secretly. Maybe even you don't know it. 'Manchurian Candidate' bullshit."

He grins, chuckles quietly, sips. Swirls the ice in his glass. It seems to please him: the idea that the trained professional soldiers might actually think he's a trained professional too, that he's somehow succeeded in "passing".

"I need to know something, Captain," I press in, taking advantage of the bourbon. "I need to know what _you_ want."

He gets dark on me. "Isn't it more about what you can _make_ me want?"

I shake my head, making myself look sloppier with the booze than I am. The veracity of alcohol...

"Do you believe in this?"

He thinks about it, considers his answer—I can almost see him rehearsing it in his head.

"I don't know. Not yet. It's certainly better than what we've been doing. Much better. Potentially, at least." Interesting: he said "we".

"But you don't trust it? Us?"

"Back to that first-impression issue," he says with remarkable spontaneity.

"Fair enough. Is there anyone you do trust?"

"Burke," he starts with the obvious. "My team. Even Richards—I don't get that he's got an agenda. Doc Becker—his heart's in the right place."

"Datascan?" I push it, knowing it was Dee and not me who sold him. He seems to process his answer, sips his drink.

"In so far as I don't think any of you can keep your reins on it for long. It's too big, too smart, too fast. And I think those dirt-simple directives you gave it will wind up keeping you all... honest."

I get a chill at what he's implying, but I don't think he's wrong—I've had enough of those nightmares myself since this started.

"I'm sure Becker would appreciate your confidence in his life's work," I allow, then get back on topic: "So: What do you want?"

"What do you want me to want?" he enjoys throwing back. So I put it on the table:

"How about _more_ , Captain?" And I let him consider possibilities before I give him some options. I watch his eyes play, watch his dissociated personality have a conversation with itself in there while he works on his drink. "More than being just another grunt on a CT crash team?"

"Which would be...?" he probes, enough to let me know I've got his attention.

"You have _presence_ , Captain. People have been watching you. I'd think you'd be surprised to know who, but I'll let you get there on your own. I've told you what Richards can do with his connections, his personality. What I'm thinking about now is what _you_ can do."

"You mean besides kill people?" he goes dark again.

"We are trying to win a war, Captain," I push back against the darkness. "You'll find the killing has remarkably little to do with securing real victories. So what I'm asking you, Captain, is what do you _want_? Do you just want to kill? Or would you rather actually win a war?"

He's polite. He doesn't just laugh me off. But he's very precise about putting his glass down, almost like a ritual gesture.

"Are you offering me a way out?" he ticks off the words very evenly.

"A way _up_ ," I try to match his pacing. "If you'll play, Captain Ram. There's a reason that your Team One is made up entirely of commissioned officers. We'll be breaking you up, of course. Each of you off to their own command, passing on your training, your experience. That could mean leading a team, commanding a company, a battalion, coordinating a theater..."

"And you're offering me—what?— _more_ than that?" Still cool.

I just smile, shrug, offer the bottle again. He waves his hand over his glass to decline. But then he drains what's left in it. He gets up, heavily, like he's still in his armor.

"I guess we'll have to see what that means," he allows me.

I smile and salute him with my glass. He lets himself out.

### 8

October 22nd.

Matt Burke:

I can hear the music out in the corridor, even with all the concrete and steel. I don't recognize the artist offhand—some kind of acid-industrial. Still, he hears me buzz and pops the door by remote without getting up. And mercifully, he drops the throb-and-thrash several dozen decibels as I step inside his dark little cell.

Cell: a good word for it—it reminds me of something between monastic and penitentiary, even by military standards. It's eight-by-ten and windowless like mine, but spare in a way that it almost looks like no one's been living here for almost a year now. The cast-concrete walls and all the horizontal surfaces are bare. No pictures, no knick-knacks, nothing personal.

Michael's sitting—kneeling—on a thin mat on the floor, like he's been doing some kind of Zen samurai thing (except with really loud tunes). The overheads are off—the only light is the screen of his notebook, bathing the room in an eerie blue and making him look more ghostly than normal. The ghost-thing is worsened by the fact that he's pretty slow to melt his face from that stoic mask he locks it in, into something more human. He seems to be savoring the last bars of whatever this is that's passing for a song right now. Then he clicks it off the player and starts to come back to life.

"Sorry," he apologizes sleepily. "I know my taste in music has a tendency to make the average person's brains leak out of their ears."

"Anything but whup-ass Country, and I can deal," I offer, looking over his little box of a room. Besides the issue furnishings, he's got an incline bench and an exercise tower with punching bags and that's about it. "Still haven't gotten around to redecorating, I see..."

"I keep hearing about this hot new hole in the ground they're planning to install us in," he plays. "I figured I'd wait to hire the Feng-Shui consultant until after the move."

"Sounds like you're bought in," I jab him, though I feel more than a little bad about it a second after it's out of my mouth, so I soften it. "No second thoughts?"

"I took the surgery, the new ID and all the training. I figure they own me until I'm something like sixty-five. Besides, what else am I going to do?" It's heavy, but the humor is still there under it. He gets up slowly, with some difficulty, like he's been sitting like that long enough to go numb. He limps visibly as he goes to the fridge.

"Pepsi?" he offers. "Real stuff. No diet..."

I nod. He brings me a can, still limping.

"The ol' war-wound?" I gesture at his left leg.

"Never been quite the same," he tosses lightly. "Still a lot of scar tissue in the meat."

Not wanting to screw up the military-neat bed, I take the desk chair. He sits on his workout bench. Then he takes a long, loving drag off his soda. I'll give him this: he lives sparse, but he seems to be able to take a lot of joy in some of the simplest things. Beer. Food. Even junk soft-drinks.

"Breakfast of Champions," he says of his Pepsi like he means it. I give him a minute with his simple joy before I finally get to my reason for coming.

"It finally came through: Live mission."

"I heard," he ruins the moment for me. I glance over at his screen again, at the Datascan ready-graphic, figuring I know where he gets his insider feed, but he corrects me: "Henderson."

I gather myself and get heavy on him. "No sims, no games. Real bad guys and real dead bodies this time. I know it's not new to you, but that was a whole different deal. You really want to get back into that shit just because the players want to prove something?"

His smile goes lopsided and dark.

"What else am I going to do?"

But the way his face slips back into that pale, dark-eyed death-mask, I know what he means to say, in that icy monotone he slips into: "Get back into it, Matthew? I never left it."

He doesn't, though. It means he's still holding the real rage in check, maintaining. I can see him push it back down somewhere inside of him, but it takes focus, and he isn't entirely successful. The _real_ Michael—the wicked-smart but screwed-up late-twenty-something with the disarming sense of humor that's so easy to just hang with and talk to, the one who treats me (hell, treats pretty much _anybody_ down here) like he gives an honest shit and is actually _glad_ to have me around no matter how 'raqed an excuse for a human being I am—he doesn't fully come back.

I wouldn't say he's got multiple personalities in there. It's more like a switch going off that sort of floods him and over-writes the humanity bits. Then he'd blow your brains out in a hot second if he thought it would even remotely improve his day. The trouble is, his human bits _know_ that. And when he comes back, when he's just Michael again, he has to deal with it. And he knows _that_ , too.

What worries me most, though, is sitting here trying to visualize what that's going to do to him over time, how it's going to eat away at those human bits, if he stays on this path. And I also wonder why that eats at _me_ so much, why I give a shit about this 'raqed piece of work I've only known barely a year and can't even say that I really know at all.

It hits me then: something about him—it's like I've known the guy all my life, that's how easy I feel with him when he's not jacked. And I realize it's not just sinking in now: I felt it the first five minutes I spent with him, bleeding in an Athens' subway tunnel.

"The brief is in ten," I tell him, checking my watch. Then we just sit and drink our Pepsis until it's time to go.

### 9

Mike Ram:

The gang's all here.

You're surprised that they're doing this as a semi-live meeting, not just conference-jacking into our feeds like they've done with every other game they sent us to run. They got us a room with a big solid table and decent chairs and individual screens. There's even fresh-ground coffee. And guest speakers.

Henderson is here in the flesh, along with General Collins (the Joint Chiefs CSA), and Richards (looking like he's trying to cope with a serious case of reflux). And Becker and Mann (both looking more than a little uncomfortable, though Becker looks more nervous than his older SENTAR counterpart).

You and Matthew come in fashionably late, though only by a few seconds—just enough to make Richards that much more tense. Manning and Ivan flash grins at you from their seats. Abbas and Ibrahim are too riveted on the feed to look at you. Which gets us to the guest speakers:

Not live, they flash in by holoscreen to join us as the sentry systems secure the room. One of them you recognize as the Israeli Aman director, General Sharavi. The other is a fatherly-looking bear of a man with a frosted black beard and longish, wavy hair.

"Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce Attila Mooradian, your Mossad liaison for this mission," Henderson is saying. "As this will be a joint-combined operation with NATO and the Israelis, Mr. Mooradian can give you the target specifics."

"...'Attila'...?" You hear Manning mutter incredulously under his breath.

"General Sharavi," Mooradian pointedly greets first with cheerful familiarity. "Gentlemen... Let me introduce you to your target for this mission..." He has a thick accent that exacerbates the relaxed, cheerful tone—he sounds more like a host than an operative.

The screens fill with images of a strongly built and severe-looking man with cropped gray hair and a short-trimmed beard, usually seen wearing a well-cut suit or business casual.

"Mahmoud Hatif," Mooradian identifies the man, his voice shifting effortlessly from cheery to a distain so bare that you almost expect him to spit as punctuation. "Jordanian expatriate. Fled from his safe-house in Turkey last year, after a mysterious string of assassinations of known or suspected terrorists throughout central Europe made things uncomfortable for him..."

You catch Richards glaring at you then, just for an instant. Matthew shifts in his chair, and seems to purposefully avoid eye contact.

"...He resurfaced a month ago in Berlin, where his interests bought him a block of run-down townhouses that are serving as his new base of operations..."

Datascan pops up a series of stills of the structures: narrow two-story walk-ups stacked around a small inner court with a private garden area, accessible only through one small gate. The buildings themselves look to be deteriorating. A number of the windows are shuttered. The exterior entries have reinforced steel security doors. Another iron fence circles the property, eight feet high. Floorplan graphics show us the interiors.

"Challenging..." Ivan mutters.

"Yes," Mooradian readily agrees. "We have reason to believe he has already hardened the site: armored shutters, security systems, surveillance jamming. Passive observation has us guessing that he has up to a dozen men onsite. Small arms have been detected, but they may also have RPGs and other heavier weapons..."

"Who is he?" you find yourself interrupting.

"Former Jordanian Special Operations," Sharavi explains quickly, as if not wanting things colored by Mooradian's apparent personal feelings. "He was connected to WMD dealing in the region over the past few decades, and has been identified as a support for insurgencies during that time, both in recruiting and supply. He may or may not have been involved in getting some of Saddam's infamous disappearing arsenal out of Iraq, and he may have brokered a number of deals for nuclear materials for extremist interests. He was identified two years ago as a potential conduit for the Jerusalem weapon..." He trails off then, letting that sink in. You can feel Ibrahim get tense in his seat.

"I didn't think we had anything hard on Hatif," Richards counters.

"What do you _need_ , Colonel?" Mooradian throws back, looking like his already fleshy face is swelling with blood. "We have him connected to insurgent arms for the last decade or more. He didn't leave his accounts hidden well enough when he fled Jordan, less than a week after The Bomb. He had his hand in something expensive."

"What's he been doing since... Well... Since he left Jordan?" Matthew asks, apparently trying not to mention Jerusalem in mixed company.

"His wife and son were killed in a bombing two years ago," Richards interjects icily. "The Mossad denied responsibility, but it seemed the obvious assumption, especially after the numerous 'surgical strikes' initiated by Israeli gunships throughout the region post-Jerusalem. One of those rocket attacks took out Hatif's house in Jordan, directly encouraging his relocating his family to Turkey, though he stubbornly stayed put in Istanbul after they were killed there."

So Hatif stayed put where his family died, up until you had your impulsive little spree last Fall. Though if losing his family didn't budge him, you can't imagine why the Grayman could have. You must be scarier than you give yourself credit for.

But it's funny: you don't remember Hatif's name in any of the Wab flashware you'd appropriated in your travels.

"You have a point, Colonel?" Collins moves to shut Richards down. Richards hesitates, opens his hands, almost like he isn't sure why he's even here.

"General," you slide in neutrally, "perhaps the question is whether Hatif remains an aggressive threat, or whether he's just protecting himself at this point."

"I do see Colonel Richards' position, but 'retirement' does not forgive one's sins, Captain Ram," Sharavi tells you directly, then flashes the slightest smile. It's oddly familiar, like he's trying to tell you something, recall some private in-joke. "In any case, Hatif's full file has been sent for your review. Perhaps after studying it you may better understand our position."

Datascan is already offering the file on your screen.

"Make no mistake," Mooradian pushes. "Regardless of hard connection to the Jerusalem tragedy, Hatif's established record shows him responsible for costly attacks on both military and civilian targets in half-a-dozen countries. And he is sitting on a small arsenal in the heart of the European Union. What he may be planning to do with it, we cannot say. But our most pressing concern is what would happen should any conventional CT force try to move in and neutralize his cell in such a densely populated area."

"And you have Hatif confirmed onsite?" Richards wants to know.

"These pictures were taken two days ago," Mooradian explains, putting up blurred shots of what looks like Hatif, surrounded by guards in heavy coats, moving from a small caravan of SUVs into the complex. There is a slight, sandy-haired young woman on one arm.

"Who's the girl?" Matthew asks.

"Mistress. Naria Harriman. College student. Local. He apparently scooped her up out of a local boarding school last Spring and has been paying her way ever since. This considering she just turned eighteen last month," Mooradian leers. "It is safe to assume he is no longer mourning his wife."

"Is she still there?" Matthew keeps after it.

"We assume so," Sharavi answers.

"Are there any other civilians onsite?" you ask him.

"Not that are apparent," Mooradian replies. Matthew shoots you a wary look. Richards doesn't appear particularly confident either.

"This will be a joint-combined operation," Collins takes over quickly and firmly. "You will link up with the Mossad team onsite. The Israelis will provide support and intelligence. A NATO CT unit will also be on hand as backup, and well as specialized WMD squads. But the burden is on you, gentlemen. Tactical Team One is point. You will go in fast, engage and neutralize, clearing and securing the site with priority on preventing civilian casualties. Do NOT underestimate this one. Good luck. God speed."

### 10

Matt Burke:

"God speed" my ass.

It's more than my reflexive dislike of Good Christian Warriors like Collins. It's the flakiness of the whole mission. I think even Richards picked up on that.

Michael, too. And that worries me maybe the most: if Michael doesn't read this Hatif as a legitimate target, then what happens when it comes down to pulling the trigger? Despite what I've seen him do when he's righteously pissed, I'm not sure if I see him killing just because someone up the chain said so.

He doesn't say anything after we're dismissed, just goes quiet and withdraws into himself, and I don't feel like he'd appreciate me chasing him down to talk about it. So we just go our separate ways back to our own suites and get to packing.

They'll fly us out in two hours. We hit early in the morning Berlin time.

God speed...

This shouldn't bother me as much as it does. So the first thing I do once I'm back in my room is sit down and run Hatif's file.

He really _is_ a bastard, at least according to Mossad. He's been connected to so much senseless chaos-making in the Gulf that the Iraqis happily green-lighted what otherwise looks like an Israeli hit. In fact, if what the files claim is remotely close to the truth, I could easily add the US, Britain, Japan, France (yes, France) and even the Saudis to the list of nations eagerly lining up to off this guy.

No. I know what's bothering me.

I rifle through the sloppy pile of flashdrives in my desk and pull one I got from Michael's apartment last year. (I've never told him that I have any of these—maybe one day he'll like to see them again, just for old times...) I load it and scan and watch him do his kung-fu thing.

He's amazing. He takes out a bunch of guys and it looks like he's dancing. They've got clubs and knives and swords he takes them away and tosses them around and locks them up into human pretzels and he doesn't hurt a single one of them. Then he shows us what he can do with his own weapons: Swords. Chains. This scary looking thing made out of three sticks chained together.

He uses a flimsy little bamboo flute to dig pressure points and wrap joints and take some big guy down and he makes it look easy. Then he does it with a knife—a wicked long live blade—and he doesn't so much as nick the guy. Then he does it with a sword. And a chain. He takes half a dozen lethal weapons and turns them into the gentlest and most graceful things in the world. He smiles while he disarms and immobilizes people who honestly look like they're trying to kill him—not the Mike Ram smile, this one looks warm, gentle: Michael's smile.

It's in here somewhere... Ah...

He's talking with his audience during a break. Some young mother—at least she looks and sounds like she is—asks about all the weapons and violence, how this can be "self-defense," how this could be good for "character building." So he smiles and he tells her a story:

"When martial arts were thriving in monasteries, this was a big controversy: how do you justify practicing violence if your primary tenant is to be nonviolent, to respect all life? One of my teachers explained this in a story: A disciple of the Shaolin order—a Buddhist order—asked his master: 'Master, why do we practice fighting and using weapons if we are taught to revere all life?' His master explained: 'If you are going to respect life, first you must be able to protect your own. In a violent world, simply throwing away one's life because one abhors violence does not honor that life. Then, if one is caring and humane, one would certainly choose to defend others against violence. You cannot defend another unless you can first defend yourself well. And if you can develop your ability to the point that you can easily protect yourself and defend others, you could afford to preserve even the lives of those who would do you harm. This is the highest attainment: if you can develop yourself to the point where you can keep yourself and others safe and not harm anyone, then you truly _can_ revere all life.' So we don't train for years to be able to kill more efficiently—killing is easy: get a gun; you can kill someone with two fingers and three minutes of training—instead we train so we never have to kill. That's the hard part. That's the part worth devoting your life to."

I pause him in freeze-frame. Staring at the screen, I imagine that I've somehow reached back and preserved this moment—this person—for eternity.

But then I remember this person doesn't exist anymore.

### 11

October 23rd.

Mike Ram:

There's an old hotel down the block from Hatif's little urban fortress. NATO had the locals clean it out for us two days ago, blaming it on a discovery of dangerous toxic mold. This covered any questions that might arise about why large numbers of men in bulky chemsuits crating big cases of equipment were moving in.

And they did. Richards double-checked that the joint-combined team had every contingency covered as soon as he arrived: They had bomb, bio and chem-agent sniffers and radiation detectors and scrubbers and MOPP gear and containment tents and bomb armor and disarming tools. There were also a handful of anonymous plainclothes players onsite that Richards seemed to know, though he also didn't show any particular enthusiasm for seeing them there—they kept the greetings brief and official, and he didn't introduce them. And German GSG supplied four of their best snipers and an extra two teams of armored backup (though their armor looks like underwear compared to our Tactical suits).

And then there was Attila and his assortment of grim-cool field operatives, all looking like they lived on coffee and pills and illegal cigarettes. Except Attila himself, who looks like a man who enjoys good food and drink—he really presents as a cheerful sort, at least to those he's not wanting to kill. He actually hugged everyone he met, greeting them like some long lost cousin. Even you.

"Ah- _hah_! The serious Captain with the big shiny gun!" he roared as he slapped you on the back. "I have been hearing things about you! You seem to make quite the impression... Hey! Don't let me forget: I have something for you..."

Then he was off to hug the life out of Ibrahim.

"Sweet guy," Matthew whispered, still shaking off his own squeezing.

We got there at three in the morning local. Datascan wants to hit at something odd like 05:20, a certain time before the sun was actually up, and the ambient temperature was still sunk into the frosty overnight low.

At 04:40, they sent Ibrahim and Matthew out on a little walk, wearing a stripped-down version of the armor hidden by heavy coats and hats. Datascan wanted a closer look from street-level to compare to what it was getting from satellite.

"Nothing," Becker gives us when they're on the swing back. "No explosives emissions, no radiologicals. Unless they've kept it clean and exceptionally well-shielded."

"This doesn't rule out bio or chemical weapons," Ibrahim interrupts from the sidewalk. "It also doesn't give us a weapons inventory."

"But we did get a head-count," Matthew tries to lighten, sounding like he's cold. "We got fourteen heat/sound images. Only four of which are up and moving."

"CO2 emissions are consistent with that number," Becker confirms. "We should be able to keep the targets locked. You'll know where everybody is when you go."

"Are we assuming one is Hatif and another is his jailbait?" Ibrahim wants to know. He doesn't get an answer.

"Come back and suit up," Richards orders.

"Good," Matthew happily agrees. "Damn cold out here..."

"Here! Here! Look..." Attila draws you to the back of the dingy little room they used to store the crates for the armor. He drags out a pair of large cases and drops them on the little bed, which creaks in complaint. Then he gets distracted. "Hey... They say you carry an old Colt 1911 Government Model, very sweet—may I...?"

You oblige him, pulling the .45 from the small of your back and unloading the chamber. He takes it reverently, appreciating the grips, the balance, the tuning of the action.

"The forty-five—it put ya through the farging wall. Very nice. Look here..." He reaches into his own waistband and comes out with a nicely blued Colt Officer's Model with well-worn wood grips. He quickly screws a suppressor onto the muzzle before offering it to you. "Good gun for this. Subsonic load so it silences nice, but still heavy on takedown."

He watches proudly as you try the balance and sight the weapon.

"You take it," he insists. "You are point—you need less noise, at least at first. Just promise to take care of it—I've had that one almost thirty years."

"What about you?" you wonder politely. He pulls out a round-edged synthetic weapon with a thick grip.

"Belgian Five-seveN. Fires NATO five-point-seven armor-piercing rounds, same as the P-90. Low recoil. High capacity. You take my Colt."

You smile and nod your gratitude.

"Now _wait_ ," he gets back to the cases, attention flitting like a child's. "These are for you. From General Sharavi—he had them sent over himself." He pops the cases and throws them open. One is filled almost to being stuffed with a mass of neatly folded gray material, which Attila is all-too-eager to start unfolding so you can see what it is. The other has...

"Oh..."

### 12

Matt Burke:

No. Oh no.

I get back in out of the freezing German air, so cold my eyes don't want to focus right, and _he_ 's waiting for me like a flashback.

Gray trench. Gray hat. Grayman.

"No..."

But Michael just looks at me with this almost-embarrassed grin, like he's been dressed in drag for a joke. But it's not a joke (even though Attila is grinning ear-to-ear behind him).

"What the _fuck_...?"

He's wearing the same damn hat and coat he was wearing when he personally tore through the South-Central EU last year. But once I get over the initial shock and take it in, it's not exactly the same, not quite:

The coat is bigger, cut to fit over the black bulk of the stripped-down SENTAR "low profile" armor (Abbas' own design) and still leave room to pack weapons under it—he looks even more like he's wearing a cape than he did before.

And under the wide (wider?) brimmed hat is a topline set of frag-proof interface goggles (with sensor arrays built into the temples) that effectively shields half his face and gives him full feed and link.

Then I realize Richards has come in behind me. I expect him to do a similar freeze and double-take, but he just stands there locked-up and doesn't say anything. The look on his face is fighting not to be sour (or sick), but he can't help gnawing at his lip a little and just barely shaking his head as his breath snorts in and out of him. Surprised, he's not—he _knew_ this was coming...

"What—?" I try again to say. Between the residual hypothermia and the sudden sense I'm having some kind of a sim flashback, I'm not sure I can speak a coherent sentence.

"Psy-op," Michael just comes out with, all pro-cool. "Something to divert their attention."

Then I remember from the briefing: Attila saying that Hatif fled Turkey about this time last year because he must have gotten word through the Wab netlinks that the Grayman—Michael, in his not-so-former life—was cutting a swath across Europe and headed in his general direction.

"I thought the whole point of that little pseudo-snuff video you starred in was to _separate_ you from the whole Grayman thing?" I manage to burble out. Richards shoots me a hard glare that says it's not the time or place to discuss it, and tells me to "Suit up, Major." Then he just turns and walks off back to his "command center."

"Change of script, Major Burke," I hear Doc chirp in over my link (I'm assuming he made the channel exclusive), sounding a little fried himself. "They 'killed' Palmeri a year ago. They figure having Gray resurface _now_ will finish selling that Palmeri wasn't the Grayman."

Despite the chill, I slip back outside to answer him.

"Or maybe since Grayman made such an impact on Euro-Terror, they decided to keep the legend alive."

" _Or_ they figure any Rad who sees him tonight won't be living to tell the tale," Becker comes back with uncharacteristic cynicism. This seems to have him near as bent as I am.

"I guess I better get dressed," I give in. "Do _I_ get a cape, too?"

Back inside, Attila is helping Michael adjust his "costume," making sure it doesn't interfere with his gear, especially the rappellers. Apparently they want their superhero—sorry: _action_ hero—to be able to fly tonight.

"Ten minutes," Richards is bitching when I get my suit sealed.

No costume for me: I just get the standard heavy black rig. And apparently I get volunteered to lug an extra helmet on top of it.

"You ready?" I ask Michael—it's all I can think of to say to him. He just grins under his hat and goggles, the way I _don't_ like, and his gauntlet gives me a thumbs-up.

"Just like old times," he purrs, disturbingly cooler than he should be.

"Move it out," Richards orders like he's the one in charge. Dee has already flashed our marching orders on our heads-ups.

"Rock and roll," Manning chimes in. Redneck dork.

"' _This ain't Rock and Roll_...'" I counter with a situation-appropriate quote from an old favorite song ("Diamond Dogs" live by David Bowie—a classic). But then Michael suddenly turns to face me, swirling his cape of a coat, gives me that grin and finishes for me in perfect time:

"'... _This is_... _Genocide_...'"

He knows my friggin' _song_...

### 13

Mike Ram:

5:17am local.

Matthew and Ibrahim left to take the long way around to their positions seven minutes ago. The others should be in-flight and imminent by now.

The GSG snipers have long since settled in, ready, just in case. Also just in case, the NATO crew gets set to come in behind us. Otherwise, they'll just be watching for anyone trying to sneak away after we hit the target, and to provide cover if we need one of the containment teams fast.

Attila and his cool killers are relegated to similar duties, spread out with reasonable stealth in the shadows of the surrounding neighborhood. Attila himself is staying close to Richards here in the makeshift command center, though he doesn't appear terribly satisfied that a showboat team of outsiders will be taking point, even if it does get apparent debts paid.

You check your borrowed pistol one last time, adjust your coat to cover as much of the armor and gear underneath as it can, then step out into the icy pre-dawn air.

You've been here before. Germany in October. Wearing this outfit. Someone else's gun in your hand.

"Déjà vu all over again..."

"What was that, Captain?" Becker cuts in, bringing you back to the present. He sounds more than a little concerned, unsettled. Then the graphics light up on the inside of your goggles, Datascan inserting itself between you and the cold night.

"Nothing. Just chilly."

"You're on, Captain," Richards pipes in, not sounding very comfortable himself. But with your first steps, you know where and when you are: the now-familiar weight of the armor grounds you back in the now. And new hat and coat over fifty-plus pounds of weapons and armor over forty-plus pounds of new muscle new body new face, you walk on down the road to do your job.

The plan violates traditional tactics in almost every conceivable way. Without Datascan controlling every aspect, every maneuver, every line of fire, this would be the worst possible disaster. But if it goes right...

Your heads-up gives you a virtual 3-D of the target complex: the fourteen live bodies inside are glowing through the transparently-rendered structures.

The complex is a squared "C" shape around the central garden court, the individual buildings staggered offset and—even though they were constructed at the same time—faced in a mish-mash of styles designed to give the place an old-world feel. The roofs, though roughly the same height, are a mountain-range of variable angles, giving plenty of places for sentries to hide— _if_ they could hide from a combination of satellite and infrared and Terahertz imaging.

There are two guards on the roofs, apparently idle in the quiet early morning hours. They took some minor notice when Matthew and Ibrahim did their initial pass, and haven't moved since. Inside, only four of the other twelve heat/sound shapes are moving around. And judging from a combination of sound and temperature shifts, one of those has just gotten up to take a shower. Bad timing.

You walk straight up to the complex in plain sight, not bothering to keep to the shadows of the neighborhood buildings—just the opposite: you march smoothly right down the middle of the empty street, coat billowing in the chill breeze like a cloak, hat brim pulled down to hide your interface gear. You are a rippling gray ghost sliding in and out of the glare of the streetlamps, borrowed gun held low in the folds of your coat, daring them to recognize what you represent and sound whatever alarms they will.

And that's the point: You want them to see you, want them to recognize you, want them to panic. You want their undivided attention.

On your heads-up, the two blips on the roof sit up and take notice. Datascan reads the rough chirp of close-range walkie-talkies a moment later. Thirty seconds after that, you can see some of the few lights on in the upper windows of the townhouses click off. Datascan shows you glowing icons of two man-shapes coming to the windows to look. A third moving form takes the stairs to the ground floor and waits close to one of the facing doors (trying to stay low, as if that makes any difference). Number Four is still in the shower.

Upping the tension, you pause for a moment at the corner directly across the street, right under the glare of a streetlamp, and just stand there for a few seconds. This is partly to see how they respond to you, and partly to give you time to synchronize your actions with your incoming supports. On your heads-up, a map-grid shows you Matthew and Ibrahim in position. And coming in fast: the icons for two silenced VTOL dropships.

Inside, the rest of the shapes begin to stir (except one, who appears to still be asleep in the flat where Number Four is showering). This is an essential balancing act: while it would be "cleaner" to take them all out in their beds, it's politically necessary to confirm hostile intent (something that's also supposed to be one of Datascan's limiting parameters). The clearest way is to see how they respond to a threat, without giving them time to actually do anything messy.

On your heads-up, the VTOLs pass threshold. You step out into the street and approach the very door you know you are being watched from. You stop just short of the entry gait, look up briefly at the roof, then take hold of your hat with your left hand and bow with a theatrical flair, like you're greeting your dance partner at a royal ball.

As your body tilts, Datascan reads the angles and targets and blows your primary rappeller through the provided slit in your coat between your shoulder blades. Hanging on tight, you manage not to lose your new hat as the auto-grappler and cable shoot almost straight up, and Datascan sinks the grappler into the eaves of the roof two stories above you. With a smooth jerk, you launch straight into the air. And keep going.

The AI-driven rappeller motor calculates an overshoot and throws you a few feet over the rooftop, disengaging the grappler and line to spin back into your armor and lock home just a fraction after you come down on the roof tiles. Despite the bulk of your armor and the rather wild ride, you manage to land almost gracefully on your feet—one of the obstacle-course "X-Game" stunts Manning and Ibrahim taught you (though you're sure everyone in the townhouse below heard the thud).

Getting your balance back, you look around just in time to see guns hastily raised, confirming that you do have both roof-sentries' undivided attention. You have just enough time to grin your grin at them before two clusters of muffled blasts drop them limp on the shingles, shot in the backs of their heads. Matthew and Ibrahim have arrived on cue.

Matthew is unscrewing the suppressor from his SIG as he climbs over the angles of the rooftops on the rightward wing of the complex. Ibrahim is on the left wing, pulling the suppressor off of his own gun. In full armor, they look like spacemen trying to traverse a rugged alien terrain. Matthew almost loses his footing, catches himself, and signals that he's intact.

"...at least I didn't fall off the building..." he's grousing, heading in your direction. He's rightly impressed, as you expect his landing (and Ibrahim's) was much rougher than yours. They blew their primary rappellers horizontally from roofs across the street, using their secondaries to anchor them back to their points of origin, then trusted Datascan to swing them down and then arc them back up, sliding them over and then calculating their acceleration to toss them up to land rolling. And they landed just in time to right themselves and pop each one of the sentries from behind while they were preoccupied with you.

" _Time_ , gentlemen..." Richards nudges, impatient. But Datascan doesn't appear to be worried. We're still time-coordinated with the incoming VTOLs.

" _Hat_ , Captain," Matthew gets your attention, then tosses you the spare helmet he'd brought with him. You hear him snicker on your link as you take off your fedora and roll the crushable felt to stuff it in your coat. "I just got what you reminded me of, doing that grappling-hook thing in that outfit: You look like Inspector Gadget."

Ibrahim spits out an involuntary burst of nervous laughter.

"Cut the chatter..." Richards complains.

You slip your borrowed (and as yet unused) pistol into one of the over-sized pockets your coat, then trade the goggles out for the helmet and visor—you will need the extra protection for the next part. "Better?"

Matthew feigns an exaggerated shudder. "Ever see an old horror movie called 'The Fly'?"

"Position!" Richards refocuses him. You boot your visor interface and clamp your ICW in your grip. The three of you step to the inner edges of the roof, looking down into the courtyard. You can hear motion, voices, panic. Then the thrumming of the VTOLs.

"Go!"

We step out into space and fall. Our grapplers blow again and catch the roof behind us, rappeller cables fighting gravity to slow us just enough not to cripple us when our boots hit ground. Your coat billows out just like a cape.

### 14

Matt Burke:

We fall together, pretty much right out of the still-dark sky into the courtyard. The rappeller cable jerks hard at the armor as it puts the brakes on. Still, the landing hurts.

The rest happens in just a few seconds.

Dropping into the middle of them would be a suicide move if it weren't for the armor and the AI. Even with, it still may be. The general idea is to draw their fire _inside_ the complex rather than encouraging them to fire outwards into population. That means we're basically targets. It also means that we'll be relying on Dee to ensure that we don't send any wild rounds out into the world, and to keep our own backup from hitting us in the resulting crossfire.

Fire control goes live before I even hit the ground. Dee dumps us in a rough triangle and points us at what it reads as motion. I realize I've finally gotten used to squeezing down on the ICW reflexively, because the thing cycles and spits a handful of rounds through a doorway before I have any idea what I'm shooting at. I only see the Terahertz image of the body drop after it's done, see the outlines of an assault rifle drop with it.

Michael and Ibrahim are sweeping behind me, peppering the buildings all around us. Then flashes of fire come out of some of the windows and I almost get taken off my feet by something heavy that smacks me in the upper chest. Then another shell punches me in the back—it almost compensates for getting knocked backwards—but I get a good half of my wind kicked out of me and I want to just spin around and hit back in all directions but fucking Dee is controlling my gun and wants me to keep to my quarter or third or whatever. Then I catch a flash of a shadow popping up over a second floor balcony and I see a thick tube on his weapon and Dee is flashing me to

"Move!!!" I yell as I dive and roll hopefully in the right direction. I realize my weapon already perforated the shooter, but he squeezes off a 40mm grenade at us before he drops. The blast goes close—even with the helmet, I can't hear anymore—and I get knocked sideways and feel my knee go pop and my helmet rattles my brains as I hit ground...

When my visor clears I'm looking at a graphic of the VTOLs hitting the complex. I hear glass breaking and grenades go and then more ICW spitting, but now it's from upstairs: Manning and Ivan and Abbas just dropped in to catch them from behind, slung like human yoyos from their dropships as they swept in low and quiet, blowing in through the second-floor windows. And I'm just lying on my back as I watch Dee coolly click off kills on my visor. And I'm idly thinking that if they had a nuke or something they haven't used it yet. Then I catch a blur of gray with a black bug of a head and realize Michael's up and on the move.

"...Burke! Major Burke!"

My body feels crushed all over and my ears feel like they're full of water. For some reason this makes me remember that someone was taking a shower or something.

### 15

Mike Ram:

It's bad for maybe all of five seconds.

You try to keep up with Datascan as it wants you to point its weapon half-a-dozen places at once. In the dark of the courtyard—they've killed all the lights in self-defense—normal vision is wiped blind by the flashes of gunfire. The only view you have of the world is the graphic rendering on the inside of your visor.

At least one shell grazes your helmet, stunning you a bit (and making you appreciate taking the time to change headgear). Then another punches you in the left thigh almost hard enough to take your legs out from under you. You're staggering when Datascan flashes "INCOMING H.E.P" and points you to get out of the way when the world flashes and the next thing you know you're sitting rather gracelessly in some shrubbery with the wind knocked out of you. Datascan assures that Matthew killed whoever threw the grenade at you, but you can't see what happened to him, only a blip on your map that insists he's close by and still alive.

Looking skyward, you catch the twin shadows of the VTOLs slide over the complex against the purpling sky. Grenade blasts and more shooting herald the arrival of the rest of the team. Now Dee has the added challenge of ensuring that we don't shoot each other.

You pry yourself out of the bushes and try to get back on your feet.

"...HOLDFIRE TARGETS...HOLDFIRE..."

The graphic has gone all buggy—there are suddenly a handful of unidentified "friendly" blips swarming the compound. Over the ringing in your ears you think you can hear Richards shouting at Attila about getting his men and to stand down and he's losing his temper.

"Hatif..." you manage to ask. "Do we have Hatif?"

You finally see Matthew: down on his back in the flower garden, sprayed with fresh earth from the blast, trying to get up. You head his way but Datascan keeps pointing you toward its own agenda.

"Major Burke looks good, Captain," Becker lets you know. "Hatif..."

He gets cut off by a blast. Datascan puts it as Ibrahim, taking one of the townhouses at ground level and blowing through a wall to clear the next one. Manning, Tetova and Abbas are moving with similar violence upstairs.

"Anything get out?" Matthew wants to know, rolling with some difficulty onto his hands and knees, making pain noises.

"Nothing, Major," Becker tells him. "So far clean. But..." his voice trails off like he's not sure what to say.

"Hatif?" you remind him. Datascan flashes the answer for you: Upstairs corner flat. There are two blips in what looks like a bedroom. One is marked "HATIF" while the other is designated "HOLDFIRE." You realize this was the flat with the guy taking the shower and the unknown—likely his young mistress—still in bed.

Datascan plots you an entry vector to the bedroom in question with nothing but dead bodies and blown doors in your way. Abbas is on it from one side, Manning from the other, but they've got some walls to knock through.

You run over the top of a body just inside the ground-floor entry, kicking his weapon away as you go—a surplus M4—and take the stairs as fast as you can in your armor. Datascan tells you that you're clear up to the landing: the target labeled "Hatif" looks like he's hunkered down for a last stand in the master suite with the "Holdfire". You wonder why Hatif is digging in instead of trying to run.

You count two, then three of the new "friendlies" moving inside the complex at street level, and two more coming into the courtyard through the garden gate.

"Shit..."

"Captain Ram?" Abbas calls you.

"Converging on target," you spit out, throwing yourself across the top landing as a burst of light auto-fire flashes in the corridor.

"Cleared through," Abbas tells you where he is needlessly—you can see him clearly on your battle map and through the walls on Terahertz. "Right next door. Setting the charge and I'm with you."

"Watch the Holdfire," you warn him. He doesn't answer you. You wedge yourself up against a corner, poke your ICW around and track down the dark corridor without exposing more than your gun. Datascan gives you a graphic target for Hatif, behind some kind of cover just inside the bedroom's open door, but you don't squeeze.

A burst of full-auto chews up the wall in front of you. You feel at least two shells make it through plaster and woodwork to kick into your plating, but you stay put. Over the gunfire, you can hear a very young woman screaming. Then just to make things more interesting, Datascan hi-lights the bouncing sphere of a grenade coming your way. Not fast enough with a Bomb-Gel, you duck back down the stairs and let it blow, close enough that the shock rattles your brains and you feel frag rattle off your helmet.

Then Abbas blows the bedroom wall in pretty much on top of the target. Plaster-dust fuzzes-out your imaging.

"PAPA!!!!"

Oh no. No no no.

You get your ass moving and run into the cloud of dust and debris. Datascan tries to clarify the armored bulk of Abbas coming in through the hole he just made in the wall, draws the firing-line of his ICW as he tracks, forms the heat/sound ghost that enhances the barely-visible human shape of the target labeled "HATIF" as it tries to crawl away. And draws another human shape, small and slight, cowering behind an overturned mattress, marked only as "HOLDFIRE.".

"Abbas! _Don't_...!"

But you hear Abbas hiss something in his native language, and you see the flash, hear the ICW spray, watch as Datascan confirms the kill in neat glowing icons on the inside of your visor.

A young girl is screaming hysterically for her father.

"It's his daughter, man!" Manning is crying from somewhere. "It's his fucking _daughter_!" You envy him that he is not actually seeing it himself.

"Stand down!" Richards shouts. "Abbas! Stand down!"

Datascan keeps trying to make it clean for you, keeps flashing brightly-colored graphics to keep you from seeing past your heads-up. So you take off your helmet. Drop it.

Outside, the sun is coming up. Orange light is cutting through the clearing dust and smoke, but the blood still looks black in the shadows. You step over the body, try not to step in the rapidly spreading lake of blood. The body is vulnerably naked, belly-up and roughly spread-eagled, having lost the hastily wrapped towel that was its only dignity.

The body is only recognizable from about the waist down: Abbas caught him in the chest and face. Much of what Mahmoud Hatif was is sprayed across the opposite wall. Abbas stands frozen in the hole he's knocked through from next door. Despite his record, it appears he wasn't quite expecting what the ICW could do—full cycle and at close range—to bare flesh. You jump back reflexively as the body gives a jerk and it empties its bladder upwards like an infant on its back. Urine mixes with blood. The smell reminds you of other places. Someone is sobbing hysterically.

You kneel by the overturned bed and take your time before you move the mattresses. The girl is wedged into the corner, deep in her makeshift shelter, but you can see the spatters of blood black on her tear-streaked face and realize that she had not been so well hidden when Abbas had squeezed the trigger.

She looks at you once—only for an instant—enough to bore her wide eyes into yours and then recoil in absolute horror, trying to bury herself deeper into her hiding place, her body convulsing. Her arms and legs flail like she's trying to hit and kick you away. You instinctively reach out your hand, but then you look down and see that your hand is not flesh but a cold, black, armored thing. You do not want to touch her with it. So you leave her there, leave her. Go outside.

Abbas, still standing over his work, is praying quietly inside of his helmet.

You manage to make it back down the stairs and into the slowly brightening daylight. There is no more gunfire.

You left your helmet upstairs.

Matthew isn't where you left him. Without your helmet, you have to go and find him the old-fashioned way.

He's kneeling by the gated entry to the courtyard garden, along with Ibrahim and a tight cluster of Attila's grim assassins. No one is speaking—except a weak voice that you barely recognize.

In the midst of them, Attila is on the concrete walkway, head supported by one of his fellows. He manages a smile when he sees you. You realize that there's a neat hole almost dead center in the breast of his soft-armored vest. There is no visible blood. But as he tries to speak you realize his mouth is bubbling with it.

"... _sh'ma yisroel_..." he manages to get out, speaking to the sky. "... _adonai elohaynu...adonai e'hod_..."

His eyes are blank, staring at the sunrise as it washes the sky. The medics come within seconds, driving his comrades away from his side, packing him, putting tubes and needles in him.

"Do you know what he was saying?" Matthew wants to know, following you otherwise silently as you walk away from there. He's limping, nursing his right knee. All around, you can see flashes of timid faces press from behind curtains and blinds from the buildings that close on either side of the street.

"A prayer," you tell him. "'Hear O Israel, The Lord is our God, The Lord is One.' Saying it as you die... It's supposed to guarantee you getting into heaven."

You realize that you still have Attila's gun in your pocket.

### Part Four: Faith-Based Initiatives

### 1

March 1st, 2020.

Matt Burke:

"Major Powell..."

Shit.

"Major Burke," he purrs at me like he's actually glad to see me (and it strikes me that he just may be _that_ clueless). "Congrats on the promotion. Nice to see a friendly. Some setup you got here..."

It must be the VR drugs. He's probably just come off two months of them, considering where he's at in the training pipe. He can't be that bushy to just throw small talk at me like we're bros, not after what happened the last time I got stuck with his company.

"So you've got Charlie Company?" I try the civil route. Like I need to ask: I just got the new rosters flashed to me, which is what made me run down here early, while the fresh-from-sim cherries were still getting suited for their first live-fires. I was hoping it was a mistake, that maybe there was some other Powell, Marcus. What the fuck is he doing here?

"Yeah," he confirms casually, like this is just another assignment, and he hasn't just spent eight weeks immersed in Psycho Sim Training World, and he isn't standing in a secret bunker wearing sixty-plus pounds of battle armor and computer-driven weaponry. "At least the first two squads that have finished sim-phase."

He's at least visibly nervous about seeing me, though—I can read it in his body language and the awkward pauses between the pally chatter.

"Yeah..." I repeat back, which I realize is about all I have to say to the guy after all this time.

"I was just introducing myself to the next batch," he manages awkwardly, trying to convince me he's settling in, nodding through the plexi of the Monitors' booth as another young international sampling gets clamped in for their next spin in the VR webs.

"Remind you of anything?" I can't resist. "The old 'It's a Small World' ride at Classic Disney?"

"I've got Sanderson," he plays civilly. "Remember him? The Coalition Brit we ran that mountain hike with—what?—three, four years ago? And Forest is in Major Manning's unit."

"Forest, huh?" I also do my best to play nice. Badly. "We should do a reunion."

I obviously don't sound convincing, because he takes a hard breath and pulls me out into the hall, out of direct sight-line of the sentry monitors (he checks).

"Please don't play me, Matt," he does the quiet and serious. "I was there, too, and not in the way you apparently think I was. I heard the word on you, and I won't say it here, but let's just say you just beat the rest of us to it."

He's almost convincing, but he can't quite look me steady.

"If you say so, Major."

I do the walk-away, and not because I'm due in Livefire.

When I get to the Kill-Room, it gets worse.

It's not just because Team One is a piece of history, broken up and farmed off to their own commands. That was the plan all along. But now that the rosters are up, I feel like I've had reality ripped out from under me.

Seeing Powell's name—and as a company commander, no less, even though he's as cherry as the candidates in his barely-filled-out unit—only got me sick. I didn't really start shaking until I noticed which names were _missing_.

Manning—freshly promoted—got Bravo Company as promised. Ivan's got Dog (he chose "Dog" over "Delta"—apparently he liked the sound of it) and Ibrahim (also bounced up a rank) is putting together Easy (appropriate) while I defaulted to Alpha. And that's about all that's right with the world.

I find Manning in Staging, making sure his own teams are ready to get shot at for real—some of them for the first time. He breaks from armor checks when he sees me come in, then hits me with my own question (or one of them, anyway):

"Any news on Abbas?" he keeps it low-volume.

I shake my head.

"Still listed as 'on leave'," I give him what little I have, "supposedly until we get a platoon or two worthy of him. Feels like an excuse. The Iraqis may be getting ambivalent."

"They have pretty good bullshit detectors," he agrees. Then he tries to brighten my day: "I see you got Lieutenant Biggs. He'll be a good platoon leader. Marine, spent a lot of time in the Stans, played against us in one of the live-fire games—that little mortar-shower we took in the Nevada desert nine months ago. _And_ you got your first girl."

Lieutenant Wise. I check her from a distance: short dark hair, fair skin, tight lines but not butch. Definitely not. She's sealing up her armor so I can't tell much more—doesn't seem to mind the weight of it, though, which is kinda scary.

"Israeli," he tells me what I know from her file. "Top scores in VR. Tough as a goddamn honey badger." He shakes his head like the world's moved on without him. "I've got two women in my teams now. New guy—Powell—has one. Ivan has _three_. I'm not complaining. I'm just surprised we're finally putting women on the line."

"New war, new rules." I realize I probably sound like Henderson and hate myself for a fraction. "A lot of female soldiers have been waiting a long time for something like this to open."

"But Spec-Ops?" he tries not to grimace.

" _You_ were Spec-Ops," I remind him. "Would you consider what we do in-suit Spec-Ops?"

He hesitates before he shakes his head, like he's never stopped to think about what he's been doing all these months. Yes, we're finally putting women in combat. But in armor and with Dee watching over them, they'll probably be safer than they've ever been in so-called non-combat postings.

I switch gears, get to the one question that's really got me sweating:

"Where's Ram?" Because he's not on the lists anywhere. He was supposed to be running Able with me.

Manning takes his time responding. I'm not sure if he doesn't know or doesn't want to say. Then he just covertly points his thumb up at the Observation Deck. I look up.

It reminds me immediately of a scene out of the original "Star Wars": Michael's up there, with Richards standing over his shoulder (looking about as happy with life as he usually does), both in neat blacks, and snake-grinning Henderson kicked back in a chair looking like the evil emperor in a gunmetal sportcoat.

"Shields up, ladies and gentlemen..." I get another shock when the voice over the PA isn't Doc. It's Amber. Why is she playing Monitor? "More practice trap-shooting incoming mortars and RPGs. This will be rapid and random. You need to up your scores—guarantee the opposition will field hotter ordnance once they see you shake off the standard antipersonnel—and it'll give the newbees some quality break-in. Alpha Company: You're up first."

I catch Michael looking down at me, just for a second, before the free-fire shutters close. I can't read what the hell's in his eyes, but it justifies the sick I've got going in my gut.

And where the hell is Doc?

No time to think about it right now. I jerk on my helmet, seal my visor, check it, light up my weapon. Dee flashes us a "go", and I lead my cherries into the big free-fire chamber like it's a Rad stronghold. The blast doors seal behind us, and the incoming starts flying...

### 2

March 17th.

Scott Becker:

This one is a surprise.

Which is saying, because I figured I had the home-field on all the other grunts, at least in this phase: I've seen _all_ the sims, I _know_ what they've been running for VR immersion training. Or I thought I did. But I hadn't seen this one in the evolutions before. Still, I know it well: It's Wiesbaden.

They've made Grayman's debut a training sim.

I shake off the shock as quick as I can: I've got a pretty well rendered Wab sticking a gun in my face and shouting like he'll pop me any second and the clock is running. I get slammed by the rush of the stress drugs as they get pumped through my IV and I want to scream right back at him. At least I know what I'm supposed to do, how it's supposed to go, so I figure I'm _way_ ahead of anybody else who gets dropped in this. So I just breathe, flash on the hand-to-hand series I just finished with Captain Ram (or at least a sim version of him, but just as frosty-scary), and go for it just like he did.

I get shot the first four times anyway. Twice by Shouting Man, twice by the second Wab that comes running in when I'm wrestling with Shouting Man. I'm sucking. But then on take five, I manage to get control of the gun and remember Shouting Man is pretty transparent as a human shield against an AK-47 and I manage to pop AK as he kills shouting man for me and I keep shooting until AK goes down cold.

Then the mission clock flashes at me to get moving for Phase Two: four more targets returning imminently with a hostage.

Not fair. The real Grayman had time to go soak in a nice hot shower—why can't they put _that_ in the sim? Me, I've got barely two minutes to raid their weapons supplies and set up for them (at which point the grunts will take the advantage back because I bet they all know how to rig a Claymore and use all the guns the Wabs have stashed).

I get shot the first time when the Claymore doesn't take enough of the Wabs down. The bastards make me run the whole thing from Start...

Take Two: I overcompensate with the Claymores and kill the hostage. Start over.

Take Three: I get the first two but get popped by Leader-Wab as soon as I make my entrance.

Take Four: I get everybody but the girl. And I hesitate when she gets all beggy and pleady and crying and then the bitch shoots me dead.

Take Five: I get it all right. I break Shouting Man and pop Number Two (hard and fast—I'm getting tired of this) and get the Claymore set (I wonder if any of the grunts used the Claymores?—home field advantage rocks...) and come out fast and blazing and pop all four (including the girl right in her smug bitch face) and count 'em cold and I don't care if I gets points off for failing to gather intel.

" _And?_ " I demand when I'm done, because the proctors just leave me looking at the mess, trying to catch my breath, realizing—despite the drugs or because of them—that I feel pissed and tired and good and strong all at once.

Then they take it away from me. "Reality" starts to spin and melt.

"SCENARIO CLEARED. RESETTING FOR NEXT IMMERSION."

Fuck you.

### 3

April 2nd.

Mike Ram:

Field trip.

This is the first time we'll get to see what will become our new home. There won't be much to see, of course. Construction won't be finished for two years on the current schedule. Given the planned depth of the main bunker, they'll spend the next three months just digging the hole.

"What the _hell_...?" you hear Matthew burble into his link as he looks out of the condensation-streaked windows of the chopper, down over the gently rolling terrain beneath us.

"First outer perimeter fence," our pilot tells us over the rotor noise. "I hear once the remote batteries are in, the fences will just be for show."

"No, no," Matthew corrects him. "The _trees_..."

Roughly uniform evergreens are laid out in neat grids as far as the eye can see, giving the landscape a bizarre manufactured quality.

"Government tree-farm," Henderson cuts in over the link from his own bird, just ahead of us.

"They could have gone cheap with any of the local real-estate," the pilot comments, switching his mic to private. "The whole region is pretty much a loss since the outsourcing craze and the big crash—whole neighborhoods have gone ghost. They decided to go with Ag land. Location, location..."

"Surreal..." Becker rolls out, still sounding rung from putting himself through the Tactical training series. He looks awkward and uncomfortable in his fresh black fatigues, like a child dressed in a suit and tie for a wedding. But he tries to make it look like he belongs.

Matthew, for his part, didn't buy it.

"What the fuck were you thinking, Doc?"

This was how we got started, 07:30 this morning:

Becker, dragging and bleary, showing up at the pad with a crisp set of blacks and a single shiny bar on his collar, his red hair a stubble trying to recover from a boot-camp shaving that revealed a freckled scalp.

"Major Burke... _Sir_..." he gave back officially, salute and all, which only made it worse for Matthew. So he tried to explain: "It was something I needed to do, sir. I didn't feel like I could adequately serve as Tactical Support Monitor without going through Tactical training."

"So you _enlisted_?"

"Yes, Major."

" _Dumbest_ smart guy I know."

"Sir?" Becker did a good job of not sounding too hurt.

"You _designed_ friggin' Datascan," Matthew bit back a little too hard. "Don't get me wrong, you've made a damn good Monitor, and I owe you, but you're set up to change the whole goddamn world... not to mention what you could be worth if you went into commercial gear... Now whatever you do, the Army _owns_."

"Major, my work for McCain is under contract—I don't _own_ any of it," he discounted.

"So quit and build another one. Or something else that will make you a bazillion dollars."

"I can always do that later, sir," he stood his ground. "But right now, I need to see this through. And if I'm going to do that right, I need to know what I'm doing—I need to know what _you're_ doing—if I'm going to ride Datascan through what happens next."

" _Lieutenant_..." Matthew rolled the rank over his tongue like he was trying to be polite about something that tasted awful. Then he tapped the name-strip on Becker's uniform: "BECKER, S."

"They let you keep your name?"

"I've gotten too well known in the tech circles, Major. Especially with this project. But it's been taken care of: my family—my parents, anyway—got sunk behind the Spec Ops TR Protection Program back when I first took on the contract. I'm not endangering anybody."

"Except _you_. Dumbest smart guy I know..."

"But all the _trees_...?"

Matthew just keeps staring uncomfortably as the artificial forest-grid passes under us mile-after-mile.

"Won't be a problem, Major," Henderson chimes back in to reassure. "They provide a visual barrier for anyone wanting to look in. Privacy. Thousands of acres of it. But Datascan can see through it _and_ over it—we'll have a satellite in geosynchronous to watch over the place. And the automated batteries SENTAR is developing will give the base the firepower of an escort group of destroyers."

"How many of these things are you building?" Matthew wonders, a mix of disquiet and awe.

"Nothing like this," Becker explains from his seat next to you. "This is the mainframe bunker. But there are already two more 'forward' bases digging, one on each coast. After that..."

"Still _classified_ , Lieutenant," Henderson warns, pointedly using the leverage of the new rank. Becker takes his cue and shuts up.

But Datascan has shown you the plans for the future, its future.

"There..." the pilot announces.

The chopper does a slow turn around a quarry-sized open pit being dug out by a dozen large movers. An assortment of trucks and other vehicles are parked by a small cluster of temp buildings at the gate that controls traffic through what must be the inner perimeter fence. There are human guards visible here, waving trucks full of fresh earth out and running sweep-gear on the empties that come in to replace them.

The choppers kick up some of that fresh-dug earth as we touch down on the makeshift landing pads.

They picked rural Michigan for a number of reasons.

First, the pilot was right: it was a cheap way of getting a large parcel of out-of-the-way real estate in a somewhat depopulated region, but still close to infrastructure.

Second, it's fairly centered on the North American Continent, out of missile range of our Second and Third World threats, and far away from infiltration from what appear to be our more risky borders (though statistically Canada has proven to be the more popular entry point for terrorists).

Third, if it does prove to be a target (which will be very likely if things go as planned), it will be far from population and government centers should something worst-case happen.

"Welcome to Michigan Command, Gentlemen," Henderson goes theatrical as he issues us into an armored mobile CP that's been set up as a caged conference chamber.

"Chilly..." Matthew grouses, subjecting himself to a sentry sweep as he comes through the entry lock. The machines clear us, and Henderson orchestrates the seating arrangement.

Richards and Dr. Mann are already seated, having taken the ride in Henderson's chopper. Miller and Collins are here as well, though you expect their transport accommodations were more comfortable.

That leaves you, Matthew, Becker and Manning. The lack of any of the international participants is glaring.

The chamber is sealed. No prying eyes or ears or wires for this, a meeting in the middle of Rural American Nowhere.

"There's hot coffee and tea," Miller tries to set us at ease. Manning is the only one who helps himself.

Dr. Mann flips open a notebook and sets up a holoscreen on the steel table we sit around. The Datascan graphic glows in the air above the table top.

"I thought this place was caged," Becker protests.

"New proxy-ware, Doctor... Lieutenant..." Mann tells him (unsure now of how to address him). "The AI has loaded a minimal version of its OS along with the files necessary for this presentation. It exists independently from the mainframe netlink."

Becker's eyes go a bit wide at that, like it suggests something significantly more than Mann's tossed-off explanation. It may just be that someone has apparently mucked with his creation without his knowledge. But you remember him telling you: Datascan can exist—in some form or other—anywhere that will support its core operating system.

A globe appears in the air, rotating, hi-lighting a series of national borders in blue: the US, Canada, the EU, the Russian Confederacy, China, Japan, Australia, Israel. Then a larger number of other, smaller nations flash in green: Mexico, Greenland, select parts of Southeast Asia and Africa, a few small fragments of the Middle East and South and Central America, a handful of Atlantic and Pacific Islands. Yellow comes next: More Africa and Central Asia, South and Central America. Finally: Red—these are pretty much exactly what you would have expected.

"Welcome to the Current World Order," Miller narrates. "A fairly neat division of Coalition and Allied Nations, at least in name. Arrayed against a persistent threat from so-called 'terror nations.' The green nations represent neutral or supportive parties—in other words, low-threat zones. Yellow nations hang in the balance—it isn't clear how they will tip, given the prevailing political and economic weather. But strategically speaking, this is hopelessly simplistic, as there's no way of containing our enemies within national boundaries. The best this map shows us is the political climate. This is the battlefield _I_ will be fighting, primarily. Yours, unfortunately, looks more like this:"

The neatly-colored map of nations dissolves into something that looks like an enhancement of city-lights from space: shimmering clusters and spatters of a million points of light all over the globe.

"Now this is only a simulation," Collins jumps in quickly. "We won't have the actual tagging profiles in place until we get Datascan fully online."

"'Tagging'?" Matthew suddenly perks, looking uncomfortable.

"Show him," Collins tells Mann. Mann reaches into his coat pocket and comes out with a plastic casing no bigger than a pill and sets it on the table. He looks back at Collins for permission to proceed, gets a nod, and pulls the case apart. A fleck of something that could be metallic or plastic falls out. It's no bigger than a flake of ground pepper.

"Nanotech RFID chip," Mann explains. "We call them 'tags.' You all have them implanted."

Manning visibly squirms in his seat.

"It's okay, gentlemen, they're harmless, and for your own safety," Henderson tries to reassure. "They allow us to track you by satellite anywhere in the world. Every piece of equipment you carry has one as well, just in case something gets taken during an Op."

"We started instituting this program to track our troops over a decade ago," Collins fills in. "The part that was lacking to make the program truly successful was a system capable of adequately tracking all those bodies and all that gear in real-time 24-7."

"And Datascan fulfilled that need," Becker concludes, though not proudly.

"More than that, son," Collins praises. He nods at Mann, and the globe shifts again. There are fewer points of light now—though still countless thousands—but they are clustered into patterns of blues and reds in some of the hottest parts of the world.

"Datascan can track quite a bit more than our own troops," Henderson gloats.

"What the hell...?" Matthew starts getting it. You look across the table at Richards and catch his eyes for an instant. He doesn't seem to be sitting too comfortably either.

"We began tagging civilians in hot zones several years ago," Miller takes it up like it's his responsibility. "We started with the potentials we rounded up in sweeps, then characters who made our travel lists, and those who showed up in intel reports. It doesn't take much to slip a tag in somebody, just brief physical contact, like you'd get during a routine security search. The political upside is that we could start actively releasing suspects en masse from our detention centers—we could simply keep an eye on them from space, watch what they did, who they associated with. Much more practical and effective than trying to detain and interrogate them all. And at that point we were managing a few thousand tagged individuals. But once we saw exactly what Datascan could do for us, we started wholesale tagging, starting with anyone we could encounter in a high-risk zone. We've got several hundred thousand tags in place already."

"Shit..." is about all Manning can come up with. Matthew goes pale, simmering. Becker looks sick—he's actually sweating.

"This is why you've got us out in the middle of nowhere?" Matthew accuses. "To drop your world-class human rights violation on us?"

"Stand down, Major," Richards warns, but without much heart.

"He's right, sir," Manning jumps in. "No way this will fly. They'll nail us up..."

"It's unlikely the tagging program will become a public issue,'" Henderson downplays. "It's highly classified, and the implanted tags are incredibly hard to detect. And right now, all we've got is a way to track an ever-growing number of people. That's all. And you never know: maybe the chips could help us find victims in a natural disaster or something someday. But if something goes down... Datascan can actually keep satellite records and rewind back to an event—like an attack—and see who was there, where they came from, where they went, who they were with. Even if the targets mart themselves, we can still link them back to their cells, their supports, their recruiters..."

"But what about family?" Matthew criticizes. "Or even the off-chance that some unlucky bastard hangs clueless with terrorists?"

"That determination can still be made onsite during operations," Collins defends.

"We crash in and see who shoots back?" Manning jumps back in.

"There's much more available than that," Miller plays in. "Possession of weapons linked to attacks, bomb residue, other forensic evidence. You've all seen how good Datascan is at scene analysis."

"We're not going to simply jump every potential target at will, gentlemen," Henderson sooths. "Nor will we leave it purely up to Datascan to determine who we do act against."

"So—what?—we leave it up to a committee?" Matthew spits back.

Henderson grins again, this time even worse than before.

"Funny you should mention 'Committee,' Major..."

On cue, the hologram dissolves the geographic globe into a familiar graphic: the UN Globe-and-Laurel symbol rotates smoothly in our midst. Then it morphs, just a bit: in a shimmer of light, there's a sword vertically down through the globe. And beneath it appear the letters U-N-A-C-T.

"This isn't something we can do alone, gentlemen," Miller preaches the well-worn line solemnly behind the new logo. "We need global buy-in to pursue terrorists across borders. And participation equals a say in what we do and don't do."

"'Un-act'?" Matthew tries sarcastically to pronounce.

"' _Yoo_ -Nact'," Miller corrects him, a hint of annoyance buried under his practiced diplomacy. "The United Nations Action Committee on Terrorism."

"Which is what?" Matthew pushes.

"Nothing, at this point," Henderson admits. "But that may change, sooner rather than later."

"The UN already has a CTC," Becker weakly protests.

"Which is what?" Henderson mimics Matthew, but maintains the cool smug. "A bunch of nations handling the problem their own way, while their diplomats hold meetings to discuss vague plans that never materialize because there is no real unity? A military force made up of uncoordinated fragments donated by member nations to limply police the world?"

"And you think you can pull them together into something that actually works?" Matthew manages to keep his ridicule within professional tones.

"No," Henderson admits without losing a bit of his smugness. "I think Datascan can."

The chamber is silent for a few seconds, the suits and dress uniforms on one side of the table seemingly waiting to gauge the response of the black fatigues on the other, with the Datascan UNACT graphic floating in the air between us.

"The proposed agreement we're drawing up will be strictly limited to timely retaliations against current and verifiable terrorist activity," Miller puts it in diplo-speak. Then he translates: "They hit us, we hit back. And preferably we hit them before they do too much damage—I want us to be as proactive as we can be without appearing to be on a publicly unacceptable offensive."

"'I do not move until my enemy moves,'" you quote an old Chinese martial adage, "'and then I move first.'"

Miller raises an eyebrow. Henderson smiles. The Datascan graphic does a barely-perceptible shimmer.

"The point is: We don't have to spend days, weeks or even years looking for a target that we ID'ed on flimsy or 'classified' evidence, then either blow them up from a distance or take them out in some unseen raid, leaving the enemy ample fodder to claim we missed or killed innocents. We can track and hit immediately—catch them with the gun still smoking, as it were—and present it with clarity to the media. Clear evidence of the target's activities going in. And no fuck-ups coming out the other side. Just clean and spectacular, gentlemen. They strike at us, we annihilate them before they know what hit them."

"And we'll have the UN mandate to do it," Collins adds in with a taste of ironic satisfaction.

You catch Matthew's eyes—he's probably re-running the conversation we had over beers way-back-when, when Doc warned us this was coming. He just didn't know they'd sell it by secretly marking everyone on the planet so they could be watched by his baby from orbit. And Becker's looking like he really doesn't want to be wearing that nice new uniform anymore.

"So... where does this go from here?" Manning asks cautiously, after a few more seconds of edgy silence.

"We wait," Collins tells us. "No more bullshit wet-ops like Berlin—that's not what we're about. Our next live mission will be a timely response to an active threat."

"We need to, as Captain Ram put it, let the enemy make a move," Henderson reflects. "Then we move immediately, show them what we're about. And I'm betting we won't need to wait very long."

### 4

April 6th.

Scott Becker:

Henderson called it. We didn't have to wait very long at all.

07:29 Baghdad local. A utilities contractor convoy (four trucks, two flatbeds of heavy equipment, a pair of Franks APCs loaded with ex-military security contractors, and intercept drones both point and rear) gets hit by the worst kind of rolling IED: a hijacked bus still full of commuting workers and students that had been loaded with enough explosives to make a crater that almost completely severed the highway. It happened on what should have been a highly patrolled artery between greens, and would have been stopped by a checkpoint except that the Regulars manning it hesitated when it came to pulling the trigger on a busload of hostages. (Odds are the checkpoint crew never even got time to see what the bus was going for before it crashed through and hit its target—the mart driving timed it to catch the convoy within three seconds of running the checkpoint. Even the automated spike-strips shredding all the tires weren't enough to stop it in time).

Preliminary casualty count is what Henderson would call a "headline nuke." And the number's still "preliminary" even after the Iraqi Regulars secure the site, put out the fires, evac the injured and start trying to put the gruesome pieces together.

What is known is that the convoy itself suffered sixteen dead and thirty-three injured (fifteen critically). One of the APCs was crushed like a soda can, and one of the rigs carrying contractors was all but vaporized. The same can be said of the bomb-carrying bus, which leads to the biggest casualty question-mark: it'll be days before we can figure out who was on it—though I'm sure whoever is responsible will help us out by proudly posting the IDs of their own marts on their sites. And then this figure isn't including at least ten civilians (including two women and four children) that got taken out just for being on the same stretch of highway when the convoy got hit.

In any case, it was more than enough to trigger Dee: Dead civilians equals viable targets.

Dee locked onto the incident site thirty-two seconds after it happened, since Collins had authorized it to monitor all Coalition military channels for something just like this. And because of the progress of the tagging program, there was already a satellite stationed over the area. Dee immediately did a "rewind" and scanned the point at which the bus was taken. Tags lit up like a small swarm of fireflies. The happy news: several of them did not get on the bus to go to heaven with their brothers. They went merrily home, probably to watch their little atrocity light up the news.

07:33. I get buzzed awake. I'd only been asleep for a small handful of hours, and that not good sleep—a combination of being more than a bit amped to be playing future soldier, geeking out about being on a carrier off the coast of Israel, and the general discomfort I get trying to settle into new surroundings (I suck enough at hotels—a junior officer's berth even on the best the Navy has to offer makes the Langley Basement luxurious). Plus, we'd only just flown over barely forty-eight hours ago (which means I'm on night three with semi-non-sleep), so I'm also suffering from a trip halfway around the world as well as trying to adjust to being ship-bound.

Dee, having no patience for anyone's cranky human frailties, just starts flashing me what it's culled from ground and sat video: it's a smoking mangle of vehicles and bodies and unrecognizable debris which I quickly realize likely includes parts of bodies. I can't get much clear detail from the blurred POV feed from the Iraqi medics as they try to extract bloodied, stunned, bleeding, screaming humans from the vehicles that did not get so completely obliterated by the blast.

I think Dee culls these close-ups of human suffering on purpose: It wants us to see the blood, the pain. I'm sure it's piping similar images to the rest of the team, stoking that Manticore programming, winding them up for what comes next. Knowing that this is what it's doing—making us crazy with righteous rage—doesn't make it any less effective. Within thirty seconds of this horror show I realize anything resembling fatigue is far gone. My body is already out of the rack and I'm zipping into my boots—I've clicked over to using my interface glasses so I can suit up without taking my eyes off of the feed.

And it gets worse when the locals get a more complete look at the mess in the roadway beyond the smashed and burning convoy: the blast scattered and shattered what looks like almost a dozen other civilian vehicles: work trucks, a taxi, two vans, assorted family sedans.

Since there was no secondary ambush (opening fire on the target after the bomb goes off), civilians are carefully approaching to gawk, to scream, to try to help pry flesh out of mangled metal. (The road is cut through, so they can't get where they were going anyway.) There are already bodies covered with makeshift shrouds of whatever is handy. I get a prolonged shot of a very small body lying next to what appears to be a young woman. They have bloodied jackets over the upper half of their bodies.

The medics and the security forces onsite do what they can, but they're still more focused on the possibility of a secondary ambush, and they don't have resources onsite yet to do any more than usher the survivors they can easily extract farther away from the still-smoldering epicenter. In one soldier's POV, some woman is screaming over the still body of a very young boy whose eyes stare at the sky like a doll's.

07:47. Henderson, slower than Dee (and looking more dragged than I am, possibly because I'm used to seeing him so together—but then, I have to remember it's the middle of the night where he is) calls us all up and tells us to get armored and up to Staging because it's official: We're on. I'm already suited and grabbing my helmet. Dee already has the dropships warming up on the flight deck.

07:49. I thought I made good time, but Burke and Ram beat me to the pad (again). At least I get the satisfaction of beating the rest of Burke's Able Company cherry team by a good thirty seconds, hoping it makes me look something like a real officer to the newbies who don't know me as just Dorky Doc.

I don't get to enjoy it long: Dee's flashing us the mission brief on our visors. It already has a set of profiles to chase based on tag files. It only needs a few pieces of up-close onsite scans to make a confirmation strong enough to justify what we're going to do next, which means we need to make a stop at ground zero first.

The upside is we'll be picking up an old friend.

09:17 local.

"Abbas!"

He's waiting for us onsite, the only one who doesn't look impressed (or just majorly double-take weirded-out) when the black VTOL dropships swoop in like angry wasps and line-drop us in the road: eight suits of bulky black armor, faceless behind the tinting of our visors. We must look like ninjas from outer space.

He's certainly not surprised. I'm sure he got the word from his higher-ups that the grand forefathers of what will one day be called UNACT set us up just offshore to wait for something like this to give us the excuse. But whether he's here by his own choice or because he got orders, I can't be sure.

The hole in the highway looks even bigger in person. We could land in the damn thing. To the Iraqis' credit, the wounded seem to have all been evaced. The dead, however, still remain as I'd last seem them—I guess the Muslim rush to bury the dead can be at least briefly forestalled by a pressing need to piece together a picture of what happened in hopes of finding some clue that might lead to proper revenge. They have no idea that an AI main-framed half-a-world away has already compiled a list of likely suspects by watching it all from space.

They haven't touched all the twisted metal and burned synthetics either, except where they had to pry out the still-living. It's hard to believe anything can do what this bomb did to a bus, several heavy trucks and a pair of armored personnel carriers. I'm wandering through it like it's some overdone sim—I have to touch jagged metal to let me know it's real. And step in blood.

The images of the dead children and the screaming mother come back. My instant reaction is righteous kill-everybody pissed, though in some part of my brain that's still rational I know it means I've just got the Manticore thing (or maybe I'm just human). Then I see one of the other suits kneel over one of the blood puddles and touch it with the fingertips of its black gauntlet, quiet, reverent, while everyone else gets to work. Then I see the big stainless-steel gun strapped to the right thigh of that suit and I realize it's Ram and I can only imagine what's pumping in him right now.

"Major Burke!" Abbas greets back when Burke flips up his visor, and offers a hearty grip. I'd think they'd hug, but it's hard in the bulk of the armor. There's still a full platoon of Iraqis covering the site. And they do stare at us like we're Ninjas From Space. And the whole ninja-astronaut thing gets worse when I jog (as best as the suit will allow) over to the edge of the blast crater to help Wise and Biggs get the necessary scans and trace samples from the wrecks, the road, the hole in the road, the dunes of debris at the edge of the crater. It takes all of three minutes to get enough to "close" our case.

"We brought you your suit," Burke is offering Abbas (who's wearing basic Dragonscale armor over his tan Iraqi uniform). "You wanna ride with us, for old times'?"

"Got it," I have to interrupt when Dee feeds it to me: a rough reconstruct of the device based on what's left, compared to the tag images of the taking of the bus, that allows Dee to run history in reverse and inside-out: who loaded the bomb (and who handled the materials for a trace scan), who went home vs. who stayed on the bus, where they came from (and therefore likely where the bomb did too), and where they went afterwards. (That done, it's already making projections as to how and by whom the contractors' security was breached to allow such an accurate set-up of their convoy...)

Dee sets us up to hard-confirm our targets by loading the material trace scan of the bomb's component chemicals (including whatever unique compound signatures it has), so that our gear will light up anybody who handled the fucking thing the instant we lock them in our sights.

Burke is explaining this to Abbas, trying to sell him coming with us. But Abbas doesn't need to think about it. I can easily see the rage simmer behind his dark eyes. And Burkes' offer makes him immediately very happy in a very scary-bad way. One quick call for release from his superiors (and I expect they intended this all along), and one of the dropships comes low enough for him to jump on the old-fashioned way.

09:26. The sun is beginning to get higher in the sky, and I can feel my suit's AC kick in as I watch the heat begin to send shimmering waves off the clogged highway toward the horizon. Dee lifts the dropships over us, and I feel the pop of my main rappeller ejecting again. A quick but familiar jerk hauls me up into the air by the back of my neck, and I watch the blasted roadway get further away under my boots. And we're out of there.

09:44. We would've been here faster, but Abbas needed to get suited and Captain Ram had to do his now-infamous costume change.

The target is a small stucco-over-foam excuse for a house buried in a row of almost identical houses, entire suburbs slapped together when the Coalition made a half-assed attempt at rebuilding everything they'd plowed under with half-a-decade of shock and awe. Dee reads right through the tar and pressboard roofing and picks out everybody home, then crosses the ones with tags against the Iraqi's housing registry.

"We've got four high-probability: they were together right at the bus-taking and came back here immediately. Dee thinks it's got sat-image good enough to show two of them helping to load the bomb. They'll be glowing with residue if they did. Another three list as low—only one of them is tagged. And three more that read as children..." I read off what Dee is feeding all of us. (My job as support Monitor hasn't changed: put a human voice on the machine, convince everybody that it's doing what it's supposed to, that someone is watching over it to make sure it isn't going all SkyNet. It also means I have to stay up in the dropship when everybody else drops. I have mixed feelings about this. But I don't have time to stew.)

"Looks like they're having a late breakfast," Burke assesses grimly, his tone implying they were too busy to eat earlier because they were hijacking and blowing up a commuter bus.

"Do we want to hit with children home?" Biggs asks.

"We could risk drawing them out," Abbas considers, but it's clear he doesn't like that idea either.

"No," Ram lays it down cold, putting his hat on and keeping it held there with one hand while the other draws his big-ass gun and cocks it. "We go. Fast and overwhelming. Time to prove Dee really won't shoot noncombatants." Then he shoots a pointed look at me and I try to look as confident as I can. He gives me back a nod: good enough. "Worst case: we've got it wrong and have to buy these nice people a new roof. Assuming we're right, I don't want any of them getting off a stray shot or blowing a vest or worse with kids around." The other helmets nod and Dee feeds them the insertion plan. Ram steps into drop position, holding his hat on, his Grayman coat flapping wildly in the wind. I see him grin a grin that looks like a snarl and look at Burke.

"This ain't rock and roll..." he says.

And the Grayman steps out of the aircraft.

The shaped charges hit the roof a split-second before he does. It's just enough to seriously weaken it without actually blowing it down all over everybody inside—it softens the tar and chipboard and framing enough that his armored weight pushes him through when he lands on it. Gray coat gray hat go crashing hard through the ceiling.

There were five adults (conveniently within the recommended allowance for terror-cell size) around the low, long wooden table, which is impressively sturdy and doesn't collapse when the armored Grayman rappels down hard right in the middle of the flatbread.

I can't immediately see their facial expressions through the smoke-and-dust haze and enhancement graphics. Dee gives them all of half-a-second to freak at the sudden, shocking appearance of the grinning and significantly upgraded Grayman on their dining table. Then a half-dozen other blasts herald the dropping of a half-dozen black-armored monsters all throughout the little four-room house. Angry red laser light lances from their ICWs through the plaster dust and smoke that has now pretty completely filled the house with a swirling chaos storm, and red dots lock the highest-probability targets.

Two of the men at the table immediately try blind flight, and run pretty much smack into Abbas, who (despite being out of things for a while) remembers how to use the plate and the bulk of the suit to hit hard and knocks them both flat out like they just got sacked at the Super Bowl. Wise and Burke have one each pinned back against opposite walls—the sight of the faceless black armor and the twin-barreled maw of the ICW dancing laserdots on their chests has them instantly in the apparently familiar hands-behind-the-head-and-kneel pose. That only leaves the one guy who managed to remain in his seat: he's cool, and at least a decade older than the others, his hairline well-receded, his beard frosted gray—he's probably lived through enough of the Bushwar to be numb to whatever chaos gets thrown at him. He just looks up at Ram, right into the muzzle of the big magnum pistol, and puts his glass of tea down on the table pretty much between Ram's boots. Then he sits back and grins defiantly and seems to be coiling for something.

"Don't..." Ram hisses at him, pointing his weapon right between the older man's eyes. Dee blares a translation of the warning through the suit's PA, followed by droning instructions for everyone to stay calm and not to move. The older man blinks dust out of his eyes but just keeps sitting there, glaring at Ram and looking like he's royally pissed at the rude interruption of his meal, never mind the big holes in his roof. He barely darts his eyes left and right, looking like he's working things out and about to jump. Dee sweeps him for trace emissions and his hands almost glow with residue.

One of the younger children is screaming from the kitchen. A woman's voice is protesting with desperate anger.

"Got it!" Biggs announces, coming through from a small side-room. "Bomb-shop under the floor in here!"

One of the men against the wall starts to complain, to protest his innocence, loud and angry. Scans show him clean, but the two that Abbas is making sure stay on the floor glow like the older man. Tags put both of the younger ones as the ones on the bus likely planting of the bomb. Dee starts droning a standard arrest warrant litany. It takes several seconds to get to the bit where they've been fingered by "video surveillance" and trace chemicals on their hands. That's when the old man dives sideways for something—he moves faster than you'd expect—and Ram takes him apart.

The big pistol flames and punches through the man's left thigh mid-lunge, spraying blood all over the tile floor and slamming him down on his face. He manages a scream, though I doubt anyone heard it after the deafening boom of the gun in the small room. He isn't discouraged, though: he tries crawling and dragging like he's got nothing to lose and reaches desperately for a nearby cabinet. He almost gets his fingers on the latch when Ram shatters his forearm with another deafening shot. Then Biggs does the shithead a favor and gets between him and what he was trying to get to, so Ram won't have to shoot him again. The man gets that he's all done, curls himself into a fetal position, and tries to bleed himself into shock with as much defiant dignity as he can manage.

Biggs kicks open the cabinet in question, and reveals a mart-belt and a pair of folding-stock AKs. I can only hope he was going for the guns and not planning to blow up his own kids, but my simmering rage wants it to be the latter.

"Get the children out," Burke orders grimly when Jansen and Roberts herd the two women and three children out of the kitchen where they'd been hanging while their menfolk enjoyed a properly conservative segregated meal. Abbas starts coaching the kids to move along and that it will be okay. Jansen has to physically drag one of the women away from the bleeding head-of-household on the floor. Abbas tells her she needs to be with her children, and she goes, turning just long enough to spit on Jansen's visor.

Iraqi APCs are already unloading troops outside to surround the house, and the women and the kids get quickly shunted into an armored police van to get secured.

"You swept them, right?" Burke questions Jansen (who doesn't seem to be sure what to do about the spit on his visor), suddenly paranoid.

"He _did_ , Major," I soothe him, getting the image of women and children blowing themselves up in a police van for spite somewhat out of his mind.

Meanwhile, Ram has jumped down off the table and is over top of the man he has shot. He sticks the muzzle of the big pistol right up against his temple and uses it to pin the man's head hard to the floor. His other hand pulls off his interface glasses, and he reaches down and shoves them over the older man's eyes.

"Show him," he says to no one in particular, but I monitor the feed and see that Dee is showing the man the onsite video of bombing's immediate aftermath, dead children and all. He gives him a long fifteen seconds or so to take it all in before pulling off the glasses. The man is whimpering now, shaking, eyes shut, going well into shock. No idea if he saw it or not. But Ram drives it home by leaning in real close and whispering in the mass murderer's ear:

" _Ana al-haq._ "

One of the men up against the wall looks like he's getting extra nervous about the army's arrival. When he moves, he's as sudden and fast as the old man was: he jumps Wise (whether he realized or cared about her gender or that she was just close, I can't guess), tries to get a hold of her ICW, tries to use her as a shield. Neither works. Abbas and Burke and Biggs track and spray, and their combined ICWs almost literally sandblast him off of her, shredding his body and throwing what remains against the wall and across the floor. And when it's done, she's just left standing there without so much as a scratch, her armor visibly soaked in his blood, looking numbly down at herself.

"Shit..." I catch her stammer into her helmet. " _Fuck_..."

The other wall-flower is still down on his knees, hands still tight-clasped behind his head, biting his own lip bloody, tears soaking the dust on his face, shivering.

The old man is in what look like convulsions, lying in a small lake of his own blood mixed with what's left of the man the ICWs took off of Wise. Their blood all runs and swirls together in the dust.

I'm thinking I'm glad I stayed in the dropship.

"Everybody out," Burke is ordering. "Get everybody out."

Then I'm not so glad I stayed in the dropship.

SOP: Fly low and fast so no one on the ground gets tempted to take an impulsive shot at you.

Just as Burke's giving the orders to clear out, the alarms go apeshit and Dee is flashing "INCOMING RPG" and takes control of the dropship while the human pilot is still trying to figure out what and which way. The VTOL lurches and turns, and I can feel one of the nose turrets spin and start spraying and something goes boom in midair _way_ too close.

It takes me maybe two seconds to get righted enough after the sudden G-force whacking to get out of my harness. Two more seconds to grab handrail and drag to the port side dropbay door and get a look outside.

The dumbshit who fired the RPG at us is still standing put, staring like a moron up at us from the back porch of his adobe shack. Instinct and heads-up prompts make me lock him in the sighting of my ICW as we pass back—dumbshit looks maybe all of fourteen years old and somebody is screaming on enhancement and translation for him to get back inside. I think it's his goddamn mother. I've got him locked and I can't pull the trigger.

Dee does it for me. The kid trades his empty rocket launcher for a live AK, and the ship's nose guns make him explode.

SOP: Fly low and fast so no one on the ground gets tempted. Problem is, I can't tell if this was pilot fuck-up or Dee wagging the dropship's ass on purpose, daring someone to do the obvious thing, just so it could make a point. Then I remember I programmed it to do shit just like that, back when I was sitting in a VR lab feeling like I was gonna save the world.

There's a woman in my sights now. She's kneeling and screaming over a pile of meat in the dirt. She turns her face up and locks her eyes on me, her kid all over her hands. Then Dee buzzes us out of there.

10:18. The dropships circle back to target, dropping low over the now roofless target house. Eight rappellers reconnect and pull seven black armor suits and one guy in a gray hat and overcoat back up into the sky. The Iraqi uniforms and the locals in the street just sort of stare dumbly up at the absurd sight of it. But the message has been sent, and headlines will follow—headlines that will go far to reverse the impact of what the terrorists did on that highway: Yes, they managed their atrocity. But we had them tracked down and cleaned up in less than an hour and a half.

I expect they stare until the dropships have flown off out of sight, vanishing into the clear midday sky as the day only gets hotter.

Welcome to the New World Order.

I'm still shaking...

### 5

June 21st.

Lawrence Henderson:

"I am not comfortable with this at all."

I'm thinking that's what's going to wind up engraved on Colonel Richard's tombstone.

"What part?" I have to ask. It's just baiting, He'll say "the whole thing" or some variant of it.

His face on the screen looks more than usually indignant. But then I expected he'd demand this conference as soon as he got the news.

"I had enough issue with the _first_ sham commission you gave him."

No complaints at all during the last six livefires: Six fast retaliatory strikes on assorted bombers and hit-and-run attackers in four different Coalition or allied ("allied", not occupied) territories—thirteen confirmed-target terminations, fifteen captures, zero team casualties, zero collateral casualties. He even kept his opinions to himself despite four very theatrical and arguably gratuitous appearances by the now-legendary Grayman (who is quickly becoming the iconic herald of the Tactical fury of the SENTAR Corporation—they should have him do the commercials in costume).

But pin a small piece of brass on an outstanding player's uniform and send him out in public, and you get a righteous fit.

"The man is an experiment, Colonel," Collins tries to soothe it, "and, in many ways, a necessary one. Now even I still don't sit here entirely confident that this new training program can match the same quality as the tried-and-true methods, but so far I haven't seen anything negative in the results, especially with Major Ram—whom I fully admit I was the least confident about going into this thing. But half-a-dozen flawless missions later, I consider him a definite asset."

"I wouldn't make quite that same assessment, General," Richards takes his opportunity to dump. "He hesitated in Berlin. And he pushed it in Baghdad. I'm not comfortable with his stability."

Collins hesitates, so I go ahead and drop it on him.

"He was _supposed_ to hesitate in Berlin."

He raises his eyebrows at me like he does.

"You still see Ram as what he was when you collected him," I lay it out. "But

if he was the same man, he would have made a meat puppet out of Hatif. Imagine what he would have done in Baghdad: I have to say I'm surprised he didn't make that old man eat that vest."

"So you're telling me Datascan is picking missions specifically for Ram?" He looks at us like we're insane.

"You're not the only one with ongoing misgivings about Ram," I allow. "Datascan is aware of that. The missions also serve as a continuation of the evaluations we put him through in VR—it will be the same for all of our candidates: we'll need to see how they respond in live ops. And Ram is doing just fine."

Richards does his usual and looks like he's trying to get a grip on reality and not choke on it.

"You made him a _captain_ after only a month of so-called training," Richards grumbles, laying it out on the table. "Now _this_. _And_ you're actually going to send him out in the real world with those clusters, like they mean something. _And_ he's going to be our forward-face..."

"The rank is commensurate with the increase in responsibility, Colonel," Collins defends. "And frankly, I think he's earned it. We've seen him under fire, and we've seen him as a leader, and we've seen his ability at public speaking—the trainings he's created and run for our recruits are among the best I've ever seen. Yes: He's got an attitude, but he seems to keep it in line—a damn sight better than some of your other divas."

Richards seems to tighten up even more at the reminder that the likes of Major Burke are actually _his_ men.

"The bottom line remains," I refocus on the practical. "We're in need of a thousand dedicated bodies—not including supports—before we can start proposed operations. We have less than ten percent of that, assuming none of the current Tactical candidates wash out or drop out. We can't rely on what's being thrown our way. We have to get actively recruiting, which means we need someone who can grab hold of a crowd and sell this to the skeptical. Ram is far-and-away your best choice."

"The Security Council is already digesting our proposal," Miller pushes. "We need to impress them that this is the right thing to do, but we also need to impress them that we can do this."

"And if the UN won't buy it?" Richards confronts.

"Then assets are assets," I go with worst-case like it's nothing to worry about. "The usable candidates get farmed to existing units, where they'll share their experiences, prove their training. Our corporate backers will change their marketing strategies, re-task their products to suit more conventional forces, sell the potential in the field over time. It's just a slower path up the same mountain. Another few years and we'll be back here, even stronger."

"Colonel," Miller jumps in to play diplomat, "you _are_ commanding officer of record for this phase of the project. Given that position, we didn't feel it appropriate to send you out stumping the bases. Plus, we need it to be an experienced Line Tactical, one who's ground through the training and made it work in live ops, _and_ has the personality to sell it. Given your limited options, you'd rather we send Major Burke? Or Major Manning?"

That hurt. But he knows that's the way it is.

"We can't spare Burke or Manning right now," Collins gives him a way out. "We need them for ops, and we need them at Langley to get their growing Companies in line." And then, apparently feeling like he needs to do some soothing: "I know you feel like we've stuck you with an unmanageable gang of hotdogs, Tom. But they've done well at this. Hell, I wasn't sure Burke was salvageable, but now he's actually acting like a CO. Frankly, I'm impressed with this whole unit. You should be, too."

Richards stares for a moment like he's been given a terminal diagnosis, then gives in with a slight nod. It looks like it hurts him to do so.

"Yes, General."

### 6

July 29th.

Mike Ram:

Fourth time you've put on this show this week. They still haven't told you just what your numbers look like from the last three.

Fort Bragg.

09:00 and the sun is already turning the black synthetic shell of your armor hot to the touch. The DI's don't complain about that, though—they're too pride-hurt and pissed, eager to kick your "Robocop ass" for what you so easily do to them. They bleed their rage at you so blatantly that it takes everything you can manage not to drink it in, feed off it, and then use it to actually hurt them.

Just keep reminding yourself: They're on _your_ side.

" _Motherfuck_...!!" one of the beefier ones spits out somewhere between you tangling up his arms and when he lands on his ass on the hard earth of the exercise field. You spin into the next one as he tries to blindside you and the mass of your armor hits him like a truck.

And the boots are cheering at the expense of the sergeants that have been giving them structured hell for the last six weeks.

"As you can see," you're saying without breathing hard at all yet, "mobility in the suit is not much of an issue. In fact, it can provide a number of advantages up-close-and-personal. Not that there aren't potential vulnerabilities..."

You stand still and spread out your arms, egging two of them to rush in and try to get a hold of you. You give them a full second to manage their best handholds before you flow into a series of follow-and-coil dissolves that make it look (and probably feel) like your body just turned into some kind of armored serpent. You run them together and get loose enough to throw a number of good, hard shots that stop just a fraction short of target and then back up when they realize just how broken they would have been and let go. Then you walk over to the heavy tackling dummy they've got for training.

"You really don't want me to actually hit you wearing this," you tell them all, and then proceed to vent some of the rage you've absorbed. The padded steel unit rattles and jumps visibly, more impressive because it looks like you're not even trying.

"And if all else fails..." You turn on them and pop the blades out of your wrists. Then you flash a grin at the DIs (who are gathering their pride and dusting it off) and prompt them to chill out and salute you.

"Gentlemen, my thanks to you for enduring that abuse for what's hopefully a cause worth a few bruises."

"Pleasure, sir..." one of them manages to pant, getting his wind back. "Not every day we get a freeshot at kicking an officer's ass, sir."

"No damage done, Sergeant Sanchez," you give him back, remembering what professionalism he maintained despite the cool glee you took in humiliating him. "Consider a transfer. I'll give you a rematch in suit of your own. And by the way: it's air-conditioned."

The boots—who've been sitting in the sun for half-an-hour now—mutter and laugh and shake their heads, at least until their DI's glare and get them quiet and focused again.

"Yes, sir," Sanchez tells you. "I'd like that, sir."

That's one.

You get lots of eyes on you as you get the official tour of the base. The local brass tolerates you with reasonable diplomacy, but there's definite skepticism (beyond the fundamental bizarreness of the armor). Word about this new mystery DARPA/SOF project has been circulating since the last half-dozen live counterstrikes—they were, after all, at least partially calculated to grab attention (hence the insistence that you show up as the upgraded Grayman in four of them that they knew would leave assorted witnesses: you've become somewhat of an icon in their New World Order).

But it's far from positive: there's definite bitterness in the off-the-record chatter. The line soldiers are bent that the technology exists and isn't available for the grunt that actually puts his ass on the line daily. We look to them like some sort of publicity performance team that comes in and runs down the bad guys for show. So you keep telling them that the gear—or some evolution of it—will be disseminated as soon as its field value is proven, but they've heard bullshit like that before. (Some of them remember the days when you had to buy your own body armor on the Net because that was the only way you'd get any.)

That leaves you to offer the next-best: if you want the gear now, join up—we still have the better part of a thousand suits to fill.

But the word is out on that, too: once this show-pony force gets put together, it's not going to be US Military—it's getting handed to the UN (assuming they want it).

"I really can't comment on that, gentlemen..."

Things get uncomfortable after lunch.

You parade out in front of another company, give them your rundown of the project (the suit, the gear, the AI...), show off the ICW against a handful of dummy mortars and RPGs, then back to the exercise grounds for a fresh smackdown with some fresh DIs.

Blame it on the heat: despite the AC in the suit, you spend a lot of time with the helmet off and the sun baking down on your head. And somewhere in there, you catch her looking at you.

It's a coed company, with one all-female platoon, but you can't help but keep picking her out of the crowd, locking on her: hard-slim, tan, dark hair, deep eyes that always seem to be looking into yours when you look her way. She doesn't take her eyes off of you all afternoon. Not like the other boots—she's different. More there. More herself—not fading into the programmed mob of Soldier-Americana. She doesn't fit.

You shake it off and do your thing with the DIs.

But stupid: you forgot about the gun.

You'd been showing off at the range: ran their kill-house with the ICW, then showed them you could do it almost as well—but more stylishly—with your laser-sighted automag. But you left it loaded-and-locked in your thigh-rig when you went wrestling.

Blame it on the heat or the coed audience: one of the DIs loses it just a little worse than normal and it gets to you. _He_ gets to you: big bully beefcake who looks like he gets off on this job because he likes to intimidate. It gets just a little too good for you slamming him down. You have to dial it back. You try to be polite, play nice, but it only makes him worse. On one pass he breaks the rules and grabs for the gun and he gets it and he's so sadistically gleeful about it as he shoves the barrel into your chest and hisses "You're _dead_ , Major..." and you just need to show him.

You lock his eyes and you barely keep the animal-snarl in and you take his hands and lock them to the gun and you pull the trigger for him before he can believe it.

Ow. Oh...

It's your own fault—you tell yourself that as the shell blows between the two of you and you feel like someone just hit you in the sternum hard with a large hammer. The shock alone feels like your teeth are coming loose and you don't even realize you're flying back until the back of your head bounces off the hard earth, but by then it's all done and you don't even care that you've got the wind knocked out of you as your rage kicks and scissors your heavy armored legs to generate the momentum to get you back up on your feet and dumbass bullyboy is just looking at you with his stupid mouth open and the gun _your_ gun still in his hands.

Dial back. _Dial back_.

You catch hold of yourself just as you snap the gun out of his hands so hard you hope it gave him whiplash. Then you make yourself step away, step away, breathe. Decock the gun. Smile.

Nothing happened. It's all just part of the show.

But you can't say that. You can't say anything. You're too busy swallowing down the rage program.

Like it was nothing, you spin the gun casually, cool, and drop it back in your rig.

Dumbass is trying to find the words to apologize but he's still in shock—you take some satisfaction in scaring the shit out of him, showing him how far you're willing to go—and you snap off a salute and turn on your heel before he can even move to return it and you tell them "That will be enough for today..." and you get the hell out of there.

But she catches your eyes again, catches what's in them.

It scares her. You see that. But you also see it—or something very much like it—held back and waiting deep in her own eyes.

You wonder what her name is.

### 7

October 12th.

Thomas Richards:

They move me into my new office. Into the Pentagon and out of Langley. I'm glad enough to see the latter behind me, but despite the E-Ring view and the executive furnishings (or because of them), I find myself wary of the evolution.

"At least you get a view, Colonel," Burke ribbed in passing when he heard about it. He knows the glorified bunker they're digging in Michigan is going to be even more tomblike than the Langley "basement" we've all spent the better part of two years living in. But the obvious implication is: I won't be at Michigan Command. I'll be here. Pressing flesh. Playing with the politicians and the "real" military brass.

"E-Ring... That's pretty exclusive real estate," Burke actually sounded impressed, however suspiciously. "The Sec-Def must have pulled strings."

They gave me a staff—a real staff, not just the Corporate TGs and the Datascan Diva-Squad. Enough to keep me in the loop and create my own world, a thin wedge carved out of a dozen assorted offices and analyst pits, two sections over from JSOC—close enough for them to wonder what we're up to and far enough away to keep them out of my hair.

Best part: No Burke. No Becker. And especially no Ram.

In my physical absence, Burke got pulled upwards: He's overseeing all five of current recruit companies—the equivalent of a battalion once we get enough boots to fill all the teams—with an additional hundred-and-sixty support staff. I hope the responsibilities grow him up a bit, or at least teach him to temper his attitude.

Manning and Powell are now his sub-commanders, each managing a dozen ready teams. According to the long-view, Burke's original Alpha Company will become its own battalion at Michigan Command, while Manning and Powell each get assigned a coastline. This means I'll see Manning the most—his Company will be stuck under Langley until they get the funding to build a dedicated "East Coast Command" base (they've already surveyed a chunk of unused wilderness inside Fort Dix for it). I can already see him calming down, settling under the weight of what he's bought into. He'll be a good CO.

Powell's Charlie Company is already setting up camp on San Clemente Island, sharing space with the Navy gunnery range and the SEALs, a deal probably negotiated in hope of selling SENTAR gear to the real special operators—this is also probably why they gave that area to Powell, since he's got the most "respectable" record of the ex-SOF we recruited (though why he went for the transfer out of a promising career—and whatever the pervasive tension is between him and Burke whenever they share air—may tell a different story).

Ram is still out recruiting, hopping from base to base, showing off the toys, doing his little speeches. And Collins was right: he is good at it. By the time the next batch of candidates finishes VR immersion, we'll be at 70% initial troop strength. They're lining up for him—I can only hope he appreciates what he inspires enough to live up to it himself.

"Colonel Richards?" a soothing feminine voice chirps in as my desk screen goes live. The face is tanned, with deep, dark eyes and lean, strong features that hint at either Hispanic or Native American bloodlines. She keeps her straight dark brown hair pulled professionally back. Her uniform is sharp.

"Yes, Lieutenant?" Ava. Lisa Ava. At least that's the name she wound up with after they secured her, after boot at Bragg and then straight to Langley for training.

"Incoming, sir. It's General Sharavi."

So much nicer than Datasan's vox.

"Thank you, Lieutenant."

She's sharp, professional, and probably smarter than I am (at least judging from her scores). And tough enough to impress Burke on the Livefire course. But she took impressively to the tech and was given a mixed team of military and corporate TGs to set up what Collins named "Net-Com": our own analyst-interface division to keep watch over what Datascan sifts from the world outside, give us the Big Picture and get it disseminated. She can sit down and have a PhD conversation with Becker, but she stays human, doesn't get wrapped in it. So while Becker is geeking as Interface Operations Chief, feeding leet-speak to the grunts, Ava will keep the rest of us apprised of what's happening in the real world, keeping score and advising next-moves on what Lawrence calls his "Ratings War". She'll make a good CO herself, probably sooner than later. (But until the Michigan base is operational, she's assigned here, to me.)

Of course, she's one of Ram's finds, rubbing my nose in the fact that he doesn't just collect hotdogs and divas. And there's a potential Uniform Code issue: It's no secret how she looks at him when they share space. Best to keep those two apart, or at least not in the same command chain.

"Thomas."

"Jacob." Ava's face melts into Sharavi's on my desktop—I'd almost think Datascan appreciates how disturbing the morphing effect is.

"Congratulations. I hear you have an office with a view."

"Yes. And you can't imagine how much I appreciate it."

"And it's a real office," he grins. "Speaking of which, expect a package later. That way your security won't think there's something other than eighteen-year-old single malt in the bottle and confiscate it for 'testing.'"

"Thank you, Jacob. Always appreciated. Speaking of: will you be coming local anytime to share it with me?"

He thinks about it for a moment, then shakes his head, lets me see that he has heavier things on his mind.

"Things are too busy here, setting up a proper forward base for Captain Ibrahim and his teams."

"I hear he has six through training and a dozen more looking good in the pipe."

"Not nearly enough," Jacob complains with his accustomed acceptance. "But it can't appear that we are getting any special dispensations. Agendas will be enough in question over the next several months. Speaking of: I hear you will be standing up in front of the Security Council next week to help sell the UNACT proposal."

"Thank you for reminding me," I bite back at him.

"Not looking forward to it?" he understates.

"Necessary evil. I'll need that Scotch afterwards."

"You'll do fine, Thomas. What is it they say? 'The product sells itself.'"

"That's what they say."

He hesitates a moment. He knows what he's going to say next won't be well received.

"I hear your Grayman will be standing up with you."

He makes it sound like a wedding. I take an equal amount of time making my answer as professional as I can.

"By Secretary Miller's own request: They think it will go over better if the Council gets to meet one of their potential new super-warriors."

"Major Ram will do fine, Thomas."

"He's got his script," I allow, "and he does speak well. And no, he won't be wearing the damn outfit you bought him."

"Still haven't forgiven me for that, have you?" he jokes.

I don't have anything to say on the subject that I'd put online. Besides, he knows how I feel about Ram, about this whole game they seem to have built around him.

He goes serious, fatherly in the way that he gets. "World the way it is, Thomas, there's nothing wrong with making a hero."

"Depends on what you make him out of." I say it before I have time to think twice. Still, he just smiles like an old friend.

"Enjoy the moment, Thomas."

### 8

October 16th.

Mike Ram:

"The media itself has always been the most devastating weapon of the true terrorist. With this tool, the violence done to a relative few impacts the entire world. What would otherwise be a random and fanatic act of mass-murder paralyzes entire societies, cripples international economies. This is because the media, by its very nature, readily and repeatedly brings the images of such violence to everyone, making _everyone_ victim to it. They do it because it's news, but more so because it brings _ratings_."

No one is really listening to you—they're tolerating you. You aren't saying anything they haven't heard from countless others for a good fifty years—no one listened to those guys either.

"For almost half-a-century now, the 'terrorists' have publicly and repeatedly proven that there is _no_ completely effective defense. So if we are really going to fight the terrorist, then we must be sure to do it in their own arena, using their own most effective weapon. We must fully invite the media to document our victories, to share intimately in our actions. Then those actions will become the tangible justice of the terrorized world. Through us, the vulnerable public will feel that they can really fight back. Through us, they will no longer be terrorized. And through us, terrorist and innocent victim alike will come to know what the New World Order is really going to be."

Pause. It's triggering you—you can feel it rise in your blood. All you have to do is start thinking about atrocity and the programming kicks in. You were nearly raving. In front of the Security Council, no less.

Breathe. Walk—you know it's annoying but it helps, pacing while you talk (one of your students once told you it reminded them of watching a tiger in a cage). It gets their attention: they're used to suits who sit behind podiums. You take the floor. You put on a show.

"Imagine: For every bombing or shooting or contamination or infection they attempt, we perform our own sensational act. And it won't be the sterile, impersonal air strikes that have proven so disappointing and politically costly. And it won't be the sloppy, expensive occupations that destroy countries, leave tens of thousands dead, _and_ leave hundreds of thousands more standing as easy targets to an opportunistic few. Instead, we will confront the terrorist face-to-face, cameras rolling, and give the viewing public the personal justice they so desperately crave, _without_ the risk of tragic collateral damage. No dead innocents and destroyed neighborhoods. No painfully long lists of casualties. Nothing to feed the naysayer. Only surgical justice..."

Above you on the big theater-screen they are running video samples from some of your more colorful operations. You notice that they do not delineate between the games and the live missions (the ones that really kill people).

You look up into the auditorium beyond the semicircle that seats the Security Council proper. Henderson is up there, trying not to look too pleased with himself (he wrote your script, after all). And Collins and Miller, looking as cozy as usual. Scattered throughout the audience are other familiar faces—members of the Council's Military Staff Committee, representing their home nations: Kudziyev, Chen, Hussein, Sakata, Frasier, Sharavi... Meanwhile, Secretary of State Franks is in his usual seat on the Council, three seats left of the chair, trying to look like this is not exclusively his nation's proposal.

Off to your right, at the presenters' table, are Becker and Richards, sweating under the lights dead-center of the raised ring of council members. Becker, up next to explain the wonders of Datascan and AI-driven interface combat, looks pale. They put him in a suit instead of a uniform, preferring to present his PhD identity over his newer and less well-fitting soldier one. You were expecting Dr. Mann to present separately for SENTAR, but he seems to have gotten out of it at the last minute, deferring to a much more attractive associate: the young, girl-next-door-looking Dr. Parry. (The absence of any actual corporate types at the table is likely calculated to distract from the trillions they're likely to reap in profits should we sell this for them.)

Richards just sits politely in his dress blacks and endures. He gave his speech already. It really wasn't all that much different than yours—it's just that with yours, they get the exciting action-packed video montage to distract them.

And next to Richards: Lisa... _Lieutenant_ Ava. You keep catching her eyes on you when you look, and she has to remind herself to stay professional, especially in the middle of the Security Council. You smile at her anyway.

The montage ends. The screen melts to blue, and the proposed UNACT emblem takes form. There's a rumbling in the crescent of Council seats. It must be the whole "sword stuck through the world" image, the glaring contrast to their signature peace laurel. You have one more line to deliver. It's just that it's not quite time yet.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Council," you go off script. Richards—out of the corner of your eye—goes tense. "I came here to read a script, to sell you something: a potential future. Or: a potential _for_ the future."

Looking up, you see Henderson grin.

"The fact is, this war has been an embarrassment since it was given a name after 9-11. That, frankly, is how those you call 'terrorist' beat you. You can't fight them without risking either looking helplessly ineffective or tyrannically imperial. They know that. They exploit that every day. I am just a soldier in this war. But that means I am the instrument of either your impotence or your atrocity. But what the UNACT Proposal is offering you—offering _all_ of you—is the opportunity to fight this war with a measure of success that you have only been able to imagine. All we are asking for is your agreement—and it is yours to give—to show you what is now possible. And what is possible? Imagine if you could have made Al Qaeda disappear—to the last man—almost overnight. To cull your enemy as fast as they can recruit, no matter how well they can hide among us. I believe we can do that now."

Richards is almost as pale as Becker. But the Delegates are listening. They don't give you any sense of agreement, but they _are_ listening.

"But I can't and won't tell you that this is the _right_ thing to do. I am just a soldier in this war. I am offering you my service. I will not tell you that you are wrong or evil to refuse it. This will be an act of violence on an unparalleled scale. Not genocide, but _ideocide_ , because it will target those who would violently oppose the ideals that you universally espouse. It will be brutal, but we will do our best to ensure that it is clean. That only combatants are targeted. That no other lives are put on the line except those of my fellows—volunteers and professionals all—and that they will be extraordinarily well protected and supported. I hand you a weapon, nothing more, and tell you that it may give you the upper hand in this war that you fight. It is your choice to use it or decline."

The chamber is absolutely silent. Richards looks numb. Becker is almost dumbstruck—either overwhelmed by your performance or in terror of having to follow it. Miller is trying not to show anything at all. Henderson is still grinning. Lisa is... well...

You gather yourself, breathe, and deliver your last line:

"This is a new kind of war we are in, ladies and gentlemen of the Council: It is a war for public approval, a war of image more than tactical victories, a war to win—and hold—the popular media, to command the headlines. To borrow a term from that media: It is a Ratings War.

"Thank you for your time and consideration."

The chairman thanks you and you sit back down at the presenter's table with minimal fanfare. The chamber is silent except for the whispers and throat-clearing in the delegate seats. They digest for a few minutes, organize themselves, and then call upon Doc to stand and do his bit. He looks at you and lets his eyes go big to let you know how nervous he is, then he gets himself together. It seems to take him awhile to remember how to talk.

You reach for the water pitcher. Lisa beats you to it and pours you a glass. She can see the tremor in your hand. Shaking. You are shaking. You hate this part: The come-down.

On cue, Matthew (who had to watch from Langley since he was pointedly not invited) chimes in on your link:

"Congratulations: Captain Kirk couldn't have done a better job."

### 9

October 18th.

Antonin Nikolai Zarovich:

"...I can't and won't tell you that this is the right thing to do. I am just a soldier in this war. I am offering you my service..."

He is beautiful. Fascinating. Magical.

"...I hand you a weapon, nothing more, and tell you that it may give you the upper hand in this war that you fight. It is your choice to use it or decline..."

I cannot take my eyes off of him. I watch the video—which must have been discreetly pirated, because the session was supposed to have been securely closed—and drag the time-slide back and forth over the choicest sound-bites.

"...This will be an act of violence on an unparalleled scale. Not genocide, but _ideocide_..."

My hands are trembling—have been trembling since the first playing. I have to breathe, have to sort out what it is I am feeling.

There is dread. Dread at the possibilities, if this intelligence is even remotely accurate. (It may be propaganda, generated from either side—a manipulative hoax).

I freeze the video on the notebook screen. I see a strong handsome face with a long scar, a face with deep passions.

"Where did you say you acquired this?"

"A contact in Belgium," Heinrich tells me again. "He's a new player. Gunter Gerhardt. Calls himself a Neo-Wahabi."

Yes. Pretty young German hothead. Butch haircut and engineered muscles—he could make a good living in the Union sex industry. A child full of bravado. Another bully with a bloodlust to feed, gathering a small army, making his name by murdering helpless tourists.

"I have heard his name. And where do you suppose he got this?"

"Sympathizers within the Council. Staff. Aides. Interns." Heinrich seems less than concerned, both with the source and the content. "The Coalition has created so many adversaries... It could have been anyone. If it is authentic, I would expect there would be many who have been disturbed enough by it to break security."

"But you do not believe this is authentic?"

He shrugs. Goes to the bar. Mixes himself another vodka martini.

"Something like this could stir dissent, if it was even remotely credible," he assesses, then shakes his drink. "It might stimulate fresh recruitment. Instigate actions against UN targets."

I let him enjoy his drink while it is freshly chilled. I stare at the face on the screen.

"Do we know _him_?" I ask, gesturing to the pretty scarred face.

"Just what it says he is in the video: Michael Ram. Army Major. Special Forces. Certainly not his real name." Heinrich smiles a bit at that. "But the scar and the distinctive armor—that _has_ been seen. The mysterious 'Grayman.' The Coalition's new 'black' strike teams."

"Exactly what is described in this video," I focus him.

"Possibly. But I doubt they can do what they say they can."

He looks up and catches the look in my eye. It sobers him appropriately.

"Don't you think we had better find out?"

He thinks about it. Appears uncomfortable.

"We would have to get online," he considers nervously. "I doubt human intelligence would serve. We would need to hack..."

"Carefully," I agree with him. "And be ready to burn the bridges."

"Yes, Warlord." He finishes his drink and leaves quickly.

I look out the window. From the hotel, the spire of the Eiffel Tower is almost visible in the haze over the gray cityscape. I remind myself: it looks so much prettier at night, all lit up.

I will miss Paris.

I sit down and run the video again.

### 10

October 19th.

Scott Becker:

"Lieutenant Becker...?"

It feels... odd, I guess. He's gotten to be so familiar, so regular, considering... And so comfortable—with my rank, especially, like it makes perfect sense to him. But then, considering...

"Major Ram," I greet him back, standing quickly to give him the requisite salute, which he returns with just enough grin to acknowledge the bullshit.

"You wanted to see me?"

In person. And he came, right after running cherry Teams Ninety-Two through Ninety-Five through an Armored Close-Quarters Combat class. He's still wearing the lower half of his suit, T-shirt above—it shows off that he just led two-dozen gung-ho techno-warriors through a three-hour smackdown session and he isn't even sweating.

"Yes sir. Something I thought you should see."

"In person?"

"Yes sir."

But he slides in like he gets it perfectly. He seals the prototype Mission Tactical Monitor chamber behind him, and I key up Dee's analysis-stream and walk him through it.

"You've apparently got a new fan," I tell him. "A search-worm. Showed up in the Net this morning. Not the usual hacker jack—this one has intel signatures."

"Ours?" he asks the obvious, figuring the competing agencies would be wanting to get the skin on what we're up to down here.

"No. Reads like a hybrid between Russian Black and Sino-Korean industrial crack. And yes, it's beyond what the known Rads could engineer. Very smart, very subtle. Lots of red-herrings and tracebreakers. _I'm_ impressed—if that gives you any idea."

"Datascan can't break it?" he asks with his classic blunted incredulity.

"It could do better if we were fully up. As is, our access is still limited to the public nets and select Coalition agencies. This is coming from something off-offshore. Looks like a Korean uplink, but that's probably several steps in already. I expect it was planted remotely: hit and run. No link home. They'd have it set to pick up later..."

"After it was done collecting whatever it was after," he follows. "So what's it looking for?"

"Us," I hit him with it. "And you. Specifically."

He stews for a few seconds, then takes the next step. "Context?"

"That's the twisty part: keywords reference our little show at the UN last week, including the product-demo we showed them. Too much detail not to be privy. And I'm sorry, but I really _can't_ tell you who."

"No match in Datascan's profiles?"

"Dee's database is current on terrorist-types, sir. Like I said: this is some whole other level."

"But not national?"

"That's the other twisty part: All the big and medium players are in. They know about us. They know you. And if they're not talking between their own agencies, the first step they'd take is to hack each other. No, this is somebody on the outside."

"Corporate?"

"I can see a corporate hack going after the intellectual property," I try. "But this worm is asking about you."

He sits down in the ops-officer's station. Digests it.

"I'm assuming it can't get into Datascan."

"Yes sir—I mean: _No_ sir. It's smart, but we've got all dedicated one-way barriers at this point. Datascan can get out into the nets, but nothing can get in here, except by dedicated links. But that also keeps me from getting my hands on the thing to splice a good tracker into it."

"Who else knows about this?" he wants to know.

"Richards and Henderson. And I figure Henderson's tuned in the higher-ups."

"They worried?"

"The Colonel seemed a bit bent about the leak, but he seemed to take it as SOP. Henderson... Well, I can never really tell with him."

I hear his link chirp, and the screens shift as Dee forwards the incoming down here.

"Major Ram?" It's the new-hotness that Richards gleeped as soon as she came out of livefire training. Ava. Still playing his personal assistant until we get NetCom online.

"Yes, Lieutenant?" He gives her the by-the-book, but the tone is nothing like what he uses on me—or anybody else for that matter. And pretty much simultaneously they both catch the fact that I'm watching them give each other _that_ look and snap to.

"Colonel Richards, sir. He's going to want to speak with you, too, Lieutenant Becker."

He thanks her as coolly as I figure he can, and she flips into Richards—though her face remains active on a side-window. Her boss wants her in on this.

"We have a situation of sorts, Major Ram," Richards gets right into it, looking quite a bit more frazzled than he was just a few hours ago when the worm came up.

"Lieutenant Becker was just briefing me."

"No, Major," he corrects sharply. Then he keys over to Ava. "Lieutenant..."

"We just started getting flashes of this on the Rad-sites," she explains, and when I see what it is I go numb and sick because I got so sucked into geeking over the worm that I was ignoring the popular underground. But that's Ava's game: keeping those super-model eyes of hers on what goes on in the big world.

"Bootlegs of our UN presentation," Richards grumbles. "Cheap and choppy, but spreading. As are the blogs. It'll be all over the public sites in an hour. INN got wind of it already."

"What's the official response?" Ram wants to know, all business.

"Secretary Miller is rolling with it. I expect he's with the President and the Secretary of State as we speak, spinning. General Collins is shut in with the Chiefs. Our 'partners' are probably sweating."

"We're blown," Ram concludes with that spooky calm he slides into. "Early."

"By at least six months," Richards complains. "At least we didn't give them a detailed picture. Still, it's enough."

"The lean is that the UN is about to be bushed," Ava breaks it down. "The early taglines are edgy: 'Coalition Conspiracy to Martialize UN.' 'Military Contractors seek to profiteer from New Imperialism.' 'New US-Sponsored Xenocide Initiative against Muslim Nations.' 'High-Tech Bushwar Death Squads proposed before Security Council.' 'New Military Intelligence AI Threat to Civil Liberties Worldwide.' The Council membership is already feeling it. They'll need to go above board, and do it fast, or they'll all look Evil Empire."

"That means we need to be shining," Richards focuses. "Yesterday."

"Is anyone backing out?" Ram asks the pressing question.

"I'm about to wade in and find out," Richards tells him. "Only reason I'm stopping to tell you first is that your faces—and mine—are all over this thing. Welcome to celebrity."

Ram takes a long, deep breath. I try to match it, because I need to come down. I feel so shaky I'm vibrating in my chair, and I'm probably pale as a corpse.

"Where do you need us?" Ram offers quickly. Richards seems to soften a bit at the offer, which is a bit of a shock in itself—I'd have sworn he'd rather just bury us in plausible deniability.

"Stay put for now. I'll try and earn my keep from this end. Let Miller call the next move."

"Good luck, Colonel," Ram offers him. Richards looks like he's not sure how to respond. So he just nods and unplugs.

"Keep us looped?" Ram asks Ava.

"Absolutely, Major," she manages a smile. "Looks like I'm working a late one..."

He gives her back a flash of a grin and she logs out.

He doesn't say anything for quite a while, just sits there watching the feed Ava keyed roll. They've got crappy video of him doing his—as Burke nailed it—Captain Kirk Speech. And Richards. And me.

Fuck.

### 11

October 20th.

Antonin Zarovich:

Alexi catches me just as I'm shutting my notebook, quick so no one else sees what I've just been fed. Good and faithful servant (no—he's so much more than that, it dishonors him to even think of him so), he brings me a fresh drink and sits quietly until I'm ready to put words to what I'm thinking.

It's hard. It's just too big.

I'm glad Alexi's here. The way he looks at me, the way he carries himself... His absolute confidence in me radiates and feeds me, reminds me of what I am.

"We... We have been presented with a... a most interesting proposal, old friend."

Breathe. I have to breathe. I have to take it in.

"Who is the client?" he asks me for the one thing I dare not tell him. Thankfully, Heinrich picks that moment to return from arranging our relocation.

"We'll be ready to move within the hour, Warlord."

"Time to enjoy a sunset," I tell him, looking over my closed notebook and out across the cityscape, dark silhouettes against a deep orange and violet sky. "And a drink."

Heinrich takes my suggestion to heart and heads for his precious martini shaker. He only gets to the heart of the matter as a point of idle conversation:

"You were saying to Number Six as I came in: We have been approached?"

"On quite an impressive scale," I downplay. "The world is about to become a very interesting place."

"And?" he presses like he's barely interested. "What are they paying us for?"

"Just a small thing, to start," I tell him. "Sending a message of sorts."

"Someone would like to reply to the UN proposal?" he guesses. I nod, still at a loss for words.

He shakes and pours his drink with his usually fetishistic flair. I notice he doesn't ask who is contracting us. Just

"I take it I should begin recruiting procedures?"

"Yes," I command, as if this is nothing. "A fresh pawn—no one who would make any of their various registries. Someone in-country, local."

"American national?"

I nod. He considers it for a moment. Smiles as he savors his drink. "Easy enough. I believe we have cultivated some promising instruments. I'm assuming this will be a one-time employment?"

"Yes." And I try to feel something appropriate: I have just condemned some child to a violent death. Again.

"Skill level?"

"Experience will not be a prerequisite," I tell him. "Only determination."

"And target security?"

"High. Executive level." I stop and try to enjoy the drink Alexi has so lovingly poured for me—I try to approach the meditative reverence of a tea ceremony. But I cannot focus. "I will give you the parameters as they solidify. But we will need an undetectable weapon in Manhattan within three days. We won't have the time to deliver one across borders. Contact your new friend Benjamin—time to see if he can and will deliver what he promises."

Alexi raises his eyebrow at the power and significance of the name I invoke, but he doesn't question.

"And our client?" Heinrich presses, finally asking (or realizing he hasn't asked) the question.

"Has already begun transactions offshore. They prefer to remain anonymous."

He smiles again. Finishes his drink.

"Do you anticipate a sting?" he asks.

"That remains to be seen. Prepare for it, as usual. This one may just be worth the risk."

### 12

October 22nd.

Lisa Ava:

Dee flashes me as soon as he comes through security.

I check the time and suddenly I'm glad it's almost 21:00—most everybody else is long gone for the day (except for a number of analysts, but they're all glued to their links and pretty much oblivious to what goes on around them). Still, for discretion, I meet him out in Reception.

Our section isn't nearly big enough to rate more than one shift of live exec-support staff, so it's private except for the sentry gear, which, as far as I know, just records audio and visual. It hopefully can't read the subtly of live human interaction.

He's dressed in some kind of commando-chic: heavy black woolly-pully style sweater that supports his Major's clusters (and probably conceals a Class III vest), fresh black BDU pants, shined tanker boots. He's got the heavy gray coat and big hat he's apparently so fond of in his left arm.

He looks good. Relaxed, considering what's on for tomorrow.

"Major Ram..."

He picks up on my tone and the salute and takes note of the security hardware watching us. Returns the salute.

"Lieutenant Ava."

He smiles. Looks deep into my eyes like he does, like he can reach right in and pull out my heart.

"Working late?" Which he knows—Dee let me know he'd checked to see if I was still here before he drove over from Langley. (Dee playing matchmaker? Or is it just a privilege of my level of access?)

"Big day tomorrow," I remind him needlessly.

"Just a repeat performance," he minimizes. "I did this show before, remember?"

"Yes sir. I was there." Smile. Flash my eyes at him. "But this time you get the benefit of the whole Assembly, and the live coverage thing. And the President."

"Which somewhat increases the odds that someone will actually stay awake during my speech this time."

"I'm sure you'll be quite enthralling, sir," I play.

"Tough audience." He paces, circling me, trying to avoid getting too obviously close. "But then I suppose they need to be thoroughly bullshit-proof to do their jobs."

"Yes sir."

He makes a show of looking at his watch. "Do you need to get out of here for a while, Lieutenant?"

"I suppose I should, sir. After few hours on Net-scan, your brain starts to slide into this sort of multi-process flash mode: all these images, nothing linear. After a full shift, I have trouble putting a coherent sentence together."

"And today?"

"Thirteen hours on, given what's spinning since someone hacked our show and put it on the public webs. My brain feels like a server. Having trouble staying in the room."

"Then we should get you out of here, at least to feed you. Something relatively nice. Do you like sushi, Lieutenant?"

"I love sushi, sir."

We take my pool car downtown. He seems content to let me drive, even though he's got to be more familiar with the DC area. A show of confidence? Equality? (Or is he just expecting he'll need to dash off to some global emergency and I'll need the ride home?)

The restaurant he recommends winds up being three blocks away from the closest parking we could find, but I'm grateful for the walk and the air despite the weather, because it gives us time to talk away from potentially curious ears (assuming we're not being shadowed). I'm hoping we might actually have a conversation like two real people, not just silent flirting and subtle innuendo. But so far getting him to talk beyond idle chat has been like a careful interrogation. At least his willingness to go out in public with me tells me he doesn't really care who might see us together. He pays attention to the distance between us, though: he walks close, but not too close.

"So, you think I should wear this tomorrow?"

It's a chilly night, a fine mist of icy rain blowing on the wind, so he almost passes for a normal person wearing that coat and hat (apparently it _isn't_ just for psy-war missions). And it covers up the military look pretty well, more than I do in my pressed urban ACUs and issue raincoat.

"I'm surprised they let you through Pentagon security looking like that," I tease him.

"A _general_ bought this for me," he jabs back, doing a spin like he's modeling the outfit. His sense of humor, as always, tells me there's probably something painful buried deep under the playful but regular self-effacement. I can't say I know him well enough yet to pry, so I just play until he's ready, pick up what bits I can, milk carefully...

"I thought they wanted you in full gear, Major," I remind him.

"Yeah," he considers somewhat sourly. " _There's_ a precedent for you: battle armor on the Assembly floor—very diplomatic. Shape of things to come?"

"The Knights of the Round Table wore their armor to diplomatic meetings," I imagine out loud. "At least they did in the movies."

"I _could_ bring a sword." Odd thing to say. Almost sounds like he isn't joking.

Awkward silence. And we're running out of outdoor privacy.

"Could be worse," I change directions, trying to keep it light, "Colonel Richards went to get himself tailored for a fresh set of blacks for it—very crisp and shiny. He even booked a facial."

"Wouldn't think he was the sort," he manages a half-assed smile.

"Oh, he most definitely _isn't_. Secretary Miller _insisted_. Even gave him the referral. He looked like he was facing a prostate exam when he left."

"He usually looks like that," he plays back. "At least when he has to talk to me, anyway." He's starting to get distant again by the end.

I let that sit for a few paces—again, that sense of something dark lying just below the surface, that takes him from playful to pessimistically grim in nothing flat—tells me to be careful with the cheap shots.

"You and Colonel Richards, you two have some history, don't you?" I go serious, digging probably a little more than I should try to.

"Some," he allows, after spending a few seconds formulating another diplomatic (in other words: carefully vague) answer. "We sort of got off on the wrong foot, a few years back. I suppose I owe him, though: he extracted me from something that was a little bit over my head."

"I have a hard time imagining how _you_ could be in something over your head, Major," I flirt badly.

" _You_ kicked my ass once, as I recall," he reminds me, trying to keep it casual, but I can feel the heat radiating off of him, off of me, even in the chill breeze...

"I thought that was the point of the exercise, Major."

"It was," he gives me, warming up as we get to the entrance. "But out of all the boots I played, you were the only one to play _me_."

Okay, it's a start.

Too bad: we're here.

It does help:

Quiet restaurant. Not too busy. Hot sake on a cold night. Soup. Food coming in slow, small, decorative samples—just sit and savor.

Let the Net out of my brain for a few hours.

Unfortunately, the small talk gets back to business too easily.

"So: You don't regret not going the Tactical route?" he asks me, probably just watching my neurons defrag, but it's a tender subject.

"I don't know," I have a hard time finding a good answer to that. I feel like I've let him down, especially after the first time I really impressed him. (And I've been wondering how long he'd wait to bring up my choice of posting.) "I obviously wasn't thinking about going the combat route when I signed up—it wasn't even an option, not that I'd ruled it out. But I guess something showed during my Sim Immersions: my sessions started taking a turn, focusing on communications, info-war, politics and propaganda. It wasn't what I expected, but I didn't know it was odd until I came out and Lieutenant Becker told me that Datascan had taken some unusual initiative with me. Then Director Henderson sold me on their plans for a dedicated info-war division, someplace I could fight what he called a 'bigger war', get on the officer fast-track..."

"Net-Com," he names it.

"Fighting your 'Ratings War'," I quote his speech, then realize I probably sound like I'm just kissing up.

"Keeping us ahead of the Net—and they used to think just managing the Press was hard..." he gives me some sideways praise.

"You're not disappointed I didn't stay behind a gun?" I ask outright.

"You can always put on the suit if you change your mind—I'll vouch for you myself. Actually, I don't need to: your scores speak for you. You could have your own company. But then, what you'll be running is a lot bigger."

He keeps eating like this is no big issue between us. He's letting me off easy, but now I think I hear something unexpected in his voice: Relief, maybe. Like he's glad I'll be away from the shooting. Maybe he thinks he needs to protect me, despite what he says about my abilities.

"Yours may wind up being the uglier front," he continues, actually not sounding like he's being condescending. "Sometimes, anyway. I'm surprised _this_ time is turning around so quickly."

"Remains to be seen," I tell him straight. "So far it's just big spin, trying to turn around the initial freak-out, all the paranoia and righteous outrage. We have to see how it digests. The uglier front, as you put it."

"I guess it depends on how we do tomorrow," he says, now sounding distracted. His eyes go far away, like the weight of what he's caught in the middle of has got him torn between dread and wonder. But then he's facing the entire _world_ tomorrow, in an attempt to reassure that we're not up to something sinister, that we may indeed be able to make the world a better, safer, freer place.

"I wonder if the President likes sushi?" I try. He smiles.

"What about you?" I push it again as he walks me back to my car. "Have you been working CT long?"

He gets distant again—weight of the world all over him—then smiles gently, innocently.

"Not long."

I think I'm starting to get the rhythm of this game: pry and back off, pry and back off—ease myself through all the layers of personal armor he's built up, watch out for the land mines.

"Classified?" I figure, letting up for a beat. He shrugs. Something else he doesn't want to tell me. (Or can't, despite my clearance.)

Slow process. And we're getting close to the garage where we're parked, so I just take a breath, jump in and push it. "Are you ever going to tell me about yourself?"

He stops and looks at me. Doesn't look at me. Like he can't look me in the eye. So he goes far away.

"That would be classified," he tries pretty lamely.

"My car is over here," I point out needlessly as we walk into the relative shelter of the parking garage. I remote-flash the car to get it warmed up.

"You okay to drive?" he wants to know (and it sounds like honest concern, but he knows my car has auto-drive).

"Not really. You?"

"I'm fine," he tells me—and he looks it. "You want me to drive you home?"

He says it without specific intention, but I think that's about the best invitation I'm going to get.

I take a step close to him—crossing that barrier he's been so careful to keep. He doesn't move away. But he doesn't move in, either. I can see him bite the inside of his lip, tense up. His eyes get far away again.

"Listen," I tell him. "I'm sorry..."

"It isn't you," he gives me, looking me in the eye. He takes my hands in his—they're warm, very warm—and it feels like we could melt together right here. Then his eyes go away again. "It's... Nothing. Bad history."

"Classified?" I prod him.

"Not really," he lets me in just a bit. "Just nothing much to it: I was in love once. A few years ago. But she wanted something else. Something more."

"She was an idiot," I blurt out. Immediately regret it. Try to get that warmth back in his hands, which have sort of gone dead in mine. "I _do_ know the feeling," I try.

Wrong thing to say. He pulls away. Turns away. Stares at the concrete deck. No: he's looking down at what he's wearing—the black uniform and armor under his gray coat—like he's not sure he wants to be in it.

Then: "I don't want to deny—there _is_ something between us, isn't there?" His voice is almost shaking. "I mean, I do feel something for you. Something maybe more than I should."

"You're a major, I'm a lieutenant. I get it." But I don't want to. "That has nothing to do with why I'm here with you now."

"You don't work for me," he tries to justify. "You work for Richards."

"So do you."

"Just don't remind him of that," he jokes, lightening, getting his defenses back up. But then he turns back to face me and sort of... freezes. Locks up. Looks like he's fighting to stay in his skin. Looks at me, into my eyes. Like he's in pain.

"You're holding back," I scold him gently. "I..."

I don't get to finish. Before I know what's happening, he's kissing me. He's got my head my face in his hands and he's devouring me hungrily, desperately. I melt. I'm breathing his breath, seamlessly, in and out, like we're one being. His taste and smell and heat blend perfectly into mine, his body melts up against me, and the whole world is gone and it's like we've been doing this all our lives and

He lets me go. Just a bit. Just enough to ask

"Better?"

He never does get back to Langley.

### 13

October 23rd.

Mike Ram:

"The Global War on Terror: otherwise known to popular history as twenty years of bloody tragedies and politically devastating fiascos: New York, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Spain, Columbia, Jerusalem, Kashmir, Chechnya... I doubt anybody here really wants me to go on... And despite whatever 'tactical' or political victories you've tried to claim from your efforts, the Media has consistently preferred to rub your noses in your shortfalls, your errors, your vulnerabilities, your unintentional atrocities..."

You are careful not to specifically look any one delegation directly in the eye—you don't want any of them to take it personally, or anyone watching to assume that directing blame is your intention. You are just as careful with your tone, your choice of words. You have come with no script this time, no prepared speech—Henderson's idea, after how well he felt you were received last time for "breaking the rules and speaking your mind." You glance up at him in the gallery—still smiling, he gives you a nod of conspiratorial approval. Miller and Collins are careful to keep stone-faced.

"This is the Ratings War," you explain with gentle, parental intensity. "It's like what they say about an auto race: more people watch hoping to see someone crash than care who wins. And someone _always_ crashes.

"Trillions of dollars per year you collectively spend trying to predict and protect against what a handful of desperate individuals can think up and pull off with minimal resources. Trillions spent bombing already-impoverished urban areas and third-world wastelands, and sweeping in with thousands and thousands of troops, trying to occupy territory you can't politically or economically afford to hold, and they've got all the time in the world to take it right back again.

"Any victories you manage are fleeting. You kill or capture one high-profile terrorist warlord, and then can't contain the dozens that pop up eager to replace him. You topple one terror-supporting regime, only to watch the country fall into hopeless chaos and maybe be taken back by those same terrorists as soon as you try to withdraw. You drive one enemy into the ground, only to inspire ten or a hundred or a thousand more. For every hundred terrorist plots you manage to stop, it's the one you miss that devastates you."

You can see Richards squirming in the wings in his fresh, custom tailored uniform. Trying not to. Trying not to sweat. Wishing you'd just _shut up_ , even though he knows they're actually buying you.

"Twenty years of radical restrictions on almost every aspect of our society and commerce in the name of increased security... and still there is no real defense. Even with all the hundreds of billions thrown into screening technology, global surveillance and intimidating security, they _always_ find a new way—or often, a humiliatingly _old_ way—to hurt us. And the Media will always be there when that happens. And through the Media, the world will watch you as you so desperately try to do the same things over and over again to try to prevent what you cannot completely anticipate."

You stop and breathe and soften as they stew. And then you give them:

"How do you feel?"

You give them a few seconds to try to make sense of that, let them try to get their balance back. Then repeat:

"How do you feel? Right now?" And you face the row-upon-row of stone-faced delegations laid out almost stadium-style in the massive assembly hall and the galleries above them and the cameras placed around the chamber and you spread your armored arms and embrace them all.

"I have just done exactly what the terrorist does: I have told your people that you can't protect them from the monsters of their nightmares. That you are helpless. That all of your efforts are worse than useless."

You lower your arms, get smaller behind the podium, softer again.

"But it's not just the terrorist that does that. Every single one of your very vocal critics does the same thing: They tell you what you're doing _wrong_. That you're only making it worse. They just never tell you what the 'right' thing to do would be. At least not anything that would actually work. The would-be peacemakers would have you placate implacable fanatics. The retribution-mongers would have you make war on entire nations and populations, when you know most terrorism is fringe extremism."

You pause, let them digest. Then start to sell:

"We have come here today to offer you an alternative. The only truly effective way to really stop the terrorist is through surgical means: to identify and neutralize each individual threat as soon as it begins to materialize. You know this. You just can't do it effectively. So you go to war with the tools you have, to paraphrase one of Secretary Miller's predecessors..."

There is an uncomfortable chuckle from the gallery at your reference. You try to let it pass unnoticed. Warming now:

"I come here to offer you new tools. And I know how unusual it is for a line officer to address the General Assembly like this—believe me, it wasn't my idea..." More chuckling, this time even among the otherwise dour delegations. "But those wiser than me felt it was important for all of you to meet a flesh-and-blood representative of the human beings who will be underneath all of this armor and technology, so that you may hopefully be impressed that I believe—and I _do_ believe—that we cannot afford to do what we have been doing. We cannot afford what is impersonally called 'collateral damage,' no matter the lengths our enemies go to ensure that we cannot avoid it if we wish to fight back."

You give them a few breaths to absorb, and then Datascan begins to roll the armor and ICW demos across the big theater screens flanking the UN emblem behind you. Then you wade into the same pitch you've been delivering to boots and base commanders for the last six months:

"That means a new kind of intelligence and a new kind of soldier. Tanks and planes and smart bombs and satellites and warships are all fine tools, but they are not effective where we need them to be. It's been decades since our enemies have gathered in numbers and in locations that would make those weapons effective. This is because they learned that lesson far more quickly than we could adapt—they learned to embed themselves into environments we couldn't afford to use our precious arsenals in, and then they dared us to come after them. What we need, ideally, is to be able to locate and cut the terrorist out of highly populated areas quickly and efficiently without incurring civilian casualties, or risking unacceptable losses of our own troops. We also need to be able to fight the terrorist face-to-face, so we can confirm our accuracy and effectiveness immediately, instead of trying to positively ID a target vaporized by a missile or smart-bomb; or even uglier: trying to defend ourselves in the Media against claims that we killed innocents instead of combatants. _And_ we need to show the terrorist and the public that we are both willing and able to make this a _face-to-face_ fight, instead of hitting from distance with drones and long-range weapons and looking like cowards.

"As for the new kind of soldier, we now have that: individual troops with armor and weapons and interface systems that can excise a small army of terrorists holed up in a crowded neighborhood or a delicate shrine or a school full of children without incurring _any_ collateral damage. We call this new soldier a 'Tactical.' And, ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly, they will be _yours_. That is essential to this proposal. The UN already has eighty-thousand assorted troops and personnel scattered in two-dozen countries, but they serve only by the generous cooperation of their home nations. The proposal is on the table that the Tacticals be employed _directly_ by the Security Council, commanded by a new Military Staff Subcommittee under a restructured CTC—what my esteemed colleagues have tentatively named the Action Committee on Terrorism. And not for any nation's political agenda, but for the simple purpose of hunting down those who would slaughter innocent people in order to bend the world to their will.

"While it is not my place to put this plan before you, I feel that it is important that I speak as a representative of those like me who have chosen to wear this armor, to tell you that I believe in this vision enough to swear an oath of service to the Council, an oath that I know may override my oath to serve my own country. This will not be a step that I—or any of my fellows—will take lightly. But if there is to be any real trust in the authenticity of what we propose, we must demonstrate that our service is to the world, not to any one nation. And that, ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly, is your new kind of soldier."

There is a rumbling in the galleries, but also up through the ranks of delegates. You have dropped the bomb that you needed to. Now you simply change the subject before they can assess what it will mean.

"As for the new kind of intelligence, since that's _not_ my area of expertise, I defer to Doctor Scott Becker of the McCain Foundation.

"Thank you for your time, your attention, and your tolerance."

More chuckles at your deadpan self-deprecation, as you bow as gracefully as you can in the bulk of your armor, and walk off to turn the "stage" over to Doc, who looks like his tie is slowly strangling him as he walks out to take your place at the podium under the UN emblem. You look up at the galleries as you pass. Henderson gives you a nod and a grin. Miller and Collins look like they're waiting for the other shoe to drop.

No reflection on Doc, who gets rolling with just a bit of a stammer as Datascan demonstrates mission scenarios overhead. It's just that they all know The President of the United States is coming up next.

"How's your head?" Matthew chimes into your link as you make it into the wings.

"Where I left it, I assume," you return, a little unsure of the context of his question.

"I heard about last night," he clarifies with a steadily building innuendo. "You apparently got so plowed with pre-game jitters that you passed out on poor Lieutenant Ava's sofa and didn't make it home. That's her story, anyway."

"Ah," you try not to feed into his immaturity. "That."

"Funny," he pushes it. "Just doesn't sound like you."

"Things change," you allow him.

"Good for you," he plays in, sounding like he honestly means it. "Glad to hear it."

"So how was my Captain Kirk impression today?" you change the subject.

"More Jean-Luc Picard this time—you're maturing. Poor Doc still looks like he's about to have a stroke, though."

"It's the tie."

"Major Ram?" A live voice comes from behind, very familiar—at least from the news and a good dozen comedians' impressions. Turning, there's a cluster of dark gray and navy blue tailored suits standing roughly in a kind of formation. The man on point offers his hand and the almost unnatural smile he won his last election with. "An honor to meet you, son."

"Thank you, Mr. President. The honor is all mine." You pull off your right gauntlet and take his hand as firmly as he grasps yours.

"Great speech. You should consider a career in politics."

"Not on a bet, sir."

He smiles wider, tries to look fraternal. "I just hope I do justice to following you out there."

"I'm just glad I could go first, sir."

Matthew is laughing his ass off on your link.

"Listen, Major... I'd like you to do me a favor and walk out with me afterwards. I'm having a little meet-and-greet back at the White House and I'd like you to drop by, press some flesh, talk about the future, get to know you a little better."

"I'd be honored, sir. I...probably should change first." You hold up your bulky armored sleeves.

"I can have a fresh dress uniform sent over," he offers insistently, apparently not wanting you to get away from him.

"Thank you, sir."

"My pleasure, Major."

His personal guard of Secret Service suits move him off to get ready for his grand entrance. He's bound and determined to embrace this, to keep it appearing above board, and to assure the UN—with the whole world watching—that he will guarantee that control of the Joint Tactical Force is placed solely in the hands of the membership (and reversing the go-it-alone mandates of his predecessors that have dominated the War on Terror since 9-11). Part of that, it appears, is making an effort to convince the world he's not afraid to be seen with the most visible players, especially after the closed-session with the Security Council was too easily interpreted as an attempt to hide an American agenda to control and militarize the UN.

"O _kay_ ," Matthew pants into your link, collecting himself. "That was just... _surreal_..."

"My whole life is surreal, Matthew."

"True."

An hour later, the President is done insisting that the United States will not hold the reins of either Datascan or the Tactical Teams, and his entourage finds you to set you up for what comes next:

You get herded in with his protection detail. Your own team of players (Richards, Becker, Lisa) is left somewhere far behind in all the directed chaos.

"It's just a photo-op," Henderson pipes in on your link to reassure. "He's got his motorcade parked out under the flags, where all the Press can see him—and see you leaving with him. There'll be some waving and maybe a sound-bite or two. Then just go enjoy the party."

"Somebody get my sidearm back from main security," you ask no one in particular.

"Already taken care of, Major," Henderson gives you quickly.

"Don't do anything I would do," Matthew inserts himself, letting through just a hint of his frustration of being made to watch from the Basement. Again. "And I expect you home by eleven, mister."

"Not a problem," you assure him.

One of the UN security suits almost immediately comes running up after you, calls your name, hands you a secure hard case and keys it open for you. It's your automag.

"Talk about service..." you mutter. You say thank you and he disappears with a polite "My pleasure, Major."

You check the weapon and finds it's loaded—more so: it's been _chambered_ , Condition One cocked-and-locked, ready to fire. Odd—you're _sure_ you'd emptied it when you handed it over—you _never_ check in a loaded weapon.

You slip it back in your thigh rig as discreetly as possible. The Secret Service agents flanking you seem only concerned with keeping the pace, staying on schedule.

We rush in rough formation out through a side entrance, bypassing the secure garages (where they would have met the limos if they had just preferred to leave without running into the Press), and you're out into the sunlight. You flinch and go digging for your interface glasses, but the agents around you keep everybody in the entourage moving, and the crowd waiting is probably bigger than they had initially anticipated.

The caravan of armored limos that make up the executive motorcade sits in the long, open drive that fronts the domed Assembly Building with its famous line of national flags. The long black cars and SUVs wait perfectly lined up just inside the barricades and police-armor of the makeshift security cordon. On the other side, waiting with anxious patience, are several hundred bodies—a few dozen of them wired with Press-gear, but the majority look like a selection of party-followers, well-wishers and supporters who knew well in advance that the President would be coming out this way. It's very clearly a staged appearance—all the visible protesters have been held well back—which is when you remember that the election is barely two weeks away, and he's been sliding in the polls.

The President is barely visible behind his living wall of security, as he changes course just short of his limo to wave to his supporters. Your escorts gently prod you to follow, apparently calculating exactly how close you should be standing to him to make the appropriate impression. He approaches the cordon with his famous smile beaming and goes to the ritual of pressing flesh, while you probably look like his very uncomfortable date.

"No shades, please, Major," one of them prompts you as you try to get your interface glasses on. "Just..."

"ATTACK DETECTED..." Datascan blares in your link. And then you hear the almost-buzzing rattle that you know is a Fletcher. And screaming.

The crowd seems to break like a wave against the cordon and the Secret Service suits lunge to cover their charge with their bodies and get their weapons out of their suits and you can almost see the storm of flechettes tear into them.

Datascan starts feeding you the urgent professional panic that floods the Secret Service and UN Security channels as they try to pick their target out of the crowd, try to get a sniper shot. You try to hold your position in the middle of the shoving and running and diving. And right in front of you, the crowd falls like the sea parting around the eye of the storm:

It's just a kid. Blonde haired. Blue eyed. Bad skin. Maybe fifteen. Wide-eyed and howling his head off in an undecipherable swirl of obscenities, looking like this is the greatest rush on the planet, spraying everything in sight until his weapon clicks empty.

Like a pro, he slaps a new magazine into the ceramic and nano-carbon automatic he shouldn't conceivably have and starts spraying more armor-piercing darts at the heap of bodies trying to protect what must still be the President under them. And looking at him, you're not sure if he knows that he's only about five seconds away from getting his spine severed by any of the Federal or NYPD snipers covering the site, but he does know enough to keep moving with the crowd to make a difficult target, his weapon cutting into anybody who gets brave enough to try to grab him.

And you feel your blood charge and your face tics up into your Manticore grin (and your face feels wet and you realize that one of the darts has cut you just below the left eye) and you reach down and fill your hand and raise the automag and lock the muzzle on that triumphant screaming crying cursing contorted child's face and you can see his eyes go wide as he looks straight down the maw of it and you do the only thing that your rage says makes any sense.

Breathe. Let go. Let it happen.

One shot. One life.

### 14

October 25th.

Lawrence Henderson:

I have either participated in shaping a better future or been complacent in an atrocity. Which one will be the story of my life will be up to history (and who's writing it).

In the immediate aftermath of October 23rd 2020, it at least appears to be the former:

The President, recovering from only minor dart wounds (no one will publicly admit exactly _where_ he was hit), has made his emergency address to a) reassure the public that he is indeed fine, b) recite the usual mantra about the need to remain vigilant and united in the face of global terror, c) express his heartfelt sorrow for the two brave agents that lost their lives in the line of duty protecting him, as well as his deep, personal regrets for the three civilians killed and the dozens more injured in the attack, and d) to express "this nation's undying gratitude to Major Michael Ram, for his timely and decisive actions that prevented further loss of life and very likely spared this country the heartbreak of another national tragedy" (the tragedy being the possibility of himself being shot in somewhere more vital than his Presidential left buttock).

His approval ratings have hit record highs. I don't really need to have Datascan calculate his odds of winning re-election next week. (I expect he'd agree that not being able to sit comfortably for awhile is a small price to pay.)

The United Nations General Assembly immediately sequestered for an emergency session to review and vote on the proposed UNACT Charter Agreement—technically only an amendment to the UN Charter, but in effect a re-invention of the entire organization, freshly committed to take a much more aggressive role in shaping world events.

The incident on their own doorstep was convincing enough in itself to push through the vote, but when it was determined that the assassin was both recruited and obtained his weapon through an extensive underground Internet contact system, the need to get Datascan fully online and integrated with the various national intelligence organizations appeared all the more urgent.

Twenty-four hours later, only a dozen nations voted against the measure, and its ratification by majority poetically coincided with the ratification of the original October 24th 1945 Charter.

As for the shooter: his brief, tragic life has been thoroughly dissected in the Media (to the intensified pain of his family).

Anthony Michael Haffner: Age sixteen. Expelled from public high school last month for making internet threats in the form of "creative literary expression" detailing his fantasies for killing everyone in his school. (The FBI was found particularly lax in failing to ensure that he didn't have any further access to cyberspace, where he apparently proved how easy it is to recruit and supply the "spontaneous terrorist.")

Beyond the eternal stigma of being labeled an attempted Presidential assassin, and having slaughtered five people (and injured dozens more, four critically) on live television, I expect the worst part for his family will be that they will not be able to avoid the bloody spectacle of his death replayed endlessly in the Media in all its formats for time indefinite. (That gun Ram is so fond of really does make a hell of a mess.)

The investigation into the source of the weapon used and the identity of the recruiting organization ran cold—whoever was involved had more than adequate understanding of the level of stealth needed to operate in cyberspace. A suddenly impassioned Becker (backed up by the McCain spokespeople) was quick to argue that Datascan could have intercepted such a plot "easily," if only it could be allowed freer access to areas otherwise "protected" because the public's concerns for invasion of privacy.

The President himself is already pushing a resolution through Congress to relax privacy protections—an addendum to Patriot IV—and is strongly encouraging other nations participating in the new UNACT Accord to take similar steps.

But perhaps more urgently (and kept classified) was the discovery that all ID traces—which should have been built into the very nanostructure of the weapon's components by the manufacturer—were absent. The resulting investigation has so far indicated the possibility that the manufacturing technology had been pirated from one of the DARPA contractors developing these guns (including our own SENTAR), and that someone may have set up shop to begin mass underground production of undetectable weaponry.

Worldwide, the ebb-and-flow of the Net continues to reflect an overall positive reception to the new hope that UNACT has promised to bring to otherwise dark times. There's still opposition, but those voices have been somewhat shamed into lowering their tone, since Haffner's actions (detailed in a rambling blog he dropped from his cell-link just before he started firing) were apparently an extreme and paranoid expression of some of the popular backlash that immediately followed the leak of the Security Council session.

In every participating nation, recruiting has tripled overnight—every boot with a hero's dream is rushing to sign up for a suit of armor and a slot on a Tactical Team, even though it means forswearing allegiance to country in favor of an oath to the UN.

And as for the hero...

I've already seen t-shirts and posters for sale on the Net and on street corners, with pirated high-rez stills of him drawing his big silly gun down on a slavering, blood-spattered child-terrorist. (It's also apparently a popular wallpaper download for all manner of consumer tech.) The best ones are the pricier FOLED sheets that rerun the actual headshot in slow-motion.

In somewhat more tactful mediums, he's topped every headline program for thirty-six straight hours now, and they don't seem to be tiring of him yet. His name pops up on no fewer than three hundred million sites on the most popular search engines. And while he never got to go to his "coming out" party at the White House that afternoon, he's been given a very public open invitation to "drop by anytime—my door's always open for you" from the President himself.

I'd expect him to make Lieutenant Colonel over this before the end of the year.

The man himself hasn't made any appearances since the event—I suppose this will actually increase his longevity in the popular media, feeding the sense of mystery, making him all the more desirable by his very avoidance of the camera. (Though this will change soon enough—we've got him booked on every major newsnet and chat show for the next two months—right up until we start active operations, and then I expect he'll be in even higher demand.)

As soon as the onsite medics patched his face, he promptly got himself a car and left quietly, with his lovely Lieutenant Ava to tend to him. According to their RFID tags, they've been shut up in her apartment ever since. Clear violation of conduct, but then, I expect quite a number of very old rules are about to be rewritten.

"Progress assessment?" I ask the glowing blue UNACT ready-graphic that now lives permanently on my desktop.

"WITHIN PARAMETERS."

I wonder if Becker programmed it for understatement.

### Epilogue: "Into This House We're Born..."

November 17th.

Mike Ram:

You almost don't need Lisa to keep you apprised of the "ratings".

"...that the fledgling UN Action Committee on Terrorism has actually announced their timeframe, setting January First as the date they will begin active military operations..."

"...calling it 'Operation: Safe For Democracy'. A bold and potentially inflammatory statement on the part of the newly formed international..."

"...question the decision of the freshly chartered UNACT to publically announce the date that they plan to begin enforcing military sanctions on terrorist targets worldwide. Acting Committee Chairman and United States Secretary of Defense James Miller states that this is a warning to the terrorists and their supports to cease-and-desist all acts of violence or face immediate..."

"...while critics continue to say that this initiative has been rushed through proper legal and ethical review because of a single shocking act of violence..."

"...are questioning the actions of Major Ram, calling what he did 'gratuitous' and 'unnecessary'. Colonel Thomas Richards, acting as commanding officer of Global Tactical Operations, insists that Ram acted appropriately, as onsite snipers could not..."

"...the President himself, fresh from winning re-election, continues to call Major Ram a national hero. Any..."

"...backlash against tasteless profiteers, who continue to produce a wide variety of consumer products featuring the now-infamous images..."

"...public approval of Ram himself continues to be extremely positive, despite concerns that his newly-chartered anti-terrorist strike force may have been 'forced down the throats' of the participating member nations out of exaggerated fear. The President himself insists..."

"...that appropriations for UNACT have reportedly already topped a trillion dollars, much of it being funneled to a small group of corporate..."

"...enlistment continues to be high since the assassination attempt..."

"...have still failed to determine how Anthony Michael Haffner obtained the highly restricted experimental firearm. McCain protégé and UNACT officer Scott Becker insists that as soon as their controversial artificial intelligence can be given more access to..."

"...serious ongoing concerns for privacy and civil liberties, not to mention the national sovereignty of those nations that..."

"...Colonel Richards guarantees that international oversight will prevent..."

"...Ram himself assures that those fears are unfounded..."

"...Major Ram gave his personal assurances that civil liberties will not be..."

"...how Ram came out of the traditional obscurity of Special Operations and is now arguably the most famous—or infamous, depending on which side you're on—person on the planet..."

"...that SSN made the bold move of naming Major Ram their 'Person of the Year' for his..."

"...interviews with some of the other officers in this multi-national..."

"...Major Haidar Abbas of the Iraqi UNACT Tactical Force 'Fox Company' strongly supports..."

"...Yeshua 'Jesse' Ibrahim—arguably as popular in his home county as Major Ram is in the US—insists this is not just some..."

"...passionate, professional young..."

"...Major Ivan Tetova, himself a survivor of the tragedy at Beslan..."

"...Burke and Marcus Powell, both heroes who served in the Wars on Drugs and Terror in Central and South America..."

"... that Major Manning's father gave his life for the freedom of the Iraqi people..."

"...Richards is a decorated and respected officer with decades of..."

"...that this is not some US agenda..."

"...remains to be seen what will happen on January..."

The pendulum of public opinion still swings wildly. But it isn't a true pendulum: it doesn't swing _evenly_. And it changes its overall momentum almost from hour to hour. (You told Lisa she may have the uglier battlefield. You were apparently more truthful than you expected to be.)

"...This is a new kind of war we are in, ladies and gentlemen of the Council: It is a war for public approval, a war of image more than tactical victories, a war to win—and hold—the popular media, to command the headlines. To borrow a term from that media: It is a..."

You cut the screen off in the middle of one of your hottest sound bites. They've been running select bits of your precious speeches like they should go down in history. "I have a dream..." "Ask not what your country can do for you..." "That's one small step for a man..."

"How do you feel?"

That one is the worst, the most overplayed. Opportunistic cottage-industry hawkers even attach it to the myriad products they've been marketing ubiquitously: clothing and posters and screen-savers of you blowing a kid's brains out.

Sick.

You wonder how they'd feel if they knew you'd stolen the line from one of your interrogators.

You've tried to avoid the flood of media demand for you, but you've had to make at least brief appearances by order of your new cabal of international masters. Answering the critics (and feeding your apparently rabid fans). Explaining yourself. Insisting that you had to go for a head shot because shooting lower would have endangered the crowd around him. Expressing your regrets to his family. Reassuring everyone that you were just doing—and will continue to do—your job. That it's not something you enjoy or take any kind of satisfaction in. Denying that you're any kind of hero.

The strange part is: they seem to believe you. Trust you. Love you.

Mostly. There are lots of critics who've called you choice names. But the pendulum swings against them the worst. It's apparently okay not to trust a bunch of international politicians and military leaders, but woe unto anyone who dares besmirch the man who saved the life of the President of the United States at great personal risk, standing up into a storm of lethal projectiles (actually, your armor took the worst of it: it looked like a pin-cushion with all the flechettes sticking out of it—you only got grazed in the left cheek, adding to your "fashionable" scars) and saving "uncountable" lives.

Richards has actually gone out of his way to protect you from a lot of it, keeping the Press ops limited (you doubt this is out of any actual concern for you, but his efforts are still appreciated).

But the Committee players—and the players behind the players—keep pushing to exploit your fame, use it to further sell their agenda, to reassure the public that we will do the right thing.

"...that I believe in this vision enough to swear an oath of service to the Council, an oath that I know may override my oath to serve my own country. This will not be a step that I—or any of my fellows—will take lightly. But if there is to be any real trust in the authenticity of what we propose, we must demonstrate that our service is to the world, not to any one nation..."

The script was perfect. Even when you weren't on script (or at least thought you weren't). You made the sale, built the argument against all potential naysayers.

And then got people listening to it by killing a child.

Saving the President. You saved the President of the United States.

Someone else would have killed Haffner if you didn't. There was no other way. That you fired the shot was just how it came down, pure chance.

But you don't believe it.

You've done your own investigating. Not on the origin of the Fletcher or who recruited Haffner—lots of people and resources continue to hammer at that. What you want to know is why your fucking gun was loaded.

Dee at least seems willing to assist. It's given you access to the security videos from the UN that day. There were no eyes on your gun from the time you checked it in (and you _did_ unload it, that part's clearly on video) to the time it got handed back to you. One strange detail: you can't see the face of the security suit that brought it to you: he's careful to avoid the cameras. (Too careful to be accidental?) You can't remember his face. You weren't paying attention—too caught up in too much else.

But you do remember: Lawrence assured you you'd be getting your gun back. That it was "already taken care of".

Bottom line: They used you to start a war. Or at least seriously re-escalate one.

"...I believe in this vision..."

Or is that just your rage, and whatever programming they've put on it?

No. You _do_ believe in this. You believe this will be a better way to fight war, to turn it into something more like law enforcement. You believe this can change the world for the better.

And you're torn: If you _can_ prove that Haffner—a child—was set up to die to push all of this through, what do you do with that truth? If it were made public, it would destroy everything. (Dee knows that, yet it helps you.) And it's not in your nature to bury it, ignore it. (Dee knows that, too.) Which only leaves one alternative:

You do what you did before. You handle the bloody work yourself.

In the interim, they try to keep you too busy to really spin on this.

Mission plans are stacking up. Their tagging program is giving us a head start. That, and all the intel they must have been sitting on (including—maybe—what you left for them in Europe). You consider this may be a standard tactic: gathering evidence, surveiling the subjects, setting them up to be taken en-masse. You wonder how much of this is tactically valid and not just gauged to give them a big, spectacular victory for public eyes short on attention span.

And they have lots of missions for you. Visible missions. In costume.

But then, there's also the _other_ front of the war. These "missions" are stacking up too: Talk Shows. News Programs. Interviews, debates, "casual" chat shows. Getting you out there. Getting to know you. (There's nothing to know: You have no past.)

The appearances won't be live, of course. Too much security risk. You'll be piped in on video or in VR, and the receiving studios will get locked down with extra security.

But you're the hero. The people need to see you.

"Watching yourself on TV again?" Lisa chides you, coming back late from her shift at the Pentagon to catch you sitting with a beer in front of her big screen (again). As usual, the TV is turned off, has been turned off for some time.

She says it with humor but you know she's worried about you. She gets to see a lot more of it—the Ratings War—fed to her by an almost omniscient AI. (You wonder when they'll try to make her into a celebrity. Will it simply be as your girlfriend? Or will they try to respect her intelligence, her strength, her savvy?)

She doesn't pull punches—she knows you don't want that. She feeds you the good and the bad (though tries to present it—as Datascan does—in impersonal numbers, statistics, curves and projections).

She gets that you have doubts, but you haven't told her all your reasons why. You can't. She can never know those parts of your past, the deleted scenes of your former life.

At least she keeps those kinds of questions few and far-between, and accepts your vague deflections.

Tonight she just kisses you as she passes to go peel out of her uniform, asks "normal" questions about what we should have for dinner. She leaves the bedroom door open and you watch her undress.

She "catches" you looking (she knows you always do) and comes back out in her underwear, stands between you and the dark screen.

"I thought you wanted dinner?" you say innocently. She takes you by the hand.

You let her lead you to her bed, to do something human, something tender...

...something to pass the time like you're a real person while what they've cultivated so carefully inside of you waits for the next time you'll have to kill.

It's coming. January First.

###

_Grayman_ continues in _Book Two: The Ratings War  
_

About the Author:

Michael Rizzo is an artist, martial artist, collector (and frequent user) of fine weaponry, and has had a long, varied and brutal career in the mental health and social services battlefield. (He is locally regarded as the Darth Vader of social work.)

His fiction series include _Grayman_ and _The God Mars_.

He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

For updates and original art, visit Michael on Facebook.com.

Discover other books by Michael Rizzo at smashwords.com

