Joe Ledger

by Jonathan Maberry

  I said nothing. Wasn’t really feeling all that chatty.

  He took it as assent, regardless. “What do you think they’re going to do with the device? I’m not talking about the North Koreans. What do you think we’re going to do with it?”

  I said nothing.

  “Do you honestly and without reservation believe that once the U.S. government gets their hands on it that they’ll hide it away and never use it? Do you think that if they did use it, they’d only concentrate on its potential for unlimited power? Do you think they can resist the temptation to study its potential as a weapon?”

  I said nothing.

  “You have good intentions, Joe,” he said. I didn’t ask him how he knew my name. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know that answer. “But sometimes you’re naïve. You’re too trusting. You think everyone has the same altruism as Mr. Church. You think that you can keep this thing from ever falling into the wrong hands. Tell me that’s not true. Tell me I’m lying.”

  I still said nothing. My heart was hammering in my chest.

  He sighed.

  “I’m going to take the device out of play,” he said. “Nobody gets it. Not our people, not theirs. Nobody.”

  “Bullshit,” I said finally.

  “No,” he replied, “no bullshit. I know where it came from. I know what it is. And I know what will absolutely happen if anyone—anyone—fucks with it. And they will. You know it, sport. They’ll fuck with it and fuck around with it and then it’ll all go to hell.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “No,” he said, “you can’t. I can. I do.” He paused, and there was a strange quality in his voice. A kind of sadness that runs all the way down to the cellar of the soul. “I’ve seen it. That’s why I can’t let you take it.”

  He took the knife away, gave me a hip-check that knocked me sideways, and stepped backward out of reach before I could recover my balance. The device lay pulsing on the floor between us. Closer to him than to me.

  Slowly, carefully, he knelt and scooped it up with the hand not holding the knife.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “Who are you working for?”

  He hesitated, studying me, then dropped the knife on the floor and pulled the goggles off. He dropped them onto the floor next to the knife. The he pulled the balaclava over his head and dropped that as well.

  I stared at him. The hinges of the world seemed to snap and crack off and for a moment the whole room seemed to tilt.

  I know that face.

  I knew those blue eyes and the scuffle of blond hair. I knew that crooked nose and the scars. Some of the scars. There were more of them than when I’d seen that face last.

  More than there had been when I looked into the shaving mirror that morning.

  I said, “I don’t….”

  It was all that would come out.

  The face was older than mine. Harder, sadder, with deeper lines and more evidence of damage.

  But it was my face.

  He looked down at me with my own eyes.

  There was such a look of deep hurt and enduring pain in those eyes.

  “I’m taking it with me,” he said. “Once I’m gone you’ll have six minutes to get out. You’ll need four and a half.”

  He smiled then.

  There was no joy in it.

  Not for him.

  Not for me.

  He turned and walked away. Within a few steps he was running. He rounded a corner and was gone.

  I knew, with absolute certainty but with no understanding of why I knew it, that if I ran to that corner and looked around it, he wouldn’t be there.

  There was a brief squelch in my ear and then Bug’s voice. “…To Cowboy, do you copy?”

  I tapped my earbud but I had to suck some spit into my mouth and swallow it before I could trust myself to talk.

  “Cowboy here.”

  “Thank God! We were having kittens and—”

  “Shut up, Bug. How do I get out?”

  “Do you have the package?”

  I hesitated, trying to construct a reply that would make sense. “Mission accomplished,” I said. Or something like that, I don’t really remember.

  He gave me the route.

  I ran it.

  I got out.

  Chap. 9

  They grilled me for days about it.

  Days.

  No sleep. No easing up.

  My boss, Mr. Church. Dr. Rudy Sanchez. Aunt Sallie. Others.

  They asked me hundreds of questions. Or, maybe it was the same few questions hundreds of times. It blurred together after a while.

  They hooked me to a polygraph.

  Someone—it might have been Dr. Hu—slipped me a Pentothal cocktail and grilled me through the haze.

  They kept asking the same questions.

  And I gave them the same story every single fucking time.

  After a while they stopped asking.

  They let me sleep.

  Eventually they even let me go home.

  Tomorrow the interviews or interrogations may start up again. I’m not sure. All I know for certain is that the artifact is gone. No one has seen it. I suspect no one ever will.

  Where has it gone?

  I have no idea.

  I really don’t.

  What happened in the lab remains the biggest mystery of my life, and that is saying a whole lot.

  I know what I saw. I know what I heard.

  It’s just that I am absolutely certain, without any margin for error, that I will never understand it.

  Not, at least, until I’m older.

  As he had been.

  Older.

  Sadder.

  Stranger.

  I don’t believe in time travel, and I’m not sure I buy any bullshit about parallel dimensions. But, how else do I explain it? What else makes sense?

  Nothing

  Not a goddamn thing.

  But…the device is gone.

  Nobody has the weapon.

  So…yeah…there’s that.

  ~The End~

  The Handyman Gets Out

  Chap. 1

  So, there I was.

  Buck naked.

  Duct-taped to a chair.

  Couple of hard-cases with no-mercy eyes and a bag of tools. Big generator on a hand truck. Wires with clamps.

  You get the picture.

  There’s shit creek, and there’s me way the hell up it without a paddle.

  I hate my job.

  Chap. 2

  Roll it back a few hours and I was fully clothed—an Orioles home-game shirt over jeans and flip-flops. Wayfarers up on my hair, cup of Starbucks cradled between my palms. Tickets for that evening’s game against Philly. I had a Franklin on the game, and the oddsmakers were telling me I was going to see Philly go home in tears.

  Life was a proverbial peach.

  I’d come into the Warehouse to clean up a few things in my office. Some after-action reports I had to sign-off on. Equipment requisitions. Like that. Nothing important. For once the whole world seemed to be taking five, sitting one out. I’d taken Junie out dancing last night and, though I’m not exactly going to get my own reality show, Dancing with Special Ops, I didn’t disgrace myself, break Junie’s toes, or reinforce the stereotype that white boys from Baltimore cannot dance.

  Even my dog, Ghost, was off the clock. Junie messaged me a selfie of herself in an electric blue string bikini with Ghost standing guard in case anyone who wasn’t me got too friendly. They were at Ocean Beach with Circe O’Tree, Lydia Ruiz, and the new gal on Echo Team, Montana. Girls’ day out. No testosterone allowed. Except of the canine variety.

  At this point all I had to do was turn off my laptop and walk out of the building, ideally dropping my cell phone in a trash can in the parking lot. Sunny skies, baseball, way too much beer. Only a bloody fool who doesn’t understand the way the universe works would even think about saying, “What could go wrong?”

  I swear that thought didn’t go t
hrough my head.

  So, I turned off my laptop, got up, switched off the office lights, and reached for the doorknob.

  Which is when my cell rang.

  I don’t have different ringtones for each person I know. I’m not thirteen. However I swear to God I can tell when a call is coming in from my boss, Mr. Church. Maybe I’m psychic. Maybe there’s a tremor in the Force. Not sure. But I knew it was him before I even looked at the screen display.

  Did I consider letting it ring through to voicemail?

  Sure. Every time he calls.

  Did I do that?

  No.

  I don’t have that luxury. I can’t.

  Besides, Church isn’t the kind to make social calls or to chat about last night’s episode of Game of Thrones. Not much for the small talk.

  And I knew for certain that he knew I was taking the afternoon off.

  On the other hand, as I dug my phone out of my jeans I cursed him, his entire family to the seventh generation, his DNA, and his houseplants.

  I punched the button and said, “Do I even want to know?”

  “Probably not.”

  I sighed.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Chap. 3

  He told me.

  “Myron Bishop wants to come in.”

  I said, “Holy shit.”

  Chap. 4

  Half an hour later I was pulling into a parking slot at Mercury Tower in Baltimore. Still in jeans and flip-flops. This was a pickup, not a combat mission. Had my piece, though, ’cause I’m not an idiot. Beretta 92f snugged into a clamshell shoulder holster under the Orioles shirt, and a rapid-release folding knife clipped to the inside of my right pants pocket.

  The tower was forty-one stories, built during the let’s-cover-everything-in-glass phase of the eighties and early nineties, so it was basically a featureless oblong that was a sun-glare hazard for miles. Lots of security. They had to buzz me into the lobby, then made me stand for five minutes at the desk. I can charm my way past most receptionists, but this one looked like they stuffed Clint Eastwood into a wool suit and wig. She was maybe six hundred years old. None of them good years.

  She scowled at me like I was something the dog rolled in and demanded to see my I.D. I fished out a set that said I was “Jeffrey Book, Feng Shui Consultant.” I batted my lashes at her and said that Mr. Bishop was thinking about redesigning his office and I was here to help him balance the energies to encourage a synergistic flow.

  The receptionist—who had the improbable name of Mrs. Daisy—gave me a look that I was sure could cause some kind of liver damage. She called Mr. Bishop and looked pained when she found out I was expected. Her nails, as long and dark as a wicked witch’s should be, tapped some keys, and a temporary I.D. came out of the printer. As I peeled off the back and pasted it to my shirt, two large security types came and flanked me.

  I let Frick and Frack escort me to the elevator. They pushed all the buttons. They rode with me to the thirty-ninth floor. They didn’t say a word.

  Fine with me. Chris Tillman would be throwing the first pitch and the crowd at Oriole Park at Camden Yards would be yelling instead of me. I wasn’t feeling chatty.

  As we soared upward I thought about Myron Bishop.

  He was, by everyone’s estimation, a very bad man.

  Brilliant, sure. Borderline supergenius, with more biotech patents on file than I’ve had hot dinners. His company, Accelerator Biologics, was at the absolutely bleeding edge of performance-enhancement science. And we’re not talking about a new kind of Viagra. Bishop and his mad scientists were building better soldiers and better athletes. No human growth hormones or anabolic steroids. Nothing that crude. He was using transgenic science to rebuild the DNA so the right genes code for lean-mass builders, increase the natural β2-adrenergic receptor agonists, and new ways for the body to self-regulate testosterone so that the subjects were real manly men capable of greater feats of strength, speed and endurance but without having their nuts shrink to acorns or their brains turn to mush. In theory.

  He started out doing this way off the radar for sports teams and got caught. That led to six years of litigation and rulebook burning to decide if genetic manipulation was covered under the standard doping rules. It wasn’t. It is now.

  By the time the court case was settled, Bishop had sold his interest in sports and was inking contracts with the military.

  Not our military, though.

  He was taking obscene amounts of money from Russia, from China, from North Korea, from Iran, and from a bunch of little countries who had more money than ethics.

  The result? A new breed of super soldier.

  Not exactly on a par with Captain America but pretty damn tough. On average, thirty percent more muscle density, fifteen percent greater potential for speed. Enhanced reaction time. Amped-up wound-repair system.

  My guys in Echo Team had tussled with some of these jokers and very nearly had our asses handed to us. The whole “subdue and restrain” thing had to get tossed out the window. Instead we had to up the game on them in ugly ways that left a lot of hair on the walls.

  Bishop and his company came under a lot of fire. We froze his accounts, had him audited, hacked his email, tapped his phone, and hauled him in front of subcommittees and judges.

  We did that a lot, with enthusiasm.

  He skated every goddamn time.

  Apparently the thing he’s smartest about is planning ahead. Before he went into the super-soldier business he hired enough lawyers to sink the Titanic. They were able to establish a lack of illegality because none of the customers in any of the named countries were in any way attached to the military nor were they associated with terrorist organizations. What Bishop had done, you see, was break the research into pieces and sell those pieces to medical researchers, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies whose primary customers were kids and the elderly.

  Fucker used a variation on the nuns-and-orphans gambit.

  His lawyers put the burden on our State Department lawyers to prove that any single action Bishop took or sale he made could, in any way, be construed as a terrorist act. No, they could not. Could anything he did be construed as actions taken against the national security of the United States? No. Not really, because each single action was carefully tied to a humanitarian target market. The designer β2-adrenergic receptor agonists, for example, were only sold to hospitals and labs researching asthma and pulmonary disorders.

  So, no one was able to prove within reasonable doubt that Bishop was anything more than a good businessman whose love of humanity transcended national borders and political agendas. Bishop’s PR people tried the government in the court of public opinion, succeeding in painting us as the bad guys and him as a saint. There was even a picture on the cover of Time that showed him handing a puppy to sick kids in a rural Chinese hospital. The kids were smiling and cute, the puppy was adorable, and Bishop contrived to look like fucking Santa Claus.

  Good place to pause and vomit.

  Here’s the truth that we knew but couldn’t prove. Whereas the science was apparently innocent when viewed piecemeal, when combined those bits added up to biotech that could—and indeed did—create superior soldiers with significant physical enhancement.

  That’s who I was going to meet.

  I’d met him before. Outside of a federal courthouse once. And again at one of his labs we raided. That raid, by the way, was based on bad intel. We busted the place up pretty good, and he handed us our collective asses in court to the tune of eleven million for repairs and a variety of nebulous damages.

  When I saw him a third time at a sidewalk café in New Orleans where I knew he’d be, I had Top and Bunny with me, and they kept Bishop’s bodyguards entertained while we had a chat. Over coffee and some very nice pastries I told him that we were, at that moment, in the process of dismantling the labs of several of his clients. It was a global, coordinated hit. Very illegal, very off the radar, and very well coordinated. Our boys plus some day-pla
yers from Mossad, Barrier in the U.K., the Belgian Pathfinders, an Austrian Jagdkommando team, and even Iceland’s Víkingasveitin. Bunch of others. We didn’t target the hospitals or civilian research labs, but we’d spent two years making a hit list of covert labs that were actually making super soldiers for sale to private contractors like Blackwater and Blue Diamond.

  There was not one shred of actionable evidence to link Bishop to these labs, though everybody knew he was involved. He was just too good with burning any bridges that led to him. The best we could do was cut his client list by at least half—call it a thirty-billion-dollar annual loss—and maybe put the fear of God into the other half.

  I had the job of making sure that Bishop didn’t take any calls while this was happening. I wasn’t in the field because I was healing from some injuries I’d taken on a gig. This was not long after I got shot during the Majestic Black Book affair.

  So, it was a couple of guys sitting at a table drinking café-au-lait and eating beignets while half of Bishop’s empire burned.

  I made sure that we were photographed at that table. That photo was leaked to the right people.

  Were we setting him up as the guy who sold out his own people to the Feds?

  Fuck yeah, we were.

  It was less than four hours before he started getting death threats.

  Over the next few months there were sixteen separate attempts to assassinate him. His car was blown up—he wasn’t in it, alas. One of his lawyers went to meet Jesus, so we all put it in the win column. Couple of snipers took shots at him, and for a fun five minutes we thought Bishop was down, but the wily bastard actually had doubles. Not clones or anything that cool. Just actors hired to impersonate him and, as it turned out, die for him. Someone torched his house, and someone else mailed him a birthday card filled with anthrax.

  None of it got anywhere near Bishop.

  His empire was crumbling, but he still had enough money to hire actual loyalty from some of his super soldiers.

  Which brings us to why I’m not drinking cold beer and watching the Orioles spank the Phillies.