The Last Good Man

by Linda Nagata

  The other four members of the QRF—Felice Farr, Nasir Peters, Ted Vargas, and Nate Gilbert—are in a second van.

  It’s a twenty-minute drive from the ReqOps campus to a private airfield. When they get there, no one barks orders. All are experienced; they know what they’re doing and they don’t need instruction. Moving quickly, quietly, they board a chartered business jet that will fly them in stages to Cyprus.

  Lincoln boards last. He will not be going with them but wants this chance for a few final words. There will, of course, be continuous communication throughout the mission, but it’s his belief, his experience, that it is easier to forge a deeper connection, a more unified purpose, when words are spoken in real time, face to face.

  The team works quickly to stow their gear in cargo closets and in overhead bins while Lincoln waits at the head of the aisle.

  The idea of organizing a quick reaction force was born out of a spirited discussion in a bar at a conference in DC. Lincoln can’t remember who first proposed it. It might have been Chris or True. Hell, it could have been him. He’d had a few drinks. He remembers sketching out an organizational structure on the screen of his tablet, outlining the necessary equipment, the number of personnel, the potential market, and then following that with a rough and dirty budget calculation to show it could never be profitable.

  But all three of them grew up in a tradition of service—they wanted to do it—so they went ahead anyway and the team has done good work. They’ve saved lives. That matters.

  The bitter ambivalence Lincoln feels is because he has to stay behind. His burn injuries and his hand make him a weaker man than he used to be, and his bionic eye does not come close to replicating his natural vision. It lets him see only in gray scale, a monochrome world on his left that blends into a color spectrum where his good eye takes over. And it’s a low-resolution interface—enough to distinguish objects on his left but not to see them clearly. Despite his experience, he would be a liability on this mission.

  So instead of going himself, he is sending his soldiers. Enabling them, encouraging them to take on a potentially deadly task without any authority behind them, just their own will to do it.

  More than any of the rest, Lincoln is aware that Requisite Operations is challenging a century-old tradition of national authority in which it is the duty of the state to protect its citizens. That tradition is collapsing in a world of failed states and ungoverned territories. When legitimate governments cannot or dare not intervene to protect the welfare of their citizens, or when no legitimate government exists, then hiring a private military company—a company of mercenaries—becomes the only realistic option for corporations, NGCs, or individuals who find themselves in trouble.

  Someone’s got to do the dirty work.

  Lincoln waits for the team to settle, his prosthetic fingers tapping restlessly, thumb to index, middle, ring, and pinkie. It’s a nervous habit. No predicting the direction events will take. But Chris is an excellent commander and Lincoln will follow virtually, offering any assistance he can.

  Seat belts click. The rustling subsides. Nine faces look up at him, alert, expectant. They know what’s at stake, but Lincoln wants to hammer it home. In his raspy voice he impresses upon them: “The first goal of this mission is to extract Fatima Atwan and return her to her home and family. But the lives of four other hostages also depend on your actions. I want every one of them extracted.”

  This earns him a low chorus of yes, sirs, serious faces all around.

  He nods to acknowledge this and continues. “The mission plan you’ve been given is preliminary. Be assured we will continue to surveil the site and gather the intel needed to carry this off. As you are aware, the situation is live and evolving. Don’t expect a final go/no-go determination until you are present in the region.” He senses the copilot behind him, and the passing seconds. They cannot risk any delay. “Good luck,” he tells them. “Make us proud.”

  Then he turns and descends the stairs.

  In the Remains of the Caliphate

  The western TEZ is guarded, though not by a central authority. It’s the local militias that hold power. The borders between their domains are fluid as they skirmish over the right to collect taxes and tolls. But it’s not all treasonous deals and bloody death. The checkpoint guards, especially, are an open-minded crew, more inclined to grant passage than to ask questions, so long as the requested fee is paid.

  In their defense, it’s hard to tell an enemy from a friend.

  A friend today might be an enemy tomorrow.

  Besides, it’s no easy thing to ask questions amid the Babel of languages in the TEZ. Foreigners are everywhere, wandering the shattered remains of the Caliphate, still looking for God or looking for trouble or just looking for a way out. The reasons they are here don’t matter to ReqOps’ mission, but their presence makes it easier for the teams to blend in.

  True is part of Gold Team. They’ve been assigned to enter the TEZ from the west, all of them packed into a battered taxi with underpowered air conditioning. They bump and rattle through an overnight journey across the poisoned remains of Syria, on a road that should have been straight but instead snakes around bomb craters. On the road’s shoulders is the detritus of years of conflict: burned and twisted remnants of vehicles, many of them technicals—pickup trucks converted to carry machine guns or missile launchers. Civilian cars, too, that might have belonged to families fleeing the horrors of war, but who can say? Some of the wrecks are partly buried in sand and grit. Others look like they burned last night. That’s an illusion, True knows. A deceptive effect of the taxi’s headlights. There hasn’t been military action on this road for at least three weeks.

  The only signs of life are occasional headlights blasting up the highway out of the east.

  As they near the last junction before Tadmur, they come upon a ruined tank, and after that another, and another. Fourteen in all, many blown apart, all blackened by fire—the sordid remnants of a hired army that tried to enter the conflict two years before, only to be taken apart by aerial bombardment. The sight is not a surprise. True has seen the pictures. But in the night, glimpsed on the periphery of the headlights, those dead tanks bring home the hubris of the PMC that fielded them. It’s never been made clear who hired the mercenary army or why. Afterward the company evaporated, the executives became fugitives, and the surviving staff scattered to the four winds.

  Requisite Operations is a mercenary company too, though it’s not part of their business plan to mount a brazen invasion on the back of a billion dollars of surplus military equipment. But if they were going to do it, True would make damn sure they had a competent air force in play.

  A few more kilometers, and a faint, rosy glow paints the eastern horizon, visible past the swaying heads and shoulders of the men in the front bench seat. True is in the back of the taxi, braced between Felice and Juliet. It’s hot, close, and cramped, and the seat is doing her ass no favors. She’s looking forward to making her escape. So it’s a relief to finally glimpse the lights of their destination shining against the brightening dawn: the war-scarred town of Tadmur.

  Their regional contractor, Khalid Naim, is driving the taxi. He’s a lean, lightly built young man, dressed in a neat button-down shirt and brown slacks, adept at playing the role of a world-weary intellectual. Early on, he had remarked with a shrug, “Being a taxi driver here is like having a front seat to observe humanity’s long fall.”

  But his is a kind of techno-aggressive weariness. Once they reached the highway, he pulled a battered AR visor from under the dash—not a high-end MARC, just an inexpensive AltWrld model, a piece of equipment even a taxi driver could plausibly afford. He donned the ugly eyeglasses with a grin. All AR visors, with their screen offset four centimeters from the user’s eyes, are notorious for their geek mad-scientist vibe. “It’ll never get me a girlfriend,” Khalid explained. “But all the truck drivers in the TEZ use AR. They made an app that highlights the wrecks, the bomb craters, the pot
holes. It’s a community project.”

  Rohan Valeski sits next to Khalid, squeezed into the middle of the front seat. He too wears civilian attire, though his appearance is not as neat. His collar is dusty and sweat-stained, and his thick ginger beard is untrimmed. He wears a MARC visor—it’s black-market gear here and a status symbol. In contrast, his weapon is a Fortuna 762 assault rifle, which he holds in the crook of his arm, muzzle pointed at the roof. A Fortuna is a cheap firearm, common in the region, nothing that will draw notice.

  Jameson Adams carries a Fortuna too. He sits beside the window. Every time the taxi sways, the Fortuna’s muzzle taps against the window glass. Jameson is tall, broad, and intimidating. He’s chosen to dress like a local tough, utility vest over a loose tunic and brown combat trousers that are Russian in origin. His beard is trimmed into a neat goatee, black against his black skin. He too wears a MARC. From her seat in the back, True can glimpse the flickers of his light-amplified view of the road. For men, both the technology and the weapons are standard.

  The women, confined to the back seat, play a different role. All three are wrapped up in abayas, the traditional black robes worn outside the home by many Muslim women in this part of the world, with hijabs to cover their heads. In the ultra-conservative TEZ this is expected and will get no questions. None of them wear MARCs or TINSLs, nor do they carry any visible weapons, because women should be protected from such things.

  But—as women do—they’ve stowed a few essentials out of sight. True has her subcompact 9 mm in a shoulder holster, a thin blade under her sleeve, and in her pocket, a Taser.

  Red Team is driving in from the south. They are all men: Chris, Nasir, Ted, and Nate. Wandering troublemakers. Nothing unusual. Not here.

  ~~~

  The taxi reaches Tadmur just as dawn’s light infiltrates the town. Khalid sheds his AltWrld visor, stashing it under the dash. “It’s not polite to wear a visor in town,” he explains. “It’s tough-guy gear. Marks you as a soldier—for hire, or already in someone’s private army.”

  They see only a few people about, walking, or riding bikes. Khalid drives slowly anyway, past walls that shelter family compounds, then two-and three-story apartment buildings, closely spaced, with black windows and undecorated faces. They pass a block of ruined buildings: one bombed-out shell still standing, the rest collapsed into rubble. Then they roll into a livelier neighborhood of recently rebuilt houses, two and three stories high, most surrounded by concrete walls enclosing protected yards, the dark-green fronds of date palms just visible over the tops.

  Here the streets are busy. Small pickup trucks and taxis scoot past, dodging one another and the donkey carts, the goats, the people. Skeletal dogs with crooked backs skulk in the sparse shadows, keeping away from the men who stand about in small groups, three and four together, the smoke from their cigarettes reflecting the soft dawn light. Most are dressed in loose-fitting sand-colored garments. Some wear belted robes. All carry weapons. They don’t seem to have any pressing business.

  True doesn’t see nearly so many women. The ones in the streets move purposefully, at a fast pace, eyes down. They all wear the hijab and like the men, they keep to groups. Safety in numbers.

  True keeps her eyes down too, shifting her gaze surreptitiously to take in the sights and get a feel for the town. Even this early, the air blowing through the taxi’s vents smells of diesel exhaust, dust, and decaying things.

  “Look to the left,” Khalid says. “See the house at the end? With the photovoltaic roof? That’s our target.”

  True turns to look down a street that runs for a block before ending at a cross street. Situated on that cross street is a walled compound with a rust-colored, paneled steel gate flanked by young date palms only seven or eight feet high. Beyond the wall, a glassy roof of flat photovoltaic tiles glistens in the early light.

  “Can’t wait,” Felice growls between gritted teeth.

  On the flight over they had learned time ran out for one of the hostages. A beetle, secreted beneath the anti-surveillance canopy that covers the courtyard, emerged with video of Noël Poulin’s brutal ritual execution.

  True thought the execution meant Hussam was ready to move on to a new safe house; she expected him to be gone even before they landed in Cyprus. She was sure the mission would be delayed and eventually scrubbed.

  But Hussam has not left the house in Tadmur. Not yet.

  Now that they are here, they need him to stay just one more night.

  She lowers her gaze, crosses her fingers. “I hope Hussam’s comfortable in that house,” she says. “Reluctant to leave. Feeling a little lazy, maybe.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama,” Rohan says in a rough undertone without turning around. “We’ve got him.”

  “Truth,” Juliet affirms. “Hussam’s had his fun. Tonight we have ours.”

  Jameson’s laugh is soft, but deep and reverberant. “Roger that shit.”

  “Amen,” Felice adds.

  True raises her gaze again, in time to see the rearview mirror capture Khalid’s slight, approving smile. His reflected gaze meets hers. “It’s getting real,” he says, before looking back to the dusty street. “I can’t fucking wait to ship that bastard out of here.”

  Khalid did six years of US Army service, first in the infantry and then in intelligence where his sharp mind and fluency in Arabic earned him steady promotion. Those skills have let him continue to thrive in the two years since, working on his own.

  He steers the cab onto a side street. “The house where Hussam is staying belongs to a war tourist from eastern Europe. Real prick. But I didn’t figure out that Hussam had rolled in until the call came from ReqOps and I went looking.”

  The cab pulls alongside a three-story apartment building. “Home, sweet home,” Khalid says. The building is only a few years old, but bullets have already chewed up its concrete walls. Khalid parks in an alley, just outside a ground-floor apartment’s weathered door. “Everyone around here wanted to believe I sold drugs, maybe weapons. So I left the door unlocked a few times. Now I’m just Khalid the taxi driver.”

  It’s a relief to escape the cramped cab. This late in the year the air is pleasantly cool, and True takes a few seconds to stretch and enjoy it while Rohan and Felice fetch two large, mismatched suitcases from the trunk.

  They follow Khalid inside to find a single room with smooth concrete walls. There is a counter with a sink, a small microwave oven, a double-burner propane stove. Beneath the counter is a case of bottled water. A toilet cubicle is in the back corner. A low, electrical buzz emanates from a ceiling fan as it turns at an easy clip above furnishings limited to a worn rug and a mattress on the floor. The only windows are narrow clerestories at the top of the outer wall; they give no view of the alley and admit only a little light, but they do make it difficult for anyone in the alley to see inside.

  “We clear in here?” Juliet asks in a quiet voice barely audible above the buzzing white noise of the ceiling fan.

  “Just your own equipment,” Khalid assures her.

  True eyes the upper walls and ceiling, looking for a surveillance beetle. It takes her practiced eye only a few seconds to spot it flattened against the concrete in an upper corner of the window. The little device is positioned so that its camera eye can swivel to watch the room or the alley outside.

  “Everything is ready on my end,” Khalid says quietly, tension in his voice. “If you don’t want to wait, if you want to do this in daylight, we can.”

  “Less possibility of civilian casualties if we go late,” True points out as she turns to check the room’s inner corners for other microdevices. “We got any reason to hurry? Any sign of the target bugging out?”

  Jameson looks at her, eyes barely visible past the screen of his visor. “Boss says steady so far.” He grins. “He also says to tell you, don’t worry. The place is clean and he’s watching over you.”

  That’s the QRF’s standard operating procedure. Lincoln watches over everything. He tracks their
positions, monitors the video feeds gathered by their visors, surveils their surroundings, and keeps an eye on relevant regional politics.

  Still, True can’t resist trading a sly look with Juliet, who nods knowingly and says, “I bet every man in this neighborhood whispers the same sweet promises. ‘I’ll watch over you, baby. You don’t need your freedom or your MARC.’”

  “They’re all full of shit,” True says.

  “All of them,” Felice agrees.

  “Ladies, ladies,” Rohan says. “Let me come to your rescue.”

  He drops to his knees beside the suitcases, pops them open. Inside are camouflage uniforms, body armor, disassembled assault rifles, a collection of grenades, tiny surveillance robots, and fist-sized kamikaze robots—both scuttling crabs and hovering copters—armed with small explosive payloads. But it’s the visors Rohan retrieves, three of them, stored in their hard cases. “Plug in quick,” he says, tossing True hers, and distributing the others to Felice and Juliet. “Hurry up, now. I do not want to see you get the shakes.”

  “You’re such an asshole, Valeski,” Felice says, snapping the case open and sliding her MARC over her eyes. “Never change.”

  True puts hers aside long enough to peel off her restricting abaya. Beneath it she wears a second full-coverage layer: a long-sleeved pullover, ankle-length athletic tights, and army boots. She is still hot from the car, so she unhooks her shoulder holster and unstraps the arm sheath holding her knife. With those out of the way, she peels off the pullover, releasing a flush of heat. Her skin is shiny with sweat, sports bra soaked with dark patches.

  “Sexy mama,” Jameson says, sitting with easy grace cross-legged on the mattress. “You look ready to kick ass tonight.”