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.”
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 6
