by Alex Howell
“But it’s rewarding, no? Like, why did you leave in the first place? For us, right?”
“For your mother and you, yes. I left so that I could set you guys up with something that I was very good at.”
“OK, well, like… I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but we’ll both be gone. Is there anything holding you back?”
Boy, she’s really going to just put it all out there, huh? I suppose there’s something to be said for the brutal honesty, but… wow.
“No,” Mason said. “But I’m an old fart, anyways. I can barely keep up with you on your runs. You think that means I could handle some of the missions I used to face?”
“You’re not even in your forties.”
“Soon enough.”
“You’re not an old fart until you’re forty.”
“Then I’m a budding one.”
Clara’s eyes went wide before she laughed. Even Mason drew a weak smile from what he had said. Any humor in that moment was invaluable.
“I”m just saying, dad, you don’t have to. We both know we can’t make the other do what they don’t want to. But I know you, you’re not satisfied going back to that insurance job. It bores you and feels beneath you.”
“Eh.”
She’s right… but that’s not why I’m still there.
“Dad.”
The deadpan delivery of his name and her expression told Mason that he might be able to fool international diplomats and other heads of state with his training, but there was absolutely, positively no way that he was ever going to fool Clara with anything. She knew him too well, and he was a much worse liar around her than he was around state and national officials.
“I could use a job that doesn’t have me sitting on my butt all day,” Mason confessed. “But there are a whole host of them outside the mil—”
“Exactly. I mean, I don’t mean to sound weird or anything, but grandpa was in the Army, right?”
“For a stint, not for as long as I was in the SEALs, but yeah.”
“Well,” she said, summoning some sort of courage just as the boxing gym came into view. “Maybe it’s in your blood to be a fighter. A soldier.”
Interesting way of putting it.
And perhaps not entirely wrong.
Although Mason’s time in the SEALs and black ops had lasted less than a decade, he couldn’t help but wonder just how true that statement was. Clara was far from the first person to make such an audacious claim about Mason, and though hearing it from his own daughter was perhaps a bit harsher than he had hoped to hear, there was definitely truth to it. It also didn’t help the cause against the case that, whenever he had served, he received numerous compliments for his “soldier instincts”, a sort of freelance mechanism that made him a deadly shot in battle and difficult to handle from the enemy’s perspective.
And, admittedly, sometimes his leaders’ perspectives.
The more he thought about it, the more he began to realize it went a little bit beyond “somewhat true” or “a little true”. It just seemed true, plain and simple. He was born to be a soldier, he had served as a soldier, and his family still lived because of his soldier blood.
But there was just one problem with that, one thing that Mason couldn’t shake.
If it was in his father’s blood… if it was in his grandfather’s blood… if it was in his blood… then that meant…
“I guess you got a little bit of it too, you know,” Mason said as the car parked itself. “I’m not especially happy to say that, but that seems to be the logical conclusion of this.”
“Me?” Clara said, although she barely sounded surprised at all, and what little surprise was evident seemed more directed at the fact that Mason had actually said such a thing than at the substance of what was said.
“I mean, if we’re all soldiers, all the Walkers, then maybe you are too, Clara,” he said.
Having said it, though, gave him a sense of trouble. He had to deflect it, had to get rid of it somehow. So he went for the one thing that he did poorly but might just work well enough here.
“I mean, you’re almost a better shot than I am.”
“Really?” she said, delight in her voice.
And, finish.
“Almost,” he emphasized.
Naturally, the competitive spirit of Clara got the best of her as she yapped about how she was going to get some good strikes in on him today. She made comments about how the old man’s reflexes had faded to the point that the most he could do was curl up in the fetal position, comments that actually got Mason to laugh. As it turned out, he was right. Humor had pulled him out of the situation.
He just hadn’t anticipated that it would be his own sense of humor.
Nor would he anticipate what those words would come to mean in the days ahead.
2
A few hours later, with Clara having left for the evening to spend some time with her friends, Mason sat in his house.
But it wasn’t just any place in his house. It wasn’t in his bedroom, where he retreated with the door open frequently so Clara could bug him if need be. It wasn’t in his living room, where he liked to mindlessly pass the time by watching sports, having a beer, and otherwise letting his mind go into a vegetative state. It wasn’t in his office, where he did insurance work that he hadn’t finished at the office—work that, yes, he had to admit, fulfilled him about as much as a single kernel of popcorn satisfied the caloric needs of a man of his size.
Instead, he was downstairs in his armory.
Notably, the one place that had not gotten ransacked during the robbery all those weeks ago. Perhaps General Jones had figured that Mason would need the weapons during the mission, or perhaps he was smart enough to know that this place had more technology than any other part of the house, including self-defense weapons.
Or, perhaps, he had simply protected the place so well that not even Navy SEALs had been able to break into the room and get inside.
Nevertheless, Mason found himself sitting in a chair, staring at the screen on which, just weeks ago, he’d found himself staring at a feed of his daughter, tied up, mouth gagged, as an “anonymous” computerized voice had called him, giving him instructions he had to fulfill to keep Clara alive. The very memory filled him with both rage and disappointment; rage that he had not killed the general for what he’d done to Clara, and disappointment both that General Jones would have allowed the pursuit of power and money to corrupt him so easily and that he had failed to account for his daughter’s safety during such a critical time in her life. He wanted to believe that the justice system would give General Jones the punishment he deserved, but the way the court systems worked in America… Mason could not let his rage fall to the side so easily.
Still, once that disappointment and rage subsided, he became more contemplative, pondering the conversation from earlier and the direct words Clara had spoken to him.
He really never had left the Navy SEAL life behind, although he had certainly left the most dangerous part behind. The missions, the seemingly impossible ones, the ones in which he had to rescue the families of the heads of states, the ones in which the odds seemed impossible… those he had quit, swearing that he’d never go through with them again. And aside from the one a few months ago, he’d held true to his word. Aside from having to rescue his daughter, the most dangerous thing Mason had done since getting out of the teams was probably running without a headlamp in the morning.
But all of the lessons that he had learned? All of the skills that he had acquired? All of the traits that had started as learned and eventually became instinctive?
Those remained, those had never gone away. It might take a few minutes to shake off the rust and bring them back to instinct, but they weren’t really hiding, they were more like dormant. It would only take a week or so of serious training, if that, for Mason to get back to where he needed to be.
As if making a point of what he had thought, Mason couldn’t help but glance around the room
and realize just how much this very house had been upgraded since he had left. He had installed a much stronger security system, one that pointed a gun at anyone that entered and demanded identification if Mason wasn’t in the house himself. He had other various devices and contraptions in place, such as the one that put the house on lockdown if the sound of a bullet was heard from anywhere within a quarter-mile range. He hadn’t had such features when he initially left the SEALs; would he have added such equipment if he could have just snapped his fingers and forgotten everything he learned in the SEALs?
It might have seemed like a dash of paranoia, but it wasn’t insane. Not if it helped protect Clara. Too bad Stanford won’t let me put such a thing in. Would do a lot of good for her and her roommate.
Guess she might really have to prove she’s learned the lessons well.
Hopefully not. Palo Alto seems safe enough, but… is there a such thing as “safe enough?”
Oh, stop it. She’s a grown woman. She’ll be fine.
Ironically, despite all of the upgrades he’d given his house, the one thing he still struggled with, the one aspect of having a soldier’s blood that he had not wrapped his mind around, had everything to do with what was not inside him but external to him—namely, the new technology that soldiers used. It wasn’t so much that he hadn’t heard of it before—automatic vehicles, nanomachines to improve one’s health and cognitive focus, ammo-free weaponry—but more just thinking of how to use it. Automatic vehicles, for instance, were great for the general populace who didn’t mind getting tracked.
But for a soldier who needed the freedom to improvise? There was a reason, Mason knew, that he had gone to a vehicle he could drive when he had to go to New York, and it wasn’t just so he could avoid being tracked in the vehicle, although that certainly played a large part.
The truth was, though, that all of this technology was just window dressing. What really mattered was that he had the soldier’s mentality. He was fearless, willing to kill, and willing to sacrifice himself if and when the time came. And while the day might come where technology could literally mind-control soldiers, Mason did not see such a day coming any time soon; and if it did, fine. He still had his soldier’s blood and his improvisational skills.
There was just one problem with the idea of returning to the teams.
Every time he thought about going back, he thought about Bree’s final words and how he had sworn to raise Clara and be a good father. While it might have been true that his job raising her would be a hell of a lot less hands on in just a few days, the last thing he wanted was for him to go back into combat and then die on the first mission, leaving an 18-year-old girl all by herself to fend for the world, to have to walk through her graduation alone, to have to do her own wedding without either parent…
Maybe teaching her and disciplining her would be done. But he wanted to be there for her through all of the life events. If Bree could not be, then Mason would have to be. The training could not dive into the realm of the actual; there had to be that boundary, much like church and state.
Still…
“Damnit,” Mason said rather loudly, slamming his hands on the desk, not quite hard enough or strongly enough to cause damage, but certainly enough to rattle some of the objects on there.
It seemed like he had to choose between two options—the safe route of continuing to work for an insurance company where he felt so out of place, or the extraordinarily dangerous route of returning to the only line of work he knew he was good at.
Sometimes I wish I was smart enough to justify Stanford taking Clara on. She certainly didn’t get her brains from me. If she did, this wouldn’t be a question.
He reclined in his chair for several minutes, just hoping that, like magic, the answer would come to him. But if magic wasn’t real before, it sure wasn’t about to be now.
Could really use some of those mind-control nanomachines right now.
What does it say that your own daughter wants you to get back into the battle? She wouldn’t have said that without knowing the risks, no? She’s clearly not stupid.
He sighed. He knew that Clara would not have said something like that if she didn’t want Mason to go. The Walkers were many things, but a family that hid their feelings about battle and war were not one of them.
He grabbed his phone and stared at it for what seemed like a good hour, as if Clara might suddenly walk in the house and give Mason a reason to pull himself from his thoughts. Odds were she wasn’t; he knew they were all going to a house party where everyone would spend the night, and though he had of course vetted everyone at the party and the host’s parents, he couldn’t help but worry. It was his paternal duty to do so.
It’s my soldier’s… yes, my soldier’s duty to do so.
Eventually, though, the truth came to him.
But that didn’t mean that Mason liked it one bit. He certainly didn’t think he could ever embrace it fully.
Guess I’ll see what good this nearly-forty-year-old fart can do when he’s all alone.
He unlocked his phone, went to the names that began with an “L,” and found the name he was looking for. He hovered his finger over the name, hesitating to call, and then pressed down before he could change his mind. He felt a tinge of nervousness rush through his body, realizing that what he was doing was something he could not turn his back on until he physically could not face forward for his tasks. He had chosen his path, and there was no going back. He had left once contractually; this was a commitment of a new kind.
Although really, this is also a chance to build back up the necessary network. Remember how much it sucked having to rely on basically just Luke and Tessa? And then how Tessa got brainwashed? And how you had to fake being in a relationship with Tessa to keep her around as you did?
Might be good to have some backup.
Assuming you would ever need such backup again, which you better not.
“Mason, how’s it going?”
And here we go.
“Luke, I’m doing good,” Mason said. “Spending the last few days relaxing as best as I can before I take Clara to Stanford.”
“No kidding, huh?” Luke said. “Your daughter’s gonna be the next CEO of Google?”
“That’d be the dream,” Mason said, mostly just playing along with the small talk than actually engaged in it. “Listen, Luke, remember that deal you told me about shortly after everything went down with Jones? The thing that I so quickly slapped away and told you to never mention again?”
“Onyx?”
Onyx.
It was admittedly a great word, one that Mason loved, but as soon as Luke had proposed the suggestion to him, it was as if he had recaptured Clara all over again. In Luke’s defense, he had merely said it was available, not something that he would ever have to take, but it had come too soon. Mason had, in more crass language, told him to bug off and never talk to him about it again.
But then Clara just had to make the comment about having the blood of a soldier, and next thing you know, Mason found himself on the phone with his old direct supervisor in the SEALs, with the man who could give him a job he was much better at and would find much more rewarding than insurance.
Even if there was a healthy degree of self-loathing and self-disgust at himself for coming back for more. Might as well turn to it instead of trying to run from it all this time.
“Yeah, that,” Mason grumbled. “Listen, with Clara going off, I don’t give a crap about sticking with insurance. I only know one thing that I’m good at, and that’s working in special ops. You’d said Onyx could help me do that. So, if that’s the case and you guys have some nice connections I can use next time a potential third World War happens… well, needless to say, I would, well, I would be honored to take it.”
He’d almost said “happy”, but that felt too false, too blissful and naive a word to describe how Mason truly felt about going back into such a field. There wasn’t anything happy about killing people.
“It’s true, Mason, that’s what Onyx is,” he said. “Let me remind you of the background, given how, fairly enough, you refused to hear any of it before. Onyx is a contracting team, run by me, made up of former trusted SEALs and other special ops personnel who have highly specific skills and work on highly unusual cases. We’re partnered up with the US government and work directly with the White House, with me as the liaison. It’s our way of being official without actually being official.”
Left unsaid, because Mason remembered quite well from the previous conversation, was how Luke had carefully vetted everyone and anyone not just for current dissent and possible betrayal, but also potential future such acts. He evaluated their personalities, their behaviors, their history, and as much as a man could possibly grasp. He fed it into some sort of computer system that suggested the likelihood of betrayal by a man or woman and used it to keep an eye on certain individuals. Luke had warned that there was no such thing as a foolproof system—that should anyone betray them, they would have taken advantage of a blind spot the system and he had—but it was as good as it got.
After the last run with General Jones, Mason could ill afford to let anyone he thought he trusted to get an upper hand. He hated to admit it, but, besides Clara, there wasn’t anyone that he really trusted as much as he used to. Even Luke was kept just a little bit further away, although he was probably the man Mason trusted most outside of Clara.
That was only relatively speaking, though.
“Because we’re contractors and not SEALs or any other black ops group, we don’t technically have as much security clearance… but, in reality, it just means we can escape the politics and red tape that encumbers the other group. It goes without saying this is a trade I’m willing to make.”
“As am I,” Mason grunted, knowing all too well just had what set off the prior events—and it was nothing to do with security clearance and everything to do with politics, power, personal gain, and anything else that would make a true soldier disgusted.
