3
Since I’d been expecting to hear about a mission-impossible tasking, the words made no sense. I stood up so fast the chair I was in fell over.
She said, “It’s a letter saying they no longer need our services.”
I took it and saw professional letterhead, wondering what intelligence egghead had created it. I read Dear sir, While we hold your services in the utmost regard, we won’t be requiring your assistance in the foreseeable future. . . .
The rest was a bunch of legalese BS about settling accounts and turning in any outstanding equipment. It was signed Kurt Hale, President.
What the hell?
Jennifer said, “They can’t fire us. We aren’t even in the government.”
I said nothing, only staring at the official piece of paper that would destroy my life. I knew I’d gone a little overboard on our last mission, but it had turned out pretty damn good. In fact, better than good. If I hadn’t gone off the reservation, tens of thousands of people would have died. Knuckles had warned me of the repercussions, but I never thought it would come to pass. I mean, surely results mattered. Didn’t they?
She said, “Pike?”
Brought out of my reverie, I said, “I don’t know, but Knuckles will.”
I knew he was in North Carolina running our unit’s Assessment and Selection, so he would be away from the flagpole and able to talk. Although it sort of pissed me off that he hadn’t called to warn me in the first place. He was still on active duty and tied into the goings-on of the unit we called the Taskforce.
An unorthodox command so far off the books it didn’t even have an official name, it routinely flouted the law to protect civilian lives—and did so successfully. There were many, many souls walking the streets unwitting of how close they had come to seeing the afterlife. Firing me for exceeding the limits of operational risk was like handing out speeding tickets at Daytona. At least that was my opinion.
I pulled up Knuckles on speed dial and it connected on the third ring. “Hey, Pike, what’s up?”
“You got a minute?”
“Yeah, just finished the final. Candidate is a bolo. He’s headed back to the hole. I think he’ll jack it in shortly.” Meaning someone had just failed to solve the problem and was being transported back to the “resistance training laboratory” for more interrogation. Knuckles thought the candidate would quit instead of starting over.
I said, “Call me back secure.”
He did so, saying, “What’s so top secret? You and Koko on the rocks?”
“What’s going on with Colonel Hale?”
“Huh? He’s got some shit sandwich on his plate. How’d you hear about it?”
That meant nothing. Kurt Hale always had a shit sandwich on his plate.
“Tell me you didn’t know.”
“Pike, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I got a letter saying Grolier Recovery Services has been fired.”
I heard nothing for a moment, then, “You’re kidding me. They pulled the trigger?”
“You knew?”
He heard the anger coming through and said, “No, no. I told you what was happening after that last mission. The Oversight Council was skittish at how you’d gone on the warpath. They were kicking around letting you go. You’re the one who said Kurt vouched for you. You knew more than me six months ago. Last I heard, you were on probation.”
The Oversight Council was our approval authority. Since we were outside the traditional military or intelligence architecture, we had our own unique command structure. Composed of about a dozen men in the upper echelons of the government, including the president, it dictated Taskforce actions. I’d ignored their orders on our last mission, and now I was apparently paying the price—even though the refusal had ended up preventing a weapon of mass destruction from slaughtering thousands.
“How did you not know this was coming?”
“Pike, I’ve been out here for a month, working eighteen-hour days. I don’t track what the brass is thinking. If I had known it was coming, I would have called.”
I said nothing, the ramifications settling in my stomach like spoiled milk. He had been kept in the dark, which meant the letter was real. They’d known he’d fight it, and so they’d just cut him out. Something that was very easy to do in our cellular, top secret world. The letter wasn’t a sick joke, and I was losing the reason I existed. The thing that made me whole.
He said, “You still there?”
“Yeah. . . . Knuckles, what the hell am I going to do?”
Knuckles heard the pain in my voice and understood why. He lived for the missions the same way I did. I’d been his team leader when I was on active duty, and he’d helped pull me through a traumatic event after I’d left. He’d been the first to sign on as our notional “employee” for the experiment of a civilian company of Operators working inside the Taskforce. The first to embrace Jennifer—a female—as an operational member when everyone else in our testosterone-driven organization wanted to give her the boot without even seeing if she was capable. And the first to ask me to kill the men who’d murdered his teammate on our last mission. The actions that had gotten me fired.
He said, “Pike, I won’t let them erase the database. I’ll keep the documents, leases, contracts, and all that other stuff.”
Meaning, I could be fired on paper, but the enormous cover architecture we’d painstakingly built with Grolier Recovery Services would remain on a shelf, ready to be dusted off. If those linkages were deleted, we’d be done forever. He was telling me what I needed to hear: The Oversight Council could say what it wanted, but the men who mattered most understood and would protect me.
It meant a lot, but in the end, I wasn’t sure he had the power. The commander would dictate that.
I said, “I’m calling Kurt. See what’s up.”
Colonel Kurt Hale and I had been through more than one scrape together, and—if he weren’t the commander—I would consider him a friend. Hell, he was a friend. But he also had to make judgments in the best interest of the Taskforce—not for any single Operator—and if the Oversight Council had spoken, there was nothing he could do.
Knuckles said, “Don’t call him today. Let it sit. He’s way too busy right now, and you won’t get a chance to make your case.”
“Why? What’s going on? Why’s this shit sandwich any worse than our usual stew?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen some reports, but I’m not sure what it is beyond the fact that everyone inside the Beltway is starting to spin out of control.”
“A threat? Something against the homeland?”
“No, nothing like that. Apparently, somebody’s kid or nephew got killed. A military guy that was related to someone on the House Armed Services Committee. Then somebody else’s kid came up missing.”
“Afghanistan?”
“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess . . . the reports don’t say. I’m just reading between the lines.”
“Why would that have any Taskforce fingerprints? The Armed Services Committee’s not even read onto the program.”
“He’s not, but the vice president is. The kid that’s missing is his son.”