CRUSH

By Rob Ashcom

A chemistry graduate student makes a discovery that will change the human race. Julia Diaz, working alone in the desert, is ready to reveal the discovery in five days. She hires Daniel Kiernan, hyper-trained National Security Agency dropout, as her bodyguard. Michael Donegan, a wildcard inside the government, is instructed to put the genie back in the bottle - then deep-six the bottle...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rob Ashcom
• Release date: Nov 15, 2009
• ISBN: 9781452403342

Rob Ashcom

* web designer (visual design)* web developer (writing code - HTML/CSS/Javascript/PHP)* writer (short stories, novels, poetry, song lyrics)* musician (accomplished guitarist; average bassist, drummer, singer; mediocre harmonica and keyboard player)* songwriter (somewhere around 75)* recording engineer/mixer (originally trained at Berklee College of Music, short professional career, long amateur career)* teacher (5 years teaching community college English writing)* martial artist (successfully competitive in Tae Kwon Do + years of boxing)* marksman (Is that the right word? I have been shooting skeet [clay pidgeons + shotgun] for 30 years; hunted avidly as a kid [gave it up for ethical reasons], shot a wild boar with a rifle in 2008 [for ethical reasons - invasive species])* finish carpenter/mason (complex cabinetry, stone tiling [slate, granite, marble])

Book preview

CRUSH

by Rob Ashcom

© copyright 2009 Robert Lewis Ashcom, Jr.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

. . . to Angela, Isabella, and Laurel . . . my peeps.

Day 1: Monday

The Ideal Self?! Oh, but I have a strange and fugitive self shut out and howling like a wolf or a coyote under the ideal windows. See his red eyes in the dark? This is the self who is coming into his own.

- D. H. Lawrence

I wash my faith in dirty water

‘Cause it gives my mind a little order

- Seal

:: 1 ::

Daniel Kiernan woke up in his crummy St. Louis office feeling like shit. His head ached and there was a feeling in his stomach like he’d just missed being hit by a bus. Pushing aside the covers, he sat up on the creaky Army surplus cot, stirring the musty canvas smell into the air that always reminded him of Boy Scouts.

East St. Louis squeaked and hummed its way back to life outside the one window, tinted alien orange by the pre-dawn amber of streetlights that never seemed to achieve full illumination. A solid background murmur of traffic radiated from the bypasses and bridges swerving around, over, and away from Kiernan’s district.

Kiernan’s life, his very existence, felt at odds with that world outside the window. There was nothing and no place left unchanged by his 354 days at the National Security Agency. In the three years since, he had worn out four or five disturbingly unfashionable Kevlar-lined jackets and spent far too much time preparing for ninja assassins, snipers, poisoners, crooked cops, the IRS—whatever retaliation schemes that books and TV could suggest and his sketchy knowledge of the Agency couldn’t refute. He’d gotten a gun license in practically every state in the union and carried an awkward chunk of New England steel under his left armpit every day, every year.

Before the NSA, he had been trained as a horseman, swimmer, runner, shooter, and fencer in the modern Pentathlon. Which was weird enough, but cool in an off-beat way. Then the NSA had retooled him for the practical affairs of state as a spy and a killer and Kiernan didn’t want to know any of that shit anymore. He wanted it out of his head . . . which was a joke since it was hard-wired into his brain and body. And the fact that it was serious, and a joke, pretty much covered all the bases.

And then there was the dream—the nightmare really—of his last day at the NSA. The dream that gummed up his thoughts at this moment as he sat on the hard edge of the cot. Dreams should be transient and preferably about sex or flying (or both). This dream felt like a kick in the balls. A giant size cup of Coke poured over his preteen head at the summer fair. A fucking disaster. And it started and ended with Philip Saunders, putatively of the National Security Agency.

: : : : : :

Walking into Phil Saunders’ office was like jumping from 1950 to 2009 fast enough to induce vertigo. The faded beige linoleum floor disappeared and the thick Berber carpeting began. It smelled like long chain polymers and Windex, not the Pine-Sol and stale tobacco smell outside. No visible wires marred the elegance of Phil’s titanium iMac perched on his equally elegant wooden desk. It made Kiernan hopeful. The rest of the building had only made him homesick and depressed.

Tested right up there on the written, Phil said, not looking up from the open folder on his desk. Kiernan sat in one of the upholstered club chairs before the desk, like a student in the principal’s office, and tried to ignore the environmental shock. Then Phil looked up from the desk and gave Kiernan a significant look. You did pretty well at the gym, too.

But tests don’t tell the whole story, Mr. Kiernan, do they? We might glean the truth out of a whole lot of tests, but you just never know. Especially with people. NSA excels at signal intelligence. I excel in gleaning the truth of people.

Phil let the pause grow, and Kiernan knew enough about the rhetorical styles of old men (mostly the guys out front of the Ivy Country Store in denim overalls who kept their semi-annual farming income in their thick leather wallets and were likely to stretch a story out over the available time which neared infinity when translated into the temporal mindset of a boy) to just let the pause hang there and percolate.

We’ll call it training, Phil continued at last, but you’re going to be tested every single day for the next year. Out of that testing, a better man may arise, ready to help protect this country from some truly evil people. And then you might not make it. No promises either way; no bullshit. So you ready to try?

Phil’s handshake was like iron even if his gut pushed open his shirt buttons just above the belt line. Years later, Kiernan could be fairly sure that none of his trainers over the next 354 days were actual employees of the NSA. Somehow it still felt better to assume that Phil had been.

They approached him at a World Cup Pentathlon qualifying tournament held conveniently at the University of Virginia. Graduation was a little over a month away and Kiernan had zero idea what to do. He channeled that anxiety into his events. Shooting targets with the air pistol was like meditation or prayer or some post-coital bliss of detachment. He won. Fencing was an explosive expression of frustration. His nerves were popping like blue arcs on a 50,000 volt stun gun. To score on his faceless opponent he need only unleash that lightning. He was buzzing and tingling with adrenaline when they approached him.

NSA does code-breaking stuff, right? he asked the recruiter who stopped him as he turned away from the scoring announcement for the fencing with the small individual event trophy in his hand. The guy’s name was David something. It was all a blur. Just a guy only a little older than Kiernan, lots of smiling, khakis and a white Oxford cloth shirt. No tie. University of Virginia’s ancient Memorial Gym echoed with voices and Kiernan felt a bubbling craziness inside himself.

The majority of NSA’s efforts are directed at gathering foreign intelligence and protecting our own electronic resources, David had answered.

But gathering for you guys means electronic eavesdropping, right? Not actual people skulking around the market in Kabul listening to the locals?

David Whatever-His-Name-Was smiled. Skulking?

Alright—lurking, Kiernan allowed.

The fencing crowd was breaking up and drifting out of the gymnasium, heading for the Aquatic Center and the swimming event. People stopped to congratulate Kiernan, slap him on the back, and jostle on past. It seemed like an odd place to be having this conversation.

Gathering intelligence these days means electronic intelligence, David said with the smile still on his face.

So what about guys on the ground?

That’s why I’m talking to you. We have limited openings for field agents. You need to be smart, first off, but you also need to be tougher than our usual math majors.

And be able to fence, ride horses, and swim? I mean the shooting and running parts are obvious…

David smiled wryly, but didn’t give him any more than that.

We did some background on you, David said. This isn’t the only reason we want to send you through the training program. David waved at the rapidly emptying gym around them. You got good grades in hard classes and you wrote two interesting papers we got from UVA’s website. So what do you say, Daniel? It’s a year of the most advanced training the Department of Defense could come up with. No commitment to anything but secrecy if you wash out or don’t start the job in the end.

Yeah, but I have all these hot job interviews . . . Kiernan grinned. Fuck that. I’m in.

Kiernan and David were just outside the gym into the blinding afternoon sunlight when a hard grip spun Kiernan around, slamming him face-first against the gym’s brick wall. He saw stars and dropped the fencing trophy, hearing a crack as it hit the pavement. And completely lost his temper. He turned off the wall with that electrical snap, driving his right fist before him as if it held the sword.

The man in front of him folded up around his fist like a sheet on a clothesline and dropped to the sidewalk.

Another guy in clothes like David’s but a short military haircut moved in with fists raised, and Kiernan thought, this guy’s the real shit. The face, the eyes, the bunched muscles of his forearms said there was pain to be had from underestimating him. So Kiernan dropped his guard, the guy practically pounced on the opening, and Kiernan hit him with the right fist in his face and solar plexus as quick as a double-click after too much coffee. Crew Cut levitated backwards a few yards, landing face down on the hot asphalt of the gym parking lot. He closed up into a fetal position, gasping and straining to breath through partially paralyzed lungs and a smear of blood where his nose used to be.

Kiernan felt like he should be shocked. He hadn’t been in a fight since fourth grade. He had just been attacked. He searched for some reaction, but couldn’t find much. The tournament had dulled his excitement receptors.

Looking around, Kiernan saw several people frozen in various stages of getting into their cars, all staring at him. He gave them an awkward, apologetic wave with his bruised right hand, and shrugged as if to say, Hey, shit happens, when that was exactly not what he was feeling.

The guy with the crew cut—now on his hands and knees spitting blood and teeth onto the already red cement—tried to say something, but his stunned lungs still weren’t pulling in enough air. Kiernan walked over to him, not sure of the etiquette involved in the attacker/attackee relationship. After gasping and straining to talk, the guy reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, dropping it in front of Kiernan.

I think that’s for me, David said and quickly stooped to pick up the paper. He wasn’t looking so cheery now, Kiernan noticed. The smile was gone and it looked like he’d lost his tan as well. The hand that picked up the paper showed a small, quick tremor. David unfolded the paper, avoiding the bits of blood it had picked up from the ground, and looked at it for a moment. His face lost any last trace of the cheery David of only a minute ago.

I gotta say . . . he started but didn’t finish. He frowned, folded the paper up again and put it in his pocket. Well fuck it. All I can say is that was your first test and you passed with flying colors. Come on, these guys can take care of themselves. Where the fuck is this Aquatic Center anyhow?

:: 2 ::

Nine windows of video evenly divided the giant monitor hung on the plaster wall of Michael Donegan’s office—the only bits of color in a room painted white over white so many times the paint had sealed the windows shut and the doors open unless you lifted and kicked them simultaneously. Each video feed—wholly under-written by taxpayers—displayed in a square as big as the average adult American’s whole monitor.

Donegan stared at the video feeds and the lipstick tube-shaped video camera facing him with a mixture of fascination and hatred. Fascination because here was Power with the proverbial ‘P’. The hatred was just because. Because he hated rich people. Because he hated powerful people. Because he hated people could do him injury and for that matter, people who were powerless against him.

In seven of the windows a person. Two of the windows a holding pattern in gray. Some of the people on the screen he knew, some he didn’t. He always assumed there were others listening in without showing their faces. Lurkers. During other online meetings he had heard their voices unconnected with the faces on his screen. Why were some showing themselves and some not? No way to know that . . . yet. This was the Group and the things he didn’t know about the Group definitely outweighed what he did know. But he was working on it.

In one square, Dennis Pedroza sat at a desk fidgeting. Pedroza represented a private consortium of Western Hemisphere oil companies trying to walk the OPEC walk while the rest of the world went green. The question of his connections in Venezuela was never discussed aloud and the open mystery drove Donegan crazy every time the man spoke.

Pedroza kept moving, shifting, gesticulating in his own little bit of video real estate as if the lack of human interaction drove him crazy. He had a repertoire of gestures and facial expressions Donegan found fascinating. Otherwise, Pedroza was just another WASP businessman with a Mexican grandfather, dyed black hair, a fat neck drooping over his white collar.

The only woman on the screen, Donna Wimmer, had moved from the Department of the Interior to an association of mining and logging concerns similar to Pedroza’s association. She looked like someone’s mom. Someone’s hot mom. Wimmer hadn’t shifted her sculpted head in ten minutes. She looked steadily, directly into the camera, and made it appear effortless. Shiny brown hair, shiny brown eyes. Jewelry all gold and diamonds. No doubt stripped off for press conferences.

The third face Donegan knew was Jack Tanner, his boss—though neither of them would ever use that term, and technically Donegan was the Assistant Undersecretary of the Department of Commerce. The monitor showed Tanner’s face brown and lined from sailing, his hair still full, but steel gray. He had the face of an executioner, Donegan thought. Behind a habitual look of alert calm, you had the feeling he was ready any instant to flip the switch and release the lightning. Some predatory potential just beneath the civilized veneer.

Tanner had called this video conference, and Donegan had an idea he was unusually concerned about recent threats to the economic recovery—that is the recovery of the portion of the world economy Tanner owned stock in.

Although Tanner’s name didn’t show up in any database of government employees, Donegan took orders from him. Tanner wasn’t listed as a consultant to the government. He didn’t hold any appointed position. He wasn’t on any government committees. But Donegan only visited the Commerce Department, where he supposedly worked, for monthly briefings. Those monthly meetings were strange, his supposed colleagues studiously avoiding any mention of the fact that somehow Michael Donegan was on special assignment. How Tanner accomplished all this was a mystery Donegan didn’t usually question.

The most characteristic feature of these meetings was their absolute banality. A transcript would be so loaded with clichés and circumlocutions as to be completely incomprehensible. It was all about context and unspoken sub-text. Everyone consumed the same diet of Bloomberg, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal, and they didn’t dilute the repartee with chat about art trends or sports scores.

At the moment, Donegan was barely paying attention to the talking heads on the wall screen—including Jack Tanner. The lurkers were all he could think about. Too mysterious, too annoying. Too dangerous. They hinted at a power structure within the Group he didn’t understand at all. Surely it was better to be invisible? Why video-conference at all?

The encryption on each electronic participant in the Group meetings was too heavy to crack unless he could commandeer a couple Cray supercomputers for a few days. Pointless to fantasize about. Even the President couldn’t do that if he wanted. Every Cray owned by the government had a backlog of jobs. No single person had the authority to push their pet project onto the front burner and turn everything else off. Not even Tanner.

So Donegan couldn’t link a computer, and therefore a location, with any of the participants. The obvious Internet tracking schemes just showed gibberish without applying an encryption key—so no IP addresses and times to connect the words spoken onscreen with the real people somewhere out there in the world. No proof. The conversations were recordable—he had all of them carefully compressed and catalogued on a hard drive—but they never said anything directly incriminating. It was all euphemisms and beating around the bush. Sometimes he’d lose track of the conversation altogether and forget what they had been talking about. He was just expected to say yes sir! occasionally anyhow. In the end, he supposed, everyone in the Group knew that if there was any blackmail value to be had from these meetings, it was all mutual. Mutual assured destruction.

Voice prints for the lurkers weren’t feasible. He had tried. No real voiceprint databases to compare to, and the technology itself was too flaky to trust its results more than half the time. But face prints were very do-able. Donegan wondered if they all knew just how accurate they were. As long as someone didn’t change their hair too drastically or grow a beard, face-printing was dead on about 90% of the time. There were two men on his screen he had never seen before. Their pictures might tell him something when matched with the FBI’s records. If the FBI didn’t turn up anything in their portrait database, maybe he’d convince them to match these faces against a scan of the downtown mall’s surveillance video. Just knowing what offices these guys came out of and who they talked to was the beginning of useful knowledge.

Onscreen, Jack Tanner was doing most of the talking, stringing together more complete sentences than Donegan had heard him utter in one sitting before. His voice emanated from Donegan’s speakers and subwoofer slightly more present than if he had been standing in Donegan’s office. A bit of James Earl Jones bass register electronically infused into his voice.

Bottom line, Tanner said, we don’t want the public choosing between this and a new car. Hell, a toaster oven for that matter. The market’s too shaky. The market’s been too shaky for years now, so let’s not push it. Let’s give the new administration at least a year before stirring the pot. And this one sounds like something to upset the pot.

I’m sure Mr. Donegan will take care of everything as usual, Donna Wimmer said. She kept her steady, general gaze on the camera, but Donegan could feel her eyes looking at him. Creepy bitch. He hoped she didn’t know where he lived or anything else about him, but that was a futile hope.

Michael may need help on this one, Tanner said. And that’s where your organizations come in. He’ll need Congressional underwriting—just in case. My suggestion is that you all have a little chat with your contacts on the Hill. Tell them Donegan will ask for what he needs.

So what do you know? Tanner asked him after the others had signed off. As a precaution, they had also signed off and then used encrypted cell phones to make contact again. Motorla Razers aquired through Commerce.

Not much, Donegan replied. Some of the people on my list are playing the rumors. Nothing solid. Langley’s coming through with their usual dribbles. They think it’s coming from Japan, but that’s some remanded hacker talking. You never know what they’re withholding anyhow. The Chinese guy’s coming in this morning. He might help with Asia if that angle’s for real.

The best lead we have, Tanner said, the one that makes me actually believe this shit might be possible, is an intercepted message to the Chinese embassy in DC. A guy named Zhang. The message said this stuff was for real, and they were gonna develop it as a weapon. So ask the Chinese guy about that, but don’t be too direct. That message could have been a plant, but I tell you, it sounded real. And NSA says it’s genuine. If the Chinese can use this shit for a weapon or for an economic war—either way—I want us to have it first.

So you don’t want to destroy it?

As far as everyone else has to know, we’ll destroy it all and the research behind it. Between you and me, I want at least a sample we can use to synthesize our own. Just in case.

Just in case.

I understand, Donegan said. And he was afraid he did. Afraid the game he and Tanner played had just moved even farther away from any semblance of ground rules. They had never worried about legality, but Tanner had always pointed Donegan at small problems that didn’t require any particularly drastic action to fix. Now the stakes had risen. How high, he couldn’t begin to say, but he had a distinct feeling of vertigo.

Alright, Tanner said, I’m sending you a guy named Chapman. Lieutenant Chapman. Should be showing up this afternoon. He was in the SEALs. Now he’s a contractor. Smart guy. He’ll do whatever you tell him and he’s got his own guys, too. I need you to stir this up, Mike. I want this thing stopped yesterday. Whatever it takes.

Donegan closed his phone. A knot was building in his stomach and it felt like a giant hand squeezed his chest, his breaths coming short as the panic feeling rose up in him. Not only was Tanner obviously worried about this thing, he was being way too generous and confiding too much in Donegan for comfort or safety. There was no way to back out of any of this anymore. Now he was part of the mutually assured destruction. It felt like he was being pushed out into the open where his illegal and semi-legal tricks could be seen by anyone. Where he could be caught. Talk about proof. Tanner was setting up a truckload of proof against him: witnesses, money transfers, and the class of felonies just kept rising. Something about those faces on the monitor and the neutral voices discussing ruin and destruction for someone else . . . something about it all made Donegan think of himself as the prime candidate for fall-guy if anything went seriously wrong. It wasn’t a new thought, just a sudden feeling coming over him during the private conversation with Tanner. And harder to deal with as a feeling than it had been when it was just part of his ongoing calculations. It was hard feeling exposed.

Donegan stood up abruptly from his desk. Fuck it if it was ten o’clock in the morning. He walked into the sitting room and across to the bar. The sweet sound of ice cubes clinked into the highball glass followed by Absolut vodka almost to the rim and then a splash of tonic water. Donegan turned, drink in hand, to face the picture windows and the view of the capitol across the river from his office.

Fuck you, he said raising his glass to the capitol and drinking.

The first long sip began to eat away at the tension in his stomach and chest, and in that rising glow he chose to look on the bright side and consider what sort of carté blanché the Group might get him from the government.

:: 3 ::

Kiernan slumped behind the desk of his St. Louis office wearing the boxer shorts and t-shirt he had slept in. Through the one grimy window over East Grant Street he could just make out the bits of the Mississippi river through the spaces between buildings. The 5am extra-terrestrial amber of streetlamps now solidly replaced with a 6:30am dullness that lacked color altogether.

America the beautiful, he said to the gray morning beyond the glass. A tangle of telephone wires cut across his view of the gray buildings across the street and a single tall warehouse blocked his view of the Arch—the one St. Louis sight worth seeing even on a dull mid-western autumn morning. The thought of an early morning shot of whiskey ran through his head sounding convincingly practical, almost matter-of-fact.

I need some time off, he thought. Some place without cement or anything colored gray. And a lot less people. Maybe visit mom in New York. See some green for a change. Ride my fucking horse again before he dies of old age.

Traffic noise of the early morning commute churned around him like surf. Then a sub-woofer down on the street rattled the window frame, brakes whined, and a rapper’s machine gun delivery like a mechanized preacher of radical change:

It’s like a holocaust to the boss when I toss...too much knowledge kicked then you’re lost...in a shuffle of feet...jinx the fiddler...and I control your mind like Hitler.

The window frame thumped and buzzed in time to the beat, and Kiernan felt the anger of the music leach into him. He was ready to weld his own anger onto a good cause and he knew it. It was easy enough to turn personal frustration into righteous anger, and that was something to be watched closely . . . like how many drinks you had each night and how many you felt like having. One thing his twenties were teaching him: being an adult wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

: : : : : :

In 1986, NSA became a combat support agency of the DOD.

What’s the DOD? Kiernan asked while writing out his name and his mother’s address for the fifteenth time on the fifteenth form they had laid in front of him. He was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he was distracted by the forms and all the acronyms floating around the conversation so far.

His guide paused and then answered, Department of Defense.

Phil Saunders was already three hours behind him. Now this conversation felt like three months ago at Memorial Gym. They were in some sort of personnel office at Fort Meade, Maryland. A line of out-of-place-looking young men and women in civilian clothes were being fed into another office by uniformed Army personnel. They looked like high school students. The room smelled of too much deodorant and cologne. Kiernan imagined them coming out the other end with crew-cuts and uniforms, on their way to one or another of the big, smoldering conflicts of the day. And even with all the people around them, his guide, a middle-aged guy who seemed about as animated as a shoe salesman and who hadn’t given him a name, was still droning on about the NSA.

They found out agents on the ground for SIGINT were pretty important and decided to put their own people in. Course that pissed off the CIA, but they couldn’t really say anything about. They bitch now and then.

Are you gonna cut my hair and all that? Kiernan asked with a nod to the line of recruits.

His guide paused again and Kiernan saw the look he’d missed last time—disgust mixed with pity. You’re not going in the Army. Didn’t they tell you anything? You’re Civil Service. No haircuts, no uniforms, but your training is gonna be worse than their’s, God help you.

Kiernan decided to pay more attention to his guide’s explanation. He was just starting to realize how ignorant he was. And he didn’t think anyone was going to be handing him a glossy brochure with this information in it.

The National Security Agency was created in 1953 to centralize US military code-breaking and cryptography. What had been several agencies and private firms were brought together to support military operations in Korea. In 1957, the NSA moved its operation to Ft. Meade, leaving Washington, D.C. since it was assumed to be a target of Soviet nuclear weapons. That one had Kiernan wondering.

The mission of the NSA was pretty simple: provide secure communications for us and intercept their communications. Most of the NSA’s resources were devoted to research and development, staying two steps ahead of the rest of the world. Over the years, the NSA’s research contributed to the development of the Super Computer, the cassette tape, the microchip, quantum mathematics, nano-technology, biometrics, and semiconductor technology.

These days it’s easier, the guide said as they went outside where he had a plain, ten-year old Chrysler LeBaron parked. "Microsoft does most of NSA’s research for them. You ever wondered why Windows sucks so bad? It’s basically a front.

"The SIGINT—that’s foreign signal intelligence—it just gets siphoned off the satellites’ traffic. NSA set up ten, twenty miles away from the major uplink stations and just suck down the same traffic. You got a big enough antenna pointed the right way, you could do it your own self.

Course that doesn’t cover everything they need. That’s where you come in. They still need to upgrade their hardware embedded in the phone systems and whatnot. Before you ask, yes they tap phone systems pretty much everywhere in the world. Same with the Internet. Just not our allies. At least that’s the story. He grinned like he’d said something funny.

The guide person dropped Kiernan off in front of another forgettable building on the base, saying, Go on in and tell them who you are. They’re ready for you.

They were ready for him. An Asian man in a white lab coat met him at the door of the featureless tan building and ushered him back into a room full of treadmills and Nautilus machines and a lot of medical gear. Three sweaty hours later, the man in the white lab coat remained nameless and Kiernan was beat. He been wired up and worn out, they told him later. All his buddy in the lab coat said was, You’re fine. Get ready for a real workout tomorrow morning.

The next morning at 5:00am a middle-aged man with a clipboard woke him up.

You’re going through the obstacle course with a Rangers battalion, he said, referring to his clipboard. You tested fine on the physical. Shouldn’t be any problems. They’ve been given a story for your inclusion. Just get in there and do what they do. Here’s the course map, the obstacles, and the script they’ll expect you to know.

An hour later, after a light breakfast they served him in his room, Kiernan stepped out of an old Vietnam-era Jeep at the beginning of the course. He wore the nondescript clothes they’d given him, leaving the Wahoos t-shirts and sweats in his bag. The sun was up, but it wasn’t warming anything yet. He shivered in his t-shirt and scanned the milling crowd of hard-looking guys and a few tough-looking women, looking for a Captain Sloderbeck. Everyone wore shorts or fatigue pants and t-shirts without any insignia, so it wasn’t easy. And Kiernan had already proven to himself and everyone else that he didn’t know squat about the military, including ranks.

This guy’s gonna be older, he thought. Older and standing out. Standing out how? Look at how the other soldiers move around him.

One man with a gray crew-cut and a face like old leather stood stock still while soldiers walked around him talking amongst themselves but never to him. Their distance was respectful, so was their silence. They kept glancing at him, Kiernan noted, but they never approached him.

Kiernan walked up to the older man and said, Daniel Kiernan, attached for the day from Special Ops.

The guy took his time looking him over while Kiernan stewed, wondering if he’d chosen the right man. Then Captain Sloderbeck said, Glad to have you. Ready for a good run?

Yes, sir.

Good . . . if you bring down our time you’ll be sorry. Sloderbeck looked grim as death and Kiernan saw visions of group beatings with soap wrapped in blankets. If you boost our time, I can guarantee you free beer for a month. Captain Sloderbeck’s face split into a lined grin that reminded Kiernan of the actor Tommy Lee Jones. Sloderbeck held out his hand and Kiernan shook it.

When it came time to start, everyone shut up and looked at Sloderbeck.

This is the last time we log on this course for the year, he said in a conversational tone of voice. Nothing that happens in the next hour or two’ll ever matter squat. Run fast, run slow, lose your breakfast, or go home comfortable and a little sweaty. Forget about it. It doesn’t matter. Right? And he looked around the whole group, turning in a complete circle. Making eye contact with every man and woman.

Unless you weak fucks break the course record . . . and you’re only five seconds short!

RANGERS! The thunderous group shout scared the crap out of Kiernan.

A course official with a stop watch got them set. With a whistle they were off, running like crazies through a marshy, hilly, up and down course, climbing walls and ropes and wading through a deep creek—all the time using a buddy system to help each other. Kiernan’s briefing hadn’t mentioned the buddy system. All they’d said was the group time was a simple average: total individual times divided by the number of runners.

At one wall, Sloderbeck slapped Kiernan on the shoulder and said, Tierney’s weak on the wall, give her a boost. Then Sloderbeck was swarming up the wall like Spiderman. Kiernan turned, looking for a her, and a woman with short brown hair came charging at him. He just had time to get set as she leaped for the rope wall. Kiernan caught her at the ankles and boosted her almost to the top of the twenty foot wall.

Woooooo! she yelled and threw him a thumbs up before disappearing over the wall.

When he crossed the finish line, Kiernan was at the front with the fastest guys and Tierney. Tierney and several of the guys puking their guts out. Grimacing and smiling through it all. Captain Sloderbeck had come in just after them, running backwards, yelling at the stragglers.

Good running, Kiernan, Captain Sloderbeck said.

Thanks, Kiernan replied, that was fun.

Ohhhh, groaned one of the guys who was spitting the taste of vomit out of his mouth. Sonofabitches like you end up in command.

You mean sonofabitches like me, Janowski? Sloderbeck asked.

Yes, sir. Precisely like you, sir.

Everybody within hearing laughed, including Sloderbeck and Janowski.

Whoever could pause from sucking air or losing their breakfast yelled for the stragglers crossing the line and traded high-fives. When everyone was over the finish line, the battalion burst into a chant of I want to be an Army Ranger . . . I want to live a life of danger and Kiernan joined them, feeling a part of all the excitement. Feeling good suddenly, no longer homesick and apprehensive

Come on, Kiernan, said Captain Sloderbeck. It’s time to ruin our good workout with a shitload of beer. We’ll find out about our time later on when the course officials stop shaking their stopwatches. I’m not too worried about the record. Sloderbeck’s leathery face broke into another grin. A little bird tells me we fragged that motherfucker. And he slid a stopwatch out of his pocket for Kiernan to see. You’re battalion for the day, so you’re invited to the drinking.

But walking off the course to the waiting trucks, the middle-aged man with the clipboard intercepted Kiernan, saying only, Come on. Kiernan had time for a wave, but most of the battalion was focused on their transport, talking and groaning, and no one saw him leave.

Pitkin was the trainer who debriefed him. Kiernan had no idea whether that was a first or last name. It was just Pitkin. Pitkin reminded Kiernan of an insurance adjuster filling in forms, crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s. Being meticulous wasn’t a virtue with him, it was an obsession.

List each obstacle in the course and the approximate distance between it and the next.

Describe the weather conditions.

Describe the ground conditions.

How many spotters lined the course?

List the name and rank of anyone you spoke with.

Rate the general condition of each soldier you observed on a scale of one through ten with ten being the best condition.

Relay any personal information volunteered to you by the soldiers or spotters.

Relay any information regarding future or past training exercises, troop movements, or duty assignments you overheard.

As Kiernan started to relay Captain Sloderbeck’s final words about the beer bash, he stopped and thought—for a change—about what he would be saying. Sloderbeck had basically said, Let’s ruin our training with alcohol abuse. Taken out of context, what could that one sentence do to the man’s career? Was it worth causing him even a moment’s embarrassment or discomfort? Was Pitkin going to do anything with this debriefing? Was it headed for the trashcan? Or would anything he revealed in debriefing actually be used? He wasn’t about to ask Pitkin, so he just shut up and skipped Sloderbeck’s final words. He already felt crappy enough about reporting on Sloderbeck and Janowski and Tierney and the men puking at the finish and everything they had talked about. It was just wrong.

That night, as he tried to think about anything else, he began to imagine what being a spy felt like. He had left all his friends behind at UVA’s graduation and now he was going to be asked to spy on anybody he met for the next year. It was a lonely prospect. And if that wasn’t enough to ruin his sleep, he wondered what came next in his