Last Man Standing

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Torsten Dahl read Coyote’s text message with a shake of his head. The sheer madness of some people blew his mind. True, he had earned the nickname ‘The Mad Swede’ after performing more than one death-defying feat of bravery in the heat of battle, but this was a whole different league. This was psychopathic and murderous, not even warfare. If this Coyote had ever possessed a heart, it had long since crumbled to ash.

Dahl was a spontaneous man. Given to sudden heroic deeds and hair-raising stunts in battle, he was also prone to crazy, impulsive acts on his family days. Anything from jumping into swimming pools, fully clothed, and getting Johanna, the kids and himself thrown out of their hotel, to impromptu fifty-mile mad dashes for specialist ice cream. It was his crazy, unplanned side that Johanna had originally fallen in love with, though not when she heard he applied the same methods in the Army too.

He tended to keep that part quiet.

They were a happy, fit family. Dahl had met his wife at the gym. His regimen impressed her; his muscles too. When she heard him speak she backed away, wary, no doubt thinking him some kind of shiny-arse local with a rich daddy and a handful of procured well-paid jobs to peruse.

Actually, Dahl kept it quiet from everyone except her that he’d dropped out of a private school to join the Army. A disappointment to his dad. But he hated the regime, the corruption, the back-slapping, the boys-own mentality it all led to. Several times he’d almost mentioned it to Drake, but secretly enjoyed the one-upmanship it gave him over the Yorkshireman — even if he was the only one that knew it. The Army had made him, molded him, and given him real purpose.

Recently, since the Odin affair, Dahl had been wavering a little. The SPEAR missions were so deadly, so potentially lethal, but also among the most important that any team anywhere in the world were running right now.

But family came first.

Could he manage the best of both worlds? Possibly, but the sheer risk endemic in their missions and the power of their enemies made him wonder time and again what young Isabella and Julia would do if they heard their mad daddy had died.

He couldn’t do it to them. But the missions kept coming. Each more crucial than the last. And now there was talk of Pandora and a new order and, beyond that, the greatest most immeasurable discovery of the ages.

Dahl breathed in. Time to stop relaxing and get his mind back on mission. It was best to confront these things at the right time, a time that was clearly not now. He would store it and move on. Johanna and the kids were already in DC. Maybe a trip to the White House was in order.

Then he thought better of it. With his track record in impulsiveness, walking around one of the most heavily guarded buildings in the world with your wife and kids in tow probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

Disney then, he thought. What could possibly go wrong in a land of mice and ducks, pirates and princesses, cars and planes?

He wondered if the guy that played Goofy had ever experienced a half-nelson.