Nightstalkers

CHAPTER 4

It started with the pretty postdoc who was the point of contact at the University of Colorado.

The Courier had been up all night partying at one of the frat houses, only two years removed from college himself. Or, more accurately, two years removed from his single year of college. After being kicked out of college, he doubled down on that year sucking dirt in the Marines, including a year at Bagram Air Base on the perimeter guard post, shooting at a whole bunch of nothing and basically being bored to tears. The stories he’d told the wide-eyed rich kids at the party were true — that is, if the older grunts who’d told the stories to him in the first place had been telling the truth.

So at the end of his year in ’Stan, when the contractor came calling with offers of big bucks and lots of time off for combat-experienced Marines (they considered a year in-country combat experience, so the boredom counted for something), the Courier had signed on the dotted line and kissed the Corps good-bye. The deal had turned out sweeter than he’d expected. They didn’t send him back to the ’Stan but rather to the Depot.

Like any other gig, though, there were drawbacks. One was the implant. The gruff retired gunny sergeant who’d taken him through Depot processing at Area 51 had told him it was a minor physical procedure — he wouldn’t feel a thing — and the actual device only had to be worn during the time when he was working. During his two months off for every one on, why, no problem, he could leave it at the Depot. That was where guys like him, the Support for a bunch of high-speed people called the Nightstalkers, were stationed. Underground on the Area 51 military reservation in the middle of no-fucking-where, Nevada. It sounded a lot cooler than it was, both figuratively and literally.

The gunny hadn’t been totally up front. The actual procedure was sticking some long, really thin wire into his chest. It left the tiniest of nubs sticking out just center and below his left nipple. That wasn’t coming out as long as he was in Support. Then when he came on duty they strapped a belt around his chest that had a matchbox — scratch that, he wasn’t old enough to have used matchboxes — an iPod Mini — sized device right over the nub and connected it to him.

When he’d asked what the device was for, the old gunny had told him: “So we can track you and make sure you’re okay. We don’t want nothing to happen to you, sonny-boy.”

So, okay, for one month’s work and two off, he could deal with it. And, of course, for the pay. That was ten large every month, even the ones he wasn’t working. The Tea Party would have a fit.

They gave him some guns, a souped-up armored van, a thick binder full of what they called “protocols,” and a handheld device the gunny called an Invoicer (the way he said it indicated it was capitalized, like a lot of stuff around the place). It contained his deliveries for this tour of duty.

“Like a FedEx driver?” the Courier had asked.

The gunny had just glared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “Read the Protocols, sonny.” The gunny had looked about as if the walls had ears. “You do good on Support, there’s a chance you make the team out at the Ranch. They’re short one body on the ’Stalkers. Been short a while. Ms. Jones is real picky about who makes the team.”

What are we, back in high school? the Courier thought but did not say, having had experience with gunnies in the Corps.

The key to being a Courier, the gunny explained, was to keep a low profile. A single panel truck, a single man, playing it cool, wouldn’t draw attention the way a clearly armored vehicle and escort convoy would.

Whatever, the Courier thought.

There were eight deliveries, all around Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. Pick this up here, drop it there. Then the next, and the next.

He’d gotten briefed, along with other new Support personnel, by some Nightstalker people with weird names: Moms and Nada and Doc. Moms told them to be very, very careful, and Nada told them to read the Protocols very, very carefully and then follow them exactly to the letter, and if they had any questions, any at all, there were no dumb questions, to call on the sat phone they were each issued.

The Courier knew from high school there were dumb questions. Those were the nerds who never got laid.

At least in high school. He wasn’t experienced enough to know the inverse of that formula as one got older.

The last guy, Doc, had some really scary shit to say about bugs and viruses and nukes and stuff that would kill you, which the Courier wasn’t sure how to take. According to this Doc guy, looking the wrong way could cause you to get some disease and die a horrible death.

At first he’d felt really cool, driving the van with all the guns and high-tech gear. After the seventh time, though — loading a sealed locker full of who the hell knew what in the vault in the back, driving 387 miles from some computer tech place in Boise, ID, to Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah (he knew the exact mileage because one of the Protocols required him to fill out all these little boxes on the electronic invoices and two of them were start and end mileage of each run, as if he were going to detour to Malibu or some such; plus he had no doubt the van GPS and the damn thing plugged into his chest were also recording everything) — it began to get boring.

He hauled ass for invoice eight, looking forward to the promised time off, with pay, after delivery. Vegas. That’s what was on his mind as he tore through the Rockies on I-70 at ninety miles an hour. Six hundred and twenty-four miles to Boulder. Protocol said don’t speed, but they’d given him a badge and a very official-looking card with his photo on it, that the gunny had told him would make any local law enforcement fuck off, because he was working for the FEDERAL government, even though technically he was only contracted. That technicality made a difference, a big one. Federal employees took something called the Oath of Office, the very first law enacted by the very first Congress, so those Founding Fathers had felt it was important. Courier got ten large each month instead and signed a contract. Either way, he got into Boulder a night early.

And partied.

He was sure there was something in Chapter 40 of the Protocol (it was pretty damn thick) about not partying the night before a drive, but he’d read what he needed to and skimmed the rest. He’d make the pickup the next day right on time.

And he did. Wearing fresh khakis, his Glock nestled inside his leather jacket, he checked the file once more before he entered the Biochemistry Building at the University of Colorado. He recognized the Point of Contact in the courtyard outside the building from the picture in the file and she looked better in person than the drab photo that must have been taken for her student ID. He walked over.

“Hey.”

That drew him the withering smile pretty girls reserve for “not now, I’m busy” until he pulled out his badge and ID.

“I hear you’ve got something for me, Ms. Debbie Simmons.”

Her eyes grew wide. She looked around as if there were spies hiding behind the bushes. Which the Courier found humorous because they weren’t in the bushes, but rather hundreds of miles overhead with a clear line of sight. His first platoon sergeant in the Marines had told him no one ever looked up. He had been referring to snipers in trees, but once the Courier got to Nightstalkers’ Support, old Nada, in his briefing, had modified that to include what you couldn’t see way up there circling the planet. The unblinking eyes in the sky.

She swallowed and nodded. “Follow me.”

They entered the building and she walked past the elevators, which the Courier found odd, and opened a fire door. They began to troop up the stairs, which was when the Courier became rather intrigued with her ass. He tried to make small talk, but she was in crisis mode and everyone knows that people worried about their careers seldom flirted. Instead they tended to talk and explain.

“I don’t know why I got stuck with it. I just did the lab work. The professor did all the real work on the project. And the professor was insistent that no one have access to her data.”

The Courier could give a shit, and her taking one step at a time was hurting his knees. He wanted to bound up at least two, if not three at a time. She kept explaining as if the Courier hadn’t read the Invoicer, or been briefed by Moms and Nada and Doc.

He and the others had been grilled with Nada “what-ifs”: What if you can’t locate the Point of Contact? What if the Package is breached? What if gravity as you know it ceases to exist…

Or, as everyone in Support called it, the Yada-Yada from Nada. But never when he was around.

“The problem is, well, the professor, she must have gone on sabbatical, at least that’s what the dean said. Sort of. And I got stuck with it. So we brought it over in the safe it came in and up the elevator and into the most secure lab.”

If you got an elevator, why are we taking the stairs? the Courier thought.

“I followed the rules in the book the professor had.”

The Courier felt heartened that he wasn’t the only one who had to follow Protocols.

“It’s locked up here, because the bio people have the most secure areas.” Simmons literally shivered. “It scares me, some of the stuff they work with.”

“Why are we climbing the stairs?”

“I use the stairs for the exercise,” she explained. That explained her tight body, but also a sense of narcissism to include him in her workout routine while he was on a job.

“Everything should be all right and up to date,” she continued as they made it to a door with a big 6 stenciled on it.

The Courier wanted to tell her Nada’s theory during his lecture about should be, which Nada had said often translated to what the fuck?

“I don’t really see the big deal,” Simmons prattled on as she led him down the hall to a door with all sorts of warning signs and big biohazards symbols. “It’s pretty small.”

He decided to show the college girl up, with a tidbit of knowledge he’d had hurled at him during the Support briefing by Doc. He tapped the closest yellow sign. “The engineer who developed the biohazard sign said: ‘We wanted something that was memorable but meaningless, so we could educate people as to what it means.’”

He remembered that because it was one of the dumbest things — among many dumb things — he’d been told, not even realizing his remembering actually validated the engineer’s point.

She stopped talking for a moment and stared at him as if he had two heads. “The professor has never taken a day off since I’ve known her. She’s always like ice; nothing bothers her, but this,” the girl nodded at the steel door, “this bothered her. Why would the professor take a sabbatical now?”

“Right,” the Courier said, not really listening to her, eyes on her breasts. Figuratively, wishing for literally.

Shaking her head, Simmons entered a punch code and the door slid open.

They walked over to another door that required a second punch code, as well as a retina scan this time, so he knew they were getting close to the Package.

There was a safe inside the next room.

An old iron safe, like Butch and Sundance used to rob.

She pulled out a rumpled piece of paper and began twirling in the combination and he stifled a laugh. He could see Nada’s long hand in this last line of bullshit.

“So the Package is all right,” she said with enough degree of uncertainty that even the Courier realized why the government was taking this particular thing away from the university boys and girls. “So you can see the problem?” she asked, indicating she had no clue what the problem was. She swung open the heavy door and pulled out a small metal box.

For the Courier the problem was that his knees were killing him.

She was anxious to pass the problem over to him. “I don’t know why the dean was so upset, since he had to have given the professor the sabbatical.”

The Courier tuned her out once more. He didn’t see any opening to the box. There was a set of numbers etched on the side after the letters ASU. He checked his Invoicer. Bingo. “Okay.” He held out the Invoicer. “Sign here, here, and here on the screen and I’ll be off.”

“The professor was really, really upset about getting this in the first place,” Simmons said as she scrawled with the electronic pen. “She said it should have never been sent here. She said someone named Doc should have been responsible, not her. And certainly not me,” she added as if he didn’t get it.

“Someone is taking care of it. Now. Me.” The Courier grabbed the Invoicer from her and hefted the Package under one arm. It was light, for which he was grateful.

“What about the safe?” Simmons asked, looking as if she had to take the thing home.

“Not on my form.”

“I did everything correctly, right?” Simmons asked. “You’ll keep it safe, right?”

She seemed overly concerned about something for which she was no longer responsible, even the Courier could see that. “I work for the government,” he said. “This is my job. It’s taken care of.”

He didn’t say good-bye. Not that it mattered: she didn’t do small talk, yet she talked too damn much, he thought as he took the elevator down. He unsealed the back of the van and secured the box in the vault that took up half the rear, the rest being full of weapons and other military equipment.

He got in the driver’s seat and accessed the onboard computer. He synced the Invoicer, indicating a positive pickup, and waited for the machine to tell him his next, and final for this tour, destination.

Area 51 Archives.

The GPS calculated the route in seconds. Seven hundred and seventy-seven miles.

“Hot damn,” he muttered as he started the van up.

Not far from Vegas at all.

To Carter, it just looked like an old deserted filling station out in the middle of the desert. Colonel Orlando was driving the battered Jeep, which was the latest in a bunch of strange things to happen ever since he’d been “tested” back in the ’Stan.

Since then, Orlando hadn’t said two words, ignoring every question Carter had thrown at him, and using the defense of that silver oak leaf indicating his rank to treat Carter like the staff sergeant he was.

Except after landing at some incredibly long runway in the middle of Nevada, the colonel had gotten in the driver’s seat of this old beat-up Jeep that had been waiting for them. A colonel driving for a staff sergeant wasn’t normal, even for the elite army. They’d been bumping along for over an hour now, leaving the runway and the hangars and the guards and all that far behind.

Two minutes ago, Orlando had turned off the hardtop road onto a dirt road, passing a plywood sign spray-painted none too steadily with the warning NO TRESPASS: WE WILL SHOOT YOUR ASS along with a skull and crossbones also crudely sprayed onto the wood next to the words. Now the old gas station was ahead on the right and Carter could see three guys shooting a beat-up basketball at a metal rim set about eight feet off the ground on a leaning light pole. He knew right away they were Special Ops, even though two had long hair. It was the same way at Bragg, where you could always tell the difference between guys in the Eighty-Second Airborne, not exactly slouches, and someone in Special Forces. They looked different because they were different.

The three didn’t even look over as Orlando screeched the protesting brakes of the Jeep, bringing them to a halt a hundred yards short of the station. Carter saw the reason. Two men had materialized from spider holes, weapons at the ready. Carter blinked as a red laser designator wavered over his face, settling in between his eyes. Shifting his glance to the left, he saw Orlando also wore a red dot.

A third man, who must have been in a hole, too, came up from behind. He held some weird device and flashed it in Orlando’s eyes. It beeped, and since the colonel wasn’t shot, Carter assumed that was a positive beep. All three wore ghillie suits with black fatigues underneath and no sign of rank or unit, so Carter figured they were contractors. He’d seen a ton of them in the ’Stan and Iraq. The guard started to go around the rear of the Jeep — not crossing the line of fire of the others — when Orlando spoke up.

“He’s the new one.”

The guard nodded, looking vaguely disappointed for some reason, as if Carter were stealing his role in the school play. “Proceed, Colonel.”

Orlando put the Jeep into gear, the clutch protesting loudly.

One of the three, a tall black man whose left side of the face was terribly scarred, took a long shot and it flew past rim and pole into a pile of old tires, sending them tumbling. A rattler came buzzing out, trying to see who’d interrupted its late-day nap.

“Yo!” one of the others, a big hulking guy with what Carter initially would have called an honest, happy face, yelled. “Eagle got a snake.”

“I hate fucking snakes,” Eagle said.

“Tell Doc about snakes,” the third guy said with a Texas drawl. He was a young Tom Cruise look-alike, handsome in a way that initially irritated almost every man who met him.

“Fuck you, Mac,” Eagle said to him as he drew a Mark-23 from under his T-shirt and fired, hitting the snake in the head, and firing again, hitting the stump.

“No one would think you were any army of one,” Mac said. “Afraid of snakes.” He stepped over the body and retrieved the ball. “We used to eat rattler back home in Texas. Tastes like chicken.”

“Bet you had to eat rattler,” the big guy said, with all seriousness. “My mom used to make us pine bark soup flavored with pine needles.”

“You had one fucked-up childhood, Roland,” Mac said. “We ate it ’cause we liked it.”

Carter got out of the Jeep as Orlando did. Now that he was closer to the big man, he could see that thing deep in Roland’s eyes that belied his genial face. The man was a killer.

The three finally decided to notice the newcomers.

Eagle nodded at Orlando. “Colonel.”

“Eagle. Roland. Mac.” Orlando nodded three times, like he was blessing them or asking permission to pass, it was hard for Carter to tell. “Been a while.”

“It has indeed, sir,” Eagle said. He looked at Carter. “Must be an officer. He isn’t covered in shit.”

Orlando was the only one who got it, and he laughed as he got back in the driver’s seat. “You gentleman have a fine rest of the day. Until next time.”

Carter hastily grabbed his duffel out of the back of the Jeep. And then the colonel was gone in a cloud of dust. Carter stood there, uncomfortable in the late-day sun, duffel bag weighing on his shoulder, his camos drenched with sweat. He knew they were reading the cues on his fatigues: Ranger Tab, left shoulder; Ranger Regiment scroll, right shoulder, meaning combat service with the unit; Combat Infantry Badge; Master Parachute Badge; Free-fall Parachute Badge; Scuba Badge.

Most people were impressed.

These were clearly not most people.

“Where do I report?” Carter asked.

“Get a grape soda,” Mac said as the other two turned back to the basketball and their game.

“I don’t want a grape soda.” Carter regretted the words as he spoke them.

Mac laughed. “Buddy, no one wants a grape soda, but one time me and this hot little cheerleader, all we had was some Jack and some grape soda, and it worked then. It’ll work now,” he added, nodding toward the rusting soda machine leaning against the side of the station.

Carter went over. The peeling labels indicated he could get Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Orange, or Grape. Twenty-five cents. He reached for his pocket, then realized he didn’t have any change. Before he could turn, Eagle called out.

“Just push the button. And make sure it’s grape. You don’t want the orange, trust me.”

Carter hit the grape button.

With a hiss of escaping air, the soda machine slid to the side and a stairway beckoned, cool air blasting out.

Carter hesitated.

“You got eight seconds,” Eagle added as he took a shot. “Or it will shut on you.”

Carter scooted down the stairs and the door slid in place above him. He caught his bearings for a second, then continued down. He reached a landing, noting the unblinking eye of a camera staring at him. There was someone at the other end of that camera and Carter shivered for a second.

There was a steel door facing him, one that just screamed “try and blast me open and let me laugh at you.” The door slid aside and a gray corridor beckoned. A figure filled the corridor. Short, built like a power-lifter, dark skinned with an acne-scarred face, gray hair, and an attitude that said he was the one who ran things. The well-worn handle of a machete poked over his left shoulder from a sheath on his back and he had an MK-23 strapped to his right hip, tied down with a strap around his thigh.

Carter stiffened to attention as the door slid shut behind him.

“We don’t do that shit here,” the man said.

The door behind opened once more and the three who had been playing basketball pressed by, paying Carter no heed.

“I’m Nada.”

Nada? Carter thought. “I’m—”

“I know who you think you are,” Nada said, “or else you’d be a pile of ashes back there on the landing.”

Eagle laughed as he looked over his shoulder at the end of the corridor. “Best to forget who you were and focus on who you will be.”

“That’s real fucking Zen-like,” Mac said.

“Follow me,” Nada ordered. “And drop that bag. You won’t need any of that shit.”

They went down the hallway and into a large circular room with dull gray walls. There were several tables in it, along with whiteboards, flip charts, corkboards for imagery, and a row of lockers. The three from outside were stripping off their soaking shirts.

“You’re meeting Ms. Jones,” Nada said, stopping in front of a surprisingly flimsy and ill-fitting door, the antithesis of everything Carter had seen since entering the complex. “You listen to her very carefully.”

The door to the left opened and a tall woman in fatigues stepped out. The way Nada shifted his posture, Carter realized with surprise that he answered to her, so he stood a little straighter.

“I’m Moms,” the woman said.

Moms? Carter was trying to take it all in.

“I was just telling him to listen carefully to Ms. Jones,” Nada informed her.

Moms nodded. “Listen to her offer. Then you get to say yes or you get to say no. There’s no shame, no blemish on your record for saying no.”

“No is the easy way,” Eagle yelled from across the room.

“No is back to the world,” Mac added.

“Hush,” Roland scolded the other two. “Moms is talking.”

Moms put a hand on Carter’s shoulder. “You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mac laughed. “He ain’t got a fucking clue.”

Moms nodded at Nada. He rapped on the flimsy door, rattling it on the hinges. Then he swung it open and indicated for Carter to go in. “Take the seat in front of the desk. Do not get out of the seat until dismissed, then come straight back out here. Anything else and I’ll kill you.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that Carter only realized he was serious after taking three steps into the room. A hard plastic chair faced a massive wooden desk. The smooth surface of the desk was unmarred by any phone, computer, or knick-knack. Behind the desk was a huge wing-backed chair, the occupant completely in the shadow cast by the large lights pointed directly at the plastic chair.

Carter sat down, hands on his knees, feeling like he’d been called into the principal’s office and he’d done something really bad — like burn down the school.

The voice startled him, not only with the accent, but the suddenness. “You do know, of course, that someone has to man the walls in the middle of the night? The walls between all those innocents out there who lay their heads down on their pillows every evening, troubled by thoughts of such things as mortgages, or their pet is sick, or their child is failing in school? The normal things people should worry about. There are even those who have grave, serious worries, such as just being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given weeks to live. But the things we, here, worry about, they are far graver than any of those worries.”

Carter didn’t know if she was really asking or if it was a test, so he followed Uncle Ray’s advice and said nothing.

Ms. Jones continued. “Someone has to worry about those things that go bump in the night, and let me assure you, young man, there are things that go bump in the night.”

Like Pads going after Dee, Carter thought. He knew there were bad things in the night.

As if reading his mind she continued. “Of course you sort of do, given your background. You did very well in the test with Colonel Orlando. You did very well in the Ranger Battalion and in your combat tours. You did very well in Ranger School. Surprisingly well, considering everyone thought you had been flunked after speaking back to that Ranger instructor. You were a washout. A recycle. Yet somehow when they printed out the roster for graduation, there was your name on it. Everyone was quite surprised. Including the graders who had flunked you.”

Carter sat straighter in the chair. He’d known someone would come after him about that sooner or later. “I earned my Ranger Tab,” he said defensively, throwing aside all the advice he’d grown up with, just like he’d done that hot day in the Florida swamp with the asshole RI. “I earned my combat patch in the Ranger Regiment. There’s many who wear the tab who never served with the Regiment.”

“Oh, yes,” Ms. Jones said. “You earned the tab. The computer said so. The interesting question is how the computer could have said so when the data the — I believe they are called RIs? — put into it flunked you.”

Silence fell over the room as Ms. Jones waited. Carter fidgeted, not sure which way to go, just knowing he was at a critical juncture not only in his career but in the rest of his life.

“Truth doesn’t set you free,” Ms. Jones said. “It just keeps you alive in the Nightstalkers.”

Carter blinked in surprise. “Task Force 160? I thought they were at Campbell and—”

“Not those Nightstalkers,” Ms. Jones said with a hint of frost. “When Task Force 160 was formed in 1981, we switched our name to Nightstalkers also, because it’s always best to have a cover behind some other classified unit. As you just indicated, it works for misdirection. We prefer to be a shadow inside of a shadow.”

“What were you called before that?” Carter asked.

“That is not important,” Ms. Jones said. “And, as a bonus, Nightstalkers was appropriate. As I told you, we’re the ones who man the walls against the things that go bump in the night. Do not make me repeat myself. How did you pass Ranger School when you should have flunked?”

“I cheated, ma’am.”

“Very good,” Ms. Jones said. “How?”

“I knew they were gonna flunk me for sassing back at that RI. But he made a comment about my sister, and he didn’t even know I had a sister. Got two actually. So I snuck out the night before graduation. Everyone else was wiped out. The last night, after the last patrol, after the entire course, everyone reaches their limits and just collapses.”

“But not you.”

“I knew they were gonna flunk me.” Carter flushed as he realized he’d repeated himself. “I couldn’t flunk. I needed to graduate.”

“For the tab?” This time it was a question.

Carter swallowed, but he was too far down the alley of truth and the walls were closing in. “No, ma’am. I needed the pay bonus.”

She didn’t ask what for, which surprised him. “How did you cheat?”

“I snuck out. Went to the command shed. Stole a smartphone they use for commo. Hacked into the system. Changed my grade.”

Ms. Jones waited.

“Then I got all the score sheets. Took them over to the admin shed. Scanned every one on me. Photoshopped all of them and changed mine to passing. Took them all out into the swamp. Roughed them up and stained them like the originals. That took a while, as I had to dry them off afterward to make them look real. Put them back.”

“They knew you cheated.”

Carter remembered the uproar, the RIs swearing the forms with their signatures weren’t right, that the computer was wrong. The sheets were wrong. “Yes, ma’am.”

“But they graduated you because the computer said so and they were afraid you would appeal and lawyers would get involved and it would be a mess. Easier to move you on.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What a sad state the army is in when an RI just can’t flunk a student with his word as a soldier and that a computer can overrule him. It’s a recipe for disaster. I predict you’ll see a similar disaster like that if you say yes to my question. Which, of course, is why you’re here.”

Then Ms. Jones gave the why we are here speech. When she was done, she simply asked: “Can you live with that?”

Carter hesitated, which he knew was bad, but he had to ask. “Ma’am, I reenlisted for Special Forces. And—”

“For the bonus, not because you particularly wanted to be a Green Beret, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ms. Jones remained silent and Carter was tempted to tell her why he needed the bonuses, but he knew Dee would have told him a man doesn’t beg. He only gets that which is his due.

Finally Ms. Jones broke the silence and there was, strangely enough, approval in her voice. “You send all your money to your family. To your older sister, Dee. Correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“To look after your younger siblings.”

That was not a question.

“Your father blew himself up recently cooking methamphetamine, correct?” Ms. Jones did not wait for an answer. “And the county is going to seize the family house and land for back taxes. You need not worry, young man. Your land and house will not be seized by the government. The exact amount of money that you should have gotten in your reenlistment bonus for Special Forces will be sent to your sister. Understand, though, that unlike our Support, who are contractors — a move I was completely against but was overruled on — we are not mercenaries in the Nightstalkers. We are soldiers. You have sworn an oath.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your answer?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

There was the grinding sound of a shredder operating in the darkness. “That was your service record. Winthrop Carter no longer exists,” Ms. Jones said. “You may go and learn what name options the team has chosen for you.”

He got up and went to the door. It swung open before his hand touched the knob and Nada was waiting for him, pulling him into the Den, the door swinging shut behind. On one of the whiteboards five names were written, each in a different color:

“Gentlemen,” Moms said. “Please read your choices and explain where needed,” she added with a quizzical glance at Eagle.

Roland spoke first. “I think we name him Slick. ’Cause what he did in Ranger School was, well, slick.” The big man flushed red.

Moms was next. “I think we call him Know. Because we all know the n in Ranger stands for Knowledge.” She said the old joke with a smile to take away any possible sting.

Mac was standing next to a plastic garbage can. “Shoot, we call him Cheetah, ’cause that’s what he is. Fast and smart.”

Nada was frowning, but that was Nada’s usual look. “Fred. Every team needs a Fred.”

“My choice,” Eagle began, “is—”

“We ain’t using two damn words,” Nada interrupted. “You know the rule. One name. An easy word. And one that won’t confuse us, so I think Know is out, sorry, Moms.”

“It’s okay,” Moms said, meaning she’d never been in.

Ms. Jones’s voice came through the door, surprisingly vibrant. She always sounded perky during the name-choosing ceremony. “What did you write, Mister Eagle?”

“Kobayashi Maru,” Eagle said. “I know the rule about one word and—”

“I believe,” Ms. Jones said, surprisingly interrupting Eagle’s attempt at explaining, “I know where you are going with this. From the old American television series Star Trek. I watched it as a child in the former Soviet Union. Yes, we had a television. The test that was lose-lose, where choosing either way was wrong. And Captain Kirk cheated on it by reprogramming the computer. Very interesting.”

There was a silence as they waited on Ms. Jones to make her ruling now that she had all the entries.

“The thing I liked about what our new team member did,” Ms. Jones said, “was not reprogramming the computer. Any fool can reprogram a computer. Even the Photoshopping of the score sheets was to be expected. But he did all of them, not just his own. So they would all look alike and his wouldn’t stand out. And weathering them. That was the nice touch. Welcome to the team, Mister Kirk.”

“Hot damn!” Mac exclaimed, a can of Pearl beer in each hand. He tossed the first to Moms, the next to Nada. He pulled and pitched until everyone had a cold brew in hand. He popped the tab and everyone else did. “To Kirk.”

“To Kirk,” the team echoed.

“I like it,” Nada said after taking a deep draft of the beer. “Short. One syllable.”

Kirk was a bit overwhelmed as his teammates came by, slapping on his shoulder, calling him by his new name. When Mac came up, Kirk clanked cans with him.

“Thanks for the brew, Mac. I didn’t think they made this in the can anymore.”

“They don’t,” Mac said. “My daddy owned a piece of the company before it got broke up and he got a warehouse full outside of San Anton’.”

“You got a daddy?” Roland said, smiling.

Mac’s face went hard. “Yeah, I do, and he’s a right mean son-of-a-bitch.”

Roland flushed red and he tried to stutter out an apology, but couldn’t gather the right words; he was better with guns than words. Moms reached out and placed a comforting hand on Mac’s shoulder, which he shrugged off angrily. She glanced at Nada and he gave the slightest shake of his head.

Then Mac suddenly smiled and the room lit up. He ran around Roland’s massive form and the big man reacted slowly, because he was only fast in combat mode, and Mac jumped on his back. “Lookie there. Roland made a funny. Someone alert the news.” He poured his can of beer over Roland’s head while the big man halfheartedly slapped at him with his massive paws.

Nada shook his head. “Fucking F-Troop.”

“What’s F-Troop?” Roland asked, Mac still on his back.

Ms. Jones’s voice came through the door loud and clear. “Another classic television show of the sixties. A western comedy. Very amusing about a bunch of misfits cast together.” She made a strange sound, and Nada started for the door thinking she was choking…and then everyone realized it was Ms. Jones laughing.

After an awkward pause, everyone started chatting again. Mac slid off Roland’s back and passed more beers out.

“What would you have done with the beer if I’d said no?” Kirk asked Mac.

Mac laughed. “Drank it anyway.”

“No one says no,” Eagle said. “That’s why she’s Ms. Jones. She picked you.”

For a surprising third time Ms. Jones cut in. “And do you know why I picked Mister Eagle, Mister Mac?”

Mac didn’t hesitate. “He’s a fucking great pilot, Ms. Jones.”

“He is indeed,” Ms. Jones confirmed. “But great pilots are easy to find. He’s also a superb navigator. The combination of those two is still relatively common in the big scheme of things.”

Moms looked at Nada questionably. Nada just shrugged.

Ms. Jones continued. “Did you know that London cab drivers have a larger hippocampus on average than most other people so they can memorize the maze of streets upon which they ply their trade? Eagle has a hippocampus that puts theirs to shame. That is why he has arcane knowledge such as the Kobayashi Maru and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch as well as his technical skills. He also has quite a bit of useful knowledge in his brain.”

Now it was Eagle’s turn to flush, the scars on the left side of his face pulsing darker with blood.

Moms stood close to Nada and whispered so only he could hear. “Something’s wrong. Ms. Jones has never spoken this much.”

“I know,” Nada said. “We’re screwed.”

Ms. Jones finished: “Drink your Pearl, gentlemen and Ms. Moms.”

Kirk stared at the can of beer in his hand. “How’d she know we were drinking Pearl?”

In the darkness of her real office, lying in her hospital bed, Ms. Jones listened through the speaker as the team wrapped up the naming ceremony with more beers. She turned off her microphone and the holographic image generated by the machine in the chair in her office.

And she worried about things she had no control over and things that others couldn’t even conceive of.

Because that’s why she was Ms. Jones.