seeing cracks. Cracks in the system, cracks in the soldiers.”
Interesting. Hort had read the anger in Larison as he’d read it in Ben. Well, it wasn’t like the unit attracted a lot of Zen Buddhists.
“Why are you so sure it was him?”
“I’m not sure. But there’s no one else that makes any sense.”
“Then couldn’t the other players—the Agency, the Bureau—figure out Larison, too? That he had the access, faked his death—”
“They could, but they won’t. They don’t know him the way I do. Larison was the best. He’s what you’ll be in ten years if you keep developing the way you need to. Right now, you’ve got the confidence and the instincts. What you need is judgment. And control.”
That was a rebuke for Manila. Ben couldn’t deny the justice of it.
“If it’s just the Agency and the Bureau on this, how did you find out? What’s your connection?”
Hort smiled as though pleased that Ben was considering all the angles, asking the right questions. But he said only, “I’ve been around for a while, son. I know people.”
Yeah, a guy like Hort had contacts everywhere: Pentagon, State, all the spook services … probably even the White House. Couldn’t really expect him to reveal his sources and methods.
“So, what’s our time frame?”
“Five days. And he says he has an electronic dead-man trigger. Even if we find him, we can’t just take him out.”
“A bluff?”
Hort shook his head. “It’s exactly what he would do. Or you or I would do, for that matter.”
“What do I do when I find him?”
That ripple of sadness passed across Hort’s face again. “You don’t do anything. Your job is just to find him and fix him. Not to finish him. Not yet, anyway. For the time being, we’re going to have to play this one by ear.”
Ben wasn’t sure what playing it by ear would be about. Up until now, “find, fix, and finish” had always constituted a half-redundant description of what Ben did, with “finish” being the real point. He wanted to ask what Hort had in mind, and why he thought they might be able to end this without ending Larison in the process. But he’d asked the important questions already, and that kind of “why” wasn’t in his job description anyway. His orders were to find and fix Larison, and he would carry them out. Presumably, at that point, he’d get some new orders. In the meantime, someone else would worry about why.
6
Don’t Want to Wind Up Like Him
The next morning, Ben was slowly circling Belthorn Drive in Kissimmee, Florida, a half-hour drive southwest of the airport in Orlando. According to Hort, this was the current residence of Larison’s “widow,” now going by her maiden name, Marcy Wheeler. For the moment, Wheeler was pretty much the only actionable thing they had to go on.
He drove, his head sweeping back and forth, absorbing information, looking for the detail that didn’t fit: a parked car with a couple of hard-looking men inside, a van with darked-out windows, a man in shades strolling along and somehow not from the neighborhood. Nothing tickled his radar. Belthorn was a sleepy collection of modest ranch houses being inexorably replaced by more imposing McMansions. But for the heat and the occasionalpalm tree, it could have been a suburban street in just about any lower-middle-class American neighborhood transitioning from older families and long-standing homes to younger, more aggressive colonists, newcomers with more of a need to make a statement and more appetite for the housing debt such statements required.
Wheeler lived in one of the older, smaller homes, a one-level yellow rectangle that looked like it contained one or at most two bedrooms and that badly needed a fresh coat of paint. Ben parked at the end of the street, far enough to keep Wheeler from seeing the license plate on his rented car, near enough to watch the house. Hort had told him Wheeler had a son, and it was almost time for school.
He watched and
Interesting. Hort had read the anger in Larison as he’d read it in Ben. Well, it wasn’t like the unit attracted a lot of Zen Buddhists.
“Why are you so sure it was him?”
“I’m not sure. But there’s no one else that makes any sense.”
“Then couldn’t the other players—the Agency, the Bureau—figure out Larison, too? That he had the access, faked his death—”
“They could, but they won’t. They don’t know him the way I do. Larison was the best. He’s what you’ll be in ten years if you keep developing the way you need to. Right now, you’ve got the confidence and the instincts. What you need is judgment. And control.”
That was a rebuke for Manila. Ben couldn’t deny the justice of it.
“If it’s just the Agency and the Bureau on this, how did you find out? What’s your connection?”
Hort smiled as though pleased that Ben was considering all the angles, asking the right questions. But he said only, “I’ve been around for a while, son. I know people.”
Yeah, a guy like Hort had contacts everywhere: Pentagon, State, all the spook services … probably even the White House. Couldn’t really expect him to reveal his sources and methods.
“So, what’s our time frame?”
“Five days. And he says he has an electronic dead-man trigger. Even if we find him, we can’t just take him out.”
“A bluff?”
Hort shook his head. “It’s exactly what he would do. Or you or I would do, for that matter.”
“What do I do when I find him?”
That ripple of sadness passed across Hort’s face again. “You don’t do anything. Your job is just to find him and fix him. Not to finish him. Not yet, anyway. For the time being, we’re going to have to play this one by ear.”
Ben wasn’t sure what playing it by ear would be about. Up until now, “find, fix, and finish” had always constituted a half-redundant description of what Ben did, with “finish” being the real point. He wanted to ask what Hort had in mind, and why he thought they might be able to end this without ending Larison in the process. But he’d asked the important questions already, and that kind of “why” wasn’t in his job description anyway. His orders were to find and fix Larison, and he would carry them out. Presumably, at that point, he’d get some new orders. In the meantime, someone else would worry about why.
6
Don’t Want to Wind Up Like Him
The next morning, Ben was slowly circling Belthorn Drive in Kissimmee, Florida, a half-hour drive southwest of the airport in Orlando. According to Hort, this was the current residence of Larison’s “widow,” now going by her maiden name, Marcy Wheeler. For the moment, Wheeler was pretty much the only actionable thing they had to go on.
He drove, his head sweeping back and forth, absorbing information, looking for the detail that didn’t fit: a parked car with a couple of hard-looking men inside, a van with darked-out windows, a man in shades strolling along and somehow not from the neighborhood. Nothing tickled his radar. Belthorn was a sleepy collection of modest ranch houses being inexorably replaced by more imposing McMansions. But for the heat and the occasionalpalm tree, it could have been a suburban street in just about any lower-middle-class American neighborhood transitioning from older families and long-standing homes to younger, more aggressive colonists, newcomers with more of a need to make a statement and more appetite for the housing debt such statements required.
Wheeler lived in one of the older, smaller homes, a one-level yellow rectangle that looked like it contained one or at most two bedrooms and that badly needed a fresh coat of paint. Ben parked at the end of the street, far enough to keep Wheeler from seeing the license plate on his rented car, near enough to watch the house. Hort had told him Wheeler had a son, and it was almost time for school.
He watched and
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