“No, nothing so simple. This is something big, something black, blacker than black. Man, I hate to involve you, what with Cassie and the kids, but it’s either you or run for the border. I don’t want to run yet.”

“It’s all right, man. You know what I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me your family. I think you need to cut them out. Get some distance.”

He could see Zeke in his mind’s eye, thinking and chewing the inside of his cheek the way he always did. “All right. Can you find the cabin?”

“I was thinking the same thing. Yeah, I can find it. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to lead them to it. And Zee-man…might want to put out a warning order for a few more guys, just in case. This is some through-the-looking-glass stuff, and I don’t know how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

“Just don’t tell me I’m going to wake up in a tank full of goo with a tube down my throat.”

“Well, I got a red pill for you here, if you want it.”

He snorted. “All right, Morpheus. When can you be there?”

Daniel thought for a moment, trying to calculate the distance and time. About ten hours to Cave Run Lake, Kentucky. “Sometime tonight, I think. Same white van.”

“Okay, brother. You take care, and I’ll see you tonight.”

He put down the phone, used the head, then went out and paid for his food order. He brought it out to the van and ate a bagel sandwich sitting there in the seat, watching Quantico go about its morning routine. After drinking a half a gallon of the milk he started on the coffee. Hunger pangs seemed to come and go, and apparently he had to feed them when they did.

On the road he passed the inbound base traffic piled up at the gate. Then he took it easy, driving in the right lane south down I-95, letting his thoughts flow.

Things were a thousand times better now. Yeah, he felt a little guilty for putting Zeke on the spot, but what were friends for, anyway, and Daniel had saved his life, after all. In some cultures that meant he was responsible for Zeke. Either way, me for him, him for me.

There was nothing quite like the bond between men who had faced death together. It sounded corny, even in his mind, but it was the unspoken truth that turned recruits into veterans and boys into men on the battlefield, and had for millennia. It was more important than just about anything else, on a par with the love between husband and wife. In fact, Daniel knew guys who would choose their brothers in arms before their wives, maybe even their kids.

Might not be right, but it was strong, very strong.

 That didn’t mean he even liked the guys, always. Sometimes he couldn’t even stand them, outside of an op, and Daniel was always a bit of a loner, hadn’t worried about keeping in touch. He could always find them later, he’d thought.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. He hadn’t memorized many Bible verses, but that was one of them. He couldn’t remember who said it, but that guy really knew what he was talking about. I hope he died well, saving his friends. Couldn’t ask for a better way to go. I know I’d welcome it when it came, if I died doing my duty, so others could live.

Daniel shook off his melancholy thoughts. Maybe the XH meant he didn’t have to think about dying anymore, or his buddies dying or anyone. Maybe XH would put him out of business. That was a strange idea. This stuff was going to change the world, if the unknown downside didn’t turn out to be too bad.

In any case, physically he felt great, better and better by the hour. His thoughts were clearer, his body hummed with vitality and health. It was an overnight revolution. And all he had to do was bite someone, he figured, to pass it on. He had a feeling of power, of the ability to bestow a gift on his friends and withhold it from his enemies, whoever they were. Then he felt a sudden stab of conscience, realizing that he wouldn’t, couldn’t withhold it from anyone that needed it. That Others May Live was his code. Not That Others Who I Happen To Like May Live.

Daniel’s resolve crystallized. He realized then that everyone had to have this stuff.

Conscience nagged at him as he drove, with nothing to do but think and listen to the radio. He started remembering stupid things he’d done as a kid, growing up in Omaha. He’d hurt people, emotionally and physically. He’d been a jerk, because he could be. He was big and tough and athletic and good-looking and he’d used and discarded girls like paper cups, drinking his fill then tossing them away. He’d had a filthy mouth, he’d gotten into fights, and he’d bullied weaker people around him. It was all for their own good, of course, and they deserved it, of course, and he deserved whatever he wanted from life, of course.

Of course.

He’d kept a purer part of himself compartmentalized, in a box marked “Duty,” and that was sacred. In that box he was a paladin. Everything in there he did right, everything by the book unless completing the mission called for a deviation, and the mission was everything.

But outside of duty, he’d been a son of a bitch.

Then Becky came along. God, she was beautiful, with sandy straight hair in bangs, freckles, a generous figure that he found just right - and she had a young daughter. It was fireworks and flame for a while, and they got married.

It lasted five years, until the drinking and gambling and stupidity ruined it all. They didn’t have any kids of their own, either. It was Daniel, his half of it, that poisoned the well too, just one more contributing factor.

I can’t be much of a man if I was shooting blanks with my own wife, right? He had too much medical training to deny a low sperm count.

A wave of guilt washed over him and he ground his teeth, tears of regret leaking out in the privacy of his van at sixty-five miles per hour. He had never faced his own culpability, and it was cleansing to just accept it.

Dr. Benchman used to tell him he had to take responsibility for things he’d done and he would feel better. He’d preferred Prozac and Ritalin and Dexedrine, but he realized he didn’t want those now.

I think the XH is fixing me.

Was XH going to put the shrinks out of a job too?

An inkling of the downside started to rattle around in the deep recesses of his thoughts, way down there where things he didn’t want to think about lurk. He couldn’t see it clearly but he figured that given time it would eventually surface.

Feeling better, his thoughts turned to Elise. He’d shot her, she’d made a fool of him by escaping – or had he let her go? Maybe he could have tried harder. He’d never killed a woman – not that he knew of, anyway. Never had a woman fire a weapon at him either. Maybe he’d had a soft spot? It wasn’t something he’d thought about much. Then he hadn’t kept her out of their clutches at the biker bar, but he might have had to kill four men in front of witnesses to do it, and she’d been so adamant. Turning it all over in his mind, he kept trying to analyze his own feelings.

Okay, he admitted it to himself. He was interested. She’d shown backbone, and every man likes a woman with a spine, a woman he can respect, but there was something more there, a connection he felt. Part of it was the shared experience of combat, of the life and death stress that welds people together in unusual ways. Still, there was more to it than that. Was he fooling himself? It was the way she had looked at him, like she knew him.

At least he had all day to think about it.

-7-

By the time Elise was back home – if she could call a cheap apartment she never wanted “home” – she was bone tired. But at least she was healed up after they had stuffed her with food. Correction, Karl had. Miguel just sat there and glared into the rear-view mirror after Karl had made him sit up front. He’d kept trying to cop a feel and she’d complained about it. A true international asshole. Russian hands and Roman fingers.