“I know what state Memphis is in, Chen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Huntsville, too, for that matter. Killed a man in Huntsville.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Doesn’t feel like a pattern anymore, does it? Feels like date rape. Feels like Fisher asked us out and then gave it to us up the ass. Anyway, we’re not going anywhere right now. Don’t have the horses. Christ, if Ferguson were a horse, I’d be thinking about putting him down. We’ll have to regroup in DC. We’re going to have to borrow some bodies. Who’s the least pissed at us at Langley these days?”

“Intelligence or operations, sir?”

Weaver turned in the chair to stare at Chen. “We need to take this rabid bastard out, Chen. What do you think?”

“Aqulia would be your best bet in operations, sir.”

“Isn’t he still pissed at us about Costa Rica?”

“I assume so, sir.”

Weaver nodded. “OK, see if you can shake a couple teams out of Aqulia, then see if you can narrow down this Memphis-Huntsville deal a little. I’ll talk to Snyder, see if she’s got a thought.”

“Yes, sir.” Chen continued to stand in the aisle. Weaver looked up.

“There something else?”

“Sir, Ferguson left a civilian alive at the station. There was a child in the minivan that pulled in for gas. I was going to eliminate it, but Ferguson threatened me with his weapon and forced me to leave the child alive. We were operating under sterile mission parameters, sir, and the protocol is clear. No contagions.”

Weaver was getting that ice-water feeling again, and not just in his rectum. “How old was this kid, Chen?”

“Younger than two, sir.”

Weaver nodded. “I guess that will be OK, then. Not like the kid’s going to ID us.”

“Yes, sir. I just thought you should know.”

Weaver nodded, and Chen returned to her seat. Shit, Weaver thought. Better talk with Ferguson.

Ferguson shifted in his seat, and the resulting pain woke him, drove him up through the murky depths of the drugs like a swimmer struggling toward the shimmering light for breath. Opening his eyes, he could see Weaver and Chen talking in the front of the cabin.

Ferguson hurt. He felt... well, he felt like he’d been shot and fallen off a cliff, both of which he’d done before, but never on the same day. Though last time he’d been shot he was gut shot, and this was just a little hickey, so on balance he figured he was ahead of the game – if the game was seeing how much you could fuck yourself up without getting zipped in a bag for the ride home. And wasn’t that just a stupid fucking game to be playing in the first place.

And then he realized he’d been dreaming, which was a surprise because he didn’t dream. Or at least he never remembered his dreams, which was the same thing as far as he was concerned. But he had been dreaming about the kid in the van, the kid strapped in the car seat. He dreamt that she was still sitting there, probably crying because it was dark and she couldn’t see her mother. Mom wasn’t far away, of course. Mom was lying right outside, ambient temperature by now, stiffening up, probably starting to take on that blue color. In the dream the kid sat and sat and sat while the sun went up and down and up and down and the mom rotted away.

And that’s when Ferguson decided he was through. Now he just had to decide what that meant. What it didn’t mean was walking up to the front of the cabin and asking Weaver for his pension, because that would just mean finishing the ride in a body bag. It meant no more sterile ops, though. It meant that for damn sure.

Weaver saw Ferguson was awake and headed back, carrying his drink, taking the seat on the aisle.

“How you doing, Fergie? Need a shot? Chen’s got the bag up front.”

“Doing better than Lawrence,” Ferguson said. “Better than Capelli and Richter for that matter.”

“Yeah,” said Weaver, “well, you were better than them. That’s why you’re still here.”

Ferguson shook his head. “I wasn’t better. I was just on the opposite side of the bowl. If Fisher hadn’t put his round through Capelli’s throat mic, I’d have been staring at that Marathon station while Fisher decided what part of me to perforate.”

“You earn your luck, Fergie, you know that. If anybody had a draw to an inside straight coming, it was you.”

“Luckier than that cop, too. And the lady in the van. And the poor bastard in the station.”

Weaver turned to look directly at Ferguson now, Ferguson still staring straight ahead, focusing on the seat in front of him, not wanting to look at Weaver, not in the eyes, not now.

“This wasn’t your first rodeo, Fergie. You got a problem we need to discuss?”

“No sir, Colonel, sir.”

Weaver took a long pull on his scotch. “Goddammit Fergie, don’t you go soft on me, not now. I got nobody left I can count on.” A sigh, another pull on the drink, sinking a little lower in the seat. Silence for a while.

“I know that was hard today, Ferguson. And I know you don’t want to hear it right now, but that was good soldiering. The lady, the cop, the grease monkey? Collateral damage. That’s all. You know what we do. You know the kind of shit that could fall down on people like those poor bastards if we weren’t in the way. And you’ve been in the way longer and better than most. Jesus, Fergie. Think about New Orleans. The shits you took out in January. We played by the rules, they would’ve got to the Superdome during the big game and suddenly the WTC would look like choir practice. I’m not saying it’s always easy to stomach. I am saying it’s got to be done. Three hundred million people in this country, Fergie. Every so often, a couple of them have to help pick up the tab.”

“Yes sir, Colonel, sir.” Ferguson sounding a little choked. “Thing is, I keep asking myself who we were saving today and I don’t see any stadium full of people or any nutjob with a WMD. I just see our guy and our nasty little secrets. I don’t see where the flag is big enough to hide behind, not on this one.”

Weaver looked down. Clapped Ferguson once on the knee. “It’s a tough call, Fergie, I’m not going to argue that. And, frankly, I gotta admit I’m glad I wasn’t there today. Hard thing to see, hard thing to do. Hell, Fergie, we don’t push the envelope, we’re the guys you call when the situation is all the way outside the postal system. Look, you’re busted up, you’re doped up, and you’ve got some healing to do. You rest up and let this shit go for tonight. My op, my orders. The civilians are on my tab.”

Ferguson just nodded. Weaver got up to walk back to the front of the cabin.

“Colonel?”

Weaver looked down. “Yeah, Fergie?”

“What about Chen? Think she’s wishing she could be glad she wasn’t there?”

“I don’t think Chen does glad, Fergie. I’m not even sure how she’ll know when she’s dead.”

Weaver walked up the aisle, grabbing a seatback when the Gulfstream hit a little bump. He plopped down in his seat and poured a couple more fingers of Macallan’s into his glass. Fergie was a good man, and Weaver had to admit he’d hung him out today, hung him out trying to keep InterGov’s ass out of the fire, nothing more. Fergie was right, no hiding behind the flag on this one. Weaver tried to picture the scene that afternoon – having to drop the station owner, watching Chen pop the soccer mom, frying the cop. He wanted to feel worse about it, but he couldn’t get it in his head.

“Hey, Chen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What kind of minivan the soccer mom driving?”

“Dodge Grand Caravan, sir. Purple. A 2003.”

Now Weaver had a picture in his head, the mom sprawled outside the driver’s door, the police cruiser burning in the foreground. He imagined seeing the kid in the car seat, the figure distorted through the heat and smoke from the burning cruiser but clear enough for you to know it was screaming.

CHAPTER 31 – RESTON, VIRGINIA

Weaver’s driver pulled the green Jaguar sedan into the brick circle drive in front of Ferguson’s nondescript four-bedroom in a development of nondescript four-bedrooms at a quarter to eight the next morning. Ferguson was sitting on a bench in his front yard, reading the paper. He was dressed preppie – khaki slacks, light green polo, blue blazer. Weaver thought Ferguson looked OK walking to the car. Still stiff, probably half a dozen bandages on under the preppie getup, but OK. Weaver wasn’t surprised that Fergie was out in the yard. He didn’t like Weaver coming into his house, never had.