“I’m sorry, dude. Know you wanted it. Don’t think it’s dead for good. Just for now.”
Jean-Jacques didn’t react. Anger would come later. He hadn’t wanted to participate in the movie. He’d done it to make going back to the Legion possible, to make becoming a Legion platoon commander possible. This wasn’t the first time the camo machine had lied to him, though. He’d deal.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” was all he said.
Pete had other news, as well. Once their leave in Empire City ended, they weren’t bound for the Mediterranean. They’d be joining a spec ops team in Sudan. The war had spread there, like a virus. Rumor had it Chinese commandos were in the region. China was making a play all over Africa. A brave new world awaited the Volunteers. A brave new front, too.
“Agency folks think it was them who zapped that consul’s pacemaker,” Pete said, knocking back his second whiskey. “Vacation’s almost over. Duty, my dude. She beckons.”
“Sergeant Swenson.” Jean-Jacques sighed, hoping the official rank might help break Pete from his plotting. “We got months until all that. Leave. Then train up. Then we get our assignment. A million things will change between now and then.”
Jean-Jacques held deep misgivings about the Volunteers’ combat readiness. It was part of the reason he’d tried to rejoin the Legion. Hollywood had made them soft. America had made them soft. More than anything, their powers had made them soft.
“I’m connected, son!” Pete’s voice cracked with excitement. “Intel community knows where we’re going before the generals do.”
Jean-Jacques rolled his eyes, but thought of Tripoli again, and those specific smells of death. Their few missions after the Abu Abdallah raid had been fiascos. What could the Volunteers do that the rest of special ops couldn’t? Armored vehicles carried more than Pete could. The web of intel networks could be way more places at once than Flowers. Stealth drones moved about as quickly as he did, with way more vantage. The Volunteers? They were more than soldiers, sure. Just not the way the others believed.
But they’d had that argument already.
He’d barely made a dent in his beer. Pete reached for his second and looked around, as if only now taking in the environment. “Gay bar,” he said. “And Flowers says you don’t have a sense of humor.”
“Hah.” Jean-Jacques took a long drink. It slid into his bloodstream and he felt his shoulders slump, then the rest of his body ease. Pete always wore him down, one way or another. Usually he lasted longer than half a beer but he was tired. He was also missing the clarity of life lived through night-vision green.
Pete looked across at him with dark expectations.
“All right,” Jean-Jacques said. “Tell me about this new enemy.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Release No: NR-043-24
TOP-SECRET MILITARY PROGRAM YIELDS SUPER RESULTS
The War Department announced today a team of super-soldiers, melding the elite training of special operators with revolutionary technology. The Hero Project was developed by the U.S. government under the supervision of the Council of Victors. Three U.S. Army Rangers—Sergeant Peter Swenson, 25, Corporal Grady Flowers, 21, and Corporal Jean-Jacques Saint-Preux, 23—volunteered for the breakthrough program. They now possess the abilities of super-strength, teleportation, and super-speed, respectively, and will be deploying to the Mediterranean to conduct combat operations. One of their focuses will be the ongoing manhunt for Abu Abdallah, the terror chieftain and architect of the Palm Sunday attacks on Federal City.
“It’s our great honor to serve America as warfighters,” Sergeant Swenson said. “Continuing to do so in our new capacities is a challenge we look forward to. The three of us would like to thank all involved, from the War Department to the Council of Victors to NASA. Onwards, to victory.”
While details remain top-secret, the Hero Project utilized cythrax, a strange, malleable element discovered in rocks found in outer space by NASA. The team of super-soldiers will be known as the Volunteers, a name they chose as tribute to the fighting spirit of the all-volunteer American military. They will fall under the purview of Special Operations Command. According to a Council of Victors spokesman, there are no current plans to conduct another program.
CHAPTER 4
AFTER A LATE breakfast of coffee and a cold taco, Sebastian walked down the street to the basketball courts. There was an inherent fluidity to the game he’d always been drawn to, finding solace and escape in it since childhood. Though no longer in any decent physical shape, he had maintained a silky, suburban jump shot, and sometimes worked into games as a substitute. A citywide tournament was under way, though, so after watching the second half of a game between two Asian Harlem teams, he returned home.
In front of his building, a man in rags sorted through the trash, collecting bottles. Sebastian thought he resembled the man from the subway tunnel but that wasn’t possible. What is it called when you think all homeless people look alike? Sebastian asked himself. Homeless-ist? He didn’t know.
“Change?” the man asked Sebastian.
“I can make you a sandwich,” Sebastian said.
“From the ashes, holy redemption,” the man in rags said, pointing to the bottles. Sebastian figured that a no and walked up to his apartment.
He made himself a sandwich and turned on the television. The Great Tet Raid was on again. He’d loved the movie as a kid and so had all his friends. What American boy hadn’t wanted to grow up to be the young marine captain stranded behind enemy lines, destined to save the war and someday become president? Sebastian watched until General Giap refused to flee the coming air strike, choosing instead to die in place with his men.
“I don’t know what god you worship,” Sebastian said along with George Clooney’s square-jawed marine captain. “But He’s about to get a hell of a fighting man.”
That marine captain was Chuck Robb, of course. Champion of the Third Way. His lone White House term had proven a rocky one, the old radicals on the left and the young hawks on the right revolting against Robb’s tenuous centrist platform. LBJ’s heroic son-in-law met the same political fate as the old man. Like many moderates of her generation, Sebastian’s mom pointed to the Palm Sunday attacks for the collapse of the two-party system, for the apparent end to American bipartisanship. It hadn’t always been like this, she said. Sebastian wasn’t sure. He wondered if the attacks had just hastened the inevitable.
Sebastian turned off the television and went to his computer. Four emails awaited. One was spam, a chain letter imploring a return to the gold standard. He deleted that one. The second, a note from his dad. He replied to that one. The third, a newsletter from a local protest group he’d made the mistake of giving his contact info to. He supported reform in the rehabilitation colonies as much as the next liberal arts major, but these people wanted to abolish them, outright. Where would veterans with troubles go? They never answered that. The fourth email was from Britt Swenson.
Hi. Got your email from Mia. Wanted to invite you to the Temple tonight, some great bands. Link below with directions. My brother will be there, too. And did I mention two free drink tickets???