The lawyer kept writing. None of the agents even smiled. Too bad, Jean-Jacques thought. It’s funny.
“Got another tip saying he ran su-support for you all.” The other field agent, Stein, spoke now. He had a mild stammer. Jean-Jacques distrusted it. “In the Dinaric Alps.”
That was interesting. That’d been one of the first missions with their supers—a running gun battle with Balkan nationalists who had them surrounded. It hadn’t been publicized, since it hadn’t been a glorious victory over terror. It’d been a total mess. Four days at the top of the earth with no resupply. Pete and Flowers thought it’d proven their mettle. Jean-Jacques thought it’d revealed their limitations. Nothing but the smells of death, with some desperate calls for artillery in between. Superheroes or not, they’d have been dead ten times over without that artillery. The Alps had shown Jean-Jacques what real power was. It’d shown him where it came from, too.
He kept that to himself, though. “No such support.” Every word he spoke would be parsed into fragments upon fragments by analysts who hadn’t seen sunlight in years. Best to keep it brief. “Just us up there.”
The agents asked about Sergeant Swenson and Corporal Flowers, if either had ever expressed knowing the bomber.
“Big negative.” Jean-Jacques looked at the man in the corner, whose focus remained on his notepad like it held the mysteries of the universe. Of course they sent the worst lawyer alive, Jean-Jacques thought. “As surprised as I was. We all thought it was a wog, to be honest.”
The lawyer wrote faster than usual into his notepad. Probably shouldn’t have said that, Jean-Jacques thought. Oh well.
Agent Dorsett leaned back in his seat, causing it to screech against the tile floor. Then he cracked his neck like he was about to power-clean the table. Fucking babylons, Jean-Jacques thought. Everything’s always a show.
“I’m going to be real with you now, brutha.”
“Okay.”
“We figured those tips were bullshit. Timeline doesn’t match. Due diligence, though. Now I need you to be real with me.”
“Okay,” Jean-Jacques said again.
“Only difference between us is a boat stop. Remember that.”
Jean-Jacques thought about that, then thought about why a federal agent would say that to a soldier. “Okay,” he said yet again.
“Thirty bombed monuments. One for each year of the Mediterranean Wars. Each monument from a different war. This was exact. Tight. Planned, with a message. We got surveillance of Gray entering Vietnam Victory Square the morning of.”
“That’s good.”
“It is. That’s just one of thirty, though. He did this all by himself? Hell no.”
“Sure.” Jean-Jacques sniffed. “But what’s that got to do with me?”
“Your cousin.” Empty seconds passed. Jean-Jacques listened to recycled air. “Emmanuel.”
“What about him?”
The field agents looked at Larsen from the task force. The older man nodded and began reading from a file.
Jonah Gray. Age forty-six. From Ohio. Army veteran of the Mediterranean Wars. Tours to Beirut, Cyprus, and Albania. First as an armored cavalry scout, later as a chaplain’s assistant. Upon military discharge, a medical tribunal sent Jonah Gray to a colony on Block Island for “signs of combat stress reaction and psychological trauma.” He spent ten years there and was released, having met the criteria for a return to the citizenry. The Bureau hadn’t been able to get much else from that time frame. The Council of Victors held tight to colony documents.
Jonah Gray went west after the colony. He’d met some separatists on Block Island and become interested in their ideas. He earned a nickname during his western travels: the Chaplain. His time as an assistant had shown him the power of reverence. A holy man held great importance to soldiers, whether in the Mediterranean or the Great Basin. He became a roving desert prophet, going from separatist group to separatist group, calling for uprising against the American government. The separatist leaders treasured him at first, seeing how this holy man inspired their rank and file. That turned, eventually. They began to fear being usurped. Jonah Gray was turning his pulpit into a platform for questioning their tactics and strategy. Sermons about God and justice were one thing. Being told they weren’t doing enough for true revolution was another. The separatist leaders had banished Jonah Gray from their camps three years before.
“He fell off our radar after that,” Agent Dorsett explained. “A mistake. But our focus was on the separatists, not a wandering reverend.”
After the war memorial bombings, the Bureau had been trying to piece together where Gray had gone next. There’d been a vet break from the Block Island colony he must’ve been involved with: twenty-four veterans escaped, including a group of his former ward mates. From those men and the strategies learned out west, Gray had formed a militia of his own. They called themselves the Mayday Front.
The Front weren’t political extremists in any traditional sense. Not far left, not far right, not devoted to toppling the federal state or tax system. Other than Gray himself, they didn’t even seem all that religious. “But they’re angry,” Agent Stein said. “And armed. A group of radical warfighters and citizens hell-bent on humiliating those they think have humiliated them. Want to destroy the rehabilitation colonies, for example. Let veterans with troubles back into everyday society.
“They’re crazy. No plan for what comes after.”
Gray had learned how to lead, how to plan. Like the Western separatists, like the Muslim Brotherhood and IRA abroad, the Mayday Front had both a militant wing and a social service wing. He had deputies installed in both while staying off the grid himself. No digital profile to speak of, no media presence. They’d found one lone video online, a grainy speech Gray had made in the Florida backwoods while recruiting an ultra militia.
Right-wing ultras and lefty activists working for the same cause, toward the same end? That didn’t reason. Jean-Jacques said so.
“Gray’s fucking nuts,” Agent Dorsett said. “But he’s got that madman charisma. It’s an ethic of total retaliation.”
The militant wing had carried out the war memorial bombings. They could pin Gray to Vietnam Victory Square the day of. Now they needed to find him. Which is why they needed Jean-Jacques.
His cousin, the agents said, belonged to the Mayday Front. Not the militant wing, but the social service one. They’d had trouble infiltrating the militants—they were wary, distrustful, made up of veterans of the Mediterranean who’d known one another for years. The social service wing, though, was more nascent, run by a deputy with Haitian roots. It’s how Emmanuel had become involved.
“Your cousin brings you in,” Agent Larsen said. “You’re a famous Volunteer. They’ll welcome your presence. Jump at getting you involved in their community projects and outreach. Especially if you let slip there’s something about the wars that you resent. Something you regret. Will help earn their trust.”
Could Jean-Jacques handle that?
He thought about Tripoli, and the boy he’d lost, the boy he’d failed. Yes, he could conjure up something for these Maydays. But why? He needed to be getting ready for war again, he said. Hitting the gym. Doing foot marches through hills. Zeroing his weapons at the range. Shit like that.