The Janson Command by Paul Garrison Read Free Book Online Page B

good.”
    “Which is?”
    “Our decency.”
    “The boys must have loved him at Cons Ops.”
    “You may recall,” Janson reminded Jessica drily. “Consular Operations was not a debating society. He only spoke about it after.”
    “After what?”
    “After he shot his partner to stop him torturing an asset they had captured in Malaysia.”
    “He shot a fellow agent?”
    “Twice in the head.”
    “He shot an American ? Jesus, Paul. No wonder he’s in a wheelchair. Who put him there?” Her eyes got big. “You?”
    “Vengeance ain’t my style, Jesse. You know that. There is no revenge. Not on this earth.”
    “Yeah?” She stared at him probingly. “Then who did it?”
    “He put himself in that wheelchair.”
    “Come again?”
    “Doug stepped off the roof of our embassy in Singapore.”
    “Suicide?”
    “That was his intention. But the body doesn’t always obey the mind. He’d done too many parachute jumps to auger passively into the ground. His body remembered how to fall. Saved his life, if not his spine.”
    “Wow… But you said he got shot.”
    “That was a different time.”
    “When did you step in?”
    “When I found him begging on Washington Boulevard in Ogden, Utah.”
    “How’d you track him down? VA hospital?”
    “He grew up in Ogden. When it all goes to hell, people go home.”
    Jessica Kincaid shook her head. “Sometimes I feel guilty.”
    “For what?”
    “All the good stuff you do that I don’t.”
    Janson laughed. “One crusader in the outfit is plenty—Seriously, Jesse, you’re young. You’re in a different place; you’re still honing yourself, learning your craft. Go tell Mike we’re going to Africa.”
    Jessica Kincaid stepped to the front of the plane and opened the cockpit door. Forty thousand feet under the Embraer’s long nose fenced farmland stretched for as far as she could see. Fields were green in the sunlight. Creeks and rivers were fringed with trees.
    She laid a hand each on the shoulders of Mike and Ed. “Boys, you know where Africa is?”
    “Heard of it,” said Ed.
    “The boss wants to go there.”
    Mike asked, “Any particular part of Africa?”
    “Port Harcourt, Nigeria.”
    She observed closely as Ed brought the changed destination up on the Honeywell Flight Management System. New-generation software integrated the Embraer’s WAAS GPS, waypoint data, and the Future Air Navigation System for flying under transocean Procedure Control. He began charting a course to minimize distance and fuel burn.
    “Hang a right,” he told Mike, showing him the course. “We’ll fuel up in Caracas.”
    Mike said, “Better get some sleep.”
    “Soon as I enter our passenger manifest for Customs and Border Protection.”
    Mike tossed a grin over his shoulder at Kincaid. “Miss Jessica, if I were to move over while Ed sacks out, would you like some left-seat flight time?”
    “You bet!” she said, always eager to fly the plane. She listened while Mike radioed Atlantic Air Traffic Control Center, through whose airspace they were flying, to request permission to change their route. When he received clearance to turn to a new course, he eased the big silver jet onto its starboard wing.
    “Be right back,” said Kincaid. “Soon as I check on the boss.”
    She hurried to the main cabin, braced against the tilt. Janson was seated on the high side, staring out the window at nothing but sky. It’s more than Doug Case, she thought. It’s more than the doctor. The Machine sensed that something didn’t fit. She thought of challenging him, of saying, “Something else is going on. What is it?” But even if Janson was ready to admit it, she knew by the tilt of his head that he could not put it into words, yet.

FOUR
    I n the Free Foree camp, hidden in the caves that honeycombed the densely forested mountainous center of the island state, seven frightened men waited with their arms tied around the trunks of broad-leaf evergreen ironwoods.
    Shafts of sunlight pierced the