“Hello? Anybody home?”
But when he got to the campsite he found it empty and quiet.
He walked through the pine trees down to Mott Lake, peered out over the water looking for any sign of a fishing boat in the distance, but the lake was still and empty.
There wasn’t a soul in sight.
Just then, a voice right behind him, not twenty-five feet away. “Last time I saw you, we were on the other side of the world.”
Clark did not spin around at the voice. He didn’t know this man very well, and this man barely knew him at all. Clark didn’t want to do anything to put him at unease.
Clark smiled and turned slowly, his hands away from his body. “Ukraine. A bit more urban, a lot more noisy than it is here.”
The bearded man with the ball cap said nothing.
Clark asked, “How’ve you been?”
The man answered flatly. “Fair.” And then, “You’re going to have a tough time trying to sell me on the fact this is some sort of a chance encounter.”
Former Delta Force officer Barry Jankowski stood in the foliage, leaning against a tree. He wore a U.S. Army T-shirt and cargo shorts, but Clark could see the imprint of a pistol under the T-shirt in an appendix holster. The man’s right hand was close enough to grab the gun in a flash if he had call to do so.
Clark said, “No, Barry. I came here to talk to you. Wanted to do it face-to-face, and this area seemed like we might have a little privacy.”
“Oh, it’s sure private here. No tourists, no fishermen. No fish, as a matter of fact.”
“They aren’t biting?”
“I blame it on the C-17s over there at the Luzon Drop Zone. Fish can feel that rumble and it freaks them out.”
Clark cocked his head.
“Just a theory,” Jankowski said. “Some might even call it an excuse.”
Clark said, “You’ve got the drop on me, so I am in complete agreement with you.”
Barry smiled. “I’m not as skittish as you take me for.”
“I hate to disturb a man enjoying all this peace.”
“You can feel free to call me Midas. I’m not Army anymore, but nobody at Bragg has called me Barry since… since pretty much ever.”
“What about Bartosz?” Clark asked.
“Well, now. You really have been looking into me, haven’t you?”
“I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time. Maybe after we talk, the fishing will be better.”
“I got a heads-up the other day that your buddy Chavez was asking around about me. Should I be worried or flattered?”
“You have a beer in that cooler up there?”
“I’ve got a few, yeah. I guess it’s five o’clock somewhere. C’mon.”
A few minutes later the two men, one in his late thirties, the other in his late sixties, sat on low tree stumps and sipped cans of Miller High Life. They swatted the occasional mosquito, talked a bit about Fort Bragg, and finally Midas grew bored with the conversational dance between the two.
He said, “So… what brings you out here?”
Clark nested his beer can in some pine needles on the ground. “You’ve applied at the Agency.”
“From what I remember, you aren’t with the Agency anymore. In fact, right after that whole thing in Ukraine, I had some serious-looking dudes show up and tell me you and the rest of your gang don’t exist.”
“Where would this country be without the serious-looking dudes skulking around telling people that what they just saw didn’t happen?”
“Debatable,” Midas said, sipped his beer. “Yeah, I applied. I guess it takes longer when your name is Bartosz Jankowski than if your name is Jack Ryan.” Midas raised an eyebrow. “Of course, Jack Ryan, Jr., isn’t Agency, either.”
“Just another guy who doesn’t exist,” Clark said.
“So I am told.”
“Look, Midas. My group… the guys you met, minus one who is no longer with us… we are an outfit that gets to do some interesting things. Important things. It is possible that you might rather work for us than for Langley. I can give you a list of men and women who know who we are, what we do. You will recognize some of the names.”
Midas did not hide his disappointment. “Is this because I didn’t get in CIA?”
“Not at all,” Clark said. “I won’t lie, I hear you are going to be offered the job in the National Clandestine Service, sooner or later. I’m not here because you didn’t get in. My organization is not the booby prize. We’re the unit that you don’t apply to. We’re the group that comes to you if we see something we like.”
Midas nodded thoughtfully, grabbed a mosquito out of the air in front of him with a hand fast enough to impress Clark. He asked, “This unit of yours. How big is it?”
“A small information technology and analytics section, a small admin section. In the operational ranks? Three.”
“Three hundred?”
Clark shook his head.
Midas’s eyes widened. “Three thousand?”
Another shake of the head. Clark held up his right hand and extended three fingers.
Midas looked at the hand. “Oh. Three, as in one, two, three.”
“Yeah, that three. We’re looking to expand to five. We are small, but we punch above our weight. We really do have a robust analytical side, and a logistics and information technology component that is absolutely second to none.”
“Fair enough. You don’t have to sell me on that. I saw what you boys can do. We damn sure would have been overrun without your help in Sevastopol, and we would have lost a lot of boys in Kiev if you weren’t there fighting alongside us on that hit there.”
Clark said, “I can promise you action. I can promise you ops that are crucial to the security of the United States, and I can promise you a great group of committed individuals you would work with every day. You will be a strategic-level asset. Oh… and we pay better than the government.”
Midas said, “That’s not hard to do, but all those government bennies add up if you live long enough to use them.” “Bennies” was slang for benefits; military folks revered their significant retirement and health insurance perks, because their monthly take-home wasn’t much to get thrilled about.
Clark said, “I can’t go into too much detail until I know if you want in, but you will be making probably two and a half times what you’d start at with a GS-9 rating. There are other options and benefits that greatly outpace government service. And you’d get the satisfaction of serving the interests of the U.S. without all the bureaucratic mumbo jumbo to deal with.”
“Like walking out of the Army as an officer in Delta and having to wait six months to a year to know if you got in at CIA?”
“Yeah, exactly like that. You say yes today, you can start tomorrow.” Clark shrugged. “You said the fish weren’t biting.”
Midas smiled again. “You mentioned one of the guys I met over there in Ukraine is no longer with your group. Did he get his benefits when he left?”
Clark looked out over the lake for a second. “No… but his mom did.”
“Damn. It wasn’t little Jack, because I’d have heard about that.”
“Sam passed away.”
Midas nodded. “I remember him. Good dude. In the field?”
Clark was still gazing out through the pines and over the water. He nodded. “Doing his job. Making a difference.” Clark looked at Midas now. “You’d be his replacement. We’re looking at another in-house promotion, too.”
Midas asked, “How deep did you look into me? You know all my secrets?”
Clark said, “For a group like us, the secret stuff is the easiest to find out. But we never found out how you got your call sign. Wasn’t Midas the guy who turned everything he touched into gold?”