Chapter 3 - Making a Match I

   I say I don't have a religion now, but I kind of do. Its the religion of ritual. I love ritual. I used to have to qualify when I said I "loved" something. But now? I've learned to just drop the quotation marks around that word. I don't just like or want or need ritual, I know I love it.

   The religion of ritual is everywhere, and we all perform our own personal observances in our own way. We bitch about getting up and going to work, but we know we need and even want to. In the back of our minds, a person with nothing to live for... typically doesn't.

   You go to church. Practically any church, too. I don't care if its the last of the big and beautiful Latin high mass if they even still offer high mass anymore. Christ, pun intended there, but even if you don't believe any more and lost your faith, even if you never believed in the first place and just go because its the thing to do in your book. Doesn't matter, what you're really observing is the religion of ritual.

   Religion was designed, either on purpose or out of want or even necessity, to be a ritual. When do you do it. I don't care if Tuesday night at 7:30 is when you meet for your own off to the side bible studies. Or Saturday night, or Sunday morning, or whenever. That's ritual, right there. How about Tuesday night? Sure, sure. Oh, wait. Can't. That's bible study night, can we make it Wednesday?

   Sunday isn't the day of rest as advertised. You get up early like its a work day, and you typically take a little more care in your appearance and dress. You don't want to be late, and you'll hurry the lagging family along. You don't want to leave early, either. Afterwards? Always some other ritual, to go along with the present one. Panic always remembers his parents and the big Sunday breakfasts, and how dad preferred the back cement patio.

   Another ritual. To celebrate you made your other main ritual. You come home from church on Sunday, and you get into your casual clothes. Another little ritual. My boss, the senior agent that runs me and our operation we're on... he's big on little rituals. His job is important enough of a career, that he can't just block off Sunday. Running a big division of the FBI isn't a job you can suddenly decide what day is your day, for you.

   No, Mike has little tics and mannerisms. If he stops one? Another just pops out and replaces it. His job, his career. Sure, he had his leanings and inclinations, but his life did it to him. Uncle Mikey, as I routinely call him? Started out a regular kid like the rest of us. He got some life lessons he can tell you about growing up, and they're good ones, too. His one liners of life lessons learned young? You can make motivational posters of them. Of course, I have my favorite.

   "Do the right thing."

   The whole story, would end with that object lesson. That punch line. That summation. And its iconic enough and seems profound enough, that you stand back and nod along. Mike says these little things aren't so little. They help mold and shape us. One day when older, and we're wringing our hands to make that big decision, and you know the one. The typical impossible decision. Now, for him? Its easy. Just, do the right thing.

   Mike will caution you. Can't just say it. You have to do it. You have to live it. Do the right thing, can be deep. The right thing, might be harmful. It might be one of those nasty aspects of being alive. Like fighting. Not good, it just is.

   Mike went to college, and it was nip and tuck to go somewhere good for his situation. A year or two in, money was even tighter. He landed a great job through school, that being pay and scheduling and everything. A doting uncle he hadn't really gotten to know? Must have observed his progress, and he was gifted a pretty new work truck.

   A cryptic note, too. Don't wreck it, you won't get another one. Save the miles, its for school and getting to work and back, and maybe going home or somewhere on vacations.

   Just remember. Do the right thing. That's all I expect out of you.

   So, he didn't have to quit school halfway through, and join the Army and go ROTC to finish his bachelors degree. After school was over, he found out what he suspected had been true. His one uncle, estranged from his own dad since their teen years and whatever differences they had. That was who had arranged for him to have the work truck. The Uncle said he had gotten drunk on Euchre night at the local club, and his drinking partner? Surprised him. Here. Keys to one of my work trucks. I always get a new work truck for myself, out of the little fleet for the HVAC company I own. Just got a brand new one, like I do every two years. What's one more insurance for a fleet. Any asshole over 18 can drive it, legally.

   So, someone else owned the work truck he drove to work and finished college in. Someone else paid the insurance every year. He tried to give it back after college, and the uncle said his friend wanted him to keep it. Apparently, the buddy had heard all about his buddy's nephew and how great of a kid he was, and he could now finish college without having to risk getting killed in the service for it.

   So? The buddy. Did the right thing. The uncle, he did the right thing, too. Now? It was his turn. Just, do the right thing. Even if it costs you? Especially if it costs you. Because that, my young friend, is how you know you're really doing the right thing.

   Do the right thing.

   And Mike did just that. He got married and had kids young. He did join the Army, but as an officer enlisting, after college was done. It was a leg up on all the ROTC guys around him, to be a recruited officer already educated. Forgoing the usual to serve his country. His uncle had told him that, too. If you have your heart set on serving your country, even dying for it one day? Don't let me stop you, if that's the right thing for you to do. But risking your life for your country? Should be completely voluntary, not something you have to do for four years to get through college.

   He ended up in Army intelligence, as a young staff officer. He explained you work under various older officers, unless and until one grooms you to take over. Its Army intelligence. They run assets. Some of your assets get killed now and again, it happens. And you're sitting in an office somewhere stateside, sending them into harm's way. Someone has to do that work, and it might as well be someone trying to do the right thing.

   People are going to get killed. Its not some game. If the country doesn't win the favor of some littler country that just happens to have a big old pile of some strategic resource, like Lithium? Its not good. Someone, somewhere? Might need to be killed. And so as much as it bothered him to be making decisions like that, he knew he had to make them. Because if he didn't, then some person without his sense of what's right would grab the reins. More assets would get killed. More people would get greased than was necessary.

   Mike learned the hard lessons about making an omelet. Gotta crack a few eggs. Not a big deal to you, its just breakfast. The chicken's not completely happy with the whole plan, you're stealing and eating her children. So even though you don't have to, probe gently under her ass every morning, while you're robbing her of any of her newborns she might have that day.

   Mike's assets, were human beings. It wasn't some card game. Lives were lost, not cards.

   Stress. Mike doesn't like the work anymore by this point. But if he doesn't do it, and well enough to get results? Someone else can't wait to grab his spot. And so he endured, and came through it. He hit some steady state, and managed his life and his career. Given a choice between caring too much and caring too little? He says plenty of people care less. Instead, he would care even more.

   Do the right thing. No matter what, do the right thing.

   And so. He thought he had mastered things. Rationalized them, to where he could nod along. And here comes what he suppressed. He was bitchy around the house, he was bitchy with the wife and kids. Not that every dad has to be that fun dad, but he didn't want to be the grouchy dad, the grouchy husband. World has enough of those already. And what's more, he wasn't like that growing up, why should he accept that now.

   So he did. He managed things as best and as diligently as he could. But then the inevitable would always happen, he had to overlook it. Because if you drop one egg, eleven eggs for breakfast is about the same thing to everyone at the table as twelve. You have instinct to jump and grab for that one dropped egg, but you risk dropping the other eleven too, and then where would the breakfast table be? Cold cereal, that's where.

   And, out came his tics and mannerisms. Too many years at a sedentary desk job. Too many seven day weeks. One too many lost assets. And the stress expressed itself. Bags of little candies. Donuts and danishes. The nice lunch, to celebrate the asset made it home for debriefing, the operation went without a hitch. The obstinate person that was gumming up the works in Lithium Land? Removed. He had been demanding a 20 million dollar bribe, because how many other big Lithium scores are there right now, hmm? Well, guess what, asshole. We were willing to fund your greed, to the tune of 5, maybe even 10 million.

   But you know what? Turns out, that for only 4 million, well... we have military contractors now, that know how to handle an obstacle to progress such as yourself.

   And so Mike, known at work as Mike The Magician, Magic Michael. The magic built up around his ass, thighs, and gut. He got porky, a little bit. Then came his early middle aged crisis. His wife wasn't happy. Things in general were fine, but he was a pain in the ass to deal with around the house. She didn't want to take the kids and go home to mother? But, that option was there. There wasn't anyone else, she loved him and the kids loved him too, but... something, simply had to give.

   So for a little while, he had started watching what he ate and drank. Made it a point to squeeze some exercise in when he could. Skipping lunch and walking was one way. But as anyone with slight issues and tics can tell you. You step on one nervous tic? Another just takes its place. He bought some time by slowly losing weight, but he was miserable without his bags of candies and his danishes.

   He related to me over the years we've worked together now, that she wasn't issuing him ultimatums, or even demanding it. She was begging him. I probably won't take the kids and leave? But, we're all going to end up as miserable as you are. Later on, I found out that "military contracting" had taken off in his Army intelligence career as the popular tool in the tool box. Then? The solution ended up being its own even bigger problem. And now that the cat was out of the bag, there was no stuffing it back in.

   Mike's career and the lay of the land was slowly changing around him. He was old school, he had been groomed by an old hand at this. Less success up front? More success overall, in the end where it counted most. But the right thing? Was getting ever harder and harder to do. And so, while on top of his intelligence game, at the very height of where he was going to surely move up and manage even more of this world? No. He had been complaining about some things. No one was listening. No one cared. Its just a job, its just a game, don't take it too seriously... had permeated his career.

   He started making the moves, to get out. Its not the kind of job you can quit one day, and run off and join the circus. He had to oversee all the operations and assets he had in play. It gave him ample time to see that it was what he wanted. No, but it was what he needed.

   He was doing the right thing, and it was going to hurt.

   He had a heart to heart with the wife, and even the kids. Did they understand. That dad might not one day soon, be able to send them on vacations as much, or even at all. It might cut into ski club and band. Might even have to readjust economically, and live somewhere else they didn't want to.

   But he wound it down, and ended it all. He passed his reins over, to someone he thought might be up to the task, to put half as much thought and care into it as he had done. The things he didn't agree with, and was leaving over? People were concerned over it, but he made them understand. No tell all book, no interviews. None of that shit. Don't worry, I'll do the right thing. I'm not burned out, I'm getting out now before that happens.

   Then the time came. Would it be worth it. They moved. More affordable place to live. More time to do things, not nearly as much money to do it with. Mike reported, he found he had been handing over money and prizes to replace being a husband and a father. No more expensive ski club and the extra ski trips? But the boy wanted saxophone lessons. Learning through band at school? Was only getting him so much.

   Screw it. Mike was out of work for the first time in his adult life. He went and took saxophone lessons with his son. Him, the wife, the son, the daughter... everyone laughed. He swore he had no talent and he was horrible at it. But, the teacher understood and showed him all the little things he could do, instead of berating him that he wasn't overflowing with talent.

   He said his daughter sort of took him out for a spin. To see what the new dad was like. When she pouted he was taking sax lessons with her brother? Why was he so much better than her. So? Mike said he became one of those silly dads. He let his daughter make funny dad's dancing with me, those little videos. He met his son's little girlfriends, and his daughter's little boyfriends. No more just getting a situation report brief from the wife, on how the little people in the house were doing.

   Mike's one of those people that are bright enough, and have some insight and intuition. He said he realized it suddenly, all at once. While digesting everything and monitoring his own progress. He hadn't been "like this" before malaise at work had set in. He certainly hadn't been like this when young himself, nor when he was a young man with a girlfriend who turned into a wife. Time and work conditions seemed to have brought this on. Now? Why couldn't he see it before.

   He was managing his household. Like he did at work. Set a good example. If you get and feel the urge to act out and carry on? Count to ten, and treat them to some sarcasm and glib joking manner, instead. Don't need to know everything. Wife? In charge of this and that. He had his duties. The daughter? Helped with meals and dishes, the son took out the garbage and helped him in the yard. The wife managed the kids, the wife and both kids had their responsibilities. He managed the wife.

   And yeah, the big thing was realizing he wasn't engaged with his kids and even his wife. He was just getting a situation report briefing, how the little people were doing. A little ten minute meeting at work. And that? Was what had been wrong.

   What didn't he do? He said he made it a point, not to sit and watch TV. Drink beer and bitch at the ball game. Enough guys have that covered, he could do anything else. His boy wanted to go on some canoe trip. Hey. For less than the cost of this one trip, why don't we just buy a damn canoe. He said they both tipped it over all day the first time, and finally learned how to sit in the damn thing and not fall over. Next time? They started paddling and moving around. They finally got sick of it, and bought a giant used one. One with the wide flat bottom, and the little motor spot on the ass end of it.

   Mike said he realizes its only half as much fun to do things with dad, so he let the boy have friends and now with a second smaller canoe, and a little motor on the big one to tow it? They could have a pack mule canoe, or more people going to do something. And yeah, Mike learned to relax and let his teenage son spend first all day, then all day and night, and finally weekends out canoeing with friends.

   The day was approaching, though. He was on the slow road to financial ruin, and something lay ahead and just up around the bend. He said the wife had a steady stream of... it'll work out. It'll be okay. Something even better will come out of all this. Then, a former college friend he hadn't seen in a while happened by. Uncharacteristically, he made a next date for another BBQ.

   He pitched him. His buddy was up and coming at the ATF, and his boss had a buddy who was an assistant director at the FBI. The chickens Mike had been grousing about at work? Well, they had come home to roost. Everyone now knew the open secret, and it was a breaking scandal. Mike, was no longer the asshole. He was now the prophet. He had seen what was coming, and tried to warn everyone. More importantly, he didn't grant interviews and tell stories. Guys did, it helped their career out. Mike couldn't do that, it wasn't the right thing to burn his former career down just because he was out and it would benefit him.

   Washington DC is its own little world, and instead of big concerts and football games, the joke is they enjoy scandals. Mike had seen and preached against an impending scandal. He got out ahead of it, taking it in the ass to get out while the getting was good. His replacement? Ended up in one of the hotter seats, since assets had turned into hiring private military contractors more and more. What was more? The FBI had a good one two punch delivered to them. The bloated budget was under intense attack at a time of periodic belt tightening, and waste was everywhere. Their own undercover operations? Were in a shambles.

   The FBI was throwing good money away after bad, on long term operations that went nowhere. Big embarrassing operations had gone tits up, and ended up played out on the news.

   Mike, old buddy. Your reputation, is everything. You didn't get hustled out of intelligence, you left at about the height of your career, just about to break into upper management. Your operations list? Said to be a string of mainly successes. And its said of you? You do amazing things, with few resources. A couple good people, a slick plan. Is there any way, you would even consider it? Coming on board at the FBI. We need someone to replace the guy we have now. He's had heart attacks, its literally killing him to wait so he can train his replacement. You get the job done, it costs less than anyone else going about it, and you won't break eggs to make omelets unless you have to.

   No.

   They came back. What would make him consider it? They didn't have a long list of people even remotely qualified to run undercover agents and oversee long term operations. Of those that could? They were wild with a budget. Out of guys known to be good with the purse strings? They would starve a winning operation, to pinch pennies.

   No. This sounds like the other shoe dropping.

   Back again. How about just consulting for us, if even part time. Give us pointers. Director says, undercover operations need to be run more like an intelligence operation. Guys like you, available? Don't grow on trees. So, he started giving advice.

   His checkbook discovered the magic of deposits once again. People in higher stations? Were suddenly asking, not telling. He said he put his wife in charge. You see me changing back? Tell me. Wife and kids were happy. He kept his weight off, he was still the fun husband and dad. Then? It happened.

   Nice lunches with the assistant director. Another assistant director who mattered a whole lot more? Was there. The director himself started taking lunch dates with him. The director and his pet assistant director, tried again. Mike. Great stuff. Everyone you're consulting with? Is asking me. Why the hell don't you just put that guy in the driver's seat.

   I can close my eyes and see Wiz. The smile, the shrug. What can you even do. He'd have said this was karma, this was the universe getting what it needed. He's a ghost now, but honestly Panic will say the same thing. Its functionally equivalent to he's still here, in another man's body.

   The director asked. What do we need to do. We can invent and terminate and reassign positions. We can restructure things, within reason. More importantly, what do we avoid. We need less scandals at the FBI, we can't take another one just yet. What do we refuse to do, even when it looks juicy and tempting.

   Mike said it went from what he thought should be done, to the director very smoothly and without him realizing it? The director went from asking advice to recruiting him softly. Most people? You just came up with the right numbers and benefits, sign here. Mike was different. What did he need. Mike laughs recounting it. He said, it was like the service. They all but drape a flag around your shoulders, tell you how heroic you look wearing it, and give you the... your country needs you speech. And you answer the call.

   When I asked him how the director snagged him, he said he fell for the modified flag drape speech. Your country needs you, but look. You work, at home. You see the results? Walking the streets. You're not making life more tenable somewhere exotic for strangers. You're making changes right at home, where it counts most.

   And so, given all but a blank check for how he went about getting results? Mike basically brought Army intelligence, to the FBI's undercover and long term operations division. And Mike, in his turn, gently and insistently recruited me. As Wiz and now Panic would say, Mike was the voice of karma. It spoke through him that day.

   But just as you have to watch what religion you proselytize and go with, if indeed any at all? You have to watch your rituals. Make the rituals good and wholesome things. Mike's never been porky the whole time I've known him, so he must have managed everything okay. He's left with a small handful of little tics, and he manages them. The first one I noticed on him? I was a psych student meeting him near the end of the big case that ended with Wiz paying the ultimate tab for doing the right thing. He paid with his life. The same round went through my shoulder; I guess I picked up the tip.

   Here's this big wig at the FBI brought in near the end when they were getting somewhere finally. Always had a bag of little candies, the ones with the waxed paper for the little individual ones. He would take one out, play with it. Regard it while talking, then put it back. He would do it again and again over time, before ever so carefully unwrapping the little candy bite. He carefully folded the little wax paper over three times. Always corners touching to corners touching.

   I kept my mouth shut, and started counting. He always took it out played and looked, and decided against it? Exactly nine times. Time ten, was when he would finally get to eat it. Followed by three careful folds, and dropping the flat little wax square into another pocket.

   I knew ritual back then, if only from a feature in psych classes. Its an accident if you count nine times, before the tenth and you get to eat. Its another random thing if you carefully fold three times while talking. But, after several repetitions over time? Always nine tries, followed by big ten. Always three careful folds, Candy gets carried in the same pocket. The empty wrappers? Always go into the other pocket.

   He couldn't control enough, he couldn't do the right thing as often as he would prefer. But he could control this. And these little rituals? Calm us some. Nine, becomes the "right" number of times to attempt it. The magic tenth time? The "right" time to pounce and eat. It must be carried in the right pocket. The folds have to be done right. The empty papers go into the designated "right" pocket.

   I seldom wonder about Mike. I can count on him, he's a stand up guy. So is Panic. They were both the same but different. They were both once the flip sides of the same coin. Panic was an asset in the field, a military contractor. Mike was running military intelligence operations. They both became disillusioned with private military and the way it was being used, and then misused. They both got out, just when their careers were really going to take off in their field. They were both stand up guys, and wouldn't tell secrets. They both knew full well, that they were good men with good motives, surrounded by a slice of life losing that and quick.

   You have to be willing and able to crack eggs, or there's no omelet on the table for everyone to enjoy. You also have to be able to say no, and take it in the ass to do the right thing, and not do what the herd thinks is fine.

   Men like these? My now long gone Wizzy. My Panic. My Uncle Mike.

   Men like these don't grow on trees.

   They don't seem to be making many more of them as of late, either.

   I've seen Panic at work. And by at work, I'm pretty sure you know what I mean by that. Its not scary to see him doing what he used to do, its positively terrifying. The scariest thing, might well not be the work itself. Its him, and how he goes about it. Sometimes? The right thing means going without an omelet that morning. Sometimes? The right couple eggs need cracked wide open and cooked. And every once in a while? A rooster needs strangled and tossed aside, and the hen itself needs grabbed and squeezed until the eggs start popping out her ass again.

   What's scary? Is that he looks for all the world as if he's just puttering around the gun range, moving dirt around for the backstops. Little jokes and puns, funny voices and dances to keep your mood as light as he enjoys. But he's not much different from that even if he suddenly grabs a rooster by the neck, and sets her on fire. He reminds me of my grandfather. Nice old codger. He took great pains to see to his chickens. He saw to their care above and beyond what any other farmer would go through. But that day came. My friendly and kind grandfather, was sitting on a log. Heads of former chickens all around him. Gutting and cleaning chickens. Dunking headless bodies not barely done kicking into boiling water to yank the feathers off.

   Freaked me out, to come around his barn and see him doing it, though in the back of my mind I kind of knew this was what went on now and again. I could see it on his face. He wasn't ashamed, but he didn't like me seeing him doing it. Doing the distasteful things that needed done, that benefit everyone. He said another year, he had thought. He was glad it had gone okay. So? He cut the rest of the heads off, and I manned the boiling water dunking and keeping the water clear of feathers. He showed me the basics then, of cutting the chicken up into all the pieces you normally buy at the store.

   The only thing I ever wondered about Mike? What he can or cannot do with his own hands. I once watched him get very fidgety with Panic and the unemotional blank front he presents with in some situations. I knew Mike for years by that point, and he was scared. I gently intervened. Panic was in the midst of explaining as politely as he could manage, but with no misunderstandings, either. He worked for me, not Mike. He meant nothing by it, but... Mike was not going to have an asset he could run.

   Mike was used to dealing with assets, and some of them were quite dangerous men. What he wasn't used to? Was dealing with them face to face, up front. He was used to dealing with one person, who related it to everyone else. He was nervous, sitting there with someone who was obviously not bothered in the slightest, about grim work. And while Panic wasn't even threatening him in the slightest, he was as gently as possible giving Mike his playbook. How he would work. What he would and would not, do.

   I've seen Panic do that to other guys. He's not doing anything, and he's making them all nervous. These guys weren't shrinking violets, either. It was a small crew of hardened felons. I knew those guys well. They should have been teasing him, and they weren't. They were all smiles, all nice and polite. Not like he was the biggest guy in the room, and far from it. My psych degrees weren't a complete waste. My felons? Were on edge. They took one sniff of him, being quiet and polite? And didn't want any problems.

   When he drops his face, and his body language? You're not scared or nervous... at first. You get there, though. After a young lifetime around animals, you come to get a sense of it. Usually not the biggest animal there, that gives that vibe off. But all the other animals pick up on it, and you better notice it too. Because if you miss or discount, what the herd picks up loud and clear on? You can get hurt. I mean, bad and quick.

   And really, that's how all the outlaw bikers in my world seem to treat him. They all report the same thing more or less, just in their own words. Why go outta my way to fuck with the guy. Heard he's okay. Because that's their general way with ordinary citizens. They do go outta their way to fuck with some of them. Sometimes to a purpose, and sometimes just for general purposes or even if only for their own amusement. They just seem to choose not to, in his case.

   They smell, what Mike got a whiff of. Maybe, just walk around that one. There's something off. Something's wrong. Too quiet. Too polite. Too unassuming. He should be a little nervous at least, if not more so. Something? Ain't right.

   And that's what it really is. Your inner, primal animal essence? Communicates with you. You get that shiver, and you start to realize. I'm used to dealing with men. I'm used to dealing with animals. But, this? This is neither man nor animal. This? Is... other. And its frightening. Really, what's actually worse is this. He was part of a large team of these military contractors. He's in fact, not the scariest one, and that's by far. He has two close buddies from that era, and really friends don't begin to cover it. They're tighter than family.

   There's three of them, and they pal around together any chance they get, at the gun range. The little one, that doesn't scare you at all and doesn't set your senses tingling? He's cooked men alive in a field before. Panic said he just stood there, smiled, and watched them burn. And it had all been his idea, to get them like that. Mind you? That's the little guy, the one that doesn't frighten you. He's all smiles and frivolity, concerned primarily first and foremost with his cooking.

   The big one, Robbie? He looks the scariest, and he gives the scariest vibe off, but... even he tells stories that mix their order up. In certain situations, the little guy was the scariest one. The littlest one? Has bested the big one before, and at the big one's own game to boot. Rob was their leader, but its obvious to see it on its face. He polls the little one and Panic, too. They like him making decisions, its his job. But whoever knows the most, takes temporary charge.

   Seeing three of them once or twice, doing what they call playtime? Is more than enough. What floors you though, is later on. When you realize they're older now and out of their prime. And there were scads of these men grouped up somewhere. If three was something else, I can only imagine what 30 or 300 of them would even be like. Yeah, I could see it. You would think you really got something going, because you rounded up a couple thousand assholes with no morality. Then you turned them loose on the "enemy", the enemy here being helpless villagers trying to of all things simply live on their own land.

   Three of them? Yeah. Probably follow you around taking pictures and video clips. Documenting your travels and deeds. Reporting back faithfully. I'm sure they pissed in a few gas tanks in the middle of the night, too. Because if that was all they could do, they would do it. Thirty of them? You'll get the same thing, but with booby traps and sporadic guerrilla warfare back. But 300 of them? Well funded and well supplied? Oh yeah, things escalated quick.

   I've seen what one man can do, and my imagination doesn't like to think too long about a couple hundred with an ax to grind.

   And at the height of the escalating struggle, they at one point had a couple thousand of them down there. There were at least three different countries represented where the final zombie squads as they came to be known were pulled in from. The governments were on friendly or even better terms with the United States, but had literally no control over the fragmented and home grown military around. One might have been having fun thumbing their noses at Uncle Sam because they could get away with it, sensing the military couldn't be called in to spank them. But the other two were frantic, yet unable to help.

   No one really cared on the outside world much, because the conflagration wasn't spreading. It wasn't on the news, so it didn't technically even happen as far as most first world civilians were concerned. It was when the kid gloves finally came off, and Team Sigma was running deep behind enemy lines, back where they wintered up and resupplied. That had been the country that was pretending to help, but secretly rounding up more zombie squads and sending them. Promised a piece of the pie for helping.

   It wasn't considered funny at all, when they finally hit pay dirt. When they wiped out a command center, a hundred miles back over the border from the conflict. Leaders all wearing curious military uniforms. It was the regular military in that country, funding and directing the zombie attacks.

   South America was about to ignite and flash over.

   Uncle Sam will pussyfoot around with irregulars that don't answer to any government, least of all their own they fought against before. But only for so long. Things were politically interesting. The country was pissed that its regular military had been hit. Really? You claimed you were trying to help, and here you are funding and organizing for it. Uncle Sam couldn't attend to every malcontent on the globe at once, but if you sting him in the ass enough? You'll become the next contestant on that fun game show everyone loves, what the hell happened to my country? It was here a few seconds ago.

   The money men doing all this, were centered out of France. France and the United States have to go along to get along. No, France didn't wipe those villages out. No, France can't do anything to the guys supposedly funding it. See, that happened in another country. French law doesn't apply there. Sorry, love to help, but sorry about your luck. While the whole time, the French government was in constant talks about once the resources started coming in, under French flags.

   The French billionaires hired third world assholes to do... well? What zombie squads do. Get drunk, do drugs, and torture and kill innocent and helpless people that can't fight back. France is cheering on the resources they can't wait to get their greedy little economic hands on, while publicly condemning the third world violence as reprehensible. Since French citizens weren't attacking helpless villages, hey, what can you do.

   This was all going on in a poor country that was definitely on good terms with the United States. After begging for help to Uncle Sam and any large enough country big enough to help, they ended up at the UN. Where The United States and France swing inordinately large dicks around. Something had to be done, but not too much. Documenting the atrocities, turned into trying to kill the guys with the cameras. Now committed to help, at least on paper? The United States had to start supporting the independent military documentation teams.

   Everything went straight to hell, and if not directly then it got there in record time.

   After learning all this, I sit back and finally realized. Mike? Had been put in charge of this mess when it started going bad, and did what he could to manage the unmanageable. Small wonder the poor guy was under stress, and picking up nervous tics and mannerisms. With all the considerable hell and confusion that the FBI as a whole can sometimes be, I asked Mike once what comparing the two was like.

   At the beginning when he started out? Military intelligence was the better deal and less stressful. That changed, though. Not for the better, I might add. He laughed and said he considered running what he did at the FBI to be a "working vacation" as compared to the other. I once asked him in a glib moment, how the fight against terrorism was going. He belly laughed.

   The way he explained it? Made sense, once you know something about how the federal government doesn't always actually work.

   "Honey, there's this country. Saudi Arabia. You always hear about radical Muslims, being militarized? That's one branch, called Wahhabi. The Saudi government, funds and pushes it. It fans out, through all the other Arabic countries. Attacks seem to come from all over, when in point of fact... the head of the snake? Is simply Saudi Arabia. The king of this sand dune empire, sets the oil production rates. Which effectively sets the pump prices here and elsewhere. You're forced to diplomatically kiss the ass of the guy kicking you in the nuts, basically."

   When he started explaining all the big countries with military that were the players, it quickly became obvious. What had went on down around the equator for a number of years? Could explode in the middle east over oil, if things weren't handled carefully. And if I understood that he who has the gold, makes the rules? Well, they don't call oil... black gold, for nothing.

   This, collectively? Is your precious human nature. This is the world of lies, backroom deals, and its all about the resources. This is the world that my Panic lived in for years, and he got his world view from it. He boiled it all down, real simple though. When you see people cut apart alive and left to suffer. People set on fire, alive. A young girl with her pregnant belly ripped open, and she's dying hugging the almost full grown fetus.

   You have to hand her a handgun, with one round in the chamber. Or, do it yourself. And someone, has to provide mercy for the fetus that's still kicking. Someone has to have the fun job of granting mercy at long last, to the person set on fire alive in town square? That's still squirming hours later.

   You either lose your shit wholesale? Or you get down on their level.

   I wouldn't say I counseled Panic, but I talked with him about it all over the years. I honestly can't believe he does as well as he does, after all that for years. He came around slowly. Like a serial killer admitting in small incremental steps only, what he had seen and done. I about needed more help than him, just getting used to hearing this shit.

   He has no real identifiable PTSD nor any large scale disruption as a result of it all. He should. He definitely should. He should have issues, and problems. Big ones. He simply doesn't. What he does have? Really bad nightmares. They come and go in patches. He wakes up covered in thick sweat, that I've never seen before him. Thick, gooey sweat. It doesn't run, it collects and pools in patches, not unlike a thinned out petroleum jelly. It smells like a rancid onion, too.

   He rinses off. He has a cold leftover coffee or two, maybe a joint or a couple cigarettes. Talks to the cats like people quietly. If its bad enough, he'll just surf the internet till the sun rises, and just earmarks an earlier bedtime for the next night. Try again. He's honestly not got a mean bone in his body, though he's more than fully capable of raising all kinds of hell. If you insist? He'll let you go, keep letting you go, and... when you've gone way past too far, he finally acts. Quick and decisive. No emotion. No reaction. When its all over? He goes off and sits quietly. No excitement, no bravado he won. Just... nothing.

   He once told me. There's boredom, and violence. They come, when they come. They leave, when they leave. You just pray for more boredom, and hope for the best. He's hunted human beings like animals in the brush, and he's been hunted himself before. They euphemistically named it... playtime.

   He's somewhat surprisingly philosophical about it all, too. These things? They just happen. Its the dark side of human nature. His karma, though. It gives him a framework through which to view it all. He sorted out for himself. What was good and what was bad. What was good, and what was evil. How a man could do the things he had done, and still look at themselves in the mirror and like the guy staring back at them.

   To him? Karma, rules all.

   There are no rules.

   There's only karma.

   I dedicated my life, to becoming and being an agent of karma. To letting the universe do to me what it wanted, so it could make me into what it needed from me. I allowed it to put me where it wanted me. After my precious Wizzy gave his life for what he believed in with a smile on his face? How could I do otherwise.

   The rifle round that blew his blood and guts into my eyes and mouth, also went through my shoulder. It was as if he inoculated me with whatever fire he had in his blood.

   I put one year into my doctorate, then left to join the FBI. Uncle Mike recruited me and figured out where I would be most useful. I spent a few years hunting down dirty FBI agents, undercover. I bird dogged them so the system could take them out after it wasn't apparent I had gotten them.

   When a dirty FBI agent sent his partner to kill one lone steakhouse waitress, alone in her bed in the middle of the night in my little motel apartment? Surprise. I had a friend over all night for a little sleepover. I'm sure they had no idea he was there, but he was. He got me out, and we escaped down an access tunnel and out another room farther down the line of rooms. After seeing me off, he went back to confront whoever was picking our door lock in the middle of the night.

   Guy had a badge, he held it up and yelled "police!" while he simultaneously fired. Panic took one in the shoulder, and plugged the guy 14 times. The steakhouse waitress that survived the hit, she being me? We went into hiding, out in the sticks. He let them "find" us, and he was ready for them. Sixteen off duty dirty DC city cops, drove up to the sticks of Pennsylvania game lands, to murder one lone waitress of a witness.

   I had to get my hands dirty, but my job I had been prepped and drilled for, was to flank with a 12 gauge pump. I got a few, but he was the one in that prepped cement box. He quietly killed a couple they were sending in to get me in my bed, before all hell broke loose. Funny thing about holding a firefight in the middle of the night, at a location where they do skeet shooting after dark? Doesn't attract the attention you would think. Then him and the tall one, the scary one, Robbie? They fanned out to play hide and seek in the tall grass and surrounding brush, to disable two others. A third was found down the road in a disabled car. The other 13, other than those three survivors? He killed most of them like he was breathing.

   In his own words. This isn't law and order. This is combat. These assholes wanna bring combat back to the civilized world, and kill waitresses for being witnesses in their own beds in the middle of the night. He said that was his world. Combat. Violence is a language, and I speak it fluently.

   That's twice he saved my life. I watched him jump off of a 100 foot bridge into icy water at night. Because the bad rainstorm had the river up to flood stage and the water rescue team wouldn't enter the water. He gained the bridge for visibility, then jumped in to save the victim. He almost died rooted like a carrot to the bottom of the river in winter, he had a bad head injury and was out of it. He still managed to locate the drugged crime victim, and keep them both afloat while fighting hypothermia.

   I ended up jumping after him. I got to spend a minute or more on the bottom of the river, another carrot. I almost died from the prolonged hypothermia in the icy flood stage waters. I'm glad I did, because he was out of it with his head injury. We all three almost went over a dam in flood stage, and there was no surviving that.

   A young FBI agent took water rescue and led them on a madcap chase in a quad, and managed to get posted up on the dam itself, and got us. Well, they got me and the victim out. The water was cresting quick. Still out of it but still moving? The last rescue water guy stayed longer than the others, and got him hooked onto a railing, and got him an emergency breather can. Basically a small temporary scuba mask attached to a can of compressed air. Good for several minutes if you strap it on tight.

   Him and the victim were dead If I hadn't of went in. All three of us were toast, if we hadn't of gotten fished out the second we did. We honestly were shocked when minutes later his arm came up and out from under the roiling torrents and he was grabbing around, trying to figure out where he had to get to next before his air ran out. We thought he was fine, but he had complications and almost died from the head injury when cranial pressure unexpectedly shot through the roof all at once after a prolonged wait.

   None of this? Was even any of his affair. He didn't get paid a dime for all this, and it wasn't even his job.

   My handler took one look at the lay of the land, and over time wore him down and recruited him to be his... he calls him a security asset. He's basically my K-9 unit. He's quiet and polite, he has some of the highest manners you'll find. He's kind of sweet and goofy in an intellectual sort of way.

   And yeah. In my scheme of things? He's the reincarnation of my Wizzy sent back to me. A dirty cop killed Wizzy, and the same rifle round went through my shoulder. Then years later? Here's Panic. A dirty cop came to kill me in my own bed one night and had the great misfortune to find him sleeping over. Its like Wiz sprang back from the grave, and took his revenge. I thought it was too much coincidence, that he took one in the shoulder. Same shoulder as mine. Scars look surprisingly similar.

   He wasn't happy though, he went on a controlled rampage. We left the last three alive, so the system had a few heads to parade around on sticks to mollify the mob that wanted the DC city cops blood. When he was informed, by mister former military intelligence, my boss Uncle Mike? That one lone straggler was home sick that weekend. Well, him and a friend went on a little road trip. The straggler had a very unfortunate, and very public... accident. The on purpose kind.

   And this is the same guy, that's so quiet and polite all the time. He likes nothing better than sweet talking and kissing and snuggling a friendly dog or cat. Most animals, simply adore him. I've seen him have only one steak left before the next planned food store trip? The cats get that one, he'll make something else and wait. I know for a fact, that he honestly places no value on money, even though he has more than he needs. He'll risk his life for a stranger he never met.

   The world could use a couple more people like him.

   God, I wish I could bear children.