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today he’d be about fifty. “And he’s a colonel now,” I said, more musing than asking a question.
    “Head of the ISA,” Treven said.
    I nodded, impressed. It was a long way from deniable cannon fodder to the head of the Intelligence Support Activity, the U.S. military’s most formidable unit of covert killers.
    “And you?” I asked, looking at Larison, then Treven. “ISA?”
    Treven nodded. He didn’t seem entirely happy about the fact, or maybe he was just uncomfortable acknowledging an affiliation he would ordinarily reflexively deny.
    Larison said, “Once upon a time. These days, I just consult.”
    “Pay’s better?”
    Larison smiled. “You tell me.”
    “The pay’s okay,” I said. “Healthcare’s not so great.”
    Treven glanced at Larison—a little impatiently, I thought. Maybe the kind of guy who liked to get right down to business. He didn’t understand this was business. Larison and I were trying to feel each other out.
    “And the other two?” I said.
    “Contractors,” Larison said. “One of the Blackwater-type successors. I can’t keep track.”
    I glanced at Treven, then back to Larison. “So, ISA, a consultant, contractors…That’s a fairly eclectic gang you’ve got there.”
    “We didn’t ask for the contractors,” Larison said, turning his palms up slightly from the table in a what can you do gesture. “That was Hort. I guess you could say he…overstaffed this thing.”
    “And you downsized it.”
    He dipped his head slightly as though in respect or appreciation. “You and I both.”
    He seemed determined to let me know there were no hard feelings about the two dead giants—indeed, to acknowledge he’d deliberately sacrificed them. And now he was implying some distance between himself and Horton, too, and implying some commonality between himself and me. I wasn’t sure why.
    “What’s Horton’s interest?” I asked.
    “We don’t know the particulars,” Treven said. “All he told us was, he’s rebuilding, and he wants to make you an offer.”
    “Rebuilding what?”
    “I don’t know. Something about an operation you took down, run by a guy named Jim Hilger.”
    Hilger. I didn’t show it, but I was surprised to hear the name. In all the times we’d crossed paths, first in Hong Kong, where he was brokering the sale of radiologically-tipped missiles and nuclear materiel, and then in Holland, where he’d been running an op to blow up the port in Rotterdam and drive up the price of oil, his affiliations had never been entirely clear to me. The last time I’d run into him was in Amsterdam, which was the last time he ran into anyone. If Horton had been involved with the late Jim Hilger, whatever he wanted was apt to be hazardous.
    “What do you know about Hilger?” I asked.
    Treven shook his head. “No more than I just told you.”
    Larison said, “I’ve heard of him.”
    “Who did he work for? Was he government? Corporate?”
    Larison laughed. “You really think there’s a difference?”
    Treven frowned just the tiniest amount, and I sensed Larison’s comment made him uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure why. Well, neither was going to tell me more. And, given Hilger’s current condition, I supposed it didn’t matter anyway.
    “Anything else?” I said.
    Treven said, “Yeah. This thing Hort’s trying to rebuild is going to include a former Marine sniper named Dox, who you’re supposed to know.”
    I didn’t respond. I hadn’t seen Dox in a while, but we were in touch and I knew he was still living in Bali. He didn’t need work, but this would probably interest him anyway. It wasn’t a question of money with Dox. He just liked to be in the thick of it.
    A part of my mind whispered, And you? I ignored it.
    Larison said, “You might want to contact Dox yourself. If you don’t, we have to, and what’s the point of getting more contractors killed?”
    Again, I was intrigued by his hint that he didn’t mind what happened to the contractor elements of