The sound of a Bell UH-1Y Venom helicopter is something that no soldier who has heard it ever forgets. It is what a man hears going into battle and what he hears when he is done fighting-if he is still alive.

The pilot landed in a clearing next to the stream and a twenty-something kid wearing an off-the-rack suit jumped from it, the blades of the aircraft still cutting though the clear air.

“Derrick Storm?” he called. “Is that you?”

The fisherman glanced at the kid with disdain.

“Never heard of him,” he growled.

Unsure what to do next, the young courier looked over his shoulder at the helicopter. A side door slid open and an older, pudgy man stepped to the wet ground. He slowly made his way to the creek’s edge, cupped his hands around his lips, and yelled: “Jedidiah sent me.”

“Don’t know him.”

“He said you’d say that.” The speaker hollered, “Jedidiah says he’s calling in Tangiers.”

Tangiers. Tangiers had been bad. Even after all of these years, whenever the fisherman thought of Tangiers, he could still feel the cold linoleum pressed against his cheek, sticky and wet with his own blood. He could still see the mangled bodies and hear the unanswered cries for help. If it weren’t for Jedidiah. .

Reeling in his line, the man started toward the creek bank. He did not talk to the two strangers waiting there. He gathered up his gear and boarded the helicopter.

Tangiers. It was a hell of an IOU to call in. Jedidiah knew how difficult it had been for him to disappear. To go off-the-grid. To die, at least to be dead to a world that he had once known. A world that had tried to kill him, not once, but many, many times. Jedidiah understood why it had been important for him to no longer exist. And now Jedidiah was calling him back, dragging him back, to what he had worked so hard to free himself from.