“I’d be more than willing to let him sit in there until his liver gave out,” Nielson continued. “But the point is we’ve got a mission. Pierson is really exercised.”

“What?” Patrick Vanner asked. The crew-cut and stocky former Marine, former NSA analyst and current electronic intel chief wasn’t sure what to do about the Kildar. The problem was, well, he was the Kildar. He owned the damned place, he was a total free agent and he had more money than God. There wasn’t any way to shake him out of his depression unless the guy did it himself. And that didn’t look to be happening any time soon.

“WMD, inbound to the States,” Nielson said. “That’s all I’ve got right now.”

“So we’d be operating in the States?” Adams asked. “They don’t have enough people?”

“The Boss asked,” Nielson said.

“Oh.”

“But I suspect he asked for the Kildar, yes?” Father Kulcyanov said.

“Yeah, but what the hell,” Adams replied. “Kildar, Keldara, big diff. So he sits this one out. I can lead the teams, Nielson does the mission planning. Heck, I can do most of that. We bring a couple of teams, keep the rest here for positional defense. Not that we need it much, given the condition of the Chechens.”

The last mission had been “the world’s most successful fuck-up.” Due to “insufficient data,” notably that a large and professional Chechen brigade was moving into the area, the Keldara had ended up in a pitched battle. It was there that Captain Bathlick and her “co” captain, Tamara Wilson, had won their spurs. It was also the reason Gretchen Mahona had been killed.

The battle had broken the back of the Chechens — their main local threat — when the Chechens assumed that four thousand fedayeen could easily wipe out a hundred “pagans.” In that, they had been so very very wrong. The battle had left the cream of the Resistance’s most elite force scattered for the ravens. Patrols had not picked up any sign of Chechen movement in their sector in the two months since the battle.