Текст книги "The Warrior"
Автор книги: Ty Patterson
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Chapter 4
The next day, Cass hands him a note as she leaves. ‘You. Me. Baseball. Evening.’
She says Rory slipped it under the apartment door on his way to school, after learning that Zeb was staying for a few days.
‘Why has he given this to me? Doesn’t he have other friends to play with, or doesn’t Connor play with him?’
‘He has a friend or two, but he doesn’t make friends easily – and he likes you. What’s wrong with that? In his seven years, the boy has seen constant relocation, moving from Kentucky to New York, and within New York a few more times. All this has led to problems with making friends.
‘As for Connor and Lauren,’ Cass continues, ‘they’re busy in their careers. He can be a bit demanding. It’s okay to say no to him.’
Zeb says he’ll think about it. He isn’t sure whether he’ll have time to spend with Rory and whether he wants to. To add to that, he doesn’t intend to stay more than two or three more days at Cassandra’s.
He wipes it from his mind and goes to meet Broker.
Meeting Broker requires counter-surveillance tactics. There are many who would love to grab hold of Broker and extract his information. Zeb spends a few hours in the subway randomly changing trains, walking aimlessly over ground, going through large stores; the idea is to lose any tails or make them die of boredom.
He enters a bar on Allen Street and spots Broker immediately, holding court at his table with a few others roaring at his jokes. Broker is the soul of any party. He’s tall, blond, great looking, in great shape, and always stylishly dressed; his ready wit, rich voice and a barely discernible limp draw people to him. It also helps that he always picks up the check.
He shoos away his admirers on spotting Zeb and gives him a long hug when Zeb bends down to greet him. They catch up on old times for a while, discussing friends past and lost.
Zeb gives him the dossiers of Holt, Mendes, and Jones. ‘I’m hunting these three. These are agency dossiers. They may be in the US, they may be abroad. I want to know who they work with, who’s employed them, where they’re based.’
Broker fingers them without opening them. ‘Why isn’t the agency helping you on this?’
‘They’re also looking into it. Rather, they’ve asked the FBI to dig up those details.’
‘Then they’ll get dick. Those assholes will run circles round them all the while giving them the polite face.’ Broker’s respectful opinion on one of the world’s foremost investigative agencies. He drums his fingers on the folders. ‘Is this related to the Congo?’
Zeb isn’t surprised that Broker knew where he’d been, even though this was one assignment Zeb hadn’t mentioned to him. Broker’s gotten to where he is because he has an intelligence network that rivals the agency’s, pays well for information, and has tight lips. Zeb gives him the background as Broker continues drumming his fingers. Broker has seen enough shit to last him a lifetime. He has his own code. No women. No children. Nothing against the national interest. He is very choosy about his clients and likes to know why they want a particular piece of information. If in doubt, he informally runs his assignments, before taking them on, past certain federal agencies. Like a credit check.
‘They might still be in Africa, or they might be here. We want to find them and also find out who their conduit is,’ Zeb finishes.
Broker looks at him, brows furrowed. ‘The kind of work you get involved in – terrorists, lost weapons, security consulting – this doesn’t sound like something the agency should be losing a lot of sleep over or for them to involve you in. It’s not their problem, really. I don’t buy the bullshit Andrews fed you.’
Zeb shrugs. ‘I am involved. I don’t care about the agency’s motives.’
‘Okay. I’ll see what I can get for you. I’m as interested in getting these guys as you are. They give us warriors a bad name.’
He heads off to the bar to pay the tab, but the bartender waves him away, refusing to take his money. It’s on the house since Broker entertained so many of the patrons and was good for business. Typical Broker. Goes on a business visit and gets the frills paid for.
They part ways outside the bar to start their elaborate counter-surveillance routine. ‘Hey, Zeb,’ Broker calls him back. ‘Damn, nearly forgot. This is for you.’ He hands over a leather case.
Zeb opens the expensive leather case and removes a pair of wraparound Aviator sunglasses. He tries them on; they fit perfectly. ‘I like them, but I have enough of these.’
Broker chortles. ‘You’ve never seen a pair like these, my friend. They’re the latest in counter-surveillance toys. They have tiny cameras fitted at the rear of the frames, and those cameras project on the corner of the lenses. The cameras focus the images automatically for the eyes, so that the eyes can see those normally. There’s a tiny switch near the right lens which turns the cameras on or off. The batteries go on for years. The NSA uses these, but I improved them. I installed another switch on the left – you can now forward the images to an email address or to another server.’
‘There are only two pairs of these sunglasses. I have one, and you have the other. Try to take care of them. Repairs are a bitch.’
And with that, Broker is off.
Zeb tries the glasses and the cameras and finds that they work perfectly. With some practice, turning them off and on becomes a casual gesture. He’s getting addicted to these gizmos that Broker supplies.
He executes his elaborate counter-surveillance routine, this time with the Aviators to help, and reaches Cassandra’s apartment a few hours later.
Rory is waiting impatiently for him with his baseball glove and school bag. He looks up with a frown as Zeb enters the apartment. ‘Dude, I bet you don’t keep your girlfriends waiting. Let’s go now. It’s not long before dark.’
He goes to the door and looks back at Zeb. ‘You heard me, didn’t you, dude?’
Zeb, his life hijacked, follows him down the apartment block and a walk across another block. Rory takes them to Riverbank State Park, where he dons his baseball glove. They spend a couple of hours pitching and catching. Rory has excellent hand-eye coordination and catches most of Zeb’s pitches.
Rory flops on the turf after practice, lies back and stares at the sky. He looks at Zeb, who is lying still beside him. ‘Does anything scare you, Zeb?’
Zeb looks at him and shakes his head.
Rory’s lips tremble. ‘My mom and dad fight almost every day. Mom keeps telling Dad that his work is too dangerous. I know some kids whose Moms and Dads don’t live with each other anymore, and I don’t want to be like them.’
He sniffs, wipes a tear, takes out some books from his school bag and does his homework. Seven years old, the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he has the presence of mind to do his homework in a park on a sunny New York evening.
Lauren spots them from her bedroom window as they approach the mid-rise entrance. She hasn’t been able to figure Zeb out; none of them have been able to. She’s not sure a loner, a self-contained person like Zeb is the right company for Rory. As they come closer, she observes Rory skipping and smothers her protective instincts. Do nothing for now, she thinks.
Andrews hasn’t much to tell Zeb when he calls him. The FBI will come back to Andrews when they have something – exactly like Broker said it would pan out.
The next day, he decides to check out Holt’s last known address, Jackson, New Jersey, home to Six Flags Great Adventure and about an hour away from New York. He knows it’s probably a long shot, but he’s already weary of inaction. He leaves a message for Cassie that he’s going out and heads for the nearest Enterprise to rent a car.
An hour later he’s in a Cherokee on I-78, heading toward New Jersey via Garden State Parkway. With the wind in his hair, his Glock, knife, and ankle gun with him, Zeb is ready. He reaches Jackson close to noon and checks out the town by first stopping for a bite at the Jackson Diner. With its retro look, the diner is representative of many such small towns, where time goes slower and the world is confined to the neighborhood.
After lunch, he tours the town, searching for realtors, and chooses a smaller one.
Zeb poses as an investor from New York looking to get away from the big, bad city. He has his cover complete with business cards, a fancy title at a venture capital firm in Manhattan and pictures of a happy, smiling family. Any calls to the firm will get routed to Broker or Andrews. Zeb has many such covers.
The realtor is too happy to help Zeb. Business is slow, ‘For Sale’ signs dot the town, and homes are not moving. The realtor drives him across the township spread across a hundred miles. It’s a nice oasis away from New York. They spend a couple of hours looking at a few choice properties within Zeb’s budget.
Zeb asks him to drive past Chesterfield Drive. The agent looks at him, a question in his eyes. Zeb shrugs and says some of his friends were looking at houses there, so he wanted to see the area.
Chesterfield Drive is not far from I-95 at one end, and the Metedeconk Golf Club is close by the other. Zeb spots Holt’s house easily. It’s a single-family home and is the only house that appears deserted. The windows are bare, newspapers piled on the porch.
The realtor notices Zeb’s glance. ‘It’s been deserted for a long time. Family home owned by some guy in the army who hardly comes back to it. No one else stays there. I left a note a year or so back, to see if he wanted to sell. Didn’t hear a peep out of him.’ Shakes his head at the injustice of a world unwilling to help him sell a house.
Zeb ignores him. He notes the single garage, the spacing between the house and its neighbors, possible entry and exit points. They come to the end of the road and turn onto Colchester Drive and head back. More viewings, more monologues from the realtor, and they’re done for the day. Zeb pays him the earnest money, promises to be back next week for a second viewing on a house, and makes his escape to his Cherokee.
Zeb enters Chesterfield Drive again and parks his vehicle a few houses away. He walks to Holt’s house, as if seeking directions, and rings the bell. He waits a while and then walks around the house, peering through the windows.
Through the kitchen windows at the back, he can make out thick layers of dust on the sink and kitchen counter. He circles the house fully, but there’s no sign that anyone’s been there recently.
He goes back to the Cherokee and prepares to drive away, but turns the engine off as a thought strikes him.
He walks back to the house and slips a note under the door. It’s a simple message – ‘I am coming.’
On the way back, he calls Broker. Broker tells him that Holt and the other two are definitely back in the USA. ‘They flew out of the Congo the second day after you left, under assumed identities. I have their biometrics coming in at JFK. I have put an alert on their debit and credit cards, and have put the word out in my network. Let’s see what bites.’
Broker hears silence from Zeb’s end, just the muted sounds of traffic. Then, ‘Pass the word to your network that I’m hunting them. Let them know I’m coming.’
‘Why? That will alert them, won’t it? Oh, I get it. You want them to be always looking over their shoulder. Dude, I like your style.’
He calls Broker again as he nears Hamilton Heights.
‘Two calls in one day? If you don’t watch out, you’ll use up your conversation quota for the whole year.’
‘Senator Hardinger,’ Zeb says.
‘What about him?’
‘His family company has mining interests in Africa and South America. Who manages them? Who all are employed there?’
‘That’s a different shark you’re going after, Zeb. You think there’s a connection? A little far-fetched, don’tcha think?’
Silence.
‘Right. I’ll dig into his background and let you know. Give me a few.’
Zeb reaches Cassandra’s apartment late in the evening and finds Rory playing on his PSP.
‘Aunt Cassie said you went out. I was hoping to get in some baseball practice. Will you be staying a few days, Zeb?’
Zeb shakes his head. ‘No, I have to go back to my apartment tonight.’
Rory’s face falls, but he doesn’t say anything.
‘Next time I come, maybe we can go camping.’
Rory lets out a shrill whoop, pumps his fist, and zips out of the room to tell his mom.
Cassandra looks at Zeb. ‘Do you have any idea what you’re getting into?’
Zeb smiles his rare smile. ‘Not really, but when has that stopped me? I need to go back to my apartment.’
‘I think Connor will want to meet you when he’s back from Africa. I’ll call you when he’s home.’
The subway carries him back to Jackson Heights, tubes full of people moving from light to dark and then light.
Chapter 5
Andrews pays him a visit a week later. They meet at a bar in downtown Manhattan, Andrews looking tired and disheveled.
‘I don’t have good news for you. I’ve been asked to back off by the FBI.’
Silence fills the space.
‘Holt is doing a deal with those bastards. In return for immunity, he’s offering a mother lode, their words, of information on Al Qaeda recruitment in the Congo.’
Zeb sits immobile, watching Andrews.
‘He contacted them as soon as he returned from Africa. He said he had vital intel on Al Qaeda in Africa.
‘Terrorism, Al Qaeda, those are the magic budget words, Zeb. Try to understand. The Feds have given him immunity in return for whatever information he can give them. What threatens our country is more important than what happened over there.’
Zeb walks away without a word.
‘You know backing off applies to you too,’ Andrews calls at Zeb’s back.
He walks a long time, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. The rage makes the city disappear, the landscape barren and shrouded in dark.
He emerges from his dark fog a few hours later to find himself sitting on his favorite bench in Central Park, near Springbanks Arch. He wonders briefly which other lost souls have sat there in the interim.
As he makes his way back to his apartment, he’s surprised at his reaction to the whole deal. He should have expected something like this would happen. After all, Andrews and the Director lived in a political world.
But nothing has changed for him, and with that, he takes out his tabla and plays into the night.
A few days later, Broker calls. He hasn’t been able to get much more on Holt or his conduit. Holt seems to have dropped off the grid even though he’s sharing intel with the FBI. Broker’s network has someone who is happy to talk with Zeb, though.
‘Kelly is damaged goods. He left the forces a few years back, couldn’t get over the PTSD after his four stints in Afghanistan. He fed me some good intel, and when he heard I was looking for Holt, he contacted me. He refuses to tell me what he has and will only talk to you. He doesn’t know anything about you, just says he wants to talk to my client directly.’
Broker continues, ‘This could be a setup.’
Zeb thinks about it for a moment. ‘Set up the meet – in the same bar we met, on Allen Street.’
‘Will do. I’ll get back to you when it’s set.’
Two days later, Zeb meets Kelly.
Broker offered to watch his back, but Zeb works best alone. Zeb arrives a few hours early, driving a ubiquitous yellow cab, having paid the cab driver to take the day off, and parks away from the bar, with a good view of the entrance. He doesn’t see any surveillance. He has been wearing Broker’s fancy shades, and those haven’t revealed any tails either.
He sees Kelly entering the bar alone and on time. He waits another half hour and walks down an entire block, either side of the bar, casually. Nothing and no one stands out.
Kelly is nursing a drink alone when Zeb walks to the bar and orders one for himself.
Kelly is grizzled, in his forties and looks like a veteran, with his well-kept body and close-cropped hair. He looks up as Zeb takes a stool, his eyes sharp. ‘Broker sent you?’
Zeb nods. They size each other up for a long moment, and then Kelly downs his drink in a large gulp and signals for another.
‘Holt? You looking to hire him? Or looking for him?’
Zeb doesn’t reply.
Kelly waits a moment. ‘You don’t talk much, do you? Broker did mention that. I’m dying. Liver. Too much to drink. Not many months left now, so when I heard Broker was looking for the lowdown on Holt, I got in touch. Call it conscience or guilt. Whatever you want.
‘Holt and I were in ’Stan together.’ Afghanistan, ’Stan to those who’d served there. ‘Many years and many bodies back. He was our commander. We were deployed at FOB Sharana. We lost so many men there. Not a day passed when we didn’t have a rocket attack, an IED explosion, snipers…everything that was devised to kill American soldiers was deployed there.
‘This was in the days when fighting with the Taliban was at its peak and parlaying with the locals wasn’t done. We spent the days patrolling and the nights afraid to sleep. Over a period of time, a strange bond developed between him and me. I did a lot of scouting, and he relied on my intel. He had excellent tactical skills, lacked an emotional core, but I knew – we all knew – if anyone could get most of us out of Sharana alive, it was him.
‘We didn’t like each other, but he respected my abilities, and I respected his.
‘Very often he and I patrolled together, and it was in the second year that we started patrolling a small village far from our base. There was nothing there; to call it a village was being generous. Maybe not more than thirty people lived there, goat herders and their women and children in a few huts.
‘Holt used to disappear into that village and asked me to keep guard and patrol outside it. I didn’t give much thought to this, since I figured he was just being friendly with the locals and getting information.
‘During the day, the men used to take their goats away for grazing, leaving the women and children behind. One day it took him too long to recon, so I went into the village to look for him. Everything seemed normal, some women cooking, a few kids playing around. Those huts were basic, just mud walls, a roof and a hole for a door and another hole for a window.
‘Holt emerged from the last hut as I was approaching it, and blew his stack when he spotted me. He screamed at me for leaving my patrol and putting us at risk. I was only half listening, because through the hole in the hut I could see a woman getting dressed. I realized what Holt had been up to.
‘Back at the unit I talked with the others. It turned out they knew. But they suspected he was raping the women. All the women in that village.’
Kelly takes a long pull of his drink. His thousand-yard stare looks out at the bar but sees the hills and brush of Sharana.
‘Those were different days. The political climate was different. They were the enemy, and we had to kill them. No one said a word to Holt because he was our commander.
‘A month later we had a sniper attack. Sumbitch took out three of our men. Holt went into a rage. He increased the patrols, triangulated the sniper’s location and tried to track him. But it’s a huge country, and those sumbitches just become invisible.
‘In the evening, Holt went to the village, rounded up two women and shot them. Just like that. Not a word said, nothing. Grabbed them by the arm, took them to a wall, and shot them. And as if that wasn’t enough, he shot a kid, maybe five, six years old. Bam, bam, bam. Over.
‘He then turned his gun on some of the men approaching him; they fell back. And he trained his gun on me.
‘This all happened in less than a minute. My brain was still processing it all when I see this gun barrel on me.
‘He finally lowered it and walked away. Not a word was said at camp the next few days. A rumor spread that the village was sheltering that sniper and they had to be taught a lesson.
‘We were raw guys, eighteen, nineteen years old. Green to the gills and shit scared. We didn’t have the balls to complain to the higher-ups about Holt. I left ’Stan a few months later. I heard Holt had moved around a bit, but slowly lost track of him. Guilt ate away at me the initial few years, and then I started rationalizing the events, and then time did its thing.
‘To this day, I have no idea how he thought, what motivated him. He was an unpredictable sumbitch.’ He wags his finger in Zeb’s face. ‘Remember that. Unpredictable. That’s what makes him dangerous. Assuming you’re hunting him.’
Sounds of the bar fill the silence.
‘I don’t know much about him. He wasn’t very open about himself. I know he had a mother somewhere in Jersey, and he mentioned her more than a couple of times. That’s all that I can give you. I don’t know if this helps you, but it helps me.’
‘Are you sure about the mother?’ asks Zeb.
‘Hell, this was some years back, and my memory isn’t what it was. But yes, he did mention a mother in Jersey.’
Zeb doesn’t remember any kin mentioned in Holt’s dossier. This could be something Broker and he could use.
‘Do me a favor,’ he tells Kelly, ‘spread the word that I’m hunting Holt.’
Kelly smiles grimly and nods.
He settles the tab and watches Kelly amble away. ’Stan had a lot to answer for.
He goes back to his dossiers when he is back at his apartment. Nope. No mother listed for Holt. No kin at all. He calls Broker and briefs him on the meeting. Broker says Holt doesn’t have any siblings, not on record anyway, and his father passed away a while back. That’s in the dossier. So his mother is the only surviving kin.
Broker says he’ll get a list of Holts living in New Jersey who are fifty years old and above, since that will be approximately the age range for Holt’s mother . Broker has access to Social Security and DMV databases. Zeb doesn’t know if he hacks into them or has access to them through his network.
Broker calls back in the evening with two hundred names and addresses fitting the approximate age profile for Holt’s mother in New Jersey.
The next day Zeb starts calling each of those addresses. He is calling on behalf of the Department of Defense to inform them of increased pension benefits to the next of kin of veterans. That’s his cover. It never hurts to appeal to greed.
After three hours of calling, he is just two-thirds down the list. So far none of the Holts are the one he’s looking for. Several of those Holts have kin in the armed forces, but none of them are Carsten Holt or anyone resembling him.
He takes a break, strips down to loose, flowing trousers, and does his deep-breathing exercises. His living room is spacious, and its wooden flooring and high roof make it a good dojo-at-home.
Once he completes his breathing exercises, he starts off with simple Kalaripayattu moves, progressing to more complex; his body seamlessly blends motion and stillness. Kalaripayattu is one of the oldest martial arts in the world and has its roots in the tiny state of Kerala in India. Zeb had been lucky to be taken under the wing of a seventy-year-old gurukkal, a teacher.
Zeb showers after his training and gets back to his calling. It’s dusk by the time he has gone through all the names. He has had to go back and call a few of the names again since he didn’t get a person the first time he called. There are still about thirty names for whom he left voice mails.
He opens a can of soup, warms it up, and eats it with garlic bread as he watches the city prepare itself for another night.
He checks his phone later and finds a message from Cassandra. Connor is back from Africa and wants to meet with him. So does Rory.
The next day, Zeb calls the remaining addresses, reaches most of them, has no luck with them, and leaves a voice mail for the remaining.
He calls Broker to ask him if he has any update on Hardinger. Broker tells him he’s putting together a dossier and should be ready in a few days.
Zeb heads out to Cassandra’s, and when he nears her mid-rise, he spots them. One of them is across the street reading a newspaper and seemingly casual but observing the entrance. The other has taken a leaf from Zeb’s book; he is slumped in the driver’s seat in a yellow cab, off-duty sign on, parked just short of the building. He’s wearing shades and holding a book in front of him, but Zeb can see that he’s also observing the entrance.
They haven’t spotted him, if he is the one they are watching for. Zeb gets a cappuccino from a café and watches them. The one on the street is checking out anyone approaching the mid-rise, and the one in the cab is watching the forecourt of the mid-rise. They are wearing throat microphones and tiny colorless earpieces. The one on the street occasionally looks at the cabbie as they speak.
After nearly an hour of study, Zeb decides to force their hands. He crosses the street in plain view of both and approaches the entrance of the building from the front of the cab. Out of the corner of his eye he can see cabbie tightening up and then consciously relaxing. Zeb goes up to the entrance of the mid-rise, reverses in one fluid motion, yanks open the passenger door of the cab, leans in, and strikes a pressure point behind the cabbie’s ear. The cabbie collapses against the wheel, out of service.
The watcher across the street stares in disbelief. This is not in the script. This was supposed to be a routine surveillance operation to watch out for the mark and report in when he turned up. He and his colleague are experienced agents and have taken down their share of badasses before, but the utter ease with which the mark has taken out his colleague shocks him. He hasn’t seen anyone move so fast, changing from casual to lethal in a second. He calls his office and briefs them and is asked to check on his colleague but otherwise stay put, continue keeping a watch till others arrive.
He crosses the street to the cab and peers in. His colleague is unconscious but seems to be unharmed in any other way. He stands undecided for a moment, looking around the entrance to the building and around the street. He doesn’t see the mark anywhere and thinks he has gone inside the building. He has lost sight of him.
Zeb has ducked down behind a few cars parked behind the cab, run back and crossed the street to the other side. He’s now sitting in the same café in his former position. He has not made any efforts to hide himself and is in plain sight from the other side of the street. He knows what will happen now. What he doesn’t know is what happens next once the cavalry show up.
They arrive half an hour later in a dark Lincoln and park behind the cab. By then, the cabbie has recovered and is chatting with the other watcher, no sign of any injury. A tall man steps out of the Lincoln’s passenger seat, followed by the driver, and the four of them have a meeting. The tall man, the leader, looks at the building and up and down the street as the watchers speak. He issues instructions as he continues to scan the area and breaks off mid-speech when he spots Zeb across the street.
Zeb gives them a little wave and holds up his cappuccino.
There is a flurry of frantic discussion among the four of them, and then they head across the street. Zeb smiles at the way they spread themselves out as they near him.
‘Have coffee, gentlemen, and rest your legs. I got tired just watching you.’ Zeb relaxes, sprawling in his chair.
‘FBI. Special Agent in Charge Isakson,’ the tall man introduces himself with a clipped, controlled voice, but Zeb can detect the anger beneath the tone. ‘I can have you arrested for assaulting a federal agent.’
‘Me? Who did I assault? I went to the assistance of your agent, who seemed to be suffering from a nervous breakdown. I didn’t touch him. As soon as I entered his cab, he fainted. I checked that he was okay and exited the cab. That’s assault now, according to the FBI?’
Pressure-point unconsciousness sometimes plays havoc with short-term memory, and Zeb is banking that the driver doesn’t remember much of what went on in the cab.
Isakson looks at his agent, who shrugs and looks embarrassed.
‘Why are you guys watching for me?’ Zeb asks.
‘We wanted to talk to you in private, but since you’ve forced this,’ Isakson says, ‘we want you to back off your investigation. We want you to keep your distance from Holt. We want your sidekick, Broker, to not come sniffing around our systems for Holt’s details. You have no idea what you’re getting involved with, the various connecting threads, so back off.
‘Remember, under the Patriot Act we have almost unlimited powers. Suspects have been known to disappear indefinitely under this Act. And if you think your sister’s connections will help you…she herself might come under the scrutiny of the Act,’ continues Isakson, on not receiving any response from Zeb.
Zeb doesn’t say a single word, nor move a muscle, yet Isakson feels the cold menace hitting him at the mention of his sister. He uneasily realizes why his colleagues told him not to go extreme on Zeb. He can sense his team shifting, spreading out, and dimly knows that Zeb could take them all out in a few seconds without breaking a sweat.
Isakson’s hand automatically moves toward the lapel of his jacket, toward his shoulder holster. His hand stops when Zeb straightens and wordlessly points towards the Lincoln.
‘Back off,’ Isakson repeats and strides away, followed by his colleagues. He discreetly wipes his brow as he approaches the Lincoln.
Zeb watches them drive away. The warning is meaningless, and he has no intention of paying heed to it. Ever since leaving the Special Forces, he has done what he feels is right and has gone through people who opposed him.
People like Isakson.
