But it was a mess they had to see through—all of them, together—whether they liked it or not. Kyle adjusted his grip on his assault rifle, the weight of the weapon grounding him.
If Stanislav wanted a fight, they’d give it to him.
2
To Withstand the Ocean
The cacophonyof sound echoed through the thick cement walls of the convention center in Dallas, Texas. Jamie Callahan, captain of the Metahuman Defense Force’s Alpha Team, cocked his head to the side and listened. At least this time all he could make out were the cheers mixing with music, but that would change once the rally was over and everyone left the convention center. The jeers and boos from protestors outside who were against what his father, Richard Callahan, stood for would carry them on to the next city and the next.
And the next.
Jamie stared down at the screen of his slim personal tablet as a notification popped up, alerting him to yet another article containing his name. The name of the site wasn’t familiar and he swiped the notification out of view, effectively deleting it. Jamie had set the search parameters for his name and his family’s name too wide some weeks back whenThe New York Times’second exposé on his family had hit the media streams, and he hadn’t bothered to fix it yet.
It hadn’t come as a surprise to them—they’d known the story was in the works ever since the first request for comments were directed at the campaign—but the ferocity of the public’s response had finally given Richard pause. Since November, since Boston, the Callahan campaign had stuck to apologetic soundbites regarding Richard’s disastrous decision to hold the open-air campaign rally on Boston Common despite the threats to his person. Richard’s reasoning—that he wouldn’t bow to terrorists—rang hollow in the aftermath.
Hundreds of people had died from the Splice attacks Declan Wolcott had perpetuated against the citizens of Boston at the behest of Stanislav Pavluhkin. The only good thing to come out of that mess was knowing that Sean and Alexei, the two members of Jamie’s team who had been MIA, were found alive in time to ensure their survival. Even now, the memory of their absence made Jamie flinch.
Of everything he’d experienced in war, losing those under his command was his greatest fear. He’d lived it, lived through it, during the attack in Tripoli, Libya that had turned him into a metahuman. That didn’t mean he wanted to go through it again. His enhanced strength and durability weren’t a fair trade for that loss in his eyes and never would be. Jamie knew that war was a series of chances and bouts of luck. No one could hope to win every time and come out whole on the other side.
Surviving was never easy, as proven by the tangled mess of a mission the exposé had dug up. Adam Dixon,The New York Times’lead investigator, had been a problem since the start of the Pavluhkin mission in London last year.
His first exposé had focused on Jamie’s supposedly near-criminal actions within the shadow of his father’s campaign. But Dixon didn’t have all the information, and the story he’d spun at the time—that of a rich son making possible black market business deals—had complicated their mission. That bit of journalism had been knocked down by the Marine Corps at the behest of the MDF after London, though it hadn’t stayed unbelieved for long.
All it took was another even more sensational story to hit the news streams and Jamie found himself back in the spotlight of public opinion. This time, Dixon had published pictures taken in Paris last November of the dinner Jamie had attended with his team and the Pavluhkin family. Granted, he’d been under orders by the MDF to show up, but trading on his family name for the good of the country was never easy.
The dinner in Paris wouldn’t be incriminating if one didn’t know that the Pavluhkins headed up thePresnenskaya Bratva, a criminal organization based out of Moscow. What’s more, the pictures wouldn’t have even existed if some divisions of the CIA weren’t operating under a vendetta by that agency’s deputy director.
CIA Deputy Director Carter Bennett was a man in power who knew far too many secrets for Jamie to ever be comfortable unless the other man was dead. The MDF had traced Bennett’s financial wealth to Vitae Neurotherapeutics stocks, a now-defunct company once owned and operated by Declan’s deceased wife, Valerie Hayes. Jamie had killed her last year during a raid on a black market Splice lab in Montana, earning him Declan’s hatred and painting a target on his back.
The crosshairs aimed in his direction were followed up by words instead of bullets these days. Between the pictures linking Jamie to criminals and the tragedy in Boston, his father’s campaign had been derailed after November. Polling had Richard at fourth place in a shrinking field of candidates, depending on the company that asked the questions. The difference was negligible; Richard was no longer the Republican frontrunner.
It was a stunning defeat that shouldn’t have happened—except the MDF had greenlit a long mission using the Callahan name and Jamie had agreed to it. Every negative rumor, every misstep dogging Richard’s campaign could be traced back to Jamie’s decision.
What a fucking mess,Jamie thought to himself as he locked his tablet and slipped it into his inner suit jacket pocket.
President Michael Rodriguez had had no choice but to direct the Department of Justice to look into Richard’s campaign decisions after the Paris pictures came to light and ethics lawsuits were levied against him. Considering no one in his father’s campaign had approved Jamie’s meeting with the Pavluhkins nor had any knowledge of the MDF mission, the charge of collusion being bandied about by the media was false.
Proving that, however, would require Jamie’s classified identity and that of his team’s to come to light.
MDF Director Amir Nazari had flat-out refused Richard’s request to do so on the grounds of national security. The mess the MDF had made of his father’s reputation would have to be fixed in a less noteworthy manner than the announcement that Jamie was a metahuman. That hadn’t stopped the Senate from opening up an inquiry into Richard’s actions and all the myriad ties linking him to Jamie. As his son, Jamie’s actions reflected back on both of them, and his ties to the company at the heart of this mess was already showing up in the news.
Root Source, Inc. was a cybersecurity company the MDF had put together for the Pavluhkin mission. The company had been disbanded in December, all identifying information of its C-suite officers scrubbed from public view, but that hadn’t stopped the CIA from leaking the information to the press, filling in whatever holes Dixon still had in his investigative notes.
The conflicting stories that had run through the press in the last year and half about Jamie were crumbling beneath the hard scrutiny of the law. The truth could save them, but the truth was something the MDF didn’t want to give up. In the end, Richard’s political aspirations might go up in smoke and Jamie might be forced to live with a false stain on his reputation forever. Neither option was appealing.
“Your father wants to see you.”
Jamie turned around to greet Special Agent Oliver Burwell, of the Secret Service, with a friendly nod. “All right.”
The older man gestured for Jamie to follow him through the busy back halls of the convention center. Burwell wasn’t always around, despite being assigned to lead Jamie’s Secret Service security detail. There were some places Burwell just couldn’t follow him.
Richard had been granted Secret Service protection last November and needed it now more than ever after people began to blame him for the Splice attack in Boston. During that fight, Burwell and the other special agents assigned to Jamie had become aware of his identity as a metahuman. The MDF hadn’t been thrilled with that revelation, but they’d mitigated the damage well enough over the past five and a half months or so.
Jamie and Burwell had come to a truce after Boston. Both of them had roles to play in the public eye regarding what was expected of their positions. Jamie let Burwell and a small group of handpicked agents act as his security detail, and they left him alone when he left the campaign trail, making only token appearances when required.
Buttoning up his suit jacket as he walked, Jamie overtook Burwell and made his way to the room set aside for the Callahan family. Campaign staff scurried about on errands around security staff and volunteers. The gloomy feeling pervading everyone backstage had yet to lift over the past few months. The bad press weighed on everyone, and while some staffers had jumped ship, most of the core positions remained intact.
One of those was his father’s campaign manager, Juan Bautista, a political veteran with numerous campaigns under his belt. Considering the tailspin they seemed to be in, Richard was lucky to retain Juan as a steady hand.
