One by one, they went to the steam table. It was mess-hall food, maybe a little worse. But given that they normally operated far from any kitchen at all, it was better than what they were used to. No matter what happens in battle, if you survive, you will want to eat.

So they ate everything that was left, all the eggs, all the bacon, all the sausages, every Corn Pop and every bagel half, and drank all the coffee and all the juice and all the milk, and then they maneuvered their muscular hulks off to their dim little motel rooms, and everybody who saw them wondered the same thing: What kind of monsters are they, those sullen giants eating everything in sight?

It is the soldier’s fate to be feared by those he offers his life to protect.

Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

MOMMA IN THE SKY

Gina Lyndon sat pressing her fist against her mouth, her whole body shaking, the office closing in on her like a coffin, murmuring to herself, “Oh, God, oh, God.”

Once again, she threw his telemetry up on her main screen, then turned the volume up until his heartbeat boomed through the silence—the deadly, maddening silence—of her office. Normally, she’d be listening to three or four songs at once, maybe also a news show. She’d been nicknamed Volcana by her father, which she hated. She was not all that intense. She was normal, damnit.

Mark’s brain was in high beta, indicating that he was talking or writing, doing something active with his mind. But safe in the motel room, she knew that. Safe for now.

Oh, Mark. Such a name. Beautiful name. She took pleasure in just writing it, Mark Bryan, Mark Bryan, over and over like a smitten schoolgirl.

The head of the scientific committee, Dr. Thomas Turner, had sent his file to her, and it made a hell of a story. Colonel Bryan was a Delta Force legend, a master soldier … and a master in other ways, too. Lovely man, full of shoal waters, though. Deep inside, something about him was as cold as winter, and she didn’t like that … but there was a whole lot more that she did.

She closed her eyes, riding his heartbeat, imagining that her own heart was beating with it. Then she threw up video of him, video watched many times, of him crossing a street on his way to his one meet with her, of him across the table from her at the restaurant, video that devastated her every time she looked at it, and she looked at it many, many times in a day.

In that first moment, seeing him for the first time, there had been the most poignant possible sense of déjà vu. But why? She decided that it was because, even though she’d never before seen him, she had always wanted to.