I hadn’t planned on coming to Alencourt until the day before. Bought the train ticket on a whim. It was totally random. There was another question: had Qayoumi been on the same train as me? The guy with the broken wrist had been scouting the train. He saw me first and stopped looking.

The blue shirt with the nautical logo.

The Afghan guy Qayoumi was a target. Why? The footsoldiers had messed it up by attacking me. Some kind of gang conflict over trafficking maybe. I’d done tours in Afghanistan. They grow a lot of drugs over there.

I figured Qayoumi had been on the same train, got overlooked because of me, and then got picked up later on, once they’d realized the mistake. Which meant there were more people involved. Including someone running surveillance and scouting wherever Qayoumi had boarded the train. The one to send the message, The blue shirt with the nautical logo.

But then there would be other, more important operators. Commanders who gave orders and let footsoldiers take the punishment. Interesting.

I was feeling confined in the hotel room. Felt like maybe going out for a prowl. If there’s a chance to be out there in the world, I’ll take it. When you’re in the field, on your own or with your team, you’ve got options either way. They can change, you can rework the options if someone’s closing them down. My job had been to close off the other guy’s options in a major way. Felt weird to just sit around on my ass after contact with an enemy. My instinct was to get closer, not further away.

But, on the other hand, I was a civilian now. I needed to readapt to regular life. Whatever that means.

I stared up at the ceiling. A thousand miles from sleep. Call it tourism, I thought. Be a good civilian. Go out there for a prowl. Call it a healthy walk. Then, come back to the hotel and sleep when you’re done. Go back to see the Vaugeois cousins in the morning, meet Gilles, regardless of his current disability. Finish up the project, complete the mission.

I swung up to a seated position. Feet on the floor. Stretched out. Yawned. Cracked my joints. Time to go prowling.