Free Joe Ledger by Jonathan Maberry

brother, I pretty much figured that. That sucks more than I can describe, but listen to me, Jimmy….I can’t let you hurt my man there. He’s a good man. A friend.”
    “A—Army?” Collins said.
    “No. He’s Gyrene like you are. End of the day, though, he’s another pair of boots on the ground in someone else’s war.” I eased off of the trigger and slipped my finger outside the guard. He watched me do it. I didn’t lower the gun, though; and he saw that, too. “I know you never signed up for this, Jimmy. Who would? They think that because you enlisted and because you signed a piece of paper that they own you, that you’re just a lab rat to them. If that’s the case, if that’s what we’ve all been fighting for, then God help the United States. Or maybe God help us all, because someone’s missing the whole damn point. You with me on this, Jimmy?”
    He paused, then nodded. It was impossible to read his face, hard to know if he was agreeing with me or giving me permission to keep talking.
    “You want to know why I’m here? Why me and my team are here? The docs who did this to you called Homeland and said that this facility was being overrun by terrorists.”
    “T-T-T-T—” He couldn’t even get the word out. The stubby antennae around his mouth twitched with wild agitation.
    “Yes, sir, Jimmy. Terrorists. How’s that for a thank-you from Uncle Sam? They rang the alarm, and we were sent in to drop the hammer on the bad guys. But…here’s my problem, Jimmy, and maybe you can help me out with it.”
    His black eyes glittered like jewels.
    “I’m not sure who the bad guys are. I mean…you’re killing folks, and you know that I can’t let that happen. I can’t let it continue. But at the same time, I don’t think you’re doing these kills because you’re a terrorist.”
    He said nothing. They all waited.
    “I think you’re doing it because you’re scared. More scared than I am now, and that’s saying something. But you know I can’t let you go on killing these people. Even if I agree with why you’re doing it, I got a job to do, and I know you understand that.”
    His antennae twitched.
    “Now… terror is a funny word,” I said. “We use it all the time, but we don’t think about what it really means. Right now…I think my man on the floor there is feeling some genuine terror.”
    Collins looked down at Bunny and then up at me.
    “And you’ve got to be feeling it. All of you.”
    The others clicked and hissed.
    “And everyone else down here is feeling it because of you. There may not be any terrorists down here, Jimmy, but I have to stop the terror. That’s my job. That’s what I’m really here to do.”
    Jimmy Collins’s eyes were wide, and dark, and wet.
    “Can you help me with that, Marine? Can you give me an out here?”
    Collins looked at me, and raised his eyes slowly toward my helmet. Not at the night-vision unit, but at the small cylinder mounted on the left side of my tin pot. He nodded at me. At it.
    “That’s right, Jimmy,” I said with a smile. “That’s a video camera. We’re on mission time here, everything’s being recorded. Everything we’ve seen, and everything we’ve heard since we came down here is saved to memory in our helmet cams. Now how about that?”
    Collins bent low until his deformed face was inches from Bunny’s. He whispered something that I couldn’t hear over the alarms.
    And then he straightened and pulled his hand away from Bunny. The five little pinpricks still leaked blood, but there was no real damage. Collins took a step back, and another. Bunny scrabbled sideways and scuttled back toward me. He made a grab for his fallen M4.
    “No,” I said.
    Bunny looked at me in surprise, then at Top, who nodded, and then at Collins.
    The hulking figure stepped farther back. His companions clustered around him. They made chittering noises, and God only knows if it was some kind of speech or the screams of the damned. Behind them was the