Spitting Image by Patrick LeClerc

unrecognized, and plenty of awards undeserved. To be sure, there were plenty of people who were justifiably proud of medals, and they earned them. But a medal was a pat on the head for a job well done.
    The patch wasn’t a reward. The patch was a promise. I wore it because I promised I would be there, despite the germs and the dark and the danger, and I would be that hope for those without any.
    That meant a lot, even to a cynical old bastard like me.
    I didn’t want to leave this life. I’d been moving on for a long time, but this is where I felt I belonged. Even if they wouldn’t let me stab Adam Armstrong.
    I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to be fired. I didn’t want a break from Sarah, and I certainly didn’t want to lose her.
    My nice comfortable little world was careening toward the abyss. And Caruthers’ clan was responsible for most of that.
    How to fight them, though? I knew very little about them, and only what Caruthers had told me, so I didn’t even know how much of that I could trust. And they knew a lot about me.
    But did they know Bob? Bob was a predator born. And he might have friends who would be a degree less likely to be known to the enemy.
    I called Bob’s number.
     

Chapter 14
    FOUR HOURS LATER, I parked Vlad the Impala at the head of a logging road, threw my bag over my shoulder and started hiking. Bob had a hunting camp somewhere up here. For when he wanted to get away from the rat race at his solar powered, off grid home on the lake, I guess.
    I checked my phone. No cell signal. The road was steep, overgrown, rutted, potholed and had boulders and roots jutting up that would have made the commander of a Sherman tank worry about his suspension.
    I settled into my old marching stride, singing in my head. Not cadence, like in training, or a traditional marching song, with off color lyrics that soldiers and elementary school kids find hilarious, but Bob Dylan. Shelter From the Storm was on my mind, since I was thinking of Sarah.
    Lots of songs came to mind when I thought of her, but right now, I was missing the safe, happy warmth of our time together, returning to, as the man sang, that other lifetime of toil and blood.
    I didn’t exactly like it, but part of me felt relief to be back in action. Away from time clocks and pressed uniforms and protocols and bills and all that. I wasn’t due back to work for three more days, and I was probably fired unless Juan and Pete bribed or threatened a lot of witnesses, so I stopped thinking about it. Out here, all I had to worry about was destroying the threat that Caruthers’ clan posed. And the worst they could do was kill us all.
    Getting shot is bad, but at least they don’t sit you down in HR and give you a speech about conflict resolution and regret to inform you and all that when they do it. It’s more honest.
    I saw a break in the undergrowth to my left. Bob had said take the first trail that split off the logging road. I wondered if that counted as a trail, since a goat would pack a rope and pitons before he tried it, but then I remembered who I was going to see and started up it.
    It wasn’t the worst hike I’d done, but by the time I saw the cabin, I was panting my way through Tangled Up in Blue .
    Bob met me on the porch of the log cabin.
    “Come on in, drop your pack and grab a drink,” he said. “This is John,” he indicated a tall, lean man sitting in the corner. The man nodded.
    “Good to see you, Bob. John,” I nodded back.
    John had weathered Native American features, big, strong looking hands and even at rest he emanated a sense of movement, action held in check, like a coiled spring.
    “John and I go way back,” said Bob. “He’s good at this kind of thing. I asked him to come lend a hand.”
    “Thanks for your help,” I said. “I’m not sure what Bob has told you. This might be dangerous, and I can’t offer you much.”
    “Bob asked me to come, so I have. Don’t worry about what you can do for