Redemption Games (John Rain #4)

by Barry Eisler

The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat, an army instructor once told me, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson. If I ever die during an op, it won’t be because I was too lazy to properly prepare. Manny showed up at dinnertime.

He looked at a WMD attack on America in much the same terms. There was so much post-Soviet matériel out there, and so many fanatics who wanted to use it, that it was just a matter of time. But no one wanted to accept this fact, any more than the Los Angeles suburban homeowners wanted to accept that a little annual soot on their wood siding might be a small price to pay to avoid a fucking holocaust. It was just how people’s minds worked. There wasn’t much you could do about it. He shook his head, disgusted. It all made him think of the way municipalities install traffic lights. After a certain number of auto fatalities at a given intersection, the politicians say, “Hmm, we really ought to put in a light there.” They were going to do the same thing when New York had disappeared under a mushroom cloud. “Hmm, we really ought to do something about the threat of WMDs.”

“It’s a strange thing, having a child,” he said. “It completely alters your most fundamental priorities. When my eldest daughter was born, I realized I would do anything—anything—to protect her. If I had to set myself on fire to save her from something, I would do it with the utmost relief and gratitude. It’s quite a thing, quite a privilege, to care about someone so much that the measure of the worth of your own life is changed by it.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for all that,” I said. I felt like I was outside my body, as though I was listening to someone else speaking the words coming from my mouth. “Of course you’re not. No one ever is. Because there’s a responsibility that comes with the privilege.” He licked his lips. “When my little son died, there was nothing I could do to save him. All the things I would have done, would have been overjoyed to do, were meaningless. You can’t imagine the impact of knowing that the most precious thing over which you have full control—your own life—is useless as barter or bribe to save the life of your child.”