Inside Outt

didn’t mean to kill the man whose neck you crushed, maybe you just wanted to hurt him. It doesn’t matter. Either way, you lost control. And an operator can never do that.”
    “I didn’t—”
    “Yes, you did. Now listen. I rocked your world recently, I get that. I wish it hadn’t needed to be that way, but yeah, I turned you upside down. Your commander betrayed you, you can never trust these people again, everything you believed in is wrong. That was more or less it, right?”
    Ben didn’t answer. He hadn’t thought of it in those terms exactly, but… Shit, was he really that transparent? He could feel his face burning.
    “So you decided it was over with you and the unit, you were done. The problem is, you’re a man with a lot of energy inside you and you needed to divert it to something else. So you flew to Manila, where your ex-wife lives with your daughter. You thought you were going to be a better person, didn’t you, maybe reconcile with your ex, be a father to your little girl. Attach yourself to something new, like a man falling in love on the rebound. But it didn’t go well, did it?”
    Ben felt his shame coalescing into anger. “Back off, Hort.”
    “No, I will not back off. You went to see them, didn’t you? And your woman turned you away. Or you saw her with another man. Or both, or whatever. Well, that’s two rejections in a row, twice your world’s been rocked. Now, some men deal with rejection and humiliation and confusion by wallowing in self-pity. Some of your more self-actualized types can let it roll off their backs. How about you? How do you deal with it?”
    Ben stared at Hort, his lips thinned, his nostrils flared. It was like being stripped, being stripped and laid bare. He wanted to blast the table out from between them and slam Hort into the wall, over and over until his eyes rolled up in his head and he learned to
shut up, just shut the fuck up…
    “For example,” Hort said, as though reading his mind, “how are you dealing with it right now?”
    Ben ground his jaw shut and looked away. The breath was whistling in and out of his nostrils.
    “Yeah, maybe now you’re starting to see it. You’ve got anger inside you, son. Maybe it’s natural, or maybe something happened along the way and made it worse. Either way, it’s in your nature to seek out enemies and destroy them. It’s what you do. It’s what you’re good at. Some people play the piano, some people race cars. You destroy enemies. And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with it. The country needs men like you and I wish we had more. But you need direction. You need that violence to be channeled. Because if somebody’s not authorizing enemies on your behalf, you’re going to go out and create some on your own, like an attack dog off its leash. You think what happened in Manila was a one-off? It wasn’t. It was the beginning of the rest of your life.”
    Ben realized he was gripping the edge of the table, to steady himself or throw it aside he wasn’t sure anymore. He opened his hands and flexed his fingers and concentrated again on slowing his breathing.
    He knew Hort was right. If any of it had been bullshit, he’d have laughed it off. The way it was enraging him, though… why would that be?
    Because the truth hurts.
    “No one else talks to me like that,” he said after a moment. “No one.”
    Hort nodded. “No one else cares enough to take the chance.”
    “What do you want, then?”
    “I want you to stop this foolishness. There’s a major shit storm heading our way right now and I need your help to stop it. So I need you to stop acting out like a wounded adolescent. I need you to be more self-aware and to show more self-control. Can I count on you for that?”
    Ben wiped his lips with the back of a hand. He’d already spent so much time thinking, the hell with the unit, he was out, he could never trust Hort again… and here was the man himself, telling him not only that he was back in if he wanted, but acting like he’d never even left. Telling him he was needed.
    It was confusing as hell. But also…
    It felt good. So good.
    A rivulet of sweat ran down into his eye. He blinked. “Give me that handkerchief, will you?”
    Hort handed it to him. Ben unfolded it and wiped his face.
    He gave the handkerchief back to Hort. “You said something about a shit storm?”
    Hort nodded and stood. “I did. But first, let’s get you the hell out of here.”

CHAPTER 4
An Extremely Unpleasant