Liberators

Joshua was picking up on the fact that sarcasm was gold with Megan and that she could dish it out as well as take it. He decided that he definitely wanted to get to know more about her. Megan was different from a lot of the twenty- or thirty-somethings eligible bachelorettes at NSA. She was confident, dressed very modestly, and witty. “So where do you work?”

“OPSEC, Officer Kim. You are not read onto that compartment of Megan yet.” Megan, a single mom, had perfected her poker face without having an alpha male around and raising two boys. She wanted to see if Joshua was only after one thing, and to find out if she pushed, whether he would push back or simply lose interest. Megan had had to sit and listen to a lot of other single moms at the Agency cry on her shoulder because they had fallen for men who valued the chase but not the catch.

Sensing that this was a test, he decided to lay a marker on the table and show that he was still interested. “Referring to ourselves in the third person, are we?” He tilted his head twice over his left shoulder to point in a specific direction, “You know, there are Occupational Health shrinks right over in the next building; I can see about getting you an appointment.”

Megan burst out laughing while trying to cover her mouth and not spray any homemade sprouts. She wasn’t used to someone absorbing her darts so well, but regained her composure and confided, “I’m a threat analyst for SADCOM.”

“SADCOM?” Joshua furrowed his brow. “You mean “SOUTHCOM, as in Southern Command?”

“No, ‘SADCOM’ is what the people who work for CENTCOM call their parent organization. While they look romantically at their counterparts in SOCOM and refer to that as ‘HAPPYCOM.’”

“I see, maybe. No, wait, I don’t get it.”

“Just about everyone who works for CENTCOM doesn’t like it, myself included. I’m employed by contract for the Agency, but I work in an office that has a liaison officer (LNO) capacity to CENTCOM on behalf of the National Security Agency. I basically analyze the area of operations and assess our ability to gather intelligence in foreign areas that are nonconsensual to our exploits.” Megan paused for effect, carefully trying to get a read on Joshua, and then continued, “I basically push paperwork from one side of the desk to the other.”

Joshua saw that she was, in fact, a real person with real hurts, so he trod carefully, seeing if he wanted to dig deeper or not. Not knowing fully what to say, he keyed in on an earlier part of the conversation and said, “Sounds like that is rather unfulfilling for having to give up so much time during the week to work and not be home with the kids. Did you say that you had boys?”

“Yes, two sons. They are everything to me, and the reason why I get up in the morning to do this at all is for them.” Megan kept it on a professional level and said, “I was a signals analyst in Company B of the Marine Cryptologic Support Battalion here at NSA-W. Before that I was stationed at the RSOC in Kunea with Company I, with my ex-husband, Eric—you don’t have to ask, yes, he is an ‘ex,’ not a ‘former’ husband. You might say that he earned his Big Chicken Di

Joshua didn’t want to say something stupid, nor did he just want to fill the space with empty pleasantries. So he smiled and said, “I generally walk through your section in the late mornings. Do you mind if I knock on the door and see if you would like to do lunch again next week?”

Megan was not one to live for others’ approval, so she had stopped feeling sorry for herself years ago. If Joshua was willing to link up again for lunch, then that was worth exploring, based on her initial impression of him as a thoughtful and seemingly kind Christian. She thought it over for what felt like an awkwardly long pause and said, “Okay, Officer Kim, we can do that. But I have to ask you not to stop by the office. A lot of my office mates hate their lives and long to turn their lives into the soap operas they so diligently DVR every day. My SID is ‘mclacro,’ you can find me on SEARCHLIGHT. You never know, I might even reply.”

Joshua was smitten. He nodded and said, “Have a good day, Miss LaCroix.”

6

DIFFUSED RESPONSIBILITY

Now, I’d like to ask people in the room, please raise your hand if you have not broken a law, any law, in the past month. . . . That’s the kind of society I want to build. I want to guarantee—with physics and mathematics, not with laws—that we can give ourselves real privacy of personal communications.

—John Gilmore

Odenton, Maryland—Six Months Before the Crunch

Subject: Lunch?

Unclassified: FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Megan,

Hello. I hope that this finds you well. I have been thinking a lot about our lunch meeting and I would love to meet again to talk and get to know you better. How about lunch sometime next week? Do you like Korean food?

Looking forward to it,

Joshua

Unclassified: FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

She replied:

Re: Lunch?

Unclassified: FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

Joshua,

Okay, I’m game. I do like Korean food, as a matter of fact. I don’t eat out very much, but some of the girls here in the office rave about Mona’s Gourmet Carry Out on A

Megan

Unclassified: FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

•   •   •

Megan was a confident woman and she knew better than to call men. She and her sister, Malorie, grew up as the apple of their papa’s eye and they never felt incomplete without a man’s attention, especially if it was the fleeting kind of attention. Most women who were single moms would find themselves compromising proper judgment when it came to dating candidates and subsequent physical intimacy just because they felt less appealing to men because they had children. Megan was content to keep on working to provide for her boys whether or not the phone rang. But she did hold her breath when the National Secure Telephone System (NSTS) phone did ring five minutes later.

“Four-five-eight-nine, this is Contractor LaCroix.”

“Megan, hey. This is Joshua. Is this an okay time to talk?”

“Well, I was just about to lower the ocean levels, win the war on terror, save the San Francisco Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse, and secure world peace with this PowerPoint presentation, now that the fonts are in cornflower blue instead of ocean blue.”

“Right, be sure to hit Save. You wouldn’t want to trust the fate of the free world to the default settings on that, would you? Hey, about lunch, I was going to suggest Mona’s Gourmet Carry Out, so I’m glad that you mentioned it. I’ll be at the range this Thursday and Friday for my weapons requalifications. What day works for you next week?”

Megan noticeably lowered her voice so that she would not be adding fuel to the gossip inferno in her office. “Do you get to Mona’s by cutting across Fort Meade and going out the Mapes Road gate, to Telegraph Road?”

“Yes, that’s usually the route I take.”

“Well, how about Tuesday, then? I usually like to hit the thrift store over on post and it’s only open Tuesday through Thursday. You can find some good stuff there sometimes.”

“Done. What sounds good to you? I can phone in the order.”

“Surprise me, I’m not picky.”

“Okay. How about we meet by the PG-165 facing Canine Road out the gate for OPS2B Tuesday at noon?”