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buckled, and I crumbled to the ground, retching, trying to be sick, but nothing was coming up.
    Hutchinson put her arm on my shoulder. “ Dale, I’m sorry. ” But her craft couldn’t reach me. “Dale? Captain Morton!”
    The dungeon voice in my mind said, Kill her. Kill them all.
    I struggled back to my feet. We know your family. Cease fire! “I’m stopped,” I said, my mouth like a computer reading a speech. “Done.”
    “Good. Now, what happened?”
    “No, ma’am, I’m done with this. All this. The military. Life. Done.”
    Hutchinson smiled, shook her head. “Some R & R…”
    “Done done done.”
    “We’ll talk about it later.”
    “No, right this fucking minute.” Cold fire flew out from my hands. “I resign. Discharge me now.”
    Hutchinson said, “Sword.” As if they were expecting this, two men ran across the tarmac and tackled me. The craft fizzled in my hands. With nothing more to say, I screamed into the face of one of the men. I hated that face, but had forgotten why.
    Hutchinson nodded, a sedative went in. I roared, but didn’t care enough to fight it. Being knocked out just made it official. I was done.
    All the way back to the U.S., every time I woke up, I screamed until they knocked me out again.

 
    CHAPTER
    TWO
    Major Michael Endicott gave the high castle a glance and thought of trivial injustice. Prague, beautiful bullshit Prague. Prague’s old-world occult irritated him. Every assignment turned noir here. Like foreign movies, Prague missions tended to end badly and absurdly.
    Endicott played the gaping tourist and waited for his call. To his right and above loomed Prague Castle, locus of alchemy and occult practices until the Thirty Years’ War. The old European aristocracies had attempted to monopolize spiritual power in their realms, but the New World’s openness to new Families had helped to put an end to that. To Endicott’s left, a picturesque rabbit warren of streets and alleyways led back down to the town, every shadow potentially filled with Central European nasties who sought his demise. Further up the road stood the old monastery, site of tonight’s rendezvous.
    Lovely Slavic women passed to and fro, irritating in their own way. A wife or girlfriend back home was overdue, but a Christian relationship took time, and in his position he couldn’t have any other kind. He had his doubts that God cared much about his sex life, but his superiors and family did.
    In response to these insubordinate thoughts, his satphone finally rang—General Dad calling. Other branches of the military could afford to move family members to separate chains of command, but not spiritual ops. Endicott answered.
    “Sir?”
    “Sword, the target has moved up your rendezvous. You’ll proceed directly to the site. Operate under Moscow Rules.” This precaution meant nothing; in spiritual ops, almost anywhere overseas was hostile territory.
    Endicott’s irritation got the best of him. “Sir, why am I here?”
    To Endicott’s relief, his father seemed to view this question as legitimate. “Pentagon PRECOG wanted you in the desert, but that freakshow Sphinx vetoed it, and that Hutchinson woman concurred on the ground, so we’ve given you Casper’s milk run. Try not to screw it up.”
    “Yes, sir.” Dad didn’t think much of Hutch and Langley’s Sphinx, but it was PRECOG’s Chimera that always gave Endicott a queasy feeling. An H-ring joke had it that the motto of Pentagon farsight was “We know, but we don’t care.”
    The general’s voice lowered into a confidential, wily tone. “Remember to ask about the Left Hand and the Mortons.”
    Lord, would he never cease on that? “Roger, sir. Wilco. Sword out.”
    Left-Hand : the craft relativistic euphemism for “evil.” Endicott hated the word almost as much as the fact. In spiritual ops, evil was Evil.
    Endicott strode up the cobbled road. He carried a long and narrow box that enlarged at one end, as if he were a professional pool