“So I guess this was the right stop,” he told her.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“You said you ‘supposed.’ Like you had some doubts. But you work here, so you knew.”

“You ‘suppose’ I work at the Pentagon,” she told him.

Danny looked for a smirk or some other sign that she was kidding with him. But she wasn’t.

Mary Clair Bennett did not have much of a sense of humor. She had spent the past twenty-two and a half years working for the Defense Department, and if she’d laughed at a single joke in all that time, the memory of it had been firmly suppressed.

In the days before titles were engineered to replace pay raises, Ms. Bennett would have been called an executive secretary. Her personality fit the words perfectly, combining efficiency with more than a hint of superiority. Ms. Bennett—she was a particular stickler for the title—had always felt that being a little chilly toward others enhanced her position with them. While her two nieces might have argued passionately on her behalf, few people would have called her a particularly warm person. Even her sister, who lived out in Manassas, found she had very little to talk to her about when she came for her biweekly visits.

“Well, thanks for getting me here,” Danny said as they reached the security checkpoint.

Ms. Bennett rolled her eyes. He smiled to himself, amused rather than annoyed, and joined the line for visitors.

The line led to a sophisticated biometric scanning and security system, recently installed not just at the Pentagon, but at most military installations around the country. More than a decade and a half earlier, Danny had presided over the system’s precursor, developed and tested at the nation’s premier weapons test bed and development lab, the Air Force’s Advanced Technology Center, better known as Dreamland. That system had essentially the same capabilities as the one used here. It could detect explosives and their immediate precursors, scan for nuclear material, and find weapons as small as an X-Acto blade.

The system checked a person’s identity by comparing a number of facial and physical features with its stored memory. The early Dreamland version had been somewhat larger, and tended to take its time identifying people; it would have impractical dealing with a workforce even half the size of the Pentagon’s. In the fifteen or sixteen years since then, the engineers managed to make it smaller and considerably faster. The detectors were entirely contained in a pair of slim metallic poles that rose from the marble foyer floor; they connected via a thick wire cable to the security station nearby. Each visitor walked slowly between the poles, pausing under the direction of an Army sergeant, who raised his hand and glanced in the direction of his compatriot at the station. The station display flashed a green or a red indicator—go or no go—along with identifying information on the screen.

One couldn’t simply visit the Pentagon; his or her name had to be on a list. Even a general who didn’t have an office here needed a “sponsor” who made sure his or her name was entered into the system.

“Please wait, sir,” said the sergeant as Danny stepped up to the posts. “We have to recalibrate periodically.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same, thought Danny. Such pauses had been common at Dreamland.

Then, the process could take as long as half a day. Now it took only a few seconds.

“Please step forward,” said the sergeant.

“Good,” said the second sergeant at the console, waving Danny through. Then he caught something on the screen. “Whoa—hold on just a second.”

Startled, Danny turned around.

“Um, uh—you’re, uh, Colonel Freah.” The soldier, embarrassed by his outburst, stepped awkwardly away from the console and snapped off a salute.

It was unnecessary, since they were inside, but Danny returned it.

“This here’s a Medal of Honor winner,” said the sergeant, turning to the other people on line.

Now it was Danny’s turn to be embarrassed. One of the civilians spontaneously began to applaud, and the entire line joined in. Danny put his head down for a moment. He always choked up at moments like this, remembering why he had gotten the medal.

More specifically, remembering the men he couldn’t save, rather than those he did.

“It was…a while ago,” he mumbled before forcing a smile. “Thank you, though. Thank you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” said the sergeant nearest him.

“You all have a good day,” said Danny, turning and starting down the hallway.

It had happened a very long time ago, more than a decade, during his last assignment with Whiplash—his last assignment at Dreamland, in fact. Colonel Tecumseh “Dog” Bastian had just turned the base over to a three-star general, officially completing his mission and restoring the base to its former glory after an infamous scandal had threatened its closing. Danny, who’d come on board with the colonel, was due to be reassigned when the mission came up.

Just one more job before you go, son. Can you do it?

The irony for Danny Freah was that if he had to list all of the action that he’d seen under fire, the mission that led to his medal would only have ranked about midway to the top. Five minutes of sheer hell wrapped inside days of boredom—the usual lot of a soldier, even a member of Whiplash—at the time, the ultraelite Spec Warfare arm of Air Force Special Operations, assigned to provide security and work as Dreamland’s “action” team. They had deployed all around the world under the direct orders of the President. Colonel Bastian had worked for the President himself, outside the normal chain of command. They’d accomplished an enormous amount—and burned bridges by the country mile as he went.

Those days were long gone. Danny was a full bird colonel now, his life as boring as that of a life insurance actuary as he tried to get in line for a general’s slot.

In a perfect world the coveted star would have been presented to him on a velvet pillow, thanks to his service record. But the world was far from perfect. The enmity that Dog had earned throughout the military bureaucracy also extended to those closely associated with him, including Danny Freah. Dog’s successor—who liked and helped Danny, though he wasn’t a particular fan of Colonel Bastian—hadn’t exactly won a lot of friends either. And then there was Danny’s record itself. Jealousy played a much more important role in the military hierarchy than anyone, including Danny, liked to admit. The fact that he was neither a pilot—a “zippersuit”—or a graduate of the Academy also hurt him subtly, denying him access to networks that traditionally helped officers advance. His closest friends and associates tended to be the enlisted people he’d worked with, and as loyal as they might have been, they had zero juice when it came to the promotion boards.

Still, professional back-biting, petty rivalries, and old boys (and girls) clubs wouldn’t have amounted to much of a block to Danny’s career during ordinary times. Even two or three years before, he would have made the general’s list without too much trouble. But the world’s economic troubles had made the times anything but ordinary.

The new administration had come into office the previous year by promising to both balance the budget and hold the line on taxes. Other administrations had made similar promises. The difference was that this President, Christine Mary Todd, actually meant to keep her word. Every area of the budget had been cut, including and especially the military. The Air Force was looking to cut the number of generals on its rolls in half.

The man Danny was coming to visit had been a victim of those cuts, though in his case he hadn’t done too poorly. Harold Magnus was the deputy secretary of defense, a position he’d stepped into just a few months before after retiring from the Air Force, accepting the fact that earning a fourth star was highly unlikely.