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By Root 440 0

their badges, made sure the media was present and able to set up their gear, determined that there would be a sufficient number of buses to run delegates to and from the nearby hotels. He did not care that hunting peoples of northeast Asia had crossed the Bering Ice Bridge and migrated to the south to hunt caribou, bison, and mammoth some twenty thousand years ago. It did not matter to him that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to visit the region, sailing from Mexico into San Diego Bay in 1542 and claiming the region for Spain. It was unimportant that sixty years later, Sebastian Vizcaino sailed from Mexico and named the region after the Spanish saint San Diego de Alcala. The natives could have been hunting dodos, the Spanish men could have been French women, none of it mattered. The thirty-year-old was unapologetic about his interest in the present.

That grew from spending time with his father, Phil, back in Indianapolis, when the fifty-year-old was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lou Gehrig's disease. Not just dying from it but being disintegrated by it. His limbs folding in on themselves as his muscles atrophied, his organs failing. In a lucid moment before he succumbed entirely to living decomposition, the elder Stone told his only son that he regretted so much in his life. Becoming a mechanical engineer instead of a painter. Not spending more time with Eric instead of bowling and drinking with the guys.

"I had a guy," the older man whispered. "The best guy." He touched the top of eighteen-year-old Eric's head with a hand whose fingers would not fully uncurl. "I could have had a better life."

That was the last thing Phil Stone had to say before the muscles of his face stopped working. He spent the last month of his life with his jaw hanging slack and his eyes staring at an aluminum bed rail and whatever memories he could find in his drug-hazed brain. Eric Stone resolved, then, to regret nothing. To live in the moment. That meant having power.

The elder Stone's illness devoured their savings and kept the young boy from graduating with any distinction. The only way he could get an education was by enlisting in the military. Having spent his life landlocked in the agricultural belly of the nation, he joined the navy, where he caught the eye of then-Rear Admiral Link. It was in San Diego, after the Persian Gulf War. There was a reception for the vice president of the United States at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems facility. SPA WAR provided more than half of the tactical and non tactical information management technology the navy used to complete its operational missions during the war.

To help pay the bills at home, Eric had worked as a waiter for a catering company. He was ordered to work the windy al fresco party.

Something about his manner captured Link's attention. His intensity, perhaps. He handled a tray as carefully as he would nitroglycerin. The wind stirred the fabric of his dress blues, but he did not lose a single drop of champagne.

Eric Stone lived in the moment.

Link had Stone transferred to his own Department of Focused Sensing and Data Acquisition. This embraced intelligence-gathering operations through photographic, electromagnetic, acoustic, seismic, olfactory, visual, or other means. It relied on everything from satellites to aircraft to sensor fields arrayed on the ground in the form of probes and micro technology Stone went to work in the accounting division. At Link's request, he found ways to get better deals from suppliers so there was more money to spend on other things. There was no kickback, no padded invoices, no black-ops funding, no dishonesty. It was all about making FSDA/SPAWAR run more effectively. Link made sure that Stone got the schooling he needed. There was strong mentoring throughout the three years they were together.

SPA WAR was Link's jumping-off point to the Company. Before accepting their offer to run Far Eastern Intelligence from CIA headquarters, Link told Stone to get in touch with him when his hitch was up. Stone did that and went to work