was a misnomer, actually—that’s what he used to be, but there were no such ranks in the management structure of the Talion Corporation. He was an STS, a senior tactical supervisor. And as his soon-to-be ex-wife was so very fond of reminding him, he had been one of those for a very long damn time.But at the moment he was his own boss, if only by default. His many superiors had traveled to other installations where plans were being finalized for some large-scale civil-disturbance deployment that was soon to roll out across the country. It wasn’t clear whether this was just another training exercise or a live operation; sometimes one could become the other without much notice. Lately not a lot of information was trickling down to his level and he didn’t want to seem pushy—or worse, insubordinate—by asking too many questions. He took it as a vote of confidence that he was left in charge of the facility and gladly accepted this opportunity to show them all what he was made of.His standing orders were simply to monitor what was happening at this place on the screen—a Wyoming ranch a hundred miles away, thought to be harboring persons of interest in a suspected cell of domestic terrorists—and to follow established protocol should anything unusual develop.In his experience, warfare was generally nothing but crushing monotony right up until the moment when everything explodes.
