Weaponized by Nicholas Mennuti, David Guggenheim Page A

concentration curls, triceps kickbacks. For someone in his sixties, he cuts an imposing figure. Doorway-size shoulders. Neck bulging like a frog stretching to catch a fly. The thick veins on his forearm fence a memento from Vietnam, a massive tattoo of a dragon, multicolored wings spread, clutching a submachine gun. Another reminder of the war dangles close to his throat, a necklace of Buddhist charms given to him by a monk he rescued in Cambodia.
    Now the Agency’s sent him back here—the ashes of Southeast Asia.
    His biceps starts to burn and he drops the weight on the office floor. He didn’t shower this morning, and his sweat’s mixed with the lavender of his girlfriend’s soap.
    Women.
    Fowler’s never forgotten what his first wife said as she slammed the bedroom door and never spoke to him again:
    “When women are alone and bored, we play dress-up. We put on Mommy’s makeup and try on her clothes. When men are bored, they play dress-up too. Only when they do it, they put on uniforms, go to someone else’s country, and kill everyone.”
    Her name was Victoria Rose. That was it. No fucking nicknames for her. No Vicki, or Vic, or Rosie. Don’t even think about it. Victoria Rose.
    It’s 1975. Fowler’s just gotten back from Saigon. He’s anxious; he’s waiting for something. He meets Victoria Rose in a bar one night when he’s wearing his civilian uniform, Levi’s and a leather jacket, holstered gun close to his heart. At that moment, Fowler’s seriously considering bank robbery as his next career move. Something that lets him carry a gun. But Victoria Rose gives him an outlet.
    She’s a peace activist, a graduate student in social work. But she fetishizes violence, specifically men of violence—men like Fowler. She likes to be close to it, to feel the weight of it lying on top of her. Like some of her hippie friends who called cops pigfuckers but secretly wanted that uniform, wanted to be on the other end of those handcuffs, the true unspoken Janus face of liberalism and power relations.
    Because Fowler’s a rare breed.
    Most men came back from Vietnam with PTSD if they were lucky, if they were real lucky. Most of Fowler’s buddies hit the booze, hit their wives, hit the heroin they had started fucking around with over there, or died horribly from cancer, courtesy of Agent Orange. But Fowler didn’t come back with PTSD, didn’t come back with the urge to drown all the memories in a sea of self-destruction.
    Fowler wants another war. He gets Victoria Rose instead.
    First day in Vietnam, September ’69, Fowler goes on a raid. There’s a firefight. He fends off the Communists and gets in a few close kills. Ted Shackley hears about the raid. And Shackley is the CIA in Laos; he pulls the strings. Locals call him the Blond Ghost.
    And Shackley likes what Fowler did under enemy fire, under pressure, and recruits him into the Phoenix Project, a CIA-designed program of pacification that’s all about punching up big kill numbers to show the suits in Washington that we’re winning the war, that we’re rounding up any South Vietnamese harboring Communist or anti-Western sympathies. Working for Shackley is like working on a satanic factory line. He’s got to report quantifiable results back to the shareholders on the Hill.
    And Fowler kills real good. He’s employee of the month every month for several years straight.
    When the war ends, in ’75, Fowler goes home, and after settling down with Victoria Rose, he realizes he doesn’t like the idea of being out of uniform. So he takes Shackley’s advice and joins the Agency’s training program, where Fowler learns there are two types of CIA. There’s the intellectuals, the analysts, the guys who go to good climates under diplomatic cover and haunt embassy halls, blue bloods who pass notes to nuclear scientists at cocktail parties.
    Then there’s guys like Fowler. Guys who get sent to denied territory to root out subversion. Guys who work off the books,