“
S
o, all that talk about having a nice little bit of work,” Sam said as night settled slowly over their little warehouse. “That whole conversation about getting paid and getting some action in—that was all crap?”
“Well, we are getting paid, technically,” Terry said. His gaze lingered on Savage who put their new weapons and armor out on the table before he packed them neatly and efficiently. “So not fully crap.”
“Whose side are you on again?” She slid down from her seat on the table as Savage shooed her away to lay a blanket on the surface on which to spread the weapons for cleaning before storage.
“I’m on my own side.” Mixon sipped his cold coffee and scowled as he looked at the revolver the other man was taking apart. Well, it looked like a revolver, but it had been established in their testing that it was not. He still had a few reservations about these new weapons. “I’m on the side that’s getting paid for work he believes in—which in this case, is protecting a family that’s been put in the crosshairs by bastards looking to protect their profits by killing my fellow soldiers in the Zoo.”
“Well, yeesh, damn son, if you want to bring logic into it,” Sam groaned and rolled her eyes dramatically. “But you did
promise us more excitement in this job than what we’ve had. I don’t know about Gary Poppins over there, but I’d really like to shoot someone in the damned face. Call it a deep, dark need.”
“Don’t worry.” Savage looked up from taking his new toy apart. “Stick around long enough and I assure you that you’ll see a lot of men with guns. You read the data that Anja sent you, yeah?”
Sam nodded. Terry didn’t respond.
“A lot of money is going into killing Anderson,” he continued. “It won’t be long before the people coming after him decide they might have an easier target in his family. I’ll keep Anderson moving and safe as well as I can, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be danger coming your way. Stay sharp and stay on top of the family. If anybody dies, I’ll hold you two personally responsible.”
“Wait, are you not giving us the green light to kill the assholes who show up to hurt them?” Terry asked, looking up from whetting his combat knife. “Because that would suck some serious balls.”
Savage looked up from his work. “Wait, no. What? What did I say?”
“That if anyone died, we’d be held personally responsible,” Sam replied. She grinned at his real consternation.
“Ah…no, what I meant was if any member of the family died, or if Dr. Monroe were to die if she returns from the Zoo, then you’d be in the deepest of crappers.” Thankful that he’d resolved that, he nodded and returned to his work. “Feel free to waste any idiots who try to keep you from achieving that goal, but at least try to make it look clean. The last guys were found with a bunch of knife wounds, but it was left clean and neat. We need to keep the cops off our trail for as long as possible.”
“Right,” Sam said. “What last time was this? Did I miss
something while on babysitting duty?”
“That was me,” Terry replied and raised his hand. “It was when I intercepted the team outside the restaurant, so no, you haven’t missed out. But wait, are you saying I didn’t do well there?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. You did a great job. A little too great, in fact.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Mixon tested the blade and resumed sharpening it.
“What, are your feelings hurt?” she asked.
“That’s not the point.” Savage sighed as he finished the cleaning and put the weapon back together again. “My point was, it was left clean and elegant, so all kinds of kudos to your skills. I’m not saying you should change anything up. All I’m doing is letting you know that local law enforcement has tracked our movements, and while it’s been attributed to gang violence, if it continues, we should prepare for some federal involvement in the situation.”
Terry grinned at Sam, who tried to cover her laughter. “I wondered how long you would keep trying to make sure you didn’t hurt my feelings. You’re a very nice person, Savage.”
“A very nice person that’s holding a very new and expensive piece of weaponry he’s dying to try out on live targets.” He clicked the last pieces of the pistol together and flicked the safety on. “It’s best to keep that in mind, eh?”
“I’ll keep that in mind, boss,” Terry replied.
“Wait, so if I get to kill the guys who try to kill Ivy or Damon, do I get a speech on how I’m doing a great job but I need to be subtler about it?” She leaned in closer. “Is it like your go-to speech, or do you come up with them as you go along?”
“You know, I’ll have a very nice one I’ll say at your graves,” Savage retorted with a nod and took a moment to inspect one of the shotguns. “Very nice. I have individual poems for both of
you. I think I might actually cry too. I’ll be the one who killed you both, but it’ll still be a sad moment.”
Sam chuckled and flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “Aw, that’s sweet.”
“It’s okay,” Terry replied with a shrug. “I like poetry. Nothing too brainy, of course, or too dark. You start talking about quoting and ravens, and I’ll climb out of my grave to smack you over the head. And then…I don’t know, start the zombie apocalypse, I guess.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Savage replied and completed his packing. “We have alien goop making an alien jungle with alien animals sprouting up in the middle of the Sahara fucking desert. How far away from reality do you think the zombie apocalypse really is?”
“Language,” Terry protested in a half-hearted way before he nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Right, so.” He focused on the two members of his team as he zipped his burlap bag. “We need to decide on mission distribution between you two. You’ll cover the Anderson family, but there will probably be some missions that the two of you will need to run on the side.”
“Oh, I can take care of those,” Sam said with a smile. “Terry can take care of the family, and I’ll be on call for any of these absolute emergencies that might come up.”
“What?” Mixon flashed her an indignant look. “How come I’m the one stuck taking care of the family?”
“Because Terry’s a girl’s name,” she said after a quick pause.
“Wow, scraping the barrel for the world’s weakest argument.” Savage chuckled.
“Well, Terry ain’t a girl,” he snapped with a grin.
“And he responds with the world’s weakest comeback.” He chuckled at the sniper’s disgruntled expression and folded his arms across his chest. “Well, I can see I’ll leave Ivy and Damon
in the absolute best of hands and will in no way reconsider my decision to bring you two on for this job. I trust you can handle the assignments to make sure each of you earns your money individually and fairly, got it?”
“Well, yeah, if this fucking asshole decides to cooperate,” Sam grumbled.
“Language,” Terry snapped in a warning tone. All Sam had to respond with was to wave the ring she wore on her middle finger. It seemed to be studded with a piece of lapis lazuli, making it almost opaque, yet it still gleamed in the weak light that filled their small, functional section of the warehouse.
“Right.” Savage grinned and hauled his bag over his shoulder. “Anderson said he and the family will stay in for the night, so the two of you can take the time off and decide what you want to do with your lives. Come tomorrow morning, though, it’ll be full-time security on the both of them, got it?”
“We’ll get it done, boss,” Terry replied. “You boys have a nice trip down to Vegas. Put some money on black thirteen for me while you’re down there, will ya?”
“The guy who can’t even stand cursing likes gambling?”
“A man can have his vices, right?”
“Oh, and Savage, you don’t give the stripper the hundred-dollar bill until after she’s finished the blow job, okay?” Sam reminded him.
“Interesting that you think I need to pay for a blow job,” he cracked back. “Very interesting.”
She had no response to that, and he chuckled on his way back to the Taurus he’d bought second or third hand from a local who wanted cash and was willing to make a quick name transfer on the vehicle’s papers. He heaved the bag into the trunk.
While he hadn’t worked with Terry and Sam long, he felt like he could trust them to do what had to be done without too much trouble. They knew what they were doing, and despite
the seemingly light-hearted jokes, they would be able to focus on their work. Besides, except for Terry’s annoyance with foul language and Sam’s propensity to use it, they had begun to work well together. It was good to see them mesh as a team.
He slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and pressed down on the gas pedal. His night off stretched ahead with no particular purpose. It wasn’t like he was the kind of guy to make plans and he needed to scale back on the drinking. He might simply watch a movie, order takeout, relax, and have an early night.
Or he would go to the bar near his apartment. It all depended on the mood he was in when he got home. Considering that the city would be in gridlock thanks to the rush hour, he had a feeling he would need a drink.
The message came at around midnight and forced Savage to bring his night of drinking to an early end. Anderson had messaged him on where to meet him and bring the materials they would need for this extended mission. The location was a small, private airstrip just outside the city, with a plane that left at nine in the morning.
The operative generally only needed around five to six hours of sleep to feel rested the next day. A few cups of coffee would be needed for the duration, but he would be able to survive and even thrive on a day like that.
He was up early the next morning and spent about an hour in physical conditioning—cardio, stretching, and yoga that he would never admit to anyone he was adept at, and a quick visit to a nearby gym for a round or two with a punching bag. That done, he hurried home, took a shower, and headed down to where he’d parked his car. The apartment building wasn’t high-end but it had its own parking lot for residents, which allowed
him to keep his cheap new car parked in a location where it wasn’t likely to be robbed or searched. Having someone discover the virtual armory he had stashed in the trunk would be the definition of a bad break.
The traffic around the city had begun to clog when he drove out, but he managed to slip through before things got too rough. Only one or two slow-moving sections slowed him a little, but he was soon out of the city and drove smoothly and carefully into the open areas where private airfields liked to set their operations up.
When he turned through the entrance, no physical guards were present. The only security was a rapid facial scan, likely sent to someone in the tower for analysis. He felt a moment of annoyance as the machine finished the scan and didn’t immediately raise the heavy steel barrier, which made him wonder if Anderson had shared his face with the security system. After a few seconds of impatience, the barrier raised and the screen over the scanner directed him to hanger twenty-one with a little map to guide him.
“Appreciated,” Savage growled under his breath as he rolled into the field. Sam would love this place, he mused. She had a whole slew of aggressive driving training under her belt, which made her the only one on their team actually qualified to drive a car through a gunfight. From what he’d watched of the training she’d undergone, most of the drivers liked the open spaces left in abandoned airstrips.
He pulled up to the hangar where a small, private jet was being helped out from under a tarp. It seemed an odd thing to do, but perhaps the need for secrecy extended to the owners of the aircraft. He wondered if his boss had specifically requested the plane for that particular reason.
Anderson was already waiting for him. “You’re late,” were the former colonel’s first words as he pulled his sunglasses off. The man looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep. The curse of
having a young child, Savage assumed.
“Two minutes late,” he replied easily and checked his watch to make sure, even though he already knew what the digital read would tell him. “And that’s only because they had some technical difficulties with the machine that was supposed to let me in. You look like shit, by the way.”
“Thanks.” His companion shook his head ruefully. “Damon was somewhat under the weather last night. Ivy and I took turns helping him get through the night.”
“Well, it’s Terry and Sam’s problem now, I guess.” He hauled his bags out of the trunk of the Taurus. “I think you can catch up on those missing Zs on the flight over to Vegas. Which—holy shit, you weren’t lying about the style, were you?”
Anderson smirked. “I was not and thank you for noticing. This baby should get us to Vegas in about four hours. I don’t really know anything about the details of the plane itself, but I was told that a hot meal and an open bar would be provided, courtesy of Pegasus.”
“So, about that whole not using corporate funds for personal enjoyment?” Savage asked and focused on making sure he closed his mouth after the question.
“Well, the plane is a rental, and the whole thing comes with the package we have guaranteed with them.” He picked up one of the three bags Savage had removed from his car. “I’m not the one who negotiated this deal with the airway. Since the amenities are already included, it would be a shame to let them go to waste, right?”
“The man makes a good point,” Savage replied with a grin when the former colonel struggled with the one bag. “You got that? It’s where most of the hardware is stored.”
“I got it.” He chuckled ruefully and grasped the burlap bag with both hands to swing it over his shoulder before he jiggled it slightly to settle it more comfortably. “And you know what the best part of taking a private plane is? No baggage checks.”
“I can’t argue with that.” He smirked. “I have to say, I’m excited to try these new toys out in the field.”
They stopped talking about weapons when the door of the jet opened and a modest yet professionally dressed stewardess ascended the stairs to wait for them. It seemed unlikely that she would take their talk about weapons aboard an airplane with the same kind of humor. Anderson ascended the narrow stairway first with Savage on his heels and a polite smile in place as the young woman greeted them.
“Welcome aboard and thank you for choosing Apollo Airways for your travels,” she said and followed them into the cabin. “Please observe the no-smoking and fasten seatbelts signs when they light up. We have a bar that will be accessible after we reach our cruising altitude and will serve lunch at about mid-flight. Enjoy your journey and let me know if there’s anything I can do to make your time aboard more enjoyable.”
“Will do, thanks.” The operative smiled again as the aircraft eased out of the hangar. He shoved his bags in the overhead bins and helped the other man with the one he’d taken.
