AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, but this is only a short-term job,” I reminded him.
“Oh. Right.” He gulped the rest of his beer and got up from the couch. When he returned, he had two new beers. I quickly finished my first beer and swapped it for the fresh one.
“Your turn,” I said. “Tell me about mercenary life.”
Jordy shrugged his broad shoulders underneath his tight T-shirt. “Seems pretty self-explanatory.”
“How long have you been doing it?”
“We signed on with the Mathos Company four years ago,” he replied. “Five this October, I guess.”
“I wanted to ask you about that. I tried Googling Mathos Company, but nothing relevant turned up. There wasn’t even a website on the card you gave me. You know it’s not 1995 anymore, right? You have to have a website.”
His brown eyes sparkled with mischief. “That’s by design. Mathos Company is a private military contractor. Emphasis onprivate. The people who need to hire us have their ways. Nobody else needs to know we exist.”
“Where’d the name come from? Is the founder named Bobby Mathos or something?”
“The name comes from some ancient mercenary group that fought for Carthage. Or foughtagainstCarthage. I don’t remember. Archer would know.”
“Seems kind of silly to not know the history of the company you work for,” I joked.
“Do you know every historical fact about the daycare place you worked? Or the college you attended?”
I shrugged. “Fair point.”
“It’s a job,” Jordy said. “That’s all.”
I examined the way he sank back into the couch. He looked exhausted when he said it. Like the weight was a lot heavier than I knew.
“How does someone even get into that line of work?” I asked. “Was there a guy at the job fair handing out rifles and grenades?”
“I was in the Army,” he replied. “Enlisted right out of high school. Mom couldn’t afford to send me to college, and even if she could, I wasn’t sure it was right for me. Turns out the Army wasn’t right for me, either. Don’t get me wrong—it made me into the man I am today. I built a lot of good habits in the service, made some long-term friends. But I was going down a path I didn’t like. So I quit.”
“I didn’t even know it was possible to quit the Army early.”
“Technically, it’s not,” he said with a wry smirk. “But I was good buddies with a medical officer who granted me a TERA discharge.”
“TERA?”
“Temporary Early Retirement Authority. Most grunts have to serve twenty years. I got out in ten.”
I chewed that over in my head. “Have you ever… fought in a war? I don’t know how to phrase it.”
“Was I ever in combat, you mean? Some. Less than most. Overall, I was one of the lucky ones. But I didn’t love it. Even when I wasn’t in real danger, itfeltlike I was. It hangs over you every day, even while you’re sleeping. Weeks go by where you’re bored and wondering if anything is ever going to happen, and then suddenly mortar rounds start raining down on the base. Sometimes I miss parts of it. I never felt asaliveas I did during those years. But…” He shook his head. “I’m glad to be out.”
“It must be nice choosing your own missions now,” I said. “I bet that gives you a sense of control, rather than just doing what people tell you.”
“Oh yeah, it’s much better for sure,” he agreed. “We like choosing our own contracts. They don’t always go the way we expect, though. We had a bad one in Prague a few years back. A close call for all three of us. The guy we were sent to capture, Anton Novak, got away. We haven’t taken on anything moderately dangerous since then.”
There was a faraway look in Jordy’s eyes. I waited for him to reveal more about that mission, but then he sighed heavily.
“Honestly? I’m burned out. It’ll be good to finish these three contracts, because it’ll give me time to relax. Spend more time with Kaylee. And maybe retire from mercenary work altogether.”
“Really? What would you want to do instead?”
He sipped his beer, then grimaced. “Wish I knew.”
“Oh come on. You must have some idea.”
