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“Come along – that’s not going to pack itself. And whileIwouldn’t mind your brother getting his hands onmyunderthings, I’m sure you don’t feel the same way.”
“Anna!” I said, laughing in spite of myself and giving her a playful swat on the arm.
Together we packed. After a short time, Anders arrived once more. There was no more stalling. I had to go.
2
AJAX
PANG-PANG-PANG
I shook my head, the sound of gunfire slamming into the side of the warehouse more annoying than anything.
“Hey!” I shouted, tearing my eyes away from the heavy-duty laptop in front of me, the bulky thing encased in ceramic thick enough to stop a shotgun blast at close range. “You dumbasses want to do something about that? Kind of trying to find our next job here!”
I poked my head up a bit to see Kallen and Ivan, two of the four members of our merry band of mercs, positioned behind a pallet of crates, rifles at the ready. Kallen, or Pyke as we called him, was easy to spot—the colorful sleeves of tattoos on his arms, along with his shock of blonde hair, gave him away from a mile off. Ivan, nicknamed Kid, was also easy to find but in a different way seeing that he was six and a half feet tall.
“Little busy over here!” Pyke shouted back as he raised his rifle, pointing it around the side of the pallet of crates.
Kid, dark-haired and dark-eyed, fired a glance in my direction. “I’m sorry, is our gun battle interrupting your internet porn session?”
That got a laugh out of me. “Screw off!” Kid fired a triplet of rounds, cutting me off before I could think of a better smartass comment.
I poked my head up one more time, checking out the enemy. There were exactly eleven of them and they were in the process of attacking our fortification in the warehouse with all the tactical brilliance of a group of five-year-old boys having play fights with their Avengers figures.
Instead of using their numbers to their advantage by engaging us from the front while pulling a standard pincer from the flanks, they were massed on the narrow road that led into the warehouse. A booby trap set by Pyke had disabled the lead of the two vans they’d arrived in, both preventing the gang from driving in the rest of the way and causing so much confusion and chaos that whatever strategy they’d managed to work out in advance had fallen to pieces.
Kid and Pyke took turns spraying bursts of gunfire at the smoking van and the lowlife criminals gathered around it. The suppressing fire was more than enough to keep them pinned, giving me ample time to poke around our Dark web merc hiring site.
Most of the jobs looked easy – too easy. The boys and I had made our fortunes running bodyguard ops for billionaires and Saudi oil kingpins. While the money was good, we’d all saved up enough over the years to allow us to venture out a bit, to take jobs that were both interestingandhigh paying.
“Where the hell is that Scottish dumbass?” Kid shouted while squeezing off another quick couple of rounds.
It was a good question. I pulled my eyes away from the laptop long enough to slip my phone out of my front pocket and check the screen.
“No text from the dumbass!” I shouted back. “Give him a minute! He loves to be late, but he always makes it! Uh, usually.”
Hudson, nicknamed Hud, was running exfil for this operation. I didn’t blame the redheaded bastard for running behind. The mission was to guard a chemical shipment long enough to transport it. The chemicals weren’t just any goodies—they were some of the most important ingredients for meth production, hence why we were fighting off a gang of lowlifes in the process of breaking bad.
More gunfire rang out, another few stray bullets hitting the exterior wall of the warehouse. I wasn’t concerned about any of that, however, my attention was on the laptop in front of me. Nothing caught my eye though; it was more of the same boring bullshit.
Anotherpingsounded out. This one wasn’t the noise of bullets hitting metal, it was an incoming email.
I clicked over, a grin forming on my face when I saw that the email was from one of our best fixers—our name in the merc world for those who acted as middlemen between us and clients—an individual known only as “Major Tom”.
Whether he was an actual serviceperson or just a huge David Bowie fan, I had no idea. Whatever he or she was, they consistently brought the best jobs to the table.
“Guys!” I shouted during a break in the gunfire. “Got some good news!”
“What is it?” Pyke shot back.
“Here’s a hint.” I cleared my throat, preparing to sing a few bars. “This is ground control to Major Tom…”
Even from behind his wraparound shades, I saw Pyke’s eyes light up.
“Are you serious? Toms got a job?”
“Yeah! Let me take a look.”
