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His job for this op was just to circle the area and find the signal they were going to set up ahead of time with a ground team. The key was not to tell him what the signal was but for him to find it. So why he had to sit in hours-long meetings to discuss logistics was beyond him.
THREE HOURS LATER, HIS brain had exploded, his eyes were gritty and tired, and he had an urge to dunk his head in a bucket of water to cool off. Felix, who was the combat medic for the spec-ops group they were working with on the op, looked less frazzled than Lake felt, but there was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. Aidan Border, the team leader for the spec-ops group, looked like he’d gone three rounds with a bear… and lost. Half his uniform was out of place, and he’d run his hands through his sweaty hair so many times it was sticking on end.
“Think we could just kidnap the brass, dump them in the middle of Wollemi, and leave them there?” Aidan questioned as they headed back across the barracks towards their building. The January summer sun was at their backs, heating them uncomfortably in their thick uniforms. Lake just wanted to get the fuck back inside where the air conditioning was.
“Don’t tempt me,” Tyler Walsh, Zach’s older brother and one of the snipers in the two-man team on their unit said, falling in step beside them. “We could set a trap for them so they fall down a mine shaft. There’s probably some hidden in there somewhere.”
“We can dig one,” Danny Sinclair, the other sniper, said behind them. “With the right equipment, we could have it done by July.”
“I know a guy,” Aidan said.
“You always know a guy,” Danny said. Lake couldn’t see him, but he could hear the eye roll in his tone of voice. Aidan had that effect on people.
“I’m friendly; that ain’t a crime.”
“In some states, it probably is,” Tyler said. “New South Wales, for example.”
“That’s our state,” Aidan said, affronted.
“Precisely.”
“Don’t make me put you in the hole too.”
“It puts the lotion on the skin,” Danny said in a fake-pitched voice.
Lake raised his eyebrows at them. “You guys freak me out,” he said. Special forces guys were always fucking weird, but this particular group needed their own specialised warning label. Having Felix with them didn’t make them any less scary. In a way, it made it worse. Felix was a great guy, but he was also a scary motherfucker if someone pissed him off. The fact that his fuse was longer than most people didn’t make it any less lethal. Felix was his best friend—they’d known each other since they’d been in grade one in primary school—and that only meant that Lake knew just how dangerous he was and just how much a person didnotwant to be on Felix’s bad side. He didn’t seem to fit in with the ragtag team he was part of, but Lake knew that he absolutely did.
Lake checked his watch. It was only just before five in the afternoon. Perfect. “All right, I gotta go see a man about a shirt. We good here?” Lake was taking a risk this late, but he had a feeling that if Grady were willing to work on Sunday, then working later into the night wasn’t that farfetched.
“Yeah, just don’t forget how to fly when we go,” Aidan said, cackling. “I don’t want to die on home soil, you know? If I’m going down, I want it to be somewhere cool.”
“Like where? A strip club?” Danny asked.
“It would be a more interesting story to tell at my funeral.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Lake said with a laugh before he broke off from the group to head towards his car.
If he listened to Christmas carols on his way to the precinct in Chatswood, that was his business. It was a good almost hour drive in traffic from Holsworthy; he would keep himself entertained however he wanted to.
The window was down, and maybe he got a few judgemental looks from people, but if he cared about what people thought of him, he’d have gone mad years ago. Mad-der anyway. He just made funny faces at them, and that, coupled with his military uniform, made them look away. No one wanted to deal with a crazy soldier.
Besides, it was still January. Only the fifth of January, in fact. Four days since he’d seen his detective. There was a leeway period after Christmas where carols wereallowed,and it was still within societal bounds. If he were doing it in like… March, or July, then maybe he’d understand better what the problem was.
Finding a park near the Chatswood Police Station was harder than Lake had anticipated, considering it was almost six in the evening. Weren’t people at home getting ready for dinner or something? He finally found a park a block over and was forced to walk. At least the air had started to cool off in the hour he’d been driving and wasn’t trying to melt his uniform into his skin anymore.
The rush of air-conditioning as he stepped into the station’s foyer was a welcome reprieve, and he took a second to soak it in.
All right, time to find his new detective friend. Hopefully, he was there. Otherwise, he’d have to make a trip to his friend’s home.
Gradystaredatthetwo melting white pieces of fluff in his coffee. It had to have been Gideon Clark, another detective in the station, because no one else was stupid enough to touch his drink. “I left for two fucking seconds!” he growled, turning to glare at the brunet cackling in his chair.
Next time, he was taking it with him to the toilet. He didn’t give a fuck how unsanitary it was. Anything was better than these floating atrocities. If Gideon put one more fucking marshmallow anywhere near Grady’s hot drinks, he was going to lose his shit. Permanently.
“Don’t deny you love that gooey goodness,” Gideon said.
“I’m going to pour it over your head,” Grady promised.
“Don’t be a sourpuss.”
