by Michael Todd
“Corran, right?” he said. “I hope it’s not too big a change from the overthrow of democratically elected governments to work on testing suits of armor.”
“This is our overtime,” the man responded with a smirk. “We keep the coups and political assassinations for the weekdays.” He gave the officer a quick once-over and paused when his gaze reached the burn scars. “What are you, army?”
“Marine Corp, actually.”
“Fantastic.” He chuckled. “Even more sanctimonious.”
Anderson nodded. If the truth be told, he wasn’t that sanctimonious, but people like these guys were the lowest of the low. They were men of skill and talent who elected to do terrible things because it meant they received an unhealthy number of zeros in their bank accounts, all paid for by the Pentagon’s defense contracts.
“Do you think you’ll be ready to move soon?” Anderson asked to change the subject.
“Absolutely,” Corran growled.
“At what time?”
He shrugged. “I can have them suit up properly right now if ya want. We might need time to make sure the supplies are ready. Let’s say maybe an hour?”
Anderson nodded.
“Anxious to get out of here, are ya?” he asked with another smirk.
“I’ve been in this hellhole for a week now,” Anderson rasped. “You cunts get this shit done today, and I can go home.” He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to talk about his family with a bunch of high-paid mercenaries.
“That sounds like a plan.” Corran turned away with a shrug. “I’ll let ya know when the time comes.”
The colonel nodded and headed back to his little hut.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“This is Overwatch.” Anderson spoke into his mic as he lowered himself into his seat in the operations center. “Are you ready, Falcon Team?”
“Fucking hell,” one of the men cursed over the comms. “Do we really have to use these ridiculous call signs?”
He rubbed his temples. All work and no coffee made him a very dull boy, apparently.
“This is an official operation,” he retorted and hated that he had to explain this to the men like they were toddlers. “Names and nicknames will be kept off comms at all times. Use your assigned call signs when you attempt to communicate and keep comms as clean as possible as much as possible. Is that understood?”
Silence was the only response from the other side. He knew that was an attempt to goad him, and it wouldn’t work. He’d been in this game far too long to be outplayed by a bunch of mercenaries with over-inflated egos. Anderson shook his head and leaned back in his seat. Let them pretend to be high schoolers. He didn’t give a damn.
“Overwatch asked you maggots a question, Falcon Team,” Anderson heard Corran prod in a rough tone. He sounded like he felt similar irritation at their antics.
“Understood,” came a series of three voices in quick succession. It annoyed him that they respected Corran more than they did him, but not too much. These guys were assholes, and their opinions mattered very little in the bigger scheme of things.
“Now, if you keep a southwestern heading, you’ll encounter a mass of heat that we’ve picked up on the satellite feeds,” Anderson informed them. “Keep your senses alert, though. There are many creatures in that mess of a jungle that don’t show up on heat sensors. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the most dangerous ones are those that don’t show up.”
“What was all that about keeping the comms clear of unnecessary chatter?” one of the voices asked with a laugh.
“Shut it, Patterson!” Corran snapped.
The colonel rubbed his temples. “That’s Falcon Four to you, Falcon Leader.”
“Oh…roger that, Overwatch,” the man said and had the grace to sound chagrined.
Anderson shook his head. It really wasn’t his problem if these dumbasses caught themselves in an international scandal while they ran an unsanctioned operation on foreign soil. They would simply be relocated and made to sit in some office in San Francisco until the heat cooled and they could operate out of the country again. It wasn’t any trouble for him, so why did he stress so badly and insist that this mission went right and by the book?
Well, it was in his bones, he had to admit that. Any mission that he was involved in had to go well, or it would be a lesson for him to obsess over and learn from for the next one. He might not have a next one after this debacle, but again, that wasn’t his problem. If they found some cushy desk job for him too, he would be more than happy with that. It would mean he wouldn’t have to travel all over the world and it meant he’d be home at a reasonable hour and attend soccer practices and piano recitals. Date night with the wife. No watching good men get killed over the profit margins of a company that had more lobbyists in Washington than there were politicians.
He also wanted this mission to go right because the last one had gone so poorly, he realized as he remembered the teams that had been sent home and those men who would be delayed since they couldn’t be moved from where they were currently treated. And the one who wouldn’t go home at all.
Why did that man have to die?
Anderson shook his head and closed his eyes. Let these guys have their fun. At least they weren’t used to make sure the CIA had enough black-ops money to hide from the rest of the budget committees. Better that they were there, clearing out some of the bugs, lizards, and other awful creatures for the boys and girls in the Staging Area.
“We’re making our approach now, Overwatch,” Corran stated over the comms.
He checked the screen again. They had made decent time. Falcon team wasn’t supposed to approach the spot indicated by satellite imaging as a large group of the Zoo creatures.
“Overwatch, my sensors pick up some automatic gunfire a short distance away,” one of the men said softly.
“Roger that, Falcon Three. We pick that up on our end too,” Anderson responded. It was difficult to determine the make and model of the gun used, but the clatter indicated that it had to be a power suit mounted model.
“Do we have any orders on how to proceed?” Falcon Two asked.
“They’re probably only bounty hunters,” Corran said but sounded distracted. “They have an open engagement protocol in effect on non-authorized personnel, right?”
“That’s a positive, Falcon Leader,” the colonel affirmed. “Although it would probably be best to keep the human casualties to a minimum. And make sure to identify whether they are hostiles or friendlies. We do have people from the Staging Area who run patrols in that area.”
“Fine, spoilsport,” one of the men growled.
“Shut it,” Corran snapped. “Keep your sensors tuned and make sure that your Friend or Foe ID scanners are on at all times, understood?”
“Roger that.”
Anderson could see from the HUD-mounted cameras that they all had their weapons out, and the FOF scanners were already engaged. It was a new system, one that worked off the ID chips that most of the military issued suits already contained. It would help to keep an eye out for civilians and the like in real application of the suits in war zones.
He wondered if these men had been selected to try these suits out because they were the ones who would use them out in the field. It made sense. The security companies that they worked for could always send the bill for the suits to the government and have the costs deducted from their taxes. It was such a common practice these days that Anderson wasn’t even annoyed by the blatant corruption anymore.
Well, he was still annoyed. It had merely ceased to surprise him a long time ago.
“Weapons live, we have hostiles,” Corran warned as a pair of the massive panthers hurtled from between the trees and attacked the five men in armor. The animals went down quickly, unsurprisingly, and the team leader motioned rapidly for them to proceed. Even though the state-of-the-art suits had voice isolation tech that would allow the men to talk without concern that hostiles would hear their voices, the hand mo
tions were engrained in every inch of their DNA. They would probably continue to do it if they used nothing but these suits until the day they died.
Anderson knew that it wasn’t good form to wish death on people who were supposed to be in his operation, but he really couldn’t help himself. These guys were class-A assholes.
“I have a malfunction on my FOF ID scanner,” one of the men reported.
“Roger that, same here,” another said and tapped lightly on his helmet.
“It looks like the geeks back in the home office still have some bugs to iron out,” Corran said with a touch of levity in his voice. “Disable the software and let’s keep moving.”
The colonel shook his head as he watched the FOF signals on the screens disappear one by one. The firing drew closer, and the men prepped their weapons for combat once more. The darkness of the jungle made it difficult to make anything out particularly clearly now.
“We have monsters,” Falcon Two shouted. “Three o’clock.”
Two of the team members shifted and opened fire on a group of massive locusts with stinger-pointed tails that charged forward.
At that moment, there seemed to be a convergence of the creatures. Orders were shouted, but gunfire and the monsters’ roars from every angle quickly overpowered every other sound around them.
Anderson hated these bastards, but he had to admit that they were some of the best that he’d ever seen in the field. They didn’t waste shots, downed one creature quickly before they targeted the next, and never focused on one hostile for more time than was necessary.
“We have humans, six o’clock,” Falcon Three advised.
“They’re shooting at us. Take them down,” Corran bellowed.
“Belay that order—” Anderson shouted over the comms, but whether the sound was lost in the attack or if they simply ignored him became irrelevant. His order wasn’t heard, and the group of five men in power armor suits were quickly shot down by the superior firepower of Falcon Team.
“Shit,” the colonel cursed, but before he could reprimand Corran for acting without orders, one of the screens went dead. Screams echoed over the comms for a few moments before they faded into what might have been a whimper. The other screens pivoted to see what had happened while the remaining creatures seemed to beat a hasty retreat.
It was difficult to discern anything in the dark conditions. Four eyes were easy to see, though, as they reflected what little light that there was. The beast was long with a serpentine tail, but six legs protruded from what looked like a very mammalian body.
“What the fuck is that?” Falcon Three asked as the creature dug its talons easily into the new and improved armor. A massive jaw lowered quickly to crunch through Falcon Four’s helmet. One last scream was heard before the man’s body went limp.
Falcon Three shouted what sounded like a Samoan war cry and opened fire on the beast. It roared in response and the seven-meter-long tail whiplashed to crash into him. It tore easily into his armor around his neck. With a quick twist, it jerked the man’s head off before he even had a chance to react.
“Open fire!” Corran screamed, and the two remaining members of Falcon Team emptied their clips at the creature. The bullets had an effect, but nothing significant until they finally shot into the long head. The creature opened its massive jaws to roar at them, and the soft tissue inside its mouth was immediately shredded by their fire. It screeched in pain, dropped back a few steps, and hit the ground with a heavy thud.
The two men worked quickly to reload their weapons, but before they could, another of the creatures, even larger than the first, swung silently from the trees above them. It landed without making a sound.
Unlike the dead one, though, this monster didn’t seem interested in them. Instead, it picked up the body of its kin and, before the men could reload, disappeared smoothly back into the jungle.
“What…the fuck was that?” Corran asked.
“Unknown,” Bial said, his first communication since they’d started the mission. “There’s no match for something like that in our databases.”
“Your databases are fucking shit!” the team leader retorted belligerently.” Get them updated ASAP.”
“We can’t,” the scientist said. “This is an off-the-books operation. Any evidence has to be vetted by Pegasus before it can be released to the public.”
“Whatever,” the man snapped. “Diaz, let’s get what we came here for and get the fuck out.”
Anderson didn’t have even the energy to tell them not to use their names on comms. It wasn’t like anyone was listening. At least the engineers had fixed the problems of comms from inside the Zoo. There was little to no interference on their end right now.
He followed Corran’s HUD camera as the man moved to the bodies of his men. He placed a beacon on them.
“You’re not recovering them yourself?” Anderson asked.
“That’s a negative, Overwatch,” he replied coolly. “Our job is to collect the merchandise and get out. Recovering bodies is secondary, if that.”
“What merchandise?” Anderson asked.
“That is on a need-to-know basis, Overwatch,” Corran replied. He kept his tone even and clipped and looked to see what Falcon Two was doing.
Anderson switched to the man’s footage to see that he had pushed the bodies of the men that they’d killed aside. He held a digging implement in his hand and quickly ripped dirt and roots from the ground before he retrieved heavy chunks of metal and tossed them to Corran, who bagged them.
The colonel leaned in closer and narrowing his eyes. With the cameras reduced to night vision and motion sensors, it was difficult to tell the make and the model of the suits. They were all the same make, though. All uniform.
They were all military issue, he realized.
“You son of a bitch!” Anderson snarled.
Corran looked up from taking his helmet off in time for Anderson’s fist to collide with his face. The suit of armor added an easy ton to the man’s weight, and even without it, he wasn’t small. Despite that, the rage that powered him produced an impact that knocked the operative back a few steps. He would have been on the ground if it weren’t for the stabilizer units in the suit.
The result was that the team leader’s head hung back for a few seconds as Falcon Two, the man who had been referred to as Diaz, quickly grabbed his gun and aimed it at Anderson.
“Come on then, asshole!” the colonel challenged and walked forward. The suits really were impressive, and it took all his willpower to not back away as the massive assault rifle was leveled against his head.
He was pissed enough that he didn’t really care about that, not on a conscious level.
“Shoot me!” Anderson snapped and opened his arms as if to invite the shot. “It’s not like you cunts care who the fuck you shoot at. Friend or foe, just gun him down!”
“Our FOF systems were down,” Corran said, now recovered from Anderson’s punch. “We couldn’t tell who the guys were while we were in the middle of a firefight. It’s unfortunate, but there wasn’t anything we could do.”
“Bullshit!” he roared, and his anger rippled through every inch of his six-foot-three frame. “The engineers ran a diagnostic on your suits once you came back into range. There was no malfunction. You fucking turned the systems off.”
The man opened his mouth to say something but shut it again and shook his head before he waved at Diaz to lower his weapon. The man growled a protest, clearly unwilling to let the punch pass without some payback, but he followed the order.
“We were protecting proprietary Pegasus property,” Corran said, his voice soft and even as he began to remove the rest of his armor. “We were authorized by the US government to do so regardless of who intruded on the acquisition and covert nature of our operation. No exceptions.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Anderson said.
“It’s in the updated contracts,” the team leader explained as he pulled his breastplate off. �
��Fine print. You should read it. Either way, your hurt feelings do you credit, Colonel, but unfortunately, I don’t have the time to deal with them. We’ve already been called back, and another operation will be mounted to recover the men and the armor we left behind. We got what we came here for, and that’s what matters.”
“Matters to who?” Anderson asked, his voice cold.
“To me, for one,” Corran said with a nod. “To Pegasus, for two. And that’s really all you need to know. Write up a report about what happened, and it will immediately be classified and redacted. Do what you want. I really don’t give a shit.” The man looked at some of the engineers who had come out to see the confrontation. “Don’t fucking stand there, folks. Come on and help me out with this armor.”
The colonel turned away, disgust roiling in the pit of his stomach. He knew how this would go. He needed to submit a report about what happened, but Corran was right. Any results and witness statements from this operation would be vetted by Pegasus before they were released to the Pentagon, which meant that nothing would change. The suits would be sold for the use of men like Corran, and Anderson would return to his office to file the paperwork.
“Fucking bullshit!” he roared once he was inside his room. He snatched up the mug that he’d left on his bedside table and threw it across the room. The ceramic shattered against the prefab surface, but there had been no coffee in it, so it merely dropped to the ground in dry, unsatisfying fragments.
Chapter Thirty-Five
They were headed back into the Zoo. While it was perhaps too soon, it really wasn’t that difficult a decision to make. Teams had to go in to support the people still in there collecting data, so it was only natural that those folks who had to return early were given another chance.
In the meantime, of course, they still had a shit ton of booze that they needed to get off their hands, so Sal called Kennedy to hire a vehicle to carry their product and take it to the bar and arranged to meet her there.