by Michael Todd
The nostalgia was probably something along the lines of being in there alone, only the two of them, and having to watch each other’s backs while they tried to get a job done. It wasn’t an impossible job, Sal mused and tapped the reloading mechanism again to make sure that it still worked. Merely annoyingly difficult.
The hours passed while they made the rounds through the jungle and tracked down the locations where the new UN suits with GPS locators emitted a signal. When they found each one, they stripped the suits of the hard drives and worked their way slowly back to where the vehicles waited. It was supposed to be only a day’s work, max. The company involved didn’t want to have to pay for more than that.
“Do you think we’ll find a body belonging to that asshole Couture?” Sal asked and adjusted his rifle to bring it closer as he carried the pack with the hard drives on his free shoulder.
“I doubt it,” Kennedy answered but glanced reflexively at the trees. “Whatever that vine shit was that snagged him probably took his suit apart to get the juicy human inside. I doubt there’d be a hard drive left to recover.”
He nodded. The details they’d been given about the GPS locators on the suits didn’t provide the names of the men who had worn them when they went down, only the model number. As this was meant to be a brute-force kind of operation, they would only look for the markers that had more than one suit in close locations, since that improved the chances of getting something worthwhile from them. It also reduced the chances that they’d run into a body belonging to the once great Dr. Couture.
Of course, the company that paid for all this had taken an enormous gamble that there would be something of use on the drives. They paid per item, whether they held something useful or not.
As they made their way back out at the end of the day, the signal interference from the trees around them gradually lifted. They reached the edge of the ever-advancing tree line and Sal glanced at Kennedy with a grin.
“What?” she asked bluntly.
“Your butt’s vibrating,” he said helpfully.
“That’s an odd way to put it,” she returned with a smile. “But thanks. Your ass is pretty vibrant too.”
“That— No, well…yes, it is, but that’s not what I meant.” He laughed. “There’s something vibrating is what I mean.”
“Oh.” She grunted and her head moved to indicate that she used her phone through a wireless connection to her HUD.
“Our Russian friends have gotten back to us,” she said after a pause. “They’ve let us know that there will be a trip into the Zoo tomorrow, and they want us to be a part of it. They’re willing to pay top dollar for it too, but we have to head over to their base to get in on the action.”
As they stepped out of the Zoo, it was hard not to smile at the view that greeted them. Sunset was still a couple of hours away and they looked out over a sea of sand from the pleasant shade of the heavy tree cover behind them. The massive girth of the wall, sections of which were still under construction, loomed large on the horizon. It looked truly impressive, Sal had to admit. A lot of work, creativity, and money were poured into a project that nobody was sure would work, and yet they insisted that it was the way to go.
He had to admire a gamble like that.
“I’m sure that we don’t have the option to turn them down,” he said. “But we might have to take a job with the Russians minus two members of our team and head in with iffy suits.”
“Which one of us will give Gutierrez the news?” Kennedy asked.
“I guess we could always go into the hospital and tell her together,” he said with a chuckle. “I have no idea how she’ll feel when we break the news that we have another job on the other side of the Zoo that we need to do. How do we even tell her? Sorry to abandon you here in this half-finished base to recover from that broken leg that may or may not be our fault.”
She chuckled. “She’s cool. I think she’ll take it in stride.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Sal’s grip on his gun tightened as he looked out into the jungle behind them and ground his teeth. Ever since he’d seen those fucking tentacles in the trees, it had been hard to get the image out of his head. The awful truth that they’d tracked the team through the jungle like they had ears and a mind of their own was the stuff of nightmares.
Well, he supposed that there were people with all kinds of weird fetishes and fantasies, and he certainly wasn’t one to judge. His time spent on the Internet had taught him that.
Kennedy nudged his shoulder. “I’d pay a penny for your thoughts, but I don’t want you to go through the trouble of having to reimburse me.”
He grinned. “I’m thinking about the amount of crazy that we have to deal with on a daily basis. I’ve actually kind of forgotten what it’s like to live a normal life with a normal job and nothing alien trying to kill me.”
“Do you miss it?” she asked as they strolled toward where the vehicles had been left.
“Not really,” Sal replied and eased his painful shoulder, the price of tinkering with his less than reliable suit. “I mean, all the getting shot at, bitten, and all that stuff is probably something I could do without, but at the same time, living on the edge and fighting for our lives—it’s hard to imagine a life where that isn’t something I would wake up every morning to dread. It’s like that feeling that you can literally bash anyone for complaining about their jobs, you know?”
“Well, considering that I’ve been in the military for most of my adult life, I’m not really sure what a normal life is supposed to be like,” she answered honestly and picked up the pace as the vehicle came into view. “My time in the Marines was spent either getting shot at or doing mind-numbingly boring work. Out here, there’s less mind-numbing, but that means more action. On the plus side, it also means better pay, and that’s something I can definitely live with. My drinking problem is starting to get expensive.”
Sal laughed as they pulled themselves into the vehicle and started it. Kennedy turned it and eased down the road toward the UN base.
“Do you miss her?” he asked into the extended silence. “Courtney, I mean.”
She sighed and gripped the steering wheel tightly enough that her knuckles went white.
“Yeah,” she answered finally after a long pause. “Of course I do. She’s my friend and I like having her around. That said, I’m also happy for her. Despite everything I said about never wanting to give this kind of life up, at the same time, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I’m glad that she got out and could head back home and play gazillionaire.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I can agree with that.”
Chapter Twenty
“Igor Khorokhorin,” the brig guard said and had to lean in close to make sure that he read that correctly. He looked at the man in front of him. There was a lean look about him and slightly feminine features but not overly so. A couple of bruises under his eye indicated that his capture had been more difficult than anticipated. This Igor character should count himself lucky that he was alive at all. Most of the time, if the people who were sent there made trouble for the people who brought them in, they were simply shot and driven out to be disposed of somewhere near the Zoo. No bodies would be found and nobody would question what happened in there.
It was a chilling situation, but it was the world they lived in now. Survival was the idea, one way or the other, and those poor unfortunate souls who didn’t learn that lesson fast enough would never be found again.
Sure, he’d heard that they stuck GPS locators in suits these days, but that was only for the people who went in with suits.
He looked at the man who still stood in front of him. There was something about him that simply didn’t fit. He looked a lot like what they said the scientists would look like—those that people constantly complained that they needed—but in the end, if they were willing to break the law, who cared if they were necessary or not?
The guard examined the paperwork for the arrest again and n
arrowed his eyes when he saw that the section marked off for reason of arrest was left blank. He looked up from his desk and called the arresting officer.
“There’s nothing here about what he was arrested for,” the guard pointed out belligerently. “You should know that we can’t legally hold anyone here without reason for more than twenty-four hours.”
“I know,” the man said in a calm, collected voice. “We only need the prisoner kept here until later tonight. We hold him for questioning, then he’s sent into the Zoo to run recon for another team.”
The guard turned back to the man, who looked at the ground and tried to avoid his gaze.
“Fucking assholes,” the official muttered and signed off on the paperwork. Sending someone into the Zoo was as efficient an execution method as any, but that didn’t mean that he approved of it. But who would listen to the opinion of a man whose bad knee made him ineligible to use the power suits they needed to head in there?
“Here today,” he said and spoke softly so that only the prisoner could hear, “dead ten feet into the Zoo.” He shook his head in sympathy, but there was no response from the man in front of him. “Who the fuck did you piss off, anyway?”
Once again, he received no response. Not that it would have made any difference, the guard realized, since there was no way to save him from the reality that he would be sent off to be some animal’s meal. But that didn’t mean that a show of sympathy couldn’t help.
The guard shrugged after the moment of silence stretched on into almost half a minute. He leaned back in his seat before he pressed an ink-covered stamp to the arrest papers.
“You can take him to holding,” he ordered and turned away as the prisoner was hauled up by the man who had brought him in and marched back to the cells down the hall.
It really was a pity that they didn’t offer last meals to the poor fuckers sent out there to die.
“So the last guy simply quit on you, huh?” Gutierrez asked as she toyed with the Jell-O left in her bowl with a scowl. Sal couldn’t tell if it was because she didn’t like the sour apple flavor or if it was because she would be stuck in the damned hospital for another couple of days.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “He’d heard that the last two guys to head in there with us hadn’t walked out, so he thought that we were cursed or something. No mention that our team was the one with the least casualties. Of course, all they see is that the veterans walk out while the rookies are all dead, so yeah, they think we’re cursed or something.”
“Look at you, using sports lingo,” Kennedy said with a grin. “Trying to be all cool and shit. We might make a man out of you yet, Jacobs.”
He grinned at the woman who had now joined them in Amanda’s room. The fact that the place was so empty meant that there was more than enough space for each individual patient to have their own room.
“Did you tell her yet?” Kennedy asked as she moved to the chair beside the bed and plopped down on it with a groan.
“I was waiting for you to get here,” he said uncertainly.
“Tell me what?” the patient demanded.
“We received word that our hacker will be available in the Zoo for a limited time,” Sal said, speaking in a low rumble of a voice. He didn’t think anyone would listen in on what they had to say, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be careful. “We’ll have to work it undercover, but the only way to get there is to actually join one of the Russian teams heading into the Zoo.”
Gutierrez raised an eyebrow. “Just how narrow is this window of ours?” She looked like she already knew that she wouldn’t like the answer.
“They start their run tomorrow,” Kennedy said and followed his example by keeping her voice down. “We need to head there tonight to be ready for it. We might actually have to sleep in the vehicle, now that I think about it.”
The other woman scowled at her leg still encased in a cast. “Doc says I won’t be Zoo-ready for another couple of weeks. It wasn’t a full break, but there were some cracks that showed up on my x-rays along with a sprain on my hip, knee, and ankle.”
Sal nodded. “I’m really sorry about this, Amanda.”
She smirked. “That’s nice of you to say, Sal, and I appreciate it. But you guys have a business to run. So long as I get my fully paid sick leave while I lay here on my ass, there won’t be any hard feelings. But only so long as this new guy you bring back is worth leaving me here on my own.”
“We’ll make sure that he’s worth the trouble,” he assured her and patted her shoulder gently. “Just…get better, Gutierrez. You are a part of the team now, and I need my engineer in top form out there, after all.”
“I’m not an engineer,” Amanda retorted with a chuckle. “I simply fix shit. Now get out of here, the both of you. You’re cramping my style.”
“Of course, we are, Spring Apple,” Kennedy said with a smirk and indicated the woman’s uneaten Jell-O. “We’ll drop you a message when we’re heading back to the compound. Depending on when that happens, we might swing by and pick you up.”
Sal and Kennedy made their way out of the hospital and shared what felt like a very comfortable silence before they reached the parking lot and climbed into their JLTV, already loaded with their suits and supplies and ready to start on their trip to the Russian base. The sun had barely begun to set, and from there, it was only three- or four-hour drive, depending on how fast they went.
Considering that Kennedy would take the wheel for this one, he assumed they would try for a record run.
“She’s a cool cucumber, that Gutierrez,” Madigan said as she started the engine.
Sal waited for the initial rumble of the powerful motor to settle into the normalized tone before they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Very cool,” he agreed. “She’s good with mechanics and a gun when needed. We’re lucky to have her on our team. You know, I think she likes you.”
His companion looked at him with a very unamused expression. “Are you kidding me? Can’t two women be friends without a guy starting to wonder if they’ll make his lesbian fantasies come true?”
“Come on, you know what I’m talking about,” he said and shook his head in protest. “I don’t mean it like that. You two seem like you’re almost close friends already, and that’s a good sign for Heavy Metal for the days to come. That said, you are more her type, and let’s be honest, if she were to develop a crush, you are the obvious choice.”
“Don’t think that I don’t see through the compliments into your inner sleazeball,” she warned, but as she looked at him, he could see a glimmer of amusement in her eyes. “That doesn’t mean you should stop trying with the compliments, though. Practice makes perfect and all that.”
Sal grinned, tugged at the lever on the right side of his seat, and let it drop into a more comfortable recline. “Wake me up when it’s my turn to take the wheel.”
“Sweet dreams,” she said with a grin and pressed her foot down harder on the gas, looking for a reaction from him. There was none as he covered his eyes with his forearm and quickly dozed off.
Chapter Twenty-One
He looked at the clock and willed it to move faster. Right now, he needed a cigarette but he’d made the promise to himself that he wouldn’t have another one until his shift was over. The decision had mainly to do with a desire to get back home to his wife and surprise her with how he’d quit a decades-old habit, but he’d slowly lost the will to do it. The old hag probably cheated on him with the single guy across the hall anyway, so why should she get to enjoy what he had to work for?
The guard was distracted from his train of thought when someone entered the brig building. His visitor was easily recognizable, even though he didn’t know much about the man aside from name and rank, and even those were somehow shrouded in mystery. Military police were difficult men to really get a bead on, which meant that as the man moved to his desk, the guard straightened from his habitual slouch and matched the visitor’s glare.
“I’m here
to release a prisoner you have,” the newcomer said and clearly hadn’t recognized the guard from six hours before.
“Igor Khorokhorin, yes?” he asked and withdrew a handful of forms from the second drawer of his desk. “I will need you to fill all these out and hand them to the release guard outside.”
The man nodded, clearly aware of the red tape surrounding even something as simple as a prisoner transfer. He went through the forms quickly like he’d practiced for them as the guard pushed out of his seat and walked slowly to the holding cells. Reluctantly, he tugged to retrieve a couple of keys that were roped to his belt.
Igor looked up from staring at the floor as he’d done for the past few hours, clearly terrified as the door to his cell was unlocked. The guard had no real desire to go in there and drag him out and was thankful that the prisoner came out of his cell without having to be coaxed. He took hold of the young man’s arm and half dragged him to where the Military Police Lieutenant Mikael Khadev finished the paperwork required for the release. There was no delay before he pushed the completed documents across the desk and stood decisively.
“I can’t do this,” Igor said softly, a hint of a tremble in his high-pitched voice. “I can’t.”
Khadev looked angrily at him, ground his teeth, and was about to snap off a string of insults when the guard stepped in.
“Look, maybe it’s not so bad,” he said in a soft, reassuring voice pitched low but loud enough to be heard by the frightened inmate. “Maybe you will be lucky and get to walk out of there too. Find a way to get as close to the other side of the jungle as you can and make contact with the Americans. Maybe they get you out of there without too much trouble. It’s not like it’s the end of the world, right?”
His words didn’t seem to have any effect on Igor, who still looked absolutely terrified. At any other time and in any other place, he would have told the man there was no need to fear. He would reassure him that the only reason that he felt apprehensive about what he faced was because it was something unknown, something that would never live up to the horrifying expectations.