by Drew Avera
“Tell me again why I had to be the one to come with you and talk to these freaks,” Jenny Armstrong murmured aside to Rachel Mata, low enough Roach was fairly sure the two men escorting them couldn’t have heard.
If they did, they showed no sign of it. Neither of them so much as gave Jenny or Roach a sidelong glance as they walked, nor did they look at each other. Their steel blue eyes were fixed straight ahead, square jaws set with determination and they could have been identical twins as far as she could tell, except that the one on the right wore his purple-fringed hair in a Mohawk and had a face full of piercings, while the one on the left had his head completely shaven, right down to his eyebrows, to make a better canvas for the intricate tattoos that seemingly covered every square centimeter of his body…or, at least, every square centimeter she could see. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and a leather vest, so that was limited to his arms and upper chest, but the patterns didn’t seem to stop where the clothes began.
Neither had introduced themselves nor as much as said a word when they’d met the two women at the front gate to the old Suffolk Municipal Airport. They’d seen no planes on the runways or taxiways on their way in, which had surprised Roach. She’d understood there being no military birds left at Oceana, but she would have thought there might have been a few private planes stranded here at the small airport back when all the shit went down.
Maybe everyone who could manage it flew out after the first bombs began touching off in the coastal cities. Her father had told her stories of what it had been like in those days, though she had trouble believing things could have been worse then than they were now. No one had used the old airport since then…until now, of course.
The old administration offices and shops were useless, burned-out husks with barely a single wall intact, but the sheet metal hangars still stood, and aircraft hangars were such a damned convenient place to store mechs. It was rather ingenious, she thought. Most of the private military contractors set up shop in old military bases simply because they’d been started by men and women who’d begun their careers in the active military, and Nate was no different.
Die Valkyrie was different.
Oh, so very different.
They’d parked the pickup at the gate and waited, figuring someone would be monitoring the approaches to the hangars, then they’d wound up waiting there for a half an hour before Jenny had begun laying on the horn. Roach knew it was the right place because of the decorations. Nothing that could have been spotted by overhead drones or satellite surveillance, just little touches. Nordic graffiti spray-painted on old signs, runes and words she didn’t understand and some fairly crude renditions of stylized Vikings with oversized…attributes doing morally questionable things.
There were other things, things she wouldn’t have known to look for if Jenny hadn’t mentioned them. Fake ravens, old Halloween decorations probably, hung from the lower limbs of trees here and there on either side of the old road leading into the airport. A toy horse someone had glued four extra legs to and stuck on a pole near the gate. And hammers. There were a lot of hammers drawn in a crude, childlike style on every blank surface.
The horn had brought them the twins. Both the men were carrying pump shotguns, though neither had bothered to point them at her or Jenny, and even now they were slung over their shoulders, a forgotten afterthought. Either they knew who the women were or simply didn’t see them as a threat. The one with the tattoos had motioned for them to follow and they’d left the truck behind and walked.
Roach leaned close to Jenny’s ear and tried to answer her question quietly, not wanting to cause hard feelings even if the two men were pretending not to hear them.
“Because Ramirez is helping James secure transportation and Nate had to stay at the base to go over our intelligence with that Conrad guy.”
“He’s an asshole,” Jenny snapped, not bothering to keep her voice down to cushion the comment. “Not Nate,” she clarified, “Conrad Barron. He’ll steal anything that’s not nailed down, which,” she shrugged, “I could respect, but he tries to convince himself he’s this legit businessman and the rest of us are suckers. But I guess he does have some good pilots and a lot of good equipment…that he stole. Hell, if he put as much time and effort into fighting the Russians as he does into hijacking cargo barges and falsifying requisition orders, the damn war might already be over.”
“What’s with the name for his unit, anyway?” Roach wondered. “LV-426? Is that short for something?”
Jenny’s head rocked backward with a barking, scornful laugh.
“It’s from a fucking movie he likes. He figures no one else will be able to figure it out ‘cause the movie is like a hundred years old or something.”
“Barron is a real skitstövel,” the one with the tattoos said, his voice surprisingly deep and pleasant, like the computer-generated voices you heard on government informational updates.
Roach stared at him, unsure if she was more surprised by the fact he’d talked at all or the word he’d used.
“What’s a skitstövel?” she wondered.
Mohawk glared at Tattoo, as if he’d screwed up by speaking to them, but he sighed and turned back to her, the look on his face one of strained patience.
“Literally translated,” he told her, “it’s ‘shit boot.’ But a better meaning would be ‘asshole.’ And no,” he added before she could ask, “no one knows why Swedish has an insult that means shit boot.”
Mohawk had more of a gravelly voice, the kind you’d expect from someone who’d been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day since they were twelve. And he might have, though he wasn’t smoking now.
“Have you ever been to Sweden?” she asked him. It wasn’t a challenge, though she supposed he might take it as one. She was honestly curious, though. She’d never even met anyone from Sweden.
“I ain’t ever been out of Virginia in my whole life,” he told her. Which, she figured, wasn’t more than twenty-five years, given his looks. “But I’ll go to Valhalla when I die,” he added with a grin that revealed a couple of missing teeth.
Tattoo nodded agreement, then raised his arms in a V as he walked, threw his head back and yelled. “Odin!”
Roach wasn’t sure if he was praying to his god or if this was their personal equivalent of yelling “hoo-ah” the way ex-Army types did. When more people began to filter out through the partially-open hangar doors, she thought maybe the shout had been a signal, an indicator to the others that it was all clear and the two women weren’t the vanguard of some ambush.
There were an even dozen of them, which was about average for most of the private military companies. The only reason BAMF was half that size was that Nate had made a policy of hiring pilots who could double up as techs and mechanics instead of paying a double-crew. It made more work for everyone, but it also meant they got twice as much of the split as a normal crew.
Aside from their numbers, though, there was nothing normal about Die Valkyrie.
They were all young, that was the first thing she noticed. Not one of them was older than thirty-five, tops, and the youngest of them weren’t even as old as Ramirez. Mercenary units tended to have a majority of creaky veterans like James and Jenny, with few of the PMC’s actually trusting the younger recruits trained by the DoD. That was yet another area where Nate was different than most…and apparently, so was Die Valkyrie.
The second thing she noticed was the clothes. Mercenary units didn’t have uniform dress codes, of course. Getting away from that sort of thing was why people became mercenaries to begin with. But still, the flight suits were comfortable, fire-resistant, stain-resistant and, best of all, free. Most of the mercs she’d met never changed out of them except to go into town.
The dozen Die Valkyrie troops gathered outside the door to the hangar were uniform only in the sense that not one of them was wearing the same thing as any of the others. Denim and leather were both popular, in different configurations, though one of them was wearing baggy cargo shorts, flip-flops and
a loud, Hawaiian shirt decorated with naked women. He was also the oldest and, Roach sensed, probably the commander.
“Why aren’t any of these PMC’s owned by women?” Roach murmured as they approached the slovenly-dressed man.
“Because it’s a fucking stupid way to make a living,” Jenny told her, not even having to think about the question. “And any woman who survives this game long enough to be an owner gets out of it.”
“What about you?” Roach asked her, frowning.
“Bitch, I was out of it!”
The man in the loud shirt and shorts stepped forward as they approached. He was a bit on the pudgy side, with blond hair down to his shoulders and a close-cropped beard trimmed into decorative patterns, mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes, and he reminded Roach of nothing so much as the concierge of a hotel coming to ask them if they needed help with their luggage.
“Well now,” he drawled in one of the deepest southern accents Roach had ever heard, “what can I do for you two ladies this fine…” He trailed off, pulling off his sunglasses for a moment, bloodshot eyes blinking in confusion as he looked helplessly at the tall redheaded woman beside him.
“Morning,” she supplied, deadpan. She wore leather hip boots over leather pants, topped by a leather vest, and Roach thought she must be ungodly hot in all that.
“Yes, morning,” he agreed. Then he frowned again and murmured aside to the woman. “Did I sleep last night?”
“No.”
“You’re Captain Phillip Brooks?” Roach asked him, scarcely believing it.
“Please,” he insisted, raising his hands up, palms-out, “call me Bubba.” He nearly dropped his sunglasses in the motion and seemed to remember he had them in his hand. He smiled and slipped them back on.
“Bubba Brooks,” Jenny hissed, her tone somewhere between amused and horrified. “Can we just go now, girl?”
“Bubba,” Roach said the name reluctantly, feeling as if just using it would lower her IQ, “I’m Rachel Mata and this is Jenny Armstrong. We’re with Broken Arrow Mercenary Force.”
“Oh, you guys are Nate Stout’s outfit,” Bubba said, nodding. “He’s a good guy. He still around?”
“Yes, and he’d like to propose a joint operation if you’d be willing to hear us out.”
“Joint operation?” an impossibly young man in stained and ragged jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt giggled with juvenile amusement. He had greasy auburn hair down to his shoulders and a mustache so thin it was nearly nonexistent. “I got your joint operation right here, mama!” He pulled a marijuana cigarette out of the watch pocket of his jeans and popped it into his mouth. “Wanna hit?”
“Junior,” the redhead sighed, “put that shit away. It’s like nine in the morning.” She glared back at the others, still watching, arms crossed, as if this were the only entertainment they’d get all day. “And the rest of you, get back to work. No one said it was break time. Mommy and Daddy have adult business to take care of.”
There were a few chuckles, a few more annoyed groans, but the rest of the crew slowly meandered back into the hangar, including the shotgun-wielding Vikings who’d met them at the gate.
“I’m Olivia Savage,” the redhead told them. She didn’t offer a hand, but Roach didn’t think it was meant as an insult. She just seemed the standoffish type. “Bubba’s XO. You two want to have a seat while we talk?” She waved at a cluster of lawn chairs gathered around a beach umbrella in the grass beside the paved parking lot. “I can have one of the fellas bring out some coffee, tea…”
“Vodka,” Bubba took up the thread, “PBR, absinthe?”
“Water?” Savage finished, offering Bubba a glare.
“No, not right now, thanks,” Roach said firmly, noticing Jenny’s eyebrow go up with interest at the mention of absinthe. We’re a bit strapped for time.”
The lawn chair creaked and moaned beneath their weight and Roach wondered if they had a standing bet over when the ancient furniture would finally collapse. She felt utterly ridiculous sitting in it, but there was little about this whole situation that wasn’t utterly ridiculous.
She was trying to gather her thoughts and lay things out in a reasoned and succinct manner when Jenny leaned forward, elbows on knees, and blurted it out.
“We’re heading to Colorado with a train full of mercs and mechs to try to stop a traitor from sabotaging a peace conference between the US and the Russian governments. If we win, there’s glory and money out the ass and you can write your own ticket, go down in the history books. If we lose, we’re dead. If we get caught along the way, they’ll hang us.” She looked between Bubba and Savage expectantly.
Savage’s mouth dropped open and she stared at Jenny wide-eyed for a moment before turning to Bubba. The bearded man pulled his glasses off again, rubbing at his eyes and trying to focus on Jenny.
“Are you serious?” he asked. “I mean, this isn’t some kind of practical joke Nate’s playing, right? ‘Cause I never thought of him as a joker. Or a smoker. Or a midnight toker…”
“Darling, please,” Savage murmured aside. “But tell me, is this on the level?”
“It’s absolutely on the level,” Roach said. “In fact, we’re leaving tonight with whoever we can get to join us.”
“So,” Jenny asked them, “for glory in Valhalla and all that shit…are you in?”
Savage and Bubba shared a look and matching, wolfish grins spread across their face. For the first time since she’d met him, Roach thought the man might actually be dangerous.
“Fuck yeah, we’re in!” Bubba exclaimed, jumping up from his chair with enough enthusiasm to tip it over backwards and knock the beach umbrella over for good measure. “This sort of shit is why I got into this damn business in the first place!” He cupped a hand over his mouth and yelled back at the hangar. “Hey fellas! Get your shit together! We’re taking the train to fucking Colorado!”
Roach made urgent shushing motions, a horrified scowl on her face.
“Oh, right,” Bubba nodded realization. Then he cupped his hand again and yelled. “And it’s top-secret so don’t say a Goddamned word to anyone.” He grinned at Roach. “Shit, I’d better go get changed!”
Savage was watching Roach’s reaction with an amused smile.
“Don’t worry, little miss,” she said. “We’re not really as crazy as we look.” She turned to head back into the hangar, but paused to glance backwards over her shoulder, her green eyes glinting. “We’re fucking crazier.”
Chapter Ten
“I don’t like this place, man,” Hector Ramirez murmured, hand resting on the butt of his holstered pistol, eyes darting about as if he expected a serial killer to jump out of every shadow.
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot not to like about it,” James Fuller agreed.
The secluded lot just outside Suffolk had been a lot of things through the decades, most recently a junkyard, as evidenced by the neatly-stacked corpses of deceased automobiles lining the tattered remains of the old fence. It seemed abandoned now, like nearly everything else in Suffolk. They’d had to drive Fuller’s old Jeep out to the meeting since Jenny and Roach had taken the unit’s sole vehicle, the old pickup they’d “salvaged,” and he’d parked the fire-engine-red SUV outside the fence line by the road and slipped in through the dangling, twisted half of a chain-link gate.
Inside had looked much like outside…at first. Rusted out hulks of ancient cars and trucks, construction equipment and endless rows of drive-trains, engines, motors and transmissions stacked neatly in order by maker and year, all surrounded and engulfed by kudzu and Virginia creeper and a dozen other species of vine and weed, and grass up to the two men’s knees.
Except where it wasn’t. Fuller had to look closely, force his eyes to sharpen on individual areas rather than just let the façade of the place fool his vision. The overgrowth and the undergrowth only grew in certain, carefully defined areas, ending abruptly where a line of particularly high stacks of flattened car bodies hid the rear half of the lot
from view.
Maskirovka, the Russians called it. Camouflage. Deception. It was an art as much as a science, a skill that took years of practice to develop.
“You’ve been here before, right?” Ramirez asked him. “You said you’d met him here before.”
“I did,” Fuller admitted. “But that was many a year ago. I don’t hang out with Bill much. Honest to God, I barely remember anything about this place. I’m fairly sure this was a strip club the last time I was here.”
Ramirez did a double-take, looking from the decades-old cars to Fuller and back a couple of times.
“Well, where the hell is this guy, anyway?” he demanded.
The kid, Fuller thought, was a bit high strung for this business. If he lived long enough, he’d settle down.
“This way,” Fuller told him, following his instincts…and a well-worn path through the grass, back around ten-meter-tall stacks of junked cars.
As if the piles of compressed auto bodies were the gates to some Elven woods in a fantasy, thick and broad-branching oak trees enclosed them in deep shadow, shutting out the late morning light, hiding what lay beyond in curtains of Spanish moss. It was lighter up ahead and though Fuller didn’t recall most of this place, he did remember what lay beyond.
“The railroad tracks run through back here,” he told Ramirez just as they pushed through a curtain of low-hanging moss…
…and straight into the yawning muzzles of 25mm chain guns on the arms of a pair of massive, looming Cobra mechs.
“Fuck!” Ramirez squawked, yanking his pistol free of its holster and bringing it up with his finger already on the trigger, as if the 9mm would do a damn bit of good against a pair of ten-meter-tall war machines.
“Hold on,” Fuller said, putting a hand over the top of the gun and forcing it down gently but firmly. “Just get your damned booger-hook off the bang-switch for a second and hold on.”
“Who the hell is this clown, Catfish?”
Wild Bill stepped out from between the two mechs as if he were resolving into existence out of thin air right in front of their eyes. He looked just as Fuller remembered even after almost twenty years: the same bushy, grey-shot beard, the same wild hair pushed under the same camo boonie hat, the same faded blue jeans and fatigue top.