A Few Good Fish

by Amy Lane

  “We got orders to move out, overland. They’ve got a base down south. Don’t stress, Perkins, company’s never done better. We just gotta get these guys outta sight before big dicks start twitching.”

  “Hear you. Go inside and do the check. I’ll do the landing gear and flaps.”

  Jackson scooted away from the vent and stood up, thinking furiously. “Shit. Shit shit shit….”

  “What?” Sonny hissed. “Can we kill them? They’re bad guys—can we fuckin’ kill them?”

  Jackson reached out and closed his hands over Sonny’s restless fingers as they twitched on the Beretta. “No,” he said shortly. “We’re not here to kill mercenaries, Sonny. If we kill assassins, assassins will be all over our ass with lead diapers until we die in a puddle of blood. We’re here to get our guys.”

  Sonny closed his eyes and nodded, then put the gun in the back of his pants like Jackson had.

  “Then if we’re not gonna kill them, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that when the shit goes boom, everybody including the bad guys are going to be going in the direction we’re gonna be. We gotta—”

  “See that big helicopter?” Sonny said, like “Oh hey, look, there’s a flower!”

  “I noticed it.”

  “That there is a cargo helicopter. Why do you suppose they’re not flying it down south? They can certainly take more shit if they do.”

  “I got no idea.”

  “’Cause see that prop? It’s bent. That thing won’t go up—just loop-de-loop all over the fucking ground if someone turns it on. Think I could figure out how to turn it on?”

  “Think you could get the fuck out of the helicopter before it started to loop-de-loop all over the fuckin’ landing pad?”

  Sonny grinned. “If I don’t, it’ll be a hell of a ride. You head for the buildings. I’ll create a distraction. They’ll be so busy figuring out how to not let that thing kill them before it destroys all the other planes and shit, they’ll never see us run behind the hangar when Ernie’s there to pick us up.”

  Jackson took a deep breath and put his hand on Sonny’s shoulder. “Sonny, don’t kill anybody who’s not trying to kill you first. I got awful shit in my head, but that is one thing I don’t got, you understand me?”

  Sonny paused. “They hurt Ace, I’m gonna—”

  “There won’t be any remains, I get it. But otherwise, think beyond this moment, you hear?”

  Sonny nodded, and Jackson looked around the corner again. He could see nobody in front of the main hangar, and nobody out in the open before the campus itself started.

  “Wish me luck,” he murmured and jogged away.

  AS SOON as he hit the strip hangar, he moved to the back and kept to the wall, but once he cleared that structure, it was just him, Jackson Leroy Rivers, all on his lonesome in a paramilitary base full of hostile assholes.

  He would have felt less conspicuous naked at the office. At least there nobody would shoot his dick off.

  After the hangar, it was a good hundred yards to the next-closest outbuilding, and he figured it only took him five, six years tops to get there. Once he hit the shade, he looked around the corner again and jerked back. This was apparently a barracks.

  And these guys were obviously off duty.

  They were pretty innocuous—playing cards, reading. Jackson had heard that a lot of military time was spent waiting around for orders, and he guessed mercenaries would be no different. These guys were just doing what soldiers do when they waited.

  But they were in Jackson’s way.

  He felt the time prickle on the outside of his skin. He had to get to the admin building—or at least close to it—before Ernie and Sonny sprang their little surprises.

  With a burst of clarity, he remembered his words to Janie. Bad guys were not omniscient—and this place was run by two leaders, neither of whom was completely trusted by their men.

  That gave some wiggle room, and wiggle room meant he could breed some confusion in these jackoffs, no problem.

  He pulled his sunglasses off the vee of his sweatshirt and looped them over his ears. Then he set his sights on the big, square admin building with the three-story rise in the middle like a squat penis.

  “Hey—who are you?”

  Jackson paused and took off his glasses, because that’s what you did when you had no qualms about somebody seeing your face. “New recruit from down south—Hamblin called me to escort the prisoners.”

  “I didn’t hear about this. I’m the damned master sergeant. I should know if there’s new people coming in!” He wore fatigues, with insignia well placed and a name tag that said Cooper.

  So they still maintained vestigial bits of military hierarchy—good to know.

  “Hey, it’s not my fault Hamblin and Lacey can’t get their shit together. I was getting laid when I got the call to come out—how do you think I feel?”

  “You know, I didn’t see no fucking car—”

  “Infiniti QX30, asshole. It’s gorgeous. You can’t see the parking lot from here—what’s your deal?”

  “The deal is, I’m escorting you to Lacey’s office. You don’t fuckin’ smell right.”

  “I’ll take deodorant if you’ve got any,” he said, sounding bored. “It’s a long fuckin’ drive.”

  “C’mon—” The guy reached for Jackson’s arm, intent on hauling Jackson away like a truant kid, and Jackson reacted. He kicked out sideways, quick as a snake, and kneecapped the guy, who fell to the ground screaming.

  He didn’t hear the men around him drawing their weapons, but he did hear the click of their safeties.

  He held his hands up sourly, heart pounding in his chest. He’d done this sort of thing before, right down to being in the sights of unsafetied guns, but never with Ellery’s life in the balance. A part of him wanted to cringe, cower. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Beg for forgiveness, beg for Ellery’s life.

  But nobody touched him like that—nobody—and the small part of his brain that was still rational kicked in. “You assholes let him drag you around like punks? Jesus, what kind of mercenaries are you?”

  For a breathless pause he thought he’d gone too far, and then, holy God thank you so very much, the gun right behind his head clicked, safety engaged, and all the others in the group of ten or so guys did the same.

  “We’re mercenaries fucking tired of being in this military camp being given orders,” the guy behind him said in disgust. He walked around to the man squealing on the ground and kicked him in the ribs. “Shut up! I don’t give a shit what your rank is—that’s not your fucking flag overhead, is it?”

  Jackson’s eyes went automatically up to the flagpole outside the administration building, and his stomach cramped.

  Corduroy.

  Like Ernie had said.

  An assassin’s guild. Lacey had surrendered his castle, and he was no longer in charge.

  “Do you have, like, a medic or something?” Jackson asked, jerking his eyes away from that incriminating flagpole. “The screaming. I mean… dear God.”

  The guy who’d spoken was fucking huge. Shoulders like a linebacker, six foot five if he stood an inch. Brown hair, brown eyes, tanned skin—pretty in a squashed-nose, average-white-boy kind of way, but apparently he gave zero fucks.

  He put his size fourteen steel-toed boot up against the guy’s neck.

  “Cooper!” he snarled, and Master Sergeant Cooper clamped his lips together and whimpered.

  “My knee!”

  “I don’t give a shit. Your knee, your balls—he could have ripped your spleen out, and you know what? I don’t care. Drag your sorry fucking carcass to the medic and get some morphine or some heroin or some goddamned crack in a cat food bag and stop—oh dear God.”

  Average Refrigerator White Boy jumped back in disgust as Master Sergeant Cooper lost control of his bladder.

  “I will give a hundred dollars to anybody who wants to drag this bozo to the fucking medic. You assholes have until the cou
nt of five before I shoot him.”

  Jackson looked around and had the sick realization that he was about to make a hundred dollars.

  Two minutes later he was half dragging the man two buildings over to the hospital barracks.

  “That’ll teach ya,” he muttered.

  “I’m a soldier!” Cooper almost wept. “I… I don’t understand. I was loyal to my CO, I did what he ordered—I did my goddamned job!”

  “Did he order you to be a bastard to people to see if you could make them meaner?” Jackson asked, trying really hard not to let any of the wet spots on Cooper’s uniform touch him.

  “I followed orders,” Cooper said weakly.

  Jackson grunted and urged him to the ramp that led up to the medical building. “You bailed on your own free will,” he said, not particularly sympathetic.

  “You follow orders or there’s chaos.” Poor man sounded lost, and Jackson actually felt his sympathies stir. He wondered how many men had been twisted like this one, into bullies, into killers. They’d probably signed up looking for a set of rules to help them navigate the human race—they’d been vulnerable to the type of manipulation Lacey had been offering.

  Such a fine line, that boundary between rules orchestrated so tightly you had to ask to break wind and the sort of miserable mean-assed chaos Jackson had just seen.

  “You use your freewill to make good decisions or the order is an illusion,” Jackson shot back. Cooper moaned, and Jackson figured him for a lost cause. He got up to the top of the ramp and knocked hard on the door.

  A gangly kid, twenty maybe, stoop-shouldered, freckled, opened the door and grimaced.

  “Who’d he finally piss off?” the kid asked. Then he smirked. “Before he pissed on himself.”

  “Me,” Jackson said shortly. “I actually have business with Lacey and Hamblin, so if I could maybe….” He jiggled Cooper, and the kid put his own shoulder under Cooper’s other side.

  “Who’re you?” the kid asked.

  “Whatzitooya?” Jackson asked back, remembering the old kid’s joke and wondering if he could maybe get the fuck out of here before shit went boom.

  The kid sighed. “I just keep hoping we’ll get orders to go back to San Diego. God, I don’t know who I pissed off to get assigned to this hellhole, but this place is fuckin’ weird.”

  Oh hell.

  Jackson helped the kid through what looked like a legit reception room to a regular clinic. The desk where a private or ensign would sit taking information was empty, and the rest of what had been a full-functioning clinic echoed with disuse.

  “Here—let’s get him on the table,” Jackson murmured.

  Cooper moaned a little, and the kid unlocked a small refrigerator and pulled out an ampoule of what Jackson figured was morphine and some bandages.

  “He’ll want the painkillers,” Jackson told him, “but not the bandages. He dislocated his knee—you’ll have to push it back.”

  The kid grimaced. “And guess who’s never done that before.”

  Cooper let out a terrified little whine, and Jackson tried to wrap his mind around the rabbit hole he’d fallen into.

  “Kid, are you even an actual—”

  “Medic? No. I’d taken three EMT courses and then I signed up. Boot camp, training, six months out at sea, where I worked in the medical bay to assist. We get back to port, I get a week stateside, get laid, and suddenly I’m here.”

  Jackson grunted. “Did you lay somebody you shouldn’t have?”

  Kid’s lips twisted, and he cast a contemptuous look at Cooper. “Admiral’s son,” he said conspiratorially. “I seriously had no idea—and neither did the admiral.”

  Oh Jesus.

  “Kid, this place is a punishment. But worse than that—it’s not part of the US Navy anymore. It’s become a mercenaries’ guild, do you understand?”

  The boy—seriously, twenty was a stretch—clapped his hands over his eyes. “This explains so much.”

  Jackson leaned over. “Kid?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you get a chance, get the fuck out of here. But don’t forget about the land mines surrounding the place, you feel me?”

  “But… desertion!”

  “Hitch a ride to the base in San Diego and tell them about this place. Seriously—fix Cooper’s knee and find your way out.”

  Jackson could read this one’s name tag—it said Saunders.

  “But… but how can I not be with the US military anymore?” Saunders wailed.

  “Don’t ask. Just… just get out, and don’t get shot.”

  And that was it. Jackson turned on his heel and made his way out of the care center, broke into an active jog, and crossed the pavement. The administration building loomed large, and he felt like he was in one of those dreams where he really needed to be somewhere and shit kept popping up to get in his way.

  He managed to make it through the administration building, his tennis shoes ringing spookily in the empty tile hallways. He didn’t go straight back to where the offices were. Instead, going by the schematics Burton had sent Ernie, he went to the right, to the com rooms. He passed two empty hallways cutting through the building and then, jackpot.

  He could hear the low hum of computers and the clack of keyboards, accompanied by subvocalized comments into coms.

  He didn’t walk into the room and look around—that would be obvious. Instead he walked past it, taking in the organized chaos of a com center with incurious eyes.

  Burton was easy to spot. He was sitting in the near corner of the room, facing the door itself. He was supposed to be studying a keyboard, but he was awake enough to catch any action outside. Jackson made eye contact with him as he passed the doorway, caught Burton’s nearly imperceptible nod, and kept walking.

  He’d spent most of his life as an irrepressible tomcat, and enough of that was left in his system to think Ernie was a lucky boy before the tread of boots in the corridor alerted him to someone else in proximity.

  Without breaking stride he took the first right, almost groaning as he ended up at the restrooms. Quickly, he walked in and started checking the stalls to make sure they were empty.

  “Please tell me you took your morning dump,” said the man behind him, “because this could be a real inopportune moment to get caught with your pants down.”

  Jackson cocked his head and flashed Burton a grin. “I’m expecting to be really busy in about….” He checked his phone. “Shit. Eight minutes. If it’s not done now, I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow.”

  He turned and gave the decked Marine-bodied man behind him a cocky smile. Burton’s eyes were big and black and fathomless. When he smiled, he popped a dimple in the corner of his cheek, and Jackson wondered how long it had taken poor Ernie to fall hard after he’d seen Burton. One minute? Two? A whole half hour?

  “Eight minutes?” Burton asked soberly, keeping his voice too low to echo. “That’s not a lot of time.”

  “Less than you think. Did you know they were gassing a plane for wherever in South America? We’ve got to get them out of here.”

  Burton scowled. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. There’s people at the hangar?”

  Jackson shrugged. “Sonny’s got a surprise going. I got no idea when it’s going to pop, but we’ve got—” He checked his phone again. “—six minutes until chaos ensues.”

  “Sonny? Where’s Ernie?”

  Jackson grimaced. “Dumping a Toyota full of C-4 in a minefield?”

  Burton’s face went hard. “I’m doing you a solid and this is how you repay me?”

  “Hey—you let that kid know he’s got you when he’s got you and I don’t think he’ll be so eager to prove himself. But Jai’s with him—I think that guy would rather blow himself up than let Ernie get hurt, so he’s safe.”

  Burton scrubbed at his eyes with one hand while he pounded a tattoo on the sink with his other palm. “Goddammit—you couldn’t have stayed in Sacramento for a couple more days?”

  “While these
assholes listened to us have sex? God no—”

  “I listened to you having sex, and I’ve got one word for you. Soundproofing. But you don’t get it—have you seen many soldiers here?”

  Jackson shook his head. “No. And the ones who are don’t realize the place isn’t US military yet. They’re just following orders and hoping to get sent home.”

  “That’s right. Do you know why that is?”

  “Because Lacey sent the other guys overseas to go kill in someone else’s pond?”

  Burton let out a growl. “You wish. See, I’m working black ops, right? My job is to kill people in our own country too dangerous to let loose. When I went under, my handler was supposed to let me go, cut me off, pretend he didn’t know me for shit. Then he gets word—his guys, off doing their thing? Are getting preempted. And then they’re getting killed. And so are the people around them at any given op. So no. This guy trained himself some psychopaths, put them in the hands of the guy running Corduroy—”

  “Hamblin—”

  “That’s the asshole. And then he turned his monsters loose on the world at large.”

  Jackson shuddered, his stomach churning. Oh God. Even if he got Ellery out of here, he might never eat again.

  “How many?” he asked, mouth dry. “We faced one of these guys. How many are there?”

  “Between seven and twelve,” Burton told him, voice rusty. “And I met a few of ’em. Did Sonny Daye freak you out?”

  Jackson thought about it. “He’s okay,” he said honestly. “Let’s just say we speak the same language.”

  “Psychopath?”

  “No—we flunked out of psychopath school. What’s left is just wildly codependent loose cannons.”

  Burton grunted, and his sculpted mouth twisted into an almost-smile. “Someday, Rivers, you and me gotta get a drink together. I don’t want to pick out curtains, but God, I miss talking to a smartass. My point here is that you’re right. Sonny’s scary. Don’t hurt Ace or you’re toast, and he’s got a gradually increasing circle of friends that he’d die for too. But he’s not evil. He doesn’t want to hurt people—”