by Michael Todd
“Someone’s eager for something to do,” Anja said as she closed the chat room and deleted her account there. It wouldn’t be difficult to make a new one and repeat the process.
“Hey Sal.” Courtney said, the phone held between her ear and shoulder as she sifted through the papers on her desk. “How are things in the Zoo?”
“Same old, same old,” Sal replied cheerfully. “Critters trying to kill us and not succeeding, us killing the critters. Madie says hi, by the way.”
“Don’t fucking call me that!” Courtney heard the other woman yell in the background.
“How are things in LA?” he asked after what she could only assume was Madigan punching him in the arm.
“Annoyingly similar,” Courtney growled. “I received the data from Anja, by the way, but I have a feeling that you don’t want me to use it yet.”
“Trust that feeling,” Sal said. “We have a plan, and our end of it would have to happen before you steal that laptop. Oh, and since we could use as much man or woman power as we can get our hands on, it would actually be best if you could come back here for a couple of weeks.”
Courtney decided not to make a joke about that. Robinson stood not ten feet away from her and typed rapidly into his own laptop as he worked through the various forms the board had sent for her approval. He had been vital ever since she’d taken up her position there—so much so that she’d sent notes to the HR department to improve his benefits and up his paycheck come the next quarter. She didn’t tell him, though, since she wasn’t sure if his input would decrease when he realized that he would receive a pay raise.
“Why do you need me down there?” she asked.
“Besides the fact that you’re one of the founding members of Heavy Metal and are missed? Well, we need your help to get our hands on data that only you are privy to.”
“Right. And while I’m there, it might be a good opportunity to find someone who might be able to acquire the assets we’re looking into.”
“Anja can probably help you with that,” Sal replied. “She has a lot of connections with various criminal enterprises around the world. It’s actually a little scary when you stop to really think about it.”
“Perfect.” Courtney allowed herself to grin. She’d never met the girl but was sure she’d like her. “I only need to pack and then I’ll be on my way.”
“We’re looking forward to it.” She could tell that he was smiling from the slight warmth in his voice. “Fly safely.”
She pressed the end call button and stared at the screen of her phone as it went black. To be honest, she had wanted to head back to the Zoo for quite a while, now. She missed Sal and Madigan and looked forward to working with the newer members, but there was also the fact that she desperately needed to put some distance between herself and all crazy circumstances in LA.
“So, Robinson…”
“I’ve already put in a request for the company jet to take us to the Staging Area,” he replied and looked up from the screen of his laptop. “They’ll probably send the approval in a couple of hours, which gives us time to pack and prepare.”
“Wait.” She raised her hand to stop him saying anything more. “Gives us time?”
“Well, yes,” he replied. “You don’t think that you’ll go alone on this trip, right? You need me to deal with all the clerical work—which I’d be able to do on the plane—and I’m your personal assistant. That means that whenever you travel on business, I need to be there with you.”
Courtney opened her mouth to raise a question about that, but she shut it again as her brain caught up. Honestly, Robinson’s expertise in the business world would actually come in handy if she had to deal with these kinds of problems involving Heavy Metal. It wasn’t that she didn’t think Sal and Madigan were doing a good job, but he was an absolute miracle worker when it came to streamlining the business process.
“Fine. How long until you can meet me at the airport?”
“I simply need to push your appointments back until you return,” he said. “That would only leave a few calls and—oh, I need to pick up my passport.”
“Huh. That’s your plan to make sure these guys don’t get their hands on what could be the most expensive thing that has been brought out of the Zoo?” Collins asked and looked mildly skeptical.
“It’s not a terrible plan,” one of the other soldiers replied. “Fair enough, there’s a lot that could go wrong, but it’s not terrible.”
“I appreciate the support, guys,” Sal said with a chuckle. “Do you have any questions?”
The twelve men and women who had been assembled looked at one another. They had been brought out to the compound to be briefed on the mission they’d all signed up for. Kennedy’s message had spread a lot faster than had been anticipated, and they all thought that it was a good idea to move the mission up on the schedule. There really was no need to risk another attack on the compound if it could realistically—and safely—be avoided.
“You’ve all worked together,” Kennedy interjected. “And we’ve worked with all of you, so there’s a fair amount of trust already established. There’s also the commission—which, as discussed, will be substantial, especially considering the role that you guys will play.”
“All things considered,” Collins said, “we’ve got your back. You guys have done a hell of a lot more for us grunts on the ground than the big money guys back home. Our honor isn’t for sale out here.”
“We appreciate that,” Sal assured him. “When the sale for the plant goes through, we’ll move out quickly. We have places for you to bunk here in the compound, but if you’d rather not, we’ll need you on call for three or four days. Obviously, we’ll pay you the retainer, so you don’t have to worry about taking other jobs in the meantime.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What do you mean, the sale went through already?” Carlson asked and leaned in closer to the screen on his phone. “I thought we had numbers on all the bids and that we out-paced the highest bid by two million?”
“Two point one million, technically,” Rodrigo said smoothly. “Which was as high as Pegasus was willing to go, if you remember. My question is why? I thought you people were looking at profits in the billions if you managed to keep the monopoly on the production from that plant.”
“I still need to answer to a board of directors, and that was all they were willing to part with on an opening bid,” the CEO retorted coldly. “We would have been willing to go higher if they tried to bargain with us.”
“They didn’t even send a reply.” Rodrigo peered at the tablet he carried. “They simply closed the bidding.”
“Do we know who made the winning bid?” Carlson asked, his mind already sifting through the list of competitors.
“Again, they kept this on the down low, so…” Rodrigo paused and tapped his tablet. “Well, one of my boys back in the lab figured their algorithm out. They’ve used a third-party proxy to run the sale, so we don’t get any more than the only bidder that was actually contacted afterwards. It was…Sanctum. A German company. They were the second highest bidders at seven point two million, American.”
Carlson made a face. “Why would they take the lower number? That has to be a terrible business policy.”
“It seems these people in Heavy Metal don’t like you that much, Carlson,” Rodrigo said and chuckled dryly. “I wonder why?”
“That was your fuck-up,” the CEO pointed out, a menacing edge to his tone. “If the dumbasses you hired hadn’t failed in their mission, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Twice.”
“And if my men had succeeded twice, you never would have had the chance to get your hands on a Pita plant,” his contact retorted with a grin. “See, Carlson my friend, you need to look on the bright side of life. You’ll get ulcers otherwise.”
“Yeah, bright side,” he muttered and shook his head as his mind considered the options. “What’s your men’s situation outside the compound?”
“I ha
ve a drone already in place, so we’ll have eyes on the target when it is moved out. I alerted the rest of the boys whom I have in the Staging Area that the sale went through and that they will be needed to run an intercept, so they are standing by at the moment. At the same time, we have intel that they’ve run a hire on the base to have muscle for the transfer, so we anticipate some action when the time comes.”
“How ready are you to deal with Jacobs and Kennedy?” Carlson asked. “Let’s be realistic here. Our attempts to eliminate them haven’t been successful, by any stretch of imagination.”
“That is a problem that has been anticipated and planned for. Don’t you worry about it, Mr. Carlson. We’ll have the plant to you before too long,” Rodrigo assured him with a smile. “And with that said, I think it’s time to hang up. The drone operators say that people have begun to load up in a couple of Hammerheads in the compound. It would appear that the intercept operation is a go.”
“Good luck.” Carlson hung up and stared at the phone, his expression tense. “It would seem that you’ll need it.”
Sal stretched in his armor and adjusted to the feel of it. It would take a couple of minutes for his muscle memory to recall that the suit would actually operate on a slight lag. A tenth of a second never sounded like a lot, but when you were in the middle of a gunfight and had to deal with a barrage of bullets and animals hurtling all over the damn place, a tenth of a second could measure the vital difference between life and death.
The other men and women in heavy armor were quiet and focused as they loaded up beside him. Kennedy was there too and she quickly gave him a thumbs-up to indicate that she was ready.
“I really hope this works,” he said as he leaned back in his seat and his hand settled on the rifle he carried on the back of his suit. He held his other hand on the pack that they carried at all times. The thought of anyone else getting a hold of it would ruin this whole plan for everyone involved, including the other men whom they’d hired for additional muscle. It wasn’t something he really wanted to get into, but Kennedy had made sure that they were the ones who would head into the teeth of the fight, and she had insisted that he be the one who carried most of the muscle. She obviously didn’t trust him not to get his ass shot.
“Hey, Jacobs,” Collins said and picked up the screen that displayed the readings from the sensors set up on the outside of the Hammerhead. “It looks like we picked up a tail.”
Sal looked into the screen that now displayed a small drone that followed them as they started to drive along the road toward the Staging Area. That wasn’t actually their destination, but it was where the only road went. Well, it was either there or into the Zoo, where most of the roads leading to the various construction sites for the walls had already been overrun. They only had one way to go.
“Well, they’re a little early, but it’s not like we didn’t expect them.” He strapped the pack to his suit and drew his rifle. It wasn’t his first choice to drive around with weapons in hand and ordinarily, he wouldn’t even consider something that could be regarded as stupidly dangerous. Needs must, however, and if they were to fulfil the mission as quickly and as efficiently as possible, they needed to ensure that they put as much distance between themselves and the compound as they could. With pursuit already in place, it almost definitely meant that they might need to face a pitched battle before they got to where they needed to be.
“We’ve got this, Sal,” Kennedy said over a private comm line. “But from now on, we’ll go into radio silence.”
“Understood,” he said, and immediately killed his connection with her. She raised another thumbs-up to him and nodded as he shifted himself closer to the driver’s seat.
“Step on it,” he ordered and checked the screen again. The drone was still there, which meant that whoever was tracking them was still a fair distance away since they needed the little device to keep track of their movements. He didn’t think that would last, however.
He resisted the urge to use the hatch at the top of the Hammerhead to gun the tail down. As much as he disliked being tracked like some sort of animal, he didn’t want Pegasus—since they were most likely the ones behind this—to have to scour the desert to find something when he didn’t want them to. He wanted their focus to be on him and him alone.
“What are the chances that these people will bring weapons in that can actually take out one of our Hammerheads?” Sal asked Collins, who was seated beside the driver.
“Well, the use of RPGs hasn’t been allowed in this little slice of heaven,” the man replied. “All things considered, the militaries involved don’t want to bring weapons in that could be used against them for fear that bounty hunters and outside mercs might lay their hands on them. But we can’t rule it out either, not with the funding Pegasus has. What we’d really need to worry about are armor-piercing rounds. The armor on these things was substantial already, and with the upgrades that Gutierrez added to them, we should be safe inside this compartment. The real problem is the isolated engine section. They might be able to shoot the block out, and if they do, we’re sitting ducks.”
“Is there anything we can do to avoid that?” he asked.
“Didn’t Kennedy brief you?” the soldier asked and constantly watched the drone still on their sensors.
“She did, but I wouldn’t mind a second—or, in this case, third—opinion.”
“Well, the armor should hold attacks off for a couple of minutes under sustained fire,” Collins explained cautiously. “Depending on the rounds they use and how sustained their fire is, of course. Yeah, I’d give us a couple of minutes, so we should always keep moving, even while under fire.”
“Agreed.” Sal leaned back. “And since the drone just pulled away, I think we need to warm up those evasive maneuvers.”
Collins nodded and drew his rifle from its holster in his suit. “Let’s lock and load, people. We’ll have company in five mikes and counting. Loosen the convoy up and keep moving. No matter what happens, always stay moving, do you hear me, drivers?”
“Roger that,” both men said in near unison. Sal pulled himself over to the door of the Hammerhead. The rest of them would handle any cover fire that would be necessary from the hatch at the top. He had another job to do.
Rodrigo didn’t much care to run operations personally. He was the kind of man who liked to keep his distance from these things. Remaining clear of the crimes that he committed was the most important part of any defense that involved plausible deniability. When his only connection to the cases that he was involved in was a burner phone that was quickly fed into an incinerator, things were so much easier and cleaner.
But when he was paid one of his best paychecks in his career and his all-time best client since he’d left the special forces wanted this done without any hiccups, he needed to be there. It had been a while since he’d been out in the field, so he intended to hang back and oversee the operation.
In person. Fuck, this was already way too complicated. After this, he needed to get Carlson into a room and explain to the man how to run an operation that didn’t require his people involved in crazy things. He’d learned a new definition of crazy lately—he thought of it as being in the middle of a firefight with a bunch of crazy animals and the people who willingly charged into the most dangerous spot on earth for what could only be called a minimal profit. It was asking for bad things to happen.
“Five mikes away, sir,” said one of the men driving the top-of-the-line Hammerhead in the middle of a convoy of five, all loaded with angry and well-armed mercs in need of money. His best people had been wiped out or had refused the mission entirely, which meant that Rodrigo had needed to hire from outside his own organization. That was why he needed to be there to run it personally. The fucking ass-wipes at Pegasus needed to get their shit together.
“Keep this trajectory,” Rodrigo said. “We’ll intercept them on the road, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try to take the sandy route around us when they see us. It wou
ld be best for that to be delayed as long as possible.”
“Roger that,” the driver said, followed by a chorus of affirmations from the others. They were mostly specialist ATV drivers from South Africa, which made them the best that could be acquired on short notice. They were also notoriously expensive, which meant he had to skimp on the other men. He, too, had a board to answer to regarding his company spending, and with the budget that had been left after he’d hired the drivers… Well, he was glad that he had the advantage of numbers—and, hopefully, surprise.
“We have a visual,” the lead driver of the convoy called in. “Two Hammerheads with significant improvements to armor now headed our way.”
A link to a live feed from the lead driver’s HUD showed him that the Heavy Metal team had brought both their Hammerheads out. They had made a good investment with their recruitment of the mechanic Gutierrez. He could see the armor enhancements. Hammerheads already looked rather squat, but with the enhancements, they had been altered to look stronger, made to bypass most landmines without taking heavy damage, and would be harder to hit dead on with armor-piercing rounds as well as RPGs. Rodrigo hadn’t been able to bring the latter in on short notice, but he’d compensated with a good supply of the former.
“Put up a blockade. Use three of the vehicles,” he ordered. “Keep two in the back to pursue any that go off road.”
“Roger that,” one of the drivers confirmed and the first three vehicles quickly formed a heavy-duty barrier across the road. In the open desert terrain, it wasn’t the most formidable roadblock, but it would make their quarry pause and rethink their movements—and hopefully expose where the mutual exchange drop would ultimately happen.
The two ATVs took a few seconds to come to a halt, and Rodrigo tried to understand what was happening. The glass didn’t reveal any kind of reaction from the people driving the vehicles, but both Hammerheads came to a halt some two hundred meters away from their blockade.