by Michael Todd
“Yeah, keep it up with the empty threats, grunt,” Anderson replied. He didn’t know why, but having someone like Savage around to talk to somehow made him feel whole again despite the fact that a part of him recoiled instinctually from the other man’s immersion in his killer persona. While one was a Ranger and the other a Marine, they had both been in the fight together and knew the kind of toll that it took on a man. Even this scant common ground fed a hungry part of him that needed the assurance of something familiar.
“Will you give me the list, or should I turn up at the office to get it?” the operative asked and finished his coffee with a soft sigh.
“You won’t need to go into the office for this one.” He knew how much Savage hated having to pretend he was simply another employee at Pegasus. “Anja said she’ll get the list to you, as well as some last known locations for you to track them from. The people we want for these positions are the kind who know how to live off the grid, so get ready to scratch the dirt.”
“Awesome.” His grunt spoke real enthusiasm. “Tomorrow, then? So, I have time to finish your wife’s lesson?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s shooting for two now.”
Savage paused and turned to look at his improvised shooting range. “Wait, what? Is she—”
“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Anderson laughed. “I was joking about her having to shoot for me too. Wait, did she say something?”
“Let’s not do that, Colonel. Head home and get some rest. You look jetlagged. I don’t know how that’s possible, but you do.”
“Will do. I’ll see you at home, Ivy.”
“Love you, babe,” she called after him before she yanked her glasses and earmuffs on.
Chapter Three
“Run me through the situation again,” Jeremiah asked. It was weird to have Anja in his ear again after so much time without her but, like riding a bike, things came back to him remarkably quickly.
Anderson hadn’t been wrong when he’d said the potential recruits wouldn’t be easy to find. The ex-military types were usually assumed to be people who lived in the middle of nowhere with nothing but themselves, their guns, and plenty of wild game to shoot—and maybe a dog.
It was a hurtful stereotype. Many of the men and women who returned from service initially had difficulty readjusting to regular society, but most of them did it well. They had the help of family, friends, and loved ones as well as a couple of shrinks to get them through the technical shit. When they slipped into their old lives, it was with the assurance that they’d done what they could for their country and walked away with their lives and a group of unlikely friends whom they would never have met otherwise.
The small hitch, of course, was that while the stereotype of the lone ex-military man with guns in the boonies was hurtful, it was based on a grain of truth. And it was that particular grain he now followed. It wasn’t like he could ask the well-adjusted veterans to join him on his team to kill anyone who attempted to kill military people on the other side of the world. Most of them would reject the offer, mostly on the premise that they had put that life behind them when they’d left the armed forces and weren’t interested in picking it up again.
Or, maybe, they wouldn’t be willing to go up against security guards and regular folk for something that wasn’t overtly evil. On the surface, the situation they face looked a lot like a regular corporate price war with the volume turned all the fucking way to eleven. Savage wasn’t entirely sure how the minds of regular, well-adjusted people worked. While that could be something of a handicap at times, it also meant he was the perfect man to find other rejects and outcasts and evaluate whether they were the right fit for his little team.
“Anja, are you there?” he asked. She had the habit of falling silent, which could mean she had turned her microphone off to talk to somebody else wherever she was. Savage was convinced she was somewhere near the Zoo. If it could be managed, it was actually an ingenious place to set up shop if you never, ever wanted to be found. He knew even he wasn’t crazy enough to go there of his own free will, and those who would weren’t usually the brainy type.
Then again, there were a bunch of big-assed fucking alien monsters to deal with, so one had to consider that too. Walking the tightrope between crazy and genius was a tiring business.
Jeremiah pulled up to what looked like an old cabin tucked away outside Hector, a small town a little under two hours from Little Rock, Arkansas. He already knew what to expect before he drove in. Small town folks looked out for each other and disliked city folk. He knew he reeked of city folk so anyone who looked at him would do so with a glare or a scowl. Their first instinct wasn’t to trust someone like him.
Come on, guys. He’d have to work hard to avoid voicing his frustrations. Still, an inward vent might help him move past it and focus. It’s the twenty-first century. Get with the times and try to understand that not everyone is out to rob and cheat you.
Although their instincts were probably dead-on in his case. It really was best to not trust him in particular. Almost everyone else who visited, though, likely had good intentions and didn’t need to deal with their hostility.
Directions were hard to come by, but he didn’t need the directions so much as to get a feel of what the man was like. He was born in the area, everyone told him. His daddy fought in the Vietnam War and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Terry Mixon was a chip off the old block but didn’t get half the recognition his daddy did. Whispers were that it was because he was black ops, and all the recognition he received had to be kept under wraps.
There was also considerable suspicion about the government, it seemed. Once again, in that instance, their instincts were dead-on.
The home had been in Mixon’s family since the fifties, apparently, and the man had kept up with the times. Water pipes and electricity that didn’t require a diesel generator made sure it was a modern house for a modern man. He assumed from his resumé that his target knew how to live with less, but simply because he could didn’t mean he enjoyed it.
A minute or two in his SUV outside the front gave him a fair impression of the man. It was a squat, single-story house and well-maintained, which clearly indicated that the man didn’t spend all his time with his guns. The woodwork was recently redone, and the varnish couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks old. Preparing for the winter was a serious business around there. It all looked well-done, crisp but not too showy. Nothing was carved into the wood to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
Either this Terry Mixon had hired himself a professional for the work, or he’d done it himself. Either way, it was a good sign. He wouldn’t have to talk to someone who hadn’t been around people in decades.
Jeremiah made his way to the house with a briefcase in his hand. The front door opened as he reached the front steps, and a tall, gangly-looking man with his blond hair still cut to the military standard one inch on the top and shaved on the side stepped out to meet him. He wore sturdy boots, thick jeans, a checkered shirt, and a heavy sheepskin jacket—heavy enough to keep a weapon concealed, but there was no gun in the man’s hands.
“I’m not buying anything,” Mixon said in an accent that showed his roots in the area but also his time spent abroad. “If you’re selling, that is.”
“I wouldn’t drive all the fucking way out here if I wanted to sell you something.” He smiled as he approached the door. A cool sense of sizing him up glinted in the man’s eyes but with no look of hostility. He was taller than his visitor and with a leaner build.
“I’m Jeremiah Savage. A pleasure to meet you.” He paused and extended his hand.
The man frowned at his hand for a moment and seemed almost confused by the gesture before he took it. “Terry Mixon,” he grunted, his grip firm. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that kind of language around me.”
“Language?” Jeremiah asked but almost immediately, he realized what he was referring to. “Oh, right. I’ll keep it in mind.”
>
Mixon nodded curtly and stepped aside to allow him entry. The inside matched the outside. Everything looked well-made and reliable, but there was a decided lack of decoration. No paintings hung on the wall, for one thing. Everything was clean and ordinary enough not to call attention to itself and lacked sufficient detail to make it memorable.
He had always lived under the impression that a man’s home was an accurate representation of his mind. By those standards, Mixon was neat, industrious, and didn’t much care for unnecessary bullshit.
“Where’d you serve?” the man asked as he followed him inside. A beagle trotted up the stairs, turned to give the visitor a look, and huffed a soft bark before he continued in the way older dogs did. He still looked fairly healthy, though.
Jeremiah turned back to Mixon and cleared his throat. “I did my first tour in the Middle East, bouncing around Iraq, Syria—the usual. I’d joined the Rangers for my second and third tours and went all over the world with them. After that, I took time off but rejoined and well… I can’t really talk about it.”
His host nodded. “I understand. Can I get you something? Well water’s all I have. Would you like some?”
“I’m good, thanks,” he replied. He wasn’t sure how to talk to someone like Mixon. The man seemed reserved, much like most snipers were, which made it difficult to discern what he really thought. “I told you that I’m not here to sell you anything, but what I am here to do is offer you a job. I’ve seen your resume. It’s fu—seriously impressive.”
A smile quirked on the man’s face at the attempt to keep his vocabulary in check. “Did anything in particular stand out?”
“Well, there was that time you engaged in a heated shootout from fifteen hundred yards out,” he replied and folded his arms. “You laid out in the middle of a war-torn town, hid in the rubble for about three days while you waited for the convoy to spring their trap, and you made sure your boys had support of their own. When the time was right, you picked the insurgents apart from a long way out, to the point where they tried to eliminate you with the mortars they brought and almost completely ignored the convoy that cruised through. That was impressive.”
Mixon nodded. His expression indicated that he wanted to hear more but was unwilling to participate in the conversation. Jeremiah paused and wondered briefly if it had been a mistake to turn the offer of water down. He pressed on.
“I heard they had a thirty-thousand-dollar bounty on you in Burma at one point when they sent you in to help with the DEA operations in that area,” he continued and managed to avoid scratching his jaw lest he look awkward. He needed to appear in control. “You stayed for six months and made sure that none of the drug lords operating in the area got anywhere near any of the windows. From what I saw, you took your longest shot out there—a little over eighteen hundred yards out. Being that close to sea level and with the kind of humidity down there, it was one hell of a shot.”
The other man nodded. “You’ve done your homework, I’ll give you that. Not many people were privy to what happened in Myanmar.”
“Well, let’s say that the SEALs weren’t the only ones called in to support that operation.” He grinned. “Look, I won’t sugar-coat it for you. The work I have will be dirty and off the books. You’ll be paid, of course. I approached you because you seemed like the kind of man who didn’t mind doing bad things to bad people, and that’s the kind of man I want on my team.”
His host stared him coldly in the eye for a moment. He had the kind of chilling glare that could easily make drug lords across the world break out into a sweat. Suddenly, he cleared his throat and looked away.
“What kind of bad people?” he asked and wandered over to the kitchen with his visitor following. A small gas stove stood in the corner, but the area boasted no extravagant appliances or furniture—a modern electric heating plate, a fridge, and a table with two seats. All had been cleaned meticulously.
“The kind that gets people killed in the Zoo,” Jeremiah replied. He withdrew a file from the briefcase and set it on the kitchen table, leaving it there. “Testing weapons and suits of armor out there in the jungle. Reports from people I trust indicate that they have tested them on marines and grunts as well as the local wildlife.”
“The Zoo…” Mixon filled a glass with water before he turned to face him. “I’ve heard that place is pretty darn deadly without anyone shooting at you as well. Have you ever been there?”
“I have not,” he replied and reminded himself that honesty was his best choice in this kind of situation. He talked to a man who deliberately kept his life simple, but that by no means meant that he was a simple man. “Between you, me, and your dog, I don’t think I’d survive for very long in there.”
“Between you, me, and Buster up there?” The sniper walked over to the file and his fingers skimmed the plain red plastic. “Me neither.”
Jeremiah nodded. “The man who foots the bill is a former colonel and Marine recon before that. He’s been there, and he’s the one who came back with stories about what Pegasus is doing there and with a vision to put a stop to it. The company had numerous ties with military contractors, which is why he and one of the scientists involved, Dr. Courtney Monroe, needed help from someone like me. It turns out that even someone like me needs help from a man like you.”
Mixon nodded.
“You won’t find anything if you research Jeremiah Savage,” he added as his gaze swept the room and noted a couple of hidden cameras. Was that the reason why he’d come in there? “And I’m reasonably sure you won’t find anything on my face, but you’re welcome to try. You will find something on James Anderson, though, and Dr. Monroe. You don’t need to trust me, but you can trust them. You’ll find a card with a number in there if you think this is the job for you.”
“What kind of deadline are we talking?” he asked as his visitor turned toward the exit.
“We’ll have operations to run by Monday next week, or so I’ve been told.” Jeremiah still tried to keep his narrative as honest as possible. “We’ll need your answer before then.”
The other man merely nodded, already absorbed in the file. The conversation was over, and it seemed clear that there would be no commitment—positive or negative—from him right away. And that, once he made his decision, it would be final.
Jeremiah had been read into Mixon’s file, thanks to Anja’s efforts to dig it out of the DOD’s servers. He remembered his own time in Burma’s humid climate and the names they gave the various American teams that had been brought in to help with the country’s opioid epidemic. There couldn’t be any official interference, of course, but the country’s own intelligence services had been read into the operations and approved of them. Nothing overt could be done, but with the Rangers cutting into the supply and the Navy taking out most of their leaders for six months, the cartels were eventually crippled to the point where the local law enforcement could work again.
He’d never known any names outside his own unit except for the tales he’d heard of the man locals called the Saim Nghaat—literally, the falcon, although one of the men he’d talked to said that the less literal translation read “death from above.”
For a sniper, he had to imagine it was something of a compliment.
Based on that alone, he was willing to hire him. But the man apparently had principles—the kind that would keep him from operating without a cause to follow. Jeremiah could only hope that destroying an organization responsible for the deaths of fellow soldiers sent into a dangerous jungle would count. He wasn’t overly hopeful, but as long shots went, the risk to reward ratio was good enough to merit an attempt to bring him on board.
The no-cursing would be a problem, he mused as he stepped into his car. He grinned when Mixon took a picture of the vehicle with his phone—or the plates, probably. They wouldn’t get him anything as it was rental, but it was good to know he was thorough.
“Okay.” He started the car and accelerated down the driveway. “Where to next, A
nja?”
“Well, the next name on the list is in Chicago,” she replied. “Are you sure he’ll take the job?”
“Sure? No,” Jeremiah replied. “Reasonably hopeful? Also no. But he’s one of the best when it comes to long-distance negotiations, and I already know he’s a beast in urban environments.”
“A beast to help the savage?” the Russian asked. “How fucking poetic.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts.” He laughed. “The guy will have us saying ‘fudge’ and ‘gosh-darn it’ before too long, mark my words.”
He continued to laugh when all he could hear was Anja making like she was about to barf.
Chapter Four
One might think that getting someone away from one of the most dangerous jungles in the world would be an easy task. Or, if not easy, then at least not one that required an inordinate degree of convincing for the parties involved. Charles had never been within a thousand miles of the place himself but considering that a majority of the companies and foundations he was a part of acquired their business out of the Zoo, it was his job to know how bad things were there. The consensus was that things were bad and looking to get worse.
But no, it appeared that Dr. Courtney Monroe had spent so much time there that she didn’t want to leave. Still, that might have been because she was a part of a small start-up in the area and, from all appearances, had a personal tie to the people who ran…whatever that company’s name was.
“Heavy Metal, right,” he grumbled under his breath as his assistant rushed in with new papers for him to scrutinize. Courtney, as it turned out, wouldn’t return anytime soon. Despite how many connections he had, he doubted it would be sufficient to persuade someone to fulfill a contract out there. Besides, some poor unfortunate souls had already tried to eliminate her a couple of times and had been beaten into submission—and extinction, for most of them.