The three looked at one another and shrugged. “What is it?”
“We need a team for an extraction. It’s not too deep of a job and you won’t be far from the gate, so you won’t have to worry about that your first time around. The job would be fifty each. Half now, half upon completion of the mission.”
“What’s the—” Charles started before Booker pushed him out of the way and said, “We’re your men.” He thrust his hand out to shake before Shira could change her mind.
“You’ll be briefed further in the morning. Meet here at zero four-thirty,” she said, then turned to leave.
“We don’t have much in the way of a kit,” the Brit told the muscle before he could follow Shira out of the bar.
He grunted and rolled his eyes. “You can get it from us this first mission. See you bright and early, gentlemen,” he said, baring his teeth in an expression that was more snarl than smile.
“What an ugly lapdog,” Walker grumbled to the man’s retreating back. He didn’t get a reaction from him.
The three looked at each other. “That could’ve been worse,” Booker hedged.
“Could’ve been better. We don’t even know what we’re doing,” Charles grumbled.
“Ah, don’t get your panties in a twist, Yankee, you’ll give people the impression that you’ve lost your bollocks,” Walker said, clapping Charles on the shoulder. “You getting scared now? Thought the Marines were tougher than that.”
Booker rolled his eyes and Charles glared.
The American punched Walker on the arm, making him wince. “Oorah, jerk.”
Chapter Three
Somewhere in the Sahara, Libya, 0400
“It’s too damn early,” Walker—Roo—said, rubbing sleep from the corners of his eyes. Charles and Booker ignored him.
The camp was mostly dark when they walked through, their shoulders hunched against the pre-dawn desert cold. They’d spent the night on canvas cots in a long tent that housed the wounded and the currently unemployed. This accommodation had been supplied to them by the helpful-for-a-price Dan.
Roo tried again. “What’s the big rush? Why zero four thirty? Why not…I don’t know, zero six hundred?”
Charles stretched his muscular arms up and out, getting out the kinks. “Who knew you Aussies were such whiners. Is it too late to trade you in?”
“Just trying to wake my brain up,” the man said.
“Wake up silently,” Booker grouched. He pulled his camo jacket tighter around his shoulders. Having the least amount of body mass of the three, he felt the cold more than they did. His body language said he wasn’t awake, but his eyes were sharp, taking in the mostly sleeping camp as they walked. He noted where the nicer area of the camp was, the tents traded up for pole barns and physical structures. He’d bet money that there were actual bunks in there. Booker hated cots, but he wasn’t going to complain about it.
The three halted in front of the closed bar. There was a note tacked to the door. Booker pulled it off the nail. “Change of plans,” he said. “We’re supposed to meet Shira at the Lampton Staging Area.”
“Where’s that?” Charles asked, taking the note from Booker.
“Looks like it’s a few streets over, toward the northwest,” Roo said.
The other two men turned to him. He shrugged and held up a tattered, hand-drawn map. “I might’ve filched this from that godawful tent we were in.”
“You stole someone’s map?” the Brit asked with a glare.
He shrugged. “The wanker didn’t seem like he was going anywhere for a while, so I took it off his hands.”
“You stole from an injured man?” Charles pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, fine. Whatever. Let’s get to the gate. We can’t screw this job up before we even start.”
Lampton’s Staging Area was in front of a large warehouse at the edge of the camp. A couple of hundred meters away across empty sand, the wall towered in the darkness.
The edge of the French Quarter rose up to meet them and the fence hunched in the gloom like a waiting predator. It was much like the second reinforced fence they had walked through to enter the Harvesters Camp. It was too dark to see yet if there was anything beyond.
A single light illuminated the Lampton Company’s logo on the side of the warehouse—a circle with the outline of a plant in the center, half the circle filled in black and the other left colorless. Several Humvees, ATVs, and other vehicles were parked in front, but there wasn’t any sign of people.
“What do you think this mission is going to be like?” Roo asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his hands hanging loosely at his side.
“I’m sure we’ll find out dreckly. I’ve experience running extraction ops, so I’m not bothered,” Booker said.
Off in the distance at the wall, a whining alarm broke the silence of the morning. The friends looked toward the gate as the yellow lights switched to flash red in time with the alert.
“What’s going on?” Roo asked.
Within a couple of minutes, five men emerged from the darkness, swearing and panting. They held another man between them as they stumbled into the camp, his body jostling on a make-shift canvas stretcher.
They halted beside the three, dropping their companion to the hard earth. Their armor was ripped, and they were covered in blood and mud from head to toe. One of the doors of the Lampton building opened and four men came out, all wearing black coveralls with the Lampton logo on the chest. They picked up the man on the stretcher to take him into the building.
Charles, Roo, and Booker watched as the stretcher crossed in front of them. The injured man moaned and gurgled. Where his left leg had been, nothing but strips of flesh remained. Blood soaked through the canvas of the stretcher, leaving a black trail. His companions staggered along behind, their eyes empty and haunted and their bodies covered in oozing cuts.
One of the original five men gave the three of them a blank, emotionless stare before he moved to follow their injured companion, never saying a word.
Roo let loose a low whistle as they passed. “Look at those poor fuckers. They just had their asses handed to them and it looks as if they’re still trying to see who’s comin’ at them.”
“Civilians,” Booker said, running a finger under his nose.
Charles rolled his shoulders.
“We’ve got this shit in the bag,” the Aussie said, cracking his knuckles. “Easy money.”
“I don’t like being over-confident, but you’re probably right. From everything we’ve seen, this camp seems full of military wannabe’s and over-zealous civilians.” Booker continued to watch the doors to the Lampton building as they closed behind the procession.
The three men shifted in the tightly packed sand. The Staging Area had returned to the placid quiet of before.
“If the job shows up, it’ll be easy money,” Roo said.
The Brit ran his finger under his nose again. “We’re early. I do have to agree, though, I’m confident in my own abilities, and if you two hold up your end, we’ll be able to set ourselves up nicely in about three months if the pay continues to be what Shira promised us. I can only imagine it’s on a sliding scale of experience.”
“Hey, man, why do you always do that?” Roo asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do what?”
“You on the white pony or something?”
“What? No. I have a deviated septum.”
“Sure.”
“I’m serious.”
“You have a deviated septum and they still let you into the military?” Charles asked. “If you have flat feet in America, you can’t enlist.”
Booker shrugged.
“It’s ʼcause all the Brits are pussies and need all the help they can get.”
Before Booker could retaliate, they heard the sound of footsteps and turned. Shira and her muscular shadow approached them. She was dressed the same as when they’d seen her the day before—black fatigues, military-grade boots, and a sharp smile that seemed to b
elong on a woman in a pencil skirt behind a desk, not one in fatigues in the middle of the desert. While her fatigues looked military, the way she wore them was almost like business attire.
The man beside her looked like he was born and bred in fatigues, and his muscles weren’t only for show. He carried himself like a weapon and his every stride screamed “deadly.”
“Gentlemen, you’re right on time,” Shira said, stopping in front of them. She looked them over, her gaze lingering on Charles again. Roo rolled his eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” they answered.
She smirked. Booker thought her smile wasn’t so much reassuring as it was conniving. “Very good,” she said. “I always love you military types. So punctual. So polite. So hopefully good at your job.”
“We try our best,” the Australian said.
“I see. Well, let’s get started, shall we? The objective of this mission is straightforward and you should have no difficulty carrying it out with your backgrounds. There is a truck that has been abandoned by a previous team in the Zoo. You are to retrieve it, contents and all, and bring it back.”
Roo and Charles glanced at one another.
“We can do that,” Booker said.
Shira smiled again. “Great. I’ll leave you in Ishmael’s capable hands. He will have you outfitted for the mission. I’ll meet you at the gate to give you final instructions.”
Shira strolled back the way she and Ishmael had come.
Ishmael watched her go, then turned to the three men. “Follow,” he instructed, leading them toward a door on the side of the Lampton building. He punched a code in and stepped through, trusting them to follow, then led them to a dark room where he entered another code. The lock clicked, and the four entered a pitch-black space. When their guide flipped the lights on, their eyes widened.
The room was chock-full of shelves and racks of weapons—grenade launchers, semi-automatic pistols, M2 Brownings, SAWs, Barrets, Uzis, and more gleamed deadly in the fluorescent light.
“Breathe it in, gentlemen,” Ishmael said, his eyes glinting.
“This where we outfit ourselves?” Roo asked.
“No, this is where we paint our nails,” the man retorted. “Take your pick but be quick about it.”
The Australian bounced forward and immediately found the stash of C-4 hiding on one of the lower shelves. Charles looked lovingly at an M4 Carbine.
“Where’s the armor?” Booker asked while the other two men chose their weapons, the table piling high with their destructive toys.
Ishmael led him to a separate area where full suits of body armor displayed on mannikins next to shelves of different sizes stood waiting. Everything was shiny and black, although some had vibrant splashes of color on the sides and down the back.
“You don’t have desert colors?”
“You aren’t going to be in the desert.”
The Brit walked to one of the mostly black sets. The armor consisted of a matte-black vest and leg guards that looked to be made of polycarbonate, all connected together with a fine interlocking material he couldn’t place but which reminded him of chainmail. The helmet swooped backward to a point, like a speed skater’s, and highlighter-yellow dots lined the sides.
“What’s this made out of?” he asked.
Ishmael shrugged. “I leave the materials up to the science nerds. Just so long as the shit doesn’t crap out and keeps the important bits protected, I don’t care. That suit there is tops.”
“Okay, we’ll take three.”
The giant led the men back to the designated company Staging Area. They wore the armor Booker had picked. Charles was too large to fit into one of the suits, so his was piecemeal. Roo, whose shoulders were wider than the rest of him, had to put together two different sizes. Ishmael mentioned something about getting the armor customized later—if they made it back from the mission.
The companions were armed to the teeth. Each of them had clipped several M34 phosphorous grenades and M67 fragmentation grenades to their belts. Roo picked up a .500 Smith and Wesson Magnum and a Carl Gustav gun with five shells. He strapped on a machete with a black blade and the edge a gleaming silver.
Charles had taken a more practical approach with a Remington 870 Modular Combat Shotgun decked out for close-quarter combat. He also chose to carry a SIG Sauer M17 and a rondel dagger.
Booker armed himself with an MP5, choosing to stick with what he knew well, which also meant he grabbed a Glock 19. At first, he’d thought knives might not be practical and wasn’t going to take any with him, but when he spotted the push daggers, he couldn’t resist taking two.
They left the weapons they got from Dan behind in a locker, liking their new toys better.
“Follow,” Shira said, stepping across the sand to the wall. Impatience bled through her demeanor as they approached the gate. Some of the sand was firm under their feet, but in other places, it was soft and churned up. Neither she nor Ishmael seemed to even notice the wall, but the newcomers were almost mesmerized by it. This was construction on a grand scale. They couldn’t make out all the details in the growing dawn, but it wasn’t a featureless face as they’d assumed. There were what looked to be doors—some quite large, although none of them looked used. There weren’t any tracks leading to them, at least.
“What’s with the doors?” Booker asked Ishmael, pointing to one large enough to drive a truck through.
“For construction, to let the equipment in and out. And people used to live in the wall, at least until a short while after the Surge,” the man said.
“The Surge?”
The man was done, however, and he didn’t answer.
They finally reached gate 04FLC, according to the sign above it. This would be their entry into the Zoo.
Shira stopped them and said, “Time’s wasting, gents. Let’s get a move on.” She passed a tablet and key fob to Booker. “Here is the key to the truck. The location has been roughly mapped out and programmed in there. Don’t expect GPS to work because it won’t. The map that’s in there should still be accurate as it was updated yesterday. I expect you to be back tonight before 19:00. You don’t want to be stuck in there overnight if you can help it.”
She stepped away after shaking their hands, the large man falling in beside her. “Have fun.”
The alarm on top of the gate started again, but instead of a harried whine, it was a low blare. The yellow lights flashed green and gate 04FLC swung open. Booker led the way with his teammates on his heels.
The alarm stopped, the gates closed, the lights returned to their yellow state.
“How do you think they’ll do?” Shira asked.
Ishmael shrugged. “I think they’re in for a surprise.”
Chapter Four
The Zoo
Gate 04FLC shut behind them with a click. They weren’t in the Zoo yet, as Charles had expected. They were in a tunnel, evidently inside the wall.
“It’s like the tunnels under Dover Castle,” Booker said, running a hand along the wall. “Where they ran Dunkirk.”
The passage ran about ten meters before they exited to open sky. Thirty meters ahead of them, another wall rose. The surface was sand but cement forms were scattered around.
The Brit turned to look back. Weapons emplacements—both automatic and manned—along the top of the wall they’d passed through had full coverage over the open space. There were signs, both pockmarks in the cement forms and burns, that they’d been used.
“Nice kill zone,” he said. “Those forms were a maze to slow down their targets. These ones here have been pushed aside so we can get in. And the entire area is covered by those weapons. Ingenious.”
“If something got here, then that something had to have gotten over that wall in front of us,” Roo said with a grunt.
“Good point,” Charles said in a whisper.
The new barrier rose ahead of them. They stood on a strip of sand about thirty meters wide that brushed along the fence they had come through.
&nbs
p; Roo saluted one of the flamethrower-carrying guards, who only glared in return. “Just trying to be friendly,” he muttered.
They crossed the open area and approached the second wall. Danger signs—more than any of them had seen before—covered the side. While the outer structure looked to be a barrier, albeit one with weapons on top, the second appeared to be dangerous in and of itself. Some of the danger signs were obvious, such as the lightning bolt. It was electrified. The rest? None of them wanted to find out.
The passage through was manned as well. Booker showed the guard their mission paperwork and they were waved through into a shorter tunnel. Evidently, the nasty surprises embedded in it did not need the massive size of the outer wall.
They emerged into another open area. This one didn’t have the maze, but there were warning signs to keep on the path. None of them were tempted to step off to find out why. Yet one more wall rose nine or ten meters high in front of them.
“They really like their walls here,” Roo muttered.
There was one more checkpoint at the gate through this one, but unlike the others, the guard manning this gate was decked out in full-body armor.
He looked over their credentials—as if they’d switched them out after the last two guards, Roo thought—then entered a code and the door slid open.
“How much do you think that guy sweats in that suit he has to wear?” the Australian asked once the door had shut behind them.
Charles and Booker didn’t bother answering. The hallway they were in was much darker than the other two passages. Only a few track lights buzzed to life, illuminating the tunnel in a faint blue glow. They walked through toward the door at the end.
A sign warned them not to open the gate if the one at the other end of the tunnel was open. Booker looked at his companions, then hit the door release. The three stepped out into the Zoo.
Forty or fifty meters of burned sand, some turned to slags of glass, stretched in front of them before plants started to claw their way to life. Some of the nearest showed signs of burns, but beyond them, the foliage rose thick and verdant.
Reprobates (The Bohica Chronicles Book 1) Page 3