Direct Action - 03 (9 page)

Suddenly, the woman stood straight up and turned towards him.

Deckard froze.

“What the fuck do you think you are fucking doing you stupid cocksucker?” she asked him.

His jaw hit the ground.

“Get your dick beaters in the air where I can see them. What the fuck are you doing over there?” The voice coming through the burka didn't match anything Deckard had expected, to say the least, but it was a woman's voice. “Hey fucker, I'm talking to you.”

Suddenly the crackle of a radio sounded under the burka.

“Got you good this time,” Bill's voice said over the radio. Laughter could be heard coming over the net.

“Very funny asshole,” the burka clad woman said. “Who is this needle dick you sent down here to hide in the bushes?”

“He's the new guy,” Bill answered. “Whatever.”

Deckard was pissed.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked the woman.

“Who the fuck
am I
?” she answered as if she was insulted. “I'm the one who has been pulling overwatch on your fucking objective for twenty-four hours, dick face. I confirmed that Muhammad what-ever-the-fuck was bedding down there. Then I walked through the night to secure your fucking extraction,” she practically screamed. “That's who I fucking am, so who the fuck are you?”

“Just a trigger puller told to do a job,” he answered honestly.

“And like a true meathead you proved to be very good at following orders. Good for you. Just squat there in the bushes and try not to piss me off any more than you have already.”

“Yes ma'am,” Deckard said as he rolled his eyes. This was getting stupid.

Exhausted, Deckard sat on the edge of the stream with his feet in the water. The woman kicked the pots into the water and cursed at him some more. They sat silently for a few minutes, Deckard unable to discern anything about her through the mesh eye window in the burka. A few minutes later the rest of the team arrived and sat down alongside the stream. The tactically correct answer was to push into the thicket and maintain a security perimeter but that didn't seem to concern Liquid Sky.

“What the fuck was that?” the woman asked.

“C'mon Nadeesha, it was just a joke,” Rick laughed.

“And how far would you have let that joke go before that pussy sunk a knife into my back?”

She was pissed, balling up the burka and throwing it into the stream. Underneath, she wore spandex shorts and a loose t-shirt. That and a MP-5k sub-machine gun. Deckard's eyes went wide. Her skin was dark like someone from southern India, but she had almost Caucasian features and large brown eyes. The woman, Nadeesha, busted him too, seeing the look in his eyes as she swung around to point at him in her fury. She paused for a split second, also surprised by the expression on his face.

She was beautiful and none of it made sense to him.

“Fuck all you guys,” Nadeesha spat. “I quit.”

“Bullshit,” Zach laughed.

“Yeah, that is like the fifth time you've quit,” Paul said.

“We pay you way too much for you to quit,” Bill reminded her. “Speaking of which, where the fuck is our extract.”

“He should be here any minute,” she said shaking her head. “Where did you find this peckerwood?” Nadeesha asked while cocking her chin towards Deckard.

“Craigs List,” Bill said.

“What the fuck.”

Just then, the janga truck pulled up, the driver wearing a big, toothy grin. Another successful mission and another big pay day for him. One by one, Liquid Sky crammed back into the secret compartment in the back. Nadeesha scowled at Deckard as there was limited space inside and she had to sit next to him. The truck started to move, and while the door was still cracked open, Rick passed out the remaining bottles of water, then locked the door shut.

Five hours later they arrived back on FOB Chapman where they discreetly unloaded and jumped on an awaiting CASA airplane heading to Kabul. Bill had paid the janga truck driver in cash, which he happily accepted. The plane touched down in Kabul, and an hour later the entire six-man and one-woman team flew out on an international flight.

Meanwhile, in southern Afghanistan, the drug trafficking organization they had hit during the night decided to retaliate. Tied into the Taliban, they called in fighters from all over the province, as well as insurgents from as far as Pakistan.

For the next few weeks they set up ambushes and IEDs alongside the main roads that weaved through their territory. Without any suspects in the hit on the drug lords' compound, and the murder of him and his entire family, the Taliban simply assumed that the Americans were involved and struck back against whatever Americans they could find.

Within six days their IED's and ambushes had killed four American soldiers. Private First Class Nelson, Specialist Rodriguez, Private First Class Thomas, and First Sergeant Harper were all returned to the United States in flag-draped caskets. A dozen others were flown to Ramstein Air Force base and then to Walter Reed with critical injuries.

6

The entire Liquid Sky element was passed out as they flew commercial air to Germany, and then on to Italy. They had changed out of their mission clothes and into civilians provided by the staff at FOB Chapman. The team was still bleary eyed as they boarded a private aircraft in Milan to their final destination. Deckard tried to discern where they were going, but found no indication and no one was telling him. Rick, Zach, and Paul bought some hard liquor in the duty free shop before taking off, pounded a couple shooters of vodka or whiskey and passed right back out. The others just gave Deckard the cold shoulder. Ramon watched an in-flight movie for a few minutes before falling back asleep. Nadeesha looked at Deckard like he was lower than dog shit before she drifted off to sleep.

Tough crowd, Deckard thought to himself. Before long, he fell asleep as well. They were all exhausted from the operation and Deckard was especially jet lagged from bouncing between time zones.

He came awake to the sound of laughing and screaming. After their cat nap, the Liquid Sky team had taken to watching another in-flight movie in their Gulfstream aircraft. It looked like the comedy movie,
Superbad
was keeping them entertained. Zach and Rick were giggling like school girls. Paul recited the movie line for line in a never-ending stream of commentary. Nadeesha kept to herself, flipping through a copy of
Flashbang
magazine.

Uninterested in the movie, Deckard wished he had a book to read, but he had always been someone who was comfortable with his own thoughts, if restless in his actions. Sitting around with nothing to do over long periods of time made him uncomfortable, but he knew how to manage it. There was an onboard refrigerator, so he helped himself to a bottle of water.

Deckard watched out the window as they landed several hours later. The terrain was fairly flat with low-laying vegetation and blacktop roads crisscrossing throughout. Disoriented, Deckard had no idea where they were. They landed at a substantial modern airport with a large terminal complex. The private jet taxied off towards the private hangers where a white van was waiting for them. Everyone piled in. If this was another operation, it didn't feel like it.

They exited from the private aircraft area's gate and out into the countryside. The road was surrounded on both sides by green rolling hills, sugarcane coming right up to the edge of the pavement and pressing out into the street. Palm trees also dotted the landscape. As they drove through the outskirts of a city, Deckard spotted a Hindu temple and knew he must be somewhere in India. Then he saw a Christian church and finally a Muslim mosque.

Now, he was really confused.

Further inland were green-covered mountains stretching up to touch the blue sky.
Deep into the stalks of sugarcane he also saw a few abandoned factories and other structures. It wasn't until he saw a billboard in French for a cellphone service that he figured it out. They were in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean.

The van swerved through an intersection and passed the entrance to several four-star hotels. They got dropped off right alongside the ocean. Waves broke against the shore and the sun was already sinking into a blue and purple sky. The smell of salt carried on the breeze. It was a residential area with bungalows lining the beach.

“Party is at my place tonight,” Bill announced. “See you then.”

The team bombshelled in both directions down the street.

“You come with me Deckard,” Bill said to the new guy on the team. “I have to give you the key to Henderson's old place.”

Bill led him on a stone path to his beach house. The Liquid Sky team leader was so tall that he had to duck under the roof on the back deck. Deckard spotted a security guard roaming the premises. Punching a number into the keypad on the door, Bill led him inside. Like the other bungalows, it was a one-story deal, but spread out with plenty of interior space. The kitchen and living room was wide open. He had pool tables and an indoor bar. Through the sliding glass doors, Deckard could see an extensive gym out on the front deck, which was littered with kettlebells and 45-pound bumper plates.

Opening a drawer under the kitchen counter, Bill shuffled through some odds and ends until he found a key ring and handed it to Deckard.

“You are two houses down, between Rick and Zach. We own this whole row of eight houses on the shore. Whatever Henderson had stowed away inside the house is yours I guess. No one back in the States gave a shit about him. Keep it or throw it in the trash; I don't care. He traveled light anyway so it won't be much.”

“All right.”

“Our rules here are pretty basic. We work hard; we play hard. Mandatory team party tonight just like after every op we do. PT is on your own, but we usually work out together. When our optempo slows down you can catch a plane to wherever you want until I recall you, but I'm not sure when that will be. Shit has been picking up the last month with no sign of slowing down.”

“It's a dangerous world.”

“And they need us to stop it from all coming apart at the seams. We'll work on getting you set up with a bank account here on the island later on so you can get direct deposits. Mauritius is a tax haven and we got a good set up here.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Go do what you have to do and I'll see you in a few hours.”

As Deckard turned away, Bill had one final item to add.

“Deckard, remember that you are still on probationary status until I decide if I have any use for you or not. There are some pipe hitters out there that just don't have what it takes to be on a team like this. We'll see if you got it or not. In the meantime, we practice strict OPSEC. Say what you need to say inside our team areas. I have this place under 24-hour guard, and our houses are routinely swept for bugs. Ramon will hook you up with a secure cell phone tomorrow. Aside from that, nothing gets said outside these walls. Do nothing that will draw excess attention to our operation here.”

“Goes without saying.”

“I hope so.”

Deckard shut the screen door behind him on his way out and walked over to his new crash pad. As he continued to scope out the area, he had to admit to himself that he could have done much worse. In fact, he
had
done much worse. Sleeping in run-down safehouses in Lebanon, crapping in plastic bags in a spider hole on the Iranian border, or sleeping in a jungle hammock in Colombia had almost became a way of life for him. This seaside secret agent stuff was a whole new world. There were some things that these former SEALs were definitely getting right.

Turning the key in the knob, Deckard stepped inside his bungalow. It wasn't as big as Bill's place, but there was more than enough living space for several people inside. It was furnished with chairs, couches, a flat-screen TV, and everything else a guy would want at a beach house. There was a full bathroom and another shower stall outside with a hose for washing the sand off before coming back inside after a swim.

Henderson.

The Liquid Sky member that Nikita had killed in Pakistan.

The operator whose corpse Deckard had picked over in the back of a van looking for intelligence information. Now he was in the dude's house, literally filling his shoes on the team. The other team members seemed resentful of Deckard, not because they took exception to him replacing their former team mate. They actually seemed completely ambivalent about Henderson's death. Liquid Sky was just pissed that they had to break in a new guy and didn't trust him any farther than they could throw him.

It was still a surreal moment.

Deckard found Henderson's iPod on the counter, where it had been laying with the headphones attached since he left on a one-way flight to Karachi. It was loaded with heavy-metal music like Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, and Megadeth. They were all sterile missions apparently. He had left everything behind. Deckard continued to walk around and examine the layout of the house, conscious of the fact that Liquid Sky probably had hidden cameras installed so they could keep tabs on their newest recruit.

In the bathroom, Henderson's toothbrush leaned diagonally in a glass. The toothpaste tube was squeezed in the middle, the inconsiderate bastard. At least the cabinet was stocked with toilet paper. In the bed room there were some dress shirts. Deckard was still wearing the Walmart clothes that Liquid Sky had waiting for them on their way back through FOB Chapman. He found a shirt which was probably small on Henderson to show off his beach muscles, but would fit Deckard normally.