Yankee looked over at him. “Been in worse places. Still sucks.”
“Shut up and get some sleep,” Oscar shot back.
At least with the sleeping accommodations not providing for any privacy, they wouldn’t have to listen to Pandora and her horndogs sounding off during the night.
* * * *
The next morning, Yankee awoke around dawn to the smell of eggs being cooked. When he looked, he spotted Pandora standing at the small gas stove the house came equipped with.
Since they had to share a two-hole outhouse for a latrine, Yankee opted to walk a few yards away from the house, in the shadows of a dying orange tree, to relieve himself.
“Don’t ya know better than to piss where ya eat?” Roscoe teased him from a nearby tree.
“Speak for yourself.” He shook and zipped before turning. Roscoe and Niner were finishing up watch. “I’ll get Oscar up and grab chow and we’ll relieve you guys.”
“Thanks. I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
“Quiet?”
“Yeah. Spooky, in a way.”
“You’re used to quiet.” Hell, they’d spent time in some of the most desolate, godforsaken places on the planet in the past four years.
“This is a different kind of quiet,” Roscoe said. “Like if you try to disturb it, it’ll smack you down.”
“You’re from Brooklyn. This is a different way of life here.”
“I guess.” He walked away.
Yankee headed inside and washed his hands in the kitchen sink. Pandora flashed him a quick smile, but didn’t speak, not wanting to disturb those who were still asleep. He gave her a nod before turning to survey the living room.
He gave Pandora credit, she could cook, and she had made great progress in the self-defense and fighting lessons they were all now giving her. She’d quickly gotten up to speed with Doc and Tango, and the others had pitched in to help teach her different skills, as well as challenge her abilities. She’d be able to hold her own against an average person, and she was developing wicked skills with a knife.
There was a shower located just outside the backdoor, including a warm water tank from a solar heater. He considered grabbing one, then decided against it since he was going on watch shortly anyway.
Picking his way through the men sleeping on the floor, he nudged Oscar in the ribs with the toe of his boot. When his brother lifted his head, Yankee tapped his wrist.
That was all the info Oscar needed. He nodded and sat up with a yawn before getting up and heading outside. Presumably to find his own tree.
After chow, they grabbed weapons and relieved Roscoe and Niner.
“Roscoe said the quiet freaks him out a little,” Yankee told his brother.
Oscar shrugged. “You’re the one who hated the whole country, sight unseen, over a case of food poisoning back in Philly,” he reminded him. “I wouldn’t go talking smack about someone feeling unsettled in the quiet of a place.”
They studied the unfamiliar landscape surrounding them. Grey light gently filtered through a ground-level mist filling the citrus grove. The entire farm lay nestled in a fertile valley southwest of the Colima Peak volcano, but they couldn’t see far enough through the morning mist to spot the mountains in the distance to either side of their current location.
“I don’t know,” Yankee said. “I have a feeling, too.”
“Seriously? Knock it off.”
“Just feels like something’s going to happen.”
“Maybe the volcano’s gonna blow us to smithereens,” Oscar teased.
Yankee just glared at him.
“You know I trust your gut,” Oscar said, “but this time you’re wrong. You’re just pissed off we’re in Mexico.”
“Yeah, but that’s not it.”
Oscar studied him for a moment, his expression turning sober. “You think we’re being watched?”
“No. I can’t explain it.”
“Well, until you can, figure it out with your yap shut.” Oscar turned and headed through the mist to walk a perimeter around their section. Somewhere out there Uni and Victor were patrolling the other side of the property.
Yankee drew in a deep breath.
The faint scent of mixed citrus, hay, cowshit. The only sounds disturbing the morning were the occasional bird, the soft lowing of a cow, and the intermittent, faint breeze trying to gain a foothold and rustling treetops somewhere close by.
No vehicles. No machines. No people.
An ocean away, Kite was ravaging the Asian continent and spreading.
Here…
If he didn’t know what was going on outside the bucolic valley, he could pretend those horrors were merely the stuff of nightmares and not something he’d been actively recruited to fight. While he enjoyed what he did, enjoyed making a difference, and was good at what he did through natural abilities and extensive training, he wouldn’t deny he wished his services and skill sets weren’t required by the world.
Maybe one day.
Then again, none of them were guaranteed a “one day.” Especially not with a Kite vaccine still a theory and not a reality.
Okay, so I guess there could be worse places to be right now.
Chapter Nine
Doc came looking for Oscar and Yankee both an hour later. Oscar didn’t need to ask what he wanted. He held up his left hand, pinky finger out, so Doc could administer the stick test.
“Ever think there will be a day we won’t need this?” he asked Doc.
“I sure as hell hope so. It’ll only happen if Q and his cohorts are successful.” He studied the strip and finally nodded. “Clear.”
“Being a pincushion sucks.”
“I know, believe me. At least you don’t have to do it to yourself.” He moved off in search of Yankee.
As the sun rose and the morning breeze quickened, the mist cleared. Other than the dying and dead trees in the citrus grove, the area looked pretty. Oscar had made his way to the outer edge of the grove, to where the cow pasture started.
Before Kite, Oscar had missed Philly. Missed being in a city where if you woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to go out for a bite to eat, you could.
Missed their mom. Missed their cousins and other friends and family.
Neither one of them had been able to maintain the insane GPA in high school needed to land college scholarships, and their mom couldn’t afford to pay to put them through school. They’d decided the military, which would pay them to earn a scholarship, would be their best option.
They didn’t mind fighting terrorists all over the world. They liked knowing they were clearing the way for a better future. They’d re-upped, and then ended up in the SOTIF program and part of the Drunk Monkeys, which paid pretty damn well, all things considered. They opted to stick with the military for a while longer, which would mean better bennies when they got out. They could go to college later.
Then fucking Kite happened. China getting pissy and nuking North Korea happened.
And any hopes Oscar had for them being able to get out of the military in two years, as they’d originally planned, shot straight out the fucking window.
No, the military wouldn’t force them to stay in once their latest hitch ended, but neither of them would leave the other eighteen men of the Drunk Monkeys high and dry like that.
He suspected their mother was safe. When they’d last talked to her, she had just sold the small walk-up she’d lived in for the past ten years and was moving out into the suburbs with her brother and his wife.
So now the brothers just had to keep themselves, their fellows in the unit, and Pandora and Q alive.
Especially Q.
At lunchtime they were relieved by Juju and Delta and headed inside. Papa and Alpha sat at the small table, a different map spread out before them.
“What now?” Yankee asked.
“Three days until I make the uplink check,” Papa said. “I need to figure out where best to do it from.”
“What about Coli
ma?” Oscar asked. “Anyone scout the town yet?”
“Lima’s out now,” Papa told him. “He’s scanning for sat-link signals. Bubba said this is the area where our next target is. When he reports back, we’ll have a better idea what to do.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Oscar said. “I meant strategic recon.”
“He’s doing that, too.” He looked up at Oscar. “Go grab showers. Both of you. Everyone else has.”
“Is that a hint?” Yankee asked.
“You both smell,” Alpha said, a teasing grin on his face. “More like Stinky Monkeys than Drunk Monkeys.”
* * * *
A couple of hours later, Lima returned with his report.
“No sign of the signal we’re looking for. Doesn’t mean he’s not there, just means he wasn’t active when I was looking. There are people in the town with sat-links, but none of them match the signature I’m looking for. And they all seem to be civvie connections that have been around for a while. They all showed up on a database I skimmed through.”
Papa slowly nodded, but didn’t respond immediately. “What are we looking at in terms of the town.”
“Small, mostly rural. Large enough, with a fairly big main road, that we probably won’t raise too much suspicion if we make our way through and don’t look like we’re poking around too much. But I’ll tell you what, it’s no Melbourne. We can’t melt into the surroundings here. The old downtown area a few miles up the road is pretty much deserted and abandoned. Looks like earthquake and fire damage and everyone gave up and left without bothering to rebuild.”
Papa pulled up another map on his tablet. “I’m thinking Guadalajara for the scheduled uplink. What do you think?”
“Based on what I saw in Colima, that might not be a bad idea. That, or you could always go back to the coast, to Manzanillo.”
“I’d rather not. We came through there once already. I’d rather not retrace our steps and call more attention to ourselves, if possible.”
“So what do we do now?” Pandora asked.
“We sneak around,” Papa said. “See if we can find McInnis before then. If not, I’ll contact Bubba during the uplink and ask him for further advice.”
* * * *
Three days later, Papa opted to travel alone all the way to Guadalajara. He left before dawn that morning, to go make the secure satellite uplink and retrieve the info drop that would hopefully be awaiting him there. Not knowing if there would be a trap set or not, he wanted the others to have enough time to get away in case trouble happened.
Yankee noted that Alpha didn’t appear too pleased with that declaration, but he didn’t argue with the major, either.
When Papa returned late that evening, he looked exhausted and pissed off.
And not necessarily in that order.
He gathered everyone around so he only had to tell the tale once.
“Good news and bad news,” he announced without fanfare. “The good news is, we’re not officially on the radar yet. As far as the US military is concerned, it’s business as usual with us. The bad news is, we are on someone’s radar. We just don’t know who. The spook picked up traffic from the grapevine. SOTIF6 was called in to assist SOTIF7 in Oz. They finally determined we were no longer there, but they don’t have any clue where we’ve gone or how we left the continent.”
“That’s good then, right?” Pandora asked.
“Yes and no. Because our official status as filed by Gen. Arliss remains ‘on assignment.’ He’s not required to answer to anyone except the President herself about our whereabouts, and apparently no one’s asked him that yet. But now it looks like there’s someone prowling around at the lower end of the food chain, asking questions and trying to find backend access to files they have no reason to access.”
“Does that mean you know who it is?” Alpha asked him.
“No. The spook believes it’s at least two levels below Arliss, but not at the very bottom. This isn’t some clerk randomly poking around in shit and being nosy. This is someone with a little pull and field experience with an advanced level of security access.”
“But he’s not sure?” Yankee asked.
“No.”
“Dammit,” Yankee grumbled.
“But there’s good news,” Papa added.
Pandora reached over and thumped the commander’s arm. “You going to tell us or make us guess?”
Yankee snickered. Maybe she didn’t want to be treated like a little sister, but that’s pretty much how the rest of them thought of her. They also enjoyed watching her verbally spar with their CO in a way they wouldn’t dream of despite his easygoing nature.
“One of the things that took me so long,” Papa said, “was that the spook gave me a couple of contacts to use to bounce chum through under a fake account he’d set up for me.”
“What exactly does that mean?” she asked. “Chum. The spook said that, too.”
“Tossing information out on the water to see who bites,” Doc told her.
“Oh. Okay. Carry on, daddy-o.”
Yankee, as well as at least three other men, disguised their amusement with fake coughing fits.
Q jumped in. “Did you access the contact site like we discussed?”
“I’m getting there. One thing at a time. I obtained another connection through all that, and they want a meeting.”
Amusement immediately turned to concern as discontent rumbled through the men.
“No offense,” Alpha said, “but that’s a damned stupid plan.”
“You haven’t heard the details yet,” he countered. “I didn’t say the Drunk Monkeys were going to be meeting with someone.” He detailed the plan. The spook had, in the info drop, also sent along everyone on record in Arliss’ food chain. From officers to clerks. It wasn’t difficult to rule out some of the lowest level wonks. But it gave them a narrower range of suspects from which to choose. Four men and two women.
Including their pictures.
The chum Papa had thrown out included a fictional operative who wanted a payment and information exchange in return for revealing the whereabouts of the Drunk Monkeys. Someone who’d already heard some rumors and claimed to have a bead on the unit.
“They bought it?” Alpha asked.
“I think so. And my bet is the mole is so well embedded into the food chain that they won’t risk sending someone else to the meeting once they’ve arranged it.”
“Arranged where and when?”
“Mexico City, but no when yet. Told him I’d get back to him with specifics.”
“That scratches off two more potential moles,” Pandora quipped.
“Not necessarily. I used ‘he’ generically.”
“So that gives us time to set up a sting in Mexico City,” Yankee said. “That place is large. Lots of places to hide. Big population. Shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“We’re not sending the whole team in,” Papa told him. “When we finally do arrange it, it’s going to be just a couple of people. CQK, and out again.”
Pandora frowned, but before she could ask it, Tango said, “Capture, Question, Kill.”
Yankee gave her credit. From what she’d already been through, her hide had toughened somewhat. She didn’t even look disturbed by hearing that explanation. “Oh. Thanks.”
“Hopefully, that mole is self-contained and we won’t find him—or her—reporting to anyone else inside Arliss’ food chain,” Papa continued. “If not, we’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
He looked at Q. “To answer your question, yes, I did. And no, no contact.” He turned back to the rest of the group. “One better, Bubba came through.”
He smiled and opened his tablet, showing them a detailed satellite map of the area around Colima. “We’ve been doing this backward,” he said. “We’ve been looking for McInnis hiding out somewhere near Colima.”
Yankee’s question mirrored the confusion on Pandora’s face. “I thought that was the point?”
Pandora voi
ced what the others were no doubt thinking. “Duh?”
Papa’s smile broadened. He scrolled a few miles south and west of the old downtown area, northeast of their current location, before he pinch-zoomed the screen. A building came into view. “We’ve been trying to find a hideout that would conceal someone in the middle of nowhere. And we’ve been searching the damn area looking for a specific sat-link signature, as well as sat-link signals that were out of place. What we should have been doing is looking in plain sight.”
He panned the satellite shot so the front of the building came into view.
They all let out a knowing, “Ohhh.”
The Compassion Médicale Internationale health clinic. They’d seen the small building while traveling through the area, but hadn’t paid much attention to it. They’d actually made a point to stay away from it, because they didn’t want to be around any large groups of people.
And they’d disregarded the sat-link signals they’d picked up from there. The world-wide charity used sat-links in all their clinics.
“Sonofabitch,” Doc said. “You think he just walked right in and set up shop and is piggy-backing through their signals?”
Papa switched screens to show a PDF Bubba had sent him, copies of e-mail communiques from the clinic’s nurse to CMI’s American regional headquarters in Dallas. E-mails from several weeks back, inquiring when a replacement doctor would arrive.
No responses to the nurse’s e-mails, but then she’d e-mailed them just a couple of days earlier, letting them know a doctor had arrived.
Pandora grinned. “I knew Bubba would come through for us.”
“It looks like McInnis’ passport is under a different name than the one Q knew he’d used to leave South Korea before TMFU. Bubba tracked that original ID to South America, then put together the info.”
“So when do we go get him?” she asked.
“Tomorrow is soon enough. I want another thorough recon of the area first. I don’t want to fuck this up and have him bug out on us.”