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  "You said they asked for me personally?" he said, remembering that statement.

  "Indeed. They were rather impressed with the way you handled your previous operation."

  "The previous operation was a fucking shit show."

  Davies chuckled. "That may be, but apparently, they didn't think it was your fault."

  Strickland closed his eyes again, his fingers tightening on the phone. Somehow he knew he was going to regret this.

  "All right," he replied. "We're in. Let me go run it by the team and make sure they're on board, but you can pencil this in. But after this one, I need some fucking time off."

  "And you'll get it," Davies replied. "You've earned it."

  Strickland didn't even answer. He thumbed off his phone and stood there in the cold, glaring at its pale screen. He knew what he had to do next and regretted every minute of it.

  Before he had second thoughts, his fingers danced over the touchscreen buttons, punching in the familiar number.

  A few moments later, her voice answered.

  "Bill? Everything okay?"

  "Morning, sweetheart," he replied. "Everything's fine."

  Well, not quite fine. But it would be. In thirty-six hours he'd be home, a twelve hour delay, but twenty thousand dollars more in the bank, and maybe even another few months of vacation.

  But deep in his gut, where he tried to hide those things that kept him awake at night, he knew this was not going to go according to plan. When GenTech was involved, things rarely went according to plan. He suspected this one would be no different.

  #

  There had to be some kind of symbolism there, Strickland thought as he narrowed his eyes at the plump round belly of the full moon floating starkly against the pitch background of the starless night sky.

  Down below them the Carpathian Mountains drifted past as the MH-6 Little Bird skimmed the surface of the peaks, meandering northeast, moving in near silence.

  "Black helicopters sent by the NSA... where are those conspiracy theorists when you want 'em?" Hudson asked, raising his voice over the rapid thumping of the helicopter blades just above his head. Strickland craned his neck back, bracing against the whipping wind.

  "So what are you going to do with your cut, Hud?" he screamed back at his squad mate. They perched on an exterior bench on the left side of the Little Bird with the wind beating at them as they cruised in the cool air towards Slovakia.

  "Fuck, man," Hudson barked. "I'm saving for college, right?"

  Strickland laughed out loud, shaking his head.

  "Noise discipline," came the low voice in his headset. Mora Krieger called back from the co-pilot's chair, her voice cracking in among the static. "Coming up on approach. Going to be going in fast, low and preferably quiet, all right, motormouths?"

  "Yes'm," Hudson replied, snapping off a crisp salute that Krieger couldn't see.

  "Asshole."

  "Cruz, Lundquist, you hear that? Shut your yaps, shit's about to get real!" Hudson yelled.

  The other two operatives were on a bench on the opposite side of the small, round aircraft, holding tight, weapons strapped around their bodies. Built for quick and quiet infiltration, the Little Bird was what they required, but as contractors, they were a bit more accustomed to larger transports.

  "When the fuck did we end up back in the fucking Army?" Lundquist called over the speakers.

  "Marines, you motherfucker," Hudson replied.

  "Yeah, yeah, Semper Fi, shit head."

  "Okay, really. Not joking," Krieger interrupted. "Altitude is 2K and we're going in hard."

  "You heard the lady," Strickland said, his voice harder and more serious. "Weapons check, get ready to disembark!"

  It had taken them only an hour to load back up after deciding to move forward with the op, a speed which even impressed Strickland. Black battle togs, cargo pants, tactical vests and full weapons kits for their 416's were all ready and waiting when they arrived back at the hotel. Even Hudon's LaRue OCR Battle Rifle had the suppressor, scope, and magazines laid out as he liked to use the freaky shit.

  Strickland glared out through the holes in the balaclava, pulled tight over his face and pinned to his head by his round, layered helmet with integrated comm system. Each member of the team sitting on the benches of the round Little Bird wore the same gear.

  The Little Bird angled left and dipped towards the ground at an uncomfortably steep pitch. On the ground ahead, Strickland made out the outline of a large, single-story building cloaked in darkness. The series of dim shapes against a less dim backdrop of mountain rock and dirt was dark in more ways than one.

  GenTech's home base hadn't been able to reach the research station in over four hours now, and all power had been cut off to the facility. It had totally fallen off the radar and as the Little Bird drew in close, the nugget of unease that had dug its way deep into Strickland's guts grew barbs and twisted itself a little deeper.

  William Strickland had remarkable confidence in this small team of operatives that he had curated throughout his years in special forces. He was comfortable with them and trusted each of them implicitly with his life. No matter how much shit he and Hudson tossed at each other, he knew the man had his back and he was one of the most well-trained soldiers he had ever served alongside. All of them were. They'd handle almost anything.

  But something about this wasn't right, or didn't smell right. Strickland had learned to trust his gut over his decade of field experience, and his gut was telling him this was not the place they should be right now. So why were they here? Why had they all agreed?

  Was it just the money? Twenty thousand was nothing to sneeze at.

  No, it wasn't just the money. Strickland knew that. At their core, his entire team, every single man and woman, were thrill seekers. They wouldn't be in this job if they weren't to some degree, and even though their guts were telling them that this was a bum deal, and he had no doubt most of them had similar feelings, they were determined to prove their guts wrong.

  Why? Because they could. And they would have another great story they could never tell anyone about.

  "Sixty seconds," Krieger reported. "We ready?"

  "Lundquist ready."

  "Cruz is locked and rocked."

  "Hudson good to go."

  "Strickland is green."

  The Little Bird tipped its nose forward, the rotors whumping and roaring, as the ground came up to join them.

  "Let's do this."

  All in one motion the operatives swept their hands over the belts strapping them to the benches, released clasps, and threw the straps aside to leap from the benches. Combat boots smacked the hard packed dirt with one sound and moved in concert, pounding along. Krieger leaped from the co-pilot seat, landing in a low crouch with the wind slamming around her from the rotor above her head. She slapped her leather-gloved hand against the canopy three swift times, nodding to the pilot who returned the nod.

  Without even touching down, the skids began to rise amid whirling tornadoes of tossed up dirt and sand. The nose tipped up as the helicopter rose, banked right into the night sky, and disappeared from view as the noise of the blades faded.

  Strickland waved his hand in a tight circle in the air, pointing to himself. The other four took note and charged in towards him, gathering to him as he crouched low behind an outcropping of rocks about twenty yards from the front door.

  "We take this slow and easy," he said as the others approached. "No heroics, no bullshit. We have no idea what's going on in there so we take our time, clear each room, move on to the next."

  Krieger took over. "We all reviewed the blueprints. We know what to expect, right? Fresh batteries in the NVG's, fresh ammo in the mags, we are good to go."

  There were nods around the group.

  "Cruz, you're on breach as normal. Krieger will use the cam, see what we can see, then we move in smart and careful. We're supposed to be on our way home right now."

  "Fuck, I'll take the twenty k, boss," Huds
on whispered. Cruz laughed and reached over, fist bumping.

  "Eyes on the prize, you two," Strickland replied. "Mission now, twenty thousand bucks later. We need to be breathing to enjoy it."

  Strickland turned away from the group, looking over towards the flat, wide collection of concrete slabs that formed some rudimentary building shaped structure. It stood cold and dark with flat gray walls and darkened windows. An all-encompassing, almost terrorizing, silence blanketed the valley.

  Strickland didn't like this, but they'd do it. And like always, they'd live to fight another day. Only part of him wondered if any of them truly would.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The moon glared upon the rocky valley with dim disinterest. Its pale light revealed five moving shadows drifting towards the structure in orchestrated patterns of motion.

  Cruz was the first to the door, swiveling and pressing his back against the wall to one side while Strickland repeated the motion in the opposite direction on the other. Krieger approached, dropping to a crouch and fishing for the TOC-100 tactical camera. She repeated the same motions she'd gone through a little over four hours previously, feeding the steel, flexible cable through a crack underneath the door, switching the monitor to night vision, casting the large room on the other side in a faded green hue.

  The camera panned at waist level and using the controls on the handle, she scanned the area inside, but just shook her head indicating she couldn't make out anything specific.

  "Looks like typical office space," she whispered. "Cubicles. Desks. Doors to the right and the south."

  "No movement?" Strickland asked from over her left shoulder.

  "None that I can see, boss."

  "Switch to thermals. Check for heat sources. Focus on body heat."

  She nodded and adjusted some of the settings on the pistol grip handle, then twisted a dial, moving the camera around in a lazy arc on the other side of the door.

  The screen remained an amorphous blob of green and blue, colors shifting into each other with no indication of heat inside, body or otherwise. Beyond the door, the world was a cool-colored void of movement and sound, a vastly silent womb of shifting blues. Slowly Krieger panned the camera, moving it gently, but determinedly left to right.

  A bright red flash exploded to the left of the lens, an abrupt streak and sudden blast of noise.

  "Holy fuck!" Krieger screamed, stumbling backwards, the camera whipping back under the door and recoiling in the air like a snake with its head chopped off.

  The screen was dark.

  "The fuck was that?" Hudson asked, looking over Krieger's right shoulder.

  "I... I don't know," she replied, pulling back the steel coil. The end where the narrow bulb of a camera used to be was cut clean, strands of narrow steel and fiber optics splayed out like frayed string. "It looked like something was there for a second. Then nothing."

  "What happened?" Strickland asked, looking at the screen which now sat dull and dead on the rear of the pistol grip device. "You tear off the camera when you jerked backwards?"

  "I don't know," Krieger replied. "I've never seen that before."

  "So what was it?" Strickland asked.

  Krieger shook her head. "Not a clue."

  Strickland couldn't help but think back to that rocky ledge outside the GenTech laboratory. Think back to that bizarre thing that had injured Bucky and had turned on him. But it had been standing upright. It was clearly a person.

  Or something shaped like one, anyway.

  "What's the plan?" Cruz asked, looking over at Strick from the other side of the front door.

  "We still go in. Plan doesn't change."

  "Long as the payout doesn't change, I'm on board," replied Cruz. He pressed his hand to the suppressed HK416 slung over his left shoulder and tapped his palm against it.

  "Then you're up, Cruz," Strickland nodded and the breach expert returned the gesture. In a low crouch, he stepped forward, checking the seam of the door as he slid a short combat knife from a sheath on his boot. Each member held a blade there though they all hoped they'd never really have to use them.

  Cruz pressed his ear to the doors and worked the blade between the seams, testing the latch.

  "No power means no electronic locks, we'll have to see what secondary latching system they have in place." He worked his blade into the narrow slot between doors, checking resistance, then wrapped his hands around the metal handle of one of the doors.

  "Damn," he muttered.

  "What?" asked Strickland.

  Cruz looked up at him. "Shit's unlocked, man." To punctuate the statement he tugged on the door and it started easing its way open. Strickland extended a hand, palm facing out.

  "Hold," he said, then looked around the group. "Lock and load, get ready, we're going in fast and hot, got it?"

  Everyone in the group nodded their heads in response.

  Strickland wrapped his gloved hand around the grip of his 416 and held up a single finger on his left hand. Cruz nodded, lifting himself up on bent knees, raising his weapon, cradling it in two hands. Krieger took a step back away from the door, retrieved the camera system, then stowed it away in one of the pouches on her tac vest as Strickland held up a second finger and waved them forward, towards the door.

  Cruz moved in, grasping the handle.

  Strickland held up a third finger, keeping it still and straight.

  Cruz pulled the door and held it.

  Strickland jerked his hand forward, three fingers shooting towards the door in a rapid chopping motion. Everyone moved at once.

  Cruz swept in, weapon raised, flinging the door open with Hudson and Lundquist just behind him. Strickland followed, swiveling and aiming his 416 towards the left, covering his side of the room. He could feel Krieger just behind, her steps moving in lock with his, barrel sweeping one way as his swept the other.

  There was a lot of room to cover. It was a wide, open concept, carpeted office that might have belonged on the fiftieth floor in a Boston high rise if he hadn't just walked in from the mountains. Four narrow paths led the length of the room, splitting scattered cubicles into three even rows, desks and fabric walls straight and even.

  Obstacles. Lots of them.

  Strickland continued drifting left with Krieger just behind. His night vision goggles draped the room in semi-translucent mixtures of gray and green.

  "Door on the left," he whispered in his mouthpiece as his barrel centered on a metal door with some faint writing visible in his viewfinder.

  "Two on the right wall," replied Cruz. "Locker rooms, if my Czech can still be trusted."

  "You speak Czech?" Hudson asked in the headset. "And here I took you for Mexican."

  "That shit's racist, yo," Cruz replied.

  "Noise discipline," barked Krieger.

  "Sorry, mom," replied Hudson.

  "Your mom looks like Kriegs?" replied Cruz. "Damn, man, I'd never have left home."

  "You're lucky I can't bust your asses down to private in this outfit, assholes," Krieger replied in a hushed whisper, but she couldn't hide the twinge of humor in her voice.

  "Lock it down," Strickland interrupted. "This could be—"

  No "could" about it. Things just got real serious, real quick.

  "Krieger, on me, now," Strickland barked. "Lundquist, you, too. Cruz and Hudson, hold your positions, but eyes fucking sharp, got it?"

  "What did you find boss?" asked Hudson.

  "Holy shit," Krieger replied softly, her voice just a whisper.

  Lundquist came up on them, weaving through two cubicles, but halting sharply.

  "Oh, fuck me."

  "Yeah."

  Three bodies were strewn about the floor, two with legs entangled, one apart from the others. One of them slumped back against the fabric wall of the cubicle behind him, the second was face down on the floor next to him, and the third had upended a swivel chair and crumpled over it with one arm dangling and a hand resting on wet carpet. The air was thick with the coppery smell of fr
esh blood and as Krieger stepped forward, her boot squelched.

  Lundquist reached under his FN SCAR and activated the switch on the tactical light, cloaking the corpses in a bath of pale white.

  "Mother of God," Krieger whispered, drawing back and pressing the back of her hand to her mouth.

  The deaths were relatively fresh. Probably a few hours old, and whoever the three men were, they hadn't died easily.

  Closest to Strickland, the man slumped against the cubicle was sitting there with his hands clasped around his stomach in desperation. A thick clump of wet gristle flowed over the curve of his dark hands. Dark blood had oozed from a gaping wound in his stomach, run down over his button-down shirt and white coat, and soaked into the carpet. Four deep, crimson gouges tore the lab coat from his neck diagonally across his chest.

  Lundquist bent low and pressed fingers to the man's throat, but confirmed what was already obvious. His head shook as he moved towards the second man. This man, also in a lab coat, was face down, covering a widely spread discoloration on the light carpet. The right side of the coat was stuck to his body with a deep red adhesive holding cloth mixed with torn flesh and dried blood.

  "What the fuck did this?" Krieger asked.

  Lundquist lifted his fingers from the second man's neck, shaking his head again, then turned towards the man crumpled on the tipped over chair with his left arm dangling. As Lundquist approached, he saw the man's right arm, but his brain couldn't rationalize the location of it compared to the body. It seemed too far away.

  As he came upon the corpse, he saw the reason why. Ragged hunks of muscle and a jagged thrust of pale white bone were visible at the man's shoulder where his arm had once been. The bone hadn't so much been broken as shredded, leaving a rough cut as if a zucchini cut with dull scissors. Twisted at the neck, the body's head tilted over the ridge of the chair, barely attached by the spine and thin strands of neck muscle. His throat sat open and torn, loose flaps still wet with blood and gore. There wasn't even a place left to check for a pulse.