Peter Nealen's Blog, page 37

Somalia Going The Way Of “Task Force Desperate”

When I wrote Task Force Desperate, I made some predictions that haven’t quite panned out (and this is not necessarily a bad thing).  I expected the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime in Egypt to last a lot longer than it did.  And only a year or so after the book came out, it was looking like Al Shabaab was well and truly on the rocks.

Not anymore.

http://www.voanews.com/content/somalia-al-shabab/3306919.html

As the article points out, Western powers pay for most of Somalia’s armed forces, and the EU pays AMISOM a fair piece too.  This is an issue we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, too.  We sink a lot of money into dysfunctional local militaries, probably a lot of that money gets skimmed off the top in local tribal graft, the troops are rather less than the highest quality, mostly joining up for the paycheck.  When the paycheck no longer becomes worth the risk, they stop being effective fighters, especially when faced with ideological true believers like Islamists.

What’s the solution?  There are a couple of possibilities.  Training local forces is Special Forces’ primary mission.  MARSOC has tried its hand at FID (Foreign Internal Defense) as well.  But for it to be done right, it has to be done within the cultural context of the locals, not through a Western lens.  Now, I’m not talking about the kind of “cultural sensitivity” that SFC Martland came up against.  I’m talking about getting down to understanding what’s going to make the locals effective warriors, and doing that.  It’s probably going to be dirty and distasteful, but it’s the cost of doing business.  A couple of examples might be beatings for infractions or the execution of deserters.  Discipline isn’t built through paperwork, especially not in a culture where paperwork is either nonexistent or the tool of tribal bureaucracy intended to enrich the tribe in power by robbing everyone else.

The other option would be PMCs.  Most PMCs these days are what Sean McFate calls “military enterprisers,” essentially trainers for hire.  “Mercenaries” are armies for hire.  Think Executive Outcomes or the Free Companies of the Thirty Years War.  It would be possible to build a force of “military enterprisers” to function for hire in the role that SF or MARSOC would, but without as much political oversight, and therefore a freer hand in getting results.  Same thing with an offensive, mercenary PMC.  It worked in Sierra Leone.  180 South Africans destroyed the RUF in a year, where 17,000 UN peacekeepers had failed.

In the short run, however, Islamism appears to be on the rebound in East Africa, much like it has been elsewhere.  How and why is complex (while the US’ foreign policy of recent years doubtless has an impact, it is only one factor of many).  The defeat of any enemy is a long, arduous process, and this kind of dispersed, franchised, tribalistic enemy is going to be longer than most.

In The Bag

Kill Yuan is finished.  Editing is done, the final file has been uploaded to KDP, and we’ve just got a couple more formatting things to take care of (including the final cover file) and the paperback should be ready to go.

I actually hate editing, even though that’s where a lot of the work happens.  By the time I’ve finished going through the work three times, beginning to end, back to back, I’m not only getting sick of it, but I’m pretty well convinced that I’m a talentless hack who has no business selling his awkward mangling of the English language to anybody.  But enough of y’all apparently still enjoy my hackery enough to pay me for it, so I will continue.

Anyway, here’s another snippet, since I did say there would be a few more forthcoming:

The sentry was starting to struggle. Using the hand he had clamped on the man’s face, he tried to knock his head against a rock, but the sentry resisted, and he managed not much more than a tap. Desperate, he dropped to the ground beside the target, wrapping one leg around him and wrapping his knife arm around the man’s free arm. Of course, now he had the sentry somewhat restrained, but couldn’t stab him.

The sentry was thrashing now, the desperation of his position getting through the drug-induced fog in his brain, clawing at the arm Dan had clamped around his chest. Dan held on tightly, keeping his off hand clamped over the man’s face, while he tried to figure out what to do next.

He suddenly rolled on top of the sentry, letting go of the man’s jaw just in time to keep from pinning his hand between the sentry’s head and the tree root beneath them. He clamped that hand on the back of the man’s neck, but now his knife hand was pinned beneath the sentry’s body.

Taking a chance, he let go of the knife and yanked his arm free, putting his weight on the other hand, pressing the man’s face into the mold and loam under the tree while he sank a knee into his back. Hastily switching hands, even as the sentry got a hand free and tried to reach back to claw at him, he snatched up the knife and plunged it into the side of the man’s neck. He didn’t want to slit his throat; he’d start aspirating air and blood through the wound and making a lot of noise. He just wanted to cut the blood vessels.

Hot blood pulsed out over the blade and onto his hand. His victim bucked and thrashed under him, and he shifted to pin the man’s hands down with his knees, even while the sentry’s feet scrabbled uselessly at the jungle floor, his soft shoes unable to get a purchase. He had to be running out of air, too, with his face mashed into the ground. Dan held on, keeping the man still while his lifeblood poured out over both of them. He’d hit the artery; it wouldn’t take long.

My Review Of The First Ten Minutes of “Sicario”

It’s taken a while, but given the milieu of The Devil You Don’t Know, I’ve been interested in seeing Sicario.  (It usually takes a while for me to get around to actually seeing a movie.)  I’d heard mixed reviews, but given that the trailers for Sicario, Narcos, and Ghost Recon Wildlands, all of which deal with Latin American Narcos, came out right about the same time as The Devil You Don’t Know was released, it got on my radar.  I’m not well-known enough to be able to say I set a trend with talking about the Mexican Drug War again, but the coincidental timing was interesting.

Anyway, the other night, I gave Sicario a shot.  And, as you can probably tell from the title of this post, I didn’t make it very far.  It’s bad.

The movie opens with an FBI raid on a house in Arizona.  Now, the CQB tactics and weapons handling are atrocious, but it’s Hollywood, so that’s kind of to be expected.  Annoying, but not necessarily a deal-breaker.

It’s the rest of the scenario where the wheels really start to fall off.  For all the little cinematography tricks that they use to build up how ominous the whole thing is, none of it makes any sense.  The inner walls of the house are lined with corpses, all with plastic bags over their heads, shut up inside the drywall.  There’s an IED under the shed out back that goes off and kills two officers when they cut the lock and open it.

Why would there be bodies in the walls in a house in Arizona?  Not only is it an enormously labor-intensive way to hide bodies, it’s not even a particularly effective one.  You can smell a dead rodent in the walls of a residential house, never mind about fifty human corpses.  The cartels don’t work like that.  Where have the bodies in Iguala been found?  In the landfills.  Landfills, mass graves, or even barrels of acid are better choices for disposing of bodies, and these are all things the cartels have really done.  These people might be sick bastards, but they’re not stupid.  The scenario in Sicario was stupid.

After that, I couldn’t keep going.  The scenario was nonsensical, and everything about the writing and the cinematography just seemed to be trying too hard, while simultaneously not trying hard enough.

“Kill Yuan” Chapter 5

I’m about halfway through Edit 2.  This will be the last full sample chapter, though I might throw a couple more little snippets out before release.

Chapter 5

Dan turned and looked behind him, barely able to see five meters even with the NVGs strapped to his head. He couldn’t see Jenny behind him. Again. He turned back forward, waited until Vernon looked back, and then raised his hand to signal a halt. Vernon nodded, and sank to a knee in the muck; they were all soaked and filthy from the last four hours of slogging through the Florida swamp anyway, so it didn’t matter.

Still making an effort not to make too much noise sloshing through the swamp, Dan started to work his way back to where Jenny had lost contact. He found her another ten yards back, stumbling over the roots in front of her. The Asian girl, named Cassy, was trying to hiss encouragement at her, but just from her posture, it looked like she was about all in. She was staggering, and making about as much noise as a baby elephant, her shoulders sagging under the weight of her gear and assault pack.

As he got closer, he could see her face, pale and drawn even in the sickly green tint of the NVGs. Her hair was lank and soaked with sweat, and all of her camouflage paint had been sweated and worn off. She looked about ready to collapse.

He touched her shoulder. “Ten more yards, then we’ll take a halt,” he whispered. She gulped and nodded, then slogged forward. He didn’t even cringe at the amount of noise anymore. They were already screwed.

Cassy looked better as she passed him, though she still looked bushed. It hadn’t been an easy movement for any of them, but the women were hurting. Which he could have predicted from day one, but nobody had asked him.

Lambert was coming up behind them, taking rear security. As soon as Dan saw that he was coming, he turned back to the front and worked his way up to where the rest of the team was waiting. He wound up right behind Cassy and Jenny, and followed them into the small perimeter that Vernon, Dave, and Max had already started. When they reached it, Jenny did a version of the rucksack flop, though her assault pack wasn’t big enough to hold her up, so it was more of a collapse onto her back, with an audible splash. She lay her head back, panting, as Dan moved up next to her and Cassy.

“Are you going to make it?” he whispered. At first Jenny didn’t say anything, but just lay there and gulped air. Cassy nodded as she took a gulp from her Camelbak.

“I think so,” she added. “Jenny’s hurting, though.”

Dan took a deep breath. “We’ll stay here for fifteen minutes, but that’s all we can spare.” It was actually more than they could spare, but at that point he didn’t see that they had much choice. He moved over to Vernon and Dave. Dave was a short, hawk-nosed man with a nasty scar on his jaw that he said had been caused by shrapnel. So far, Dan had little call to disbelieve him; he’d performed well enough. You never knew in this business, though.

“Long halt, fifteen minutes,” he whispered, as he took a knee. Dave muttered something that sounded obscene.

Vernon checked his watch, carefully shielding the green glow with his hand. He shook his head, the movement barely visible in the darkness. “It’s going to start to get light in thirty,” he whispered back, “and we’ve still got eight hundred meters to the assault position.” He glanced back at the women. “This is the fifth halt in two hours.”

“I know,” Dan replied. “What do you want me to do? Leave her out here? We’ve got to make do with the assets we’ve got. She’s a good shot, at least.”

“Not going to make any difference if she can’t even get to the fight,” Vernon answered. He shook his head again.

Dan said no more, but took another thoughtful glance back at the two girls. Cassy was hanging in there better than Jenny was, but she was obviously exhausted, and she had barely passed the shooting quals. He had no idea how she had performed on the ship scenario, but she was hurting when it came to a light infantry mission.

Max was the other unknown quantity. At first glance, Dan had doubted he’d do any better than the women. He was overweight and pale, with a wispy, reddish-blond beard that he probably should just shave off. He looked like he should be sitting in front of a wall of computers and monitors, not out in the bush.

When he’d expressed this concern to Vernon, the other man had laughed. “Don’t worry about Max,” he had chuckled. “I’ve watched that fat fuck reduce lean, mean, greyhound-looking motherfuckers to tears, and laugh while he did it. He might not look like much, and he might not be the fastest man alive, but he simply never stops, never slows down. He’s a fucking tank, and he’s strong as a bull. He’s also smart as shit. If it involves explosives and he doesn’t know it, it’s probably not worth knowing. He’ll hang. And he’ll probably embarrass a few of the hard-dicks in the process.”

Dan had shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it. Even though he looks like a basement-dweller.”

Vernon had laughed again. “I was there the first time he tried to tan. After half an hour he came back inside, red as a lobster. Swore he’d never try it again.”

Right at the moment, Max was on a knee, facing outboard, saying nothing. He’d certainly kept up, never falling behind, and so far, he appeared to be as tactically sound as Vernon had assured him he would be. Time would tell.

Vernon’s concerns were more pressing, though. They were behind schedule. They were way behind schedule. They were supposed to be pulling off the target site by now. Instead, they hadn’t even gotten into position yet, because Jenny, who had managed to make it through the punishing PT session of the first day, couldn’t hang when it came to doing the real heavy, dirty, day-to-day infantry shit. A six-kilometer infiltration after a six hundred meter swim to shore with full kit was apparently more than she was prepared for.

Which, of course, raised the additional question of why counter-piracy contractors were training to do light infantry infiltration and assault in the first place.

Whatever. I’m still getting paid, and this is kind of fun. Or it would be, if it was going somewhat according to plan.

He kept watching the swamp around them, and glancing back at the girls. Jenny wasn’t looking much better. But they didn’t have the time to waste. “All right, halt’s over. We’ve got to get moving. We’ll push hard to the objective; the girls and Dave go on exterior security, the rest of us go in. It’s going to have to be harder and faster than we planned for, because it will be light by the time we can jump off.” Damn, I’m glad we’re not trying to coordinate this with another team. It’s enough of a nightmare as it is. At least we’ve got sim guns this time instead of laser tag bullshit.

Dave, who was on point, stood up without a word, and started forward. Dan stepped up behind him, with Max and Vernon following. He looked back in time to see the girls struggling to their feet, Cassy giving Jenny a hand up. They’d just have to keep up; there would be no more halts to catch their breath.

They forged through the swamp, making enough noise to wake the dead. Muck and water sloshed around their ankles and shins, branches raked against gear and clothes, and the occasional stumble thanks to a root, a dip in the ground that was unseen beneath the foliage and mud all seemed like they gathered together to make about as much noise as a herd of elephants stampeding through the jungle. Dan was sure they had been detected, even before Dave plunged nearly to his crotch in a hole that he hadn’t seen because it was full of water, spitting out a choked-off curse as he did so.

The night was noticeably giving way to gray pre-morning twilight when Dave suddenly put up a hand and sank to the ground. The rest followed suit, with another cringe-worthy splash in the back as Jenny flopped down behind a log.

Dan quickly saw what had prompted Dave’s sudden halt. They were at the objective. Not the assault position, but the objective. The small group of tents and plywood buildings was right in front of them, maybe fifty yards away, and the nearest sentry was even closer than that. They’d gotten so focused on making up for lost time that they’d overshot.

“Fucking dammit,” Dan muttered to himself. This just kept getting better and better. The sentry, an OPFOR role-player in tiger stripe cammies with a simunition mask, was already starting to move toward them. He had to have heard the splash, or maybe he’d just heard the racket they’d been making for the last three quarters of a klick. There was no time to deploy in any sort of formation, no time to make sure everybody was set. They had to go now, or fail. So he rose to a knee, shouldered his rifle, and shot the role-player in the facemask.

Even as the man swore, scraping at the orange splatter on his goggles, Dan bellowed, “Assault right, base of fire left!” Suiting actions to words, he got up and dashed forward toward the nearest plywood shack, hoping against hope that the team would react accordingly, and he wasn’t about to turn himself into Leroy Jenkins.

Gratifyingly, he felt the impact as Vernon and Max hit the wall next to him. The faint snaps of sim rounds indicated that the base of fire had opened up, punctuated by a few noticeable thuds as the plastic rounds smacked into plywood. The role-players were yelling to each other, a few of them using the obnoxious pseudo-Russian accents favored by SERE instructors.

It was at that point that Dan realized the entrance to the shack he and the others had stacked up on was around the corner, exposed to the center of the camp, which was presumably filling up with hostile role-players. Even with the base of fire throwing paint in that direction, that was a no-go.

Can this op get any worse? he wondered. Don’t answer that. He looked toward the opposite corner. “Max, on you!” The pudgy man simply nodded, eased his rifle around the corner, took two shots, and then followed the weapon. Vernon and Dan flowed after him.

A role-player was standing around the corner, his rifle held muzzle-down, a neat pair of orange splashes on his chest, his hand held up to indicate that he was “dead.” Max moved up to the next corner, slowly easing around it while Vernon dashed to the corner of the next plywood shack to cover that direction.

Dan moved up behind Max, and peeked past his shoulder. There were about six role-players in the central part of the camp, mostly returning fire towards the base of fire out in the swamp, but a few were turning toward their position. Oh, well, time to throw caution to the winds. He stepped around Max, his rifle coming up, and opened fire.

The role-players had good cover against the base of fire, but not so good from the flank, and between Dan and Max, four of them were quickly eliminated. Two more ducked out of sight in the door of the third plywood shack.

“Cover that shack,” Dan told Max. “Vernon, on me.” As soon as he was sure that Vernon was behind him, he angled for the door in front of him.

The truth was, now that they were engaged, some of the suckiness of the entire situation was falling away, adrenaline flushing out the exhaustion and frustration. He felt alive, even if it was just sim rounds in a cheap combat town in the middle of a swamp.

He hit the doorway moving, button-hooking through to clear the deeper corners, Vernon half a step behind him. He could hear Max shooting behind them, hopefully taking out one or more of the role-players holed up across the camp.

The room was empty, nothing but a packed, muddy floor and four plywood walls spattered with blue, green, and orange sim impacts. As soon as he registered it, Dan turned back to the door, Vernon already facing him across the opening. He briefly considered the possibility that, due to their lateness, the trainers had already removed the “hostages,” just to fuck with them. He dismissed the thought. They still had to clear the objective, regardless.

With a nod, they burst back out into the clearing. More shots snapped, and Vernon yelled, “Fuck!” He’d been hit in the shoulder, a bright blue splash visible against his muddy cammies. “I’m good, let’s go.”

The two role-players were still trying to engage from the far shack; one of them had shot Vernon. Technically, they should clear the nearer shack, so as not to leave a potential threat at their backs, but Dan pressed toward the known threat, dashing toward the role-players’ shelter, counting on Max’s covering fire to keep their heads down. A few shots whipped by him from behind, reminding him that the base of fire was still back there, and hadn’t necessarily gotten the word to shift fire. Well, this was stupid. But he made it to the wall without getting shot, unless he was now sporting a few new splatters on his back plate.

This was going to get tricky. The two role-players had definitely seen him coming, and there was no way he was getting through that door without getting shot. But the longer he lingered, the longer they’d have to get set. Cursing his own stupidity, he charged through the door, thankful that Vernon had stuck by the crazy white boy running straight at the bad guys.

He button-hooked through the door again, this time running right into the role-player. They got tangled up, both falling to the muddy floor, while Vernon traded shots with the second guy, who had jumped backward to avoid the dogpile in the doorway. The guy under him was fighting him, both rifles out of play. So he got a knee under himself, heaved up off the floor, and then he and Vernon shot the last role-player at the same time.

They were the only ones in the shack. No hostages here, either. They didn’t hear anymore shooting, but Max suddenly called out, “I’ve got the hostages!”

“Where the hell is he?” Dan gasped. Between the dash and the fight, he was a little out of breath. The movement of the night before was starting to take its toll.

“I’m guessing in that other shack,” Vernon replied.

“By himself?” Dan looked out the doorway, to see Max standing in the doorway of the third shack. With another look around the camp to make sure there weren’t any more role-players waiting to shoot them in the back, the two of them moved to join him.

“I know a one-man clear isn’t the best option,” Max said, in his nasal, high-pitched voice, “but when you guys went in there, I thought I’d better make sure there wasn’t anyone in here waiting to shoot you in the back. Found the hostages instead.” Behind him were three more role-players, two men and a woman, in shorts and t-shirts with bags over their heads. They were sitting on a tarp rather than the muddy floor, and appeared quite relaxed. Dan thought for a second, and recalled that there were only supposed to be three hostages. They had what they’d come for.

But there were still two tents out there, and he’d seen enough of Decker’s evil imagination to expect a curveball. “We’ve still got to clear the tents,” he said. “Hold here on the hostages.” Since they didn’t have intra-team comms, he stepped out into the center of the clearing, and circled his hand over his head, calling in the base of fire. They wouldn’t be in a position to support effectively anymore; their fields of fire were shut down by the assault force’s presence. Then he pointed to the nearest tent, waited until Vernon said, “With you,” and dashed to the flap.

There was no stacking up on a tent; sims or not, it made no sense. He bulled through the flap, leading with his rifle muzzle.

Decker was standing in the center of the tent, his arms folded in front of his massive chest, dressed in his customary instructor uniform, glaring at his watch. “You’re running late,” he said.

Dan lowered his rifle. “Had a couple of hangups on the movement,” he explained.

Decker just nodded. Then he reached into his back pocket, pulled out what looked like a firecracker, and yanked the string hanging out of it. It went off with a bang.

“An IED just went off in this tent,” he yelled, so that Max could hear it. “Both Tackett and White are now casualties.”

“Motherfucker,” Vernon muttered.

“Both of you may as well lie down,” Decker said. “You’re not walking out of here.”

They got down on the ground, Dan thinking about how completely fucked this entire exercise was. There goes my team leader spot, I’ll bet, he thought. Decker just stood there, his arms folded again, and watched.

Lambert entered the tent with Dave and the women; Max was just outside the flap on security with the hostages. Lambert looked at the situation, then looked at Decker, who anticipated his question. “They are both alive, but non-ambulatory.” He didn’t ask what they were going to do, didn’t prompt any action, but just went back to his baleful watching statue act.

“Shit,” Lambert said bitterly. He looked around. Jenny was looking pretty peaked, and Cassy, while alert, didn’t look like she was in the greatest of shape, either. “Dave, take Dan,” he said. “Max, get in here and carry Vernon. Girls, sling the weapons.”

Dave grumbled as he handed his rifle off to Jenny, who slung it over her shoulders to hang muzzle-up beside her assault pack. Then he bent down and hauled Dan up into a fireman’s carry. Dan helped as much as he could, without making it obvious enough to elicit a comment from Decker.

Max came in, passed his rifle to Cassy, and easily lifted Vernon to his shoulders, adjusting the weight slightly before crouching down and making his way out of the tent. Dave followed, with rather less grace.

“You might want to hurry up and get off the X,” Decker offered helpfully. “OPFOR reinforcements are en route.”

This just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it? Dan put his hand on Dave’s back plate, trying to adjust his position so that his nuts weren’t getting crushed. It was going to be a long movement. He was finding himself doubting that they were going to make it. Seven kilometers is a long way to carry a body, particularly through a swamp.

Lambert led out, taking point while Dave and Max followed, with the hostages next and the girls in the rear. They weren’t making any better time than they had on the way in.

The slog just kept getting harder, even for the guys being carried. While it may not be as stressful as walking, being carried fireman-style is not comfortable. The longer it goes on, especially as the carrier starts to get tired and stumble, the less comfortable it gets. Max was forging ahead, keeping up with Lambert without too much apparent difficulty, but after about five hundred meters, Dave was definitely falling behind, and starting to sag under Dan’s weight. No surprise; Dan weighed about two hundred five pounds in his socks, never mind in kit and soaked, muddy cammies.

Finally, Dave staggered and dropped to a knee, almost catapulting Dan over his head. Fortunately, Max had turned to look back at that point, and signaled to Lambert that they needed to halt. Dave let Dan down, and stayed down on one knee with his head bowed to his chest, gulping air and looking like he was about to puke.

Under other circumstances, Dan would be tempted to cheat, and just get down and walk the rest of the way, but Decker was pacing them, about ten yards behind Cassy in the rear, so that wasn’t an option. They were going to have to gut this out somehow. He just wasn’t sure how.

Lambert came back to Dave and looked down at him, anger written all over his face. “Not even a klick, Dave? What the fuck?”

Dave looked up at him and snapped, “I don’t see you carrying anybody, asshole.”

“That’s because I’ve got to get us where we need to go,” Lambert retorted.

“I walked point in here, I can walk point on the way out while you take a turn,” Dave pointed out.

“Yeah, and you damned near walked us right onto the objective without knowing it, too,” Lambert said acidly. “Fine. I’ll take a turn. You’d better not get us lost.” He unslung his rifle and handed it to Dave, then bent down to pick Dan up. With a grunt, he swung him up into a fireman’s carry, then, his voice sounding strained, said, “Come on, we’ve got to keep moving.”

Lambert made it farther than Dave, but after about another kilometer and a half, he had to stop, sucking wind. He still shot Dave a venomous look. “Yeah, real hard to go a fucking klick.”

“Will you knock it the fuck off?” Max said, speaking up for the first time. He was sweating profusely and starting to look a bit red in the face, but was still standing tall with Vernon on his shoulders. Vernon hadn’t been kidding about the man’s endurance. “We’ve still got too far to go to start bickering. You two want to go five rounds, you can do it back at the barracks. But we’ve still got five klicks to go, so save your breath and figure this shit out.”

“I’ll carry Dan for a little bit,” Cassy offered suddenly. “I won’t be able to carry him very far, but I’ll try.”

Lambert looked at her skeptically, and Dan couldn’t help but agree. Cassy was not a large woman; she might be a hundred fifty pounds soaking wet. She might make it a couple hundred meters, and that would be slow and painful. Jenny didn’t say anything or look at any of them; she was doing a convincing job of watching rear security.

Dave shook his head. “No, I’ll take him. We’ll just have to switch off.”

“What about you, Max?” Cassy asked. “Are you doing okay?”

Max nodded. “I’m fine. Let’s just get to the boats, shall we?” He turned back toward the beach and waited for Lambert to get back up to the point.

It took another couple of hours, all with Decker shadowing them silently, before they got all the way to the beach. Only to find that the boats weren’t there.

Of course, they should have expected it. They were at least three hours late to extract. In the real world, extract wasn’t going to hang out on a hostile beach for hours, they were going to scram within about thirty minutes. Which left them with a problem.

“Get the comms up,” Lambert snapped. “We’ll have to call for emergency extract.” He glared out at the Gulf. “Which is probably going to give us a new RV point.”

That wasn’t going to go well. Dave was looking pretty strung out, and even Max had started to stagger over the last kilometer. Neither of the girls were looking that great; Jenny was noticeably dragging ass. If her rifle hadn’t been slung around her shoulders, she probably would be dragging it along the ground.

“Delta Two-Zero, this is Gamma One-Four,” Max called over the radio. It was a civilian job, though bigger than a Motorola handheld. Not as capable as a military green-gear radio, but still effective enough, and it could still be encrypted. “We are at the original extract point, requesting emergency extract.”

“You’re late, One-Four,” came the reply. “Beach extraction is not possible at this time. You will need to swim twenty-five hundred meters west. The boats will come in and pick you up there.” They were really being hard-assed about this. Twenty-five hundred meters was a long swim, and Dan had little doubt that Decker would insist that they tow the “casualties.”

“Delta Two-Zero, be advised we have two non-ambulatory casualties and three hostages,” Max sent. The answer was immediate.

“Good copy, One-Four. Rendezvous instructions remain the same.”

“Fuck,” Lambert snarled. “All right, let’s dig up the fins and the UDT vests. Inflate the vests if you have to; this is going to suck.” He glanced at Decker after saying that, but the big man didn’t say anything, just still standing there and watching, looking completely unruffled. He didn’t even look like he’d worked up much of a sweat following them through the swamp, which seemed impossible, given the humidity.

It took a few minutes to get geared up, then it was a dash across the open beach and into the water. Or an attempted dash; it quickly turned into more of a waddle, since Max and Lambert were once again carrying Vernon and Dan. Decker’s hawk-like stare had dispelled any ideas of cheating and “fairy-dusting” the two of them mobile again.

It was a long, hard swim, with numerous stops, floating with the aid of inflated vests. It was made even slower by the fact that they didn’t have fins for the hostages, so they had to breaststroke. It took almost an hour to get far enough out, and that was with the tide going out. Even once they were sure they were far enough from shore, it still took another fifteen minutes before they saw the boats coming in, and were able to signal for pickup. They crawled into the rubber craft and clung to the gunwales like drowned rats, soaked, exhausted, and miserable.

Back at the barracks, they were soon hard at work cleaning and drying their gear and weapons. The ocean had rinsed off most of the mud, but the salt still had to be hosed off, and everything had to be hung up to dry. Batteries needed to be replaced and magazines refilled. All of them were sitting on the benches in the sun, the men in trunks and the women in shorts and t-shirts.

Jenny had been one of the first to have her sodden gear and clothes off, and was sitting on a bench by herself, jamming her magazines. Dan looked across at her, then glanced over at Vernon next to him.

“She seems to have perked up some now that the weight’s off of her shoulders,” he observed quietly. Vernon nodded.

“Watch yourselves around her,” Cassy said, sitting down next to Dan. “She’s evil.”

Dan looked at her. “You know her?”

She shook her head. “No, but I know the type. She’s hot and she knows it, and she’ll manipulate everyone around her to get what she wants. Mark my words. If you stay team leader, she’ll try to get into your pants sooner or later. That way she’ll own you, and she’ll get to do whatever she wants.”

Lambert laughed. It had an ugly edge to it. “I’d fuck her and then slap her down anyway. Two can play at that game.”

Cassy looked at him with distaste, then turned back to Dan. “I’m serious. Watch your back around her.”

He nodded. “Thanks.” He saw Max sit down on the far side of Vernon, and leaned out to address him. “Max, I owe you an apology.”

Max just smiled. “No you don’t. I know what I look like. Vernon can probably tell you that I have long owned the fact that I have been blessed with great strength, agility, and endurance, and cursed to possess them in a body that looks like a bag of mayonnaise and sounds like a squeaky chew toy.”

Any further conversation was stilled as Decker walked in, dressed like he’d spent the entire night and morning after on a jaunt through the Florida swamps. “All right, hot wash time. Tackett. What went right, what went wrong?”

“We eliminated all the hostiles and got the hostages out without losing any of them,” Dan said. “So much for the good news. Bad news, we got slowed down on the infiltration, and didn’t get to the objective until it was already light. We got rushed and overshot the assault position, and just about ran right into the objective without getting set. Then I charged across open ground and past an open door to clear the second shack, instead of clearing methodically. Oh, yeah, then Vernon and I got blown up, but I’m not sure how we might have avoided that, since it was fairy-dusted.”

Decker nodded. “Pretty good summation. Anyone have anything else to add?” When there were no takers, he just said, “All right, finish getting re-cocked and get some rest.” He turned to leave.

Dan got up to follow him. “Decker?” he asked. The human fireplug turned to look at him. “Can I ask a couple of questions?”

Decker just looked at him for a second, then jerked his head and stepped out of the locker room. Dan followed. Out in the hall, Decker turned to face him, once again folding his arms. It seemed to be his default stance.

“Is this an evaluation course or a training course?” Dan asked. “Because it kinda seems like both.”

“It is both,” Decker replied. “While you are being evaluated every minute of every day, we do realize that none of you have worked as a team, so there are going to be things that need to be ironed out. There isn’t a lot of time for a pre-deployment train-up, so that’s why the grading is as harsh as it is.”

Dan tried to keep his expression impassive, but something must have showed. “What?” Decker demanded.

“It’s just that the ‘harsh’ grading seems to be on two different scales,” Dan said carefully.

“You have concerns about the women,” Decker said flatly. It wasn’t a question.

“In a word, yes,” he replied. “They can’t keep up. Even the most hard-core of them.”

“They’re here for a good reason,” Decker said cryptically. “Your concerns are noted.” He looked at his watch. “Now, I suggest you finish getting your gear reset, get some water and chow in you, and get some rest. The Warning Order for your next scenario drops in eighteen hours.” He turned without another word and walked away.

“Kill Yuan” Chapter 4

Two chapters left on the rough draft, and then editing and re-writes can start.  So, in the meantime, here’s Chapter 4.

Dan had to admit that this was the fanciest training setup he’d ever seen. While the initial impression of the compound had been eye-opening, the most sophisticated training modules weren’t readily visible from outside.

He was presently standing on the deck of a small container ship. All around was sea and sky, with what looked like a green-cloaked island off in the distance. All of it was projected on screens, that would recognize the laser light from the otherwise very real-feeling facsimile of a SIG SG553 in his hands. It was the most expensive and sophisticated ISMT he’d ever seen. The freighter itself was a full-sized, complete mock-up, almost indistinguishable from a real ship, except that they had arrived in the trainer through a passage that led up through what would have been the hull, where he’d seen that it was in fact a purpose-built structure. If he hadn’t, he might have believed that they had somehow gotten an actual ship inland and buried it.

The entire trainer was underground; they had descended about ten flights of stairs to reach it. Patrone, another one of the trainers, a short, hairy Italian with a thick Jersey accent and Decker’s attitude, had led them down, and was now presumably ensconced in some control center, watching.

The candidates had been split up into teams that morning, for the first time. It was only day four, and it had already been a whirlwind of a week. After the brutal introduction of the first day, they had started day two with another crushing PT session, then gone straight to the range, where they found their kit and weapons waiting for them. The vests were all identical, high-end London Bridge Trading Company plate carriers, all in Ranger Green. The weapons were all SIG; P226 pistols and SG553 carbines. Dan had fired the P226 before, but never the SG553. He adapted quickly, though, and it was a good thing, because the courses of fire kept getting more difficult and the time hacks shorter. Decker was merciless. It wasn’t training; it was a sink-or-swim, pass-or-fail evaluation. If a candidate boloed a line, he or she got one chance to fix it. So far, they had only lost two more candidates to marksmanship failures on the range. Apparently, the day one thrashing had driven off most of the dead weight.

That morning, after another punishing hour and a half of PT, they mustered in front of the barracks with gear and weapons, and Decker called off teams. Dan had been happy enough to get teamed with Vernon, though he wasn’t as sure of the other two members of his team. Tom Lambert was a fit, sandy-haired man with nearly as many tattoos as Trent. While he had so far said little, there was a certain arrogance to his demeanor that set Dan’s teeth on edge. He looked his teammates over with a critical glance that was almost contemptuous. When Dan had laid out the plan after Patrone had given them the scenario, Lambert’s replies had been flippant, almost dismissive, as if he didn’t give a shit for the plan because he knew what he was doing.

The fourth member of the team was a blond bombshell of a woman named Jenny Hagener. She was fine-featured and liked to wear low-cut shirts that showed off her considerable cleavage when not on the range. She also had the coldest, most calculating eyes Dan thought he’d ever seen. Not all the time; she could be very warm and engaging most of the time, but every so often the mask slipped, and he didn’t much care for what he saw. Though he had to admit that that very coldness might serve her well in the business at hand. Time would tell.

The scenario that Patrone had given them at the entrance of the trainer had been simple. “You are tasked with security for this ship. You are presently passing through waters known for pirate activity. Check over the ship and get into position as the team lead sees fit. You have twenty minutes to familiarize yourselves with the ship’s layout before the scenario begins.” With those words, he had shut the door and left them to their own devices. It was strengthening the “sink or swim” feeling of the whole course.

Now Dan was on the superstructure, scanning the simulated ocean, watching for the inevitable pirate strike. Vernon and Lambert were patrolling the forward section, and Jenny was on the stern. The Daisy Duke was small for a container ship, but it was still a little large for a four-man team to secure. Given everything else that had been thrown at them so far, Dan wasn’t expecting a simple problem, either.

“Movement, one o’clock,” Lambert’s voice crackled over his earpiece. “Looks like we’ve got incoming from the island.”

Dan’s eyes snapped to the green hulk of the island, and quickly picked out the dancing pixels on the screen that had to be approaching boats. He corrected his assessment. They might be boats. It was probably best not to jump to any conclusions. It would be just like Decker’s evil imagination to throw them a curveball right out the gate.

As the specks got bigger, though, he became increasingly convinced that they were boats. At least three, possibly four. That was bad. They had the high ground on the ship, but four rifles against four boats was bad odds, regardless of any advantages they had on the defense. If they concentrated in one spot to repel boarders, the other boats could move around to climb the hull in another spot that they didn’t have covered.

He briefly considered falling back to one of the interior spaces, hardpointing and waiting for the pirates to come to them. He wasn’t sure how the trainer would handle that; the pirates he could see were just pixels on a screen, after all. But he was fairly certain that Patrone had that eventuality covered, somehow, and he was forcing himself not to think of the scenario as a video game, but rather to approach it as he would a real-life combat action. He had a feeling that gaming the game would not go over well with this outfit.

“Hold your positions and keep a low profile,” he sent over the radio. “Let them show their hand before we respond.” How the pirates deployed would determine how they countered, he decided. If they didn’t think they’d face resistance, they might concentrate in one spot to board the ship, and then they might be able to spring an ambush. It seemed like a decent course of action given the disparity in numbers. If they could get the pirates bunched together, they’d have a better chance of taking out enough of them in one go to hopefully drive them off.

He realized he was thinking in terms of combating real pirates rather than computer programs, that might not react the same way real human pirates would. He dismissed the thought as he studied the incoming boats. Patrone probably had a few more nasty surprises up his sleeve for them, and the scenario was more about how to handle the situation on the fly than to get it exactly “right.” If things went south, they’d just have to adjust.

As he watched the approaching boats, using the binoculars he had up on the superstructure to magnify the images until they were big blocks of pixels instead of tiny dots, he started to think he saw shapes in their bows that might be machine guns. That wasn’t good. It was hard to tell, since the images were still extremely pixellated, but he was fairly confident in the assessment.

“Be advised,” he called out, “enemy boats appear to have machine guns in the bows. Looks like all four of them.” He thought for a second. “All right, here’s the plan. Everyone fall back toward the superstructure, but stay on deck, as concealed as possible. I don’t want anyone visible from the water. I’ll stay up top and observe until we can spot a boarding point. No one engages until I give the word. They’ve got us outnumbered and outgunned, so we’re probably only going to get one shot at this. Hopefully, they’ll decide the ship is undefended and board in one spot. When they do, we’ll ambush them.”

“And if they spread out and board at multiple points anyway?” White asked.

“Then fall back to the bridge,” he replied. “We’ll strongpoint there and call for support. If possible, we’ll then push out to clear the rest of the ship from the bridge, situation depending.”

He got clipped acknowledgements all around. He might have a vague bad feeling about both Tom and Jenny, but he had to admit that they were pros, at least from what he’d seen so far. Hunkering down in his position atop the superstructure, he kept the binoculars to his eyes and watched the pirates approach.

They stayed in a loose formation as they closed in, and he was soon able to distinguish the pixellated figures of the pirates themselves. He counted five to six per boat, and there were definitely machine guns in three of the four. They looked roughly the size of military RHIBs, though they were nondescript speedboats that may or may not have any real-world antecedents. Imagining that the coxswains and gunners would stay on the boats, that left them with a good fifteen boarders to deal with. Not necessarily insurmountable, but at close quarters it made for very bad odds.

He briefly toyed with abandoning the earlier plan and opening fire at a distance, hoping to drive them off that way, but decided against it. Those machine guns had a lot longer reach than their carbines, and at the very least, could be used to suppress them enough to get the boats in close enough to board and overwhelm them. No, if it had been Somali pirates in rickety wooden fishing skiffs, that would be one thing, but this was going to require a bit more circumspection.

The pirate boats spread out as they got closer, circling the freighter as if looking it over. Dan kept hoping that they’d examine their target, then mass together to board near the bow, but his hopes were dashed as they slowed, still encircling the ship, then started to close from all directions, the machine guns pointed up at the gunwales.

“That’s it, they’re boarding at multiple points,” he called. “Everyone fall back to the bridge.”

It had been an option to secure Engineering, since the pirates couldn’t take the ship anywhere if the engines weren’t under their control, but he’d decided that it would be easier to secure the bridge and then clear the ship from the top down rather than try to fight upwards. Grabbing his carbine and slinging it, he headed for the hatch leading down into the superstructure, keeping low to hopefully avoid observation from the sea. It briefly flashed through his mind how ludicrous it was to be ducking to avoid being seen by a bunch of pixels, but he remembered that Patrone was watching everything, and would be judging every action.

He got to the bridge a good thirty seconds before the rest did. “Cover down on the hatch, and stay away from the windows,” he said. He had no idea how Patrone was going to handle CQB inside the ship; he hadn’t seen any screens that might be ISMT trainers except for the outside screen. He’d let Patrone worry about that. None of the instructors had given the slightest indication that they were looking for canned responses to scenarios, so he wasn’t going to assume that there was a canned drill that he was “supposed” to use. He’d play to his instincts and his own evaluation of the situation, and if they didn’t like it, they could fire him.

He and Vernon got behind the console, their carbines pointed at the hatch, while Tom and Jenny set up at opposing angles, keeping all four muzzles focused on the fatal funnel. For his own situational awareness, and with no little curiosity as to how things were going to play out, Dan glanced out the windows that faced down toward the deck, to see where the pirates were.

To his surprise, there were men clambering over the sides, equipped with rifles. It looked like hatches had opened in the screens around the base of the mock-up, and now there were real live OPFOR coming up over the gunwales. “Heads up,” he said, “we’ve got company. Looks like role-players.”

“How the fuck are we supposed to effectively shoot role-players with these laser-tag guns?” Vernon asked. “It’s bad enough getting a role player to die when you hit him with simunitions.”

“Don’t know, don’t especially care,” Dan replied, turning his focus back on the hatchway. “I’m assuming that either that’s been provided for, or else we’re supposed to get overrun for some sadistic, judgmental reason that we’ll probably never get explained. Let’s just do what we’d do in the real world anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Tom said, “but if I shoot one of these assholes in the face and he doesn’t go down, I’m gonna buttstroke him until he does.” Dan ignored the comment and waited.

They could faintly hear the sound of boots ringing on steel decking, as the pirates entered the superstructure. They kept quiet, waiting. Muffled voices rose from below. They sounded vaguely like orders being given, but they were too quiet and distorted by passing through the metal corridors that they couldn’t make out any words.

The assaulters were trying to stay quiet, but there’s only so quiet you can get on a steel deck. Dan heard them pause just outside the hatch and hissed, “Shut your eyes!” He suited actions to words, putting his head down and opening his mouth to try to reduce the impact of what was coming. A moment later, the flashbang hit the deck just inside the hatch and detonated with a deafening report and eye-searing flash that seemed to almost stab right through his closed eyelids.

The concussion had rocked him, even with his head down, but he immediately opened his eyes and got back on his rifle. Smoke from the bang was still roiling up from the deck, and the first assaulter was already in the hatch. The smoke was probably going to interfere with the ISMT rifle’s laser, but since he’d been the one to say, “Play it like the real world,” he wasn’t going to wait.

The rifle clacked; the self-contained units didn’t have the pneumatic systems that allowed for the more realistic noise and recoil of the bigger, stationary ISMT trainers. But something beeped on the OPFOR’s gear, and he dropped to a knee, holding up a hand.

The man behind him, though, didn’t slow down, and was already digging his corner as Tom shot him, eliciting another beep, even as the OPFOR shooter’s rifle barked, and a bright orange splatter pattern appeared on Tom’s vest.

A flurry of muted “shots” later, and it was over. All five OPFOR who had come through the hatch were down on a knee, their hands held up to indicate they were “out.”

“Motherfucker!” Vernon was holding a hand to his abdomen, beneath his plate. “Fucking cocksucker, you damn near shot me in the fucking balls!”

Before the OPFOR he was bitching at could reply, a speaker in the overhead came alive. “White, you’re down,” Patrone’s voice said. They waited for some further instructions, but that was all.

“So now what?” Jenny asked.

Dan shrugged, going through the motions of reloading. They’d been warned that each “magazine” was only good for so many shots before it had to be replaced. He wasn’t sure what electronic wizardry led to that, but he wasn’t going to take the chance of getting drummed out for having an “empty” weapon at the wrong time.

“I guess we clear the rest of the ship,” he said.

“With three of us?” Tom asked incredulously.

“I don’t see any reinforcements rappelling in,” Dan replied, “and it’s pretty obvious the scenario’s not over. I think they would have told us if it was.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Tom muttered, but he also play-acted reloading his weapon, and stacked up on the hatch.

And he’s right, Dan thought. This is retarded. I guaran-fucking-tee this is just some sadistic, ‘we want to see how you react,’ no-win shit-show one of these fuckers thought up. Probably Decker. For the moment, however, he wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. So he joined Tom at the hatch, waited for Jenny to get in position across from them, then kneed Tom in the back of the leg. “With you.”

Tom launched through the hatch behind his rifle. He was still obviously pissed, though whether more at the ridiculousness of trying to clear an entire freighter with only three shooters or because he’d been shot in the plate with a sim round, Dan couldn’t be sure.

The bridge took up most of the deck, with two small, easily cleared storage compartments aft. In seconds, they were on the ladderwell heading down.

The OPFOR can run circles around us in here, Dan thought. There should only be ten left, unless the ones we just ‘neutralized’ get up and come around behind us. He almost thought that it was likely. No, they don’t even need to do that to fuck us over on this scenario.

Descending the ladderwell, they came to the next deck down, where the officers’ quarters were located. Dan simply said, “Clear left.” Tom immediately turned starboard, pausing at the first hatch. As soon as Dan was behind him, he threw the hatch open and they went through.

The cabin was empty. This was where the attention to detail, not to mention the money, involved in this little trainer became even more evident. The cabin was fully furnished, just like on a real ship. It had to have cost a fortune to put this facility together.

Jenny, being the last one in the compartment, looked around for something to do for a second, before Dan impatiently pointed toward the hatch. She got the message and set up on the passageway. Moments later, they were pushing back out of the hatch.

Compartment by compartment, deck by deck, they made their way down toward the engine room. It was looking more and more like the OPFOR had gone for the bridge and the engine room, and ignored the rest of the ship. Which did kind of make sense. Secure power and control, and the rest just kind of drops in your lap.

Tom was good, his movements, situational awareness, and weapons manipulation very smooth and practiced. He and Dan easily fell into a rhythm as they cleared compartment after compartment.

Jenny, on the other hand, seemed a little lost. She had the basics down, and her weapons manipulation was good, but she obviously hadn’t had a lot of practice at CQB, and needed to be directed repeatedly. She also didn’t have the smoothness of movement that either of the men did. She could handle her weapons, but her footwork in the confined spaces was awkward. Dan again found himself wondering just what she was doing there, given the decidedly non-PC standards they’d seen so far.

They hit resistance a deck above the engine room. Suddenly there were two muzzles in the passageway, spitting sim rounds at them. Jenny let out a piercing yell as she caught one in the neck. The three of them pressed forward, firing at the all-but-invisible OPFOR that were barely exposing their rifles and one eye through the hatchways ahead. They all took a few sim rounds to hands and chests before getting right on top of their tormentors and practically pressing the ISMT guns to their chests to get the telltale beeps of kills.

By now, Dan was fuming. “Fucking assholes,” he snarled at one of the OPFOR. This had started out as challenging but professional, if a little unfair. Now it was just getting stupid, and it was pissing him off. But he still held out a hand to stop Tom when the other man looked like he was about to kick one of the OPFOR in the face. “Come on. Let’s just finish this bullshit.” Somewhat to his surprise, Patrone didn’t break in to tell any of them that they’d been hit, even though all of them were now sporting bright orange splatters and nursing some decent welts.

They pushed forward to the ladderwell that led down into the engine room. Dan suddenly had a thought, and motioned to Jenny to cover down the ladder, then went back to the hatches where the OPFOR had ambushed them. Crouching down, he started taking the flashbangs from the first guy’s gear.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?” the OPFOR asked.

“Fuck you,” Dan said. “You’re dead. Dead people don’t complain. So shut the fuck up.” He shoved the man’s two flashbangs into his cummerbund, then went to the other one.

“Fuck off, man,” the OPFOR said. “You’re not the last run.”

“We didn’t get the appropriate equipment for this evolution, so I’m acquiring some. Fork ’em over, or I hit you until you do.”

“That’s not cool, man.”

“Neither is trying to clear a fucking ship with three people, with laser tag guns against simunitions,” Dan snarled. “And don’t get me started on the little stunt you dickbags pulled right here. Hand ’em over.”

The guy just raised his hands. “Fine, man, take ’em.” Dan obliged, yanking the stun grenades out of their pouches and stuffing them in his cargo pockets before starting to turn back toward the engine room. Then he stopped, reached back, cleared the sim rifle, chucked the magazine down the passageway, then did the same with the other man’s weapon. “Because fuck you,” he said. It was unprofessional, and his anger was quite possibly going to lose him the job that day, but the unfairness and just plain cheapness of the scenario had gotten under his skin.

Getting back to the ladderwell, he handed Tom two of the flashbangs, then yanked the pin out of one of his and tossed it down the ladder. Tom did the same a second later, then they raced down the ladder, weapons up and scanning for threats.

Apparently, the OPFOR hadn’t quite been ready for their own flashbangs being used against them. One of them was holding his ears, trying to blink the blotch out of his vision, just behind the ladder, when Tom swung around and shot him. Just to make sure he didn’t miss the beep, he then body-checked the guy into the bulkhead.

They weren’t in the engine compartment itself, but in the engine control room, forward and slightly above it. So were most of the rest of the OPFOR.

Two of them were at the “controls,” which were a reasonable facsimile of the green-painted control panels on an actual ship. The other four were bringing their weapons up toward the ladderwell. They’d taken some of the flashbang, but not quite enough to discombobulate them, at least not to the extent Dan had hoped for.

He sidestepped out of the ladderwell in order to clear Jenny’s field of fire, and opened up, trying to put at least two rounds into each opposing shooter. He felt the impacts of more sim rounds on his plate but ignored them, many years of sim training and the conditioning to fight through the hits coming back even as he hoped that these clowns were professional enough not to aim at his unprotected face.

A chorus of beeps announced that the OPFOR shooters were down. Jenny started to lower her weapon, and the last one, who had ducked behind the end of the control console, shot her. “Cocksucker!” she screamed, as she brought her own rifle up, but Tom and Dan had already spread out along the bulkheads, and got shots at the OPFOR at almost the same time. His vest beeped and he dropped his rifle, raising a hand.

Jenny was fuming, her face tight and her teeth obviously gritted, but before she could say anything, Patrone’s voice came over the PA system again. “Dorn, you’re down.”

“Fuck!” she yelled. “I hope you get fucking dick cancer, you fucking anal wart!” For a second, Dan thought she might actually throw her ISMT rifle. He traded a glance with Tom, who just shrugged. This wasn’t going well.

After a moment of catching their breath, trying to tune out Jenny’s ranting, which had quieted down a little but not stopped, Tom looked around. “So, what, the scenario’s not over? Isn’t this all of them?”

Dan shook his head. “We can’t be sure. We’ve still got to clear the rest of the ship.”

“With two of us. Fucking amazing.” Tom checked his kit. “I’ve got four mags left.”

“Same here,” Dan replied. He heaved a sigh. “No point in waiting around. Let’s get this over with.” He led the way, going through the hatch into the actual machinery spaces.

Like the rest of the ship, it was a remarkably faithful reproduction, a maze of pipes, condensers, giant diesel engine housings, and power transmission shafts. It took a long time to clear every nook and cranny where someone might be hiding, and there was the ever-present threat that if someone was back in there, they could easily stay ahead of or behind them. They had to be constantly on the alert, checking every corner, every angle, often above and below them, through the grated catwalks.

They came back up, out of the engineering spaces, and into the hold, which was full of cargo containers, stacked four high. It was another long, laborious process to sweep the deck, and they still couldn’t be sure that someone wasn’t playing hide-and-seek among the containers. Two men was just too few to effectively clear the hold.

But they played along, though Tom’s expression continued to sour as they went on. He apparently was highly unimpressed with the entire scenario, and Dan had to admit to himself that he was, too. If the whole course was like this, it didn’t bode well for the professionalism of the company, or the quality of the contract. A couple hundred grand is a couple hundred grand, but you can’t spend it on your kids if you’re dead because your employer put you in an untenable position.

At the bow, they paused for a moment before mounting the ladder up to the main deck. “We’ve got to keep low, below the gunwale, and see if we can take the boats out one at a time,” Dan said.

Tom nodded. “Sure, that’s why they haven’t called ‘game over.’” He shrugged. “At least the ISMT fuckers can’t hit me with sim rounds.”

“I wouldn’t put much past these fucktards at this point,” Dan muttered. “We’ll take the starboard side first, and work our way around clockwise. Cool?”

Tom shrugged again. “Good with me.”

Keeping close together, they mounted the ladderwell, coming up onto the weather deck. The gunwale only rose about three feet above the deck, so they had to stay crouched low. In real life, he doubted the steel would stop 7.62 rounds, never mind the heavier 12.7mm rounds the DShKs threw. For now, though, it would have to do.

The two of them crouched below the lip of the gunwale, facing each other. Dan eased one eye over the lip and spotted the “boat.” The graphics were pretty crude, considering the sophistication of the rest of the trainer, but the targets were easy enough to pick out. The second on that side was back by the stern, looking quite distorted on the screen at that angle. Distance was impossible to judge, but he was hoping that the ISMT was set up for point of aim/point of impact. He ducked back down and pointed in the direction of the boat. “It’s right over there. I think we can take it out and get back down before we get called out by the other one.”

“Fine,” Tom said. “Let’s do it.” He took a breath, then counted down. “One, two, three.”

On “three,” they rose up over the lip of the gunwale and opened fire. Knowing right where the boat was, Dan was on it in less than a second, and watched as the “pirates” jerked and stiffly fell off the boat to slide out of sight in the digital water. As soon as they were down, both men ducked back below the gunwale. Without a word, Tom started duck-walking toward the stern. Dan followed.

They repeated the process with the other three boats. The ISMT’s AI was not inventive, and not particularly responsive. None of the computerized pirates got a shot off. It may as well have been a carnival shooting gallery.

They paused after shooting the last pirates, but there was no input from Patrone. Figures, Dan thought. “Well, I guess we need to sweep back through the ship again,” he said after a good thirty seconds of silence. “Scenario must not be over.”

“Fuck,” Tom muttered. “This is fucking dumb.”

“Yeah, it is,” Dan agreed. His irritation was rising, starting to override his thoughts of the money. He recalled the words of an old mentor, It’s easy to be hard, it’s hard to be smart. As unforgiving as the program had been so far, its impressiveness was wearing off quickly as it became apparent that it was focused on being hard rather than being smart. He was really wondering what kind of smug douchebag had designed this scenario.

But they hadn’t gotten ten steps before the screens around them went dark, and lights they hadn’t previously seen in the ceiling came on. Patrone’s voice came over the PA again. “All right, scenario’s over. Meet me back at the entrance to the trainer.”

They made their way back below decks to the hatch leading out of the ship. Jenny was still furious, her face pale and pinched above the growing livid welt on her neck. Vernon was just shaking his head.

Patrone was waiting for them on the other side of the hatch. He just pointed down the hallway. “Go down there, hand off your kit to the next group, and then go where Merchant tells you to go.”

The others just nodded, but Dan couldn’t stay quiet. “So tell me something, Patrone,” he said, refusing to be intimidated by the little man’s glare, “is this the way the the contract’s going to go? Four motherfuckers to secure one ship?”

“You got a problem with that?” Patrone asked.

“Damn skippy I’ve got a problem with it,” Dan retorted. Is this guy fucking serious? “It’s fucking stupid. It’s going to get people killed if bad shit happens. If that’s the level of operations on this contract, I’ll quit right fucking now.”

For a second, Patrone just stared at him with that tough-guy look, then his expression changed. It was subtle, but Dan thought he saw a bit of a smirk. “Noted,” he said. “I’ll just say this; the scenario as designed is a worst-case scenario. That ease your heartburn a little?”

Dan studied him for a moment, trying to see if the little man was jerking him around. “For the moment,” he allowed, and turned toward the hallway. Patrone didn’t say anything else, but just stood there with his arms folded, watching them leave.

None of them said anything as they passed their gear off to the next group. But Dan was thinking.

Was he just bullshitting us? Or might there actually be some brains playing mindfuck games here?

The rest of the day was depressingly boring. They were sequestered away from the groups that hadn’t gone through the ship trainer, and set to studying various ship plans and videos of pirate attacks. One by one, the other groups joined them as they finished with the trainer, most of them visibly pissed off by the scenario. Dan was starting to suspect, and hope, to some extent, that that was part of the point.

It was getting dark when they were summoned to form up in front of the barracks. Decker was waiting there, still in his skintight black polo shirt and khakis, his massive arms folded across his chest, watching them as they got in a ragged formation that would have had a drill instructor losing his mind but that was apparently about the best that MMPR and its trainers expected of them. They weren’t there to drill, after all.

Decker stared at them for another moment after they’d stopped moving. “Well, what did everyone think of the ship trainer?” he asked, strangely conversational.

Nobody spoke up. Dan expected that was because nobody wanted to tell Decker that they thought his training scenario was bullshit. He figured that he couldn’t be the only one having second thoughts at this point.

“Nobody wants to say it was bullshit?” Decker said. “Because it was. And there’s a reason why. One, we wanted to see what you’d do if thrown into an untenable position in training. How badly do you want the job? A few of you essentially said, ‘this isn’t fair,’ and quit. You might notice a few gaps in the ranks. Because we can’t predict that things won’t go badly pear shaped in the real world, and you can’t just say, ‘No fair!’ and quit then. There’s only so far we can take it in a training situation, but if you didn’t game the game, you’re already somewhat ahead.

“Now for the second part. Only one of you retarded monkeys actually had the foresight to extrapolate training to real-world deployment and the balls to call bullshit. Only one of you was thinking about whether or not we were going to throw you to the wolves downrange, like a number of contracting firms have a history of doing. Fortunately for a lot of you, it’s still early in training, and you’ve still got time to pull your heads out of your asses. Unfortunately for you, Tackett, you just skylined yourself. You’re an operational team leader now, and provided you don’t fuck it up between now and showtime, you will be when this goes real-world.

“Kill Yuan” Chapter Three

98,000 words in the bag.  Five or six chapters to go on the first draft.

The gear list hadn’t been a long one, so when the plane landed in Fort Myers, Florida, he walked off with his carry-on and didn’t even pause at the baggage claim. He headed straight for the ground transportation doors, his bag slung over one shoulder.

Spotting the group was fairly easy. Men in the contracting world have a certain look, and there were at least a dozen there on the curb who had it. All of them were of a certain age, fairly fit for the most part, short hair while still being outside of military regulation, some beards, jeans or khakis, collared shirts. Granted, some broadcast their “contractor” status more openly than others, sporting coyote tan backpacks, 5.11 shirts, tan desert boots, expensive Oakley sunglasses, and often worn, sweat-stained ballcaps in either tan or green, with velcro and patches on them. Those were generally the guys that Dan found he disliked. They were usually, though not always, more interested in projecting the tough-guy contractor image than actually being professionals.

There were a few others hanging around that he suspected were probably there for the same job, but they looked even less professional than the ones decked out in “contractor chic.” There was one guy with lots of tats, a screaming high-and-tight haircut, soul patch, and at least five earrings and a nose ring, wearing an old woodland BDU blouse. Another pair, who were standing over to one side, talking quietly, were both wearing black leather jackets and had shaved heads. He’d peg them for skinheads except that one was obviously Hispanic.

It was the girls dressed in the contractor starter kit that kind of threw him. There weren’t a lot of women in the contracting world, largely because most contractors were former combat troops. He guessed that the times were a’changing, and that MMPR was going all equal-opportunity in their recruiting. He wondered again if this was a good idea; he’d yet to meet a female would-be combat soldier who could quite hack it. If PC was going to be the name of the game on this contract, this could get bad before it even got out the gate.

He tamped down his concerns, though. If the company was as serious as their emails had intimated about the strictness of their standards, it would all come out in the wash. Either the girls, if they really were there for the same reason, and weren’t just gun bunnies going to one of the “tactical” training facilities that he knew littered southern Florida, would hack it or they wouldn’t. Given the current political climate, the recruiters may not have had any choice. It wasn’t his concern. If it became a problem, he could always quit.

He didn’t like to think that way, though. Quitting meant going back to the helpless nightmare that had been life since the phone call that had asked him to come identify Julie’s battered body. No, he just had to focus on meeting the training objectives and getting to work.

Three white, fifteen-pack vans pulled up to the curb, and a fireplug of a man with a shaved head got out of the front van. He was wearing a skin-tight black polo shirt and khaki cargo pants, and he looked like he juggled barbells for a warm up. He stood on the curb with a clipboard and glared at the gathered wannabe contractors for a second before starting to call out names. As each individual rogered up, he just pointed with a knife hand at one or another of the vans.

So, that’s how this is going to be, is it? Apparently, MMPR, or at least their training section, was going with the, “I don’t give a fuck about you shitbirds, get on the fucking bus and do what you’re told or get lost, we can always replace you” model of treating its contractors. He almost turned around to go get a ticket back home right then and there. In his experience, a contracting company that treated its contractors like boot privates or raw recruits generally wasn’t worth much. They were likely to demand the contractors do something stupid downrange, and selected for Active Stupid in training, however much of it they actually offered.

But that fifty grand a month was still dangling there, enticing him with the possibility of paying off the mortgage and a lot of other bills, making it that much easier to raise the kids. So he stuck around.

“Tackett!” the fireplug yelled.

“Here,” he called out, stepping forward. The bald guy looked at him with all the warmth of a shark eyeballing its next meal, then pointed to the second van back before going back to his clipboard, dismissing Dan as quickly as he’d noticed him. Dan didn’t worry about it. It was annoying, sure, but he just kept that paycheck in mind as he climbed in. He was already starting to slip back into the detached mindset that he’d learned both during eight years as a Marine grunt and then another five in the contracting world.

He slid toward the back of the van, which was already occupied by two others. One was a linebacker-sized black man with close-cropped hair and a goatee, dressed simply in jeans and a plaid, short-sleeved button-up shirt. He watched Dan maneuver toward the back seats with cool appraisal in his eyes.

The other man was long haired, dressed in black cargo pants and a black t-shirt, with tattoos crawling up both arms and an earring in one ear. He looked like a hippy, except the tats were heavy on skulls, an American flag, and an infantryman’s cross—a helmet atop an inverted rifle with a pair of boots at the base. Dan quickly reassessed his initial impression; the guy might look out of place otherwise, but unless he was a poser, those tats belonged to a grunt, at the very least.

Since those two were taking up the very back seat, he took the next seat forward, next to the window, placing his pack on his lap. A moment later, a fat, red-haired man with a patchy beard puffed his way into the seat next to him. “Boy, they’re sure piling on the hard-ass routine early, aren’t they?” the guy asked. Dan just nodded.

“Do you think they’re going to keep it up through the whole training phase?” the red-haired man asked. He was still breathing a little hard, and looked sweaty. Dan wasn’t sure what he was doing there; he obviously wasn’t in shape, given the warning about strenuous PT standards, but then, they had women coming along too, so maybe the “strenuous PT standards” were only strenuous for some desk jockey who was looking at the numbers before writing the emails. Still, from the looks of the human fireplug out there, he wasn’t sure. He still thought that the redhead’s heart would probably pop if he had to run more than fifty yards.

In answer to the man’s question, he shrugged. He wasn’t feeling terribly talkative. Neither of the two men in the back seat seemed to be either, but that didn’t deter the redhead.

“I’m Aldo,” he said, sticking out a meaty hand. Dan shook it politely.

“Dan,” he answered. Aldo proceeded to reach back to the guys in the seat behind them to introduce himself.

“Vernon,” the black guy said, shaking Aldo’s hand. “Glad to meet you.”

“Trent,” was all the long-haired guy said. He shook Aldo’s hand, then leaned back and folded his arms. He was apparently not feeling particularly social, either.

“So, what do you think?” Aldo asked Dan. “Is this the way they’re going to treat us? That seems kind of fucked up. I mean, we’re not at boot camp here.”

Dan really didn’t feel like having this conversation, but didn’t see a polite way to avoid it. He shrugged. “Maybe the job really is as dangerous as the email suggested it was, and they’re trying to weed people out early. Good enough method.”

“But why would they offer to pay us so much if they’re going to treat us like privates?” Aldo didn’t seem to get it.

“I know, man,” the bearded man wearing a tattered III% olive green ball cap in the next seat forward said loudly, “this is bullshit. We’re professionals, we shouldn’t have to put up with this motard fuckery.”

“Then why’d you get on the fucking bus?” Vernon asked. “Ain’t nobody holding you here at gunpoint that I can see.”

The loudmouth looked back at him, but didn’t seem to actually have an answer. He looked slightly nonplussed for a moment, then turned back front and continued haranguing the small Asian woman who had had the misfortune of sitting next to him. Dan heard enough to gather that it was mostly about how badass the man was, and that he wasn’t going to put up with some bullshit contract trainer yelling at him like a drill instructor. After a moment, he put his head back against the window and tuned it out. It was the same thing he’d heard countless times, usually from people who were far less tough than they imagined they were.

After a few more minutes, the vans started to pull away from the curb. In a few minutes they were out of the airport and onto the highway. Few of the contractors talked, aside from the Three Percenter, who wouldn’t shut up. Aldo tried starting a conversation a couple more times, but was met mostly with monosyllables, so he gave it up after a couple of miles.

Dan was somewhat more interested in where they were going. He was vaguely familiar with a few of the training facilities in Florida, and which one they ended up at was going to tell more of the so-far mysterious story of the contract. He was already questioning their training methodology just from the bald representative’s attitude. If it turned out to be a professional outfit, it was good news. If it turned out to be one of the cheaper, loudmouthed, tacticool YouTube celebrity ranges, it might be a better idea to cut away and hope for another opportunity, regardless of the heartache he’d already gone through to get there.

They soon turned off the highway and onto a two-lane road that stretched off into the thick Florida pine woods and swamps. In moments, there was nothing to see outside but nearly impenetrable brush and trees on either side of the road. When they’d been driving for twenty-five minutes without a sign of a house or any other structure, he started to wonder how far into the boondocks they were going.

After a half-hour, the vans slowed, then turned off onto a gravel road that led even deeper into the swamps. The road looked relatively new, built up on a levee with swampland and woods on either side. There was a lot of standing water back there under the trees, and Dan could already almost feel the itch of the mosquito bites. Sure, it was fall, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything this far south.

They followed the gravel road for another fifteen minutes before coming to a blue-painted gate across the road. There was a barbed-wire fence extending from either side out into the woods. There was also an armed guard at the gate. Dressed in khaki cargo pants and a black polo shirt, just like the human fireplug of a rep, though his shirt wasn’t nearly so tight, he had an exterior belt on with a holstered Glock and four extra magazines.

The vans stopped just short of the gate, and the guard came out, pulling a small tablet out of his back pocket. He conferred briefly with the driver of the first van before walking back to the next one. Dan heard the driver list off the passengers, and the guard seemed to be checking them off of a list, before nodding and continuing back to the next vehicle.

“That’s interesting,” Vernon said from behind him. It was the first thing he’d said since he’d briefly shut the Three Percenter up.

“Seems like they’re really particular about who comes in and who doesn’t,” Dan observed.

“It sure does,” Vernon replied. “Makes me wonder even more about this gig.”

“Wonder what?” Aldo asked, making Dan regret getting into the conversation. He had a feeling he could actually have a meeting with the minds with Vernon, but the fat kid was out of his element, and for some reason Dan found himself irritated at his question.

Vernon just shrugged, though. “Well, between the alleged sensitivity of the contract, the tough-guy approach that seems to me to be calculated to drive people away, and now the security, well, it raises questions. The listing I saw for this job suggested that training would be strenuous and the job high-risk. Add in the paycheck, and I am really starting to think that they understated the situation a bit. Whatever this gig is, it ain’t the usual mall ninja job.”

Dan had to agree, though he kept his thoughts to himself just to avoid talking to Aldo. He suspected he wouldn’t be seeing the red-haired man for very long, especially if Vernon’s suspicions were on the money.

The guard walked back up the little convoy of vehicles and swung open the gate. As they drove through, Dan looked out the window and saw a Heckler and Koch HK416 leaning against the cooler back in the guard’s little shelter beside the gate. That was when he saw the second guard, who had stayed back in the shadows, wearing a vest and carrying his own HK carbine. They were not fucking around when it came to security.

They continued trundling along the gravel road for another twenty minutes after the gate, and still didn’t see any buildings, though Dan thought he caught a glimpse of what might have been a corrugated tin shed back in the trees at one point. Wherever this facility was, it was on some considerable acreage.

Finally, they came out of the thicker growth and into a broad, cleared area, probably about ten acres worth. Dan whistled.

Whoever was behind MMPR, they had money. A lot of it. A three-story brick barracks, that looked brand new, was only the least eye-catching part of the installation. The far side of the compound was lined with ranges, running from five-hundred-meter strips to a series of one-hundred-meter bays. A rappelling tower rose next to the barracks, and what looked like three entire combat towns, purpose-built training villages, covered a lot of the remaining area. There was even what looked like a fifty-meter pool, with an extremely realistic facsimile of part of a ship’s hull rising out of it, along with what looked like a partial superstructure. Three shiny Bell JetRangers were parked next to the helipad in the center of the open area.

“Well, that is rather impressive,” Vernon murmured.

What have I gotten myself into? Dan wondered. While this certainly wasn’t the crap training facility that he’d feared, its sheer expense further illuminated the questions that both he and Vernon had been pondering. This was definitely not your standard security contract job. Certainly not your standard maritime security contract, which often as not just threw a bunch of guys who could sort of professionally handle weapons onto a ship with as little training as possible, often while the company assured the client that they were all twenty-year Navy SEALs. No, this was serious business, far more serious than he’d expected.

The vans rolled past one of the combat towns on the way to the barracks. As they passed, Dan studied the buildings. After the first two, he was fairly certain that they were all heavily built enough that they probably had ballistic walls, which meant they were all for live-fire. That was rare enough, especially on a civilian facility.

The vans pulled up in front of the barracks. The bald man got out and stood there on the curb with his arms folded as doors were pulled open and the contractors started getting out. Apparently, not quickly enough for his satisfaction.

“Hurry the fuck up!” he bellowed. “We haven’t got all fucking day! Get the fuck out and get on line, or you can stay in the van and go back to the airport!”

That got people moving a little more quickly, scrambling out of the side doors and around to the back to retrieve their luggage. Since Dan didn’t have more than his backpack, he just got out and stood by the curb. The bald man stared at him for a second, then seemed to nod to himself and went back to staring at his watch.

With a frantic scramble that Dan hadn’t seen since the School of Infantry, the men and women hurried to get in a ragged line on the curb, hauling their luggage along with them. Some of them had far more than Dan imagined they would need for an overseas deployment, never mind a training course. They were some of the last to get in position, and the bald guy looked decidedly pissed off as he watched them straggle in.

“Listen up, ladies and gentlemen,” he said loudly. “You’re going to have to do a lot better than that over the next eight weeks if you want a job here. We don’t have time to play boot camp games, and we sure as shit won’t coddle your asses. It looks like a few of you didn’t read the full listing before you applied, but don’t worry. We’re going to sort that shit out in a hurry.

“You may call me Decker. I’m the chief training cadre here, which means I’m in charge of deciding if you’re going to be an asset, or dead weight that needs to go away. I’m not your friend, I’m not your fucking mentor, and I’m not a nice guy that you’ll want to have a beer with when this is all over. I’m a prick, I know it, and I will continue to be a prick for as long as you have the misfortune of knowing me. If you piss me off, you’re gone, and I’m easily pissed off.

“All of you know that the job is going to be risky, and it pays really, really well. I guess we’ll see just how badly you want that paycheck.” He pulled out his clipboard again. Dan was already starting to loathe it for some reason. “Now. Room assignments.” He began calling off names and room numbers. If anyone took more than a second to roger up, he repeated the name loudly, with a rising note of anger in his voice.

He wasn’t kidding about one thing, Dan thought. He really is a prick.

“Tackett! One oh seven!” Decker called out.

“Roger!” Dan replied, playing along. “One oh seven.”

Decker got to the end of the list, and lowered the clipboard. Then he looked at his watch. “You’ve got five minutes to get to your rooms, stash your shit, and be back out here in PT clothes. Starting now. Go.”

There was another frantic scramble, with several of the recruits getting tangled up with each other and their luggage. Dan was finding that old habits were quickly reasserting themselves, and he hung back to avoid the worst of the press. He still got to his room while probably half of the class were lugging their bags down the hall or up the stairs, huffing and puffing as they tried to race Decker’s watch.

He found his room quickly enough. It was spare, with cinderblock walls, a desk, a folding chair, a small private head, a twin-sized bed, and a rifle rack against the wall. He dropped his pack on the bed, dragged out his running shoes, shorts, and t-shirt, and quickly changed. He was one of the first ones back outside. Vernon was already out on the curb when he came back out, and Trent was on his heels.

Decker didn’t appear to have moved. He was still standing there in his khakis and polo shirt, his arms folded, looking at his watch impatiently and tapping his foot. Dan hadn’t bothered to check his own watch when Decker had started his time hack, but he gathered that the last few who came running out of the barracks, including Aldo and the Three Percenter, whose name was apparently Jon, were pushing the time limit down to a matter of seconds.

As soon as Aldo, already sweating and breathing hard, was in line, Decker simply said, “Let’s go,” turned, and started running toward the ranges. There was a moment’s hesitation, as the contractors tried to figure out what was going on, then the line turned and started straggling after him.

He wasn’t starting out with a nice jog. He had launched directly into what Dan felt was a slightly stiff distance pace, but which was obviously punishingly fast to a number of his classmates. After the time spent sitting in airports and airplanes on the way to Florida, he found he was sucking wind to start with, but he knew his own level of fitness well enough to be fairly certain he’d get his wind soon enough. Some of the others, he wasn’t so sure.

Decker led the way down the five-hundred-meter range, keeping the same pace the entire way, then ducked behind the berm. Dan, about ten people back, lost sight of him, but as they came around the berm, saw that he’d stopped, and was now standing there, breathing normally, his hands on his hips as he waited. He pointed to the ground in front of him, facing back uprange, and the contractors started getting on line in front of him.

By the time the rest of the class had lined up, Dan was already breathing slowly and evenly, though he had a nasty suspicion that it wasn’t a state of affairs that was going to last. The final arrivals, mostly the heavier contractors, though including more than a few of the women and a couple of the men who had looked halfway fit, were already obviously hurting, and they had barely gone half a mile. Aldo was already looking green around the gills and sweating profusely.

As soon as the last stragglers had stopped running, Decker rapped out, “Fifty burpees. Go.” He proceeded to suit actions to words, and dropped to begin his own reps. Dan had to give it to him; Decker might be an asshole, but he wasn’t going to demand they perform anything that he wasn’t going to do himself. Still, there was a chorus of groans at the command, and Dan had to suppress his own. He hated burpees with a passion, but he dropped and started cranking them out.

Predictably, Decker was done first, though Vernon, Trent, Dan, and about a dozen more of the fitter-looking contractors were right behind him. Dan’s breathing was labored, and his chest hurt a little, but it was no more than he expected after fifty burpees. Damn, those things fucking suck, he thought, as he fought to get his breathing and heart rate under control.

As soon as the last one finished, Decker simply turned and started running again, at the same pace as earlier. It was a little more painful this time, and Dan concentrated on stretching out his strides and keeping his breathing easy. This was going to be a long afternoon.

The trail led out into the woods and swamp, though fortunately it seemed to mostly be built up like the road had been, so they weren’t running through the mud and water. Yet. Dan wasn’t sure that it wasn’t going to come to that. This was a hell of a way to start a training course, but as he thought about it, it seemed like an efficient enough way to weed out anybody who wasn’t ready to be there, whatever the job ultimately turned out to be. He remembered the warning in the job listing about “strenuous” PT standards and thought, They weren’t kidding, were they?

After another half-mile or so, they came to a mostly dry spot, with rows of pullup bars. Decker went to the farthest one and waited. Dan covered down on a bar and waited to hear how many he had to do.

It took even longer for everyone to catch up this time, and that was probably only going to get worse. Dan didn’t mind; it gave him time to rest and even out his own breathing. Decker still didn’t seem to be sucking much wind. He was still just as merciless, too. As soon as Aldo staggered to a stop, his hands on his knees and his head bowed toward the dirt, Decker called out, “Thirty pullups. Go.” Again, he led the way.

Dan was feeling the burpees a bit, and had to get off the bar a couple of times to shake out his arms and hands, but he got his thirty knocked out, however ugly the last four or so were. Decker didn’t bat an eye as he stepped away from the bar and let the next guy up.

It was ugly. A lot of the candidates weren’t up to the task, and it was painfully obvious from the beginning. Aldo took three tries just to get his first, and was visibly weakening with every moment. Dan traded glances with Vernon. Depending on how Decker handled it, it was likely that they would see the last of Aldo, along with a number of others, sooner than they’d thought.

Finally, there were close to a dozen candidates still frantically kicking and kipping toward the bar, when Decker looked at his watch. “One more minute,” he barked. “If you haven’t gotten your thirty by then, get off the bar and wait here. Cadre will collect you and get you on your way back to the airport.” His voice dripped with contempt, and he actually sneered as Aldo promptly dropped off the bar and stepped away, once again dropping his hands to his knees.

As soon as the minute was up, Decker led out again. He ran like a machine, keeping the same steady, relentless pace. After another mile or so, as the trail got rougher and wetter, they came to another cleared space, this one with forty-five pound dumbbells lying on the ground. Dan suppressed a grimace. He knew what was coming next. Sure enough, once they had all gathered, Decker announced, “Forty renegade man-makers. Go.” Dan dropped to the pushup position with his hands on the dumbbells, did a pushup, renegade row with the left, another pushup, row with the right, another pushup, then stood up and pressed both weights overhead. One down, thirty-nine to go.

And so it went, for what felt like the entire afternoon. Every half-mile or so, there would be another exercise. Kettlebell swings, rope climbs, ladder climbs, eight-count bodybuilders, more burpees, bear crawls, log lifts, log carries, casualty carries…it went on and on. When they finally ran back to the barracks, Dan was starting to stagger in spite of himself. He was so drenched in sweat that he felt like he’d been through a swim qual rather than any kind of regular PT, and every muscle ached. His lungs were burning, and his head was starting to hurt. It was beyond anything he’d done in years, as hard as he’d worked to stay in shape.

They hadn’t actually lost that many more after the pullups. A few had fallen out from sheer exhaustion, but for the most part, about forty had hung in there. They had lost probably half of the women, and those who were still gutting it out were at the rear, but they were still pushing through, though they looked about ready to die.

Once everyone was back at the barracks, Decker finally slowed, and led an easy jog around the barracks and the closest combat town, then led them through a fairly comprehensive cool-down. When they were finished, standing there as the sun went down, he said, “Congratulations. You made it for today. Tomorrow we start Weapons and Tactics. Now get out of my sight.”

A couple hours later, after grabbing a rather insufficient boxed dinner from the small dining facility in the barracks, Dan was about ready to collapse into bed when there was a knock at his door. When he answered it, Vernon was standing there in the hallway.

“Hey, man, we didn’t exactly get introduced,” the big man said, sticking out his hand. “Vernon White.”

Dan shook his hand. “Dan Tackett. Come on in.” He waved Vernon to the chair and perched on the side of the bed. “What’s on your mind?”

Vernon sat down. “What did you do before this?” he asked.

“I’ve been a mechanic for the last year, after my home improvement business went under,” he replied. “Before that I did a few gigs with WPS, and before that I was with 3/5 and 2/1. You?”

“First Ranger Battalion for six years, then WPS and a few other gigs.” He didn’t elaborate on what the “other” gigs were, and Dan filled in the blanks without asking. “First time I’ve ever seen a setup like this since I got out of the Army, though.”

“It’s pretty wild,” Dan agreed. “Can’t say I’ve seen that method of weeding out undesirable candidates on contract before.”

“Hell,” Vernon said, “I’ve never seen this level of performance demanded on a contract before, and I’ve been on some pretty high-end ones. What do you think we’re actually going to be doing?”

Dan shrugged. “The listing said counter-piracy. The only reason I can think of for going full-motard right out the gate would be if we’re going to be less security guard on ships and a little more Executive Outcomes, if you know what I mean.”

Vernon nodded. “Pretty much what I was thinking. And if that’s the case, I think I’m actually glad that training is going to be hellish. I wouldn’t want to go to actual combat with half the motherfuckers I worked WPS with, but they could pass the standards.”

“Yeah, I’ve known some awesome dudes in the business, and I’ve known some real turdbags,” he replied. “What I’m wondering is how they’re getting the clearance to do it if we really are going offensive? There hasn’t been a company that’s successfully done that since EO got shut down, at least not so far as I know.”

“No idea, man,” Vernon said, getting up and stretching. “But it’s probably a question best left until later. Tomorrow’s going to start early, and I know I’m going to be hurting in the morning after that death run this afternoon. Just wanted to make sure I properly introduced myself. See you in the AM.”

“Cool,” Dan replied. “Later, man.”

Five minutes after Vernon left, he was asleep.

Trying Something New

So, in light of a recent article highlighting the decline of the B&N Nook (they are no longer selling Nook books in the UK), and some things I’ve been seeing regarding Kindle Select, I’m trying an experiment with Kill Yuan. It has been unpublished on Smashwords, meaning it will be coming off of B&N and iBooks for preorder within the next week. Both outlets have accounted for a very small fraction of my sales to date, so I’m going to try Kindle Select for this one, and see if it works better. If you’re the one person who already preordered it on iBooks, I apologize. You’ll be refunded. I just have to see if Kindle Select offers enough advantages to balance out the small number of sales I’ve gotten on other platforms.

“Kill Yuan” Chapter Two

The draft has just passed 85k words.  It’s coming along quick now.  So here’s the second chapter, to continue whetting the appetite.

Chapter 2

Four Months Earlier

Amy and Tom were already outside on the curb waiting when Dan Tackett pulled up to the daycare center. It was already dark, and the clock numbers on his truck’s dash shone accusingly at him. It was already almost eight at night. Sandra Crawford was standing on the curb behind the kids, a stiffly impassive look on her face.

He parked the truck, grabbed the envelope off the dashboard, and got out. It was time to pay the daycare bill already, and he mused bitterly that every cent he made working extra hours was going into paying for those extra hours at child care.

“Good evening, Mr. Tackett,” Sandra said stiffly, disapproval at his lateness in every word. “I trust you know what time it is.” The Happy Circle Child Care Center was supposed to close at seven, and he was just getting there to pick up the kids at fifty minutes past that.

“Yes, Sandra, I do know what time it is,” he replied tiredly. “Work went late tonight. I couldn’t afford to pass up the overtime.” He handed over the envelope, while turning to the kids. “Amy, Tom, you ready to go?”

“Sure, Dad,” Amy chirped. Tom, younger than his sister by two years, just nodded. He had become a boy of few words ever since their mother had died in the crash. Amy grabbed her little brother’s hand and pulled him over to the truck, pulling open the back door and helping the three-year-old into his car seat.

“You really should make an effort to spend more time with them,” Sandra said, some of the lecturing tone gone from her voice. When he looked at her, he saw only concern in her eyes. “It’s not good for kids to spend all day every day away from their parent.”

He sighed heavily. “I’ll take that under advisement when I can afford to pay all the bills,” he replied, and started back toward the truck.

He got back in the driver’s seat and turned down the music. Julie wouldn’t have necessarily approved of the kids listening to half of the death metal that he’d taken to listening to ninety percent of the time since her death. But he found that in his current state of mind, much else in the way of music just kind of ground on him, and both the news and talk radio just pissed him off.

“How was your day, Amy?” he asked, as he pulled away from the curb. The little girl promptly launched into a detailed, if wandering and sometimes incoherent, story about the doings of the day in kindergarten and then at daycare. Dan couldn’t really follow most of it, but it meant he didn’t have to say much as his daughter chattered away. Tom was already asleep in his car seat; it was almost his bedtime already.

Dan clenched his hands around the steering wheel, Amy’s description of the esoteric, made-up game she and several others had played that afternoon fading into slightly high-pitched background noise. How am I going to maintain for another fifteen years? he thought. She’s been gone for four months and I’m already losing it. The strain of not letting the kids see that Daddy is coming apart at the seams is just making it worse.

It was a half hour drive to the house, where he gave Amy the keys to unlock the front door while he carefully lifted a sleeping Tom out of the car seat and carried him inside. Amy wanted to help take her little brother’s shoes off before Dan put him to bed, but Dan did it himself, then tucked the little boy in. Tom barely moved or made a sound, just turning over on his side, his eyes still closed.

“Did you get something for dinner?” Dan asked Amy.

She nodded, her blond curls, inherited from her mother, bouncing. “Miss Sandra got us some food before you got there to pick us up.” Good. At least Tom wouldn’t be waking up too ravenously hungry.

“All right, then, go brush your teeth, then it’s time for bed,” he told her. She nodded again, and bounced off to the bathroom.

It took another fifteen minutes to get Amy ready for bed, tucked in, prayers said, and the umpty-fifth reading of her favorite story gotten through, which Dan could probably recite word-for-word without being able to tell anyone what it was really about. He was running on autopilot by then, anyway, as the day’s exhaustion started to weigh him down. He finally gave his daughter a last hug, then turned out the light and headed downstairs.

He’d ignored the mail sitting under the slot in the door when they’d gotten home, and he wanted to ignore it further. He knew what was there. The mortgage was due again, as well as the insurance bills. All of which would just about clean out what was left of the last month’s wages. After standing over the pile of envelopes and unsolicited catalogs, he muttered, “Fuck it,” and went into the kitchen. In the cupboard above the counter were several liquor bottles, and he grabbed one at random before heading for the back room that had been his study.

The place was as much of a wreck as most of the rest of the house. Part of that was because of the long hours he was working, and the corresponding lack of energy when he got home. Part of it was simply because he failed to see the point in trying to make it nice.

He realized, as he popped open the bottle and took a swig of what turned out to be rum, that he was deep in a depressive episode, and had been pretty much ever since Julie had passed. She had been everything that was good in his world for six years, and then, in the time it took for a drunk not to hit the brakes, she was gone. Now he was struggling to keep himself together for the sake of his kids, unsure how to care for them the way she had, and feeling like he was drowning with every breath he took.

He sat down at the desk and fired up his laptop as he took another fiery gulp. He didn’t know why he even bothered to turn the damned thing on. It never gave good news.

But he did the same thing he did every night anyway. Once it was up, he logged onto Combatant Jobs and SOCNET, and started scrolling through the listings.

I don’t know why I’m doing this, he thought. I’m just pretending there’s a chance to get back in the action, make some good money and get a little bit of that combat thrill again. Those days are past. I’m just sitting here, drinking, pretending that my life isn’t over.

“Listen to you, you self-pitying fuck,” he growled out loud. “’Oh, woe is me, my life is over.’” He took another swallow. He should have been getting buzzed by now, but the fact that he wasn’t didn’t say anything good for his alcohol consumption habits over the last few months. “It better fucking not be. You’ve got two little kids you’d better stay alive for.”

And now I’m sitting here drinking alone and talking to myself. That’s real great, Tackett. Real good sign, there.

He wasn’t really studying the job listings. Most of them he’d seen before; either State Department-sponsored training gigs in Africa, Stateside training contracts that were mostly tied up by one Good Old Boy network or another, or PSD assignments or static security jobs at big-box FOBs in Afghanistan. Those jobs were dwindling as the drawdown continued, though there looked like there were some new ones in Iraq. Of course, he was all too aware that most of the listings were from companies that didn’t actually have the contracts in question, but were trying to get a stack of resumes built up so that they could tell the client that they had a ready-built crew standing by when they bid on the contract, six to nine months down the line. None of which made those particular listings of any immediate use.

Who am I kidding? None of these are of any “immediate” use to me. I’m a single dad with two kids. I can’t just drop everything and go to Afghanistan for a year, certainly not for a measly…$65,000? You gotta be fucking kidding me. He’d been hearing for years that the glory days of contracting for $1200 per day were over, and his own perusals of the contract listings had borne that out, but if there were actually contractors settling for $65k a year in a war zone, it was worse than he’d thought.

He wasn’t sure what made him click on the next listing. All it said was, “Sensitive High Risk Contract.” It was just uninformative enough, and he was just drunk enough, that he had to check it out. He started skimming the description, then stopped and started over, setting the rum bottle aside.

MMPR Inc. is recruiting for a Sensitive, High-Risk, Counter-Piracy mission. Combat Deployment or Warzone Contracting experience required, minimum fourteen months on the ground. Candidates must be able to pass strenuous physical evaluation and training, as well as high-standard weapons and tactics training. Due to the sensitive nature of this contract, no details about operational location or the identity of the client can be included at this time, until the candidate can pass the pre-deployment vetting course. Training is expected to last two months. Actual contract is open ended, minimum four months. Beginning pay: $50,000/month. All resumes must be submitted no later than September 15. That was in two weeks.

Dan sat back and stared at the screen for a long time. He didn’t even reach for the bottle. Fifty grand a month? That was astronomical, even back in the good old days. He suddenly found himself wondering how much he could pay off with two hundred grand. Four months would pay off the house, easy. That would be one huge Sword of Damocles no longer hanging over his head. With the house paid off, even if he went back to wrenching on Harleys and Gold Wings for a living, he wouldn’t have to spend all the extra hours just to make ends meet.

Hold on, now, he thought. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. He read through the listing again. There weren’t any overt red flags, at least not at first. The pay was high enough to raise some eyebrows, including his own, but the rest seemed to be pretty standard contract listing boilerplate. He studied the company name for a moment. MMPR? Never heard of ’em. A quick search turned up a company website, which was as sleek and generally uninformative as any contracting company website he’d seen. Companies with their fingers in the high-end, sensitive contract world didn’t tend to advertise it on their front pages. If you could find it on their job listings, it would be couched in such esoteric, euphemistic terms that it would be next to impossible to know for sure what the job was or where it was.

He sat back in his chair again, the booze forgotten, and stared pensively at the screen. He’d opened this particular can of worms as depressed, alcohol-fueled, maudlin pining after the glory days gone by, expecting, deep down, to do little more than fantasize about being a trigger-puller again. He knew it probably wasn’t a good idea, especially with the kids to worry about, but that fifty kay a month was damned enticing. It would solve a lot of problems.

But Amy and Tom gave him pause. He would be away from them for a long time, at least six months to go by the listing. Of course, how much time do I spend with them now? They’re being raised by kindergarten teachers and babysitters, not their father. Abruptly, he pushed back from the desk and left the room. He crept up the stairs to the kids’ bedroom, eased open the door, and stepped inside, looking down at them.

Tom was still on his side, his knees pulled up, the blanket halfway down his torso, one chubby hand splayed on the sheet next to his head. Amy was lying asleep on her back, her golden curls splayed out on the pillow, breathing softly. For a long time, he just stood there, watching his children.

They’d be fine with Grandma and Grandpa, he thought. Hell, probably better off than they are with me right now. And Julie’s folks have offered to help time and again. I’ve just been too damned stubborn to take them up on it. He felt a flash of guilt at the thought. He hadn’t refused Roger’s and Darlene’s help because he bore them any ill will. He’d done it because he’d been too proud, too convinced that he had to take care of his kids all by himself. And so I pay strangers to take care of them for me. He turned to leave, the decision all but made. He eased the door shut, carefully turning the knob to latch it without making noise.

Back downstairs, he sat at his desk again, and picked up Julie’s picture. Please forgive me, he thought. I can tell your parents and anyone else who asks that I’m doing this for the kids, to make enough money that I can take better care of them. But I’d never be able to lie to you. The money’s a bonus. I’m dying from the inside out, have been ever since I came home. I need this. I need something. I promise I’ll come back and try to be a better father after this, once I’ve got enough of a nest egg to pay for the house, at least. He hoped with every ounce of his being that he wasn’t still lying.

He still hesitated ever so slightly as the pointer hovered over the “Apply” link. He still knew nothing about the company or the contract, and the promised paycheck was high enough to be as much of a warning as an enticement. What the hell, he thought, as he clicked the link and prepared to start filling out the application form. It’s worth a try. Probably just another resume farming operation, anyway.

The next day went pretty much the same as the day before it had. He got up too early after going to bed too late, worked out until his headache was gone, then got the kids fed and off to kindergarten and daycare before going in to work. He tried to get back to pick them up from daycare earlier than he had the day before, and managed it. By a whopping fifteen minutes.

The entire day, he’d done his damnedest to concentrate on work and not think about that job listing. It probably was going to be just like so many he’d responded to before. He’d send his resume and then hear nothing. It wasn’t like he was dead set on it.

But as soon as he got home and got Amy and Tom to bed, he went to the laptop, started it up, and went straight to his email. Nothing.

Well, what the hell did I expect? It’s not like I’ve ever heard of a contracting company replying in twenty-four hours or less.

He had a couple more stiff drinks than he’d planned on and went to sleep.

Three more days went by. Dan kept working late, but he put the listing out of his mind. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Then, on the fourth night after he applied, he checked his email to see a message from MMPR Inc.

Mr Tackett,

We received your application for the Sensitive High Risk Counter-Piracy Mission we listed on Combatant Jobs. We are happy to say that you appear to meet all of our qualifications for a successful candidate. Therefore, we would like to invite you to attend our initial vetting course outside Naples, FL, from October 1 to November 30. Given the closeness of the date, we have attached your itinerary. Our chief instructor, Decker, will meet you at the airport and drive you out to the training facility. All required forms are attached, as well as a list of documents and equipment you should bring.

We wish you the best of luck at training, and urge you to bring your A-Game.

Respectfully,

J. Colton, Director of Recruitment and Training, MMPR, Inc.

Dan sat back in his chair and stared at the screen. His bluff had been called. Could he turn his kids over to Roger and Darlene for six months or more, while he went off to probably sit on a ship, waiting for nothing to happen? But even as he thought the question, he knew that it wasn’t quite accurate. No company throws that kind of money around for glorified security guards on a freighter. There was something else going on. But for $50,000 a month, could he afford to care?

He thought for a long time, then grabbed the bottle, took what he determined was going to be his last drink for a while, and grabbed the phone to call Roger.

Three and a half weeks later, he pulled up to Roger and Darlene’s house. Tom was excited to see Grandma and Grandpa, but Amy was a little more pensive. As he swung her down to the ground, she asked, “Why do you have to go away, Daddy?”

He knelt down in front of her and held her shoulders. “I got a new job, Amy,” he said. “It’s only for a while, and it’s going to solve a lot of our money problems. I’ll be able to pay off the house, and take better care of you and your brother. But to do it, I have to go away for a while, and I can’t take you with me. So that’s why you’re going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a while.”

“When are you coming back?” she asked. There was a little bit of a quiver in her lower lip. She had already been through the death of her mother, and now she was having to say goodbye to her father, less than five months later. It was a lot for a five-year-old girl to handle.

“It’s going to be a few months, but I am coming back,” he told her. “And when I get back, things are going to get better. I promise.” Please, God, don’t let that be a lie.

Amy was tearing up. This was not going well. Dan felt a lump hardening in his own throat. “I’m scared, Daddy,” she said, her voice starting to get choked up. “What if you don’t come back?”

He hugged her tightly. “I’ll come back,” he repeated thickly. “I promise. Grandma and Grandpa will take good care of you until I do.”

Darlene intervened to collect her hug from her granddaughter, saving him a little bit of further heartache, but when he turned to get Tom out of the car seat, the little boy was already crying. He clung to Dan’s neck tightly, sobbing. Through the sobs, he picked out that Tom didn’t want his Daddy to go. He held his son for a little bit longer, murmuring reassuringly that it was only going to be for a little while, that he had to go, that it was going to make their lives better in the long run. He didn’t know how much Tom understood or believed. At that point, he wasn’t sure how much he believed, either.

But there isn’t a great alternative, is there? I could call it off right here and go back to wrenching on bikes on overtime, letting strangers raise my kids while I struggle to make enough money to keep a roof over our heads, but then we’d be in the same boat, wouldn’t we? I have to make this work. It’s only for six months or so, and then I’ll be able to stay home. He hoped he wasn’t deceiving himself. He was afraid that he was. He knew the world he was about to go back into.

Darlene, cooing comfortingly, gathered Tom into her arms and carried him toward the house. The little boy was so miserable that he had forgotten his excitement at seeing his grandparents, and just kept bawling into her shoulder.

Dan watched his kids go into the house, his fists clenched, tears in his eyes, feeling like the worst father in the world. I’m doing this for them, I’m doing this for them, he kept repeating in his mind.

Roger, having stood nearby while Darlene ushered their grandchildren into the house, stepped over and put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. He knew Roger understood; the man had done three tours in Vietnam, and later gone to Rhodesia, where he’d served with the Rhodesian Light Infantry. He had seen the elephant many times. Dan still couldn’t help but imagine that his father-in-law disapproved of his running off to chase adventure, especially so soon after Julie’s death.

“It’s always tough on kids,” Roger said. “Fortunately, Darlene and I didn’t have ours until after we’d already come Stateside, but I’ve seen it enough times before.” He looked Dan in the eye. “It’s going to weigh on you. You’re going to be sitting on the plane, going wherever you’re going, and you’re going to keep replaying Tom’s crying and Amy’s questions in your mind the whole time. Listen to me. You’ve got to leave that on the plane. If you’re going somewhere risky, and for the paycheck they’ve promised you, I can’t imagine that ‘risky’ quite covers it, you’ve got to have your head in the game at all times. For their sakes, you have to trust that we’ll take good care of them, and just concentrate on getting your ass home in one piece. You hear me, son?”

Dan nodded, his throat tight, his eyes still wet and stinging. He finally met Roger’s gaze. The old man was studying him with narrowed eyes.

“I hope so,” Roger continued. “I worry about you, Dan. With this coming so soon after Julie passed…well.” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “There was a kid who came to join the RLI, not long before the war ended. He was barely military age. He’d been out in the bush for a couple of days, and got home to find that ZANLA terrs had murdered his parents and his little sister. He crushed training, and when we got out to the bush, he was one of the most aggressive, ferocious fighters we had.

“But we could tell that he wasn’t in it for revenge. There was a different look in his eye. One of the boys said he was, ‘looking for a reunion round.’ He was hoping to catch a bullet and see his family again.” He paused again, as Dan looked at the ground. “I know you miss Julie, Dan. So do we. Not a day goes by that we don’t still cry about her. But you can’t go see her yet. Those little kids in there need their Daddy, even more now that their Mommy’s gone. So if that’s anywhere in your mind, you need to forget about that reunion round and concentrate on getting back to Amy and Tom.”

Dan nodded again, and looked Roger in the eye. “I hear you,” he said. “I’m not suicidal, Roger.” Are you being entirely honest, here? a little voice asked in the back of his mind. Shut up, he thought. “I walked away from the mil contracting world five years ago, and I still remember why. I’m doing this strictly for the money.” Okay, that’s not one hundred percent honest, but it is the primary motivating factor, so let’s keep things simple.

Roger just raised an eyebrow, as if to say, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday, kid, but let it go. “That actually brings to mind another worry. I know, I sound like an old Jewish grandmother. But the pay…that’s a lot of money, Dan. A shit-ton of money. Not only does it tell me that you’re going to get dropped into some pretty horrific shit, but it’s also the kind of money that people will go to great lengths to get their hands on. And I’m not just talking about your fellow contractors. Watch your back, Dan. Twenty-four seven, you need to be watching your back. As good as that paycheck sounds, it gives me a bad feeling.”

Dan looked up at him with a raised eyebrow of his own. “You’re thinking that if I’m dead, they don’t have to pay me?”

“I’ve seen it before,” he replied grimly. “Had a friend who was working contract in Afghanistan a few years ago. He said that he and his crew got ordered into an obvious ambush. He could never prove anything, but he’s always suspected that his supervisor was trying to get rid of them because the company was having money troubles. Greed is an eternal motivator, and it turns people into monsters. Never forget that.”

“Oh, I know,” Dan answered. “I’m not new to this business, remember? I’m under no illusions that I’m anything but another monkey on the shelf to these people.” He looked back toward the house. Amy and Tom were both in the window, watching, anguish in their faces. It looked like Tom was still crying. It was going to be a rough few first days in Roger and Darlene’s house. He turned to Roger. “I’ll be careful. Now, I should probably get going, while I still have the guts to go through with this.”

Roger clapped him on the back. “Fair winds and following seas, son,” he said. “We’ll take good care of Amy and Tom. Call whenever you can. It’s important. They need to know that Daddy didn’t just leave and forget about them.”

“I will.” He turned and stepped into the cab of the truck. “I’ll be back in a few months.”

“Kill Yuan” Is Up For Pre-Order, Plus A Little Taste

As of now, Kill Yuan is up for pre-order on Amazon, with a release date of May 10.  Go here to preorder.

And just to give a bit of a taste, so you’ve got a reason to hit that preorder link, here’s Chapter 1:

 A shout from the watchtower drew Nong Song out of his reverie. He looked up from the table where he had been cleaning his QSZ-92, to see Banh waving from the watchtower and pointing off to the southwest.

He grimaced. Nong didn’t like many of the motley squad of Javanese and Malaysians he’d been saddled with, out here on tiny Pulau Repong, but the scrawny, gap-toothed Vietnamese pirate, who liked to boast about the number of merchant throats he had slit dockside in Cam Ranh, revolted him. But Shang Xiao Yuan had put him on this flyspeck in the ocean for a reason, so he hastily reassembled the pistol, then got up and reached for his binoculars.

As he scanned the water, looking for whatever Banh had meant by that inarticulate yell, he thought, for the hundredth time that week, that there really was very little to like about this entire situation. He had put on the single bar of a Shao Wei in the PLA Navy, only a year before, looking forward to a career that he hoped would ultimately end in a command of at least a destroyer, if not one of the refit Kuznetsov-class carriers. He certainly hadn’t expected his career to end less than a year later, resulting in his presently sitting on a tiny, miserable island in the South China Sea, commanding a band of pirates with only one other Han on the island. And Pan Jing was not the man he would have chosen to have with him. He was almost as bad as Banh.

It took a minute of scanning the horizon before he saw what the little Vietnamese was excited about. It was a yacht. A big one; his quick estimate put it at close to seventy-five meters or more. Sleek and silver, it looked very, very expensive. He ran to the tower and began to climb, while yelling to Pan, “Start getting the boats ready!” The big crewman looked up languidly, and started to get to his feet. If the target was as rich as Nong thought it was, as soon as Pan learned what it was, he’d lose some of his laziness. So would most of the rest.

The ladder leading up to the tower was as rickety as the rest of the structure, which had been hastily lashed together by men who had somewhat more knowledge of knots than they had love for manual labor. It hadn’t blown down yet, at any rate, but it creaked dangerously as Nong climbed. He was probably going to have to send Banh down when he got to the top, just to be on the safe side.

When he hoisted himself up onto the platform, Banh was staring through the spotting scope at the yacht, muttering to himself gleefully in Vietnamese. Nong didn’t speak a word of it, though Banh, along with most of the rest of the pirates except for a couple of the Javanese, spoke passable, if rough, Mandarin. Nong didn’t speak, but simply jerked a finger toward the ladder. Banh hesitated, the look in his eyes suggesting that he was considering simply gutting the soft Chinese kid that had been put in command over him, but then stepped away from the spotting scope and started down the ladder.

Nong waited until Banh was already a good ten feet down before turning to the spotting scope himself. He’d learned early not to necessarily trust any of his fellow pirates, especiallynot the ones who had been engaged in this particular occupation for much longer than he’d been a naval officer.

Banh had already had the scope focused on the yacht, which was barely moving; it had hardly reached the edge of the optic’s field of view. It took the barest of adjustments to center the yacht in the scope’s objective lens.

It was expensive. Nong didn’t know what boat values were but he was guessing a price tag that no one short of the Central Committee could afford. As he focused the scope a little better, he could see figures on the bow. They were far enough away that it was hard to see, but he thought he could see several shirtless men and almost as many women in even less clothing. They were mostly light-skinned. Westerners. Probably Americans. Japanese were possible, but he thought he could just make out a flash of yellow hair on one of the women.

Whoever they were, they were obviously extremely wealthy, and just the kind of target that Shang Xiao Yuan would call a “target of opportunity.” The majority of their targets were freighters or tankers, but the Shang Xiao wasn’t going to pass up a juicy kidnapping, and this looked like one of the juiciest.

Nong really didn’t have his heart in this business, but he knew that the Shang Xiao would probably have his head if he passed up a target like the yacht. Worse, he’d probably just turn him over to Banh for sport. Not because Yuan held the Vietnamese pirate in any sort of esteem, but simply because he was the scum of Nong’s crew. The Shang Xiao had a harsh imagination when it came to punishment. He wouldn’t just take a man’s life, he’d make sure that man lost all face before he died.

Abandoning the spotting scope, Nong started back down the ladder. Apparently, Banh had already started spreading the word. The pirates were stirring out of their afternoon stupor, though a few were still moving sluggishly, probably still either drunk on Arrack or stoned. The first few executions had curbed some of the harder narcotic use shortly after Yuan had consolidated his hold on the islands, but Arrack, Langkau, ruou, and marijuana were plentiful, and usually overlooked. Some of the Malays and Javanese needed or wanted the liquid courage when they went after a ship, especially as more armed guards were getting posted on them.

“Is it true?” Pan asked as Nong reached the ground. There was an eager light in the big man’s eyes, that Nong didn’t like, but that was life as normal anymore. Ever since Shang Xiao Yuan had taken the Zhaotong and deserted to set up his little empire here in the Anambas.

He nodded. “It’s true,” he replied. “It is a very large yacht. It looks like tourists.”

Pan grinned. He had very good teeth for a rating on a PLAN frigate. It didn’t make the smile any prettier. “Rich tourists, then,” he said. “It will be a big ransom. And they probably are too rich and spoiled to cause any trouble. Easy money. And maybe a little fun, too.”

Nong carefully hid his disgust. Showing emotion in front of these men would be worse than losing face; they would descend on him like jackals. Like it or not, the only way to survive for now was to be a pirate. He pulled his pistol out of its holster and pointed it at the sky. “Let’s go!” he shouted. With a roar of approval, the pirates swarmed to the armed speedboats partially hidden beneath overhanging branches that had been tied down to create overhead cover.

The speedboats had belonged to the oil company that Yuan and his men had expelled from the islands. With the help of the pirate bands that Shang Xiao Yuan had suborned, they had equipped them with a mix of Type 67s, PKPs, DShKs, and a CIS .50. They were attack boats now, and had seen use.

Even the drunks and the stoners made good time getting into the boats and getting ready for action. It wasn’t often they got a target as enticing as an expensive yacht full of dumb Americans, or whoever they were. The women were an added bonus.

With a roar of outboards, the speedboats surged out of the little bay, quickly picking up speed as they raced toward the yacht. Nong was in the lead boat, as his position necessitated. These cutthroats might not be soldiers, but Nong was keeping to his training, as the Shang Xiao had admonished him to do before sending him to this shithole of an island. Only acting like soldiers was going to allow them to control this rabble.

He looked around at the rest of the boats. Their formation, if it could be called that, was a little ragged, with several of the boats pushing to race ahead of the rest. He’d given orders that the machine guns were to be covered until they had the target surrounded, but Banh was in the bow of one of the smaller and faster boats, holding on to the CIS .50, grinning his gap-toothed madman’s grin. Nong gritted his teeth, even as he reflected that he should have expected as much from the little chusheng.

But as they neared the yacht, it didn’t look like the Americans even noticed the gun. He could hear their music pounding even over the roar of the outboards, and a couple of the girls in bikinis on the bow were waving to the boats. One even lifted her top, flashing the incoming pirates with a whoop that was almost drowned out by the music. Nong momentarily felt a flash of resentment at these Westerners’ arrogant stupidity; they would deserve just what his pirates were about to give them.

The pirate boats split, three swinging around the stern while Nong led the other two around the bow. In moments, they had the yacht bracketed, and Nong pointed at the bow. Jalak already had a grappling hook ready in his hands as Abdul steered the boat in toward the yacht’s bow.

The stupid Americans still didn’t see the danger. The big-breasted blond was leaning over the gunwale, waving to the pirates and yelling something that Nong couldn’t understand in a high-pitched voice. A few more of the men had come to the side as well, all shirtless and carrying bottles of beer. One raised his bottle toward the boats with a gleeful shout.

Jalak was starting to twirl the rope with the grappling hook, preparing to throw it. Nong put his hand up and brought it down with a shout of, “Now!”

The covers came off the machine guns, at least aside from Banh’s. In a ragged volley, all five boats fired bursts into the air over the yacht.

Now the Americans got it. Screams erupted from the deck, and suddenly the partiers on the side were gone, a muscular arm hauling the blond away from the gunwale even as she screamed. Jalak gave the grapple a practiced heave, and it caught the gunwale on the first try. With a tug, Jalak made sure it was holding, then pulled, drawing the boat close enough to start climbing up.

Nong, true to his role as leader, made sure his pistol was in its holster, then grabbed the rope and started up, with Jalak and Soeprapto right behind him, each with a Type 63 rifle slung across his back. Jalak’s even had its bayonet, which he liked to wave under crewmen’s noses during a hijack.

Nong had not been the fittest of officers when he had pinned on his bars. He still wasn’t; the diet of mostly rice that was all that was available wasn’t terribly conducive to physical fitness. But he was definitely leaner and stronger than he had been when he’d first set foot on the Zhaotong. That was by necessity. Just like the bravado and his pistol, being stronger than most of the pirates he was supposed to be leading was a survival trait. So, while his arms were burning by the time he got up to the deck, he still made the short climb quickly enough, and was able to launch himself over the gunwale at just about the same time that Banh came over from the other side.

The bow had emptied by the time the pirates got on deck. Nong caught a glimpse of a shapely rump in a bikini disappearing through the hatch beneath the helipad that was just aft of the bow. He followed, not so much out of lust, though he was sure many of his fellow boarders would have that foremost in their minds at that point, but because that appeared to be the best route to the bridge. While he really wasn’t worried about much resistance from these spoiled rich Americans, there was always somebody who would try to be brave and stupid, and it was best to nip that in the bud by taking full control as quickly as possible. The bridge was the best spot to do that. He’d learned that on his first hijack, when Yuan had made him go along with Qiao.

The yacht’s interior was a marked contrast to the freighters and tankers they usually attacked. Everything was very sleek, modern, and roomy. He stormed up the ladderwell into a wood-trimmed lounge with luxurious sofas and what looked like a well-stocked bar, before going through another hatch into a narrow passageway similarly paneled in what looked like oak. There were a couple of screaming, barely-dressed young people in front of him, who ducked into cabins on either side, but he ignored them for the time being. Once they had the bridge, they could sweep the yacht and gather all of the hostages on the top deck.

The bridge was two more decks up. By the time he got there, some of the heady thrill of the hijack was going to Nong’s head. The yacht was one of the richest boats he’d ever seen. There was more money sunk into the vessel than anyone aside from a General or a Central Committee member could ever dream of having. Maybe, if he made a good enough showing, the Shang Xiao would be content with ransoming the hostages, and let him have the yacht. It was unlikely, he knew, but a man could dream.

He burst onto the bridge, pistol already in hand, and went straight to the man in board shorts at the tiller, who was still staring in shock at the pirates swarming onto the yacht’s deck below. Nong pistol-whipped the man to the deck and stood over the crumpled body. “I am now in control of this ship!” he shouted, in passable English, or at least he thought it was. “Everyone down on the deck, now!”

He had been far too keyed up and absorbed with fantasies of owning the yacht he had captured to notice that the man had moved with the blow, instead of taking the full force of it. He also hadn’t noticed the tattoos that crawled over the man’s arms, chest, and ribs. Nor would he have necessarily recognized several of the insignias integrated into them, even if he had.

Most of the Americans had quickly dropped to the deck on command, though a brunette with slightly Asian features wearing short shorts and a red string bikini top was just standing next to the stern of the bridge, staring at the pirates and shivering. Banh, who had been right behind Nong all the way up, now advanced on her, leering. His folding-stock Type 56 was slung on his back, and his knife was in his hand.

“I said get on the deck!” Nong shouted at the woman, as much to protect her from Banh’s attention as to reinforce his command. Shaking like a leaf, she obeyed, as Banh stood over her, the same rotten leer on his face, thumbing the edge of his knife, both a promise of things to come. Nong looked away in disgust.

Gunfire suddenly erupted from below decks, a rapid, hammering series of reports that froze Nong’s breath. He turned toward the hatch, sick with the sudden realization that he had just lost all control of his men, and opened his mouth to shout.

He never got the chance to yell. The sight of two large men, one black, one white, both dressed in shorts and t-shirts with plate carriers over them, rifles in their shoulders, made his brain go into lock. This was supposed to be a rich playboy’s yacht, filled with soft, spoiled partiers. There weren’t supposed to be guns here besides what his men had.

Before he could unfreeze his thoughts to act, an iron-hard leg slammed into his calves, sweeping his feet out from under him. He fell to the deck, striking his head on the tiller as he went down. He thought he heard three painfully loud cracks go by his head before everything went black.

When he came to, his head was pounding and he felt nauseous. As soon as he became aware of it, the nausea redoubled and he retched, bile dribbling down his chin and chest. He couldn’t turn to keep it off of himself, which was when he realized that he was zip-tied to a chair, hand and foot.

He cracked his eyes open, squinting against the light, which only made the pain in his head worse. He could feel the knot in his skull where he’d hit the tiller throbbing. He felt sick, and only in part because of the concussion.

He was still on the bridge. There was another man at the tiller, and the faintly Asian brunette was now wearing a t-shirt and plate carrier, standing nearby with a rifle. She was standing over Banh’s corpse. The Vietnamese pirate had taken a round to the side of the head, and the exit wound had blown a good chunk of his face off.

Nong realized he’d heard the woman shout while he was puking his guts out. She turned toward the ladderwell from below, where two men were now stepping onto the bridge. One was the man he had pistol-whipped, now similarly armed and equipped. The gash where the pistol had hit just above his eyebrow had been closed with butterfly bandages and was still oozing a little bit of blood.

The other man, in the lead, was half a head shorter than his companion, with icy blue eyes and hair that was a dark brown shading to black. He unslung his rifle, leaned it against the bulkhead, then stepped over to Nong’s chair, looking down at him for a moment. He loomed over Nong enough that it hurt to look up toward the sunny sky and squint at him.

Finally, the man squatted down in front of him, bringing his face about to eye level. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

It took a moment for Nong’s aching brain to process the words. He didn’t dare nod; it hurt too much just to keep his head still and upright. “Yes, a little,” he replied.

“Good,” the man said. “My Mandarin sucks. What’s your name?”

Nong gulped, and didn’t say anything for a moment. Old conditioning was reasserting itself. He might be a pirate now, and no longer in service to his country, but he was being questioned by what he could only assume was an American soldier. He couldn’t bring himself to talk.

“Look, son,” the man said calmly, “I’m being nice right now, because you’ve got a concussion, and you might have some information that we can use. If you piss me off, I’ll turn you over to Lambert over there,” he jerked a thumb toward the tattooed man with the cut on his forehead, “and he won’t be nearly so nice. So let’s try this again. What is your name?”

“Nong Song,” he finally whispered, after it took a moment to gather enough spit to talk. His mouth and throat were raw with used stomach acid, and something tasted like blood. The man named Lambert laughed.

The dark-haired man glared at him for a second before turning back to Nong. “All right, Nong Song, here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to tell me everything you know about Shang Xiao Yuan’s dispositions on the islands. How many men does he have? Where are his bases? What kind of defenses? Does he have allies on Borneo or mainland Malaysia that will come to support him if he’s attacked?”

Nong shook his head painfully. It was hard to think, between translating the dark-haired man’s rapid-fire questions in his head and the pounding agony and nausea of his concussion. “I do not know a lot of that,” he said finally. “I was only a Shao Wei. I have been out on Pulau Repong for the last three months. The Shang Xiao does not tell me his plans; he just tells me to keep a lookout. I was to report big targets and attack smaller targets of opportunity.”

“That would be an expensive yacht filled with scantily-clad tourists,” Lambert added helpfully.

“No shit,” the dark-haired man replied. “Shut up.” He turned back to Nong. “Let me put it a different way. Is the entire crew of the Zhaotong part of the band? Or did some decline to become pirates?”

Nong thought about it for a moment. He honestly didn’t think anyone had decided to object to Yuan’s announced plan to desert and carve out his own little empire in the South China Sea. If there had been, they had been dealt with quietly and permanently before any of the non-Chinese pirates had seen it. “I do not know,” he muttered. “I do not think so.”

“You don’t think what?” the man demanded. “You don’t think the whole crew went pirate along with you, or you don’t think any decided they didn’t want to play?”

“I do not think that any of the crew defied the Shang Xiao,” Nong said thickly. “I was the junior officer on board. I think maybe the rest were already part of the Shang Xiao‘s plans.”

The dark-haired man looked up at the man called Lambert. Lambert shrugged. The man turned back to Nong. “All right, we’ll assume that the whole crew joined. Do you know how many non-Chinese pirates there are?”

He tried to shrug, but couldn’t. The zip ties were digging into his wrists. Only now that he was a bit more conscious was he aware of how cruelly tight they were. The pain had been eclipsed earlier by the throbbing agony in his skull.

“I do not know for sure,” he confessed. “There are many. There are enough that only Pan Jing and I were put here to command these men.”

“That’s a lot, if the ratio holds,” the woman said. “We’re talking probably five or six hundred, minimum.”

“I suspect that we’ll find more of the Chinese closer to Yuan himself,” the dark-haired man replied. “Presuming Nong Song here is telling the truth and he really is just a boot butter-bar who doesn’t know shit, and got put out on the LP/OP because he’s a boot and the Captain doesn’t entirely trust him.” Nong didn’t understand all of that, but he got the gist. The dark-haired man turned back to him. “Where is the Zhaotong itself?” he asked.

“I do not know,” he replied honestly. It had been at anchor off Pulau Matak the last he had seen it, but that had been three months before. “It has not come here since we were assigned to Repong.”

“This guy doesn’t know shit,” the man called Lambert said. “Let’s just off him, throw his corpse to the sharks, and quit wasting time.”

A flash of irritation flickered across the dark-haired man’s face, but he looked at Nong and said, “I hope you can give me more than that, Ensign Nong Song, because otherwise Lambert, as much of an asshole as he is, is right, and we have no further use for you. So, what’s it going to be? Do you have something else for me?”

Nong felt a jolt of fear go through him like an electric shock. Looking at the man called Lambert, he could see his own death in the man’s brown eyes. He felt another surge of nausea, whether because of the concussion or the imminence of his own demise, he couldn’t be sure. He thought of the exultation he’d felt, in spite of himself, as he’d stormed the yacht, watching the rich tourists run screaming from him. For a brief moment, he’d forgotten his nervousness and disgust at what he’d become, and embraced the savagery. Now all that was gone. He thought he felt his bladder let go.

“No, please,” he stammered, trying to think past the befuddling pain in his head. There had to be something, some fact they didn’t have, that might keep him alive for a little while longer. “I’m sure there is something, I just have to think of it…”

The dark-haired man studied him for a moment, his nose wrinkling as he noticed the urine stain on Nong’s shorts. Finally, he stood up. “Two more questions, for now. Did any of your people get left on the island?” When Nong shook his head in the negative, he continued. “Did you radio to the main base that we were here? Is anyone expecting to hear from you about the target you came out for?”

Nong’s stomach dropped even further, if that was possible. He hadn’t thought to report the sighting or his attack to Yuan’s headquarters on Matak. He’d been too desperate not to let his motley band of cutthroats get ahead of him to even think about it. Slowly, he shook his head.

The dark-haired man nodded, satisfied. “Good. That gives us some breathing room. It gives you a longer lease on life, too. I’ll have some more questions later. Think really hard about the answers.” He looked at the woman. “Keep an eye on him.” Then he turned and walked off the bridge.

Lambert started to follow him, but stopped at the top of the ladderwell, and watched the other man descend before turning back toward Nong. Nong didn’t like the look he saw in the man’s eyes as he paced back toward the chair.

“Lambert…” the woman began, but the man held up a hand toward her.

“Shut it, Cassy,” he said, never taking his eyes off of Nong. He advanced until he was standing directly over him, looking down. It hurt, but Nong craned his neck to look up at the tattooed man.

For a moment, the man called Lambert just studied him with blank, dead, pitiless eyes. Then he drew his pistol. The woman started to say something, but without looking at her, Lambert said, “Get out.” She hesitated. “I mean it. Get out.” She still hesitated, her hands flexing a little on her rifle, and Lambert looked over at her. “You gonna shoot me for a fucking pirate?” Lambert demanded. “Fuck off. Get out of here.”

“Dan’s going to hear about this,” she said tightly.

“Sure he will,” Lambert said. “But he won’t shoot me for a fucking pirate, either. Get lost.”

With a glare, the woman left the bridge. Lambert turned back to Nong. “Some people are a little too good for this business, you know?” he said conversationally. “I know you’re just wasting our time to try to save your worthless ass. You’re just a clueless bootenant out of his depth, but you’re going to string Dan along because he doesn’t want to be the one to drop the hammer on you, all tied up like that. But as for me, I don’t like having my time wasted. I think we could be doing better things than interrogating you. Plus,” he added, reaching up to touch the bandage with two fingers of his off hand, “you gave me this. So fuck you.” He dropped the index finger to flip Nong the bird.

The last thing Nong ever saw was the gaping maw of the pistol’s muzzle below the coldest eyes he’d ever seen.

The Guns of “Kill Yuan”

Since I did a bit of an Area Brief for Kill Yuan, I thought I’d give a little run-down of most of the weapons used in the novel.  Since this isn’t a Praetorian novel, things are going to be a little different.

Graphics heavy post ahead, because who doesn’t like a little gun porn?

MMPR, the company that employs the mercenaries, issues all the same equipment, for ease of logistics and commonality of both cartridges and magazines.  The primary rifle is the Sig Sauer SG 553, a commando variant of the SG 550.  It’s a 5.56×45 NATO rifle, in use by the Swiss as well as numerous armed forces in Southeast Asia (which is a large part of why it was chosen).  Designated Marksmen use the SG 553 LB.

In keeping with the rifle, the chosen sidearm is the P226, Sig Sauer’s classic 9mm Parabellum service pistol.

For light fire support, they’ve gotten their hands on a handful of Ultimax 100s, Singaporean light machine guns in 5.56 NATO.

Yuan’s pirates use a large variety of weapons, though most are Chinese in origin.  There are a lot of Type 56 Chinese AKM clones in use.

There are also more than a few Type 63 SKS rifles floating around.

Since the core of the pirates are Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy defectors, there are a few QBZ-95 service rifles among them.  The QBZ-95 is a Chinese-developed bullpup firing the 5.8x42mm cartridge.

A few, including Nong Song in the first chapter, have pistols, mostly the QSZ-92, another Chinese development.  The 92 chambers either the 5.8x21mm or the 9x19mm Parabellum.

The pirates have several different machine guns at their disposal, including Chinese Type 67s, Russian PKP Pechenegs and DShKs, and Singaporean CIS .50s.

(Seen above: a Singaporean CIS 50)

Shang Wei Feng Kung’s Jiaolong commandos use a combination of weapons.  Trying to maintain a relatively low, somewhat deniable profile, they use Singaporean 5.56 NATO bullpup SAR 21 rifles, though they are all well trained on the QBZ-95 as well.

Most of Feng’s commandos continue to use their QSZ-92s as their sidearms, though they have a few South African Vektor SP1s for more deniable operations.  The SP1 is a 9mm in use by the Singaporean Commando Formation, making them common enough and not overtly Chinese to the casual observer.

So, there’s a quick rundown of the more prominent firearms that will be featured in Kill Yuan.  Though there might be some new ones cropping up; after all, the first draft isn’t quite done yet.