“Of course, yeah I'm headed your way now.” John talks into the burner held to his ear as he looks around for any street signs. “We got caught in a little traffic and the GPS turned me around so I had to take some side roads. I should be there in about fifteen?”
“How bad was the traffic? It’s not like you to be so late.” A woman's voice on the other end sighs with mock exasperation.
“Nothing terrible. There was a two car accident on the shoulder but you know how people get.”
“I know, tell me about it.” he can hear her eyes roll even over the phone. “Well, give me a call when you are close so I can heat up dinner for you.”
“Will do, love you.”
“Love you too.”
John puts the phone away in his pocket and gives Spaz a side eye as he grins ear to ear.
“It’s so weird hearing you talk like a family man.”
“Oh fuck off Spaz.” John groans and takes a left down a road only recently being blanketed in the blue of the morning sun.
“I'm serious! You’re always such a serious hard ass. I thought the only time you let loose was on the booze or when Cat gets all close.” Spaz wiggles his shoulders to nuzzle up to John, who shoots the smaller man a deadly glare.
“Fuck off Spaz.” John shoves him away with a hand and a smile. Taking a little pleasure in his much greater strength over his colleague.
“I bet Cat’s jealous,” he tests, knocking on the back panel where Cat and Kid are hiding.
“Jesus Spaz, would you knock it off?” John says a bit more seriously, eyeing the man down until he takes a deep breath and leans his head on the window.
“Alright alright.”
John had spent ten years in spec ops, ten years learning how to kick in doors, clear rooms, defuse briefcase nukes, jump from planes among a hell of a lot of other badass operator shit. Several months worth of training would have been excessive. He knew how to do everything and it was safe to say he was an expert at it, there was very little training left for him to do in the field of being a damn good killer.
That was why they hadn’t spent the past months training to be killers, they spent the past months learning how to be covert.
It was a skillset John was unaccustomed to, but one they needed to learn and put into place quickly with in field experience to prep for this contract. With reports of this anomaly having super hearing well into the range of miles, any words or phrases that could trigger his attention were a no go.
The entire conversation he had just had on the phone with the woman in the TOC was entirely code.
Catching traffic meant that activity in the area delayed their snatch and grab on the family. A two car collision for the two non-target individuals who decided to talk with Cesar before he could leave. The woman telling him to give him a call so she could heat up dinner meant that she needed to hear from him before they went forward with phase one to clear any changes with Blackwood and the spooks on cams to give a green light for entry.
It was safe to say that John would do hell week a million times over before doing all this covert crap. He’s a solider, not a fucking spy. This kind of garbage was reserved for three letter agencies, but Blackwood insisted that they adapt to this new environment, and John knew the man was right, like fucking always.
Not every mission was going to be in the middle of nowhere Iraq or some backwater in Africa. These anomalies were popping up all over the map and that meant making sure their movements as a private military corporation were totally clandestine, especially in the states.
John learned everything there was to learn about covert operations. From the code they used, to adopting a brand new persona and identity. Hell they made a damn good actor out of him despite being the last to pick up on it, and all of that was necessary, especially when an anomaly's super senses could pick up an increased heart rate, or micro expressions. It wasn’t enough to lie, you had to believe everything you said.
After this mission here they were going to be following a number of contracts all throughout Europe and Asia which meant a number of interested government intelligence agencies would likely be trying to listen in to anything interesting. It wasn’t like what Blackwood was doing was legal, not by a stretch. They needed total secrecy, black ops so dark the operators doing the work couldn’t always see. Compartmentalize information, blend in, get in, get out, and do it all without anyone ever knowing they were there. Operating here in Cuba was dangerous, given the anomaly they were fighting, but operating with this skill set in Europe was even more dangerous, because chances were they had their own counter intel groups working the cases. A slip up here, meant injury or death. A slip up in Europe and Asia, meant an international incident.
John rounds a different street, being sure not to approach from the same direction all while looking around like some poor lost tourist complete with a tacky Hawaiian shirt and tan slacks.
After a pass or two on the street signs John calls up his “wife” at the TOC.
“Alright, I know where I’m at now. I’ll be home in a second.”
Target is clear, ready for the green light.
“Good! Oh I’m so glad to hear it, I missed you all day. I’ll heat the food up now, see you in a sec hun!”
Accelerated timescale, target is moving faster than anticipated, be quick.
“See you soon.”
Heard, moving.
John hangs up, finding it hard to suppress the shiver as the word “hun” lingers in his ears, tapping some devilish memory he hoped to forget.
He brings the van to a stop and then puts it in reverse, parking the vehicles backside into the driveway of the empty house directly next to Caesar’s. With a tap from Spaz on the back dividing wall, John listens for the sound of the rear doors opening and the weight to shift as Bella and Kid exit.
John watches the rear view mirrors, having positioned the van so that there is no view from the street to the two half kitted operators currently vaulting the wall to land in the backyard, each of their movements so precise, so quick, so quiet, that even as John watches their known approach vector, he can barely see them at all.
Both are dressed as locals, Kid and Bella having spent the past two days making sure they got tanned enough to not totally stand out. They both wear simple clothes with soft body armor underneath and suppressed handguns stuffed into their waistbands.
Hearing Bella’s accent work had him the most floored however, her typical French eased perfectly into a regional accent she had picked up from all of their simulation missions in the area.
Confirming Cat and Kid are in position, all he needs to do now was wait for them to work their magic.
Truth be told he’s a little jealous they got to be the door kickers on this mission, but then again they are easily the stealthiest of the teams and deserved the honor after working their asses off harder than anyone in training.
Unfortunately that leaves John alone in the van with Spaz.
“So Cat huh? You better watch yourself, you know. There is something called “emotional cheating”. You can’t just avoid sticking your dick in someone and be safe, no no women get real upset when you cheat on them by flirting with another girl.”
“Spaz what the fuck are you talking about?” John rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
God he hopes those two were quick.
“Your wife, man! If she finds out you and Bella have been rubbin’ shoulders she’s gonna drop your ass. Do you have a trust? You should have signed a prenup before you took this job. I’m tellin ya man divorce courts don’t like men and they sure as fuck don’t like operators with fat bank accounts.”
“I am not cheating,” John says plainly. He hadn’t quite gotten around to letting the others know about his wife yet. So far Bella and Casper were the only ones who knew his story and John and Casper were the only ones to know Bella. As expected, neither said a peep to anyone else even after word got out about his walk back from her room.
“You’re too old school, I’m tellin’ you it doesn’t matter if you keep your hands to yourself? You look at Cat the wrong way and I swear to you your wife will know, shit they always know. I don’t know how women do it man they got like a fuckin’ 6th sense for that shit.”
“Cat and I are friends, same as you and I are friends.”
“I dunno...”
“You know what? You're right. You’re more like an acquaintance.”
“Man what the hell! After all we’ve been through!”
“Kidding.” John smiles and checks the rear view mirror again.
“You know what I realized? How little we actually talk while doing shit. It’s like we never actually have conversations while active.”
“We are on mission right now”
“Yea but we are sitting in the car!”
“Van.”
“Whatever, we are sitting in a van waiting around. We don’t banter at all while working.”
“That's because work is work. Gotta be in the right mindset for this shit. Can’t just mouth off about how my weekend was while dropping a man. We save the talk for the drinks after.”
“Yea, I mean I guess you’re right but still, I gotta say it gets a little lonely running and gunning in silence.”
“Are all you Delta’s like this? Or are you a special case?” John eyes the man, who shrugs.
“Dunno, none of the other guys in my unit minded it much.”
“You get into a lot of bar fights per chance?”
“Oh fuck yea, all the time, how’d you know?”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Lucky guess.” John turns the engine on as he feels the phone buzz in his pocket.
Picking it up, he confirms the package pickup with more code talk, this time from a man's voice talking about how their reservation for tonight was confirmed.
John puts the van in drive and slowly rolls in front of Cesar's house just as the front door opens, Cat and Kid both walking out carrying large duffle bags over their shoulders.
Spaz slides the side door of the van open with a thud, and as soon as it does Bella and Kid are inside, setting the bags down with Spaz closing the door.
“All clean,” Cat says, slipping out of her fake accent and back into the french one.
John rounds the corner of a different street and drives as carefully as a tourist as he starts heading towards the warehouse.
Under normal circumstances they would need to be even more covert than this. Hauling assets out of the house in broad daylight while hopping walls and parking in abandoned driveways was atypical for their normal level of expected secrecy.
The only reason they were able to be this blatant was because this area as a whole had next to no active surveillance of civilian activity. The level they needed to operate was best if matched to the level of resistance, that way they weren’t doing things the hard way when an easy path was available.
This mission just so happened to have a fair amount of easy paths for them to take.
John hears the sounds of the bodies moving in the back of the van, the muffled cries and protests from the children mixing with a calming reassuring mumble from one of the adults.
John drives the route he replayed over and over in his head, making sure to adjust to detour routes in order to avoid heavier points of traffic along the way.
They manage to make it nearly to the warehouse, when a small police car comes into view around the next bend, two officers waving him down the moment he appears.
“Ah shit...” John grumbles, following their direction to pull off the road.
Spaz quickly taps out three short knocks on the dividing wall of the van, letting Cat and Kid know they needed to make sure the packages stayed quiet.
John rolls down his window just as the officers approach, letting the warm humid air fill his otherwise nice cool air conditioned front seat.
“Morning officers.” John plasters on his most innocent tourists smile, while fishing for his wallet in his back pocket, in doing so pressing a button on the pager to send a signal to the TOC to let them know there’s been a delay.
“Si si, ?hablas espa?ol se?or?” one says, he’s a short and stout man with hard hands and harder eyes that search John's face with an easy smile of his own.
“no muy bien,” John replies with a “so so” wave of his hand and a very poor accent.
“You should not be here sir.” The other, a slightly taller and leaner officer says in a thick accent. “It’s dangerous, a lot of crime.”
“Oh... right I see, sorry about that, I was just looking to get to San Lazaro.” He hands them his passport, his ID, as well as a map that shows how to get to the resort his fake wife is staying at. “The roads were bad, so I came this way.”
“Ohhh no no.” the other says, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. “This is no good.” he taps the paperwork with a look of dissatisfaction.
“No good? What do you mean no good?” John looks confused, though inside he wants to punch them in the mouth, bag 'em and take them too just for the inconvenience of all this.
“No, no good. You come down, we have to take license.”
“Take my License? Why?” John knows where this is going, but he very well can’t tell them that, he has to play the part of a clueless tourist.
“This is no good, but maybe we can let you go?” one looks at his partner who makes a show of thinking.
“Si si, we let you go, but this costs us money, we lose money if we let you go, so you pay us now and you go, si?”
“Really? You’ll do that for me?” John gives a sigh of relief, fishing for some money in his fake wallet.
“Si, we do this for you.”
“How much?” John pulls enough money from the wallet to make their mouths water.
“Five hundred.” the shorter one says, quick to count the visible bills.
“Of course. Here.” He hands them five hundred dollars. “And I can go now?”
“Si, yes you can go.” He gestures down the road.
“Thank you, gracias...” Just as John shifts back into drive, a body thumps in the back of the van, prompting the officers to both turn and look at him.
“Wait wait sir, sir!” One calls out, but John is already on the gas, waving and thanking them out the window, pretending to not understand them as they try to flag him back down.
“What the fuck is going on back there?” John growls, turning his head while rolling up the driver side window.
“Working on it!” Kid half yells, half whispers back.
“Work on it faster!” John looks into his rear view mirror and watches as the officers get into their car and turn on the lights. “Fuck me...”
John rounds a corner, and then another, trying to take a complicated path to their destination in order to lose the crooks on their tail.
The streets are tight, with cars lined on each side, several times he has to just lay on the horn and nearly clip the mirrors off nearby vehicles to ensure he can get through.
John’s driving is good, damn good in fact, but even with all of his years of experience he finds it a worthy challenge navigating the densely packed streets of cars, people, and debris.
“Shit!” Spaz grips the handle on the ceiling as John gasses it around a corner and rips the e-break to send his back end sliding through a gap so narrow it nearly takes his rear bumper off. The bodies in the back shift as he gasses it again, sending them crashing into the back of the van as he accelerates to a hairpin turn. “You’re gonna fuckin kill us!”
“Ye of little faith!” John smiles, and hits the turn sharper than even he anticipates, sending the car onto two wheels, its roof nearly scraping a nearby wall. The bodies in the back shift again, threatening to bring the car all the way to the ground until John cranks the wheel the opposite direction and corrects it.
“Fuck yea!” Spaz shouts, pumping his fist into the air.
“I told you, didn't I?” John laughs, and reroutes them back to their intended path of travel, ripping around corners, down a set of stairs with heavy thumps, squeezing through alleyways and through abandoned warehouses until John can no longer see the lights on the top of the police car.
Checking the time on his burner he confirms he’s late, and quickly calls up the TOC.
“We need to move the reservation for tomorrow to 6, if it’s not too late? I just remembered I had a meeting to go to at 5.”
I’m hot, someone's on me and I needed to lose them. The pursuer is gone but we are delayed.
“I’m not sure... I’ll have to check, but I’ll let you know as soon as I get a hold of the restaurant.”
Other teams are already in motion, delay now will be difficult, try to get back on schedule, but will tell you if anything changes.
John stuffs the phone back into his pocket and finally rounds the last bend to see the warehouse in question. It barely qualifies as anything more than garage space, and likely is. As the warehouse itself is attached to a garage extension, for what was likely once a mechanics shop.
Pulling in, Spaz sprints from the van to close the place up while Cat and Kid stumble out of the back of the van, “packages” in hand.
“Shit John! What was that back there?” Kid rubs his head, while Bella stretches out a leg, shooting John a curious look.
“A little run in with local authorities.”
“I meant going sideways.” Kid examines the van, trying to calculate how it pulled off such a maneuver.
“That was a calculated risk.”
“It is a good thing you’ve brushed up on your math.” Cat huffs, brushing the hair out of her face, and hauling the human sized duffle bags over one shoulder each, carrying the mostly still bodies into the warehouse behind Spaz.
The warehouse itself is a mess, a layer of dirt and grease cakes the ground inside, making the concrete floor below barely visible. Small windows in the top near the ceiling provide only a sliver of yellowing sunlight that cooks the already stuffy air.
Cat and Kid remove the packages from the duffle bags, revealing a young man and a young woman, as well as four children. Two boys and two girls from ages 9 to 13.
Cat offers them a smile and speaks in perfect Spanish, telling them all that they will be okay, that nothing is going to happen to them, and that all of this will be over very soon.
Kid grabs the gear the spooks hid here two days ago. Normally a risky move, but given the level of security surrounding the armor and weapons, John figures Blackwood has a method of ensuring they don't fall into the wrong hands even if they could breath the serious security of the boxes containing the gear.
Setting the bomb proof cases down, Kid puts in the combination, uses a key to unlock tungsten locks, and then uses his thumb print to finally open one case, containing one set of armor and one weapon.
He repeats the process six times, grabbing his own gear first to pull security on the packages while the rest gear up.
All of the work Cat did to calm the hostages down is erased the moment the guns and armor come out. The mercenaries look positively terrifying. The sleek black plating and tinted glass visors on the helmets make them look like walking talking fighter jets. If John saw this gear in a movie, he would absolutely think they were the bad guys.
The truth is, they are the bad guys, or at the very least not the good guys, but that doesn’t bother him much. The only person getting hurt in any of this was a man who ripped apart United States Coast Guardsmen, and that is more than enough to set things right in his mind.
With the armor on, the TOC comes through his integrated comms unit crystal clear, no more fake accents or code, these lines are secure which means they can get straight to business.
“TOC to team two actual, copy.” The admin back in the base calls.
“TOC, this is team two actual, good to go,” John replies swiftly.
“Team 3 is in position, team 4 is delayed, have your unit on standby for baton pass.”
“Copy TOC, standing by for baton pass.” John looks to the others who have all finished gearing up.
“Team 4 hit a roadblock, myself and Cat will take over watch, standing by for baton pass. It’s going to be a long few hours so rotate as needed.”
The comms click in his ears, each beep an acknowledgement
John and Cat both head towards the admin offices positioned on the east side of the warehouse, providing a clear view all the way out to the other end of the docks a few miles east, below them.
Checking through the settings on his rifle, and then buddy checking with Cat to ensure all systems are nominal, the two position themselves away from the window but with a clear view outside, and wait.
And wait.
They wait for hours in companionable silence, until the sun sets low behind them.
John doesn’t mind not talking, in fact he sort of preferred it at the moment. While on mission he likes to focus, to commit his mind, body, and soul to the task at hand. and Cat is much the same. They don’t need to speak to pass the time, they take comfort in each other’s presence alone.
The hours tick by, until the cover of dark signals Casper and Kane's phase of the plan. Looking down the scope of his rifle. John adjusts the zoom settings to try and see if he can spot them. The lenses they use are incredible, allowing him to just keep zooming and zooming and zooming until the pin prick of movement in the horizon becomes a full sized ship.
“Can you see them?” Bella asks, curious, but not wanting to take her own eyes from the greater surroundings.
“I can see the ship, but I can’t see the others. They must have taken into account what was visible from the surrounding positions.”
“Impressive.”
“Hard pressed to find someone on the team who isn’t impressive.”
“Touche.”
Scanning the boat, John watches as movement flickers against the boat's windows, people are moving on deck, frantically it seemed.
“What do you see?” Bella asks again, noting the stiffness radiating through John ever under all the armor.
“Movement, it looks like something is—”
Blood splatters one of the windows inside the ship, then more, then a body crashes from a top deck to crunch into the mid deck below.
“They are in a fight,” John grumbles.
“You sound jealous,” Cat teases.
“I am!” John grumbles some more, watching through the scope as another body falls.
“This is dangerous for the mission. We need to capture at least one other member for the United States to be happy,” Bella notes.
“Yea, well. Kane might be a fucking psycho but Casper will keep him in check.
A phone rings from downstairs, signaling the call being made by Casper or Kane to convince Cesar to come this way.
John tries to listen in, tuning his helmet's ambient microphone to try and pick up the conversation.
“Alright, let us get ready.” Bella shifts, pulling her own rifle out and moving to aim it out at the window, watching with John as the boat begins to pull away from the dock, the fighting evidently over, and control being taken by his team.
John takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out, and steadies his scope down the water, cursing silently as he realizes he probably won’t be able to fight at all today.
