Burrow then turns to Captain Harkins.
“All relevant information has been uploaded into your tactical helmet.”
Burrow leaves the room, and to no one in particular, I ask.
“If all relevant information has been loaded into the Captain’s helmet, why did they call us all here?”
Kelsey the other weapons sergeant gives me a snide look.
“It’s a test, tenderfoot, they want to see where you stand. They know who you are and where you come from. The U.A. wants to be sure you can serve their purpose. My guess is Burrow was eyeing Abram.”
He turns towards Abram and she stares back with an uninterested expression.
“You see Abram, here, is a bit of a peculiarity. She grew up in one of Lui’s orphanages, but professes loyalty to the U.A. What’s it like to claw your way to survival every day?”
Kelsey looks her up and down slowly. He scrutinizes every twitch, and every breath, that she slowly and calmly exhales.
“Needless to say, her loyalty is questionable. Can you be loyal Abram?”
Just like that all the pieces to the puzzle fit. Abram has more practice at surviving, than anyone in this room. That’s how she could be strong and emotionless during training, while being battered, cold and hungry. To outlive a childhood like that, you would have to develop a heart of stone.
Abram doesn’t move a muscle, though she can’t control the fact that her face is now red with anger. Kelsey continues on with his arrogant rant, turning his snide comments towards me.
“But you’re not much better are you Malone, that mean old drunk, you call a daddy smack you around?”
“Enough!” Doc Love’s bellow reverberates within the cinderblock room. Then more calmly he says to Abram and me. “There are no secrets in this ODA…most of us aren’t assholes about it, though.”
Abram pushes off of the table she has been leaning against and in a mocking tone asks.
“So, what’s your secret Kelsey?”
“No secret, just a rich boy from Connecticut…I didn’t crawl out of the gutter.”
She scoffs
“That explains why you look like such, a fucking pansy.”
To this Kelsey cracks a broad smile.
“You’ll fit in just fine here, Abram.”
This statement is met with simultaneous grunts of approval. Chief Becket clears his throat.
“If you’re all done with your meet and greet; we have work to do. Be at LZ J in 40 minutes.”
Forty minutes later we are loading into a Cyclone 52, a helicopter flown only by the Night Stalkers, an elite group of pilots, who specialize in black ops missions. I take a look around the Cyclone as we settle in, and chuckle to myself at the name. The Night Stalkers used to fly black hawks, until the government contracted out with a vacuum cleaner company. Using the companies, technology to create a helicopter that is nearly silent. So, now the biggest bad asses in the military fly around in a helicopter named after a vacuum cleaner.
We are all pretty quiet as the captain, reviews the intel from the computer screen, in his helmet. My mind drifts while I wait to hear more details about my first mission. I think about Abram, surviving Lui’s orphanages, most don’t make it out, let alone healthy and strong. How did she do it, and why the hell would she go into service. It doesn’t add up she must have an ulterior motive for being here. I wish I knew if I could trust her, only time will tell. The stakes are too high, to have faith in the wrong person. The penalty for service member disloyalty ranges from ten years in a prison work camp to public execution.
The captain lifts off his helmet, and takes out a map, signaling he is ready to brief us. He looks up for half a second before pointing to a spot on the map.
“The meeting is taking place at the administrative building, in Kurgan, Russia, just north of the Kazakhstan border. It involves two high ranking government officials, one Russian, and one German. We expect there will be approximately ten agents from each government monitoring the surroundings. We’ll land two klicks away, where we will meet with Kirkland and Williams, the two SAS operatives responsible for the original intel.”
After the captain finishes the group settles in for the ride. It is quiet and dark, and I’m soon lulled to sleep by the vibration of the helicopter. When I wake up everyone is still sleeping, with the exception of Doc Love and Abram, who are engaged in quiet conversation. Just then, one of the pilots comes back to wake the captain. I overhear him say we will be stopping to refuel in thirty minutes. They land us at a forward operating base in Ireland. The Cyclone’s, fuel efficiency, and newer fuel tank design allow it to go great distances without stopping. However, they were short sided in thinking about human needs. Once on the ground, we all make a beeline to the latrine, which in my case has become an urgent human need.
Twenty minutes later we are back in the air. When we land in Kurgan, only the sounds of our boots hitting the ground, disrupts the silence. At the rendezvous point, we meet Williams a tall lean Englishman, with a burn scar that covers the right side of his neck. Kirkland is a couple inches shorter than, Williams, but, with his dark curly hair and massive build, he has the look of a feral beast. His gravely Scottish brogue only adds to his air of fierceness. After a couple of minutes of discussion, we are on the move. We move in shadows, until the group
