Maybe there was a connection with Liam and Burke? If Liam was out, maybe Burke had had to follow him? That would have given credence to the idea that he would just take off.
But it was really damn hard for me to give any credence to any idea when no one was saying a damn word. I could understand Kelly’s spot, actually—if Liam had told her not to say anything, or if she genuinely had no idea, perhaps she was going through a spell of confusion. But that Burke couldn’t say anything…
That hurt.
“All good, Em?”
“Huh? Yeah, sorry. Hey, I’ll let you go. But thanks for the advice, it’s really appreciated.”
“Of course, Em. Let me know if you need anything else.”
We hung up somewhat awkwardly right there. I think both of us knew that the other was not saying everything that they could have, but for now, at least I knew I’d go through with the implantation. I just didn’t know if I’d be doing double or single.
The waiter came by with the food a second later. My appetite had, actually, returned somewhat, now that I had the clarity of the situation. I dug into as much of my food as my appetite would allow before I got the food boxed up to go. It was awkward eating alone, and I told myself if I saw Burke again I would let him have it.
I left cash on the table as soon as the boxed food came, not bothering to wait for a final amount on the receipt. There was probably a good fifty, maybe even sixty percent tip there, but fortunately, one of the perks to being able to pay someone five million for their sperm was you could leave the occasional large tip.
I started heading back to my office. Slowly, the decision of what I would do with the final question came to mind. And by the time I got to the front door, I made my final call of the afternoon.
“Hey, doc,” I said. “I’ve decided.”
Chapter 10: Burke
When I had landed in Tlaxcala the night before, the entire place just reeked of something disturbing.
It wasn’t anything to do with the actual scent. It had more to do with the fact that there was a feeling of finality to this mission, that this is where things would come to a head. A decade felt like a century when it came to dealing with Snake—every time it felt like we had him just on the ropes, just inches away from the final defeat and the takedown, he managed to wiggle out like his reptilian namesake.
But now, Scott had full confidence he was with the van. Maybe part of his growing bolder extended to him taking stupid risks in the field. We had our chance. We just had to strike right.
And boy, I had to say, having Scott and Liam tagging along in the coming hours would make life a hell of a lot easier. Things would get ugly as hell really fast. But I thrived off this.
If I’d wanted a peaceful life, I would have just gone back to the sperm donor clinic and jerked off for a couple hundred bucks a day. But then again, if I was that dude, my sperm wouldn’t be worth jack shit. So I suppose I was happy to be in this spot, although “happy” felt like an odd fucking way to describe it.
As soon as I got off the plane, Scott had an arranged vehicle waiting for me. I already knew by heart the city from having visited it on previous missions and knew where our DOM bunker was, on the southeastern side of the city. I drove about half an hour out, down some supposedly abandoned roads, before I pulled in to gather myself. The night had now fully settled in; there were plenty of beautiful stars up above, but a shitload of darkness and nightmare on the road ahead.
The truck was stopped for the moment about thirty miles north of me. By our recon, it was not moving particularly fast, no faster than a vehicle just barely going over the speed limit on a U.S. highway. Scott hadn’t given a reason for this, but that was only because years of experience had already told me why; a vehicle that did move quickly did so because it was so well protected it didn’t need to move quickly. The cartels, Snake’s own security defenses, and whoever was driving and riding in that truck would have its back.
“Nothing like a goddamn warzone,” I muttered to myself as I unlocked the armory in the bunker.
Powerful, ruthless people. Those were our enemies.
And with Scott and Liam now having families, it was very obvious who was going to be the one putting himself in the line of fire the most. It was me. I had no family, and thus the lowest amount of risk going in. I was going to be their body armor of sorts; I was going to be the one most likely to die.
But you might have a kid one day…
I had just opened the door when that thought popped to mind. It made me freeze where I stood. I actually even fucking gulped at the thought.
Death had always felt like a part of the job, perhaps almost an inevitable outcome to a certain extent. That we had avoided it to date was less a function of skill and more a function of circumstance. The wrong environment could have killed us at any moment. And honestly, it was what kept me going. Only when I knew the risk of death was so high did I feel so alive.
But
