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Prologue
The desert, far from Caldwell, NY, or Boston, MA, or sanity
Soer in special ops, he would reflect that Isaac Rothe, Matthias the Fucker, and he, hiht that bomb went off in the sand
Of course, at the tioing But that was life: Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park You had to hop on the rides as they presented the whether you would like the one you were in line for or if the bastard was going toand your cotton candy all over the place
Maybe that was a good thing, though As if back then he would have believed he'd end up duking it out with a de to save the world from damnation?
Come on
But that night, in the dry cold that washed in the second the sun went down over the dunes, he and his boss had walked into a minefield and only one had walked out
The other? Not so much
Crave
"This is it," Matthias said as they cae that was the color of the caramel on a Friendly's sundae
They were fifteenin a barracks full of ar that he and his boss were XOps, they were outside the stream of defined corps, which worked to their benefit: Soldiers like them carried IDs from all branches of the service and used them whenever it suited
The "village" wasstone structures and a bunch of wood-and-tarp huts As they approached, Jiles picked uptarps-they flapped in the wind, their shadows darting around like fast-footed people who had guns And grenades And all kinds of sharp and shiny
Or in this case, grungy and gritty
He hated desert assignh a proper urban or even suburban assign as co at you Out here, people had resources he was unfamiliar with and that always made him twitchy as fk
Plus he didn't trust the anization with a direct line to God Yeah, Jiuy way back when Yeah, he'd been under him for the last decade
But all of that juste" in the fine township of Nowhere-anyone-could-find-a-body-ville
A gust of ent Nike across the flat landscape, sprinting over the sand, picking up those tiny little particles, and carrying all of theues Beneath his black, lace-up boots, the ground was constantly shifting, as if he were an ant walking across the back of a giant and irritating the piss out of the bastard
You began to feel that at any reat palm could come down out of the sky and flatten you
This trek to the east had been Matthias's idea So that couldn't be discussed anywhere else So naturally, Jim had worn a Kevlar vest and about forty pounds of weapons Along ater MREs
He was a pack animal for real
"Over here," Matthias said, ducking into the doorless entry of one of the stone structures
Jie patch, as far as he knew
He got out both his guns before going inside Bottom line? This was the perfect locale for a forcible inquisition He had no idea what he'd done or what he'd learned to warrant an interrogation, but one thing he was clear on-there was no reason to run If that was the "because" he'd been brought here for, he was going to go in and find another two or three XOps guys in there to work him over while Matthias asked the questions If he bolted? They'd just hunt hilobe, even if it took weeks
Could explain why Isaac Rothe had shown up this afternoon with Matthias's protege and second in coht-up killers, a couple of pit bulls ready to go for anyone's throat
Yup, this h even if he had, there was no escape froot out of XOps alive Not the operatives, not the fringe-playing intel guys, not the bosses, either Die with your boots on was the way you lived-not that you knew that going in
And the thing was, he had been thinking of ways to get out Killing people for a living was all he kne to do, but it was starting to fk with his head Maybe Matthias had somehoeaked to that
Tih the doorway
Might as well give 'eht-
Just Matthias No one else
Jiain According to his night goggles, there was only the otherbut Matthias Still
"What's going on?" Jim demanded
Matthias was over in the far corner, about ten feet away When the man's hands ca position but all his boss did was shake his head and loosen his gun belt A quick toss and it was in the sand
And then he took a step forward, opening hisquietly-
Light Sound Blast of energy