Though he faced a wall he spoke loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room. “It’s that grit and shit from Mogadishu. It’s not the contact lens, the contact is fine. I think my fucking eye is jacked.” He groaned as he took out the contact and looked closely at his bloodshot eye in the mirror. “I don’t need this bullshit, I’m supposed to go see Springsteen tomorrow night at RFK.”
Behind him on a piece of the sectional sofa that had been dragged away from the TV area, Paul Lynch sat with a canvas backpack in his lap and a thick sewing needle in his hand. He was working to repair a torn strap on the pack. None of the men in the room had been paying much attention to Morgan’s play-by-play about how his eye was bothering him, but Lynch heard the last part. Without looking up he said, “If you’ve got a combat injury you can get Zack to put you in for a Distinguished Intelligence Cross. You can pin that shit on your shirt for the concert and pick yourself up some cougar tail.” He chuckled to himself as he finished a stitch. “Cougars love wounded dudes.”
In front of the TV, Dino Redus held his Xbox controller on his lap. He worked the buttons and levers frantically while he stared at the big screen in front of him. Despite his frenzy, his Medal of Honor match wasn’t going his way, so he turned his attention to the conversation behind him and laughed at Lynch’s comment. “Five, if Zack gives you a medal for getting sand in your eye, I should get a damn ticker tape parade for that time I got shot in Islamabad.”
“It’s not sand!” Morgan shouted back as he popped his contact back in. Then he blinked a few times and looked again in the mirror. After a moment he said, “Okay, maybe it was sand. I’m good to go.” He reached for his burrito.
Sitting next to Redus on the couch, Ritchie Phelps spit tobacco juice into a plastic Gatorade bottle and adjusted the ice packs he’d strapped to both his knees with ACE bandages. Once he felt like he had them on the worst part of the swelling in his joints, he reached up and removed the towel from his head, then he shook out his freshly washed hair. “I’m the most busted-up dude on the team. If Five gets a medal and Three gets a parade, they need a marble statue of my ass right there by the bubble at Langley.”
Across the room, sitting at one of the picnic tables and typing on a laptop with a pen sticking out of his mouth, Zack Hightower shook his head in disgust and pulled out the pen. “You guys are the whiniest little bitches I’ve ever had under my command. Why can’t you all be more like Six? Just do your job and stop griping about every little fucking scratch.”
Keith Morgan was Sierra Five to Zack Hightower’s Sierra One, but this was an extremely informal unit, so he had no problem talking back to his team leader. “Zack, the only reason Six doesn’t complain about anything is because Six is fucking psycho.” He had moved on from his worries about his eye, and now he took a big bite out of his burrito. With a full mouth he said, “Ain’t that right, Six?”
Court Gentry sat at one of the workbenches on the back wall, hunched over a pistol he was buffing with an oil rag. He wore threadbare blue jeans, the sweatshirt of a college he had not attended, and a ball cap with the logo of a baseball team he knew nothing about.
Without missing a beat or looking up, Court replied, “Certifiable.”
The room transitioned back to silence, other than the Medal of Honor match, as everyone returned to their individual projects.
This was an uncharacteristically lazy morning for the men of the Goon Squad. Hightower ran a tight ship on the Golf Sierra Unit, the informal banter notwithstanding. But he was showing mercy on his team today considering everything they’d endured over the past week. All six operators of the task force, Zack Hightower included, had been in Somalia since Sunday on a particularly dangerous and austere operation. They’d completed their job yesterday morning and then climbed aboard a company Gulfstream, flew for fourteen hours, and only landed at the airport here in Norfolk at one a.m. As soon as they deplaned they loaded their gear in a van and climbed into an SUV, and then they returned along with their equipment to the team room in the TDI building. They spent a couple of hours cleaning and refitting their kit in case they had another in extremis callout, then they crashed in their bunks for a few hours.
It was after eleven a.m. now, and Hightower knew his boys would be back at work soon enough, so he let them sit around and shoot the shit this morning while he filled out his after-action report on Mogadishu.
Keith Morgan took another bite of his lunch, then his eyes flitted up to the monitors in front of him. For the first time he noticed the three men standing in the anteroom, just outside the door. “Company.”
All six men in the team room pulled firearms from holsters or grabbed subguns that they kept within reach. With the exception of Hightower everyone remained seated. Sierra One stood from the table and turned towards Morgan.
In the back Gentry one-handed an MP5 off the table, slammed a thirty-round magazine in it, and racked the cocking lever. He spun around in his seat and aimed the weapon at the door across the room.
“Who is it?” Hightower asked Morgan.
Morgan kept his eyes on the monitor for a few seconds, then he relaxed noticeably. “It’s our fearless leader.”
Hightower boomed back at him. “I’m your fearless leader.”
“Hanley, I mean. He’s got a couple of other guys with him.”
“What other guys?” asked Hightower.
“Dunno.”
“Operators?”
Morgan shook his head. “Nah. Look like a couple of brassholes from Langley.”
Hightower headed to the door, surprised that his team’s control officer was dropping in unannounced, with guests in tow.
But not too surprised. Even though Hanley didn’t spend much time here, he occasionally stopped by after a successful mission, and Mogadishu had been nothing if not textbook.
Hightower said, “Unlock it,” and he headed towards the door, but while he walked he looked over his team sitting and lying around the room. As if only noticing his motley crew for the first time, he sighed. “Straighten yourselves up. This place looks like a motherfucking soup kitchen.”
A couple of men chuckled, but no one really moved but Redus, who stood at crisp attention and saluted, a sarcastic gesture that Hightower returned with a middle finger and an eat-shit look.
Morgan punched a button on a desk panel and the massive locks in the door released.
Dino Redus did a decent Matt Hanley impersonation, a little bombastic and just slightly patronizing. Before the door opened he called out to the room in Hanley’s voice, “Hell of a job in Mogadishu, Golf Sierra! Welcome home!”
Morgan and Phelps both snorted out a quick laugh.
Hightower himself pulled the door open and bade the men into the lair of Golf Sierra. Hanley was first through the door; he shook Hightower’s hand and then called out to the others. “Well done in Mogadishu, Golf Sierra! Welcome back!”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hightower.
The two men with Hanley stood silently. One was in his forties with white hair, the other in his twenties, his hair black and slicked back. Both men wore heavy Burberry coats.
Hanley said, “Gentlemen, meet Jordan Mayes and David Lloyd. They’re from the office. SAD.”
The two suits raised hands to the men, and the men nodded back politely enough, but no one really tried to pretend like they gave a damn about a couple of suits.
Hanley, Hightower, and the two others stepped into the conference room, and the door closed behind them.