“Even more so than ever,” Dylan said.
“So what does it matter if the Prophus lose the States? I mean, we haven’t lost the planet yet.”
“I’m not dead yet,” Hutch added. “We keep fighting until we win or die.”
“I don’t know about you boys, but I’m in it for the fame and fortune,” Faust added.
That brought about a round of laughter and seemed to have broken the ice. The men became their normal selves again as they bantered and ribbed each other. Roen sat back down and smiled. These were a bunch of good guys, every single one of them. Wuehler might have been a prick, but he knew how to assemble a team with quality men.
“What does that say about me, Tao?”
That Wuehler does not get it right all the time.
Suddenly, Roen’s watch beeped. The chattered died immediately and the group began to gear up, from armor to ammunition to night vision goggles to rifles. They were a veteran crew and knew when to get serious. Within four minutes, the team was ready to go.
Roen grabbed the door latch and slowly turned it, making the entire container creak as he moved the lever ninety degrees. Then he opened the door a smidgen and looked outside. They were in a massive storage yard. They were two stories above the ground, stacked on top of another container. A cool blast of air flowed through into the stuffy container. The midnight sky was as black as he could have hoped for.
Roen turned to the men behind him. “Alright, do your job, stay safe, and hit them where it hurts.” He grabbed Dylan on the shoulder as he was about to jump out. “Manny’s dependable?”
Dylan nodded. “Yeah, old Imelda will be ready.”
Roen conveyed last-minute instructions and encouragement to each person as each left the container. Within seconds, he was the only one left inside. He peered out the opening and watched as his team headed toward their assigned sections of the Punai grounds. He dove out head first and rolled gently to a kneeling position, rifle aimed forward.
A large barbed fence separated the storage yard from the warehouses, Roen’s assigned section. Intelligence bought from the Bamboo Union indicated half a dozen guards manned the night shift at the warehouses while three manned the refineries. Roen had put himself on the more difficult assignments and had sent the lumbering beasts to the refineries. Tao had objected strenuously.
You are heading tactical. You should not be prowling at all.
“Limited resources, buddy. Gotta make do with what you got. Besides, six guards is a lot for anyone to juggle, let alone these lumbering hulks. There is a grand simplicity to being a shock trooper after all. Just point the way and let the carnage begin.”
If it were that simple, I would have steered you toward that role a long time ago.
“I’m much more sophisticated than that. More a scalpel than a butcher knife in my execution.”
You are as much a surgeon as Leopold a humanitarian.
“Which one is that?”
The one that liked to explore and meet new people in foreign lands, and then kill them.
Roen spent the next few minutes scouting the perimeter of the fence separating the container yard and the warehouses. Once he was ready, he followed the fence north until he came up to a small hill. There, he settled in and studied the pattern of the four floodlights. Within minutes, he had timed all four. Then he watched the guards making their rounds until he was comfortable predicting their routes.
The rest of the team should have arrived at their designations around the complex by now: Jim at the northwest warehouses; Ray, Grant, and Hutch searching the refineries; Dylan at the administration building. Hopefully, with all of them spread out, they could find this catalyst and be out within the hour. Then it depended on Faust and Stan at the docks to direct their exit strategy.
“How we looking, fellas?” he whispered into his mic.
“In place,” Dylan whispered back. Jim echoed the sentiment. Grant grunted his affirmative like he always did.
“Going in now.” Roen stretched, feeling the ligaments in his body pop. The past five years had done wonders and horrors to his body. From losing fifty kilos and training to run an ultra-marathon to being shot half a dozen times and rupturing organs, his body had run the entire gamut. He wondered how much longer he could keep this up.
Already thinking about going out to pasture?
“Only if there’s a hot filly involved. Wait, don’t tell my wife that. But really, guys like me don’t retire. We just do one mission too many.”
Can I tell you how much you sound like Edward right now?
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Roen’s eyes trailed the moving floodlights as they floated across the concrete field between the fence and the first building. He’d have forty seconds to scale the fence, run across the forty-meter clearing, and get behind cover. He took off at a sprint.
Watch the barbed wire on top of the fence.
In three bounds, Roen launched up the four-meter fence, using his feet and hands to effortlessly scamper to the top. Using his upward momentum, he log-rolled onto his back just as he reached the crest of the fence, keeping his chin tucked against his chest and letting the Kevlar take the brunt of the sharp barbed wire. A second later, he landed softly on the ground and flattened into a crouch. Then he was off again, sprinting at full speed while still hunched over.
You are better at running low.
“Can’t believe it took me six months to get this down, not to mention the number of times people snickered while I trained to run like Igor.”
Small price to pay for ninja mastery.
“I’d pay double to disappear in a puff of smoke and glide among tree tops.”
Roen reached the wall of the first building in exactly thirty-three seconds. He checked his watch and then slid toward the first window, peering into the darkness. Once he was satisfied that no one was inside, he moved on to the end of the building and checked around the corner. A patrolling guard had just exited the building and was moving away from Roen’s position.
Once he disappeared around the corner, it would take him nine minutes to make it back around. This should be plenty of time for Roen to get into the building, check it out, and then move on to the next. As long as he stayed just behind the guard’s route, he would be fine. He looked up at the floodlight again.
“Time before it hits that door?”
Forty-six seconds.
“That’s cutting it tight. I’m not good at lock picking.”
That is because you usually lock pick with a gun.
When the floodlight passed, Roen took off, sprinting along the side of the building to the wall. He took out a set of bump keys and picks. One glance at the lock and Roen knew he was destined to fail. It was an industrial-grade keypad lock and that part of his breaking-and-entering game was weak. He fiddled with the lock for exactly thirty-nine seconds before abandoning the door and going back around the corner.
Do you even know what you are doing?
“Yes. Well, no.”
He retreated around the corner with just over two seconds to spare before the high beam swept the building. Roen’s game of cat and mouse with this white light continued for several rounds. Each time it passed the building, he would run back to the door and spend the next thirty-eight seconds trying to work his locksmith magic. Then when he failed, he would flee back to the safety of the corner as the light came back around the building. By his seventh attempt, he was so irritated that he was ready to shoot the lock. Unfortunately, a silencer was not one of the tools his team had deemed necessary to rescue from the original safe house. Roen clenched his fist, knuckles white as he racked his brain for a solution. This delay was proving costly.