Page 112 of Fire for Effect

I wasn’t sure why the hell he was prolonging my miserable existence.

Was this just all a big joke to him?

“Yeah. Teresa used to call me Joe.” His right hand lowered just a little.

Teresa? My mother’s name was Teresa.

I swallowed. Unsure, and unwilling to hope… but… I looked at his face - past the beard, and the wrinkled tan. His eyes were green near the pupils, and a dark blue on the outside. His eyes. His mouth. His nose. They were all familiar.

I had seen them a thousand times before, looking back at me from my own mirror.

What… the… fuck?

Two things happened at once. Cobra turned the pistol in his right hand to Heath.

Heath bolted, lunging out the door as Cobra fired a single shot. The pistol in his left hand flipped, until the grip faced me, barrel towards him. Like he was handing me a pair of scissors and keeping the sharp end towards himself - you know, to be polite.

I grabbed the pistol, and came to my feet, my hand sweeping as I scanned the room from left to right. As soon as a cut came into my sight, I fired.

Pop. Pop. Pop!

Three bodies lay on the ground.

Cobra put his back to me, and we moved in a circle, dropping the members of Prodigal Sons.

Where was Heath? He wasn’t down, so where the fuck was he?

He had lunged out the door, and I wanted to follow him. But then again, I didn’t, because I was too hurt to be a real threat right now. I’d have to lean on Cobra and hope he could help me get out of here.

“Behind you,” Cobra said, as his arm extended over my shoulder, his pistol aimed to my back. He let off a shot, and a body thudded to the ground.

The room was cleared, the only sounds were of our own ragged breathing, as the puddles of blood on the ground grew at a steady rate.

I was alive.

The statistically improbable outcome had happened. Luck had been on my side for once, and now…

“We gotta go, kid,” Cobra said, his large palm falling on my shoulder. “We made a lot of noise, and now we have to scram.”

Chapter 31

The Light

Griff

The way to kill someone quietly was simple. Knife across the larynx. They’ll gurgle and sputter as the air bubbled out of their throat, but it’d escape before the air could vibrate their vocal cords and turn into a scream.

I wiped my boot knife across my pant leg, cleaning it before placing it in its sheath. The body at my feet gurgled and spluttered. He was fighting for life, but he’d lose that battle soon, just like he lost his little melee to me.

Three dead. At least by me. Who knows what the others had done.

That was the thing about the Prodigal Sons. They might be full of veterans, but not all veterans were made the same.

I wasn’t the kind of shit bag that thought you had to be a grunt for your service to be important to a war effort. In fact, I appreciated the fuck out of a good S-4 Logistician, and a smart S-1 Admin type. But you should leave the grunt shit to grunts. Leave the operations to operators.

Don’t stick the paralegal into the middle of a tactical squad and send them into combat.

That’s what the Prodigal Sons did. All veterans welcome, regardless of their skills. And then they thrust them into grunt roles.

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