Page 14 of Unmade

Honestly? He’d green-light me for ops again, but he’d probably want me to start off easy. Besides, I couldn’t take on a longer assignment while my old one remained unsolved and collected dust.

“I know I’m good to go,” I said firmly. “But I’m guessing he’ll recommend shorter stints for a while first. And considering I’ll be stuck here full-time with recruits…”

He nodded and opened a drawer. “So what you’re saying is, you’ll be home often enough to take on three…four…classes?”

“With orientation and mentoring, three,” I replied.

“Fair enough.” He had two printouts for me. “I want you to teach your survival class again, with emphasis on wildlife in South America. It looks like we’re sending a lot of operators down there this year too.”

No wonder. A large cartel had practically imploded last year, resulting in power vacuums and gang wars.

I’d found out some of our guys had been involved in the unraveling when the Tenleys had made the evening news. No more undercover work for them.

I checked the second printout and nodded to myself. I’d be in charge of water qual too. That was fine. I was qualified to teach four classes, and I’d taken on the two I liked the most.

“Was there anything else? Otherwise, I’ll get started on the interviews.”

“You’re free to go,” he replied. “Wouldn’t hurt if you brought Alex over for dinner sometime. It’s been a while since we saw her.”

Yeah, I’d get right on that.

* * *

I found a quiet corner in the library on the second floor, an area that wouldn’t be quiet for much longer. This year, we were taking on a whopping sixteen recruits, and they’d spend much of their time in here come August.

Sixteen didn’t sound like a lot based on the number that applied to join us every year, but this would be one of our biggest recruiting years since the early 2000s. War was on the horizon again, and we didn’t have any time to waste.

Wanting to get it over with, I started by removing applications with zero military experience. Step two, remove those who had four or more years left of Reserve commitment. A year or two was no problem; service members who were no longer on active duty weren’t likely to get called back in at this point, aside from a training rotation about once a year?—

I grimaced as I spotted one guy’s birth date. Born in 2002? Fuck no, kid. You can wait another couple of years.

Four of the applicants had only checked domestic work as their preference, so I made a special pile just for them.

After that, I had approximately twenty applications left, and now I could actually start reading them properly. At least their MOS, expertise, and experiences. About ninety percent of our recruits were former Army or USMC, but infantry—despite being the most common type of service member—was not as common among those who wanted to join Hillcroft. And we needed infantry now. Everyone applying for something within intelligence, tech, or logistics was wait-listed.

It’d been like this the past couple of years, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Service members retired and stayed away, or they simply remained in the service. In 2022, we’d had so few applicants that we’d accepted recruits without military experience.

“Bingo.” Another rare infantry gem. Six years in, two NATO exercises in the Baltics, a nine-month stint in Germany, two years left in the Reserve… You couldn’t ask for more in a peacetime soldier.

Born in 2000. Of-fucking-course.

Name—

“What the…”

Leighton Watts?

As in…?

Was it actually him?

I flipped to the last page, and there it was. A black-and-white webcam shot of Little Mr. “Thank you for talking to me.”

I hadn’t heard from that little shit in three years.

He’d texted me twice during basic training, and then nothing until he’d been promoted. Once more when he’d happily announced, with four exclamation points, that he was officially 5’9”. In all caps, he’d let me know he was finally average height “for real.”

Maybe he’d become too tall to hear his phone going off in his pocket, ’cause he sure hadn’t responded to my last two messages.

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