Page 61 of Call Sign: Thunder
“Yeah, well it won’t be my first and probably won’t be my last. I’m heading down to The Ranch in a couple of hours. If it will make you feel better, I’ll talk to him about resuming his sessions with you, but that’s about all I’m willing to do.”
“That’s not enough.” She paused before adding, “I’m going with you. If he won’t take my calls, I’ll go to him.”
“Fucking great,” Ryder said under his breath.
Doc spun to leave, delivering her parting comment over her shoulder on the way out. “I’ll be waiting out in the pit. Don’t you dare leave without me.”
Only after she’d slammed the door closed behind her was there finally a moment of silence in the good-sized office.
Ryder finally addressed the only other remaining person in the room — the hefty guy sitting in the chair. “Don’t just sit there. Get this fucking thing off my wrist.”
The man approached Ryder, laying out a leather pouch on the desktop. He pulled out several small tools and what looked like a USB thumb drive and got to work on the complex set of locks keeping the football attached to Ryder’s wrist. About thirty seconds later, the case was free and Helms massaged his wrist.
“How long until you’re ready with a debrief?” Ryder asked.
“Normally, I’d like a few hours to get things organized, but if the cake order is right, we don’t have time.”
“Cake order?” Zach asked before he could stop himself.
Ryder hesitated but finally answered. “Just one of the code words for incoming assignments.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “And just what kind of cake orders do you take?”
“We’ll get into that…”
“You’re asking me to come with you today, right?”
Ryder nodded.
“Then I think it’s a reasonable question to ask.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t, but I don’t have time to debrief you. Let’s just say… we take the assignments others can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Does it matter?” Ryder said.
“Yeah, it does, if the people who are doing the cake ordering shouldn’t be eating cake if you get my drift.”
Ryder nodded. “We don’t take orders from the wrong side.”
“And who decides what’s the right and wrong side?”
“That would be me,” Ryder asserted. “Listen, we’ll have a few hours on the flight down to The Ranch. I’ll answer more of your questions then. Right now, just know that we are independent contractors — not attached to any one sponsoring entity. That means we take jobs from both the private and public sector.”
“So why would a man like Walter Benson need your services? Why not just send in a sanctioned crew?”
“Because sanctioned crews — like the Marines — come with oversight… and budgets… and are easily traced by public records and even the media. Sometimes there are jobs that need to get done that can’t exactly play by the rules.”
“Plausible deniability?”
“Something like that,” Helms replied.
Zach had an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Going into foreign countries on missions with the United States Marine Corp was one thing. Performing missions without the safety net of the US government’s official backing was something else entirely. But then he looked through the wall of glass taking up one whole wall of Ryder’s office and realized that this was no fly-by-night band of misfits. They were clearly well funded and if the senate arms committee knew about them, they were also well connected.
“Fine,” Zach finally answered. He still had more questions than answers, but he had enough information to know he was all-in for their little trial run.
Ryder and the guy started walking toward the door. “Let’s go out to the pit. Bing here will pull up the intel and we’ll see what we’re working with.”
