Some Days, Part Six. (Finale)

...Leak is proven and precise. Don't file a flight plan home anytime soon.

What the hell does that mean? He found the leak, and obviously has proof of it. So far, so good, but what does precise mean? Is it just one leaker, is the info going to only one buyer? Is only one team being tracked?

Don't file a flight plan home anytime soon. Obviously, the last one got us shot down. More to it than that, though, there always is. Don't file a flight plan anytime, home soon?

Message received. We're still coming home, though. By now, information would have leaked about the shootdown and the subsequent operation.

Mercenary companies simply do not have the luxury of idealistic members. PBE employees fight for brotherhood, glory, entertainment, and a host of other reasons, but all of us also fight for money. Few of us would stay with PBE if the money stopped coming, and we're definitely not in it for Queen & Country. So, from time to time, people leave the company in a somewhat less than respectful fashion, and occasionally they try to vent their frustration on company members or property. It's always a fatal mistake.

This was different, though. Someone inside was actively leaking information, and doing so to a specific party, not simply selling data on the information black market. Of course, one of the reason that we've caught all the leaks so far is that we have enough fixers dealing in information that we're normally among the first to know that there's a new dealer in the game.

That information was being leaked to Iran was obvious. That it was coming from someone who had access to our flight plans was also obvious, that meant someone at the Chateau. We hadn't filed flight plans with the US authorities in A-stan, they had orders to let us in whenever we showed up.

Oh, we are definitely coming home.

Athanasius, FPoP, and I left early the next morning. The shooters stayed in country, they'd gotten a new assignment in the area, and wouldn't be needing a pilot for a few days. Of course, the flight back to the Chateau would itself take a few days. A C-47 is just not a fast aircraft.

We got to the Chateau around midnight, three days later. By that time, I'd learned to absolutely love/hate the bird, and I couldn't wait to see it get painted in some proper colors. It was tough, fairly powerful, had great cargo capacity, and was slower than it had any right to be. Also, it was older than my mother. With some modernization, we'd have something that was a definite improvement over the plane we'd lost.

We were greeted on the runway by the command staff and a medical team. I don't mean just HM, the entire staff was there. HM, owner. BTDT, head of Chateau Security and God only knows what else. Echo, chief medical. Bushwacker, wild card member. IEC was there, too, looking like he was torn between being happy and getting ready to level a third-world country.

"Welcome back, Soren. Is this the new bird?"

"Yes, it is. C-47. No major mechanical problems that we've found, but she needs some upgrades."

"And you got The Prince out?"

"He's fine, but Wut's team lost a man during the extraction. Liquid's body is in the plane."

"Fuckers. Get yourself inside, and we'll fill you in on what we know."

This can't be good.

It wasn't. Apparently, upon my asking him to find the leak, IEC had gotten his James Bond on in an impressive fashion. He'd been able to isolate the time and date that the flight logs had been accessed, and then used that data to find the leak.

Not being content with simply having circumstancial evidence that it was him, he'd picked his way into the man's room, planted bugs, and then waited for him to talk in his sleep. The idiot made a phone call the next day, using an encrypted smartphone, to an outside contact about a team we had operating in Africa.

He'd taken the audiotape of that to BTDT, who listened to it, and then both of them went to HM. HM reacted in a surprisingly calm fashion, had the medical team pump him full of drugs, and then interrogated him. The spy hadn't been a drug user, very few of us are, and the sudden influx of chemicals (with the additional stress of rave lights, loud music, and people yelling at him for hours on end) had made him very talkative.

He'd been approached just after he'd finished law school (paid for by PBE) by some Iranians. They'd given him a sugary deal: simply take paychecks for a couple years, and leak information only if it pertained to the Middle East. They hadn't wanted everything, and they'd paid on time, whether information went their way or not.

What an idiot. HM would have paid more just for the chance to slurp them false info.

So, quite happily, the spy had done his job, giving the Iranians info whenever we had a team in the area.

What had really started a shitstorm was when PBE's intel team had cross-referenced the information recovered from him and his off-site data storage with our personnel logs. Every time we'd had a team in the Middle East run into serious trouble, it was because of this spy.

14 of our men had died in those incidents. What would have been an execution quickly turned medieval, and while no one was talking about how the spy had been disposed of, it was rumored that he'd been burned alive. I didn't want to know anyways, I've never been a fan of torture.

The week after we got back, a company-wide alert went out. All employees not currently on assignment were requested to attend a red-carpet screening of FPoP's movie.

Fucking red carpet affairs. I know what's on that video, there's no reason for us to be in three-piece suits for this. HM's dicking with someone, I just know it. Last time he did this, he invited a bunch of celebrities, then screened the Dagestan massacre video.

Whether we liked it or not, working for PBE came with some oddities. One of them is that our boss occasionally goes insane.

I don't know where he got the carpet, but damned if HM didn't literally roll out the red carpet for the event. Journalists aren't allowed inside the Chateau, but some Hollywood-types did show up and walk down that carpet. I wasn't going to let myself get photographed, so I went to the chow hall to get some food before the show.

"You're the one they call Soren, right?"

What? Who doesn't know me around here?

"Excuse me, Miss...? The movie will be screened in the theater, on the other side of the Chateau. This area's not normally open to the public."

"I'm not here for the movie. Don't you remember me? From college?"

"That was eight years ago, I don't remember everyone from...wait, you?"

"Yeah, me. How've you been?"

"I'm here. Why the fuck are you here?"

"I told you I wanted to be a writer. I talked to your boss, told him that I wanted to do some research for my next novel, and that I'd known you from before. He thinks it would be a good idea, and said he's OK with it."

I highly doubt that. HM's probably trying to get me to relax after the shootdown, and thinks you'll end up in my bed.

That I don't take girls home when we're out on the town in various countries isn't a secret inside PBE, and more than a few PBE employees have sent various women to my door in an effort to get me to relax. I don't mind, and the women are redirected to someone else's room. It's become something of a joke, since me trying to shoo a naked model out of my hotel room was once caught on video and passed around the company 'net.

"Well, if the boss said it's OK, then I'm OK with it." I lied, and looked at my watch. "After the screening, though. I had to shoot people to get this movie here, I'm not going to miss it."

"Certainly. I'm here for the next few weeks anyways."

Shit.

She took my left arm as we walked to the theater.

OK, maybe this isn't so bad, as far as escort missions go.

Aside from the unclassifiably weird shit that comes out of Japan, there's a definable difference between "good" and "bad" porn. Iranian porn is normally in the "bad" category. An Iranian sex tape made of and by the wife of the prime minister...who am I kidding, it was amazing. Not because any of us wanted to see a 50-year old woman naked, but because of who else was in the movie.

None other than the current Supreme Leader of The Islamic Republic of Iran. Adultery is definitely against the Qur'an, as is sodomy, and the fools had set up a scenario where he was the seducer. It was a short movie, only 8 minutes long, but no one in the audience could believe what they were watching enough to talk.

"Holy shit."

"What?"

"Well, this explains why we had to shoot our way out of the country. Man, I can't wait for the news tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Well, unless I miss my guess, this has already hit the internet, and will probably tear Iran apart from the inside. The secularists have been a fairly prominent minority for a while, and the Islamists are going to shit themselves."

"Oh."

"Yeah. This is going to be a profitable year."

"You're looking forward to this."

She sounds disappointed. Does she not understand what we do for a living?

"Paid cash for kicked ass. We had a team in Iran last week, extracting this movie. We have more recent intel on the country than the CIA does, and we've got assets in the area that will be more than happy to go in and make some money. Plus, I've got a new plane that I'll get to fly around that country, and the locals are amazing cooks."

About that time HM walked up.

"Ah, she found you. Very good, I hope you two are catching up on old times and enjoying yourselves?"

"Yes, boss, I was just telling her that we're likely to be involved in the civil war that video will start in Iran."

"More than likely. You're going back in..."

Fuck.

"...in four weeks to start that war. The gentlemen over there are from the US government, and are offering us the chance to go in early and get a head start on things. I'm sending two teams, and offering you the chance to fly them in, since you know the area."

"You bet your ass I'm in. My plane needs some upgrades first, though."

"It's on the top of the list, and some of the parts are already on their way."

He took a long pause.

"Oh, and one more thing. PBE has hired her as a combat correspondent. She'll stay in the plane, but she'll be talking to the shooters to get information for her book. I want the real story to be told for a change, not the fairy tales the shooters tell, and not the smear job the media puts out."

"Her? In a combat zone."

"Yes. Training starts tomorrow, she'll be qualified by the time you leave."

I started laughing, and HM stood there with that smile of his, then gave a little laugh and walked off.

"What? What are you two laughing about?"

"Ma'am, some days, when you ask for an inch, you get a mile."

Some days.

The End.