Dancing (a deleted scene)

(This got cut out of "Rock and Roll", mostly because it didn't really fit the storyline. Had a lot of fun writing it, though, so I figured I'd post it as a one-off.)

I love a good night out on the town. It's always fun to watch people who have no idea what they're doing in life try to manipulate guys who have seen and done it all. We drove a PBE-marked SUV to the front door of one of the nicest nightclubs in the city. The steak was delicious, cooked to perfection, the milkshake was spectacular, and the ladies were beautiful. And young.

"Oh my God, are you guys with Payback Enterprises? Oh my God, this is so amazing!"

And stupid. BTDT winked at me.

I've got to start this, or BTDT's going to win tonight's bet.

"Ask her to dance, Balci."

The girl started babbling again.

"Balci. That's a cool name! Where are you from? Do you want to dance with me?"

Let's be honest. PBE gets the ladies. After a while, it stopped being fun to bet on who could charm a girl the fastest, mostly because the skank factor went through the roof when we got famous. Soon enough, the bet turned into who could do something "culturally different" and still charm the girl. In Arab countries, that meant alcohol, in Europe, it meant taking her to get tacos, and in America, it meant acting like a gentleman. America girls...lack class.

"Sure, ma'am. I'll talk to the DJ, I've got a song I want to hear."

A few quiet words later, Balci passed the DJ a few bills. "Yes, that one will do fine."

Miami has never really left the 1980s. It's still a neon-lit party town, full of tropically-clad girls and guys, only with less cocaine and more MDMA. The Bangles had been replaced by another pop harlot, but the personality hadn't changed a bit.

"Shall we?"

He led the girl onto the dance floor, paused for a second, then put an arm around her waist, and grabbed her left hand. The music stopped, rare for a dance club, and a piano piece started coming over the speakers. It was a complete waste of the sound system, Mozart had never been one for throbbing bass lines.

"I thought we were going dance?"

"And we shall, my dear, we shall."

Balci led her through a waltz, in the middle of a now-empty dance floor. He'd learned to dance properly while he was an honor guard for some king before his PBE days, and there are some things the body never forgets. She'd picked it up by the end of the song, and He nodded to the DJ to play another, similar piece.

By this time, Bushwacker was either having a seizure, or laughing his ass off, either way he was rolling on the ground. The normal club patrons had stopped buying drinks, and were wondering what the hell had happened to their dance party. Another waltz started playing, and the girl clearly wanted another dance.

"HEY. OLD MAN! Put the dance music back on!"

I looked over across hall. A frat member had recovered his shock enough to realize that most of the women were watching Balci, not his muscles, and probably figured he'd make up for grace with intimidation.

"This is dance music, and the lady and I were dancing, pup. Perhaps you and your lady can do the same?"

Balci turned back to the girl, and her eyes widened. He ducked, and the frat's punch threw him off balance. Fighting is a lot like dancing, it's a thing of grace and economy of motion. None of that is learned bench-pressing a keg, and from the booth, we started to smile.

"Leave, pup. You don't want to do this."

"Yes, I do."

He punched and missed, Balci punched back. Some of the kid's college-aged friends rushed in to help, four middle-aged bodyslayers in black polos jumped onto the dance floor.

"Balci, how did you manage to turn a waltz into a fucked-up version of West Side Story?"

"Pup's jealous of my dancing partner."

"This is our club, you old faggot men. Get the fuck out, before we put you in the hospital."

Balci thanked the girl for her time, and punched the kid in the face. It was on. I've always had a thing for bar brawls, the way two men fighting turns into 30, as people who've no reason to fight somehow still get involved. It's fun to watch happen, fun to start, and I'm always sober enough to talk my way out when the cops show up.

The fight cost me the bonus I got for bringing a plane back without bullet holes. Balci had officially started it, according to the manager, and while he appreciated our patronage and thanked Balci for showing the girl how to dance properly, he'd have to file charges if we didn't pay for the damage to the bar. HM raised an eyebrow, but I told him I thought it was a fair exchange, and paid the man.

The bet had been forgotten about. I suppose that means I won.

Rock and Roll, Part Six.

I woke up again to Bushwhacker and Kahlan arguing in the hallway.

"What? What's going on now?"

Bushwhacker stuck his head back inside the room.

"You're going home. To the Chateau, anyways. Your lady here..." I heard a cough "...Says we need to be careful with your leg, and we can't risk bending it. I'm trying to tell her that you'll be fine once we get you into the jet."

"Jet?"

"Private charter. Medevac back home. This area's too close to the shit to keep you here for another month, and these doctors suck. Echo's call, not mine. HM's saying the same thing, we are not going to risk anyone knowing you're here."

"Kahlan, Bushwhacker's not going to screw up my leg. Let him do his job."

"Soren, the stitches won't hold up to much strain. You need to be careful."

My wife used that same tone of voice.

"I'll be fine, Kahlan."

Bushwhacker's phone rang and he tapped his earpiece. "Yeah, copy that. ETA 15."

He shut his phone off and fished into his backpack.

"It's time, Soren."

"Good. I fucking hate hospitals. People die in these places."

Then he handed me a pistol.

"Oh, it's like that, then?"

I checked the chamber and mag, then tucked it under the blanket. I'm not a trooper, but even for a pilot, this was undignified. I'm a professional, it's just not right to be shooting from a moving hospital bed.

PAYBACK Dynamics: Art of the Tactical Bed.

"Bushie, if I have to shoot someone from a hospital bed while half-naked, it's going to be embarrassing for everyone present. You'd better defend my dignity."

"Dude, you've been shitting in a bedpan for eight days. Dignity is that thing you had, and can never get back."

"Oh, right. Just get me on the plane before I start shooting at random stuff."

There was an ambulance waiting outside. I'd actually never been in one and conscious before. Bushwhacker did a good job of getting me into the ambulance, I only wanted to shoot him once. The trip to the airport went smoothly, and we were airborne before I got to shoot at anything. Once they'd strapped me into the airplane, it wasn't long until I fell asleep again.

I woke up over the Atlantic. Bushwhacker was sleeping, and had apparently found the plane's minibar.

Good for him, he needs a day off.

"Kahlan, you awake?"

"Yes," came the reply "you up for talking? For the book?

"Yeah, it's story time."

"Mind if I record this?"

"Not really. You want I should start at the beginning?"

"Yeah, sure."

"OK, so the first job was in Best Korea. North Korea, it was back then..."

As war stories go, mine have never been the stuff of legends and medal citations, instead being the stuff of police reports and FBI investigations. I've spent a decade flying for PBE, and in that time have gotten more than my share of blood on my hands. I've killed people with rifles and pistols, I've dropped explosives on them, and even gotten personal with a knife a few times. That's excluding the kill squad that started it all.

No one really talks about the killing, we all understand that it's impossibly rare to find someone who's going to get it. The people who join up to kill people normally get killed pretty quick, they're not in it for the job, and they go off mission and get shot. A few of them have been retired, several by my hand. That sort of thing is simply impossible to explain to civilians, so no one does.

But shit, it was good to tell the story. I'll give Kahlan credit, once that tape recorder started, she only threw up once. She's seen my blood all over an airplane, but hearing me talk about the early days, when PBE worked with knives as often as gunfire, it just wasn't something she was ready for. I've never really gotten a thrill from killing the way a few of the troopers do, but I enjoyed my work as a pilot, and I was very good at it.

I'd told the story of the first years when the tape recorder started clicking. That thing had been running for six hours. Kahlan wasn't looking at me directly anymore, that had stopped when I'd started talking about that clusterfuck in Burma. I thought I saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

Shit. It doesn't look like this is going to end pleasantly.

We landed at the Chateau at dawn. Hotaru and the medical staff was there to debrief me. At least this time I had a wheelchair.

"Boss, I don't know if I'll be back on active duty very soon."

"Oh, that's fine, Soren," Hotaru was wearing that grin of his. "Once Echo's got you back on your feet, several of the training cadre have offered their rehabilitation services. They feel they can accelerate the healing process if they take shifts."

"How nice of them."

"Only the best, company motto. Miss, how is the research for your book going?"

Kahlan coughed. "Well, I think I've got plenty of raw data, the trick will be telling the story. I should have a manuscript in a few weeks."

"Wonderful. I'm looking forward to it. In the mean time, feel free to spend some time talking to Soren, who's off active duty for a while."

She walked into my quarters a few hours later.

"Your boss wants..." She began.

"Wants us to end up together." I cut her off. "I know, and while I don't know why, I know he's pushing it. Fuck. This. Shit."

"What?"

"Look, you're a nice lady, so I'll be honest. I'm getting older, but I'm not going to retire for another decade. You know as well as anyone what I do for a living, and why I keep doing it. You're a nice lady, but being a family man was a dream I gave up over a decade ago, and I don't know if you're going to be OK with living with a merc. It's not for everyone, you know that."

"Soren...why did you say that? You just shut me down and locked me out, didn't even give me a chance to tell you what I thought. Do you do that to everyone?"

"Just the ones I like."

She laughed. Not a cynical laugh, either, but an honest-to-God laugh, something born of amusement.

"You never did learn anything, did you? I've seen you at your very worst, heard you talk about darker days than I've ever read in a novel. But you know what I saw? I didn't see the stone-cold killer you are when you have to be, I saw the nice guy you are when you're off the clock. Soren, you're a good man, who just happens to be paid to do horrific things to people.

"Soren, You've spent a decade killing people, or helping other folks kill people, and you're still that awkwardly-nice guy that I knew back in college. You're in the shit, but you don't smell like it. For all you've done, you haven't let it corrupt you. There are dogs in that yard out there that are going to have to be put down one day. You know that, and it still bothers you. You don't mind the killing, but you hate that it has to be done.

"I listened to you talk for six hours about a job you hate, but one you do because you won't trust anyone else to do it right. Back in college, no one understood that. You'd even state it, but no one got it. I get it now."

"Kahlan," I held up a hand. "Do you know,"

"Shut the fuck up, Soren, before you disappear for another decade of my life."

"What?"

She kissed my hand, then gave me a hug.

"Soren, we both know who we are," she said into my shoulder. "Let's see where this goes. Get back on your feet, take some time off, and show me the world. Remember how I wanted to travel?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The End.

Rock and Roll, Part Five

"Troll Six Actual for Chateau Actual, over."

PanamaJack had been placed in charge of the combined team, which had been dubbed Troll Squad.

"Chateau Actual here. You're doing what exactly?"

"We think the Islamists will come here to bury themselves in the toughest bunker in the country, so we gonna, ya know, walk in and kill everyone inside after we've killed everyone outside."

"I said exactly, shithead."

"Blow the power lines, snipe the guards, hope the mortar teams don't find us in time, spook the guard and staff buildings, and generally cause chaos until everyone outside is dead. After that, find a vehicle, drive it down the tunnel, and politely ask them to open up."

"You have sixteen men. There are over one hundred guards at that installation, an unknown number of possibly-armed non-military personnel, and you are in hostile territory."

"We have sixteen men who can hit at a half-kilometer, and we're going to hit them from two sides and the barracks at the same time. There won't be anyone alive."

"Operational command is yours. Make the call, and don't forget that you have to be alive to get paid."

"We're going in tomorrow night at nightfall. Send everyone you can possibly send our way to help us out."

"We'll do what we can. Vendimus Mortem."

"Go ahead and fuck up their shit."

The reason they waited a day was to get snipers in position. The Americans had just taken Shahin Shar, and it was hoped that the Iranians would be too distracted by the Americans to notice a single van that had been parked on the other side of the mountains from the base.

Two hours after the call went out, a pair of UH-1 Hueys took off from an airfield outside Baghdad. Each bird had two pilots and six ice-eyed men in the back. They flew below the hills, hiding from the radar. Three hours later, they landed on a long, cratered airstrip just north of Shahin Shahr. The Americans had bombed the strip itself, then stationed a small Army detachment there to provide support for helicopter operations.

PBE has a surprising relationship with the United States Military. On one hand, we exist outside the chain of command, we don't even read their ROE, we don't take prisoners without charging extra, and we don't normally get along with anyone who bleeds flag colors. On the other hand, we often make magical phone calls to men wearing stars on their shoulders, and gates are opened, records are erased, and we walk past doors marked "Do not enter."

Within short order, the helicopters had been refueled, and some more phone calls were made. One was to HQ, telling the Boss that the QRF was in position. Another was to PJ, telling him the same thing. A third went to the local radio station, requesting Lady Gaga be played, and yet another, placed in fluent Farsi, asked a local man if he had Sheik Albert in a can.

The local food delivery service, sadly, had been destroyed during the invasion.

In Kandahar, a heavily-armed C-47 was fueled, and the crew ate a quick meal, preparing to sprint to the runway the instant the call came through. The holes in the fuselage had not been repaired, there would be time for cosmetic repairs another day.

In the dusty hills outside the Natanz Nuclear enrichment facility, four two-man teams got into position and began to wait, laying nearly motionless under dusty tan camo netting, sipping water and hoping they didn't get seen until it was time to start shooting.

In a regular military, if one was told to assault a facility that had 27 machine gun emplacements, an unknown number of mortar emplacements, an unknown number of heavy weapons kept inside buildings, and only had 16 men to assault the place with, they'd laugh nervously and refuse the mission. In a superpower's military, they'd soften the place up with artillery or airstrikes.

PBE just starts shooting. We're not going to pass up opportunities to complete the mission just because we're outnumbered. It's amazing what accurate long-range fire can do to even the odds.

The lead sniper on this mission was Jasta, a Canadian guy who'd joined up a few years back. He was amazing at long ranges, and had become PBE's top sniper when Swissguy had transfered to full-time training. He'd been tasked with coordinating the sniping attacks, and the instant the sun hit the horizon, he told the snipers glassing the gate to start.

The first rounds went downrange almost simultaneously, sailed through the windows of the guard huts without appreciably deflecting, and smashed into the chests of the two men who'd been distractedly discussing the progress of the war.

As soon as they went down, Jasta clicked the radio once, and the rest of the snipers opened up. The four teams had roughly encircled the eastern half of the facility, leaving the western approach where the assault team was waiting untouched. The snipers made quick work of the guards who'd been manning the towers, then went to work on the guards manning the weapons. At 500 yards, it was better to hit the guy with binoculars than the guy with the gun, because the guy with the gun couldn't see shit.

15 seconds after the first shot, a series of charges detonated, knocking over the first four high-tension powerlines leading into the facility. It was obvious that they'd have onsite power generation, but that wouldn't be able to power everything.

Standard assault doctrine is to weaken the approach side, and the flanks so that reinforcements will be slow in coming. A side benefit of that is that an untouched side will generally not be reinforced, which is why PJ's team had started low-crawling towards the wire the instant the lights went out. They stopped 50 meters short of the fenceline, breathing dirt and keeping grenade launchers aimed at the weapons emplacements.

The guards piled out of several different buildings and began to move towards the eastern side of the base. They started taking fire immediately, the snipers knew that it was easier to hit men running towards the fence than the men ducking behind walls, and they also knew the importance of disrupting the reinforcements as much as possible.

The radio crackled, informing PanamaJack that air support was 30 seconds out. The choppers were hiding just behind the mountain, waiting for the Spooky to blow the big stuff up before the air assault guys came in. And that's when everything went wrong.

One of the snipers saw it first, a column of dust snaking it's way up the desert towards the facility. Towards an already-outnumbered squad of mercs trying to shoot their way into a fortified compound.

"Fuck, we've got incoming!"

"OK, Cobra: check it out! Entry team: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!"

Six 40-mm grenades were launched almost instantly, destroying the two closest gun emplacements, as well as the watch towers and the small huts next to them. The barbed wire took four more grenades to clear a small path through, and then it became a standard street-to-street operation. During the day, that would have been dicey, but at night with most of the lights out, the PBE troopers were as gods among children.

"PJ! Jasta, the column's the fucking Americans! They're telling us to abort the operation immediately!"

"What? We're in a fucking firefight, tell them we'll stop when we're not getting shot at!"

"They're pissed!"

"So am I! Payback, stay put, but do NOT let yourself get shot."

Four minutes, the Americans reached the front gate and officially joined the fight. Nothing PBE troopers carry has quite the effect of Abrams-mounted M2 machine guns, so once they started shooting, our troopers dove for cover and stayed down.

"PJ, Cobra here. I've told the Americans your location, they're ordering us to stand down and approach the column."

"Fuckers. All right, tell them we're in. Do not let them shoot at us. Jasta, get your men in here, we're done for the day."

It can't be said that the Americans aren't good in a fight. They tore through the remaining defenders with a ferocity rarely seen on the battlefield, and they moved with incredible coordination. These were definitely not the rank-and-file grunts we'd seen in action in Chile a few years before.

"Payback? Who the fuck's in charge of you assholes?"

However, it didn't seem their attitudes had improved any.

PJ stepped forward. "Technically, Colonel, I am in charge of this operation. At least until His Madness releases me from command."

"Ok, get your boys out of here. You're not authorized..." Some of the troopers laughed "...to be assaulting this facility."

"Our contract reads..."

"If you don't get the fuck out of here, your contract will be canceled and your boys will be listed KIA. You arrogant mercs, you think you can just waltz in and out of our combat zone, doing anything you like? You guys are thugs in polo shirts, nothing but the latest generation of thugs and contract killers."

"Well, Colonel, we're sorry that we didn't leave enough combat for you. I'll have a chat with my boss, and we'll clear out."

"You've got fifteen minutes."

PanamaJack walked around the corner and fished his satellite phone out of his backpack.

"Hotaru, what the fuck's going on?"

"Officially, the contract is being listed as fulfilled, but unofficially, the Americans are so pissed they can barely talk. Apparently, they're shitting themselves that the press might find out and/or the durkas might have a failsafe in there. They want this place intact, and they damn sure don't want us taking it for them."

"We're getting paid, right?"

"That's still under discussion."

"Paid or Payback, we're coming home."

Rock and Roll, Part Four.

I woke up staring at a white tile ceiling, listening to something beep rhythmically. My head was fuzzy.

What happened?

"Where am I? Kahlan? What happened?"

"You got shot, Soren. We're in a Catholic hospital in Azerbaijan."

"You're here?"

"Yeah. Bushwackers's here too."

"Bro, what happened?"

"You nearly completed the mission with that fuckin' nuke of yours."

"Wait, what?"

"Yeah, so apparently the Ayatollah was hosting a party that night at Khomenei's mosque. That bomb you dropped leveled the building, took out 11 of the 23 Islamists we were paid to hunt. PJ's team hit one of the safehouses the next night, got 6 more."

"Why are you here?"

"I got called in to keep an eye on your until they can move you. Wut's team went in two days ago, they're still in-theatre with PJ's team."

"How long was I out?"

"You've been in a medically-induced coma for three days. You got winged by a fuckin' Ma Deuce on your right leg. You nearly bled out on the plane, and these nuns put five pints of blood into you while they stitched on your leg. Then that shit got infected, and you nearly died again. You're still sick, but I told the doctors that we're moving you out of the area before news of our presence leaks to the press."

"Well, all that from a near miss. If it had hit me, it would have blown me in half."

Bushwacker yanked the the blanket off the bed. My leg was bandaged, but it was obvious I'd have a huge, puckered scar for the rest of my life. The round had definitely hit me, but another two inches and it would have missed me entirely. He grabbed the chart from the foot of the bed.

"You damn near lost your leg, asshole."

"How long until I walk again?"

"You start PT as soon as the doctors say the muscles have healed enough." He took a deep breath. "Soren, that's going to be nearly a month. You're going to be off active duty for a couple months at the least. You're going to have a limp, and running may never be possible."

I started laughing. "Well, that's not too bad. I was worried this was serious."

Kahlan looked at me worriedly, then Bushwacker chuckled.

"The Mad Hatter's going to be fine, ma'am. If he's alive enough to laugh, he'll pull through."

"Mad Hatter?"

"Just another name we have for this asshole."

I fell asleep again.

Panamajack's team had inserted flawlessly. Splashing into the resevoir in a line 150 yards long, they'd regrouped and come onshore in a well-rehearsed manner. Sneaking into the utility yard at the dam itself, they'd stolen a utility van and driven into Tehran at night. There they'd selected a storage facility from a list of predetermined safe houses, backed the van in, and slept.

News of the bombing had greeted them with their morning communiques from the Chateau. Locally, they'd been able to determine who'd been killed, and had relayed to the Chateau that almost all of the primary targets had been wiped. Along with the continuing PR fallout from the porn video, Iran was erupting in chaos.

They'd hit the primary safehouse the following night, taking the chance that the Islamic leadership would hunker down there the first night, then move on. They were right, they'd gotten six more of the bastards. All of them had been executed, on their knees. The message was simple: They died like weaklings, not in battle.

Along with the primaries, they'd also recovered some intelligence that none of us had wanted to find. Not only had Iran been pursuing nukes, which everyone knew, they'd actually made some. Not in the megaton range, thankfully, nor especially small, but they had at least three Little Boy-type bombs. Small enough to put in a moving van, big enough to wipe out a city, simple enough that an idiot could set one off.

That information had been passed on to the US almost immediately, who had thanked PBE, then given prompt orders to find and kill the last six guys and then work on the nukes. Luckily for us, PBE's second team was ready to go, and was inserted the next day, although they had to swim in from the Caspian.

The decapitation of Iran's Islamic leadership had caused the US military to advance it's airstrike timetable by two days. Anything made of steel started getting bombed the night after Wut's team was inserted. By the third day, Iran's air force was reduced to scrap, and US fighter-bombers were given free reign to kill anything they wanted, any time they wanted.

That's a nasty environment for a pair of 8-man tactical teams to work in. Air force pilots simply don't give a shit if they kill some mercs, most of them view us as amoral assholes who profit from war. Consequently, instead of being able to do their job, they hunkered down and waited for the flyboys to calm down.

That turned out to cost us. Realizing that there were assassination teams in the area after the first safehouse had gotten hit, the Islamic leadership had abandoned it's plan to run from house to house, and instead hooked up with a detachment of the Quds Force for safety. The only thing worse than hitting a moving target is hitting one protected by a detachment of an elite unit.

The troopers suddenly found themselves tracking a moving target that they couldn't come close to defeating.

On the other hand, it's a hell of a lot easier to find a group of 80 than a group of 8. The Islamic leadership had traded concealment for cover, and it was going to cost them. The Americans had started the ground war the day the air war quieted down, and the imams were going to run out of space to run around in damned soon.

It was Wut's team that came up with the idea to draw them out. He'd realized that they'd run unless Quds force could be drawn into attacking them, and if they could be baited enough to commit, we could drop the hammer on them like Thor fighting a serpent.

The biggest, shiniest thing left in Iran was the nuclear enrichment center at Natanz. The US was planning on taking it intact, they wanted proof that Iran had nukes. The couldn't bomb anywhere near it for political reasons, the last thing they could afford was to irradiate part of the country they'd decided to free the shit out of.

A pair of white delivery fans left Tehran the next morning, and drove to Tehran. As scenic drives go, it was rathe boring, they passed little but bombed-out military buildings and burning vehicles. Four hours later, they pulled off the highway a few miles short the Natanz Nuclear Enrichment Facility, or whatever the Iranians were calling it.

Rock and Roll, Part Three.

The preferred SEAL method of entering highly hostile territory is a HAHO jump. They'll jump out of a airplane at 30,000 feet, pop a chute, and float 30 miles to their LZ, then do their whole sneaky bastard thing. It's extremely effective, unless of course the country being snuck into has been setting up to defend against Israeli airstrikes for 20 years. With Iran, that simply wasn't an option from any direction, they weren't unaware that the US had invaded Afghanistan two decades prior. The entire country bristled with AA.

Of course, that's only the preferred method if you don't have pilots who specialize in low-altitude insanity. Staos and I were going to fly in from Dubai at about 50 feet above the waves, fly through Iran at about 75 feet above the dirt, drop an 8-man team of shooters into the reservoir just out of town without even slowing down, then buzz a few towns on the way out of the country, dodge the Caspian Sea portion of the Iranian navy, then land in Baki, Azerbaijan.

The shooters would sneak and steal their way into Tehran, wait for the signal while taking pictures, then slaughter their way through as many of Allah's chosen as possible when we got the signal. They'd be working in the same area as several other SF and SOF teams, and the chances of having a friendly-fire incident always goes up when those guys start calling in airstrikes.

PMCs, if they even have the capability, make damned sure that they don't accidentally splash a Coalition squad when airstrikes are called in. On the reverse, we don't always have those neat little IR strobes that mark us as friendlies. Also, they don't always let us know that cruise missiles are inbound, and one particularly unlucky PMC had lost an entire 8-man force when a SEAL team had targeted a bomb factory and didn't know the mercs were in the area.

PanamaJack's team met up with me in Iraq. We hadn't worked together in a while, but it's always cool to see old friends. His team is one of the more lethal teams in the company, they've got a reputation for shooting first, hitting the target, then shooting again just to make sure. Definitely the people we wanted to send in first, I'd pick up Wut?'s team in Azerbaijan and be ready to deploy them as backup if things really went south.

We took off just after dusk, and reached the Iranian shoreline just as night really fell. I'd been assigned a copilot for this op, Staos had finally gotten certified to our standards on multiple-engine aircraft. He was another guy who'd come from the website, and had spent years battling a heroin addiction. He'd beaten it eventually, and had come looking for us when we started getting famous.

Night flying is a boring exercise for everyone but the pilots. Especially when we're flying over Iran, which is a boring place to fly over anyways. Even at our stupidly low altitude, we didn't see much that shone in the night. Occasional huts were lit up, but on the whole, we were flying in darkness, past darkness. Just the way I liked it, to be sure.

Four hours of low-level flying after we cross the shoreline, I let the troopers know that we were about to fly over the drop point. This was going to be the hairy part, they'd leave a plane going 150 miles an hour over a lake at night low enough that their chutes would really only slow them enough to not skip across the surface of the lake like stones.

The cabin radio started blasting The Clash's Rock the Casbah, the green light went on, and mercs started the invasion. Eight men, with a week's worth of supplies, jumped out of an airplane flying 175 miles an hour only 75 feet above the water.

I turned the plane to follow the valley out to the coast. It would take us about 20 minutes to get there, and we weren't done with the dangerous portion of the flight.

If I get seen, we're going to have to make sure that they dont't think we dropped off a team. That means carnage on a serious scale.

"Make ready the port-side cannons!"

"Aye, Cap'n. "

My jumpmaster, an older Shogun named Mike, opened and secured the gun windows on the pilot's side of the airplane. We now had a pair of GM-134 miniguns and a 20mm cannon that used to be attached to a Messerschmitt aimed out the port side of the airplane. All were computer-controlled, aimed by the comms guy sitting behind me and staring at a pair of IR feeds. The miniguns were paired together, the cannon could be aimed somewhat independently if necessary.

"Mr. Torpido, let me the know the exact second we get spotted. We're about to hit the coastal areas, and we're going to be noticed."

They knew all this, and they knew that I knew that they knew, but decorum has to be maintained. One of the lessons of leadership is that leaders should always appear to be in charge, and I'm the pilot, which makes me the leader.

I always wanted to be a pirate, though.

I couldn't fly any lower, and with the troopers out of the building and the fuel load where it was, I was flying as fast the engines would haul us. We roared past first one lit house, then two more, then we were in the city.

There. That's the line.

I realized I was holding my breath. I hadn't been this on edge for a long time. I took a deep breath. We'd be fine.

"Shit! They know we're here. Radio just lit up like a Christmas tree!"

"Alright boys, we're on Plan B. have they launched any airplanes yet?"

"No, but Command says the military comms just went crazy."

"Fuck it. Plan C, everyone."

I wrenched us into a hard left turn. We had to go downtown, to make some noise. We couldn't let them know we'd dropped a tactical team in the resevoir outside town.

"Mr. Mike, make something important blow up. Preferably something that will really piss them off."

"Cap'n, your choices are the Parliment building or Khomenei's mosque."

"Mr. Mike, drop the bomb on the mosque, if we can hit it."

The original plan had been to fly low and fast out over the coast and go to Azerbaijan. The backup to that was to fly out a different way, still going to Azerbaijan. The backup to that was to make it look like an attempted assassination of someone really important. Subtlety is key in our business, but the best way to cover up an infiltration is to do something insanely obvious, and make it look like an accident.

Strapped to the back wall of the cargo hold were two 100-quart Rubbermaid coolers, solidly wrapped in five rolls of duct tape. Inside them, we'd stacked 99.5 gallons' worth of C4 blocks, and topped them off with a 3-minute delayed fuse and a parachute. Much like jump troopers in WWII, the chute was static-lined to the plane. Unlike the jump troopers, so was the fuse.

Technically, the closure rate for a ground target is the same whether the aircraft is 50 feet off the ground or 5,000. The calculation is rather simple: One aircraft, traveling at 225 miles an hour relative to the target, should release a chute-retarded package pretty much right over the target. Chutes go straight down, after all.

It helps when the target is lit up brighter than anything else in the city. The bombs got kicked out 3 seconds apart, I made a hard turn to the north, and firewalled the throttles. The coast was now 12 minutes away, the bomb would go off in three.

We'd just left Tehran's airspace when the sky lit up. We'd have to wait for the news cameras to show up to see what we'd hit, but a pair of coolers full of over 350 pounds pounds of exploding Composition C-4 each were bound to make a dent in whatever it had landed on.

It also makes a amazing distraction.

For the next 9 minutes, we flew lower than anyone sane would try. My eyes were throbbing, I'd been wearing wide-angle NVGs for six hours. We finally hit the coast, and I told my copilot to take us the rest of the way while I searched for some painkillers.

That was when the tracers found us. A ragged line of holes went through the starboard side of the aircraft and a matching set appeared in the top of the plane. I reflexively dove for the deck.

"What the fuck just shot us?"

"Patrol boat. Starboard side, 400 yards."

"KILL IT!!"

"Aye!"

Staos pulled the plane into a hard port turn. We could sink most boats, bet we had to be turning to port to do it. Another burst rippled our way, some of it hit the plane. I tried to stand up, but the plane was at too much of an angle, and I bounced off the wall and into a jump seat.

Damnit, why's my leg hurt so bad? I must have fallen into something.

I heard Kahlan scream.

Fuck, I hope she's OK.

Then the turn was completed, and Torpido jammed the firing button down. A standard GM-134 minigun has the barrels zeroed, meaning that all of them are aimed at the same place. When HM had first talked with me about making our C-47 into a Spooky, we'd decided to have the miniguns adjusted so that the six barrels would hit each point and the center of a 2-MOA star. At the 600 yards from us to the patrol boat, that meant a pattern about 12 inches across.

Holy shit are those loud.

A third-party observer would have seen twin bars of light reach across the distance between the plane and the boat. To me, looking out the window from a jump seat, it looked like fireflies gently floating out to the boat. The boat captain just saw a spray of death headed his way at 2,800 feet per second, and died befoe he realized what it was.

Torpido walked the miniguns' fire down to the waterline, back to the stern, then up and off the bow. He'd kept the cannon tracking the cabin, filling it with fire and death. The lights on the boat went out almost immediately, then the boat stopped in the water.

"Soren, the boat's toast."

"Good."

What's wrong with my ears? My voice sounds funny.

"Soren?" I heard a girl call. "SOREN!"

Fuckin' NVG migraine, I can barely see anything.

"Shit! He's been hit!" a man's voice said.

Who?

Then things went black.

Rock and Roll, Part Two.

HM called me into his office a few hours after we got back. The whole command staff was there, even the Color Guard. He motioned for me to take a seat in one of the chairs opposite his desk, which I'd rather not have done. That many people made me nervous, even though most of them had been on ops with me.

"General Soren, welcome back."

I haven't been called that in years, not since the website.

"Thank you."

"Why did you call yourself a General, back there?"

"I liked tactics and strategy, only Sergeants, Colonels, and Generals do that stuff. "Colonel" I dislike for spelling reasons, "Sergeant Soren" sounded too comic-bookish, so I used "General". Worked at the time, anyways."

"How would you invade and pacify Iran, General?"

"Well, there's three main power structures in place, military, political, and religious, and four factions, adding the academics. The military will get destroyed, hopefully, and the politicians will likely get lynched, or will be in hiding. They'll hope to trade favors for power, so the invading coalition can use them to sniff out corruption for a while. Religious types are a huge factor in the country, since they're officially in charge, but they took a massive credibility hit when the video went out. The academic establishments, students, professors, etc, are likely to be capable of stabilizing the citizenry, but not if the coalition is there for another decade."

"Go on."

"OK, so the military gets raped in the invasion. That's a given, and hopefully the invaders don't take prisoners, like happened in Iraq 2003. Problem is the religious folks. They've got some power, they're the official leadership of the country, but they're hard to target politically because of the political implications of doing so.

"Standard blitzkrieg warfare will utterly destroy Iran's standing military, no question. The insurgency can be taken down, but not if they're doing it for Allah. That means the Ayatollah and his friends have to die. Not get put on trial, die. In the night, quietly if possible, and for goddamned sure not in a firefight with the Imperialist Zionist Capitalist Invaders from the West.

"Unless I miss my guess, that's where we come in. The two suits got sent here to hire us to assassinate the entire Islamic leadership of Iran, or most of it, since they can't be seen doing it. We're supposed to wipe out the Islamic leadership so that the country will split along faction lines as we roll in. Our contract probably says "Assist in the pursuit of high-value targets", unless I miss my guess."

One of the Agency types blinked, and his partner coughed. Hotaru Maniac stared at me, then started laughing.

"Shit, we should have done this years ago. Soren, you just got your rank back. You're now in charge of PBE's Combat Air Wing for this operation, which at this moment consists of your Spooky, one Huey Cobra that flew in Viet Nam, and two UH-1s that we took as payment for an op in South America. We're also trying to get another jump-capable plane for the shooters, but that may not happen in time."

"Well, that definitely gives us some options. How long are major combat operations scheduled to last?"

"Four weeks, starting in five. We start in three."

"Awesome sauce."

The Agency types ducked out the back. They looked mildly annoyed, they must have been furious to let that much emotion show. The CIA never likes being obvious, even when the only options are. Apparently, I'd guessed their exact plan, and they *really* don't like that.

"C'mon, Soren."

"What?"

"Party time. You got promoted, we're going to get drunk, then pay half of Miami's bikini models to make passes at you. You're coming, otherwise it won't be any fun."

"You're buying dinner first. Somewhere with good steaks."

"Deal."

The next three weeks were a flurry of activity. The C-47 got modern engines, sacrificing some flight range for a shorter takeoff. The helo pilots spent six days a week practicing landing people on angled rooftops, in narrow streets, and providing fire support on targets designated by the shooters. I don't know where they'd been, but they were not fresh out of flight school.

I spent most of the time going over target lists, probable locations for the targets to run to, and who might hide them if needed. Not very exciting by comparison, but while predicting the movements of the enemy isn't an exact science, there is some probability involved. They'd run to friendly locations, cities that were more Islamist than others. When those fell, they'd run to smaller and smaller villages, until they ended up in isolated compounds like Saddam did. By marking these beforehand, we hoped to narrow down the time they'd have to run.

The girl passed her training course in the middle of her class. Not bad for a girl who's barely 5'6", there's no such thing as "standards for women" in PBE. I got to hand her her certificate, she gave me a hug, then punched me in the jaw and called me an asshole for not warning her about Survival Week.

"What would I have said?" I asked her later. "Would you have gone through it if you knew what was in store?"

"Probably not."

"Then, are you glad I didn't tell you? No one would make it through if they knew what was coming, and how long it would take. Not me, not you, not any of us. The only way to get through is one step at a time, not looking at the big picture."

"Fine. Just don't do it again."

"I'm not going to. You're a PBE employee. One of our combat correspondents, camera, notebook, and brain, recording our escapades for posterity. You'll be there, in the plane. Should the worst happen, you're the one that's going to push you through it, not me."

"What happened to the novel? I'm not a journalist."

"You're both. What you see and do here can't be talked about outside, without official approval, but Maniac wants you to write it all down, and he's trying to get the real story out. That's where you come in. You're to write a form of tell-all book. Anything that doesn't go in that book, feel free to paraphrase and name-change the hell out of it, and call it a novel.

"Oh, and by the way, we're flying into Iraq the day after tomorrow. Call your folks, tell them you'll be gone, but you can't say where. This isn't official yet."

"Is this how it always is? Leaving for parts unknown in secret, never being honest with the people back home?"

"Yes. My family hasn't known my exactly location in years, although they do know I'm a pilot for Payback Enterprises. None of them know how many people I've killed, all the places I've been, or the people we've lost. Maybe some day, when this is all over with, I'll have you write my story. Hell, a lot of us would give you book deals, if HM let us."

"I can only hope so. That is closer to the original plan, after all."

"By the way, I heard they gave you a new name in training?"

"Yeah, I didn't like my old one anymore. Everyone calls me Kahlan now."

"Your eyes aren't green."

"True, but I look killer in a white dress."

That image isn't going to leave my head any time soon.

"I'll bet. Grab your gear, you need to pack for a plane ride."

Rock and Roll, Part One.

One of the benefits of being a higher-ranking PBE employee is that we get to do recruiting missions.

This isn't to assume that "rank" as such exists in PBE, leadership has always been a question of skill and initiative first, seniority second. The FNGs (Fuckin' New Guys) start at the bottom, but a particularly intelligent employee can get promoted very quickly, and unlike military commanders, HM doesn't have patience for political games. Being seen to be a kiss-ass is a quick way to get sent on a less-survivable mission, where one's actions will either prove one's talk, or not. Most often not.

But anyways, as the senior pilot in PBE's employ, I frequently get sent out to recruit new pilots, raise awareness among the aviation community that PBE needs pilots, and look for new ways to use airplanes to slay bodies. The other specialists do the same thing, dropping by law school graduations, military bases, and medical schools on a frequent basis. We have a permanent booth at SHOT show.

This particular day, my cross-country tour brought me to the Dayton Air Show, one of the US's biggest annual air shows. Now, any pilot or organization that can bring a WWII-era C-47 will get some attention. The fact that it was painted like a WWII-era 101st Airborne jump bird, with the exception of our rifle/syringe/hourglass logo, raised some extra eyebrows.

Oh, and HM had instructed the mechanics to leave it armed. Nothing says "subtle" like real miniguns in an aircraft owned by a PMC at an air show attended by large numbers of mil/LEO personnel, with the Air Force Thunderbirds scheduled to show up. I was going to spend all day being watched by armed AF security personnel, but occasionally, we actually want attention from the officials, since we're always looking to hire the best and brightest of them.

I was told to especially look for helicopter pilots. Odd, since PBE doesn't have much in the way of helo assets, but HM thinks pretty far in advance. I'll give the man credit, he's often way ahead of us strategically. The man has plans for PBE that are so detailed I often wonder if the madness is just an act.

A few Little Bird pilots could really give us some new options for moving our troopers that we just don't have at the moment. Even two would give us the ability to lift a fire team off a rooftop instead of road exfiltration.

I spent most of the day wearing the polo and handing out business cards, telling mildly-interested folks that yes, PBE is hiring, and yes, we pay excellent wages. No, I'm not going to tell war stories, and no, I'm sure as hell not going to talk about selection and initial training. Yes, we're a good company to work for, no, I'm not going to tell anyone what countries we're currently working in.

I would have loved to put on a demonstration, but there was just no way to get *that* approved with the locals. I could just imagine the conversation:

"Yeah, we'd like to blow several large holes in the field opposite the hangars, and we'd also like to pour several thousand tracer rounds into some vehicles from 2,000 feet off the deck, preferably at night."

"Aren't you a little old to be making prank calls? Who did you say you were with?"

I hit pay dirt right after the Thunderbirds did their thing. By this time, temperatures were well over 90F, and it was a bright sunny day, so every who could find it was in the shade. For me and my temporary copilot, that meant a bright pink parasol and some insulated blankets on top of the plane. We stuck out, but we also had a better view than anyone except the airmen who were doing the same thing on top of a C-17.

How old is this guy?

That was all I could think of as this scrappy young kid was yelling up at me. I didn't know if he was old enough to shave, and I felt quite certain that he wasn't old enough to drink stateside.

"WHAT! Stop yelling at me!"

"Hey, I need to join you guys!"

"What the fuck for, kid?"

Start with the asshole card.

"I can fly a helicopter!"

"Great. Talk to the local hospital, go flying dying folks around."

C'mon, kid, tell me why you really want in PBE.

"Uhh, yeah, I don't think the cops will hire me anytime soon. I've kinda got a record with the cops."

"For what, exactly?"

"It was just one bad day, I swear."

We may have a winner.

"OK, come on inside."

I climbed down off the top of the bird, knowing I'd miss the blind-side knife edge pass that I'd been waiting all day for. Those Air Force guys can *fly*.

"What's your name?"

"Billy Dickerson."

Amazing. I can't wait to hear him tell the cadre his last name.

"Well, young William, tell me the entire story. It will be checked, and we will know if you're keeping secrets from us."

"I got out of highschool six years ago, went to helicopter flight school on Dad's money. He was a chopper pilot in the Army, but I didn't have the grades for Army flight school. Got out, got a job working for a lumber company. You know how they skyline logs up the hill and load them onto trucks? Well, they run those lines with a helicopter. I was the copilot on one of those choppers, working in the company until they'd promote me to my own chopper."

Kid's got balls, at least. Is he a total fuckup, or is there potential here?

"Ok..."

"Well, it was my day off, and me and some of the lumberjacks were blowing off some steam with some long-range shooting. You know how it gets almost zen when you really focus on the target?"

I nodded.

"Yeah, well, we'd spent a day at the range, and we were driving back to the job site when we got pulled over by some State trooper. This asshole saw us, saw the guns, and some old beer cans in the back, and pulled us all out of the truck. That was bad enough, but someone cracked a gay joke during the frisking, we all started laughing and adding to it, and he had us all arrested for disorderly conduct.

"We spent the night in jail, got a fine, and would have been sent on our way, but they weren't gonna give us our rifles back. Called it collecting evidence."

"...And?"

"Well, I...uh...I mean we, well, a fight got started. In the sheriff's office, the four of us guys tried to run out the door with our guns, and we made it out the door, into the truck and 20 miles down the road before we ran into a roadblock."

He made it out without getting shot? Doesn't look like he's that good of a brawler, but that still took good initiative.

"OK, so Assaulting a police officer, theft of police property, evading arrest...why are you not in prison?"

"We pleaded guilty to the assault and evading charges, and the lawyers got the theft charges thrown out on account of the cops having no right to confiscate the rifles in the first place. I did three years for that shit, and now I can't get a job with any respectable company. Fuckin' McDonald's won't even hire me."

"So you came to PBE? You think we're going to give you a new start, without caring about all the stupid shit you did when you were younger, and we'll give you another helicopter to fly once you prove yourself to be something other than the useless faggot you definitely appear to be."

The kid paled. I nearly busted up laughing, it was just too much fun.

"Well, I mean you guys have a reputation...I just thought..."

He trailed off. This kid was serious, and would probably work his ass off for another chance.

"Yes, yes we do. You'll have to work harder and endure more than ever before, you know that, right?"

"Yessir."

"Do not call me "Sir" again. Payback is NOT your father's Army. If you've got a cell phone, call whoever you've been staying with, you're going on vacation for a while."

"Yes... uhh, what do I call you?"

"Everyone calls me Soren."

I had fun for the rest of the day, I told the kid to wash the plane, twice, claiming that I could still see dirt spots on it, then I had him run around to various concessions stands, bringing me cold and unspilled sodas. I think he knew that I was testing him, and while his smile lasted for about 5 minutes into the first wash, he remained polite for the rest of the day.

I've got a good feeling about this kid. I think he knows it's just a game he has to play in order to win his fresh start, and that puts him a ways ahead of the people who think they can actually impress the selection cadre and get it easy.

We locked up the plane at nightfall, I showed him how to manually retract and stow the guns, then we went to a hotel. I've slept in that plane, but with four-star hotels in the area, and military personnel guarding the airfield, I didn't need to do it that night.

I paid for a two-bed, four-star room on the company card, something which the kid had obviously never seen the inside of before. He asked why we were staying in such luxury, and said he'd be fine in a smaller room. I smiled and told him that PBE lives in a different world than lumberjacks do, and crashed out.

I woke up at 0600, and checked my messages for the first time in a week. I'd gotten one from my elder sister, she and her husband had been approved for their second adoption, which I was glad to hear about. One from my mother, who was still tending to a neighborhood's worth of cats back home, and still swearing that she only owned three. Or was it four now?

Several work-related emails were waiting for me to respond to them, mostly progress reports and logistics concerns. Accounting was pissed about the hotel room, but they're good at what they do because they get pissy about hotel expenses. PBE rakes in piles of cash, but we burn through it pretty fast, and we're not nearly as profitable as it appears to outsiders. The vast majority of what we make goes to operating expenses, and a small army of bean-counters is required to make sure that we're not wasting funds.

The final email from the Bossman regarded the girl. She was apparently doing fairly well in our support-staff training program, and was in high spirits most of the time. She'd made it through the PT phase in good form, was doing her survival course currently, and was becoming a fairly competent shot. I thanked HM for letting me know, and sent a token message to let her know I was proud of her, and praying for her.

Of course, she'd never get such a message, and I knew that.

PBE had at the beginning only run a single training course, the brutal experience known as "Selection" to outsiders, "Lovecraftian horror" to people currently in it, and "beginner's training" to insiders. Everyone who had a combat job went through that, but as PBE had grown, it had needed specialists who simply didn't have what it took to get through that kind of training. When the course was explained, no college-trained folks had even applied for the accounting job.

In the end, PBE had created a shorter training course, at first marketed to outsiders as "Tactical Training for Law Enforcement and Security Personnel." The four-week course consisted of two weeks of PT, weapons training, and a third-week "survival experience" that was one part training and three parts low-level suck, mostly being wet, marching, and camping, but without a lot of sleep. Week four was more weapons training, but geared towards teamwork.

Then we added that to the employment contract, and anyone in a non-combat job had to go through it. It turned out to be a huge success, the support staff suddenly had a new respect for the shooters, and the shooters had more respect for the bean-counters and cooks. The company ran smoother, and morale actually went up. We'd hire folks just out of college, and they'd get letters from home, watching their friends' waistlines increase, while our support staff did regular PT, spent time on the range, and got paid more.

They had also had fun, got to travel on a regular basis, carried pistols, and got to blow stuff up on occasion. Most of them, if they could work through the morality issues of working with mercs, would retire from us after 20 years. It was, simply put, one of the best legal jobs in the world for our support staff. I suppose Colombian drug lords would pay more, but no one really wants to work for those guys. Not after PBE took down one of the Mexican cartels a few years back.

We left for the Chateau a few hours later. "Chateau" brings to mind a palatial cabin in the alps, but it's actually a compound in Florida. We own enough land to do live-fire exercises, survival training, have our own runway, and enough buildings to house everyone and everything we own. I mean everyone, too. We could house and feed every shooter, support operative, paper-pusher, and cook in the company, for several months, if the situation required it.

"Hey, Billy, what kind of music do you listen to?"

"Gangsta rap."

White kids these days.

"That's nice."

Strains of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Run Through the Jungle soon started fighting the engines for volume, and my copilot and I enjoyed the first round of preparing the kid for selection.