nap first?” Bolan heaved a sigh. “It’s been a long-ass seventy-two.”
“Well, the day we do fight, I want your best. So yeah, go down to the galley. Tell Namzi you want the fried rice with julienned Spam and two fried eggs on top. I swear to God that little Indonesian shit makes magic. Plus he’s from Java, so the coffee is good.”
Bolan shoved out his hand again. “Will do.”
The Polynesian engulfed Bolan’s hand in his own but forwent the bone-crusher. “Welcome to Viking Associates, Blue. Welcome to shit detail.”
* * *
Bolan stretched out on his bunk. He put one khanjar dagger beneath his pillow and left the other in his backpack. He took out his phone and punched in the number for Stony Man Farm, in Virginia. His signal bounced off an NSA satellite, then was routed through a series of cutouts, before landing at the Farm. The firewalls and cybersecurity protocols chewed on Bolan’s communication and decided it was kosher. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman answered.
“You in?”
“I’m in.”
“Where are you?”
Bolan hit the GPS tracker app on his phone. “The worst stretch of ocean ever.”
“How are you doing otherwise?”
“I spent all my money on beer, knives and soap.”
“Okay...”
“I’m sending you some pictures.” Bolan had managed to photograph the Viking team currently aboard the ship while pretending to text. “They’re all former US military. I need to see their files and what you can dig up.”
“On it.”
“Thanks.”
“How are you getting along with your new playmates? Viking Associates has a pretty rough reputation.”
Bolan grunted in bemusement. Viking had worse than a pretty rough reputation. They worked cheap, had a record of not observing international protocols, as well as killing would-be pirates rather than trying to capture them or drive them off. One of their Russian teams had kept a teenage Somali pirate alive and had their fun with him before cutting him up, tying a rope around him, throwing him overboard and using him as shark bait. The fishing had been successful, word had gotten around and it had a salutary effect for ships flying the Viking flag. The problem was that two of the team members had been dumb enough to film the atrocities with their phones and send it to their friends. The videos had gone out onto the web and gone viral. Viking became a pariah. No one would hire them. They went bankrupt, and there was talk of a United Nations human rights tribunal. Rampart Group had swooped in out of nowhere, bought them out and fired most of their employees. Rampart had tagged the word “Associates” onto the security company, but Viking was still the black sheep of the private security industry and the bottom rung of the Rampart Group. As both Sifuentes and Big Abe had stated earlier, Viking Associates got all the shit details. Bolan considered his last forty-eight hours with them pretty successful.
“Well, I have a nickname, and I think the cutest girl in class likes me,” Bolan said drily.
“Sounds promising,” Kurtzman muttered.
Pictures and files started appearing on Bolan’s phone. “Just so you know,” Kurtzman said, “we do appreciate the easy requests every once in a while. The big guy is Aperaamo ‘Big Abe’ Umaga. Samoan. Tenth Mountain Division, then Ranger. Failed the Special Forces course because of ‘attitude’ problems.”
“That might have been foreseeable.”
“Classic Rangers lead the way, but does not play well with others,” Kurtzman continued. “In private security he’s had goon-squad duty, and VIP ‘stand around and be huge and mean looking’ jobs. He signed on with Viking right when everything went south. He survived the culling.”
“Sifuentes was a Ranger, I know that. How come he isn’t anymore?”
“Busted for failing a drug test. Marijuana.”
“How about Mono?”
“Moisés Nilo. Squad mate of Sifuentes. Busted at the same time when their unit got drug-tested.”
“And the mullet?”
“Lazlo Mendez. He’s 101st Airborne. He was offered an early, honorable discharge to testify in a military court tribunal. The case is sealed, and his discharge papers have been redacted. You want Hal to ask for it?” Kurtzman referred to Hal Brognola, Justice Department honcho and director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm.
“No. Tell me about the black guy.”
“Jimbo Ketch, born and raised in the United States Virgin Islands. Boatswain’s mate second class. Transferred to the United States Navy Riverine Squadron, RIVRON 3.”
Bolan was detecting a theme. “Tell me how he lost his rating.”
“He got in a brawl with three other Riverines. One of them was an officer. He claimed he didn’t start it, and the attack was racially motivated, over a woman.”
“Did he win?”
“Oh yeah. He put two of them in the hospital. However, he’d been reprimanded for fighting several times in his career. He got busted back to E-3. Finished his bit and didn’t re-up. Went into private security.”
“And the woman?”
“Bianca Maria Ibarra, United States Marines. Military and Police. She made sergeant. Served in Iraq with distinction. Bronze Star and Purple Heart. She was accepted into the United States Marine Corps Criminal Investigation Division, graduated at the top of her class.”
“And?”
“Conduct unbecoming. Apparently Miss Ibarra has a bad habit of getting a little too friendly with superior officers, apparently sometimes more than one at the same time. She was up for a dishonorable discharge. Rumor was she was going to testify about the dishonorable behavior of a number of officers. Her discharge was reduced to general. She applied to several California police departments and was rejected. She currently holds a private investigator’s license in the State of California as well as a California private patrol operator license to provide security and bodyguard services.
Bolan considered his new teammates. “Quite the band of fallen heroes.”
“It is odd. Rampart buys out Viking, cleans out the bad apples, rebuilds the brand and then restocks it with this riffraff.”
Bolan didn’t know his team yet, but he knew Sifuentes was Ranger all the way, and he was willing to bet Abe would fight an armored fighting vehicle with his bare hands for a teammate. “I wouldn’t call them riffraff just yet.”
“So what would you call them?”
Bolan was starting to have an inkling about that. “Expendables.”
“Really? How so?”
Bolan considered his mission. The UK’s MI6 had intercepted chatter that nuclear
