Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 97696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 391(@250wpm)___ 326(@300wpm)
“Looks like we’re going rogue.” Connor took his seat and booted up his secure comp. We’d left Davey at my place the last two days since we weren’t sure what we were gonna find in here, so it was just the seven of us sprawled around the room. Each of us had our own special skills when in the field, but for a job like this we were all schooled on how to go digging.
“Okay let’s get to work. We’ll keep searching for what if anything the old man has, but in the meantime let’s get what we can on all the players involved.” Lo pulled up the projector screen we kept hidden in the wall and lit it up. On the screen were the names of everyone involved that we knew of so far. We had their addresses, their numbers, where they worked, who they associated with, down to where they got their laundry done.
I felt the first zing of excitement. This is what I was made for, when I was at my best. That waiting around shit is for the birds, and now that I had something to work for, it made it all the more necessary to be on my best game. “Hooyah.” The others picked up the cry and it resounded around the room. Time to go to war.
“Since these humps are spread all over the place we’re gonna have to do our thing from here using the comps. First we make sure that they’re absolutely secure, Dev that’s you. Quinn I need in-depth runs on all of them running concurrently. Zak, run all their names in the database. I wanna know if any of them have so much as a speeding ticket. I want known associates, going back twenty years. Cross their names, see where they met and what they worked on together. Find the connection.”
“I’ll do the cross.” We got to work to the sound of machines beeping in the background. Not our usual milieu, but it’s what we had to work with. Every once in a while, I looked up at the board, at the faces we had up there. Some of them were the faces of men we’d trusted in the past, men we believed had the nation’s best interest at heart. It was fucked to now learn that they might’ve been looking after their own interests all along while we, and others like us were putting our lives on the line.
The one that bothered me most was the red question mark next to the CO’s old friend’s picture. We still weren’t sure if he was in on what was going on. But since he was Logan’s contact on the inside, and new information had come to light that he should’ve been aware of but hadn’t passed on, there was a question as to his loyalty. It would suck ass if he turned out to be dirty, but I would have no problem putting a cap in his ass if that is the case.
We got down to work using our highly illegal but very effective computers. A job like this was more time consuming than hunting some asshole out to destroy the world. There were pockets of information hidden behind a hundred smoke screens that if you didn’t know what you were looking for, could send you around in circles until you said fuck it and moved on.
I was crossing the names of the players and their known associates and the shit that was unfolding before my eyes only helped to send my pressure through the roof. There was a fuck load of money changing hands between parties, but they were sending the shit through so many channels it would be hard for an inexperienced eye to catch on. Then I peeled back the first layer we’d found so far and that zing became a hum.
“If this shit turns out to be about money, I’m gonna lose my shit. I found the General.” Are you shitting me? These fucks were willing to sell out their country for a few million pieces of fucking paper? We all know the rumors, we’ve heard worse than what’s being reported on the evening news.
If our government was willing to sacrifice a few thousand of its own to build a fucking pipeline in the Middle East, I might hate that shit, but I gotta figure those fucks know what they’re doing. But if these fucks were only out to pad their own bottom line, I’ll end every last one of them myself.
“I told you fucks all along that they were up to no good. Since when do we get called to do a job only to be put on hold? Never.” Ty was right, we dropped the ball on that one.
“Let me see that.” I printed out the list of names for Lo as the others waited. “Son of a bitch.” It was easy to see the connection now where we had missed it before. It wasn’t a well-known fact that the General in question had gone to school with the fuck up, which is our code name for one of the country’s former leaders.
“How did we miss this?”
“We’re fighters Lo, since when have we ever given a second thought to politics?” They kept us so busy who the fuck had time?
“Yeah, but this shit was right under our noses the whole time. Did you find the other one in there?”
I knew whom he meant without asking. “No, but I still have a ways to go yet.”
“I hope to fuck he’s not caught up in this. I’d hate to think the old man was surrounded by enemies at the end.”
That shit left a bad taste in my mouth and sent my mind down a whole new path. I didn’t say anything about what I was thinking, not yet. I needed to do a little more digging and a lot more thinking before I voiced that particular evil. Because I knew if there was any truth to it, my brothers would be destroyed. Though it was no fault of ours. But if it turned out that the ‘friend’ in question had been the one to set him up, this place was gonna become a battlefield.