it was the widest smile he’d worn in months.
SIXTEEN
The morning temperature in Dubai hit 108 degrees and the humidity hovered near ninety percent. The eight Americans who filed down the jet stairs looked weathered and worn; black soot was visible on the cheeks of virtually all of them, in sharp contrast to the rings around their eyes where they’d been wearing goggles during the hit on the house in Caracas nineteen hours earlier. Their hair was a mess, both from the helmets or ball caps they wore during the mission and from the bedhead picked up from lying awkwardly on cabin chairs or on the cabin floor, men packed nuts to butts in a luxury aircraft poorly suited for troop transport.
The leader of the team, call sign Hades, was last off the bird, and when he came down the stairs, he filed in with the others near the hatch of the cargo hold, ready to grab his heavy ruck of gear and his rifle. He was as tired as the rest of the team, if not more so, and he also had the additional burden of knowing he’d lost one of his men.
Hades rubbed his eyes, avoiding the sun and the glare off the aircraft as best he could, then reached up as his MultiCam rucksack was handed down.
Just like with the rest of the team, all of Hades’s tactical gear and clothing were in his massive Osprey pack. Now he wore dingy linen pants, flip-flops, and a red loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt. The seven other men all wore civilian clothing, as well, but their beards, mustaches, fit physiques, and ages gave them away as some sort of a fighting force.
But there was no one here to see them. They’d parked in an out-of-the-way portion of the tarmac, and other than the pilot and copilot, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
Until a black Mercedes passenger van rolled into view, coming from the direction of an airport entrance reserved for government personnel. The Mercedes parked in front of a nearby hangar, and a Middle Eastern man in a gray suit and tie climbed out from behind the wheel and opened the rear door.
“Somebody call an Uber?” Mercury quipped, but no one laughed. They were beat from the thirty-five-hour round-trip flight and the fight in Caracas, and their spirits had taken a hit with the death of Ronnie Blight. Joking and ribbing one another was a thing with this team of mercs, but today Mercury’s tired attempt fell flat.
Hades moved with his men, squinting in the sun because his Oakley shades were still tucked deep in a pouch in his pack. He headed for the black Mercedes van that would take them all, he assumed, to the apartment building where they resided two to a room here in Dubai. But just before he folded himself into the van behind the others, a silver BMW 8 Series Gran Coupe pulled up, and the driver of this vehicle climbed out and opened a rear door.
Hades handed his pack off to Thor and headed to the BMW. “Catch you guys in a bit. Clean and secure your gear before you rack out.” He knew where he was going; he’d been through this before. He’d be meeting with his employer, and he was damn glad. He had a few things he needed to get off his chest about the shit show they’d just experienced.
As he rode in the back of the sleek four-door coupe, it wasn’t lost on him that he hadn’t bathed in two and a half days. The rich leather looked brand-new; the wood paneling around him seemed to have been buffed to a brilliant shine that very morning.
And Hades looked down at his hands, dirt in the cracks like spiderwebs, even though he’d worn gloves, and he saw a faint smear of Ronnie’s blood on his forearm, even though he’d worn a long-sleeved tunic.
Hades’s real name was Keith Hulett, but no one on his team called him that. He hailed from Fort Wayne, Indiana, the son of a soybean farmer.
Hulett had been a master sergeant in the U.S. Army before joining his current company several years before, working his way through security contracts in the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. He’d moved up the ranks in his company to team leader, and then he, along with his eight men, all specially selected by him, had served as guns for hire for the United Arab Emirates for the last year and a half.
But Hades