Page 132 of Agency

The Amphibious Cessna P206’s prop engine filled the cab of the plane with a constant roar, like a grizzly right up in your face and exceedingly angry that he hadn’t yet been served dinner. The growling white-noise was constant and all-encompassing in my front passenger seat, and practically buffeted me about the head and chest as this great, predatory purr demanded my attention in spite of the noise-canceling aviation headset I wore.

But I couldn’t give over any of my finite focus. Not as we cruised low and fast over this spread of water on our barely planned, and definitely un-filed, flight path. Even the moon wasn’t out yet, and only stars lit our way north from the shore.

“Ten minutes!” Mac shouted over the headset. “Hop and a skip, baby! Hop and a motherfucking skip! Woo!”

I glanced over to Mac, to his face grinning as he gripped the flight yoke tight and hard. Was he on something? Meth? Coke? Or just pure, mainline adrenaline?

Jesus Christ, I couldn’t believe we were trusting this guy to put us and all our gear down on a lake in the pitch black. All instruments, no lights, no safety nets.

“Ten?” I asked.

“Ten, baby!” More of that worrying mania in his grin. “Y’all bitches get fucking ready! Woo!”

I glanced back to my camo-painted crew. To Morgan’s somber, striped face. To Ambyr’s contemplative, almost statuesque appearance as she gazed out the window from within the dark blues and browns daubing her skin. To Andrew’s grinning face, his teeth a white gash across the dark makeup.

None of them returned my gaze.

I shifted in my seat and looked back out through the front windshield, and to its single, furiously spinning prop slashing the night air.

If we crashed, at least, I’d punch my ticket first.

Small miracles, right there.

But Andrew had sworn Mac was good. If Andrew was willing to climb into the plane also, then that was good enough for me. Despite Andrew’s goofy exterior, he had a keen mind, and an ability to see things in people I couldn’t.

I trusted Andrew–so I trusted Mac.

God help us, though, I hoped that trust in Andrew wasn’t a mistake as we practically skipped north across this wide, giant pond I hadn’t even heard about until the day before, barreling towards some unknown, un-scouted threat.

Mac had called just as the four of us were settling on our new strategy. The plan wasn’t the best, but literally almost anything else would have better than what we’d had. Because Ambyr was right: none of us had any taste for outright murder, execution, or assassination. Not on missions we’d planned ourselves.

Coming down from the higher ups?

Okay. I could understand that. I’d been a mushroom when we were Spec Ops–fed shit and kept in the dark. And I’d understood the rationale at the time, and was even kind of grateful that I didn’t necessarily need to understand the further ramifications of our work. That morality, that balancing and weighing of every single consequence on the scales of our individual souls hadn’t seemed to apply so much. The only thing that mattered back then was keeping the men beside me alive.

Because we did have a choice in this, unlike back in the service. True, we’d needed to disregard illegal orders while serving. That was part of the deal. But, I’d met the lawyers, officials, and generals who weighed the legality of our directives, and I could at least somewhat trust the men and women making those decisions. And, end of the day, orders were fucking orders. You wanted to decline them because you thought they were illegal, then you had a lawyer, a court, a panel of judges. You had a process.

Sure, that process was martial. But at least that martial process was in a court of law.

This shit with Management, though?

Somehow, this had struck different. Anger had made me jump to my choice. Anger as I thought about Ambyr being taken from me. Not her leaving… Everyone was their own person. I’d had women leave. Women who couldn’t, or didn’t want to, handle the bullshit around my soldiering life.

And I could deal with that.

But some piece of shittaking her from me? Or our strike against him not mattering, so the Sword of Damocles continued to hang over her?

I could carry a pack mule’s worth of burden in my life, but not any of that. Never any of that.

Oh, even as we flew out over the lake with a new plan in mind, that made me grind my goddamn teeth like I was trying to chew my way through a cord of firewood.

The prop engine continued to buffet me with furious force, the thrumming sinking into bones, muscles, organs. Only a few more minutes. Only a few more minutes for my crew to ready themselves.

Because I wasn’t going in. Not with my bum ankle, and not with the distance of the hike through rough terrain. I was on guard duty, making sure Mac didn’t just take off when the fireworks started.

Yes. We had other egress plans. But the floatplane was the best, and the one we were sticking to, no matter what Mac’s feelings on the subject became. If that meant I needed to hold a gun to his head to keep him on the water, then I guess I was holding a gun to some man’s head tonight.

“Five, bitches!” Mac was practically writhing in the pilot’s seat like he was trying to adjust his cock at the front of his khaki work pants. “Five minutes!”