They would only acknowledge each other by the codenames they’d carried long ago. Joe’s was Blue. The other three were Red, Green, and Yellow.
“Gentlemen,” Joe greeted them all as they filed into the room, “you all made it without a hitch, I see.”
“My car’s been bugged three times in the past week,” said Yellow resentfully. “They know we’re looking for them, at the very least.”
“Let ‘em know,” Red spat, pacing around the room. “We sacrifice the best fucking years of our goddamn lives for this country, and what does it do for us? It sends fucking assassins after us to take us down like animals. I don’t care if they’ve got an army waiting for us at that research facility, I want blood, Blue.”
“You’ll have it,” Joe said calmly but sternly. He had to walk a fine line to both appease and restrain his kindred.
His pride.
“Our information is fresh,” Green said patiently, hands folded in front of him. “The assassins know we’re in Cleveland, but they don’t know we’re after them yet. The information I fed them has them thinking we’re taking a flight out of the country tomorrow. I assume they plan to follow us on board and kill us after we land.” He grinned. “Which is why we’ll be dealing with them tonight, instead.”
Everyone nodded, in perfect agreement with each other. This was a night Joe had been looking forward to for a very long time. Hell, all four of them had.
They’d met less than a decade ago, but it felt like it was more than a lifetime. They knew how to act as one. To think as one. Most importantly for tonight, to fight as one.
“We have no time to waste,” said Yellow, “every second that passes is another that they could get tipped off about our plan. Let’s get moving.”
The group nodded in unison, and silently, they slipped out of the hotel. There would be no car tonight, no getaway planned, and if all went well, no loose ends to tie up. Joe was going to lead these four men to do what they and only they could, using what the government did to them against its own agents.
***
The four men slinked around the compound, undetected. They had arrived quickly and
silently, and that was precisely how they meant to execute this plan and make their exit. Either that, or none of them were coming out of the abandoned chemical plant alive.
Of course this is where they’re staying. It was in Joe’s mind as they saw the faded, rusty logo on the side of the building, and he knew the exact same thing was in the thoughts of every one of his squad members.
ArisCorp.
In truth, there had been another reason he’d been so willing to take the environmentalists’ job for such a discounted price. ArisCorp was more than just a greedy, increasingly clumsy corporation. A few years back, it worked with the military, hiring the finest geneticists the Ivy League had to offer on a regular basis. Everything ArisCorp did was classified, and everything they produced was golden.
Including Joe.
The company had fallen from grace and into ruin since then, but the logo still held bitter memories for all four of the men who made up the former special operations unit the military volunteered for, what was to be a cutting-edge development in biological warfare. And at the time, ArisCorp had delivered. God almighty, did they deliver.
The military had funded ArisCorp to develop and implement recombinant DNA into soldiers. And they succeeded.
They didn’t make a sound as they moved up to a back door and exchanged glances, and Joe counted down on his fingers.
3… 2… 1.
Red kicked the door open and tossed a small metal object into the room, and all four men averted their eyes as the flash grenade went off. The shouts from inside told them they had the advantage.
They were armed only with pistols and the knives they’d kept from the old days. It would be all they needed. As one unit, all four of them moved in, keeping low and their eyes forward.
It was dark inside, and they knew they had caught the assassins off-guard. And the dark was no obstacle to them. Their vision was as clear as day.
Joe saw Yellow and Green head right while he and Red took left. Immediately, his senses picked up on those familiar smells nearby him—fear, surprise, confusion. The smell of startled prey. It was just around the corner they were approaching.
Without hesitating, he reached around the corner and caught hold of a wrist before yanking it out into the open with such a supernatural strength that the man gave a yelp of terror. He went sprawling onto the floor, gun flying from his hand as Red’s pistol flashed and put a bullet in the assassin’s head.
There was no time to do so much as take a breath. The assassins had been taken by surprise, but that would only last for a few moments, if the government was taking the threat Joe and his men represented seriously. These would be top-notch operatives they were killing tonight.
Indeed, the sounds of gunshots from Green and Yellow’s direction told them at least three of the assassins had marshaled themselves and prepared to defend the place.
A bullet struck the wall between Joe and Red, and the two of them ducked, Joe turning and shooting back in the direction of the gunfire on instinct. A cry of pain told him that his shots hit true, and the pair of them moved for cover.