Grady was standing atop a metal table.

He looked over his men. Mostly the same old black hats that had been with him for years. A few guys left every year. A few guys came. The new kids looked game. He saw soldiers, no, better than soldiers. He saw warriors. Guns were clean. Guns were loaded. Suits were checked. These weren’t the same grabasses he had to deal with in the semi-professional bullshit military that he was a part of for the good ole US of A. Anyone worth their salt picked up and left that shitshow the first day they could. He had signed on with one of the contractors 20 minutes after he walked off base. He made more in 6 months than he made in 8 years in the Army. Eventually he found guys like him. Hard-living, ass-kicking, fist-fucking warriors who wanted nothing more than to the use the skills they had learned to better their lives. These were guys who meant business. Men.

They had three hummers and it was three men to a hummer. One driver, two shooters. Best soldiers were always on the left with the driver. Best drivers were Grady, Rogers, and Hernandez. Grady considered himself the best shot too, but he wanted point. He’d shoot and drive both if that’s what it took. They also had the payload vehicle in the back. It was a deuce and a half. 3 guys in it. Payload road in the middle, shooters on either side with a driver. The black shit went in the back with the payload.

Things were close to ready to go. The mission was simple. Brunsen’s payload. They take Brunsen out to a defined location, he loads up a bunch of the black death shit into a 55 gallon drum, then him and the drum stay in the back. They only needed Brunsen to load the black shit. Once they were back, it was kaput for him too. Grady would deal with the fallout later.

“Hey! Shut the fuck up dipshits.” Grady addressed the crowd of pseudo-soldiers the same way more or less everytime. “For those of you who have done this with me before, nothing changes. We leave, we get what we need, we come back. For you new guys though….” Grady chuckled. A few of the other guys chuckled with him. “For you new guys, welcome to the show. Let me explain what is happening here. We do not and I repeat do not have any authority out there gentlemen. What we are doing is completely and totally illegal. The US government looks the other way at this whole thing because some very powerful people have paid them to do so. That means Kansas City is back to being the Wild, Wild West. At the same time, I promise you we are not the only paramilitary operation running around out there. There are a lot of folks, foreign and domestic that would like a piece of the evil that lies out there. Will we see anyone? I don’t know. If we do see anyone, what happens? New guy over there.” Grady pointed towards one of the new recruits.

“Report to you?” Boos rained down from all sides.

“No, that is an extremely stupid answer from someone who is trying to get my entire team killed. You fucking shoot do you hear me? There are absolutely no rules here. Rules of engagement are engage all targets immediately. You will engage or you will be engaged. If I start taking fire and I figure out you were waving at your buddy ‘cause you knew him back in Iraq, I will personally put a bullet in you the moment that I’m done with them. I’ve done it before gentlemen, and I will do it again. Ask around ‘bout ole Grady and you will hear one thing and one thing alone. I may not be nice, but I pay well and I damn sure promise you that if I say it, I mean it. Now is everyone clear on the last point?”

Nods were shared around the room.

“Excellent, the next point, under no circumstances are you allowed to take off any piece of your biohaz suit.” Groans all around. “I don’t give a fuck if you don’t care if you get radiation poisoning because you are going to blow your entire paycheck on ratchet pussy and cheap whiskey. I don’t give a shit if you don’t plan on living past 40 anyway. The fact is that’s a nuclear wasteland. We’ve had guys who decided if they couldn’t see it, then it couldn’t hurt ‘em and then they come back and two days later they’re shitting their brains out and docs have to pump ‘em full of whatever my ex-wife’s new husband is feeding my kid at night when he has the runs.” Laughs all around. Everyone loves a good self-deprecating joke. “If you aren’t operational you are no used to me. If I can’t use you, I am not paying you. And that also means you are getting replaced, got it? What happens here is not for the faint of heart. If you live through this ordeal, you will be very rich, and if you have half a god damn brain, you will move very far away from here. This is real black ops shit gentlemen. You won’t see shit while you are here. Do you understand? You are fucking blind men. You are Stevie fucking Wonder. No, Stevie plays piano. You are Helen Keller without the love of learning. There is no braille here. You can’t see. You can’t hear. All you can do is kill anyone who causes us a problem. Understood?”

One of the new recruits raised his hand. “Yes, question from the guy who thinks this is Mrs. Grady’s second grade class in elementary school. Put your fucking hand down and talk.”

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“What about The Ghost?” he said.

“Jesus fucking Christ with the god damn ghost stories again you miserable fucks? No, there is no Ghost. There’s about as much truth to that story as there is to the one about Hernandez having a 6” dick.”

Hernandez spoke up. “It’s true Papi, it hasn’t hung that high since I was in 7th grade.” Laughter all around now. “And don’t worry young one, if you get scared you come talk to Hernandez.” He blew kisses to one of the new recruits.

Schuyler chimed in, “Hey recruit, don’t be the last guy out of the showers or you’ll find out why they call Hernandez the Dominican Cottonmouth. It’s brown, it’s 14” long and it just gets wider at the head.” Larger bellows of laughter now, Hernandez chief amongst them. Grady laughed too. It was good to lighten morale. The fact of the matter was he didn’t care how many of the recruits unwittingly ended up exploring their sexuality with Hernandez. He was a damn fine soldier and as long it didn’t affect the mission, it hardly mattered who was fucking who.

“Now, this mission is slightly different than the last. We have a new payload. If the payload doesn’t reach the target, we turn around. If the payload is incapacitated, we turn around. If the payload dies while the mission is in operation we all go home. If the payload does not complete his mission we do not get paid gentlemen. Do you all understand that? Goal 1A is to complete the mission. Goal 1B is to come home alive and everything after that hardly matters. Are we all in the clear?” There was a loud cheer of affirmatives from Hoo-rah Marine Corp bullshit to the simple “ya” that was needed.

“Grady, what’s the payload?” Schuyler asked

“Gentlemen, I want to be very clear. The payload is someone you have all probably heard of and someone many of you may not like. I don’t care about your feelings. I don’t care about your likes and dislikes. If you want to share opinions go log onto the internet. There is an extremely good reason for doing what we are doing and that reason is because I am paying you to do it. If you don’t like that reason, you are welcome to leave, you will not be invited back. Brunsen, get over here.” Grady motioned to Brunsen.

Grady wasn’t too excited about working with the Brunsen guy. It was one thing to be driving around KC but it was another to be seen with this piece of shit. What a goon. Killing people was fine. That’s war. That’s life. This guy killed women and children though. Respect for taking out a helo with an RPG but fuck, like 500 dead from the building fires? Putting a bullet in him was going to be more than he deserved.

The team wasn’t impressed. Grady heard the sort of grunting that killed missions, that ruined teams. Time to put a stop to that.

“Yes, he’s that John Brunsen. Yes, he’s a piece of shit. Yes, I hate his guts too. All of this fucking crybaby whining stops immediately. This isn’t a fucking Consumer Reports survey and no one is paying you for your opinions here.”

It didn’t stop them, and Harrison was the first to complain. Not a huge surprise. Grady knew the story already. “Yo Grady, I got family in Atlanta man. This motherfucker got my cousin killed. I ought to slice this bitch up right here.”

Grady pulled the knife from his belt loop and threw it into the floor in front of Brunsen. “I want to make one thing clear. If anyone hurts this man without my permission, you go through me next. We cannot make money with a dead terrorist. This terrorist stays alive until I say otherwise. Is that clear Harrison?”

John Brunsen was unmoved by any of the conversation, remaining more or less motionless with an empty stare. Harrison looked sternly and nodded. “What the fuck is his problem anyway. Yo are you retarded or some shit man. How come you don’t talk?”

“Hey, don’t use that word man, my little sister has Down Syndrome. The term is mentally handicapped dick.” Schuyler said.

Harrison got nose to nose with Schuyler almost immediately. “You defending this motherfucker? Really?”

Grady was already halfway over to them when Hernandez and Johnson pulled them apart. “Schuyler, quit being a whiny fucking pussy. Harrison don’t be a bigot. And everyone pull your fucking shit together.”

Grady sighed. “The black death shit ate up his brain or something. One of the scientists explained it to me. His medulla oblongata is fucked up or something. He can’t think. He just does what you tell him to do. He won’t be a problem.”

Schuyler asked, “Is that why he did all that fucked up shit? Are they fixing him or something?”

Grady said, “Don’t know. Didn’t ask. Seems like whatever that black death shit is, he can touch it. OH! That brings me to an extremely important point that I missed earlier. If any of you touch that black death shit you stay outside. Forever. You understand? You bring that shit in one of my Hummers and you’re done. You don’t touch it. You don’t get near it. You stay the fuck away from it. He is the only one that touches any of it. Everyone understand? That shit is more deadly than barebacking Bangkok whores with an open sore on your cock, trust me, I’d know.”

Grady paused and took measure of the company. “You boys ready?”

Affirmatives all around.

“Good cause we’re goin’. Mount the fuck up boys. One more ride and we go home rich. Brunsen you ready for this? You hear everything I said?”

No response.

“Hey dipshit, Brunsen. God dammit. Brunsen if you heard what I said and are ready to go I want you to tell me yes.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus fuck. This fucking asshole…” Grady sighed before he hopped in the driver seat of the lead hummer. “Brunsen in the deuce and a half in the back. NO! Not that one, the big one. The fucking big one. Do you know the word big? Point to the big truck. Very good. Now get in the big truck. Jesus fucking Christ on the cross this fucking guy.”

Grady and his team rolled out into the desolation of a former metropolitan area.