“It could be dangerous,” I said, for about the tenth time as Bract and I sat in the truck, going over the plan.

“You say that already. What is this?” Bract was holding up the GPS tracking coin.

“It’ll allow you to be tracked by satellite. You just have to put it somewhere you know will be safe. Where they won’t find it.”

“Inside of the sock?”

“Sure that should be good. And I’ll be wearing this earpiece.” I indicated the tiny bud as I inserted it into my left ear. “I’ll be able to hear Oak and when I speak, she’ll be able to hear me. I also have this cameral attached to my jacket here. That way Oak can record what’s happening around us.”

Bract nodded. Then he picked up a cherry bomb.

“And those are fireworks. They’ll explode a few seconds after you light this end. If we need to make a quick getaway, this will be a useful tool.”

I handed him a couple and a lighter. He placed them into an inner pocket of the jacket he was wearing.

“You have a knife right?” Oak asked. She was at the wheel, ready to drop us off outside of Gransu. The sun was dipping now and we were almost ready to go.

“Yes.”

“So does Senel, and he’s also got his gun. I think that’s it. We’ll be tailing you to wherever they take you. The GPS trackers should work anywhere above ground. If anything turns bad, we’ve got four officers on standby to assist.”

“Ok,” I said, clapping her on the shoulder.

“Meryl will be monitoring the footage from the office, but he won’t be able to hear what I’m hearing. Likewise, I won’t be able to see what he’s seeing. Try to get some good camera angles if you can. Good luck, be safe out there,” Oak said, patting my hand. “Both of you.”

We exited the vehicle and headed towards the camp. We were both garbed in heavy jackets this time, both for protection against the cold and concealment of our equipment. Before we made it all the way to the trees, I stopped.

“Bract, hold on.” I pulled something else from inside my jacket and handed it to him. He took it and stared at it for a moment.

“Pocket pistol. You know how to use it?”

He nodded slowly and carefully tucked the gun away. “I thought you cannot give me a gun?”

I shrugged. “This is my personal weapon, not registered with the department. I want you to use it if anything goes bad.”

It was mostly insurance against my guilty conscience, in reality. I couldn’t do this without Bract, but bringing an innocent civilian into the line of fire was not a habit I wanted to make. If I was going to put him into the line of fire, I was going to make damned sure he had more than a knife and cherry bombs to defend himself with.

We got to the meet up spot to find it deserted. As ordered, we pulled two black bandanas up over our faces while we waited. This had the added bonus of covering my ear and my earpiece. I switched on the little dial so the earpiece was active.

“Oak, copy?”

“Loud and clear Senel,” Oak’s tone came in over the radio frequency.

“We’re waiting. They said they’d pick us up around sunset. Ok, a truck is pulling up now. This is it.”

A white truck with the same HIB Pharma emblem on the side had just pulled up. Inside were three men this time. One of them stepped out and I recognized Pistol Guy. He approached us, his face covered as before and his eyes were dark and cold.

“Senny and friend. Ready to work? We have a little drive first. Hop in.” He indicated the back of the truck and we both climbed in obediently.

“Oh and before we start, I’ve got a little something for you both. As a reward from your employer.”

He was holding out a small bottle of clear liquid. He pulled out two shot glasses, his eyes narrowing in what I could only describe as amusement. “Have a drink.”

I felt my hands immediately begin to sweat. Drinking some unknown liquid from a drug dealer was not an appealing prospect.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to sound curious rather than apprehensive.

“This is the good stuff my friend. You’ll love it.”

I glanced at Bract, who was looking extremely uneasy.

“Is vodka?” he asked.

“Is good. Here you go.”

He handed us both a shot. I didn’t see any way out of this without an outright refusal. I tipped the glass to my lips slowly so that I could smell before I tasted. It didn’t smell much like alcohol. There was something sweat about the aroma, but other than that, I had no idea what it was. I tipped it back, deliberately spilling as much of the stuff as possible so as not to take the full amount. It hardly tasted like anything. Beside me, Bract had followed suit. Pistol Guy beamed at us and clapped.

“Very good. You say it too. Very good drink.”

I had been struggling to hold the liquid in my mouth, hoping for a chance to spit it out, but I could tell Pistol Guy would only be satisfied when he had both spoken, thus forcing us to swallow.

“Very good drink,” we both mumbled. I felt the liquid slide down my throat and grimaced.

Pistol Guy nodded. “Ok, you take a nice restful break before we work, yes? Stay laid down in the truck, ok? Enjoy the ride.”

And with that we were off. The moment we started to move, I said, “Oak, come in.”

“What the hell just happened?” Oak said and I could hear the concern in her voice.

“Our new employer just made us drink something. No idea what it was. Probably a drug of some sort.”

I couldn’t feel any effect yet, but I feared the worst.

“Shit, that’s not good. Should we intercept?”

“Not yet,” I said, glancing at Bract who was laying face up beside me. “I’ll keep you updated.”

“Roger that.”

“You ok?” I asked Bract after a few minutes of bumping along.

He nodded. For some reason the gesture looked sluggish. All at once I felt a wave of tiredness come over me.

“It’s some sort of sedative, I think,” I mumbled to Oak. “I’m feeling like passing out.”

But no sooner had I said it than a dizziness accosted me. I felt like I was floating, and not in a particularly pleasant way. “It’s got some sort of psychedelic property to it too. A dissociative,” I relayed, feeling my tongue heavy in my mouth.

I heard Oak swear from what felt like a ways off. “What should we do?”

“Just hang on. You’re…tracking us right?”

“We’ve got you.”

“Ok, I’m going to take a nap. Maybe I can sleep it off.”

There were some other words in my ear, but I had stopped listening to them. My whole body ached with a slippery sleepy swirling sensation. For what felt like the better part of a day, but was probably only a few hours, I oscillated between brief bouts of wakeful consciousness and a bizarre waking dream in which thoughts all the way from my earliest childhood memories to the food I had eaten a few days ago flowed through my brain like a river, each one too brief to focus on or recall clearly afterwards. During the spells where I became aware of my current state, I noted only vague details. The sky was darkening almost to black now. I could see the first stars emerging overhead. The air was becoming cooler and oddly humid. It felt familiar and comforting somehow.

I felt something move beside me. I reached out and felt the arm of Bract. He was obviously in a similar state to me and his arm tensed upon contact.

“Are you ok?” I managed to ask.

“I think so. I am like in dreaming,” he said, his tone mystified.

I held onto his arm from thereon, as a sort of anchor to my only companion in this odd business. It wasn’t long after when the truck lurched to a halt. It was fully dark now, the stars bright overhead. I felt a little more myself, although there were clearly some hallucinogenic properties still in effect, as lights looked particularly bright and what colors I could see in our dim surrounding were particularly vibrant.

I heard and felt truck doors opening and closing. “Oak?” I asked, suddenly recalling the earpiece. “Where are we?”

“Senel, there you are! What the hell man, I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for the past two hours!”

“Sorry,” I said vaguely, lowering my voice as shadowy figures began to move about our vicinity. “Do you have us?”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“We’re approaching your location. Looks like you’re on the coast somewhere. I’m looking at the map right now.”

I stared around, suddenly catching the tang of brine on the air. At the same time, the salty edge mixed with something even more fragrant. A shot of adrenaline injected into my system, clearing my muddled mind. That was the smell of cypress, a relic of my distant past. And if I was smelling that, there were only a few places I could possibly be.

“Cordel,” I said.

“Yeah, how did you know?” Oak said. “Anyways, we’re twenty minutes from your location. We’re going to approach to within a block and hold position. We’re ready to come in if you need support. Just say the word.”

“Ok.”

Bract and I crouched in the back of the truck until Pistol Guy banged on the side. “Let’s go, time to work.”

We exited clumsily, the drug still in our systems.

“Where are we?” Bract asked, gazing around. We were in what appeared to be an empty sand parking lot not far from a line of buildings. Gnarled and twisted cypress trees surrounded the area, ghostly in the bright starlight.

“The coast,” I had time to say before Pistol Guy clapped his hands and waved us to follow him and his mates.

We walked for a few minutes until we found what appeared to be the edge of a cliffside. It overlooked the ocean, where the breakers were cresting white far out and a gentle surf was rhythmically pushing itself over the pale sand. It would have almost been a pleasant sight, had we not been risking our lives.

“Down there,” Pistol Guy said, pointing at what appeared to be a small ship bobbing out beyond the waves.

I swallowed. What the hell were we getting ourselves into? Pistol Guy shoved us down the embankment, which turned out to be more a sandy hill than a cliff. By the time we were down to shore level, a group of men could be seen amassed by a small pier, standing next to what appeared to be a dinghy. There were four of them and they greeted Pistol Guy with a few handshakes. My stomach plummeted when I saw that two of them were shouldering automatic weapons. Those were military grade machine guns.

“Let’s go,” Pistol Guy said and everyone boarded the dinghy. While everyone else took seats, Bract and I were shoved up into the bow of the boat and made to crouch down as the engine sputtered to life and we moved forwards through the waves. A particularly large one came up and we crashed through it, wending a wave of cold water across myself and Bract. I held up a hand over my ear to keep the earbud as dry as possible, sincerely hoping as I did so that our GPS trackers were waterproof.

“Senel, where are you?” Oak’s voice came through. “What’s all that noise?”

“We’re on a boat,” I managed to say under cover of the motor noise.

“What? What do you mean you’re on a boat? We can’t cover you if you’re on the water. You need to abort right now.”

“I don’t think that’s an option,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at Pistol Guy and the rest. We were heavily outnumbered and outgunned. And besides, the only way to abort currently was to jump into the sea.

“But Senel-” I cut her off.

“We’ll be ok Oak, I’ll update you soon.”

We arrived at the larger ship a few minutes later and we anchored to it and climbed a few metal rungs up to the deck. There, several more men, all armed similarly, awaited us.

“You two sit here, don’t move,” Pistol Guy instructed us, leading us to a bench.

We sat while Pistol Guy and the others went below deck to chat. A couple of guys with guns wandered around, making any thought of escape impossible.

“What are we doing here?” Bract muttered to me.

“Not sure.”

I tried to make out any sound of what Pistol Guy and the others were discussing, but they were too far away to be heard clearly. I tried to make sense of my surroundings, but the damn drug was still distorting my vision, making it difficult to keep details straight. The two guys remaining on deck kept glancing our way. One of them said something to the other at one point and they laughed. Bract stiffened beside me.

“That is Kivich speech,” he informed me quietly. I frowned, trying to concentrate. What on earth were Kivich men doing here? Maybe the drug runners had hired expat Kivich soldiers as muscle.

“Can you understand it?” I asked.

“Only some. He say we look weaker than the last ones.”

I forced my brain through the drug fog to assess this statement. That made it sound like this was a regular affair, whatever job we were doing. I tried to keep the button that was actually a camera free so that we might have some clear footage of the scene to view later.

But them Pistol Guy returned. He seemed to be pleased about something, as did his companions.

“Ok, time to get this show on the road,” he said, clapping his hands. “Would you be so kind as to show our guests to the cargo hold?”

The armed men marched us down a set of stairs below deck to where apparently there was a cargo hold. As we moved, I tried to make out any details of the area. I saw what looked like an office room opposite where the hold was. The door was cracked and I thought I saw two men sitting inside. I managed to pause, hoping the camera was getting a shot of them. But a moment later, one of the men pulled the door of the room shut.

“Here,” one of the armed men said, gesturing towards a pile of what appeared to be burlap sacks. “You carry.”

His voice, muffled from his mask, was similar to that of Rifle Guy’s accent from the previous evening. Bract and I glanced at each other before we moved in and each hauled up a sack. They were bulky and reasonably heavy, maybe fifty pounds each. We hefted the sacks over our backs and clambered back up the stairs. I felt less coordinated that usual due to the drug and I struggled to stay upright as we made our way through the tight squeeze. Once back on deck, we made our way over to the dinghy. Pistol Guy’s crew had gone back down the rungs and awaited the loads. We handed them down and then turned to retrieve more. In total, there were about thirty bags of whatever the merchandise was. I collapsed back on the bench after we finished moving the last ones, waiting for Pistol Guy’s men to secure the load on the dinghy.

“Water?” I asked one of the passing guards. My throat felt parched after all that work.

He sniffed and instead of handing me a bottle, he spat at my feet.

“Ok, I guess no water,” I grumbled, wiping sweat off my brow.

“Ok boys, time to head back,” Pistol Guy called to us a few moments later and we headed back into the dinghy, this time with Pistol Guy and his two cronies, and just one of the armed men and us two jammed in the front. I didn’t feel too confident in the dinghy’s ability to fight through the waves, weighed down as it was, and I braced myself against the side of the boat frequently as we hit the surf. But somehow we made it. Once to shore, we unloaded the boat and the armed man drove it back, leaving just the five of us behind.

“Ok, up the hill we go,” Pistol Guy said, indicating the sacks to us and them pointing up at the top of the hill where the truck was parked.

I groaned inwardly, already feeling tired and sore from the first cargo moving. Bract and I each grabbed a sack and began to march up the sand. It was slow going, like slogging through honey. The chill sea air whipped around us. A layer of fog was starting to come in, creating a dampness over my skin that my sweat soon mingled with. Pistol Guy’s men followed us up the hill, then waited by the truck to load the burlap in and secure it. They didn’t follow us back down, so just we two returned to where Pistol Guy was speaking on a cell phone by the burlap. He waved at the bags, indicating we should continue. We each hefted another sack.

“What do you think is in here?” I asked Bract as we started up again.

The cargo felt lumpy and hard, almost like wood blocks, but different somehow. It had a faint smell about it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, almost like a spice used in baking.

“I don’t know,” Bract said. “It smells strange.”

I wanted to find out what was in the sacks, but they were sown up tight and the burlap didn’t appear to have any holes. As we lugged yet more loads up the hill, I cast around for something sharp to puncture the bags, but all around was only sand and smooth stones. However, at the top of the hill, there was one jagged old cypress tree. It wasn’t particularly sharp, but I just needed it to seem believable. On the next sack, I feigned staggering at the top of the hill, leaned over and crashed backwards against the cypress tree. At the same time, I palmed my knife and cut a shallow hole into the side of the burlap. Rapidly, as the two cronies shouted at me and started forwards, I pushed my fingers into the hole, searching, and pulled out something rough and woody about the size of my fist. This I quickly pocketed, along with my knife, pretending that I had fallen out of exhaustion and thirst, which wasn’t far from the truth. My body was fatigued and my throat felt like sandpaper.

“Idiot,” a voice said over me. I recognized it as Rifle Guy’s voice just as a booted foot flew into my side, connecting with my gut and causing me to grunt in pain. Rifle Guy clearly was getting out some of his anger for the way I had flattened him last night in our little dual.

“Get up scum! Get up!”

I struggled to my feet before the next blow could come. Rifle guy examined the bag and cursed for a while, then took the bag from me and sent me back down the hill for the next. Pistol guy was waiting by the pile when I got there.

“Getting tired now Senny? I thought you were a fighter.” He prodded me towards the pile of burlap. I resisted the urge to tackle him, give him several good punches and then rip his mask of his face.

We hauled sack after sack up the hill. I typically considered myself pretty fit, I kept in shape, but this was a new level of workout that I hadn’t been prepared for. By the time we were at the final few bags, I was feeling exhausted and my body was aching. But at the same time, I felt adrenaline gearing up. We were currently performing a service for these men, at the end of which, we awaited an unknown fate. I hardly thought they would shoot and kill us, but if we had to drink more of whatever Pistol Guy had given us earlier, I didn’t know if I could take it. And it hadn’t escaped my notice that the back of the truck was now full of burlap, leaving no room for us to ride back to Gransu. Whatever was about to happen, we needed to be one step ahead.

“Listen,” I said to Bract as we hauled our second to last sacks up the sandy hill. “I think we should run after we finish the last ones. I don’t think they’re going to pay us, much less give us a truck.”

Bract nodded to me. “Ok.”

“Oak, we’re going to make a run for it when we bring up the last sacks. If we can make a clean break, that would be best. But we may need some help.”

“Copy that. We’ll get eyes on you two. We’re ready to cover you. We won’t shoot unless we have to.”

“I think we can distract them long enough to get away. On my signal.”

“What’s your signal?” Oak said.

“You’ll know.”

We deposited those sacks and headed back down for our last. Pistol guy followed us up this time, his hand resting near his hip, where I was sure his gun was concealed but accessible. As we handed the last two bags over, Rifle Guy and the other man lifted them into the truck to secure them and strap them down. Pistol guy walked around the examine the load. It was at that point that I grasped the two items I would next need. Surreptitiously, while our three employers were distracted, I flicked on the lighter, lit the fuse of a cherry bomb and then tossed it towards the edge of the sandy hill.

“Good, good,” Pistol Guy said coming back around the side of the truck. “And now, my friends, for your payment.”

He reached downwards to what might have been his gun or anything else in the world but at that moment, the cherry bomb exploded on the side of the hill. All three men whirled around, drawing weapons and at the same time Bract and I shot off towards cover.

“The trees,” I said, veering into them rather than the buildings, which were further away. We made it through several trees as shouts erupted behind us. But the men didn’t shoot. It appeared they didn’t want to cause a lot of commotion and raise awareness of their activity.

Stealthily we moved through the trees. It was just bright enough with only the starlight to make our way, but not bright enough to easily be followed. I heard the sound of the truck’s engine roar to life.

“Down,” I said, pulling Bract to the ground just as bright headlights lit up the area.

I gazed back uselessly into the light, trying to determine where the guys were.

“Oak,” I muttered. “We’re in a grove of trees by the parking lot. Where are the sheriff’s guys?”

“I saw you run in, but I can’t see you now. They’re two blocks back.”

“Tell them to drive away about half a mile, then throw their sirens on and drive this way slowly like they got a call about noise from a resident.”

“Copy.”

We stayed low, my heart beating in my throat.

“Do we run?” Bract asked me.

“Negative. Let’s wait.”

“Oh Senny,” a voice called suddenly through the trees. Pistol Guy was moving around somewhere in front of us. “Don’t you want your reward? Come out now.”

I breathed in the damp salty air and attempted to stay as still as possible. I could hear a crunching sound approaching, which meant at least one of the guys was drawing near. Carefully I reached back and pulled my glock.

Abruptly, the sound of a siren came through the night, just audible over the engine’s idling. I heard one of them curse. There was the sound of running feet, car doors opening and slamming, and then the truck peeled around and shot out of the parking lot.

I let the air out of my lungs and felt my body unclench. Beside me, Bract too let out a huff.

“Senel, we just watched a truck drive away. What is your status?”

“I think we’re clear. Come pick us up, will you?”