One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [109]
“Whoa. I’m the one paying for this. If I want information, you’ll give it to me. I’m not going to throw money at you just to have you blow it without oversight. Do you have that?”
“Yeah. I got it. Fuck this. I quit.”
“What? You can’t quit. You owe me.”
Lucas snarled, “I owe you nothing. You push that button one more time and you’re going to see firsthand what I owe you. Understand? I don’t want to hear that ever again.”
Lucas waited a few seconds, hearing nothing but breathing.
“Call me when you have something.”
“Fine.”
Lucas was sick of hearing what he owed Standish. Fucking politician . A weasel like every other politician. No honor. No belief in something greater than himself. Just whatever favor could be gleaned based on which way the wind was blowing. Yeah, Standish had possibly helped him out, but the truth of the matter was there wasn’t any proof that he had done anything wrong. The only people who could prove he had killed civilians were dead in an IED attack. He’d eventually have gotten off anyway.
He regretted having killed his teammates, but they had lost their way. It was war, Goddammit. He had killed the civilians to get information on terrorist attacks. It had worked. The team broke up a terrorist cell that had murdered at least thirty Americans and would have murdered thirty more. He didn’t understand why his teammates had chosen to turn him in, but he couldn’t let it stand. He had done the right thing. Two noncombatants for thirty Americans. How could that not be seen as a good thing?
He had been working the civilian side of the defense industry for over a year now, and was beginning to hate it. Everything was about the almighty dollar. Nothing was about a cause, a goal greater than the individual. It disgusted him, and he wanted out. Even his actions in Afghanistan, while others might not understand them, were for something larger than money. At the least, it saved American lives, even counting the two who had died at his hand. The sacrifice was for a larger effort. Now his work did nothing but cause money to exchange hands.
It wasn’t that he disliked the work. Truth be told, he’d never minded killing, any more than the average big game hunter. He didn’t draw any particular pleasure from the act itself but did enjoy the hunt. Now, though, the purpose was gone.
Since he had started contracting out, most of his employment had been nothing more than gleaning sleazy information for Standish, the greatest “success” coming when he found a political rival with a young boy. It disgusted him. He’d done only one violent act since leaving the Navy, on behalf of a foreign corporation looking to gain an inside advantage on a classified defense contract. Their only competition was a small outfit at Fort Bragg, something the foreign entity should have been able to outbid. The problem was that the competition was U.S. based, and thus the foreign company was convinced they were going to lose. Lucas had smoked the CEO of the U.S. contractor, securing a foreign win. The money had been extremely lucrative. Worth the woman and child he’d been forced to kill as well. The money Standish was throwing around was even better. Enough to quit this shit forever. He looked at this target as a blessing. The fact that two people would die caused him no angst at all. It was just work.
Lucas returned to the problem at hand. He had a pretty good background on both of his targets now and began to build a plan of attack. He would need his best folks for this one, as he was fairly sure a mistake against Pike had the potential to be catastrophic. He ran through his Rolodex of employees—all of whom worked for him on a contract basis—picking ten that fit the bill. He purposely left out the two who had worked with him