J Ward: Crave

“Matthias… oh, fucking A…”

The man’s lower leg looked like a root that had been torn up out of the ground, the limb nothing but a ragged stump that was shredded at the end. And there were patches of darkness on his fatigues that had to be blood.

Jim checked the pulse at the neck. There was one, but it was faint and uneven.

Unbuckling and shucking his belt, he cranked the leather around Matthias’s upper calf and pulled hard, torniqueting the limb. Then he quickly searched for other inj-

Shit. When Matthias had been tossed back, he’d fallen onto a wooden spike. The damn thing went right through him, the toothpick to his pig in a blanket.

Jim pretzeled up and tried to see whether it could stay in place to get Matthias out of here…

It appeared to be freestanding. Good.

“… Dan… ny… boy…”

Jim frowned and looked at his boss. “What?”

Matthias’s eyes opened like his lids were steel shutters he could barely raise. “Leave… me.”

“You’re blown to shit-”

“Leave me-”

“Fuck that.” Jim reached for his transistor and prayed that Isaac, not that freak second in command, answered. “Come on… come on…”

“What y’all needin’?” The soft Southern drawl coming over his earpiece was good news.

Thank God for Isaac. “Matthias is down. Bomb. Make sure we’re not target practice as we come into camp.”

“How bad?”

“Bad.”

“Where y’all at? I’ll get a Land Rover and pick you up.”

“We’re forty-six degrees n-”

The gun went off across the way, a bullet slicing through the air right next to Jim’s ear-to the point where he assumed he’d been hit in the head and the pain had yet to register. As he braced himself on one palm, Matthias let his SIG fall to the side… but what do you know, Jim did not fall over thanks to some kind of cranial wound. Warning shot, evidently.

His boss’s one working eye shone with unholy light. “Get yourself… out… alive.”

Before Jim could tell Matthias to shut the fuck up, he became aware that something was biting into the hand he’d put out. Lifting the thing up, he found… part of the bomb’s detonator.

Turning it over and over, at first he didn’t understand what he was looking at.

And then he knew all too well what it was.

Narrowing his eyes on Matthias, he put the fragment in his front pocket and crawled over to his boss.

“You’re not playing me like this,” Jim said grimly. “No fucking way.”

Matthias started to babble just as squawking curses came through the earpiece.

“I’m okay,” Jim said to Isaac. “Misfire. I’m starting back for camp. Make sure we’re not shot as we approach.”

The Southerner’s voice became instantly strong and steady, just like the guy’s killing hand. “Where you at. I’ll just get a-”

“No. Stay put. Find a medic on the QT and make sure they can keep their mouth shut. And we’re going to need a chopper. He’s going to have to be airlifted-discreetly. No one can know about this.”

The last thing he needed was Isaac out in the middle of the night looking for them. The guy was the only thing standing between Jim and an accusation that he’d murdered the head of the deadliest shadow organization in the U.S. government.

He’d never live that one down. Literally.

But at least the hush-hush was not going to be a news-flash. Keeping quiet about shit was the MO in XOps-no one knew exactly how many operatives there were or where they went or what they did or whether they went by their own name or an alias.

“Do you hear me, Isaac,” he demanded. “Get me what I need. Or he’s a dead man.”

“Roger that,” came the reply over the earpiece. “Over and out.”

After confiscating the gun that had been put to use, Jim picked up his boss, settled the dead, dripping weight on his shoulders, and started hoofing it.

Out of the stone shack. Out into the blustering, frigid night. Across the sand dunes.

His compass kept him on the right track, true north orientating him and leading him on through the darkness. Without the point of reference, he would have been utterly lost as the desert was a mirrored landscape, nothing but a reflection of itself in all directions.

Fucking Matthias.

God damn him.

Then again, assuming the guy lived, he’d just given Jim his ticket out of XOps… so in a way, he owed the guy his life: The bomb was one of their own and Matthias had known precisely where to put his foot in the sand. And that only happened if you wanted to blow your damned self up.

Guess Jim wasn’t the only one who wanted to be free.

Surprise, surprise.

South Boston, present day

“Hey! Wait a-Save that shit for the ring!” Isaac Rothe shoved the advertising flyer across the car hood, ready to slam the damn thing down again if he had to. “What’s my picture doing on this?”

The fight promoter seemed more interested in the damage to his Mustang, so Isaac reached out and grabbed the guy by the front of the jacket. “I said, what’s my face doing on here?”

“Relax, will ya-”

Isaac brought the two of them close as sandwich bread and got a whiff of the pot the SOB smoked. “I told you. No pictures of me. Ever.”

The promoter’s hands lifted in the conversational equiv of a tap-out. “I’m sorry… I’m really… Look, you’re my best fighter-you get me the crowds. You’re like the star of my-”

Isaac curled his fist tighter to cut off the ego stroking. “No pictures. Or no fighting. We clear?”

The promoter swallowed hard and squeaked, “Yeah. Sorry.”

Isaac released his hold and ignored the wheezing as he crumpled the image of his face into a litter ball. Looking around the abandoned warehouse’s parking lot, he cursed himself. Stupid. Fucking stupid of him to have trusted the smarmy bastard.

The thing was, names were not all that important. Anybody could type up a Tom, Dick, or Harry on an ID card or a birth certificate or a passport. All you needed was the right typeface and a laminating machine that could do holograms. But your mug shot, your face, your puss, your piehole… unless you had the funds and the contacts to plastic-surgery your ass, that was the one true identifier you had.

And his had just gotten a workout at Kinko’s. God only knew how many people had seen it.

Or who had zeroed in on his whereabouts.

“Look, I was just doing you a favor.” The promoter smiled, flashing a gold grille. “The bigger the crowd, the more money you make-”

Isaac shoved his forefinger up the guy’s stovepipe. “You need to shut the fuck up right now. And remember what I said.”

“Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

There were a number of all-rights, no-problems, and anything-you-likes that followed, but Isaac turned his back on the babble, babble.

All around, grown men were getting out of cars and shoving at each other like fifteen-year-olds, the bunch of juiced-up, armchair quarterbacks ready to peanut-gallery it up: The closest they were going to get to the octagon was standing on the outside of the chicken wire looking in.

The fact that Isaac was almost done with this underground MMA moneymaker was irrelevant. The people who were looking for him didn’t need any help, and that happy little close-up along with the telephone number in the 617 area code was precisely the exposure he didn’t need.

Last thing he needed was an operative or… God forbid, Matthias’s second in command… showing up here.

Besides, it was just too fucking dumb of the promoter. Unregulated bare-knuckle fighting coupled with illegal gambling was not something you advertised, and anyway, given the size of the crowds that showed up, the audience clearly had enough mouth.