Chapter 1

- Daniel-

It was a little overcast and hazy as I entered the mouth of Tampa Bay and I could barely see the crystalline fingers of the buildings of downtown Tampa. There were a few breaks in the clouds so when the afternoon sun did break through it flashed off their plastisteel exteriors reminding me of an old style lighthouse welcoming a tired sailor home from the sea.

Not that I could claim I was a sailor of yesteryear returning from a voyage to some exotic, distant land. No circumnavigation of the globe in search of spice for the fat homeland factors or silks for the pretty ladies waiting patiently for their intrepid wanderer to return bringing wonders and tales from the mythical orient or darkest Africa. No, it was more like petulant little boy slinking home after running away from his grownup duties like a forty-four-year old Peter Pan. Or maybe more like a pouting teenager hiding in his room wallowing in self-pity with a broken heart after the head cheerleader dumped him for the star jock.

Both were equally true and not a particularly pleasant self-portrait if I do say so myself. However I had to admit I did feel one hell of a lot better than I did when I'd left two months earlier.

What was I running away from you ask? Well, Cynthia Delmar for one. You never heard of Cynthia Delmar? I'm not surprised, but I'll bet my last New Dollar you've heard of her daughter, Antigua Delmar. That's right, the Antigua Delmar. Singer, vid artist and the present teen icon and idol of just about every thirteen to seventeen year old girl in the known world and the masturbatory fantasy of every teenage boy who's ever seen her. Come to think about it she probably features in the fantasies of quite a few older males, maybe some getting close to their mid-forties.

She's a cute kid; there is no doubt about it. Tiny, slim with golden hair and piercing blue eyes; she looks about sixteen but is really close to twenty-two. Oh, that's right she is twenty-two now. I sort of remember sending her a birthday message when Sara reminded me of it. I say sort of because at the time I had about three-quarters of a liter of cheap rum under my belt and was feeling no pain. I hope I didn't embarrass myself too badly with it but to tell the truth I'd done that so may times during my little midlife rumspringa one more time probably didn't matter.

Anyway, you know who I'm talking about. If you don't then turn on your vid and wait a few minutes; I'm sure she'll pop up in something. Back to Cynthia and why some big strong he-man, a war vet feared, hated, loved and revered throughout South and Central America, in about equal parts I should add, was running like a scared dog with his tail between his legs and just now slinking back home. Good question, but to understand why, you have to understand just who Cynthia Delmar is.

As I said before Cynthia is Antigua's mother. She is also her business manager and a sharper mind in the music business I've never seen. Not that I know much about the music business but she is one smart lady. She is also one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Take Antigua, age her a few years, add legs you would be willing to die for and a pair of bright blue eyes that could keep any male mesmerized for hours.

We met when Antigua chartered my boat for a weekend schmooze-cruise for recording bigwigs to sell her upcoming comp (that's short for compilation; us old farts used to call them albums). I have to admit I was a goner from the second she stepped out of her limo. For some reason she took a liking to this battered old hunk and I spent the next couple of months as happy as I've been since my wife Kathy was killed in a terrorist attack almost six years ago. I can admit it now but I was head over heels in love and seriously considering the possibility that this one would be one I would be with for the rest of my life. I really think she felt the same way about me at the time. Unfortunately she had one small flaw that I hadn't been aware of.

Cynthia Delmar is fucked up in the head. I mean seriously fucked up and I don't mean the mass-murderer, killing spree with a knife and high heels type of fucked up. Actually, that I might have been able to tolerate. I've been called a mass-murderer and stone-cold killer before many times so I know how these little incidents can be blown way out of proportion. Nope. Her problem is she can't stay faithful to any one man for more than a few months if you put a gun to her head. She fell in and out of love faster than a teenaged girl changing outfits for the first date with a new guy. Oh sure, she'd love you with a passion hotter than a magnesium flare while she was with you but suddenly that would be gone like a switch had been thrown and the lights went out. She did it to me. Silly me. I thought everything was going great and ... Wham! The next thing I knew she was cuddled up against her next boy-toy mooning over him with those baby-blues.

That ain't the way I'm put together. Say what you want about me but when I commit to someone I stay faithful. I was off playing soldier for a lot of my seventeen-year marriage to Kathy but I never once strayed over the line and believe me the opportunities were there for the taking if I'd wanted. I'm sure as death and government incompetence that Kathy did the same for me. If she ever did stray thank god she was discreet enough I never found out about it. I don't know what I would have done if I'd have found out she was cheating ... probably just died.

The bottom line is I don't step out on my partner and I expect the same in return. Oh sure, over the past five years I've been know to play a little sheet music with a lady friend or two but with the understanding that's all it was, just a good old sweaty time together to clear the tubes and let off some pressure. Fuck-buddies is what they used to call it. I don't know what they call it now but it's all the same thing.

Cynthia and I weren't just fuck-buddies and as far as I'm concerned she is pure poison. Sure, she's still drop dead gorgeous but I'd rather take up juggling live grenades then even look at her. It's true she did offer to come back to me once. Even said she'd stay with me, like that would happen, but I didn't have to even think twice before I turned down that offer. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice and you can stamp the sucker mark on my forehead and kick me in the ass. I may not be the brightest bulb on the holiday tree but I'm not that stupid.

So like any heartbroken adolescent after we snatched Tinker Bell back I took off in a pout like a cat with a stick of demo tied to its tail. Childish yes, but to tell the truth I feel much better now so maybe it was necessary.

Who's Tinker Bell? Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. Tinker Bell is Antigua. The funny thing is even after being betrayed by her mother Tink and I still remained friends. Don't ask me why for some reason we just click together and I don't mean sexually. Sure she's cute as a Labrador puppy and sexy as hell in her own right but there's this twenty and some odd years age difference not to mention the fact our experiences set us farther apart than the opposites sides of the Grand Canyon.

She's the number one teen pop artist, vid star and celebrity icon of our day not to mention she's richer than God. Me? I'm just another broken-down war vet who spent ten years slogging through jungles killing and destroying most everything I could get my hands on. I'm not poor by any stretch of the imagination but I don't shit gold when I take a crap. Certainly not a friendship built on shared experience, that's for sure. Still, I do enjoy her company and she seems to do the same with me for some odd reason. Maybe it's the same fascination that keeps you coming back to the monkey house when you go to the zoo.

Anyway I called her Tinker Bell when I first met her because she looks dead on like the little fairy that was Peter Pan's friend. I didn't think about it at the time but seeing how she somehow integrated herself into my team, it fit pretty well. My team? That's the Lost Boys or the Muchaches Peridos as we were know in most of SA (South America.) We were originally a U.N. SpecFor team put together primarily for crime interdiction when it became obvious to the rest of the world that the SA and Central American countries had about the same ability to govern themselves as two-year olds in a playpen. Mostly we were supposed to stop the terrorists being sent out of Venezuela-Columbia by the super-red Chavezistas but there was also human trafficking, i.e., sex slaves and tobacco heading up to the U.S. That was a good deal; I could almost always pick up my smokes for free from the loose contraband lying around.

Yeah, I know the States banned all forms of tobacco years ago at the same time they legalized almost all other forms of recreational pharmaceuticals. So what? It's not like cancer is a problem anymore. Shit, take a little shot and no worries about that and even if it was, I got bigger things to worry about than a little uncontrolled cell division. Even if it were still a problem the chances of me dying from the Big C instead of, oh say, a bullet in the brain, are about the same chances of me winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Damned small. Although come to think about it the dead are rather peaceful so if you factored in body count ... Naah, the Muslims, Chinese and the French still got me beat. I'm just a piker compared to them.

Back to what I was originally talking about: my team and Tink. Anyway my little band of intrepid adventurers got to calling themselves the Lost Boys and it kind of stuck. We even had handles (code words identifying each one of us) like Nibs, Tootles, Cubby and such. For some reason I never got one of those tags but one of the first groups we went against started calling me LaMuerte, The Death, and that stuck also. Beats the shit out of being Peter Pan I guess.

Of course after the jihadists attacked the States and most of the civilized world and that crazy bastard Chavez decided he wanted to be king of the western hemisphere instead of just President-for-Life of Venezuela-Columbia they shifted our focus away from the petty criminals to the hordes coming out of SA trying to finish what fifty years of socially progressive U.S. administrations couldn't: destroy us, that is. I hear that in some rural parts of Venezuela the mere mention of the Muchaches Peridos can cause a grown man to piss his pants. Who says a man can't leave his mark on the world?

So anyhow, Tink got her cute little ass grabbed by a syndicate that was looking to expand into the North American market. Unfortunately for them the business venture they were product-testing was kidnapping and their first test subject was Antigua Delmar. Not the wisest choice as it turns out. Suffice it to say we got her back with almost no bloodshed, comparatively speaking that is, but that leads me to my second reason for running away. I know Natalie said it was to ponder the strategic possibilities but I'm trying to be honest here: I ran away.

There is just the tiniest possibility I might have inferred ― taken totally out of context of course ― during my discussions with this somewhat less than legitimate organization that the vets in the U.S. were a little more organized than they actually were. I suppose after reviewing the recording of that superlatively stupid but tactically effective operation I could see where they might have gotten that idea. Unfortunately, it just wasn't true. At that time the vets were about as organized as a 1990's rave party put on by a bunch of drunken college boys.

Doubly unfortunate for one ex-SpecFor captain. It was pointed out to me post-op that if our South of the Border buddies found out the sum total of our vet organization consisted of seven broken-down has-beens they'd be down on us like stink on a dog fart in a heartbeat. So if I or my people were going to survive and thereby continue our lives as public nuisances and burdens to society, someone was going to have to actually organize the vets, a prospect that quite frankly scared the shit out of me.

To begin with I had to ask myself if I really wanted to get involved in an effort with the ultimate aim of killing in an organized manner again. That's not as easy a question to answer as it might seem. Remember I'd spent ten years doing just that and let me tell you it ain't as clean and glorious as they make it out to be in the vids. In fact it's nasty, heartbreaking and soul-destroying at its best. Could I actually lead men and women back into situations where I know for a fact some of them are gong to die?

The next question was the vets themselves. If you know a real combat vet you understand what I mean. Sure most of us can survive in a civilian world, but to be honest it's mostly us just acting like we fit in and I agree we do a fair job of it. Most people don't even realize they have a bug-nuts psycho-killer sitting at the desk next to them and as long as they don't find out all is well with the world. Now I'm not going to say our war was any worse than anyone else's but there were times when the casualty rate in the front lines came about as close to 100 percent as you can get. I don't care if you're Superman, that kind of intense fighting is going to change you. Try doing that for ten years.

The result was as the armies drew down post-conflict they stripped the veneer of control, i.e. uniforms, rank, military discipline and chain of command, from these men and women leaving their training, knowledge, memories and paranoid delusions. My initial thought was these crazy fucking killing machines in civvies weren't going to take too kindly to someone trying to bring them back into the same kind of organization that did its best to kill them. My second thought was that the "someone" allowing them to focus their irritation on him would be me. Hence the need for brown pants.

Besides, organizing the vets would be like trying to herd cats. Cats with guns. Cats with guns who knew how to use them.

Now I know some the noble men and women of our past would seclude themselves behind closed doors to ponder the realities and ramifications of such weighty decisions, maybe surrounded by the works of great philosophers, religious leaders or ethical gurus. I could see them leaning on the combined works of these intellectual giants, wrestling with the balance of the good to be achieved as opposed to the evil that would surely be inadvertently released along with the angels.

I took a slightly different tack. I spent two months drinking myself stupid, fucking anything that gave me half a chance and generally doing my best to insure no actual thought stayed in my conscious mind long enough for me to recognize it.

The end result was the same and a foregone conclusion as anybody could have told me but my way was a hell of a lot more fun. Okay, I could have done without the hangovers that even D-tox could barely dent but given the choice between a monistic cell and looking up at the bottom of a barroom stool I can tell you which one I'd choose.

So now it was time to grow a pair, pull my big-boy pants up and get on with it.

There was only one lone figure standing on the pier waiting for me as I pulled into my home berth. I wasn't exceptionally surprised, I hadn't exactly broadcast my arrival time but given that she see knew exactly when I'd arrive I had to figure all of them did. Like I said, I wasn't surprised. I assumed she'd been talking to Sara my, our, AI over the net

"Hey, Mike," I called out. "How's it going?"

"Yo, Boss," she answered cocking her head. "You look like shit. Got the bitch out of your system I'm guessing?"

"You must be looking in a mirror," I grunted before grabbing her and giving her a tight hug. "Why yes, I'm very happy to be home; I missed you too. That's a lovely tan you have also, you get that in the County can?"

"Fucking Top left me there for a week," she said pushing me away and punching me on the arm. "He doesn't love me like you do."

"I always did spoil you; that's the problem," I sighed. "Any bodies we need to hide? What's the damage this time?"

"Boss," she said looking hurt. "It wasn't like that at all. There I was taking a short nap down by the bay and these two cops sneak up and slapped restraints on me before I could even wake up. Vagrancy is what they said. Can you believe that shit? Vagrant! Me?"

"Delinquent, yes; vagrant, no. Hmm, at least I don't have to pay off any hospital bills this time," I said stretching.

"None they know of or can prove anyway," she grinned. "So, you ready to roll?"

"Yeah, I guess I am," I sighed again. "Where is everybody anyway?"

"Here and there," she said noncommittally. "They'll meet us later at Bennie's."

"Aren't you even interested in what I've decided to do?" I asked.

"Don't matter to me, Boss," she said shrugging. "Besides, Natalie already told us what you were going to do. That's one scary bitch, Boss. She like says something is going to happen, it happens. She got some deal with the devil, you think?"

"We've all danced that dance once or twice." It was my turn to shrug. "I think she just sees things better than we do. She and Sam still together, I assume? Don't remember hearing anything different while I was gone but then some parts do seem to be a bit fuzzier than others."

"Couldn't get them apart with a crowbar," she answered shaking her head. "They'll be there at Bennie's."

"Better not let Sam hear you calling her a bitch then," I chuckled.

"I ain't afraid of that pussy," she snorted. Sam massed at least three times hers and could probably twist the barrel of her sniper rifle around her neck without breaking a sweat but for all that I had no doubt she didn't have one gram of fear in her whole body, not from Sam anyway. For one thing Sam would rather die than hurt Mike and for another she just might be able to take him. Not in a fair fight sure, but who was stupid enough to fight fair? Mike is as deadly as she is pretty and her idea of a fair fight was you on the ground and her still standing. Come to think about it that sounds like as reasonable a definition as there is.

"Well, unless you think you need a little nap after your vacation how about you getting you ass in gear, Boss," she called over her shoulder as she started walking down the pier. I jogged a bit to catch up. I needed to get out and do some real workouts; drinking and fucking for two solid months may be fun but it doesn't do much to keep the meat in fighting trim.

"So, who is Maria?" she asked playfully as I came up beside her.

"Christ! Didn't you have anything better to do than listen in on me?" I'd left the channel open through Sara my AI. She also happened to be the team's combat AI during the war. Don't ask how it came about that I still have her; I'd have to kill you for sure then. As a combat AI she had the ability to network all six of my team members. When networked any team member could listen in on what was going on with any other team member unless they specifically turned it off. Of course I had an override. I'd set her into combat mode during our little rescue operation and left it on afterwards since I didn't know what the hell was going to happen with the syndicate. Besides I figured they would worry about me less if they could hear I was still alive and who knew if I might have needed someone to bail my ass out of trouble. I didn't have any secrets from these guys and if they wanted to listen in on me puking my guts out in the morning or getting sweaty with some willing sweet thing, well that was their choice.