Chapter 1

The cold, flat wind whistling around the tired mobile home seemed a lonely, haunting sound to Rick, as he shuffled outside to take a smoke in peace. The deep purple-black glowering mountains surrounding the valley where Rick called home spoke to the permanence of space and the stars that spread themselves before him as he flopped heavily onto the weather-beaten stolen park bench that served as external Living Room to the squalid trailer he called home. Pushing back the stained, white straw Stetson on his gray hair, he set down his chilled beer to fish in his blue work shirt for his pack of Camel Crush cigarettes and then fished out his cheap disposable lighter. He cupped his calloused hands against the wind, got his smoke lit after the 4th try, and inhaled deeply and blew smoke at the sky.

The stillness of the night spoke to Rick, and the only noise he could hear over the pop and sizzle of his damp tobacco burning and the muffled compressor of his refrigerator humming, was the occasional gust of wind that whistled through some holes in his trailer. The wind wasn't cold, since heat was still radiating off the hard-packed earth, and Rick enjoyed the small comfort of a gentle breeze and broad stillness of the night. If he really strained his listening, he thought he could even detect the rustle of a mouse or other denizen of the night hunting or hiding in the nearby scrub.

This peace and solitude was part of the reason Rick had moved to the desert after he cashiered out of the Corp, despite his platoon laughing about him moving from one sand pile to another ... he chuckled as he remembered the conversation with his mother, about how she yelled that, "that damn Fallujah firefight should have worked enough sand into his [expletive deleted] to make him want to avoid the beach from then on!" His points that there were no IEDs to contend with, or trigger-happy Blackpaw armed "consultant" forces fell on deaf ears. He knew her real complaint was that he hadn't come back to his boyhood home in Delaware, Ohio, back to the corn fields and woods they still occupied on the family farm.

Still, after 12 years in the Corps and catching a lot more fragments and Purple Hearts than he'd wanted to contemplate, he just couldn't see going back home and settling down to a life of plowing, slopping hogs and hanging out at the local farm supply playing checkers on cold nights. That was the way of his father and brothers, and was no longer enough to satisfy him, it was just TOO peaceful there, too familiar after years of constant change in the Corps, enough to choke him and turn him old before his time. No thanks, ma, I want to be in the high desert, even if you don't understand, even if I can't tell you the real reasons I'm out here living like a hermit.

As he sat in the growing dark, and deep twilight turned to deeper night, the inky desert sky in front of him stretched from the deepest dark huddling against the mountains 80 clicks away, deep blue-black and dark over the high desert, to the glimmering, pulsating shimmering skies 50 kilometers distant in Las Vegas. He kept his back turned, physically and metaphorically, to Las Vegas, having turned his back on all that the Sin City offers in the hustle that never sleeps, and Rick chose to find solace in his quiet dirt and scrub veranda as a nightly ritual, pointing his boots at the wilderness and his back to the dazzling distant shimmer of the city that no longer held any attraction for him.

As he drained his second, and last, beer for the night and crushed out another Camel in the makeshift tuna can that served as smoking lounge for his outdoor oasis, his watch beeped an alarm, as he knew it would. "21:35, time to make the donuts," he muttered to the night air to nobody in particular.

Old habits die hard, thought Rick, and 7 years in war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan had taught him to go prepared and on the bounce, so it was time to suit up first before heading out on what he still thought of as his "Night Ops". Pulling a small Mag flashlight from the hip pocket of his blue jeans, he rounded the far end of the trailer and looked at the dilapidated-looking pole barn behind the trailer home, and paused to look for anything out of the ordinary, any flash of movement, out-of-place scrub or distant burning red glow of a cigarette. He clung to the deeper shadows under the overhang of the trailer, still not using the flashlight until he was sure he was unobserved – more concerned about four-legged predators than the two-legged variety, but being wary had kept shrapnel out of his backside on more than one occasion, and that same habit caused the pause for him to check his 6 and make sure his routine was followed.

The grey shed leaning against the broken-down pole barn gave off the impression that Rick wanted, that there couldn't possibly be anything special behind the crappy trailer in the middle of nowhere. The beaten-up 1985 Ford F150 was half primer and half black, and a sorry looking brute of a truck, but Rick loved the Old Beast, as he had dubbed his truck 190,000 miles ago. He never parked it in the pole barn, preferring to give the impression that he didn't trust the dilapidated structure even with his old beater of a truck. Having paused for his customary two minutes of ritual caution, Rick saw the best sign he was unobserved – a lonely coyote trotted across the field 200 meters out and continued his night hunt, silent sentinel to the desert being devoid of unwelcome visitors.

Rick strode quietly past his truck and slipped into the pole barn, around the rusted tractor, and to the side of the barn where a beaten door opened on oiled and quiet hinges, belying the decay around the building with the well-maintained entrance to the back room of the barn. Rick closed the door behind him, flicked on the flashlight, and looked for the 4 independent tells and triggers that would have betrayed entrance to his back room, but they were all in place. Only then, did he key the alarm code on the unadorned keypad, flick on the light, note the time, and moved to his gun safe. Jed paused with his hand on the electronic keypad, and waited the few seconds for the security system to reset. When it did, 4 screens flickered to life, showing slowly panning infrared and monochromatic video from four approaches to the hideaway, and Jed checked the displays before opening the safe.

The austere room where Rick kept his arms and supplies, and did cartridge reloading on cold winter nights, was something he and his best friend, Jed, had taken great pains to setup as the ultimate "Man Cave". However, where other men might have built a shrine to sports, the NCAA, NFL, NHL nor NBA were ever invited into their concrete and steel shrine to hunting and firearms. Where other men might have adorned their manly oasis with flat-screen televisions, jerseys, neon beer signs and posters of bimbos, Jed and Rick had filled the room with reloading benches and presses, sonic case tumblers, neat shelves of dies and powders, and a small but well-equipped work shop. A stuffed 8-point mule deer head on an oak plaque was the sole decoration in the room. Since Jed had died on that trip, however, Rick felt the deer that Jed had bagged before his fatal fall was the best tribute to the shared experiences and bonds they had forged in this tiny but functional room.

"Little Dick and Jedekiah", they'd christened their duo, the Summer they'd first started Night Ops. Rick loved his blood-brother Jed enough to put up with the double-entendre regarding the stature of his wedding tackle, but nobody had called him that before or since without a good fight. Rick snorted at his own humor and the easy familiarity of Jed's presence in the room, and got to work.

The Sig Sauer P239 compact .40 caliber pistol that Rick removed from the holster hidden under his blue workshirt was enough for lounging around the house to address the unwanted intrusion of a snake, coyote or two-legged predators, but that was off-duty wear, and not serious firepower for his Night Ops. Though Rick dearly loved his Sig P239, and the great concealment and firepower combination offered by the well-crafted platform, Rick preferred the company of more "formal wear", as he liked to call it, when on patrol. First, he donned a simple leather shoulder holster, clipping both stays to his 2" gun belt that, to a casual observer, would look like any other casual belt, complete with oversized navy, deep red and black rodeo belt buckle. Only to a practiced eye would the thick hand-tooled leather and muted colors on the buckle suggest a purpose other than gaudy cowboy fashion sense, and Rick preferred it that way, hiding the functional belt in plain sight as though it was a scruffy trophy of long-lost glory.

Satisfied the shoulder holster was well-situated and comfortable, Rick picked up his Kimber Ultra-Carry II 1911 compact .45 caliber pistol from the safe, racking the slide and checking the smooth action of the aluminum-framed powerful pistol. Rick slapped home the shorty 7-shot magazine, racked a Federal 230 grain hollow-point into the barrel, ejected, and topped off the magazine with practiced ease, reloading the magazine with a natural motion born of repetition. Cocked and locked, he secured the precision .45 in the holster under his left armpit, snapped the thumb release home, and inserted two spare 8-round magazines in their proper position on the right side of the holster. From long practice, he thought the phrase "Ammo Up" as he had a thousand times, and felt the tips of the defensive hollowpoints to ensure they were facing upwards, ensuring the proper angle for fast tactical reload.