Coffee, why in god's name did she choose coffee? She needed a drink, and for some reason she went with coffee. She knew the answer of course, if David was in Los Santos, getting drunk was out of the question.
"You sure you don't want me to Irish up that coffee for you Miss Brennan, looks like you've had a hell of a day."
Aliza looked at the bartender. "Do I want you to, sure, can I let you, no. I need a clear mind right now. It's pretty complicated, you don't want to know."
The bartender shrugged and moved on to one of his other customers. She was in one of her favorite watering holes. It was a classy place, high end liquor, foreign beer, professional bartender, and an interior that could've easily passed for a London gentlemen's club. It all screamed old world opulence.
Her thoughts turned back to David. What the hell was he doing here?
She had a feeling that it had to do with the deaths of all those analysts, but this wasn't David's territory, figuratively or literally.
David and his people were a strike team, not assassins. They were the hammer to her team's scalpel. They stormed the strongholds of radical clerics and prevented attacks on Israeli soil. His team addressed the enemies of Israel in the Middle East whereas her team handled the international networks.
"Hey, it's you." The last time she'd heard that voice, she'd dropped its owner off at an emergency room in the middle of the night.
"Hi," she turned around as Tracey De Santa sat down beside her. "You're looking better."
"Yeah, rehab is shitty to go through, but you usually come out healthier than you go in." Tracey ordered what Aliza was having.
"If you don't mind me asking…?"
"Prescription meds, painkillers and antidepressants mostly, with some ADD meds for when I needed to be super focused." Aliza was put slightly off balance by how nonchalant Tracey was about her addictions. Addiction counseling hadn't been part of her psychology degree, but Aliza knew enough to be aware that the fact that Tracey was open about it to a relative stranger was either a good thing or a very bad thing.
"You seem fairly laid back about it," it was a weak return, but Aliza's mind was on other things.
"Well, when it's your third time in rehab, you're pretty much used to talking about it. It's either accept it and move on or be really fucking ashamed about it. Shame isn't really my thing. And before you ask, the first time was for an eating disorder, and the second was coke." Well, she certainly has her Los Santos party girl credentials, Aliza thought, but kicked herself for being cruel.
"Spend a lot of time on the LS party circuit?" Aliza had lived that life in Europe, she knew where it could get you if you weren't careful.
"Up until last week, yeah. After you dropped me off, the hospital tested me and found enough pain meds in my system to sedate a horse, so I had to spend a week detoxing at a place on the mainland." The bare minimum legally required by the state of San Andreas. God you have to love Americans and their drug laws, Aliza thought.
"Sorry, so why aren't you at a club then?"
"No, don't apologize. I'm giving this whole sober thing a shot, so my friends think I'm boring. Well that and I'm not getting back together with Mark." That got Aliza's attention, the bastard just kept popping up.
"Why do they care if you and Mark are togeth… Wait, he's your drug connection isn't he?" Mark certainly seemed the type to dabble in drug dealing to pretend to be dangerous.
"Yeah, he got designer drugs for my friends, but he won't come near me or any of my friends since you beat the shit out of him. My friends like free drugs, so they really want me to get back with him, but I'm like no, he beat the shit out of me. So my drugged up mom sent me looking for my drunk father and that's how I ended up here drinking coffee with you. That's my fuck up story, what's yours?" Mark's a drug dealer, Aliza mentally noted that tid bit for later use.
She took a long sip of her coffee, "What makes you think that I have one."
Tracey giggled, "you're sitting in a bar drinking coffee, I've spent enough time in bars to know that means you want to get drunk, but you need a clear head. So you've got my story, what's yours?"
Aliza smiled and shook her head slightly, smart girl.
"Well, if you really want to know. I'm a day trader these days, a freelancer, but I used to be with a major firm. I started out in venture capitalism, managing assets, making sure they didn't completely screw up and ensuring profitability. It was surprisingly similar to my high school job at a daycare. Eventually they moved me into foreign ventures. I did most of my work in the European and Asian markets, but I did a lot of work in developing markets in Africa and South America. Mostly I handled liquidation, but I also handled acquisitions and brokered deals with other organizations." Corporate euphemisms, her main fallback to tell the whole truth without saying a word. It's like they designed the vocabulary of the two fields to be interchangeable.
"So you're into stocks or something, my dad does day trades too. So what does that have to do with why you're here?" The bartender brought Tracey her coffee.
"I'm getting to that. I took a meeting with a couple of old associates. An analyst from my department and my counterpart specializing in hostile takeovers in Middle Eastern markets. They brought me in on a joint venture that I'm fairly certain is designed to address a recent hit the market took. It's an invite back to my old firm, I promised myself when I left that I wouldn't go back, but it took less than a minute for me to slip back into my old life." It felt good to talk about the situation with someone, even if it was hidden behind a cover story.
"Like an addict finding a pill bottle," Tracey said.
"Exactly," Aliza chuckled ruefully, it was a fairly accurate depiction of what she had just done.
They talked for a while longer, Tracey talked about her dysfunctional family. An alcoholic father pining for his glory days and refusing to accept the fact that his family was dysfunctional, an emotionally stunted stoner little brother who'd never grown up, and a sex addicted mother who'd gotten Tracey into pills in the first place.
"So, yeah, my life is like one of those stupid reality shows, except it doesn't make me famous." Tracey let out a small, bitter, laugh.
Aliza decided not to respond to that, asking if Tracey still loved her family would be cliché and probably annoy her. Agreeing with her would just come off as patronizing.
"So, not sure if your into this, but want to go back to your place and fuck."
If Aliza wasn't trained to keep her composure, that question would have had her spraying coffee everywhere.
"Am I into women, yes, but if you don't mind me asking, what makes you want to have sex with a stranger?" Aliza wasn't averse to having sex with Tracey, she was an attractive woman, but one had to question things when propositioned for random sex.
Tracey didn't miss a beat, "my shrink says daddy issues, but as to why I want to have sex with you in particular? Because you seem cool enough, you're hot, and it seems like we both need a good lay."
Aliza had to hand it to the girl, she'd never heard someone be so nonchalant about asking for sex, not to mention the fact that the she made a convincing argument.
"Alright, let me get my jacket."
Casting off her thoughts of David, for the moment at least, she stood up.
This might turn out to be a good night after all.
….
God, this turned out to be a shitty night.
Lieutenant Commander Andrew Daniels, current commanding officer of DEVGRU, commonly known as SEAL team six, thought this as he lay prone on the dirt in yet another hellhole.
He and his men had just finished an op in the Persian Gulf, only to find a new one waiting for them as they got back to the carrier. With no time for rest, they were resupplied and sent on their not-so-merry way. Two operations within a forty eight hour period, never a good sign.
Andrew didn't like this op, at all. Despite the way they were portrayed in the media, special operations were rarely sudden affairs. They were like grand musicals, every step carefully planned out thoroughly rehearsed, every possibility planned for. They'd been left to handle this op on the fly. Andrew was used to working with a five man team, but almost always in coordination with a larger force. This operation had no blocking force to prevent enemy reinforcements, no backup team, just him, his men, the helicopter extracting them, and a pair of Joint Strike Fighters that he had no contact with.
The other thing he didn't like was how scarce the briefing had been on details. They knew what their target looked like, but not who he was. They knew how many men they were likely to be facing, but not what faction they belonged to or what they were likely to be armed with.
It all screamed of a last minute decision by some bigwig in intelligence looking for a career booster.
Yes, it was fair to say that he hated everything about this mission, but he had to go through with it anyway. That was the life of a Navy Seal, bouncing from hot sandy hellholes to cold rocky shitholes to kill and possibly die for a bunch of bureaucratic assholes.
He wouldn't trade it for the world.
"Delphi, Python is within visual range of the objective."
"Good copy Python, you are clear to proceed, secure Chiron and move to point Lima for extract. Maintain radio silence until Chiron is secure."
"Python Copies all Delphi, going dark."
Andrew and his men crept along the creek bed until they reached the rear wall of the camp. The barbed wire on top of the wall was stretched taught, rather than rolled. It was a classic amateur mistake. He and his men tossed a specially made rubber tarp over the wire and boosted each other over the wall.
They snuck along the rear wall of the camp's barracks until they found their entrance. Stacking up, they made a soft entrance, they found no one in the main living quarters. It was like any other barracks in the world, bunk beds and footlockers along the walls with a clear path running through the center. Andrew's sniper, Mark Dunn, spoke over the comms. "All hostiles are in the training yard, you should be clear to move on Chiron."
"Good copy Apollo." God I hate these stupid call signs, Andrew thought, why can't covert ops types just use the NATO phonetic alphabet like everyone else is beyond me. It was one of the things that told him that this op was concocted by some new intel officer who'd seen too many spy flicks as a kid.
They spread out and carefully cleared the room, it took extra time, but Andrew was a firm believer double checking everything. He'd seen too many men die because of intel had misjudged numbers or a sweep hadn't been thorough enough.
"Clear left," Estevez said.
"Clear right," Holmes said.
"Clear Center, move up." The target's quarters were on the second floor. Andrew and his team cleared the stairwell and moved on to the officers' quarters. Chiron was supposed to be in his room at the end of the hall. Once again, they stacked up on the door. Andrew motioned to his team, giving them a three count with his fingers. Three, two, one… breach.
His team surged into the room and grabbed the target before he could react. It was a quick, perfectly executed, movement. Within fifteen seconds, the man's hands and feet were bound and he was gagged and hooded. Estevez tossed him over his shoulder and they began exfiltration. Now was the most dangerous part of the mission. They had to move fast, Andrew checked his watch, they had about fifteen minutes before the air strike was supposed to hit. And that was with a five minute comfort zone in case it hit early.
They sprinted down the steps and through the barracks, "Apollo, are we clear for exfil?"
"Route's clear." With that knowledge, they booked it out of the barracks like the devil himself was on their tails. Within five minutes, they were outside of the compound's perimeter. Within ten they'd rendezvoused with Dunn. They were in the helo just as the fireworks started, and forty nine insurgents disappeared in a ball of fire.
"Wish they all went this smooth, eh boss?"
Andrew nodded. "Smooth, yeah, but if I find out this was a million dollar boondoggle just so that a congressman can catch a couple of votes in the next election, I'm killing someone without authorization."
By god, Andrew thought.
I need a cup of coffee.
Okay guys, I know that it's been forever. I kind of gave up on this story for a while because this chapter was a lot better the first time I wrote it, but that didn't save correctly, so I dropped it and just finished it today on a whim.
R&R people.