“A little nosey?”
“Negative. When I go into combat with someone, I would like to know who the hell I am dealing with.”
“Ok…,” she thought for a few seconds, “I am Chief Sargent Lia Dahan. I believe you would me a Sargent First Class. You know my unit already and like Harwell said, we were here o
n a joint training and tactical planning exercise when my team was ambushed by the infected. I say ambush, because it gave me the impression they planned and executed it with some precision and forethought. Not to mention, since we were on diplomat mission, we weren’t geared for combat.”
Lia looked straight at Priest, “We had some prior warning, but it came at the price of some soldiers ahead of us and behind us. We ran, but they overtook some of my colleagues. I tried to help them, but they were overtaken so quickly, it was over in seconds.” She had her head down and jaw clenched.
Priest laid a hand on her shoulder. She snapped out of her reverie and continued, “I have been with the MOSSAD for the last 10 years. Hand to hand combat and sniper quals are my specialty, if I was to put that down on paper.”
“Ah, we need that in Philly.” She turned to look at him for a moment,
“What about you, Sergeant Priest?”
“What about me?”
“What’s your story?”
“Hmm, not much of a story. Master Sargent Alex Priest, broken home, got into trouble. Court appointed me to join the Army to get straighten out. That was oh 25 years ago. Been with Special Operations for the last 14 years and the Light Reapers for the last six. Me on paper, hand to hand, weapons expert, strategy and leadership. Oh, and don’t forget stubbornness and sarcasm. Those are areas of expertise.”
Lia laughed, “And what about Mrs. Priest?”
Now it was Priest’s turn to laugh, “No, no… got close once. We were engaged, but going out and meeting people was her expertise. She ended up meeting too many people and caught her with one of them when I came home early from a deployment. She and some lieutenant were together in bed, both a little high. I yelled, she screamed, slapped me a couple times for being home early.”
“What did you do?”
Priest smirked, “Body slammed her into the closet, locked it, then kicked the shit out of the lieutenant. Kind of fucked his face up pretty bad, broke some ribs. His left arm looked a little wonky too. Oh, yeah… and fractured his collarbone.”
“Was she worth fighting over?”
“Ah, hell no. I wasn’t fighting over that bitch. I was just pissed that he was in my house, sweating on my sheets, eating my food and worst of all, drinking my good bourbon, mother fucker! Probably would be Sargent Major by now. You? Any eunuch’s out there courtesy of Ms. Dahan?”
She smiled, “No, nothing like that. I don’t have to deal with assholes like that. I’m a lesbian and my partner respects me better than that.”
Priest’s eyes went side, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know.”
She watched him fumble for a couple of seconds, then burst out laughing, “Hahaha, just kidding.”
“Damn, you got my pressure all up,” he said with his hand on his chest.
She was still laughing, “Sorry. No, I have had a couple long relationships, and I also was engaged once. We had been together for three years and as soon as he put the engagement ring on my finger, he changed. Became controlling, losing his temper. We got into a pretty heated argument one time in which he put his hands on me.”
“Ooh, I bet that worked out well for him.”
“Yeah, his arm never really set right after that.”
“Damn!”
“Yeah, they had to wheel him out on a gurney.”
“Wow.” Priest was shaking his head. They both laughed and turned to check on the progress of the team.
Several minutes later, they were in the air, hooked up to the Humvee sling load and were on their way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
CHAPTER 25
Based on the last tracking data Harwell had on the ISIS faction, they should arrive in Philly in approximately four hours. The team had calculated this after infill, three blocks away from the objective location.