“My girlfriend was here with her family as a teenager. She walked me through the building changes. I think we will be all right once we get in there. It might be a little harder to get the families out though; it will just depend on if the rebels show up right away or not.”
“He said girlfriend.” Rake made a shocked face.
“Yeah, I heard that as well. Must be a pretty fucking amazing woman if you are willing to call her that,” Sandbag added.
“Come on, guys, we aren’t here to talk about my love life.” I tried to change the subject.
“Nitro has a girlfriend,” Rake joked.
When I finished talking, I looked up at the guys and all three of them had grins on their faces. They looked absolutely ridiculous. I knew they wanted to keep talking about my girlfriend, but that wasn’t really my style. I did like referring to Ana as my girlfriend, though, and I was excited to talk to her about it when I returned home.
“Girlfriend?” Baller asked as if he just then started to pay attention to us.
“Yes, girlfriend. Is that so unbelievable?”
“Actually, it is,” Rake added. “What kind of woman would date you?”
All three of them broke into laughter. We all loved to bust each other’s chops about how the single life was treating us. It was difficult to have a family and children when you deployed to dangerous situations all the time. But all three of the other guys had managed to have some sort of long-term relationship in the time I had known them. I was the only one who had been perpetually single and never once had I had a girlfriend that I would speak of to them.
“Okay, okay, let’s get back to work.” I tried to redirect them.
“So, is she Syrian? What’s she look like? How did you two hook up?”
I rolled my eyes at Rake as he asked his questions, but I knew I had to tell them a little something or they weren’t going to leave me alone about it.
“She’s actually from Liechtenstein: petite, blonde, and very sweet.”
“Does she have a nice rack?” Baller asked.
“I’m done with this. Let’s move on. We have at least two days of planning before we can execute this. What kind of weapons do we have available?”
“Right there.”
Rake pointed to a small pile of handguns that were lying on the counter. Next to the guns were two boxes of ammo. About enough gun power for us to break into a bakery and steal some bread.
It was the norm for us, and we always managed to wrangle up some additional firearms. Working as freelancers was much better than working through the military; we didn’t have to abide by the same rules as them when it came to buying guns and ammunition. We were free to purchase and acquire our guns in whatever way we saw fit.
“Well, shit, Baller, go get us some more,” I said as I pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills.
Baller had a long beard and spoke Arabic; he could pass as a local if he had to. And anyone selling guns for cash wasn’t going to care all that much who they were selling them too. The black market for guns in any war zone was where we always went to get our weapons before a job. It was sad, but we had to do it that way in order to be prepared.
One thing I knew for sure: when I started my company, I wasn’t going to let any guy head out on a job without having proper firepower. It could be the difference between living and dying, and I wasn’t going to risk any of my men’s lives.
Planning my own company had never been a goal for me until I started going out on jobs and being put in situations that were totally out of control. I certainly could see why people hired a security firm when they had to do business in dangerous areas, but no one seemed to do research on the firms before they hired them. My firm I worked for at the moment was one of the best in the industry, yet we still had the same problems.
If I could solve those problems and make the jobs safer for both the agents and the clients, I knew I could skyrocket into the top spot in the field. Agents talked to each other, and as soon as the word got out that I was properly supplying them for their jobs, I knew I wouldn’t have a problem at all getting guys to work for me.
When the good agents came to me, so would the good clients. Most clients were dedicated to the firms they were using because they knew them. No one liked change all that much, but if their favorite agent worked for me, I was pretty sure the clients would want to follow them over as well.
Baller, Rake, and Sandbag didn’t know about my plans to start my own firm, but I suspected they would want to come over and work with me. They were loyal employees though, so I might not be able to steal them away until Blankenship closed shop, but that was all right with me. I would much rather have loyal men on my team than money hungry guys who would jump ship at the first increase in pay.
Rake and Sandbag got to work mapping out the route we could use, and I started calling around to find a couple SUVs. We only had two small trucks so far, and that wouldn’t be nearly good enough if we had six families to rescue. I hadn’t gotten clear intel on the number of women and children that were in the building, but we estimated a total of 18 to 24 people that we would need to get out of there. We had to have at least three large vans or SUVs to make the trip.
“Do we have contact with the guys inside the building yet?” I asked as I went through my mental checklist.
“No, they have been sending emails to their main office, but we are pretty sure those got cut off last week. Haven’t heard from them since then,” Rake said.
“So, we don’t even know if they are alive?” I exclaimed as I stood up and knocked over my chair in the process.