Nightstalkers Read Online Free PDF Page B

waiting at Bagram. You get him there. You stay with him the whole way until you get him to the Ranch.”
    “Got it.”
    There was a moment of silence. “Good work, Orlando.”
    “Thanks, Ms. Jones.”
And I’m fine too, you bitch
, Orlando thought but didn’t say as he turned the phone off. A vein was bulging in Carter’s neck and Orlando knew he was going to have one angry man next to him for a journey around the world. A man to whom he could explain nothing.

TWO DAYS LATER
    It started with the pretty postdoc who was the point of contact at the University of Colorado.
    The Courier had been up all night partying at one of the frat houses, only two years removed from college himself. Or, more accurately, two years removed from his single year of college. After being kicked out of college, he doubled down on that year sucking dirt in the Marines, including a year at Bagram Air Base on the perimeter guard post, shooting at a whole bunch of nothing and basically being bored to tears. The stories he’d told the wide-eyed rich kids at the party were true—that is, if the older grunts who’d told the stories to him in the first place had been telling the truth.
    So at the end of his year in ’Stan, when the contractor came calling with offers of big bucks and lots of time off for combat-experienced Marines (they considered a year in-country combat experience, so the boredom counted for something), the Courier had signed on the dotted line and kissed the Corps good-bye. The deal had turned out sweeter than he’d expected. They didn’t send him back to the ’Stan but rather to the Depot.
    Like any other gig, though, there were drawbacks. One was the implant. The gruff retired gunny sergeant who’d taken him through Depot processing at Area 51 had told him it was a minor physical procedure—he wouldn’t feel a thing—and the actual device only had to be worn during the time when he was working. During his two months off for every one on, why, no problem, he could leave it at the Depot. That was where guys like him, the Support for a bunch of high-speed people called the Nightstalkers, were stationed. Underground on the Area 51 military reservation in the middle of no-fucking-where, Nevada. It sounded a lot cooler than it was, both figuratively and literally.
    The gunny hadn’t been totally up front. The actual procedure was sticking some long, really thin wire into his chest. It left the tiniest of nubs sticking out just center and below his left nipple. That wasn’t coming out as long as he was in Support. Then when he came on duty they strapped a belt around his chest that had a matchbox—scratch that, he wasn’t old enough to have used matchboxes—an iPod Mini–sized device right over the nub and connected it to him.
    When he’d asked what the device was for, the old gunny had told him: “So we can track you and make sure you’re okay. We don’t want nothing to happen to you, sonny-boy.”
    So, okay, for one month’s work and two off, he could deal with it. And, of course, for the pay. That was ten large every month, even the ones he wasn’t working. The Tea Party would have a fit.
    They gave him some guns, a souped-up armored van, a thick binder full of what they called “protocols,” and a handheld device the gunny called an Invoicer (the way he said it indicated it was capitalized, like a lot of stuff around the place). It contained his deliveries for this tour of duty.
    “Like a FedEx driver?” the Courier had asked.
    The gunny had just glared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “Read the Protocols, sonny.” The gunny had looked about as if the walls had ears. “You do good on Support, there’s a chance you make the team out at the Ranch. They’re short one body on the ’Stalkers. Been short a while. Ms. Jones is real picky about who makes the team.”
    What are we, back in high school?
the Courier thought but did not say, having had experience with gunnies in the Corps.
    The key to