Jake Carlling had not been a mercenary – ah, he corrected himself, a private security contractor – for very long. He’d seen a little action here and there, in places most of the world had never heard of, and some in places it had. Until now, his entire career had taken place overseas.
He hadn’t expected to be called upon for an assignment in the States, not ever. And he really hadn’t thought that it would call on him to go back to the home town he’d been so thrilled to leave three years earlier.
But here he was, travelling down Interstate 49 towards New Orleans, along with a few hundred other guys just like him. Outside, some over-dressed asshole in an SUV leaned on his horn and gave Jake and the other men in his truck the finger. Jake gave it right back to him, but the guy probably didn’t see it – he’d gone by too fast. Jake returned to his silent contemplation of the mission and the men in his unit, all of them trundling towards what he still thought of as home, for all that he’d never planned to go there again.
He knew that part of him was actually happy at the thought of the death and destruction that had been visited on New Orleans – there had been some people he’d left behind that he’d really hated – but he also knew that feeling wouldn’t last. It never did.
Hate was an abstract. In Basra, he’d hated a million towelheads, but that hadn’t stopped him from giving first aid to enemy prisoners when they needed it. It was easy enough to wish pain and fury on someone when it was just your imagination – that was about as real as a Warner Brothers toon. But when you heard their pain, in screams or moans; when you saw their tears and blood – that was when you learned who really were. And Jake had learned that for a mercenary, he was unusually compassionate.
His superiors knew it too, he was pretty sure. Why else would they have called him up to go do bodyguard duty for International Red Cross aid workers? He just hoped that no one he knew saw him. It was going to be hard enough being there without people making things more difficult for him.
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