Firecracker was growing deathly bored, waiting to hear from Intel what the next move would be. Tobias had given her the team lead on the next mission down the pipe. Her biggest issue was that it hadn’t come yet. She wasn’t renowned for her patience, after all.

With her, was a few of the older veterans of the unit. Lawman seemed to walk right out of a western. He was tall and ruggedly handsome, albeit with some scars on his face and haunted blue eyes. What was once blonde hair, and a goatee, were liberally streaked with the white of age and stress.

Kit Kat was purely a pretty boy, who preened like a peacock, with mocha skin. His vivid green eyes, however, were those of a hawk constantly roving and surveying, never at rest, and while he was average height and build, she had seen the asshole work out. He was very fit for a man in his Fifty’s, a fact he didn’t bother to hide with his clothing, all tight fitting tank tops and shorts. His attitude was one that put others off guard however, constantly lazing around and perpetually at ease. He even chose his own call-sign, as he put it, “Everyone wants a Kit Kat to put their mouth on”.

The narcissistic fucker. She would tear his balls off and feed them to him but he actually was damn good as a sniper and support by fire.

Fall Guy was about as opposite as one could get. Pasty, short, prone to bouts of nervous fidgeting, completely unremarkable in a crowd. Thin, balding brown hair, and a close cropped beard, which only put him a pair of glasses and an ugly sweater from apparent pedophilia. Aside from all that, he was a sweet and thoughtful guy, who just about anyone would open up to in a conversation, about damn near anything, even your darkest secrets. Not to mention, an expert in close quarters battle, with a pistol and his hands as it seemed rifles made the man skittish. A deep flaw, in Firecracker’s opinion.

They were the only ones at the base of operations at the moment, it seemed a ghost town without the others there. It was giving her a pang of sadness she would admit to no living soul, more than even the pang of never seeing her family.

Tobias had gone to see Elisa in California. Firecracker had her doubts that that was it, but she didn’t question the man, who was more a Father to her than her own blood- not that her family were any more or less atrocious. She did come from a military family, though, with all the attendant pressure, expectations, and outright sexism, to be expected from a Marine father and a spineless traditionalist Jap housewife.

Shaking her head to dislodge the train of thought, and a vicious snort to expel it the rest of the way, she trained her sharp gaze on the others, who were in various states of lounging and relaxation. “Who has a good story to share, any more excitement and we will all be dead asleep when the call comes.” A chorus of moans were her answer. “You fucks know the drill, volunteer or be voluntold.”

Lawman grunted, a rumble comparable to the world’s slowest landslide. “Well if someone has to bite that bullet, I guess it may as well be me. Who here remembers that movie a good while back, “Home Alone.” The brief laughs told him they all did. “Little do y’all know, that movie was, in part, inspired by me.”

The outcries of disbelief stalled his continuing to speak, Kit Kat spoke up, “No damn way is your life a movie, not even just in part.”

Lawman laughed, “You just don’t want to be outshone or outdone do you, you sad sack of narcissistic insecurities? Well, don’t worry your soft skin or empty head, it’s not something anyone really knows. It’s too dark a story for regular folks.”

Everyone settled down, anticipating the dark tale, eagerly. Whatever differences they had, any combat veteran enjoyed the occasional, or even frequent, dalliance with the macabre.

“A long time ago, further than I sometimes care to admit, my family decided to vacation in Europe, touring the places my father had seen in war. I was the youngest, of nine children. Ma was a careless alcoholic and Pop was a relentless perfectionist. If you did nothing wrong you were left alone or outright ignored. Step out of line and you got whatever was left, after the ass chewing, handed to you on a splintery wooden platter. Suffice to say the household was full of bile and confrontation. The older kids defying Ma and Pop, and the middle kids trying to be like Ma and Pop by giving me even more hell. Yup, woe is me and all that. Well I figured while they were fighting and all that I would sneak up on to the roof with my sleeping bag and rack out under the stars.”

The rest of the team looked restless, they were wondering where the blood was going to be. Anything to distract them from the eerily similar details in their own lives.

“Turns out, I am a very heavy sleeper, slept through them getting ready and leaving, they had given us our tickets the night before and everyone assumed I was out and doing things like getting ready since my bed was all made and no suitcase was set out. There I was, a man of nine, home all alone. I waited hours and no one showed. It was well into the night when I realized they weren’t coming back. That’s when I heard someone trying to force the door. I ran all through the house turning on lights, I could hear them mention they had seen everyone leave but that they should go around back just to be careful. Sprinting up the stairs I grab Pop’s shotgun, racking a round into the chamber as I ran for the back door.”

The tension and hunger was building, they knew when blood was coming. Lawman was an excellent storyteller, his manner of speaking drew a person in, unless of course they were as jaded and calloused as his current audience.

“I heard a faint knock as I laid flat against the ground, the knock repeated again more loudly. Finally I could hear two people muttering and gleeful that their intended place of larceny was for all intents empty.”

“Funny enough one of them decides they need to be extra sure and peep on through the doggy door and see if anyone was around, but wearing headphones to block the noise. No sooner said then the poor bastard pops his head through right in my line of sight and I instantly pull the trigger. His head pulped more than a melon from a stick of dynamite. Some of the shot must have gone through the door somehow because all I hear afterwards is a screaming man rolling in the snow.”

“The cops came and so did an ambulance. Sadly no one could vouch for who I was so they put me in foster homes and I was lost to the system, it was only after I turned eighteen that I finally found my family again. They never looked for me, they didn’t care.”

Everyone sat back as the tale wound down. All of them pondering their, separately, miserable lives that gave them the common ground to bond.

It would be hours still before anyone said a word beyond some form of condolence.

It was Firecracker who spoke up to fill the breach,”Holy shit, you got downplayed to a whiny blond bitch who had a BB gun. Instead you were epic and decisive. Why the fuck would they not use that? Some smart as prick kid who annihilates the assholes who come to rob his house.”

A round of agreements were being shouted but silence reigned faster than a lightning strike as a phone rang. The team began searching frantically, Tobias wasn’t a boss you let go to voicemail. An exuberant shout from Kit Kat signaled victory in the furious struggle to find the device as he held it high before tossing it to Firecracker.

Answering quickly before the voicemail took over, Firecracker made he voice smooth and deliberate. “Hey Top, got anything for us yet?”

A heavy sigh seeped through the line, “You charming examples of humanity almost lost the phone, didn’t you?”

Firecracker was quick to answer, “Hell no, Top, just playing hot potato and seeing who it landed on.”

A sharp laugh bust forth, “I’ll believe that when I see it. We got the Intel, an item of interest is being held at a previously unknown Viking site at Svalbard. It’s supposed to be some kind of tracking system left over from the Atlanteans, so long as you have dna related to the one you’re tracking you can find them anywhere. Most of the network seems intact but the control is mobile. You and your team are to set your load-out and get wheels up in thirty.”

Firecracker felt joy unbound rolling through her, this was it, the real deal. It was her time to lead and do a damn good job of it. “Fuck that, Top, we will be wheels up in fifteen.”

When Tobias spoke again, joy died, and almost Firecracker’s confidence as well. “ I appreciate the enthusiasm. This, however, is no cake walk. Don’t disappoint me, Tara, this is your first mission as lead. Complete it, or be dead enough that I can’t get my hands on you. I will not tolerate failure.”

Humbled, and sour at being humbled, Firecracker responded with sullen decorum. “Yes, Sir.”

True to her word, Firecracker had the team ready and in the aircraft, insertion ready, in fifteen minutes. Her mind ran thousands of ways to get things done. She just hoped, at least, one of them will be the right call.