The two story shoot house sits isolated in the surrounding Jordanian desert, with only a single road leading up to it and a parking lot nearby. The featureless concrete box gives little evidence of what’s stored inside, and that is exactly the point.
Punching in numbers into a keypad on the door just outside, John ignores the sounds of Kane trying to get his attention from down the road as he breaches into the first room and starts firing off rounds into the pop up targets as they appear.
With a soft buzz their white silhouettes block windows and doors. John snaps his sights to each one, pulling off two rounds to the head each and every time, feeling the satisfying thump of reverberating recoil through his bones with each trigger pull.
His boot connects with a door, and it slams open. A buzz, a target, two rounds. He flows through the shoot house like water, each reload a smooth transition, not a second of time lost.
THUMP THUMP
Two more bad guys, dead.
THUMP THUMP
The next target doesn’t even finish popping up as he puts two more into it.
Another door, another room, and John’s mind clears, every fiber focused on the mission, every sense honed to kill the lifeless moving shapes.
His sweat smells acrid, the alcohol seeping through his pores as he finishes the room, working his way back to the entrance to set it up again.
“John!” Kane tries to get his attention, but John ignores the man, punching in the digits only to be stopped by Kane's firm hand on his wrist, pulling him away.
“The fuck do you want?” John shakes the man off, wheeling on him.
“I want you to calm the fuck down long enough to listen to me.” Kane doesn’t back off, and John almost presses harder, but stops himself.
Letting his rifle fall across the sling on his chest, John takes a step back and closes the panel on the wall.
“What.” It isn’t a question, John knows what Kane wants and he doesn’t particularly care to talk about it right this second.
“Quit being a selfish asshole and let me in.” Kane cracks his smile, and for a moment John’s taken back.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re fuckin’ excused. What? You thought I came here to get all sappy with you? We are fuckin operators Johnny boy, and we are a team. You don’t think I need to blow a little steam after all that shit too? Punch in the numbers for two and lets fucking sweat it out.”
John stands, a smile working its way around his face as he nods, and does exactly that.
“Just like Abu Garh yea?” John chuckles, finishing putting in the code for a two man clear.
“Damn fucking right.” The alarm buzzes, and this time Kane kicks the door.
In a typical sim room you would never run this fast with two people using live rounds. One mistake was all it took to put a round in the back of your buddies head.
But this isn’t a typical sim room, and John and Kane aren’t typical buddies.
Before, John flowed through the rooms like water, but now? Him and Kane are death incarnate. They don’t need words in spite of the fact that it’s been years since they operated like this. No words are needed, no hand signals. The two men know exactly what the other is thinking at all times, and that makes the situation incredibly deadly for the pop up targets.
There was a certain kind of bond a man got when he shed blood with another, fought side by side with someone. The kind of bond you can only get by saving a life and having your life saved, the kind of bond you forge in a blood soaked desert.
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
Each transition into a new room, to a new target, is surgical. Millimetre perfection, not a single step out of place as they run it again and again and again, until the lactic burn nearly takes hold of their very being, and even then the two push, fists bumping into one another, heavy pats on the back of the plate carriers to drive the other forward
“Come on! Come on Kane lets go!” John shouts, bringing the man's head in close to his with his palm on the back of the Aussies neck.
“Me? You’re the one slowing me down,” Kane challenges, and they continue over and over and over again.
At some point, Bella appears and takes to loading up their magazine with fresh rounds between drills. She makes sure to add some snide comments, backhanded compliments and technically correct pointers to improve that they pretend to ignore. All in all, a very welcome presence in the midst of the bullshit that was dealing with a real devil.
John and Kane don’t stop until their bodies fully give out—John trying to kick in the door as the next buzzer sounds, only to fail. His leg bounces off, the door stays closed, he tries to shoulder through it, and it finally opens up but he collapses to the ground, exhaustion wracking his bones.
Kane laughs, tries to grab John and haul him out while providing cover fire, plugging the moving target with a few rounds before he too stumbles, though he goes backwards and out into the parking lot near the bench, where Bella watches him like a little boy investigating a particularly neat ant.
“You two look like you had fun.”
“Yeah...” John confirms with a laugh, spinning around and grunting as he grabs Kane’s legs and uses the man to pull himself out of the room.
“Get the fuck off me!” Kane cackles, trying to kick at John, but his legs are too weak to stop the advance.
John climbs up Kane and onto the ground beside him, where his arms finally give out entirely and he is forced to roll to his back, joining his Aussie friend in staring directly into Bella's amused expression.
“What do you say you give us both a little tender love and care, aye?” Kane tries.
“Sure” Bella grins, the corners of her lips curling up in that familiar feline way.
“Wait... wait wait!” Kane raises his arms up just as Bella’s foot comes down at his face, the heel stopping a fraction of an inch from his nose. “Take your shoes off first.” he winks.
Bella lets her boot drop, smacking his forehead off the asphalt with a thud.
“Ah!” Kane grabs at the back of his head, rolling over to grip at the injury.
“A little help?” John asks, bringing a hand up.
Bella rolls her eyes, and pulls John up from the ground, though she doesn’t move as he staggers closer to her, their chests bumping into one another.
John is taken back for a moment, cautiously taking a single step away but Bella advances, keeping them close together.
Her perfect jawline nearly reaches his own. She's a tall woman, though she still needs to angle her head upward to meet his eyes at such a close distance.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Come to my room tonight,” she says plainly, searching his eyes.
“Where the hell is this coming from?” John half gapes, half whispers, still trying to put distance between them, a distance that Bella never lets stand for more than a second.
She can’t be serious, can she? This isn’t just out of nowhere this is off the back of a series of strange interactions and even stranger existential dread. Chances are her head’s spinning just as much as his own, but she clearly has a different way of letting off steam.
“Come-to-my-room,” She repeats casually.
“Bella, with all due respect, I can’t.”
“That wasn’t a request.” She holds his gaze for a time before Kane starts to recover. Only then does she back away, her expression turning into something more innocent, and then contemptuous as Kane stands.
“And what happens if I don’t show up?”
“I have a sneaking suspicion you will”
“You are one persistent woman.”
Bella throws back her head in a clipped laugh. “Boys, what fun creatures you are.”
“What happened to men?” John asks.
“You were men, now you are boys.”
“Any particular reason for the demotion?”
“You fought Casper, that made you a man. You play soldier with Kane, that makes you a boy,” She teases, biting the tip of her tongue as she offers a little twirl while walking away.
“Damnit Kane you’re making me look bad,” John jokes, slapping the now standing Aussie on the ass as he still rubs his head.
“You do that yourself, getting drunk, telling her about your wife. Not a good look my friend,” Kane counters, punching John lightly in the plate carrier.
“Fuck, does everyone know about that?”
“Damn right we do, we thought for sure you and Bella were going to be an item. She hasn’t invited anyone for drinks. We saw her leave by herself, asked what the hell happened and she said you had a wife.”
John blinks “You were watching the door?”
“Course we were watching the fuckin door! Had to see how well you performed after all these years of being off the market.” Kane makes it sound like it should have been expected. “Color me surprised. I guess you’re a loyal man.”
“The fuck? You thought I would sleep around?”
“Yeah! Didn’t you sleep with that woman in Panama?”
“Nope.”
“But you took her to your room!”
“Yeah, for a massage.”
“John, we all know what that means.”
“it means a massage, my muscles were stiff and she had hands of fucking steel.”
It’s Kane's turn to blink in disbelief. “Well fuck me, alright then, you’re a loyal man. Still I'm shocked your wife let you come here. From what you told me it sounded like you were ready to settle down with the woman. She change her mind?”
“Something like that.” John looks out to the horizon, and then up to the sky. He wonders if Evelyn was finding this whole conversation funny, or annoying.
It would be easier to just say that she was dead. Hell, he had told the devil bartender that little tid bit but he still didn’t have the courage to drop the news to Kane. As far as the Aussie was aware, Evelyn was alive and kicking.
Kane almost never asks personal questions or puts his nose into people's private lives, so it makes sense he doesn’t know about John's wife. But still, it’s weird.
The way people act, the way he acts, it makes it feel like she is still alive in a way.
Maybe that’s why John doesn’t tell them. If he breaks the news that his wife is dead it would be like losing her all over again...
“Earth to John.” Kane snaps as he drops his weight onto the loading bench.
“I’m a loyal man.” He agrees, plastering on something close to a fake smile before joining Kane at the bench. “I don’t have many good traits so I take a good deal of pride in that particular one.”
John says it loud enough, and hopefully pointed enough in Bella's direction that she gets the hint. If she does, she ignores it as she stands at the head of the table, eyeing both of the men with a sobering expression.
“A devil from hell.” Bella sighs.
All John and Kane can do is nod. What else is there to do? Its a fundamentally earth shattering revelation, one that happened over the course of an hour of two on the tarmac.
Kane shudders. “I knew there had to be an explanation for the shit we saw in that town. I just never expected it to be that.”
“Abu Garh, the symbols, how they got that nuke.” John recalls, and Kane soaks it all in.
“The past has a damn bad habbit of coming back to haunt, aye Johnny boy? It’d be funnier if it wasn’t so fucked.”
John raises an imaginary glass in toast, which is quickly mimed by Bella and Kane. “Hear hear.”
“You think she wants to help?” Kane asks.
Bella rolls her eyes. “I think you’d be a fool to not assume some ulterior motive.”
“I think both can be true. This shit in that town, its been happening for a while now. If us mere mortals can find it then sure a devil could have found it even easier. Means she was waiting, waiting for us to deal with it.”
“Hmmm.” Bella runs her hands through her hair. “She needed us to need her.”
“Tricky bitch. To hell with her, then.” Kane snorts. “What ever she’s playing, we don’t do it. Full stop, tell her to fuck off and we go on our marry way.”
John has half a mind to agree, but can’t stop the grumble from rising deep in his throat as the reality of their situation settles on them. “And do what exactly? Leave the site? Let that other devil soak up bodies until it's too strong to ever shake a stake at?”
“We go elsewhere. If devils are real then that opens the door.” Bella reasons. “We ask blackwood to put out feelers, we open ourselves up to any other resource that can be used. A priest perhaps? Something along those lines, no?”
“She appeared in our compound, played with us, and asked for a meeting. If this devil could solve the problem on her own then she would have—save herself the trouble of making a new enemy in us. Means she's confident that there are no other options. I think id be smart to ask, to try, but I think our options are pretty cut and dry.”
“Perhaps you and Kid can work on something? If she wants this devil gone, enough to wish to help us then she will give more information. Get what you can from her, or Blackwood at the very least. You and Kid are smart, very smart with your toys.”
John works his jaw. He has no fucking clue what he can possibly conjure up to fight a devil, but in the spirit of feeling through their options he’ll at least give it a shot.
“Oi, lets be honest now too…” Kane adds. “We are all cut from the same cloth here—the three of us. The shit we’ve done. If we aren’t already damned to one hell or another then I don’t know what the fuck youd need to do to get there. Goin’ with a woman like that ain’t so bad.”
Bella scoffs. “Until she rules the world and kills everyone because we gave her power.”
“Which is why we have contingencies! We work on options. Fuck Bella if devils were strong enough to take over everything then we’d all be fucked any way. We are the greatest mercenary company to every exist. We fight anomalies for a living for fucks sake. If we can’t stop a devil then we are all fucked anyway.”
“You said that twice.”
“Oh fuck off.” Kane throws an empty magazine at Bella who catches it, and sets it back down on the table.
“Im new to this, but back in my MARSOC days I saw more than my fair share of strange. You all are the anomaly hunters. Call it a devil, call it a wendigo, call it a mutant or anything you like. Kane's right. We deal with this shit. We play it all by ear, feel out the options, and when the time comes we do the best we can.”
Bella smiles, and lets out a long, slow breath. “Let us make sure our reports are in soon then. Until then, before you boys charged out here all hot headed to let off steam, the others agreed to take some time at the pool. Bronco is praying over it, hoping it might do something to ward the devils”
“We have a pool?” John cocks an eyebrow
“Yes we have a pool. Now come on, let's swim in some chlorinated holy water. Who knows, we are feeling out options, no?”
John and Kane look at each other, shrug, and heft their tiered bodies off the bench to try and cleanse as much of their dirtied souls as possible…in pool water.
