>From: erikred@planecrash.Berkeley.EDU (Erik Nielsen)
Subject: Working hard, or hardly working...
Date: 30 Sep 91 21:44:06 GMT


	We're sitting in the bunker when the phone rings.
	"Don't answer it."  Louie's jumpy, maybe paranoid.  Being wired
makes him jumpy.  Being nervous and wired makes him paranoid.
	"Relax" Second ring.  "Shut off your damn reflex booster."  Pick up
the phone.  "Yeah?"
	The voice on the other side hesitates.  "Riddle me this."
	"Fuck you!  I've already got a job!"
	Aw, damn, Louie and Weber are staring at me, shit-hot and eager.
	"Twenty," says the line, "plus all expense paid vacation for two."
	Twenty?!?  Jeezus, that's almost three times this job.
	"Thirty."
	"Twenty-four."
	Oh, God in heaven.  "When and Where."
	"Five minutes.  Your backyard."  Click.
	Pause.
	"You're not leaving us, are ya, Damien?"  Louie's whine irritates
the hell outta me.
	"Here's the sitch:  I got two tix outta here, ASAP.  Who's going?"
	Louie's reflex booster makes his draw look like a magic trick.
Unfortunately for him, it also screws his aim up all to hell, and his first
shot hits the wall five inches left of Weber.  Weber draws nice and slow,
he's got all day, fires once.  Bang, says the gun.  Thud, says Louie.
	"El-zee in four, web.  Let's blow this one-horse joint."
	"All to hell, boss."
	This "one-horse joint" is about 30 miles south of Ndjamena, capital
of Chad.  My boss is, or was, Idris Deby III.  His grandad took over the
country back in '90, and the place flourished.  Then he blew off elections
and named his son as successor.  Deby Jr. didn't win any popularity contests
with his martial law plan, and the current revolution's been going for more
than a decade.  Not bad, considering Monrovia's averaged two leaders a year
for the past five years, and the People's Republic of Niger into a dozen
pieces when their own revolution came.
	Now I'm a merc, and as such I'm supposed to MYOB; but as far as I'm
concerned, the Chadian Islamic Front's got this one in the bag.  So,
assuming Deby snuffs it sometime soon, my contract here is legally up.
After that mess in Nairobi. . . well, no one's gotta hit me twice with a two
by four.  I'm outta here.
	As for Web, we've been together for two years, and I trust him like
a brother.  I knew that kid Louie didn't have a chance.  And if he had shot
Web?  Well, business is business; if Web can't take out a piece of shit like
that, I'm doing him a favor by killing him.  The kid knew it, Web knows it.
	"All set?"  We're right by the door now.
	"Check."
	"Go!"  I kick open the door and jump aside.  The guns start a second
later, turning the table and wall into Swiss Cheese.
	I drop to the ground and roll so I'm prone in the doorway, my
automatic answering with thunder and a rain of metal.  They stop shooting
and duck.  Web steps into the doorway and fires four grenades:  one over the
clump of rocks fifty feet to the right, one straight ahead at the bushes
thirty feet away, two at the gun emplacement to the right.  He's out the
door as the first goes off, and I'm right behind him.  He swings up on top
of the bunker as I lay suppression; then he covers me as I swing up.
	Once on top, we set off the smoke: green to mark the LZ.  Then we
wait.  Web's got his audio boosted to max, listening for the transport, and
I'm scanning the sky with my telescopic.  Two and a half minutes later, Web
says, "Shit.  You hear that?  Apache, southwest."  I look; he's right, as
always.
	"I didn't think they had any more of those POS's.  Aren't they a
health hazard or something?"
	"Welcome to the boondocks."
	The Apache gets closer, and the rebels get nervous.  Instead of
wasting their bullets trying to hit us, they pull back.  One of them has a
bullhorn and rails at us to surrender to "the will of Allah."  Web starts
laughing, and we're both almost in tears when the Apache picks us up.

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Copyright 1991, Erik Nielsen

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--
     "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
			Roy, _Blade Runner_
Erik Nielsen					erikred@ocf.berkeley.edu