I am Devin Thomas.
For the past year I’ve been in charge of Team Twelve; a brand-new
counterterrorist team. Before I did that, I was in Delta Force, and before that
I was a Green Beret.
It wasn’t my
choice to go into the Army. A judge told me it was either that, or a lot of
jail time. All told, I’d probably stolen around a hundred grand worth of stuff,
I’d assaulted over thirty people, including a couple of cops, and I’d
accidentally killed my girlfriend during a bank robbery. (The judge never knew
about that one).
I really did love
my girlfriend. And it’s entirely my fault that she’s dead. I was 16 when it
happened; and that pretty much left me an emotional wreck.
I could fight
through it though. When you’re as good as I am, your bosses want you to work all
the time. And when you can’t emotionally bring yourself to ask a girl out, that
leaves you with lots of time to work.
So I worked. I
trained my team, day and night, to be the best in the world. We jumped out of
more airplanes, spent more time in the shooting gallery, ran more miles, and
had more hand-to-hand combat training time than any other team in the history
of the world.
But that wasn’t
all. We studied too, each team member always had to be making progress in a
Middle Eastern language, and we were constantly studying the geopolitics of
that entire region.
One night, we were
doing a midnight training exercise in Fort
Worth . Very basic “evade the local PD” exercise; with
the theory being that if we can evade American cops, we can very much evade
Middle Eastern cops. The cops were told that we’d stolen a lot of money, and
they had no idea it wasn’t the real deal.
So we were
speeding down Belknap in a black van. Plan was to get on I-35, wreck the car,
disappear into the river, swim a couple of miles, and meet up on the other side
of town. Tyler
was driving; we had three police cars on our tail, and we were guessing that we
had a couple SWAT vans incoming from either side. I was in the back of the van,
getting my swimming gear on, when suddenly I hear a loud POP. “TYLER ! What the heck was that?!”
He looked back at
me grimly. “Spike strip, boss.”
Really? This is
legitimately the best team in the world, and we run over a spike strip?
“Everybody out!” I
pulled off my swim gear and grabbed my water pistol, which was filled with
ammonia. You don’t ever want to pull a real gun on cops, that’s just a bad
deal; but a water pistol filled with ammonia is a nice deterrent.
We hopped out of
the back of the car and split. I didn’t have to say anything, everyone knew the
backup plan: Meet up at the Auto Depot on Rosedale ,
steal a few cars, drive to the safehouse.
Unfortunately, the
cops had a different plan. Three cars were bearing down on us, sirens
screaming. So we split up, knowing that most likely, three of us weren’t going
to make it.
See, all that “No
soldier gets left behind!” stuff sounds really good in theory. In reality, it
ain’t always possible. Not all of us were going to make it, and everyone had to
accept that fact, and do their best to make sure that it wasn’t them being left behind.
I sprinted west on
Belknap, trying to find a place where I could hide. And then I heard the sirens
focus in on me.
Dangit. Why do they always have to pick
the large black man who looks like he’s in charge?
Gotta hide, gotta hide, gotta hide… But
there was nowhere. Open range, as far as I could see. I had to settle for
running on the sidewalk, so they couldn’t just run me over.
They pulled
alongside me, matching my speed. I had them on my right and a brick building on
my left, nowhere to go. The guy
riding shotgun leaned over and pointed a bean-bag shotgun at my face. I pulled
my water pistol, which made him duck for a second, just enough time for me to
sprint ahead and jump the fence into the parking lot.
I zigzagged away
from the car; putting distance between me and the cops. Home free.
BAM.
The shot me with a
bean bags round. Have I mentioned that I hate bean bag rounds?
They booked me and
put me in general population, which I tried to tell them was a bad idea. It
took a couple of broken bones to convince them to put me in interrogation.
I sat there for
about eight hours, just waiting…waiting…waiting.
Finally, around 9,
this blonde chick walked in. “Good morning, Mr…?”
I smiled. “Mister
is good for now.” See, I don’t carry ID on me during training missions; because
officially, I don’t exist.
“Okay.” She smiled
at me “Well, my name is Maggie, and I’m the District Attorney who’s going to
send you to jail.”
Ooooh, Barracuda.
“So, unless you
want to be there for the next ten years; we can start with your name.” She
smiled again.
I smiled back at
her. “See, Maggie; I don’t think that’s going to happen. So, you can save
yourself some time and let me go; or you can cause yourself a lot of
frustration by continuing to interrogate me.”
She was good, she
just smiled at me and kept walking around the interrogation table.
“See, Mr. Thomas,
I don’t think that’s really going to happen.” She winked at me
What on earth… I almost fell over, but
instead I just laughed. “Nice try, pretty lady; but that ain’t my name.”
“Oh really? I’m
sorry, I must have you confused with another Devin Thomas who leads Team
Twelve, and was scheduled for a midnight training exercise in running from the
police.” She winked again.
Okay, this ain’t cool.
“Hey, Maggie; I
don’t know who you think you’re talking to; but I ain’t Devin Thomas, and I
don’t even know what Team Twelve is. Although, if you’re looking for a man
named Devin, it’d be willing to change my name.”
She laughed.
“Sorry, Mr. Thomas, I’ve got other plans for you. Let’s go.” She walked around
the table. “Now, before I uncuff you; I just want you to know that there’s a
sniper with his crosshairs on the door, and that one-way window retracts into
the wall, and there’s four men with MP-5s pointed at you right now.”
Okay, this lady
was starting to get under my skin. What’s worse, I kinda liked it. But there
wasn’t anything I could do; I wasn’t about to start killing local PD.
She uncuffed me,
and then she walked over to the interrogation camera and…unplugged it.
“Devin Thomas, you
are in big trouble.”
Um, what? I just
sat there.
“My name is Maggie,
and I’m the legal eagle who’s been keeping your team out of legal hot water for
the last year. You sir, are a very bad boy.”
Can’t argue with
that. I decided that this increasingly attractive chick was legit, and I let my
guard down.
“So…what’s the
plan?”
“The plan is, you
walk out of here with me, you learn your lesson, and you stop messing with
local cops. Got it?”
“What about after
that? My vote is you, me, Chili’s, 7 PM. Sound good? Awesome.”
She rolled her
eyes. “Let’s just get out of here.”
We walked straight
out of the police station, to the company car.
“We’re going to
the airport, our flight leaves in three hours.” She handed me my ticket. “From
the airport, you’re supposed to take a cab to the Pentagon, where you’ll be
dressed down by Cole Wilson.”
I
nodded. “Great! And after the Secretary of Defense rips me apart, I’ll pick you
up and take you to dinner. Sound good?”
She
looked at me, sizing me up. “…Fine. You pick me up at seven.”
Sweet.
“Hey!”
She looked me in the eyes. “One date. Okay? And we’ll see what happens. Got
it?”
I
smiled. “Yes ma’am.”
Oh, sometimes…I get a good feeling.
EIGHTEEN
MONTHS LATER
“Now
sister, do you take this handsome man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” The
pastor asked.
“Yes
I do.” She looked at me.
“Now
brother, do you take this fine, beautiful, deluxe, quality lady to be your
lawfully wedded wife?”
I
considered breaking his jaw for talking about my wife like that; but I didn’t
think that would look too good on the wedding video. Especially considering
that I’d written my own vows.
“Uh-huh”
“Then
by the power vested in me, by the District
of Columbia and our Lord Jesus Christ, I do pronounce
you man and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”
Oh yes.
“One
date huh?” I whispered.
She
laughed. “Shut up and kiss me.”
Gladly.
