A Flock of Ill Omens Read Online Free Page A

okay?” he asked, giving up the play.
    She loved him for his concern. She knew some men could be oblivious.
    “I'm just worried. You don't think Jeff's warning about the shot was anything, do you?”
    “Maybe, maybe not. When do you need yours?”
    “They want it by my next shift. If I don't have it, they'll probably give me forty-eight hours.”
    “So that's a week, right?” He put his arms around her as he crawled into bed next to her and Sarah rested her head on his shoulder.
    “About.”
    “Wait until they make you. We'll have better information then.”
    She hugged him. “That's why I need you. Permission to procrastinate.”
    “And for a little hanky-panky?” he asked.
    She grinned. “Maybe a little panky, anyway…”
     
     
     

1. 4. Matt Jacobs:
    Miami, Florida
    SNAFU Defined
     
    “Fuck!”
    Matt Jacobs wasn't a man to mince words. And he wasn't thrilled to work his ass off, only to have some numbnuts screw it up for him. His time in the military had taught him the definition of SNAFU–Situation normal: all fucked up–but he didn't have to like it. He'd made it to Miami four days ahead of schedule knowing he always had to make up for somebody else's bungle. He was ready to be out of the country for a while and there was a high-paying job to do. He'd be damned if he missed the opportunity.
    The mission was in Venezuela, but they were flying into Trinidad and taking a boat from there. Or that had been the plan before the fucking National Air Safety Board had grounded everybody. Worse, the people who had means to bypass NASB were suddenly all MIA. He'd checked a map, wondering if it was possible to boat the whole way, but it was way too far and fall wasn't known for kind seas.
    He barreled up I-75 in a formerly-military-issue Jeep because he hadn't gotten hold of command on the phone. He'd never seen Eagle Corp run in such a shoddy way, and by the time he took 10W in the Florida panhandle, he was fuming. In Matt's experience, mercenaries normally made the military look like a half-assed Boy Scout troop in efficiency, but every step of this had been botched. In his anger it barely registered how sparse the traffic was.
    It took a few more hours of driving, but finally he pulled into the Eagle Corp headquarters in Pensacola, fit to spit. Not even the decency to return his fucking phone calls.
    His Army fatigues were way too hot, even in November. A sultry breeze came off the Gulf but it didn't cool him. Sweating gave him yet another thing to be pissed about as he slammed his door and strode to the cinderblock building that could have been any warehouse, but instead housed one of the military's most frequently-used contractors.
    Matt scanned his ID for access. When the door opened, not even the air conditioning could hold off the stink of something rotting inside.
    “Jesus! What's wrong with you people? Who died?” he shouted, before covering his mouth with part of his sleeve and going in. He pulled out his weapon with his other hand, the silence giving him chills. Something was wrong.
    Determining what took only as long as approaching the bullet-proof glass and peering into the reception area. The young man manning the booth had slid sideways off his chair. Matt figured, based on his unnatural position that he'd died and then fallen.
    That was disconcerting enough, but the smell suggested it had been a few days and nobody had found him yet, which meant nobody had been here. He tightened his grip on his gun, even though logically the gun was the last thing that would help. Nobody finding this was huge. Catastrophic. At central control, somebody was supposed to be in control .
    He let himself through the main entry into the line of offices and mission rooms. Three more people were lying dead in their offices on sofas or in chairs, suggesting they'd needed to sit or lie down. A lot of blinking phones suggested people had been trying to reach them. It crossed his mind that just being here was marking