The rest of that day was my getting my team structured and organized. I had to declare combat roles, put a uniform together and all kinds of other things. Where roles were concerned, Nina was our Grenadier, Jayden was our sniper, Arnett and I were riflemen and Mako was our Tech Expert. I kept our uniform's light and simple, white T-shirts, blue jeans, Red River combat boots, Magpul Knee and Elbow pads and sunglasses, plus our vests. There was a lot of other things I had to do, but most of that was just paper work, as well as talking to a few of Venom's founder's, who revealed some pretty...interesting things about the project. Like the fact that it wasn't government funded and that Morningstar didn't have to answer to anyone because he was as High as the Venom Broad went and had the final say in everything, and the very, tiny small fact that Mercury was his son. It's all starting to make sense now. Maybe that's why we were treated so well, the food was so good and the barracks were so nice. Morningstar wanted to make sure we all still had the chance to live a life that had some semblance of normalcy. Over the next two days, nothing much happened around 29. Mercury, Nina and I spent most of our time at the range, sometimes seriously practicing, other times checking claymores and C4 out of the armory and being ridiculously stupid with Carlos, or looking around for different ways to employ them, make them more efficient. When I wasn't screwing around with them, I was in the garage working on my Civic. It had felt really neutered since track week, so you know what? Supercharger. I was putting a supercharger on the Civic. Turbo wasn't good enough, super alone wasn't good enough, so I went with both. Now normally with a setup like that, you have to run race gas, but race gas is annoying and hard to find in California so what I did was set up a dual tank fuel system. I would fill up one tank with pump gas and the other with Isopropyl alcohol, like what you get at CVS or at Walmart. And the combination of the two, once you get over a certain amount of boost, the alcohol kicks in and it's basically an E-85 set up on the fly. Cool right? Of course it is.

A couple of days after the Sim, My team and I were at the mess hall when Morningstar came to get us, saying he had a mission.

"What is it?", Nina asked.

"I'm sending you to Pakistan", Morningstar said, "the job is to recover a local elder who has information on the Taliban, supposedly bases and outposts in the area."

Morningstar rolled out a map of the town. It was about what I'd say was the size of Sweeney, the town where I used to go to school at. At the center of the town was what my guess was an old palace with a giant wall around it, there was only one gap in the wall that I could see. Morningstar traced a path through the village with a pencil.

"Once your in the city, you'll link up with a few of Carlos' guys who've been posing as local Taliban, watch for blue flares and a thrown together check point, that's where they'll be. Listen to me kids", Morningstar said lowering his voice, "this town is populated and occupied by Taliban forces who are quite cozy with the locals, if you're seen, the civilians are sure to Alert the enemy fighters. Being a human in that situation would be bad enough, but if you get caught, only God knows what they'd do to you."

"In other words were walking right into a hornet's nest", I sighed, 'wonderful."

"The word stealth doesn't mean anything to you does it?", Morningstar asked, "your team's name is Shadow, yet I bet not one of you has a suppressor for any one of your weapons."

"Just the S-30", I said.

"I have one for my M4", Nina said.

"I got one for both my guns", Jayden said.

"Just my Sidearm", Arnett said.

"I don't like suppressors", Mako said, "you lose range and stopping power."

"This isn't call of duty Mako", Nina said, "suppressors haven't decreased a weapons ballistic abilities since the late 60's."

Mako didn't answer her.

"So when are we leaving?", I asked.

"In 20 minutes", Morningstar said, "as soon as the C-260 gets here from the air port."

"A 260?", I asked, "isn't that a bit much?"

"What can I say?", Morningstar shrugged, "you talked to the Broad, those people got more money than they know what to do with."

Nina laughed, "that is true...hell one of those guys had a gold plated Ferrari."

I rubbed the side of my head.

"Don't ever mention gold plated Sports Cars around Ace", Mako laughed, 'Haven't you learned that by now?"

"Who the fuck gold plates a 75 grand sports car?", I asked, "gold is heavy shit, he doubled the weight of that car."

"His money, his car", Jayden said as we left Morningstar's office and headed for the Armory. Once there, we grabbed our weapons, ammo and uniforms. I also checked out 4 packs of C4 and 5 claymores as well a few Extra magazines for the S-30 because I didn't want to suppress the 220. We waited outside the armory for about 9 minutes before the C-260 touched down on the runway. It was a huge, 4 propeller engined black winged craft that was about 400 feet long, 50 feet tall and had a wingspan of 300 feet. The interior was composed of tan plastic and carpet and up front where the pilot was were two, Recaro Bucket seats, a single steering wheel that seemed to be from a Bugatti Veyron, and a very simple dash with only a few gauges and switches. The crew was rather small, four people, two of witch were Pilots and two of witch were mechanics.

"You guys Shadow team right?", the pilot asked.

"Yeah", Jayden said, "that's us."

"Which one of you is Ace?", he asked.

'I am", I said,

"When the mission is completed you return to the same airfield that we land at", the pilot said, "Morningstar's orders. Until then, we have a sixteen hour fly to Pakistan, so I suggest you get settled in."

The pilot went back to his seat and started the plane. My friends and I put our gear up in a few of the containers that were in plastic covers above the living area. The jet itself was a little how I pictured Air force one. In the back of the Jet was a tan couch with a glass and wood coffee table bolted to the floor. On each side of the plane as a table that could seat four and still have room for the center walk way. The walls were lined with about 40 or so windows that let quite a bit of sunlight in, almost overpowering the LED bar that ran the full length of the ceiling.

"This is a pretty cool Jet", Nina said sitting next to me.

"Reminds me of the 4 door Veyron saw on Bugatti's website", I said, "it had all kinds of cool stuff in it and still had a top speed of 240 miles an hour, and this was for a car that weighed 6,744 pounds."

"Damn", Mako said, "that sounds heavy for Pick up."

"It is", I said, "but the Veyron is more a piece of Art than a sports car. The car that I designed to dethrone the Veyron weighed 3,144, but most of that weight was cooling systems and the engine itself."

"You designed a car?", Nina asked.

"More or less", I said, "it was just a concept that never even got sketched up."

"What did it have?", Jayden asked.

'Twin Hypercharged W-24", I said, "makes 7,662 All Wheel Horsepower and theoretically would do 516.5 miles an hour. It was weird because, you had this car that had a Supra interior, the doors, head and taillights, the wing, the wheels, all of that was from the supra, yet it looks like a Supra fucked a Lambo and produced that."

"Mid engined Supra", Nina said leaning into me, "every Tuner geeks dream."

"Every car guys dream", I smiled at her.

"Muscle car people are a different breed than Tuner guys", Nina said, "for me, Mid engine Corvette, only a few people got to buy those, but that's my dream car."

"You guys ask for too much", Jayden laughed, "my dream car was a low slung convertible with a loud exhaust and a metal interior."

"Mine was a BMW i8 with AWD, an AC motor and solar panels on the roof", Mako said, "that is such a badass Electric car."

"Mine was a 68 Challenger like the one in the movie Spirit GT", Arnett said.

"You've seen that movie?", I asked.

"Yup", She smiled, "the school on the reserve showed it. My favorite part was when that Ford Focus with 1,251 Front wheel horsepower pulled up to the starting line and Ricky freaked out because he was sure his Challenger didn't stand a chance."

'No spoilers on if he wins or not", I said, "I wanna watch it for myself."

Jayden smiled, "I've seen that movie too. I liked the part where Ricky drove the Challenger for the first time and kept stalling it out because he couldn't shift in time."

"Ah learning to drive stick", Nina said leaning up against me, 'I remember those days."

"Downshifting killed me every time", I said, "I could upshift fine thanks to my Dad's old 240, but downshifting ate the tranny in my Civic."

"I hated driving those manuals", Jayden said, "I preferred the automatic in the rig."

"Fuck that", Nina said, "Manuals are more fun and there more reliable. Manuals can't glitch and there stronger than automatics."

"That's a disputable claim", Mako said, "the toque converter in automatics doesn't slip and the faster it spins, the more power the engine puts to the wheels."

"How the fuck do you know?", I asked, "You don't know shit about cars."

"I don't", Mako smiled, "but if a computer chip makes it work I'm all over it. Unlike you Ace, I don't believe that every single silicon chip on this planet wants to become a self aware AI and take over the world."

"Now I've never said that computers were a bad thing", I said, "what scares me are GPS's they can dump from a crop duster that you can't see and chips they put in your head to replace passwords that could have C4 or some Virus in them. Anyone could kill you at any time with that shit."

"You know we probably got chips in us", Mako said.

"I hope not", I said, "if I find it I'll cut it out."

"No you won't", Mako said.

"Why wouldn't I?", I asked.

'Because if they were smart they'd put it somewhere that you'd never go with a knife if you found it", Mako said.

"Thanks for that image", Nina sighed, "Seesh and I thought the physical was bad."

"That was horrible", Arnett said, "what was that gel they used?"

"Who fuckin knows?", I asked, "that shit burnt. Anyway guys, we should probably get some sleep."

"Yeah", Jayden said leaning back, "seems like a good idea."