Free Secondary Targets by Sandra Edwards Page B

position—one they’d subsequently turned down—with an elite military-type government agency...one that doesn’t exist under any branch of the United States Government...you tend to take notice.”
    “Just how many times have you run across this?” Eric wasn’t laughing anymore. His face had become dreadfully sober.
    “Every time somebody said they’d been framed, they were first approached with a clandestine proposal to join some mysterious organization.” Marcus’s mind teetered on the edge of uncertainty. What sane person believed the bill of goods he was trying to sell?
    “Huh?” A faint thread of hysteria cracked in Grace’s voice as she placed her glass of orange juice back on the table. Her eyes had a strange glare in them as her attention bounced between Eric and Marcus.
    The girl was clearly spooked, but Marcus sensed there was more going on inside her head that had nothing to do with the General’s disappearance.
    “Spike teams,” Eric said, before Marcus had a chance to delve too deep into what might be troubling Grace. “Hatchet forces.”
    “Close. Close.” Marcus nodded perfunctorily. “Just not quite so universally known. And a bit more clandestine.”
    “So, they work pretty much under the same pretense as our good friends in the Army?” Eric posed the question, but judging by his perceptive expression understanding had awoken in him. “But with a lot less scruples,” he added, confirming Marcus’s suspicions.
    “You’re getting there now,” Marcus said, almost laughing. To see that he and Eric still had the ability to anticipate each other’s thoughts was refreshing. “They take what they want. No matter the costs. And they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.”
    Playing with the scrambled eggs on his plate, Eric asked, “No rules, huh?” His light tone melted some of the tension that had started brewing when Marcus received Eric’s phone call yesterday.
    “Just don’t get caught,” Marcus said, opting to drive the mood in an informal direction. Finally, somebody had found a way to ease the tension and he had no plans to thwart the effort.
    “Wait a minute...” Grace’s objection invaded their repartee as she waved her fork elaborately in the air. “Isn’t that the kind of shit you guys live for?”
    “Typically,” Eric said, as if he really knew the topic. Marcus doubted it. If Eric was that knowledgeable on the subject, he wouldn’t have come looking for Marcus.
    Time to shed some light. “But not when we have to be reinvented as a person.”
    “Maybe you should just go ahead and spell it out for me,” Grace said with the dejected look of surrender, and laid her fork across the center of her far-from-empty plate.
    “Well...” Marcus glanced at Eric. Who better to use for show-n-tell? “If Eric here decides to join our secret military group...at that point, Eric Wayne no longer exists. He gets a new identity and is forever cut off from his former life.”
    “And if I say, no...” Eric said with a grand air and reached for his cup of steaming coffee. “I find myself in some serious shit.” As he sipped the coffee, Marcus doubted Eric was truly aware of his accuracy.
    “Precisely.” Marcus’s zeal poured out in a full-throated roar. “It’s then that he’s accused of some crime or another that’ll buy him twenty-to-life in Leavenworth.”
    “Why?” she asked with a long, exhausted sigh and reached for her fork.
    “Because...” Marcus said as Grace poked at the mixed fruit, mostly melons, on her plate. “If you say no, you have to be neutralized.” He couldn’t begin to appreciate this reasoning, but he understood it. “These types of operations depend upon secrecy and no one but its own agents knowing it exists. Well, no one credible anyway.” The entire concept was clever, and Marcus had to laugh at the irony. “And who’s going to believe Eric Wayne’s accusations if he’s doing time in Leavenworth?”
    “So what you’re