Grunt Work

I Got My Own Team

San Francisco is really fucking weird.

'This mission is really fucking weird,' said Katya.

'I'll say,' I agreed, wondering if she could read minds. I don't remember her swearing all that much in training, so she might have picked that up from me.

'Too fucking right,' said Johnnie around his mouthful of food.

'We're supposed to be here, casing out all these big tech companies to rob from. But they just give us stuff? It's just so weird.'

'Yeah, no,' I said, agreeing, though to be honest that wasn't what I found weird. It looked nothing like Big Hero 6. I mean, the red bridge was there. The hilly roads were there. But everything else seemed off about it. I tucked into my ice cream, looking at my crew, feeling a bit of a thrill at the thought. I have a crew! Okay technically they're just a temporary thing, not completely, 100% legalised mine. But for now they're my crew and I was really happy with them.

'Where do we go next?' Manish asked. He was a small, wiry, unassuming looking Nepalese man. Like me he was an ex-soldier, serving in the Royal Gurkha Rifles in the British army. He was pretty easy going, and I liked how we could quickly and easily talk to each other on this mission.

I looked through the list on my tablet. 'Next up is Tesla. The Kaptain wants us to take a closer look at this rocket technology, and also get an upgrade on his car.'

'Oh man, I love Tesla,' said Theo, the last man on my team. Unlike the others - Katya from Russia, Johnnie from Scotland, Manish from Nepal - Theo was another Kiwi. 'Do you think we can get a tour?'

'We're not here to tour, Theo,' Katya said to him harshly. 'We're supposed to be going in under the radar. Take a look around and then report back. That's it.'

'That sounds like a tour to me.'

'Me too,' I pointed out.

'We're not going on a tour,' she said crossly. 'That implies that they know we're there. I know the other companies found us out, but that's not happening again. We're going to be stealthy. We're not even go in through the front door.'

We went in through the front door and signed up for the tour.

I did try looking for a back entrance and all, but then I saw tourists going in and I figured we could just join them, so we did. It was easier anyway, and once we got inside it was easy enough to slip away from the group and have a poke around, after we roughed up a few employees for their IDs.

'We shouldn't be assaulting the common workers,' Katya protested.

'I know it's a bit dodgy,' I said, 'but we need their badges.'

'But it's not like how it is in New Zealand,' she continued. 'If we break things, it costs a lot to get fixed in their hospitals hear. Did you know it costs a thousand dollars just to get an ambulance?'

'Tae fuck?' Johnnie yelled a little too loudly. 'The fuck do these people think they're doing, robbing from the wounded like that?'

'Exactly my point,' Katya nodded. 'Can we take it easy on them? They look pretty stressed as it is.'

'What about this Musk guy?' Manish asked. 'Can we rough him up? He sounds rich.'

'No!' Theo protested.

'Yeah, sure, why not,' the rest of us said.

Theo hmphed. 'Can I at least get his autography first?'

'We can do that,' I promised.