Lobo Malo

Prologue

Roger Wanderley grinned as cheers erupted in the Base of Operations when he and the other Division agents made their way through the UV lights and into the foyer. It was hard not to feel the elation of the people who'd just learned of the demise of Charles Bliss and the effective end of the Last Man Battalion. Things weren't going back to the way they were, but the groundwork for a new beginning had been finally established. Even the base's resident misanthrope, Paul Rhodes, couldn't deny the eventual effect of the LMB's defeat on the morale of the JTF personnel and the civilians staying in the shelter. Well, he might, Wanderley thought, his grin briefly taking on a wintry cast. That man would complain about being hanged with a golden rope.

He approached Faye Lau and braced briefly to attention. "Welcome back, agent," she said, smiling back at him. "Good work at the UN. With Bliss out of the picture, we're finally on top of things. Certainly better than when we first got here." Her hand unconsciously came up, touching the dressing still wrapped around her head.

"At this rate, we might all be home by next Christmas," Wanderley quipped.

"It'd be good to go home. But this," said Lau, looking over at the Christmas tree set up in the shelter area, seeing New Yorkers enjoying each other's company despite the dire circumstances which brought them there, "this isn't too bad."

"Where's Lobo?"

"Ryckmen? He and Urquidez are back in the armory."

Wanderley blinked in surprise. "What're they doing back there? There a fight brewing I don't know about?"

"You'll have to ask them. But step lightly. He looked a little focused."

"Like how focused?" Wanderley's weeks with Lowell Ryckmen thus far had given him a much more nuanced appreciation for the word since first dropping on to Manhattan.

"Thousand yard stare focused."

Wanderley shuddered. He'd seen the results of Ryckmen's thousand yard focus. It was too messy to be considered clinical and too neat to be considered butchery. "Consider me warned." He left Lau, stopping briefly to receive Roy Benitez's congratulations in person, then continued into the armory. As he approached, he heard the distinctive clicking of ammunition being fed into magazines and the muffled rattling of grenades as they shifted in their cases.

Lowell Ryckmen sat on the edge of a heavy duty workbench as he pushed 7.62mm NATO rounds into a box magazine, four of them already filled and lined up next to each other. Ryckmen's swarthy, windburned complexion and craggy features gave no indication of his mood. But the metronome steadiness of his fingers and the flat light in his eyes told Wanderley that he was more than just angry. Wanderley wasn't sure he'd ever seen the marksman so elementally enraged. He felt his mouth going a little dry, hoping that Ryckmen wasn't angry at him. "Missed the fireworks, Lobo," he said quietly. "It was like a shooting gallery in there. You would have had fun."

"I could drill LMB skulls with ballistic tip boattails every day for a year, and it would never start being fun," Ryckmen growled softly, not even glancing at Wanderley. He looked over at the woman sorting through the grenades. "Lena, can you pull a couple of flashbangs and some frags for me?"

"How many frags, do you think?" Urquidez asked, her faint Puerto Rican accent oddly musical in contrast to Ryckmen's flat Midwestern tone.

"Four, I'd say. If somebody can't take the hint after that many, I'm clearly doing something wrong." He looked up at Wanderley, a chilly expression locked on his face. "I expected you'd be basking in the glow of your adoring public, Wonder Boy." The acid tone Wanderley couldn't ever seem to escape when he talked with Ryckmen seemed extra-concentrated now. "What? No head left to mount on the wall of the den?"