Page 4 of Wings
Dex materialized from the shadows near the pool table, full patch member with the easy confidence of someone who'd earned his place years ago. Grey threaded through his beard, and his knuckles bore the scars of settled business.
"Just keeping her ready, brother." I ran a brass brush through the barrel, counting strokes. "Weapon maintenance is—"
"Warrior maintenance, yeah, I heard that speech before." But Dex grinned, settling across from me with the careful movements of a man whose back had seen too many miles. "My squad leader used to say the same thing. Fallujah, '04. You?"
"Helmand, Kandahar. Three tours." I kept my focus on the Glock, wiping down the slide with practiced motions. "You?"
"Two in Iraq, one in the Stan. Marine Corps, Force Recon." He watched me reassemble the weapon with professional interest. "That why you carry the 19? Military habit?"
"Muscle memory." The slide clicked back into place with satisfying precision. "Trained with it, deployed with it. Figured if it kept me alive over there . . ."
"It'll keep you alive here." Dex nodded like I'd passed some test I didn't know I was taking. "Smart thinking. Though the threats here don't usually announce themselves with AK fire."
"No," I agreed, press-checking the reassembled weapon before holstering it. "Here they smile first."
Dex's laugh had edges. "Now you're learning."
As he left, for some reason, my mind flashed back to the skateboarder, and then, my brother.
I wondered where he was crashing these days. Coming down from whatever cocktail kept him vertical through another night of proving his worth to men who saw him as expendable. He'd be chewing his lip raw, pupils dilated, that manic energy that meant he was between fixes.
We'd learned to shoot together at sixteen. Mom worked three jobs that summer—hospital cafeteria, cleaning offices, weekend shifts at the nursing home—just to pay for lessons at Ironridge Tactical. She'd grown up in a rough neighborhood in Denver, understood that her boys needed to know how to protect themselves.
"Discipline and respect for consequences," she'd said, driving us to that first lesson in her ancient Corolla held together with duct tape and industrial strength prayer. "You learn what these can do, you learn to never use them unless you have no choice."
Alex and I had soaked up the instruction differently. I fell in love with the precision, the clear rules, the way following procedure led to predictable results. Put rounds on target by controlling breath, stance, trigger squeeze. Simple. Clean. Reliable.
Alex, on the other hand, adored the power. The way the range master's eyes tracked him with new wariness. The weight of potential violence in his hands. He was naturally gifted—better groups than mine, faster draws, instinctive understanding of angles and movement. But he treated it all like a video game, something to win rather than respect.
"Consequences are for people who get caught," he'd told me after we'd both shot perfect scores on the qualification test. Sixteen years old and already choosing his path.
"Prospect Moreno."
Duke's voice cut through the bar noise like a drill sergeant's. I looked up to find him standing in the chapel doorway, backlit by the fluorescents inside. Thor and Tyson flanked him, their expressions unreadable as carved totems.
"Back in here."
Moreno. Not Wings, the nickname I'd earned through months of prospect work. Not Gabriel, which would suggest familiarity. Just Moreno—military crisp, professionally distant. The kind of name you used for someone you were about to dismiss or promote.
I walked back into the chapel. The door closed behind me with the finality of a round chambering. Time to learn if different was what they needed, or just another word for not enough.
One month.
One month to prove myself.
My apartment squatted above Rosario's Auto Parts like an afterthought, all exposed pipes and windows that rattled when the industrial AC units kicked on. Home sweet home for eight hundred a month, utilities included if you didn't mind the constant mechanical symphony.
I dead-bolted the door and immediately started shedding the day. Prospect cut hung on its designated hook. Boots aligned against the wall. Keys in the ceramic bowl my mother made in some long-ago pottery class, its lopsided shape a reminder that even Maria Moreno wasn't perfect at everything.
The prosthetic came off last. Always last, because once it was off, I was done moving for a while. I collapsed onto my secondhand couch—Army surplus store special that had probably seen action in Desert Storm—and worked the release mechanisms with practiced efficiency.
Sweet Christ, the relief. Like taking off boots after a twenty-mile ruck march. I massaged the residual limb, fingers working around scars that mapped trauma in raised white lines. The stump throbbed in time with my heartbeat, phantom pain crawling up neural pathways that remembered what used to be there.
Duke's words echoed in the empty apartment: "I’ve got one more task for you, Moreno. You nail this, you’re in. No more bullshit. One month. Medical supply runs. Doc will brief you tomorrow. Don't make us regret this chance."
A test disguised as an assignment. Typical Duke, typical Heavy Kings. They didn't hand out patches like participation trophies. You earned your place or you didn't, and if you couldn't handle smuggling medical supplies to folks who needed them, you sure as hell couldn't handle the heavier stuff.
I forced myself up, hopping to the pull-up bar I'd installed in the bedroom doorway. PT didn't care if you were tired, hurt, or swimming in self-doubt. Thirty modified push-ups first, weight balanced on my right leg and arms. My left leg—what remained of it—wanted to phantom-help, muscle memory trying to engage limbs that weren't there.
