15
NINE
The surprises just kept coming today, didn’t they?
Alex.
Alexei.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked. Da, the world was a big place with over seven billion people, but when you looked at the microcosm of special forces, it really was quite small. Incestuous, even. At times, your old enemy became your new boss. A former Spetsnaz operative could easily find himself hunting pirates off the Somali coast, or playing bodyguard to rich Emiratis, or hired as a mercenary in Syria. Or, it seemed, working as a personal trainer to a vicious British assassin with a taste for donuts.
Alexei looked down at me, confused.
“Do we know each other?”
“We met once, a long time ago. Twenty years.”
I never forgot a face. It was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because two decades later
