The men had earpieces, but they weren’t made for smaller ears, nor was I familiar with using them. Besides, as Luke was fond of telling me, my job was to stay near him. Stay near Luke. Boy, had he drilled that into my head. Stay near Luke, and if something went wrong, stay near Major. I suppose the other guys came next in the “stay near” directive. But if things got that bad, I was probably fucked anyway. That part Luke hadn’t said, but it had been in the grim set of his mouth, the veiled look in his eyes when he’d asked me one more time to stay back. He couldn’t have made me. I was tired of running. Like Marguerite had said, I ended up hurt either way. At least this time, I had a shot. Make it count. Luke and Major were stuck with me, while the other two men circled around. There were several parts of the plan referred to as redundancy, and I chose not to overanalyze situations where we might need that. I would be fine, and more importantly, Luke would be fine. One day this would all just be a funny story that we never, ever told anyone.
