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Everyone stared at Scout.

“Get me Support,” Moms said to Kirk.

“You’re on,” Kirk replied after tapping his PNR.

“Support. We’re going to need a bunch of baby diapers. And tampons. Enough to absorb”—she looked at Doc—“how many gallons?”

Doc did some quick mental calculations and supplied the number.

“Roger,” Support responded. “Diapers and tampons.”

“I’m gonna need a lot more flamers,” Roland said, smiling at the thought.

Moms clicked off the radio and smiled bitterly. “I remember the code line in the Special Forces resupply report for tampons. They used that as my nickname in the Q-Course.”

“They were assholes,” Roland said.

“Yeah,” Scout threw in. “Assholes.”

CHAPTER 23

Back at the Winslows’, everyone was shedding their vests, armor, and outer clothes, which were saturated with a mixture of water and soot from flamed wet tampons and diapers. Roland had gone through fourteen flamers, another record in the secret history of the Nightstalkers. They’d dashed to the pool in relays, tossing in cases of diapers and tampons, while Roland flamed the surface.

The Firefly had fought back. Kelsey, cowering behind a lawn chair, had suffered a broken arm, and Support had taken him away afterward for medical treatment. Kirk, keeping his record intact, had suffered a dislocated shoulder when a tentacle grabbed his hand and tried to drag him into the flaming pool. He’d simply walked over to the wall of the house and slammed it back into the socket.

The Firefly had dissipated when they were down to three feet of water left and their copious supply of diapers, tampons, and napalm was running dangerously low.

“Maybe you need to go home, Scout?” Moms said as she noted the team in a state of half-undress.

“You know how to use the washers and dryers?” Scout asked. “They have one on every floor.”

“Why?” Nada asked.

“You think anyone around here carries laundry up the stairs?” Scout said.

“I doubt anyone who lives here carries their laundry anywhere,” Moms said.

From the room off the hallway from the garage they heard Roland cursing. “Anyone know how to turn this thing on?”

“See?” Scout said.

“Everyone get some pants on,” Moms ordered, “while the kid dries our cammies.”

The guys trooped upstairs while Moms and Scout gathered clothes off the floor.

“Thanks,” Moms said as she removed magazines from a sopping combat vest, along with a radio, grenades, and other assorted goodies.

Scout looked over at her in surprise. “For what?”

“That was a good idea. More importantly, it worked and no one got killed.”

Scout shrugged. “I just put what the guy was saying together.”

“I know,” Moms said, “but you did it quick. That’s important. That’s a talent.”

Scout flushed. “You should see me ride. Now that, I’m talented at.”

“I’d like to someday,” Moms said.

The conversation was over as the team came back down dressed in their civvies, with bundles of sopping camouflage fatigues in their hands. Scout dispatched them to all three floors with orders to put them in the washers. Then she went from floor to floor, loading each machine with detergent and softener and setting them correctly.

The team sat around on leather sofas while their clothes began to whirl. A loud clanking sound came from the upstairs laundry.

“Eagle,” Moms said. “Where’s your Mark-23?”

“Just great,” Roland muttered and he went upstairs with Scout and retrieved the wet gun from the washer. He sat down with it and ejected the magazine.

“Can you show me how to take it apart?” Scout asked, startling Roland.

“Sure.”

So while the big guy and the little girl took a large-caliber pistol apart, the rest of the team decompressed. Roland didn’t even realize he was rubbing his fungus-covered feet along a carpet that cost more than the house he grew up in. Doc was eyeing the bourbon in the crystal decanter, but decided he’d had enough of liquids that could kill him for the day. Kirk was looking at a photo that had been in his pocket and gotten soaked, setting it so it would dry but not be seen by the rest of the team. Eagle was upstairs on over-watch. Nada had taken out his machete to sharpen it, but realized he hadn’t used it in the Great Water Battle, as they had decided to name it on the way back, so he put it on the coffee table that cost as much as his MK-23 pistol. Moms was typing up her after-action report.

Roland had finished taking apart Eagle’s gun and then he walked Scout through the steps. Moms watched them, torn between pride and disapproval. When Scout did it correctly, on the first try, the girl did a flip, then went to a handstand in the center of the room on top of the coffee table next to Nada’s machete.

“I’ll give you a dollar to stop doing that,” Moms said, feeling bad because she knew the real reason it bothered her was Scout’s exuberance and energy. Moms couldn’t remember ever feeling that way.

Scout was still on her hands and looked at Moms. “Do you mean four quarters or a hundred bucks?”

Roland looked up from the gun, stunned. “She’s a gambler. That’s what they call a hundred bucks.”

Scout flipped and stood upright. “No. I don’t gamble, but Doctor Carruthers, two blocks over, is a bookie. And his son, Tad, was my BF, for a while. And I think he was my BF because his dad was so interesting and he let me listen as he took bets. I like to listen.”

“Of course you do,” Moms said, running a hand through Scout’s damp hair, avoiding her burn from the killer curler. “Four quarters. On my tab.”

Scout sat down, yoga style, on the plush rug being invaded by Roland’s fungus ten feet away. “Sure, but there’s a vig on the tab.” Then to no one and everyone she began speaking, the words rushing forth. “Did you know the term vig comes from vigorish, which is how they supposedly treated you when you owed money? Broke your knees with vigor?”

“No, I didn’t,” Nada said, with a warning look at the others, and they all realized what he meant. Scout was finally coming down off the action by talking and everyone had a different way of doing it.

“But Doctor Carruthers said that was mostly movie BS, because how’s someone going to pay you if they got broken knees? He said the worst thing you can do to a degenerate gambler is cut them off from gambling. Which makes sense, right?”

“Right,” Nada said.

Scout looked at Kirk, who was looking at the drying picture. “How’s your shoulder?”

Kirk looked up, startled, his mind 990 miles away in Parthenon, Arkansas. “Huh?”

“Your shoulder?” Scout repeated.

“Oh.” Kirk rotated it with a wince. “It works.”

Scout nodded toward the picture. “Girlfriend?”

Everyone on the team went still, because no one ever asked personal questions.

“My kin,” Kirk said.

“You guys don’t seem like you have families,” Scout said. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

Kirk didn’t seem to notice the rest of the team, only Scout. “My older sister, Dee. Two younger brothers and little Becca. She’s the baby of the family. Just turned six.”

“I wish I had a brother,” Scout said. “A sister, maybe not. We’d probably fight.”

“Right,” Roland said. “You not getting along with someone.”

A bunch of dings started going off and Scout jumped up. “Washer to dryer. I’ll take care of it.” She ran up the closest set of stairs, not the ones Roland had taken.

Moms looked at her exhausted team. “We’ve got two Fireflies left. We were lucky we had Scout on this one. That stupid Acme would have blown us all up.”