The Profession

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Book: Read The Profession for Free Online
Authors: Steven Pressfield
I tell him that.
    “With your permission,” he says, “I’m buying you out.”
    Salter indicates Chris, Chutes, Q, and the others. He asks if I’m happy with my team.
    “The best there is.”
    “Acquire their contracts too,” he instructs his aide.
    Salter takes the locking briefcase from the ADC.
    “Gent, I’ve got an assignment for you if you’ll take it.”
    He hands me the case. I am to deliver it to a certain individual whom I know and about whose location “outside of theater” theaide will provide particulars and arrange all transport, cover, and compensation. I will complete the assignment as discreetly and expeditiously as possible, then turn around and get back to Salter in person as fast as I can. “After that,” the general says, “I’ve got an important job for you and your team.”
    He glances to Hayward but says nothing. Chris listens; the others look on from their vehicles. Salter apologizes that he can’t tell us more. He reminds us that our position, compensation-wise, is pretty cozy right now. We can play out the tail end of this campaign and fly home, each of us, with a quarter mill in the bank.
    “This new job will triple that,” Salter says. “But you may come back missing your ass.”
    “With respect, sir,” says Chris. “My ass will take the money.”
    Salter regards me. “Will you go where I send you, Gent?”
    I don’t give a damn about the money. The mission is strictly secondary. What counts to me is the chance to fight alongside Chris and Chutes and the others. And the opportunity to serve again under Salter.
    “Sir,” I say, “I’ll fly to hell if you tell me to.”

4

CHAOS IN THE KINGDOM
    I LAND AT AMMAN, JORDAN , at 1030 local, 20 August 2032, bound for Inverness, Scotland—having flown out of Kuwait City an hour and fifty minutes earlier on a private jet (no other passengers) leased to Force Insertion. Queen Alia airport is bedlam. Status boards read
    FLIGHT CANCELLED
FLIGHT CANCELLED
FLIGHT CANCELLED
    Loudspeakers broadcast in English, Chinese, and Arabic, as Asian and Middle Eastern families and businessmen crisscross the floor, pushing loads of luggage atop carts, or camping disconsolately in recesses and alcoves. Even though I’m flying privately, Security has required me to deplane; I have been searched three times and interviewed twice. I wait with everyone else in the main terminal.
    My assignment from Salter is to deliver the briefcase to Maggie Cole—Margaret Rucker Cole, the former first lady, widow of the late president of the United States, Jack Cole. Mrs. Cole is staghunting in the highlands of Scotland. The plane will clear regional security here and continue on to Inverness.
    In the terminal, TV news covers only two subjects—chaos in the Middle East and plummeting markets around the globe. Holo stalls broadcast bulletins and updates on the attempted coup in Saudi Arabia. The rising has been put down, say the Iranian news agencies FARS and IRNA, by mercenary troops commanded by Gen. James Salter and in the employ of the Saudi royal family. Al-Jazeera is reporting the exact opposite: Salter’s troops, paid by sources unknown but suspected to be a cabal of young and disaffected princes, has overthrown the House of Saud. No one knows which report is true, if either. I certainly don’t. What seems to be factual, at least according to Trump/CNN, Tass, and Ariel Caplan, the female combat correspondent from Agence France-Presse, is that chaos in the kingdom has touched off a regional territorial free-for-all. Russian and Turkish troops are clashing in the Caspian Basin; Iranian armored units, supported by the satellite and drone power of their Chinese allies, have emerged from their enclaves in Tehran and are sweeping south and west (the fore-wash of this wave is what swept me and my team out of Nazirabad), attempting to recapture the oil and gas fields that had been stolen from them, in their view, after the second Iraq-Iran war, by Lukoil, BP,

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