Zed Corporation; November 5th

"Alex, you know how the boss secured all these vehicles?" Jake asked as we walked into the small motorpool. I chuckled.

"Who cares? Gavin's throwing around money like no tomorrow. Probably just bribed a few of those stupid communist retards." I replied as I walked over to a row of humvees.

"Sweet american engineering." I cooed as I ran my hand over the hood. Sixteen up armored humvees, didn't look like they'd gotten shot up either. Must have been captured from some national guard base up near Bakersfield… shame the unit's identifiers on the bumper had been painted over.

"Alex!" I spun around to see Gavin walking over dressed in tactical gear for once. I nodded to the boss.

"Ah, Jake's here too. As soon as Duke gets here I'll go ahead and brief you on our target area today." Gavin grinned as he slammed his map on the table. Jake and I exchanged looks, the boss was planning something risky wasn't he?

"Wasn't Duke visiting his son at that hospital on Santa Catalina?" Jake asked. I felt bad for the poor guy, his kid was sick and the doctors couldn't seem to figure it out for the life of them what the cause was. Man shouldered it like a champ, always came into work, never complained.

We didn't have to wait long for the guy to appear, the guy was decked out in gear, couple grenades hanging off his vest along with enough magazines to make us winch at the weight. Man seemed to prefer the soviet AKs for some reason, most of us used M4s some had AR15s instead.

"Now that my team leaders are here we can start going over our plan for our next target." Gavins finger stabbed at a point down the coast about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. Jake whistled.

"Camp Pendleton?" Duke quietly read the name.

"The Soviets haven't cleared it yet, we'll be able to harvest a shit load of crystals and get our hands on some good military gear while we're at it." Gavin grinned.

"Risky boss, rumor has it that area is swarming with undead, worse than even the city center was." I warned him.

"That's why I went out and got some new equipment… a couple LMGs, a handful of RPGs, and a couple MT-LBs… not as much as I wanted, but enough for us to get a good harvest at least. Besides, we wait till the military starts clearing it out. There won't be a quarter of the crystals left and any equipment will be thrown in a government Soviet stockpile." I nodded, the boss was making a good point, the military was terrible about harvesting the crystals and tended to destroy about half of them in their battles with the undead.

"What's the plan?" Duke asked, glancing at all the new guns that had been hired on over the last few ops.

"Simple really, we're going to make our temporary camp here, at the Naval hospital… probably going to be a lot of mutants in the area… so we'll clear it over the next week or so. We'll divide the company into four groups, rotate one out once we've gathered enough crystals and loot to sell, then rotate back in." Gavin explained.

"I was able to convince those damn military assholes to part with five of those MT-LBs, one will become a mobile command center, the others… armored cargo vehicles. Once we fill two we send them back, just filling both of those with crystals should net us about half a mil each trip."

I grinned, looking at the other two. That was a lot of money… This could be a nice trip. Mutants could be a bit of a pain… but who cares, we'll be rich in no time.

"How are we splitting the agents up then?" I asked the boss

"As equal as we can get them… we're going to have to do a lot of field modifications once we get to the hospital, that'll be a future problem though. For now each of us is going to be a team leader."

"I'll be team A. Alex, you'll be team B, Jake team C. And Duke will be team D."

"Whats that going to look like for vehicles?" Duke asked.

"Well for getting down there a lot of the guys are going to be shoved inside the MT-LBs, otherwise we are splitting the humvees, we have twelve armored and sixteen unarmored." Gavin mused for a moment.

"So three armored and four standards for each team." Jake interceded.

Gavin nodded. "Go ahead and choose who will be part of your team, I want to get on the road within the hour… we'll need to stop by the fuel depot and fill our gas cans before we go…" Gavin instructed as we started pointing to the guys and pointing them towards some vics. I grabbed my speaker, walking over to one of the un armored humvees, sliding into the driver's seat as my team started crowding around me.

"Alright guys, boss has a long term, risky venture planned. Should get us a lot of money though." I grinned as I looked at the team. About sixty guys all told.

"It's gonna be dangerous. So keep your wits about you… once we send our first shipment back we're gonna start rotating from our camp… expect to be operating in the area for a while." I said.

"Where are we going Alex?" one of the new guys asked as I lit a cigarette.

"Camp Pendleton."