New Fiction – the Detachment

It’s weird, most of my writing life I’ve focused on fantasy, or – more recently – sword noir. These days, I struggle when I am writing fantasy. I have a hard time finding a voice in which to write. What I seem to have no problem writing is modern, especially modern “thriller” or military action.

Below is the opening to the latest story on which I am working. The title right now is “the Detachment,” for reasons that may seem obvious.

Hope it sounds cool.
THE DETACHMENT

There were units that did close personal protection. They did it much better than the Detachment. Some asshole in Ottawa heard of it, heard it was high-speed and low drag. That asshole heard about its time in Africa. So that asshole said he wanted the Detachment to do his CPP when he went to the capital city of the newest country in the world.

Archer had done his time in Africa. Everyone on the team had done their time in Africa. They knew the city, sure. They knew the city and they knew the country. It wasn’t that they couldn’t do the job. It was that there were people who did the job better, this particular job. This wasn’t the Detachment’s job. This wasn’t even CANSOFCOM’s job, though they would do it if the profile were high enough and if they didn’t trust the CPP assigned. The problem was – in Archer’s mind – that no one asked if the Detachment could do this. No one asked if the Detachment would do this. Some asshole with connections, some asshole who sat on the security committee, some asshole who knew enough to know enough and that’s about it – that asshole took the Detachment from the job they did well and dropped them into a job they didn’t do well.

They could do the job. Like a bunch of other teams, they had done the training. They had done training with the RCMP, they had done training with the Secret Service, they had done training with pretty much every mother-fucker who did CPP, but that didn’t mean they were the best choice for the job. There were plenty of other teams who could do it better. There were plenty of other teams who focused on it. But some asshole wanted a high value asset to guard his ass – and yes, in cases like this, it always seemed to be a dude.