Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shaun stopped outside the briefing room. With the others out on the retrieval mission, he hoped he would finally have the opportunity to send a message or grab a phone. He shifted the coffee, balancing both mugs in one hand, and knocked.
“Come in.” Max’s yelled response had him pushing open the door.
Now that he wasn’t distracted by the picture of the man who had given him to ISIS, Shaun could see that the room was similar to the war-room back home.
A massive wall of screens lined one wall.
Max stood in the center of the floor with a headset on as he spoke to Noble.
Cubicles lined each side of the room with an agent at almost every desk, and Shaun figured they were either gathering intel or manning an operation as the intel came in.
At least that was what happened with his team, although on a smaller scale.
“TOC, this is Eagle.” Noble’s voice had Shaun scanning the screens.
He watched the footage from the body cameras showing Red Squadron on the edge of a meadow surrounded by forest. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a familiar sight.
A group of six men approached the same meadow from the opposite side.
Max must have seen them at the same time because he cut Noble off. “Eagle, be advised, you’ve got half a dozen hostiles approaching at speed from the northeast.”
Shaun watched as Zenko’s team faded into the grass and the new team approached the meadow.
His team. Shaun heaved a sigh of relief as he scrutinized their body shapes, picking out men he knew as easily as he knew his own reflection.
Grif was there, too, so there was some hope of keeping Rock from losing it then.
He watched the Ghosts advance into the long grass.
Oh shit, was Rock standing on Zenko? If not, he was damn fucking close. Shaun held his breath for what seemed like hours until he heard the familiar order that sent a shiver down his spine.
“Bogadh amach, is bosca marú é seo.” Pride warred with humor inside him.
Zenko had managed to stay off the radar of one of the best hunters Shaun had ever known, and somehow Rock had missed seeing Zenko right under his fucking boots.
Oh, his commander was going to be so pissed.
Maybe he should beg Max for a copy of the footage as proof.
Shaun refused to look at why he was so proud of Zenko for avoiding the famous Garrett ‘Rock’ Rockwell’s Spidey senses.
Right this second, it probably shouldn’t matter as much as the fact that his team was coming for him.
That they were in a different country didn’t matter.
Based on the map in the top right corner of the screen, the Ghosts were most likely tracking the people who had taken him to the cave Zenko had rescued him from.
“TOC, this is Eagle.” Noble’s call had Shaun turning back to the video feed from the team’s body cameras.
“TOC, go ahead, Eagle,” Max answered immediately.
“Did you get any of their faces, or anything off their uniforms to identify our mystery team?”
“Eagle, all I could see was grass, a boot, and someone’s ass,” Max responded. “No identifying marks that I could see. We picked up the order on one of the cameras, and we’re running it through voice recognition software now.”
“You sure about that, TOC?” Shaun’s lips quirked up when Zenko interjected, “You’ve seen a lot of ass.
” Shaun wasn’t too worried about them finding Rock’s voice on any system, although he had been doing a lot of flying for that Delta Force-turned-country-singer former teammate of Grif’s.
At most, all that should show up would be communications with flight towers around the globe.
That would make these guys crazy trying to figure out how a pilot for a country star’s voice was a match for what essentially looked like a Black Ops team leader or a merc.
Shaun folded his lips together to stop himself from laughing out loud when Max gave the screens his middle finger as he searched the drone footage tracking Rock and his team.
“They’ve continued south, Eagle,” Max informed Noble. “Your route ahead is clear to the target location, less than two klicks.”
Max kept his attention on the screens, tracking Noble and his team as they made their way to the target zone while occasionally checking the drone footage to see where Rock’s team was. Shaun stepped closer and handed him the mug of coffee.
Damn it, do these people seriously have no freaking cell phones? Everything is connected to a wire.
Shaun casually strolled around the room as if he was taking everything in, and he was.
Just from an operative’s point of view. Noble would be pissed when he figured out that Shaun wasn’t any old truck driver Zenko had rescued and brought to their home base.
This was going to turn into either a pissing match between Rock and Noble or they would get on like a house on fire, and there was no telling which way it would go.
Shaun listened to the exchange between Max and Noble about the weapons cache while Max organized a Chinook to pick up the team and their unexpected cargo.
“Shaun?”
Everything went dark. The screens cut out and the computers shut down around him. “Eagle, this is TOC, come in?” Max hit a red button on his desk and was already heading toward the door when the klaxon warning of a security breach began to sound.
“Eagle, this is TOC. We’ve been compromised.
I repeat, we’ve been compromised.” Everyone else scrambled toward the exits, and Shaun didn’t need anyone to tell him there were plans in place for exactly this situation.
He had no way of knowing if the warning had gotten through to Zenko’s team, but he hoped like hell it had.
He and Zenko might not have a clue where this thing between them was going, but Shaun didn’t give a fiddler’s fuck about that right now.
All that mattered was helping the people who had rescued him and then taken him into their family for the last week.
They’d played pranks on him just as they did everyone else, and somewhere along the way, he’d stopped feeling like the stranger Zenko had dragged through their gates.
What happened later was anyone’s guess, but Shaun was kinda thinking he liked this team and this family.
If someone was coming through those gates looking for a fight, he would help defend them or die trying.
He stayed on Max’s heels through the short run to the cage, with Castiel, Reese and Drax converging on the room from different parts of the compound.
By the time Max got the door open, any thought Shaun had of maintaining his truck-driver cover was gone.
If somebody was coming for Red Squadron, he needed a weapon in his hands, and whatever questions followed would have to wait until they were all alive to ask them.
In the meantime, he would show whoever had the audacity to come after this team just what it meant to take on a Ghost.
Shaun ignored the raised eyebrows from Max and the other three as he entered the cage that held Zenko’s weapons and started pulling out body armor and guns.
His hands automatically worked the weapons, clicking pieces together in movements that would tell their own story.
All of these men were military; every single one of them would recognize what he was doing for what it was.
“Cat’s outta the bag, huh?”
“All I want to know,” Castiel’s grumble held enough menace that Shaun forced himself not to flinch, “is if you are with us or against us.”
“That team who nearly stepped on Zenko and the others?” Shaun looked to Max, his hands still moving as he geared up. “That’s my team.” He nodded toward the door. “Whoever is out there? They are not.”
“Five minutes.” Max didn’t comment on Shaun’s admission as he continued gearing up. “That’s how long we have to clear the compound.”
“Military?” Reese asked as he continued to gear up.
Shaun glanced around as the others worked with the efficiency of men following a well-rehearsed emergency protocol.
Whatever Max had triggered when he hit that red button had killed every electronic device in the compound and sent the non-essential personnel evacuating.
The rest of them had five minutes to get their asses beyond the wire.
“Classified.”
“Not sure I like classified shit very much.” Drax grabbed his go-bag and gave the contents a quick check before closing it again. “Zen’s spare go-bag is in that locker.” He nodded to the metal door behind Shaun.
He figured that was the best he could hope for at this stage. He would follow the others’ lead since they obviously had an exfil plan in place, and now he knew exactly how long they had to get their asses beyond the wire.
“Four minutes.” Max’s count had everyone moving faster. Shaun grabbed Zenko’s spare go-bag from the locker and slung it over his shoulder before following the others through a door at the back of the room and down a short corridor. Drax took point and glanced over his shoulder.
“Damn it, I liked this place.” The regret was clear in his voice as he cautiously pushed down the bar to release the lock on the door.
“Three minutes,” Max whispered. “Unless there is a tango out there who is going to take your ass out, move it.”
“Who made you the freaking boss?” Drax grumbled. He went through the door and stepped to the side with his weapon at the ready. Shaun watched him sweep the immediate area before Drax gave them the all-clear. “Clear.”
Max followed, then Shaun moved through and took his position, with Castiel and Reese coming behind him. Within seconds, all five men were moving as a unit toward a helo.
“Two minutes.” Max continued to give the countdown.
Drax cursed as he climbed into the cockpit of the H60 Black Hawk and started flicking switches. “Damn it.”