Chapter 12 #2
“What happens in two minutes?” Shaun asked Max as he attached a safety rope to a carabiner on his vest. If he had to hang out the door to take a shot, at least he wouldn’t fall very far if Drax had to take evasive action.
“The charges start counting down to blow the compound!” Max yelled across at him to be heard over the whirring of the rotors. “The whole fucking place is rigged, and we don’t have Saxon here to cancel them.”
“You think this was a false alarm?” Shaun watched Castiel take a seat beside Drax and nodded to Reese as he clipped in next to him at the door, already checking his weapon for readiness.
“Nah,” Reese answered him. “It’s highly unlikely. We have never had one in nearly six years.” He lifted his scope to his eye and began scanning the compound. “And this?—”
“Armed.” Max’s voice cut across whatever Reese had been about to say, drawing more curses and what sounded suspiciously like promises of violence from Drax as he fired up the bird.
“And this?”
“This is the first time we’ve had to blow one of our home bases,” Max told him.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Yeah.” Reese concentrated on the far corner of the compound. “Pretty much.” He dialed in his scope again. “I have movement in the northeast corner.”
“Roger,” Max answered. The bird lurched on its wheels before starting to lift off the ground. “Thank fuck for that.” Within seconds, they were moving over the wire of the compound.
“Do we have a sat phone or comms that I can use?” A brilliant flash of light behind them caught Shaun’s eye as the compound blew, dust rising into the darkness in their wake.
He braced instinctively, but when the percussion wave never reached them, he knew they were far enough away to be safe from the blast. As long as there wasn’t someone waiting with an RPG, they were pretty much home free. For now.
“Who do you want to contact?” Max shared a glance with Reese before turning back to Shaun. Reese shrugged. Fucker would let Max decide.
“My boss,” Shaun told them. “He is the closest one I trust to go after Zenko.” He pointed to where the base used to be. “Do you not think that if they had the balls to come for you here, they didn’t go after Zen and the others, too?”
“He’s right, Max.” Reese surprised him. “If they came for us, then the others are sitting ducks.” He looked pointedly at Shaun, and the warning in his expression was clear enough.
He had better not prove him fucking wrong.
“I don’t think Shaun would do anything to put our guys in danger.
If anything, he owes us for saving his life. ”
“Alright then.” Max handed over a sat phone. “Do not fucking make me kill you or Zenko will have my ass.”
Shaun took the phone and dialed the number he knew by heart. When the phone connected and an automated voice asked for the required extension number, Shaun entered the five-digit code he had memorized more than six weeks earlier when he had taken this assignment.
He had barely clicked the final digit when a familiar growl came through the phone. “I need you to authenticate. I give, Law.”
Shaun rubbed one eye and answered calmly and softly, “And I respond, Murphy.”
“Jesus.” Something slammed onto a desk, and Shaun would lay odds it was Cade’s coffee mug. “Shaw?”
“Yeah.” Shaun heard the sharp intake of breath through the phone but cut Cade off before he could start asking questions they really didn’t have time for. “I need you to patch me through to Alpha, STAT.”
“Roger that, brother.”
Shaun listened as the intermittent beeps indicating a call to a satellite phone in a foreign country sounded in his ear. He glanced at Max and Reese, then held the phone away from his ear in preparation for the bellows he expected to come from the speaker.
“This is gonna get loud.”
“Go.”
Rock’s voice sounded strained even to Shaun. “Boss?”
A harsh breath came through the phone. “Shaw?”
“Yeah.” Shaun immediately pulled the phone farther from his ear, then stared at it in surprise when the expected bellowing didn’t happen. “Boss?”
“Where the fuck are you, Shaw? I swear to Christ, I am about five minutes from ripping Syria apart to find you, asshole.”
Shaun winced. Rock, using the shortened version of his name, and over a connection he hadn’t confirmed as secure, told him exactly how worried the man had been about him. “I need you to do a retrieval for me.”
“What the fuck?”
Ah, there was the bellowing. Shaun didn’t have time for too many explanations, and he couldn’t give too much information over the wire.
Fuck it, I’m telling him to go get my man.
If there was one thing Rock would understand, it was the connection you could form with someone and how quickly it could happen, especially in a warzone.
“Boss, I need you to go to these coordinates and pick up my guy.”
“Swear to fuck,” Rock growled out. “If I have been burning out every terrorist cell I could find in this shithole country while you have been off with a piece of ass, I will shoot you myself, asshole.”
“Nope, Boss,” Shaun told him. “In fact, you almost stood on him in that kill-box meadow a couple of hours ago.”
“The fuck you say?” Rock’s disbelief came through loud and clear, and Max and Reese exchanged smirks that, in spite of the shitty timing and situation, had Shaun grinning, too.
“Yup,” Shaun muttered. “Boss, Zen’s team. Their home base was just compromised, and they are out there searching for intel on who took me.” Shaun frowned when a harsh, indrawn breath came through the speaker.
“Did you say Zen?”
“Yeah?” Shaun looked at Reese and Max, raising an eyebrow before shrugging when both shook their heads.
“Zenko Marks?”
“Yeah.”
Shit, how does Rock know Zenko?
“Who else is out there with him?”
“Four-man team,” Shaun told him. “Including his boss.”
“Noble Bauer is out there?”
“Yes, Boss.” Shaun was sure Rock was losing it, because he’d never heard that tone of disbelief from the man before unless he was dealing with Shar and Grif pulling a prank.
“God dammit, Shaun, send me the damn coordinates and double time it.”
Shaun nodded at Max and reeled off a secure email address he knew Rock could access.
“One of Zen’s team is sending you the intel now; we have to assume they are targets and possibly under live fire.”
“Noted.” Rock cursed softly under his breath. “Hold on a sec.”
Shaun could hear a muffled conversation in the background, and he could guess what that conversation was. No decision was made in Ghost Team without everyone’s agreement.
“If they need a place off-grid,” Rock’s voice was rough as ever and terse, as if he was pissed, “take them to the safe house in Croatia.”
“Thanks, Boss.” Before Shaun had finished speaking, the tone sounded in his ear. Yup, nothing new there then. Rock had hung up on him again.
“Your boss knows Noble?”
Max’s question had Shaun frowning. “I don’t know, but it sure sounded like he knows him. In all the years I have worked with him, I have never heard him mention Noble or Zenko.”
“Three minutes.” Reese’s announcement over their headsets had Shaun looking toward the darkness ahead, but something about the plan suddenly didn’t sit right.
“Wait.” Shaun looked at Max. “You said we’re heading for one of your fallback locations?”
“Yeah.” Max shifted his attention from the instruments to Shaun. “It’s where Noble will expect us to go if the main base is compromised.”
“The main base wasn’t compromised, Max. Somebody came through your fucking perimeter.” Shaun pointed back toward the direction they’d come from. “You blew the entire place rather than risk whatever they could get their hands on, but now we’re going to another Red Squadron location?”
Reese went still beside the open door before turning his head toward Max. “Fuck. He’s right.”
“If they found one of your bases, you have no way of knowing what else they found.” Shaun held up the sat phone. “Rock just gave us somewhere off-grid in Croatia, and my team is going after Zen and the others. When Rock gets to them, he’ll tell Noble exactly where he sent us.”
Max stared at him for a couple of seconds before reaching forward and tapping Drax on the shoulder. “Change of plan. We’re not landing.”
“Would’ve been fucking useful to know that before I started my approach.” Drax banked the Black Hawk away from the distant runway and began climbing again. “Where the hell am I going?”
Shaun gave him the location Rock had provided, then settled back against the bulkhead as Drax changed course. “Croatia.”
Max looked toward him. “You trust this Rock of yours to get that message to Noble?”
“I just sent Rock and my team after them.” Shaun tightened his grip around Zenko’s spare go-bag between his boots. “If anybody can reach your guys, they can. Noble will know where we are.”
Reese glanced toward the darkness outside before settling his weapon back across his thighs. “Then I guess we’re going to Croatia.”
“Looks that way.” Shaun rested his head against the bulkhead and closed his eyes for a second.
Rock was going after Zenko, Noble, and the others, and Shaun had to trust his team to do what they had always done.
Find their people and bring them home. He pulled out the sat phone again and shot Cade a secure message at Dreamland.
Unknown Number: 41726 RS B ELMT DV CRO SH. G1A AUTH. RS DP ELMT G1A/N/Z CRO.
Unknown Number: 58314 U/D
Cade’s confirmation came through seconds later, acknowledging that Shaun was taking Red Squadron’s base element to the Croatian safe house on Rock’s authorization, while Rock would bring Noble, Zenko, and the deployed element to meet them there.
Shaun tucked the phone away. For now, his job was getting the rest of Red Squadron somewhere nobody hunting them knew to look. It would have to be enough.