Chapter 9 #2
“Send it.” He resisted the urge to shift from foot to foot as the grainy image populated on his wrist device, and it took him a hot second to figure out what Dawsyn had sent him and another couple of heartbeats to figure out why his operator had sent it to him. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Gael grabbed his arm and twisted it almost to the point of pain so he could look at the image too. “Those are Ariat boots. There isn’t exactly a Boot Barn or the like around here for someone to pick up a pair of those.”
“Yeah.” He knew what they were; he wore a similar pair almost every day of the week.
The seasoned Operator he was trained to be urged caution.
But the one who wanted to execute this mission and save the girl, wanted action now.
If she was here, they could fire this mission up to another level. “Doesn’t mean they are hers, though.”
“Nope,” Gael agreed, “but it’s enough to cover our asses if TOC can confirm they match the ones our girl wears.”
“Our girl?”
Gael shrugged. “We’re hunting her. If we find her, she’s ours until we get her home.”
Sometimes his brother didn’t make a lick of sense, but he was too damn relieved that Gael appeared to be dealing with being back here better than he thought he would to worry about it.
“TOC, Seahorse One.”
“Go ahead, One.”
“I’m sending you a shot of some boots.” Theo was going to think they’d lost their minds. “See if you can confirm they are what our package wears.” He sent the image and prayed the connection was strong enough for it to go through, then pressed a button on his watch.
“Roger that, sir. Got it.”
Hurry up and wait. The bane of any operator’s existence. It drove him nuts. He glanced at his watch.
Sixty seconds.
Too soon to hit up Theo for an update.
I’ll give him five minutes. If he can’t do it by then, we’ll change tactics and…
“Seahorse One, TOC.”
“Go ahead, TOC.”
“That’s an affirmative on your boots, boss,” Theo said. “Well, as sure as I can be with a still from her run in El Paso. G-TOC agrees and reminds you that FRED has pinpointed this area.”
Rowan glanced at Gael and waited for his nod. “Seahorse Six, get up here.”
“Copy.” Calloway moved up the file and dropped into position next to Rowan.
“Tell me what you see.” He wanted his extraction expert’s opinion before they walked into something he’d missed.
“Put Four on that slight rise on the back end of the camp,” Calloway advised. “That way we can flush ‘em toward him, and he can pick ‘em off if we need to.”
He agreed and passed the order onto Jericho. “Four, I just pinged you the nest location.”
“Copy.”
Rowan didn’t need to look to know his sniper would work his way around to the position they’d pinpointed.
The delay before an assault, when everyone was in place, was something he’d learned in SEALs and an important part of their process.
It allowed the Operators in the assault element to become oriented to the target zone.
It allowed them to know the swamp sounds around them and to focus on the tangos they would face.
It gave Jericho time to get to his location and to study the layout in front of him.
Having your sniper familiar with the movement of sentries was always useful.
After close to ten minutes, Jericho came up on the tac net. “One, Four. In position and waiting on your call.”
“Roger that.” Rowan brought his weapon to ready position and patted down his gear in the order he’d perfected over the years, making sure everything was locked, loaded, and ready to roll.
“All Stations, TOC, on my count.” As he held up his hand, two fingers folded, three standing vertical, all his men activated their IR beacons so their sniper could identify them.
“Three.”
He dropped one finger.
“Two.”
He dropped the second finger and took a breath, “Green light. Go! Go! Go!”
Their goal was to move fast and stealthily. If they could avoid an outright firefight, it would be safer for the hostage they wanted to rescue.
Rowan stepped out of the jungle canopy behind the first tango. He clamped a hand over his mouth, drew his blade across his throat from ear to ear, and carefully lowered his body to the ground.
A sentry walked around a hut and froze when he saw what was happening in the clearing. He opened his mouth, but before the yell could pass his lips, a suppressed pop sounded, and red bloomed on his chest before he, too, dropped to the ground.
Scout is taking care of business.
“Seahorse, search this place,” Rowan ordered over comms. “If our package is here, find her, stat.” He didn’t have time to receive the confirmations from his team before his connection with the overlord that was his Tactical Operations Center pinged him on comms.
“Seahorse One, TOC.”
“Go ahead, TOC.”
“You have a convoy coming up from your eight o’clock.” Theo informed him, “We’re counting at least twenty-five tangos.”
Fuck.
Just fuck.
“Copy, TOC. We’re about to go hot. How soon can G-TOC’s extraction team get to my primary extraction site as a priority one, over?”
“Patching you through, sir.”
Rowan didn’t bother to respond, as he knew Theo was already doing his nerd thing and connecting him to the pilot of their extraction helo.
“Seahorse one, Skillet.”
“Go ahead, Skillet.”
“We can be at your primary extraction point in fifteen mikes if I push it.”
That’s going to make it tight.
There was no way he could put Rock and Grif’s helo in the line of fire unless he had no choice, especially when the bird was being flown by their wife. “Make that thirty, Skillet.”
“Copy that, Seahorse One,” Skillet replied. “See you when I see you.”
He flipped back to his team tac-net. “All stations, we’re on a clock. We have a convoy incoming, and thirty mikes to extraction at priority one.” Once he’d let his men know the intel that had come from TOC, he wanted to know what they’d found. “Talk to me, Seahorse Two.”
“Still no civilians,” Gael said, his voice clipped as he stepped back out into the clearing. “She’s not here.”
She has to be fucking here.
Rowan had to work harder than he’d liked to keep his pulse from spiking. He breathed and scanned the treeline again, searching for something, anything to let him know what had happened to Enya Moore and where to find her.
There.
He’d almost missed the narrow trail by undergrowth and a curtain of hanging moss and thick-leafed vines. “Two, Three, on me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On you.”