Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ty
Echo stood in place, each wearing a borrowed uniform.
Like T-Rex and Havoc, Ty was dressed in an orange maintenance jumpsuit with broad reflective tape stripes. He sat in the driver’s seat of the fuel truck with Rory curled onto the floorboard beside him.
T-Rex held the directional wands that would lead the Davidson jet to their chosen X, and Havoc stood there with tire chocks in hand, looking helpful.
Inside the hangar, Jeopardy and Nitro waited.
They wore the clothes handed off by two of the customs officers.
In this case, they donned suit jackets with embroidered emblems. Jeopardy and Nitro were chosen for their fluent Spanish, should someone decide to speak with them in the native language rather than English.
And practically, they were picked for those roles because they were the only ones on the team that were short enough and wiry enough to get their bodies into the available uniform, and even then, the tight fit wasn’t ideal if things turned kinetic, which Echo promised to contain.
When they’d arrived, Echo had already mapped out a plan, and they’d come up with a sales strategy. Even on missions within Delta Force, sometimes there was a competition for who was the big dog.
This was Spanish soil; they had trained professionals skilled in their work.
T-Rex was ready to convince them to stand down and leave it to Echo, but when White’s jet landed, she moved behind closed doors for a private discussion with her counterpart at the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia, CNI.
France’s DGSE had already filled them in on the Paris mission Echo had performed.
And the CNI “did not wish to interfere in this important work.”
White didn’t clue CNI in to the fact that this was an entirely separate mission. She simply thanked them graciously, accepted their ground rules, and called T-Rex in so he, too, could sign on with the plan.
The Ground Rules:
The pilot and co-pilot could be removed from the plane, but nothing should seem interesting to anyone who might oversee.
Like in Paris, they wished Echo to function on the same cats’ paws.
These were dangerous times to seem like they were bending over backward for Uncle Sam.
It could well put a bullseye on their citizens.
The four passengers listed on the passenger manifest for their international flight plan were to remain on the plane throughout the intervention.
Everyone on the plane was to be treated with respect until a crime was discovered, to avoid blowback on the Spanish government if innocent people were being harassed.
If Echo discovered a crime and wished the perpetrators to move through legal channels, the criminals were to be removed from the plane and handed over to the CNI, who would, in turn, expedite extradition to the United States.
Should this be an issue handled through CIA channels that did not require legal paperwork, the CNI would be otherwise engaged and unaware.
White promised to let them know which route was required once Echo got on the plane and gave it a thorough search.
Gunfire was a last resort. Violence was to follow the United States’ Graham Factors, which allowed Echo to determine, based on expertise, the level of force required to manage the situation.
It made no mention of minimum; it was about “reasonable,” especially in a dynamic encounter in a confined space.
They were not to flatline anyone.
T-Rex shook hands with the CNI and told him they would function professionally throughout the intervention in accordance with the rules given to them.
And then they waited.
Finally, Ty spotted the Davidson jet floating down from the sky.
“Bigger than yours, White,” Nitro said over the comms.
“Huh,” White replied, “and here I was always told it wasn’t the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean.”
Ty watched a grin spread over Havoc’s face as he listened to White’s banter.
Ty, himself, was struggling.
Had he been in this position before with a big-assed emotional component, saving his brothers and sisters from the dangers they faced together? Absolutely.
But Kira was something wholly different from his brotherhood; she was his breath, his soul.
She’d been in danger before, but Kira had been beside him. He could see with his own eyes that she was fine. He was able to move her out of the dangers.
This time, she drank the unknown liquid, and now, the best guess was that she was on this jet with the bad guys.
Since she wasn’t on the manifest, that meant she wasn’t visible to the customs agent at takeoff.
Tied and gagged and stuck in a cubby?
That seemed like best case.
Yeah, he was struggling with the images of her, drawn in vivid detail, in his imagination.
White was in his ear, “Okay, the tower instructed them onto their landing strip. Get ready to look professional. Echo Two, you hanging in?”
“Echo Two, standing by for the signal, hopefully it comes soon. Rory’s got a bad case of gas, and it’s hard to breathe in the cab.” Light. Professional. Muscle memory. Ty couldn’t let his emotions jam him up.
But it was harder every second once the tires chirped, trying to gain traction, and the pilot eased the jet around to where T-Rex signaled him in with a practiced flourish of the orange wands.
Havoc placed the chocks.
Ty lowered his window to hear.
The engine wound down, and through the windshield, Ty watched the pilots remove their headsets.
Nitro and Jeopardy walked toward the jet door as it opened, and the co-pilot lowered the steps.
Nitro signaled the man down and called for the pilot to bring their logbooks and documentation. The co-pilot blinked. Nitro gave the same instructions in English with an impressively heavy boot on the accent pedal.
The co-pilot asked if all the passengers should do the same, and Nitro batted the question away with the flick of his hand.
As soon as the pilot moved to the tarmac, Nitro asked them to show him what was in their hold.
Ty stopped breathing. He was terrified that, when they opened it up, Kira would be rolled in a rug, like the team had just done to the Paris cell.
There was the green puff that Kira tied to her suitcase, and her backpack with the bright pink “peonies—not roses, Ty.” Stacked neatly in a row, six other carry-on-sized bags—two pilots, four names on the manifest, that seemed right.
Next, there were a couple of heavy-duty totes, the kind that operators used for their gear.
Nitro would maintain control of the pilots.
Jeopardy loaded the plane and asked for passports while White listened on audio, with her computer up, to identify the voices.
“White. I have AI verification that the first two men were in Kira’s hotel room during the kidnapping. Zip-tie them. Over.”
Ty wanted to be first man on.
T-Rex talked Ty out of that.
T-Rex told Ty that he was last on the plane because Rory was limping from his last two days of fun and games with the bad guys, and they needed to protect him. Ty knew that T-Rex was afraid that Ty would lose his mind and beat the men to death.
Which, honestly, might be exactly what Ty meant to do.
His hand gripped the door handle, and his foot jackhammered the floorboard, ready to jump off his X and move into play.
Ty was straining at professionalism in ways he wasn’t prepared for. It was a physical and mental battle to stay squared away.
Rory knew it. He was awake and standing on the passenger seat, every muscle in his body taut as he stared out the window.
“Echo Actual. The plane is secured. No joy with our missing person. Over.”
“White. Echo Two move into place with K9, standing by.”
Okay, screw professionalism. If Kira wasn’t screaming for help, she was endangered. Or … Ty wrestled the rest of that thought to the side as he flung his door wide and jumped out of Rory’s way.
Pointing toward the open door as Ty ran, he called, “Rory, find Kira. Go!”
Rory was a bolt of lightning as he bunched his muscles and shot forward, taking the stairs in a single leap and coming to a screeching halt at the top. His nose in the air, he sniffed left and right.
Ty made it up beside Rory to find the four men, sitting in the overstuffed leather chairs, zipped at the ankles, and held in place with zip ties attaching their wrists to the chairs’ arms. Echo stood guns trained, making sure that no one thought about doing anything stupid.
Ty moved to the cockpit and called Rory to the front of the plane so they could do a systematic search, not under the bar, not in the kitchen cabinets, not in the bathroom.
Rory got excited in the bedroom, his nose went to the floor and up in the air.
Ty checked the closet, then knelt to check if Kira had been stuffed under the bed, but it was a solid frame like in hotels.
Rory jumped on the bed and whined as he sniffed the covers.
She’d been there.
But the bed was now neatly made.
“White. Do you have her Echo Two? Over.”
“Echo Two. Negative.”
Ty shut the bedroom door and started to knock on the panels to see if there was a hidden compartment.
His mind went to the heavy-duty totes in the hold.
Yeah, they were big enough to fold a body.
He pushed that thought hard to the side.
“Rory, please find Kira. Find Kira.” Ty’s whole body begged for the miracle of having her back in his arms.
Rory scratched at the blankets, barking his own frustration.
Ty pulled the blankets and sheets back, and there was no blood, no signs of fluids.
Rory kept pawing and barking.
“Okay, buddy, get down.” Ty gestured the command. As soon as Rory was by his side, Ty lifted the mattress to find that it had a solid base with a release handle. Tugging it up, it rose smoothly on hydraulic lifts.
And there lay Kira on her side with a pillow under her head.
She was white and sweaty, but even as he looked down, processing the miracle, Ty could see Kira’s chest rise and fall. Alive.
“Got her?” T-Rex called.
“Got her,” Ty called back.
Rory jumped into the box, whole body wriggling as he danced around Kira, licking her face.
Ty followed Rory into the cavity and scooped Kira into his arms. “Ambulance stat!”
T-Rex stepped into the bedroom, “Just hold her upright like that. Help is two minutes away.”