Chapter 13 #2
“That’s the one.” Griffin captured his flyaway hair and stuffed it back under his Kevlar.
“I served with Jonah, and when he and his partner were released from duty under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, all of our team left shortly afterward.
Rock and I have been trading who follows who around the globe ever since. ”
“And Shaun?” Zenko carefully watched Griffin, looking for any indication he was hiding something that might give Zenko a hint of what the hell was going on.
“He’s been a part of Rock’s team for a long time.”
“His name is Shaun?” Zenko was going to be pissed if Shaun had given them a false name. Fuck, Noble would blow a gasket if Max’s background check hadn’t picked up on it.
“It’s been his name for as long as I have known him, although Rock and the others sometimes call him Shaw.”
Fuckballs, that means it is a false name, but it’s government-sanctioned shit.
Zenko screwed up his lips into something close to a grimace before blowing out a breath. “What team?”
“He can’t tell you.”
Zenko turned to look at one of the other four men who had answered.
They had spread out around Griffin and Rock, watching their backs, their faces covered and their eyes barely visible.
Shit, this really was some covert stuff, and the only team he could think of that was more covert than his own was the product of rumors and whispers around warlords’ campfires throughout the Middle East. Zenko wasn’t even sure if they were real or fiction like The Avengers or The Ghostbusters.
“Ghosts.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
Zenko studied the serious expression on Griffin’s face.
He had spent so much time working in shithole hotspots around the globe that he’d become an expert at reading the flicker of expression or flash of acknowledgment in another person’s eyes as easily as he could read the label on a bottle of Bud.
“Recipe for today,” Zenko muttered just loud enough for Griffin to hear him. “One cup of cluster… along with two cups of fuck.”
“Yup, that about sums it up.”
“Zen.”
Noble’s voice pulled Zenko out of his muttering. “Yes, Sir?”
“Contact TOC, find out where the hell they are.” Noble looked at his watch and sighed. “They should be at our backup site by now.”
“Maybe not.” Rock bumped his shoulder against Noble’s, making Zenko’s eyebrows rise at the easy camaraderie between them. “I told Shaun to take them to one of our safe houses in Europe.”
“What the hell, Rock?”
Noble glaring at the other man made Zenko snicker.
As his hands automatically double-checked his weapon, he watched the drama unfold out of the corner of his eye.
“What do you think?” he asked Griffin. “Will they be girls about it and have handbags-at-dawn shit, or will Noble take the offer Rock has on the table?”
“I don’t know.” Griffin’s hands were also moving as he patted his vest, checking the placement of the various tools and equipment attached to the webbing.
“I know Rock feels he owes you two for helping us get our woman back in The Lebanon. That your base was targeted makes him angry. You are military, and the threat is coming from the inside. Rock’s own honor won’t allow you to fight alone.
” Grif paused and looked at Zenko. “Neither will mine. There is some other shit going on with my old Delta team, and we think this might be connected, considering the weapons stash you found and the US-owned Chinook that blew that weapons stash to hell, nearly taking you with it. Yeah, Rock won’t back down from this one without a fight. ”
“Looks like Noble knows Rock well enough to know that.” Zenko watched as his boss cocked his head to one side while he listened to Rock. “Or at least well enough to listen to his advice or explanation.”
“Yeah, they go way back to when they were kids.”
Zenko was sure his eyebrows had disappeared into his Kevlar when they rose in shock. “Noble and Rock grew up together?”
“Yup.” Griffin tapped his ear with his index finger and muttered something Zenko couldn’t make out before continuing. “Rock’s father took Noble in at some stage and raised them together.”
A whispered roar followed by a solid thump had Zenko turning his gaze back to Noble and Rock. Noble was cradling one fist in his opposite hand.
“Shit. You punched a tree again, didn’t you, Boss?”
“What didn’t kill you,” Rock told Noble as his fingers probed the knuckles on Noble’s fist, “should have tried harder because now it’s our turn to kick some ass.” Zenko shivered at the coldness in Rock’s voice when the man paused before adding, “And we’re fucking good at kicking ass.”
“Yup.” Noble shook out his fist and grinned at Rock. “That we are good at.” Zenko stood a little straighter when Noble looked between him, Roman, and Saxon. “We move with my boy Rock and his team.”
“Copy that,” all three of Red Squadron answered immediately, and Zenko figured the other two were thinking along the same lines as he was.
Noble had never led them wrong. Into clusterfucks and situations where it was balls to the wall to get everyone out alive…
sure, but never once had he led them wrong.
They would follow him anywhere, no questions asked.
Even into the unknown after Rock and his team.
Zenko fell into formation as they moved out, but his mind kept circling back to the bombshell Rock had dropped so casually.
Shaun was an operator. A fucking Ghost, if he was reading everything he’d seen and heard correctly, and suddenly every instinct that had nagged at him since the night Shaun had put a K-Bar to his throat made sense.
The reflexes, the hand movements, the way Shaun watched a room and seemed to know exactly where everyone was without looking.
Zenko should probably be pissed that Shaun had lied to him, and he was, but beneath the anger was something else he wasn’t ready to examine while they were still standing in the middle of fucking Syria.
Because Shaun had finally gotten a chance to contact his own team, and instead of asking Rock to come get him, the asshole had sent them after Zenko. Whatever explanation Shaun owed him could wait until Zenko got back to him. Then they were going to have one hell of a fucking conversation.