Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Zenko, call Shaun and tell him to get his ass on my plane STAT.” Noble looked about two seconds away from coming down the steps and hunting Shaun down himself.
He didn’t blame him for being pissed. Everyone else was on the fucking plane.
They were supposed to be wheels up, and Shaun had disappeared to find coffee almost an hour ago.
Zenko had already checked his phone twice since boarding and was reaching for it again when Noble muttered, “Just my luck, another high-maintenance fucker to deal with.”
“You said that out loud.”
Noble glanced at Max, who had taken the seat beside him for takeoff. “Huh?”
“You said that out loud as if you and all of us on this damn plane are not high maintenance.”
“Hmmh,” Noble grunted at Max, unclipping his belt. He was about to stand when Shaun finally came through the door of the plane, and Zenko felt the tension that had been winding tighter in his gut ease.
Thank fuck.
“About fucking time.”
“Chill, Noble,” Shaun told him. He stuffed a weapons case into the overhead locker and dropped into the seat beside Zenko as if he hadn’t kept an entire spec ops team waiting for him. “I have some updated info on our target guy.”
He caught the look Noble sent Shaun and almost winced on his behalf.
Yeah, his guy was in deep shit. Noble might have been willing to overlook him keeping them waiting if he’d come back with the fucking coffee he’d gone looking for, but announcing he’d been digging into their target before they’d even had the mission briefing was something else entirely.
He glanced at the man beside him. He had no idea who Shaun had contacted or what he’d found, but if he’d broken the chain of command or reached out to the wrong person for information on a classified mission, he might have to get in line behind Noble to wring his neck.
Noble shot Shaun one last warning look before turning toward the front of the plane.
“Peanut, tell the damn pilot we are ready for takeoff.”
“Sure thing, Boss.” Reese headed toward the cockpit while Noble settled back into his seat with a heavy sigh.
“Where the fuck were you?” he whispered as soon as his guy planted his ass in the seat next to him.
“You were going for coffee, and one, you came back without coffee, and two, you were late for the plane, so Noble is pissed. Three, you went and dug further into the commander, or called an asset. Are you sure they aren’t connected and you didn’t tip him off? ” He glanced sideways.
What the heck?
Is he sleeping?
He nudged him sharply with his elbow, sending a tingle through his funny bone when it connected with solid muscle, damn it. He shook out his hand.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yup,” Shaun answered without even opening his eyes. “I’m just waiting for you to ask either the right questions or something intelligent and to quit treating me like a fucking green idiot who’s just out of basic.”
He inhaled a breath. He was going to beat him for being a sarcastic shit, then, damn it, he caught a whiff of his aftershave.
It should be fucking illegal for his guy to smell that freaking good.
It was making him forget his argument, and he wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
He shifted in his seat, turning his head and stretching his neck first in the opposite direction and then back toward him until the movement almost buried his nose in the crook of his neck.
He made sure to take a good whiff of the sexy smell before pulling back.
The hint of a smile curling the corner of Shaun’s lips told him he’d been caught freaking red-handed sniffing the hot guy.
The ding of the seatbelt warning created a mad scramble as all the men moved toward the small couches set up farther back in the plane.
He dropped into a seat near Reese and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Whoever is paying for this trip sure as shit is loaded.”
“Yup,” Reese whispered back just as quietly. “We are normally the ones hitching a ride on a cargo plane.”
Just in front of Reese, Roman started to hum, and after a couple of bars, Saxon joined in. He frowned at the pair of them. What the fuck were they up to, and why the hell did that song sound familiar?
“Who you gonna call?” Saxon whisper-sang as he looked over his shoulder at Shaun then he and Roman both grinned widely and sang in unison. “Ghostbusters.”
“Bastards.”
Was Shaun fucking blushing? He was freaking sure that was red climbing up from under the collar of his T-shirt.
No fucking way. Right? Oh, shit, he is.
His guy had better hope like hell that neither Ro nor Sax spotted it, because if they did, then ‘Ghostbusters’ was going to become the theme tune for this mission. Noble would fucking lose it or beat the pair of them and then yell at him for not warning Shaun.
Max pushed past Noble and started setting up his field laptop along with the rest of the equipment they would need for the mission briefing.
The sight of the folders being pulled out told him the JSOC or NATO had sent through a hell of a lot more intelligence since Noble had spoken to them back at the safe house.
“Sit your asses down and listen up!” Noble yelled over the rumbling noise of the team pushing and shoving each other like little schoolboys.
He gave Max the briefest hint of a smile before he started handing out folders of information.
“You have until we reach our destination to have the information in these packets memorized. I want every little detail checked and double-checked. As always, this mission is highly classified. However, given who our target is, we need to be extra careful with who we reach out to.”
Noble nodded to Max, who immediately clicked on his keyboard. The laptop screen flicked to life with an image of their target before Max spun it around to face the team.
“Our High Value Target is former Commander Wade Sheridan. His last posting was Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s western Anbar Province.”
Noble had barely finished speaking when Max pressed another button on the keyboard, minimizing Wade Sheridan’s image to the top left corner while the rest of the screen filled with an image of a military base.
“This is Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.” Noble gestured toward where Shaun was sitting beside him. “Shaun overheard a plot to hijack a commercial plane and crash it into the base in a similar style to nine eleven and the Twin Towers.”
Noble’s brows drew together as he stared at Sheridan’s photograph on the screen, his expression hardening.
“Shaun reported the information to Sheridan, and two days later he was taken captive during a fuel run to Baghdad.”
“Do you know who captured you, Shaun?” Drax sat forward in his seat and tapped the pen he held against the notepad in front of him.
“ISIS,” Shaun answered. There was the slightest change in his voice when he said the word, and it pulled Zenko’s attention away from Drax.
He glanced sideways at his guy, but there was nothing in Shaun’s expression to tell him whether anyone else had heard it or if he even realized it had been there.
Max clicked another key, and the screen changed to show the faces of the two men Drax had eliminated at the entrance to the cave. He recognized both of them immediately. He’d seen their bodies after Drax cleared the entrance and they went into that fucking cave to get Shaun out.
Noble gestured toward the photographs. “These are the two men who we know for sure are connected to Sheridan.”
“I have a definitive connection between them.”
Shaun’s voice pulled Zenko’s attention away from the photographs and back to the man sitting beside him.
Noble turned from the screen and fixed Shaun with a look that immediately put Zenko on alert. “Oh, do you now?”
“Yup.”
Noble’s jaw tightened as he stared at Shaun.
“And where exactly did you get this information?” The warning in his expression was clear enough that Zenko shifted his attention fully toward him.
“Because I swear to fuck if you have compromised this op, because you reached out to the wrong person, I will kick your fucking ass.”
“I called in a contact Grif has,” Shaun told them. “Kalon Roberts, he works with Grif’s old team and has no military connections.” He paused for a second. “Well, unless you consider the fact that he is in a relationship with Steele Givens.”
The look on Noble’s face had Zenko wondering if he was about to fucking kill him. The part about Kalon being connected to Steele wouldn’t help Shaun’s case one damn bit.
Noble leaned forward, fixing Shaun with a hard stare. “Tell me what you see when you look around this plane?”
Shaun looked around the plane at the others before turning back to Noble, confusion written across his face.
Noble sighed. “Do you see Roman and Sax laughing and joking and being general dumbasses?”
“Hey,” Roman protested, while Saxon flipped Noble off from where he was sitting beside him.
Noble ignored both of them and kept his attention on Shaun, waiting until he gave a small nod. “Do you see Max and me planning our routes in and out along with the three stooges over there, aka our insertion experts?”
One of the men Noble had indicated muttered, “Fuck you, too, Boss,” earning a couple of snorts from the others, but Noble didn’t even look his way.
Noble waited until Shaun acknowledged that he understood what he was pointing out before sweeping one hand around to encompass the rest of the team.
“I don’t know how Rock does it on his team, but on mine we don’t have any lone rangers.
We are not the investigators here. That role is for the CIA, military intelligence, and a different color squadron.
” He let that sit for a second before continuing.
“We are the tip of the spear. We verify all information they send us, we create the plan, and we execute it. Got it?”
“But…”
Noble stood to his full height, using every inch of it as he stared down at Shaun. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Sir.”