Chapter 14
brOCK
My eyelids popped open. I scrubbed the sleep from my face and eyes, running my hands through my hair.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
I stood and stretched as I waited for Foster to answer. When he didn’t say anything, I looked at him, silently demanding an answer.
Foster mimicked my face scrubbing, then crossed his arms over his chest.
His voice was rough when he spoke. “Adam was recaptured, and according to Charlie, he’s injured.”
I closed my eyes to keep Foster from seeing the agony that torched my soul. After gathering myself, I looked back at him. The other guys and the Holt people the admiral sent were acting like they weren’t paying us any attention.
“I’m waiting,” I said.
“They’re not sure, but Mattox Drummond, Charlie’s team leader, told me that it looks like he’s dragging a leg, and the sniper hide he was in had blood smears,” Foster explained with his chin tucked.
The man’s body was nearly vibrating. If he was feeling anything close to what I was, anger, frustration, and disbelief—not to mention fear—were battling it out inside him.
I glanced around the aircraft as Foster buckled up beside me. “When?”
Foster huffed. “According to Mattox and Mercer, Adam held off an assault on his sniper hole for close to two hours.”
“When, goddammit?” I yelled. “Where was his QRF? Where was Charlie?”
Adam shouldn’t have had to be out there injured, fighting on his own.
“They overtook him about thirty minutes ago. As for QRF, they weren’t deployed for a couple of reasons.
As the admiral said, a larger unit wasn’t sent out earlier because they didn’t want to draw attention to Adam’s escape, but also because of how hot the area was.
When Adam dug in and made a stand, Charlie was already en route, so they sent the QRF to aid the Army, who were in a firefight with insurgents.
But when Charlie got there, Adam’s hole was dry.
ISR was providing support to firefight and QRF. ”
“Then how the fuck do they know how long he held them off?”
Not a shittin’ bit of this was adding up. Adam had been left out there like a goddamn sitting duck.
The pilot alerted us to buckle in for landing.
Foster and I sat down, and he said, “They were on him when the firefight started, but since his comms weren’t working and they had troops in contact, they switched.
Once all the Army boys were rounded up and headed back to base, they moved back to Adam.
He was still fighting them off. Mattox said he was armed to the teeth, but a sustained fight on his own? Well, you know how that goes.”
Yeah, I did. You went down, or the enemy did, but eventually, someone ran out of ammo. If Adam was injured, switching to hand-to-hand wasn’t a possibility.
“So, we go in?” I asked.
Please, God, say yes.
Foster stared at me. “Fuck yes, we’re going in. I’m over waitin’.”
I braced myself for landing.
Hang on, Adam. I’m coming.
When we touched down, Commander Mercer met us at the airstrip. “Charlie is sitting on the sniper hole. ISR has tracked him to a compound. Gear up. You’ll rendezvous with Charlie and then go get our man.”
It’s about fucking time.
It took us several hours, but when we pulled up to the rally point. Mattox and the vast majority of his team were sitting on Adam’s sniper hole when we arrived.
“Where’s the rest of your team?” Foster asked.
“I sent a couple of the guys to do some recon on the location where Adam is being held. According to Davis and Nichols, Adam was alive, but in rough shape, the last time they laid eyes on him.” Mattox pointed off toward the horizon.
“There’s a compound, most likely a prison of sorts, just shy of two hundred klicks that direction.
Considering Adam’s injured and dragging a leg, the fact he made it close to a hundred miles in about thirty hours is impressive. ”
I stared at him.
Impressive?
“I think holding off the Taliban on his own for over two hours is much more impressive, especially considering Adam finished BUD/S with a hairline fracture to his femur.”
Before Mattox or his guys could say anything else to piss me off, I stalked over to the outcropping where Adam had hidden. I hunkered down, sifting through the space. As I moved some brush and flipped a rock, I found Adam’s pack.
The sight of Adam’s blood and gear gutted me like a kick to the nuts. I picked up Adam’s pack and in it, I found all the things you’d expect, but I also found something I’d never seen before. A keychain with washers on it. Washers with dates on them. Dates no one would recognize but Adam and I.
I clutched the keepsake tightly. The metal bit into my palm. Tears prickled the backs of my closed eyelids. All these months, I’d thought he didn’t give a fuck. That all he wanted was a convenient fuck buddy. That he didn’t love me as much as I loved him.
I clipped the memento onto my dog tags, zipped up Adam’s pack, and climbed back out of the hole. “Let’s go. He’s suffered long enough.”
We moved out, meeting up with Charlie Team’s two guys. I knew Evan Davis and Peter Nichols. They were good SEALs. Both were newer guys, but they had decent instincts. I appreciated them being here, but to voice that would call attention to shit better left unsaid.
Davis said as we approached them, “We need to breach. When we first got here, he was being put in one of those metal crates out there in the open. Then, that armored car rolled into the compound. Fifteen minutes later, a couple of guys came out and pulled Adam out of the crate and dragged him into the main building. The sounds coming from inside that building are harrowing.”
Foster and Mattox looked at each other.
Then Foster asked, “How many tangos are on site?”
Nichols explained, “I’ve counted about ten to fifteen coming and going, but I don’t know how many are inside. There aren’t any windows that could be used for a sneak peek, either. So, we’re gonna have to go in blind.”
“How many entrances?” Mattox asked.
Davis and Nichols glanced at each other. They seemed to be weighing their answer.
“Fucking spill it,” I growled.
I was over this fucking bullshit. I was sick and fucking tired of the hemming and hawing and beating around the fucking bush.
Foster stepped in front of me, his eyebrows raised and head cocked. Our gazes locked together for several minutes until I nodded. I crossed my arms over my chest and forced myself to relax.
Foster watched as I dialed back the aggression, then turned back to Mattox and his guys. “Well, you heard Chief Jones. Fucking spill it.”
“Sir, there are two entry points visible. We think there’s another way in and out, but we don’t know if Senior Chief has enough time for us to play lost and found for the tertiary exit,” Petty Officer Evan Davis said.
“Why do you think there’s a third?” I asked without the venom from moments before.
Davis looked me in the eye. “I’ve been watching this compound for almost two hours, and there’s someone who seems to be appearing and disappearing from the courtyard, but we cannot find where the hidey-hole is.”
Mattox stepped in. “You said you could hear sounds coming from inside? Do you think we could go in through the walls?”
“I say we split into four teams. One team breaches the north wall while another breaches the south, and the other two teams take a door apiece,” Nichols suggested.
I considered his suggestion. My concern was the placement of the wall breaches.
“Have you pinpointed where in the building they could be holding the senior chief?” I asked.
“We believe he’s on the south wall,” Davis said.
Foster looked at me. “What’s your assessment?”
I pulled out my binoculars and flipped on the night vision.
“We put Davis and Nichols on the wall teams.” Lowering the binoculars, I asked, “Were you able to tell how Adam got out of this hellhole the first time?”
Nichols piped up, “It looks like he hopped the north side wall on the west side of the building, which is a direct shot from the door on that side of the building, but there are several metal dog crates in the yard, and there are people in them. If I was a betting man, I’d say he came out of the east side of the building, stopped to check on the other hostages, and then hopped the wall. How he managed it, I don’t know.”
Yeah, well, Adam DuBois is a fucking superhero.
I nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right. I say we put the petty officers’ plan into action sooner rather than later, because they won’t keep him alive for long after he escaped and led them on a wild goose chase.”
Foster and Mattox nodded and started dividing us into teams. But when it came to assigning breaching locations, Foster was adamant that he and I go in with one of our guys through the south wall.
When we were far enough away, I asked, “Why the change on the breaching teams?”
Foster looked at me with a small smile. “Well, if it was Julie, I’d want to be the first person to her. The first friendly face she saw.”
“Thanks, Foster. I appreciate it.”
The fact that the team had rallied around me in spite of my sexual orientation and feelings for Adam overwhelmed me.
Foster nodded and updated Commander Mercer over our comms link while we moved into place.
“Alpha One is in place and set.”
The other three teams replied. Time for shock and awe and the overwhelming might of the US Navy SEALs. These assholes weren’t ready for what was coming for them. As much as I wanted to exact revenge on every motherfucker in this godforsaken building, Adam had to be my priority.
“EXECUTE! EXECUTE! EXECUTE!” rang through my comms unit.
I turned my back to the blasting charge Carson had set on the wall. The blast made my body shudder, but I pushed it out of my mind as I infiltrated the building.
I scanned the room. Screams filtered through the building, muffled by the walls. One of the screams stood out. I’d have known that voice even if he hadn’t screamed my name.
Adam!