by Margaret Kay
“Why didn’t we know there were Tangos in the building?” Shepherd demanded.
“We’ll find out, sir,” Yvette replied. Her eyes flickered to Angel and Sienna.
“If anyone else is there, let’s try to take one alive,” Shepherd ordered. His eyes followed Yvette’s. He’d forgotten the two women were there. “It’s time for you to go, now.”
Sienna heard him, but was frozen in place, her eyes glued to the many feeds on the monitors, her feet unable to move, her heart pounding in her chest.
Just then, two more Tangos took positions in the doorway, one high, one low. Garcia and Lambchop took them both out in a burst of duel gunfire ripping through flesh and splintering the door frame. Garcia stood and pressed his back to the wall beside the door. His camera feed showed Lambchop, sprinting up to and taking a similar position against the wall on the other side of the doorway. Through Lambchop’s feed, the women could plainly see flecks of the Tango’s blood on Garcia's face and neck.
Seeing the blood, Sienna’s chest tightened. She knew it wasn’t his, but that didn’t lessen the panic.
“Now!” Shepherd repeated more forcefully, his eyes on the women.
“Sorry,” Sienna muttered, forcing her feet to move as she followed Angel out of the room.
On the other side of the door, unable to see what was happening, Sienna lost any composure that she was trying to hold onto. Tears streamed down her face. She wrapped her arms around her own torso, holding herself as though this would enable her to hold it together. She leaned against the wall and sobbed. He’s going to be okay, he’s going to be okay, she repeated in her head. She didn’t see Angel’s reaction, nor did she care at that moment. All that she cared about, was that Anthony was in trouble. He could have been killed, and still could be.
When Angel finally talked herself down from her heightened state, she realized that she clutched Sammy tightly against her chest, too tightly. She gazed into his chubby face. He was her little man, who was just like his daddy. She reached out to Sienna. “Shh, it’s okay, the team will be fine.”
“How do you do this?”
“I don’t normally watch, but I know what the team does, have seen it and not over a monitor. They’re the best at what they do, Sienna. You have to have faith that they have each other’s backs.”
“If Landon hadn’t shot those men, Anthony would have been killed.”
“But Landon did, because that’s what they do. They take care of each other.”
Sienna glanced back at the door into Ops. “I want to know what happens, but I don’t want to watch.”
“I know,” Angel said. “Come on, let's wait in the apartment. I need to feed Sammy and lay him down for the night. I’ll text Shepherd. He’ll let us know when it’s over and will tell us what happened.”
Sienna merely nodded and followed Angel to the door. She watched numbly as Angel pressed her hand to the scan pad and entered her code. They went up the one flight of stairs and she repeated it on nine. Within the apartment the two women sat in the two comfortable, overstuffed chairs as Angel fed the baby.
Within the warehouse, the situation deteriorated quickly. Through their comms, Garcia and Lambchop heard Cooper. “Team Two holding position. We’ve got incoming. A second semi is heading in this direction.”
“Team Three you are still clear to engage,” Yvette directed. They were moving in from the north, approaching the already parked trailer while Team Two was approaching from the south.
“Roger that,” Jackson’s voice replied.
Shepherd clicked on the keyboard that controlled the feeds on the monitors, queueing up the bodycam footage from the three men in Team Three. The last rays from the sun were nearly completely gone now. The area was dark. They had fanned out and were approaching the semi, one from the front, and one from each side. Shepherd then watched the feed covering the south side of the warehouse. The semi came into sight angling to back up and park in bay three.
“You’ve got company, Team One.”
“We hear it Big Bear,” Garcia replied in a whisper. The semi was nearly in position. “We’re going to penetrate and clear the offices. He nodded to Lambchop and then the two men thrust themselves within the room in proper cover formation.
As the truck docked. The large overhead bay door rolled open, a screeching of metal on metal that had to have been heard a mile away.
“Warehouse bay door number three is opening. They must have a remote opener,” Cooper reported.
“Move in on that truck, Team Two,” Shepherd ordered.
“Roger,” Cooper’s voice replied.
He and his team moved quickly and quietly. Cooper came up to the cab as the driver eased himself to the ground. Cooper raised the butt of his AR and struck the back of the man’s head, hard. The man collapsed against his truck then slid to the ground. Cooper restrained his hands and feet in zip ties and then rolled his limp body beneath the truck.
Doc took up position at the rear of the truck, covering Mother, who rolled beneath the trailer. Madison pressed herself against the other side. The sound of the large back door of the semi rolled open with a clanging of metal. Seconds later, Mother pressed his body against one of the tires, in an attempt to remain unseen. The barrel of his weapon was on the two men who had jumped down from within the trailer. They held weapons. One had what looked to be a twelve-gauge pump held lazily in one hand, the other clutched a semiautomatic handgun more seriously.
From their positions, both Madison and Doc heard movement, shuffling, voices from within the semi.
“Bajar!” The men who held the shotgun, who now stood just steps within the warehouse ordered.
“Rapido!” The other man barked. He turned and his face came into view. Dingo.
The people within the semi began to get down, none to quietly.
“Riddler is on-site,” Mother whispered. He watched the men and women jump and climb down from the trailer, all Hispanic, a variety of ages from teens to people who looked to be in their fifties.
In Ops, Yvette checked the location of the trackers in both Juan Carlos and Mendoza. Neither were anywhere near the warehouse. She broadcast this update.
“Notify the DEA to move in on Mendoza and Juan Carlos,” Shepherd told Yvette.
Meanwhile on the north side, Team Three had made it into the warehouse and took up positions concealed behind several large boxes near that doorway. Their weapons were trained at the garage bay and the rear of the semi that was unloading its human cargo across the room. A light within the trailer illuminated. More people came off the truck. There had to be seventy or so of them. They stepped into the warehouse and stood huddled in groups near the doorway. Two more armed men were the last to jump down. Within the semi were pallets with packaging, and stacks of folded up tables.
“Unloading of personnel looks complete,” Jackson reported. “Four armed Tangos and what I judge to be about seventy civilians, most likely slave labor, from the looks of it.”
Dingo had his cell phone to his ear. His eyes scanned all around the interior of the warehouse.
“The Riddler is on his cell, looking nervous,” Jackson reported, watching the man through the sights of his black AR-15.
“Do you have a clear shot on each Tango, Team Three?” Shepherd asked.
Jackson glanced to his right at the Undertaker, who motioned to indicate he was covering the Riddler. Then to his left, at the Birdman, who also nodded, pointing at the Tango to the far left of the group. That left the two in the middle for him. “Roger that, Big Bear.”
“If he gets much jumpier, take the four of them out,” Shepherd ordered.
Just then the sound of a cell phone’s ringer sounded from the offices area where Razor and Lambchop had entered. Dingo had tried to ring one of his men. Dingo heard it faintly and his head swung towards the direction of the offices. He aimed his weapon in that direction and moved towards it.
“Engage,” Jackson whispered the command.
A split second l
ater, four bullets were fired with surgical precision, striking each of the Tangos right where the men of Shepherd Security had aimed. Without firing a shot, the four men fell in lifeless heaps to the cement floor. Many of the people who had been herded from the truck screamed. Most dropped to the ground, their hands over their heads. A few ran and hid behind the crates and boxes. Several made a break for the door on the east wall.
“Tangos neutralized,” Jackson reported. “I’ve got civilians running to the doors on the east wall.”
“Cover that Team Two,” Shepherd ordered.
“Offices clear,” Garcia’s voice then reported.
Jackson and his team moved in on the people who had been unloaded from the truck, their weapons covering them. “Permanecer abajo!” They all yelled, telling the people to stay down in Spanish. Outside, Cooper, Madison and Doc intercepted the people running out the east door. No one slipped past them.
All seventy people were herded to one corner of the warehouse and held there while the Spanish speaking members of Shepherd Security pulled them one at a time aside and interrogated them. They all told the same story. They had paid big money to be guided through the desert and snuck into the United States near Juarez, but their guides soon became their captors.
They were held in deplorable conditions, were prisoners who were locked in rooms without running water or bathroom facilities, buckets their toilets. Many of the women were beaten and raped. They were forced to prepare and package the marijuana. One woman reported that she had been forced to work for the cartel for the last two years. Anyone who wouldn’t work or tried to escape was executed in front of the others.
Meanwhile, Cooper broke open the lock on the first semi. Rolling the door open, he gave a slow whistle at the amount of pot packed into it. “How did a shipment this big get through Customs?”
“Maybe several smaller loads were consolidated in this trailer,” the Birdman suggested.
“The DEA should be able to back-track this trailer through Customs, if it came through,” Cooper said. “Control, how long till the DEA and ICE will be on-site?”
“DEA are still engaged in bringing in Mendoza and Juan Carlos, and ICE’s Rapid Response Team is in route, ETA one hour,” Yvette reply.
Cooper sighed. He knew one hour usually meant two and with no ETA for the DEA, they wouldn’t be wrapping things up anytime soon. They wouldn’t be back to HQ before midnight, probably much later. “Roger that, Control. See what you can do to light a fire under the DEA.”
“I’ve got labels for all ten of the growers you identified, Razor,” the Undertaker broadcast. He had busted open the pallets of packaging material and flattened boxes within the trailer of the semi that had brought the workers.
“Photograph everything,” Cooper ordered. “The DEA is going to be busy. You still on-line Big Bear?”
“Negative, he’s on the phone with Mason,” Yvette reported.
Uniform
“The sound of gunfire still triggers me,” Angel said softly. “Even though I go down to the range weekly, hearing it when I don’t expect it, like in Ops a bit ago, sends a tidal wave of emotions through me.”
Sienna stared at her in silence, unsure what to say.
“Did that cause the same in you?” Angel asked.
Sienna nodded. “You could say that.” The truth was, Sienna wasn’t sure if that was what had happened or not. She wasn’t sure what she felt beside the horrible terror that Anthony could be killed.
“You’ve been kind and haven’t asked me any questions,” Angel said.
“It’s none of my business. And I would never invade your privacy or risk upsetting you by asking.”
Angel smiled at that. Sienna Andrews was a nice woman. “It will get easier one day, dealing with what happened. I didn’t ever think it would, but time and a lot of therapy from Joe Lassiter has gotten me to the point that only a few triggers, like that, remind me of what happened to me. Most of the time, I don’t even think about it at all.”
“I look forward to that day.”
“They call it trauma for a reason,” Angel said. “As I said before. I am stronger because of what I went through.”
The women continued to talk softly, long after Angel finished feeding Sammy and he fell asleep. After Angel laid his tiny body in the middle of the queen-sized bed and retook her seat. “Is there any wine here?”
“No,” Sienna answered. “I looked earlier, before you came to see me.”
“I should go up to Shepherd’s penthouse and get us a bottle.”
“How long do you think the guys will be?”
“Long enough to have a few glasses of wine,” Angel joked. “The usual timeframe is a few hours after they’ve wrapped up operations. They have to do an official turnover to the authorities onsite, which in this case will be the DEA. Then they have a post-Op debrief. If anything went down that calls for it, Lassiter is called in and they meet with him before they can go home.”
“What do you mean, if anything went down? And what, Lassiter would come in here in the middle of the night?”
Angel nodded. “He does often. When Shepherd was shot and they rescued me, they immediately flew Lassiter up to the hospital that we were at. He counseled everyone on the spot. I’m not sure what time it was when he got there but I’m pretty sure it was the middle of the night.”
“Shepherd was shot when you were in trouble?”
Angel nodded. “I thought Anthony would have told you. That’s why he’s in the wheel chair. The bullet fragmented and caused nerve damage.”
A numbness overtook Sienna. “And you were right there when it happened?”
Angel nodded silently. Sienna looked upset, no, she looked terrified. Angel wouldn’t share any more details. She changed the subject. “So, if you stay when this is all over, you and Anthony are going to need a place. His condo is tiny. My neighbor across the street from our townhouse is getting ready to put her place up for sale. She asked me if anyone I knew was interested and I told her I did. She will give me, or someone I know, the first option to buy it when she’s ready. You should think about it.”
If Sienna was stunned by Angel’s revelation that Shepherd was shot in front of her, she was even more stunned by the suggestion that she and Anthony should think about buying a townhouse together across the street from Angel’s. Were they anywhere close to doing that, in their relationship? And why would Angel think they were? “Maybe,” she mumbled mindlessly.
“It’s a great neighborhood. There is a pool and community center with its own park right down the street from our unit. I can’t wait till Sammy is old enough to play there. All the units have small fenced-in back yards and dogs of any size are allowed. Yours is a Lab, isn’t it?”
Sienna nodded her head, still processing the possibility of her and Garcia moving in together, just like that. “It sounds nice.”
“And it would be good for all of us, if we lived that close together. Jackson would love to have Anthony as a neighbor. There are so many things that would be easier that way. Madison and Cooper come over often, but their place is across town. We don’t have too many friends outside of work. I’m friendly with a small group of women in the complex. They get together for wine and various home parties. I go when I can, but none of them have kids. I haven’t found a group of new moms yet. Joe doesn’t think I’ll find the right group as my life is so different than most new moms. Other women whose husband’s travel cannot understand what it’s like to live with what our men do, not that I could ever tell anyone outside of the agency.”
It occurred to Sienna what Angel was saying. Their men, Angel was referring to Anthony as her man. A smile cracked her lips. “No. I guess I’m glad I never knew what Greg was doing. I don’t know how you don’t worry nonstop when Jackson’s gone.”
Angel smiled faintly. “I never said I didn’t.”
There was a single quiet knock to the door. Angel came to her feet and quickly opened it. Shepherd was in the hallway. He rolled into
the room as Sienna stood as well, grasping her trembling hands together. His eyes flickered between the two sets of concerned stares that focused on him.
“The mission is finished. Jackson and Garcia are both fine. The whole team is.”
“Thank God!” Angel sighed. She hugged Shepherd.
“They should be back in about two hours. You may want to get a few hours’ sleep while you can. Lassiter will be in by the time they are back and after he is done with them, schedule something with him if you need it. I know what seeing that does to you.” He paused and shifted his gaze to Sienna. “You too. Your ordeal is fresh. Garcia reported on your nightmares before we brought you in. If that’s still an issue, seeing what you did tonight will most likely trigger you.”