Fredo leaned over Julio. “Hey there. You still at home, little Corpsman?”
Julio’s eyelids fluttered in response to Fredo’s words.
“I don’t got a lot of time. No problem if you need to chill some more. I need to get some intel, but only if you can. Can you help me, buddy?”
T.J. was looking down on the patient with a frown, concern all over his face. “You be careful, Fredo.”
They could hear someone running down the hallway, equipment jiggling.
“Think they’re bringing a cart. You only got a couple seconds, Fredo.”
All of a sudden, Julio mumbled something.
“What?” Fredo put his ear right up to the boy’s lips. “Tell me again, son.”
“Diego Mora. He shot me.”
Fredo squeezed his shoulder, got out his cell, and turned on the voice messaging feature. “One more time, my man.”
Julio repeated the words just as the heavy-set nurse, an orderly with an equipment cart of some kind, and a young intern entered the room.
“Out!” the intern pointed to the door behind him. “You’re not family, and you get the hell away from my patient.”
Fredo slipped the phone in his pocket as he and T.J. exited the room then ran down the hall to the outside.
Chapter 9
‡
Fredo made the quick call to Mia, which was hours overdue.
“You know you’re glad I’m a big girl and got Ricardo and lots of projects to keep me busy, with all this cleanup. And of course I got your other SEAL buddies beside me nearly twenty-four-seven, you hear what I’m sayin’?”
“Yes, dear.”
He rolled his eyes at T.J., who gave him the thumbs-up. Fredo got her caught up on Julio’s near-awakening.
“That’s wonderful. Answer to prayers, I’d say. Better tell my Mama. She’s been prayin’ every hour, holed up in that little house of hers.”
“Mia, we’re gonna have to convince her to get out of that neighborhood. I think the time has come for that fierce talk.”
“Good luck with that. I’m not gonna be anywhere near you when you try to tell her that. Maybe you and Armando and Mayfield can get your heads together, and after all this violence, maybe she’ll finally be ready.”
Next call he made was to Riverton. “Got a name from Julio. Diego Mora.”
“Julio awake now?”
“Barely. Here, I’ll send you the voice clip. He said it clear as day.” He did the phone playback and heard Riverton swear.
“Okay, I’ll pull in the Feds right now. God, I hope it doesn’t take them a week to get their shit together. You got an address for this Mora guy?”
“Nope. But I’m sure someone knows him. We were asking the wrong question. And, Riverton, put a guard on Julio’s door at the hospital. It’s too open there; makes me nervous.”
“I’ll get a uniform on right away. Now Fredo, you stay out of it, you hear? You wait for us to get the plan put into place. In the meantime, just sit tight, and if you get an address, well, I want to be the first one you call, hear me?”
Fredo made screeching noises into the cell phone, rubbing his mouth with his hand, imitating a bad connection, then pushed the red button to disconnect.
T.J. had his hands on his hips. “You dumb shit.”
“You’d do the same, and you know it.”
“Okay, so now there’s another thing I don’t wanna know! Fredo, Kyle told you not to get involved, Riverton just told you the same thing. And yet you’re fuckin’ gonna jump in anyway, aren’t you?”
“What the fuck to you think, T.J.? Wouldn’t you do the same? Come on, you know you would.”
T.J. was about to crack a smile, but stuffed it. Fredo didn’t want his friend to know he’d noticed.
“So here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking Kyle asked you and Jones and Coop to keep an eye on me.”
“Yeah. Impossible, but yeah.”
“Let’s go get ’em so you can do your jobs.”
“Unbelievable,” was T.J.’s only response.
By the time Fredo and T.J. gathered their gear and got over to the club house, there were ten SEALs waiting for them. Their team leader, Kyle Lansdowne, was one of them.
“Now that’s what I call boots on the ground,” Fredo said with a big high-five for his LPO. It was the first time Fredo had felt like smiling in four days. “You’re one slimy bastard, Kyle. You played that one really well, asshole.”
“Just makin’ sure enough people heard me and wanted to see if you really had the balls to carry it off. Officially? We’re not here. We get caught, we’re screwed. Way I see it, one of us gets busted, we all do.” Kyle addressed all of the men. “We got two things we gotta do and one thing we most definitely don’t want to do.” He walked in front of the group like they did at their Team building in Coronado, walking that straight imaginary line in the floor. “We find these bastards. And I’m talking about the Mora kid and his cronies. We turn them over to the Feds or San Diego P.D.”
Fredo knew what the one thing was that they weren’t going to do before Kyle had a chance to say it.
“We don’t, and let me repeat, we don’t suffer any loss of life. I mean if you should run over a small dog or cat, our mission is screwed. Certainly no women or children and abso-fuckin-lutely no bad guys.”
“What about us?” Luke asked.
“That goes without saying. That’s always the rule. No heroics, just get in and get out. So first we find them. It will be your basic fan out and reconnaissance. We go door-to-door. We ask questions, and look for nervous people. They’re gonna think we’re cops anyhow, unless they remember us from the project.”
Lupe appeared in the doorway, holding her baby in her arms, and Kyle nodded to her, which made every one of the SEALs turn. Unlike a mission overseas, they didn’t have their long guns or strange unicorn hats with the scopes for night vision, but they were stowed across the inlet on the island at the Team building if they needed them. Fredo also knew that every one of the SEALs had his own personal shooter, along with a KA-BAR or some other ugly kind of knife, and they were wearing Kevlar. From behind, they might have looked like a bunch of hikers readying themselves for nasty terrain.
“Ma’am?”
“I know where Diego Mora lives, or where he used to live.”
“Holy shit, Lupe. That’s a streak of good luck,” Fredo barked.
“I’ll take you there now.”
“Whoa, just give us the address, and you can stay protected.”
“No. This is what I must do. I hold myself responsible for Ephron. He was trying to help me, and it cost him his life. Besides, you won’t get anywhere close to him without me there.”
“I can’t let you or the baby go with us, Lupe. I just can’t do that. Sorry.” Kyle tenderly put his palm on her shoulder. Her seventeen-plus years of hard living didn’t mask the admiration she showed Kyle as she drank from his gaze.
“If it weren’t for me, Ephron would be one of you. I know he would.”
Fredo could tell from the fidgeting in the room the Team wasn’t in favor of getting Lupe near the kill zone.
Kyle’s voice was low and authoritative, like he was talking to a child of five. “No. I said no, and that’s final.”
“You don’t understand. He doesn’t care anything about any of you, or even me. He wants to see his baby.” She held the toddler up, his dark eyes scanning the faces of the men all around him. His fat pink cheeks and curly dark-brown hair made him look like a real-life cherub. As Lupe bounced him gently, she added, “He has never seen his baby.”
None of them were happy about it. These were the types of situations they’d rehearsed over and over again, the kinds of times when extreme care would be taken to protect the innocent, even if it meant their own personal loss of life. There was background chatter as Kyle finished laying out the plan. Fredo knew, as he watched everyone check their weapons, test their Invisios, tighten their straps, flatten their extra Velcro custom poc
kets, and double check their extra clips, If he asked any one of them, they would all tell him they’d take a bullet for her and the baby without thinking.
Unlike overseas, they had the added restraint of not being able to shoot first, which was always the safest. Hostage negotiations worked out badly over fifty percent of the time because someone on the other side either got scared or had thought that perhaps they couldn’t trust one of the SEALs, and often it cost them their lives. Adding to the fucked-up situation they were in, some of the local gangs had acquired cop-killer rounds that would slice through their armor like a curling iron through a popsicle. So they could shoot to defend themselves, but only to wound and not to kill.
But none of the bastards deserved to live.
Fredo was beginning to get tired, and realized his stamina hadn’t built up. Breathing hurt a little. He wasn’t getting enough sleep. He’d work on that, after they finished their mission. Until then, he would just have to put it out of his mind.
After they got all their gear together, Kyle called a brief team meeting, going over the strategy and Lupe’s description of the compound Diego lived in one more time, just like they always did. Rehearsing, over-rehearsing was always the plan. It increased the odds they’d have a successful mission.
Fredo called Mia again, this time letting her know they were “doing something,” their code for “don’t ask, I’ll never tell.”
“Fredo, you stop all that playing around and come home. I don’t like you running around with your buddies so soon after you were in the hospital.”
“I’m fine. No need to worry.” He did experience a little shortness of breath. He made sure she didn’t hear it.
“That’s when I worry the most! Oh, Fredo, come home and fuck me, okay? Wouldn’t you rather do that than run around with—you have guns with you?”
Again, he couldn’t lie to her. She’d know it.
“Mia, of course. We have to protect ourselves. Going after the guys who did all this shit. Would be stupid not to go in armed, my love.”
She purred some favorite words to him, and sure as heck, his unit came to full attention.
“Mia, you’re making me hard.”
“Good, then you can just tell Kyle and the boys you gotta come home and service me proper. Fredo, please.”
“I’ll be home. Just hold that thought.” He was grateful for the sexual banter, which took his mind off of the stress and apprehension he was feeling. But all too quickly, he realized if it went bad, this could be the last time he’d talk to her. It was strange, because he’d never felt this way at home before. It was always when he was leaving to go overseas. He decided it might be a good time to tell her what he’d been trying to tell her all this time.
“Mia, just in case, I want you to know—I wanted you to know—how much I love you.”
Mia became unhinged on the other end of the line. Fredo was silently cursing himself for not being more careful to not worry her.
Fuck it.
She didn’t need to know about his little sperm with the dented heads. There was nothing wrong with his equipment. Compared to some of the larger issues at hand, whether or not he could make babies seemed less important.
“Mia, we’ll have a good time when I get home. We can stay in bed all day. Or go somewhere, okay? You like that?”
She settled down. “Be careful, Fredo.”
“Of course. I’m with ten other guys. We got this. This is what we do. All you gotta do is be ready to see me when I get home.”
Lupe was grinning at him when he hung up the phone. She’d caught every implication, and he didn’t feel embarrassed in front of the young mother.
“Lupe, you’ll have this some day. I love being married. We’re gonna help you find a real man, not just a sperm donor.” The word did stick in his mouth, and he nearly stumbled on it.
“Maybe, Mr. Fredo. Maybe someday.” She picked up her diaper bag and jacket.
He didn’t know how Lupe had gotten mixed up with someone like Mora. He could never understand why Mia had run with Caesar and his gang before Fredo was able to convince her of his love. He knew what kind of woman she was, and he loved every part of her, even her flaws. He did not know the woman who had tormented him those first few years they knew each other, making fun of him, teasing him, and driving him wild. It didn’t matter how many times her brother, Armando, tried to talk him out of it, Fredo could not give up on her. He would have gone to his grave loving her, if that’s what it took.
Now he had that life, that perfect life. He tilted his head, smiling down at the toddler, placing a palm on his curly locks, and realized that he could love someone else’s baby like he loved little Ricardo, the child Caesar had fathered. He could die for a child some low-life like Diego had fathered without a thought. It didn’t matter if he or she was his flesh and blood; it was who he was as a man.
So it was time to make sure someone else got a chance, got the time to think about choices and perhaps make different ones, like Mia had eventually done. Without the SEALs, without this project, without all the people who wanted these kids to grow up safe, none of them had a chance.
And that just wasn’t acceptable.
Chapter 10
‡
The house Diego lived in didn’t look anything like a home. It looked like a prison. Razor wire was generously rolled along the top of ten feet cinderblock. The entrance to the compound was heavy and metal, and it rolled to the sides, rather than opening like a normal gate. It could have been stolen from a cell block, just like a guard tower or entrance to a maximum security prison. Behind the walls, Fredo could hear dogs barking as they approached.
“Lupe,” he stopped to talk to her before they approached. “If this goes bad, it will all be over fast. If it goes good, it will all be over fast. These things never linger on for days and days, or even hours, you understand? There will be no hostage situation here, and there will be no hesitation. If I yell down, you go down on top of the baby, okay?”
“You give me the signal, then?”
“No, sweetheart, I’ll just yell. You won’t be confused at what I ask you to do. But pay attention, okay? And watch everyone around us, know where they are and what they’re doing all the time, okay?”
“What if Diego isn’t here today?”
“Well, if he’s not here, he’s dead. I doubt he’d be allowed to have free time when the boss has just come back to town. It wouldn’t be very good for his longevity.”
She nodded, and together, they resumed their walk, heading directly toward the complex. This had all been arranged. The rest of the Team was in hiding at various places. He knew Armando was some place high up so he could get off shots if it came to that. Danny Begay, the Navajo SEAL, was ready with his slingshot and throwing knives. He was the fastest and quietest killer on their team in hand-to-hand combat.
Normally, Fredo would be making little IEDs and small explosive charges or smoke bombs. But they’d decided he was the target once and could be the target again. This time, however, he wore the Kevlar. Lupe wore a vest, as well, and a plate was strapped around the baby’s back, hidden under the blanket she carried him in.
They were damned lucky Lupe knew so much about the complex. Her showing up today was probably the last thing in the world they expected.
The two of them walked down the center of the road, aiming for the gate. Though armed, Fredo held his hands up, indicating he was not packing. It might give him the precious few seconds of safety he’d need if things started to go wrong.
A guard appeared at the top of the gate, holding a semi-automatic. He wasn’t afraid to brandish it, even though it was illegal as hell in California. But with the stiff gun control laws, and those laws becoming more strict by the day, the gap was widening between the bad guys and the people who just wanted to go about their lives without interference.
“We only want to talk to Diego Mora. We’re here to negotiate some kind of a truce,” Fredo shouted with authority.
; “Well, asshole, I speak for fuckin’ Diego Mora. And I doubt you have anything I want that you can negotiate with, except that pretty little mama there.”
Fredo understood that he was probably gazing at the fighting form of Sonny Alvarez, looking refreshed and ready for all-out war, having just recently returned from his vacation at Pelican Bay. Fredo guessed Sonny hadn’t been informed Diego had knocked up a local girl.
“Well your man Diego might have something different to say about that. Why don’t you just tell him, and we’ll wait right here?” Fredo felt Lupe shaking next to him.
Alvarez nimbly jumped down off the wall behind the fence. A few seconds later, the gate was rolled back, and out stepped Alvarez and two other lieutenants, armed to the teeth. Clearly, no one was concerned about violating parole, least of all Sonny.
The man was covered in prison tats, faded and milky, caused by unsanitary implements and skin that wasn’t properly attended to during healing. He sported a ring of skulls around the base of his neck. With his ruddy complexion and large craters from acne, he was probably the ugliest man Fredo had ever seen. His skinny chest showed a breastbone that pushed forward, a childhood deformity that was never fixed. Only about half the teeth remained in his mouth. The crowd of three stopped nearly ten feet away. Too far. He had to find some way to get closer.
Fredo saw recognition crest on the face of the young man to Sonny’s right. The man was fixated on the baby.
“Can I hold him?” the man asked Sonny, not Lupe.
“No,” said Fredo as he stepped in front of the girl and the baby. “We got issues to discuss first.”
Sonny searched the surrounding area, as if sensing the rest of the team. “You got a lot of balls, little man, or are your friends out there in hiding?”
“I got one man who will call the cops if something should happen to any of the three of us. We got 911 on speed dial.”
Sonny’s arrogance was his downfall, Fredo surmised. He also guessed the man wasn’t terribly bright. It looked as if thinking actually caused him some pain.
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