by Bella Juarez
Nothing’s changed since high school.
Considering how Sylvia and her gang had never moved past the mental age of seventeen, a picture flashed into Rio’s mind of Danny kissing her good-bye when she’d dropped him off earlier. The butterflies in her belly swarmed as she remembered when he’d slipped his ring on her finger and how good it felt whenever they touched. Realizing Danny didn’t love Sylvia and never had brought on feelings of pity for this woman and her sad life. Having her back to Rio, Sylvia hadn’t given any indication that she knew Rio had been there, but Sylvia had to know where she stood. What did piss her off had been the fact that Sylvia believed she was stupid. When the “call” ended, Sylvia turned around.
“Rio, I didn’t know you were here. Did someone already help you?” Sylvia asked.
I’m a fucking cop for God’s sake! Like I wouldn’t pick up on the mirrored ball that hid the camera on the ceiling that you looked at every time you said his name?
Rio took a mental step back and looked at her ring remembering, she was engaged to Danny, and she was Mistress. This sad, pathetic woman would never understand or love him enough to be what he needed.
“All good, thank you. I’m waiting for Martin to get back with copies of the transfer paperwork.”
“Are you doing anything tonight?”
“Sitting at home and watching TV. You?” she asked, knowing she was being evil by playing along with this silly game.
“I might be having dinner with an old friend.”
“Cool. Anybody I know?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Have fun,” Rio said as the deputy handed her the copies she’d been waiting for.
Getting her paperwork, she left and shook her head as she walked. Sylvia had been stupid to think that Danny would ever go back to her. As she rode back to the station, she knew she had to make damn sure Danny never wanted to look at another woman, much less think about one. She’d already put that plan in place, right before he left.
* * * *
Dan arrived at Special Warfare Group 5 and went straight for the command suite. He entered the office and stopped.
Oh shit!
“Sorry, skipper. You said to come see you as soon as I got here. I’ll come back later.”
“We were just talking about you, son. Come on in,” the admiral said.
Dan had walked in on Captain O’Malley having a meeting with the commander of Navy Special Warfare Command and former Command Master Chief James Jones. It didn’t get much more powerful in his world than the men who sat in this room.
“Don’t stand there with your dick in your hand, boy, come on in and shut the door,” Master Chief Jones said.
“JJ, leave him alone,” the admiral said.
“What the fuck? He’s standing there like he’s just walked in on you bending Rock over the table and you’re asking him if he wants a turn. I’m just helping him out.”
“Jesus Christ, JJ!” Captain O’Malley said.
Stepping inside the room, Dan approached the conference table. Master Chief Jones was notorious for saying the most inappropriate things at the most inopportune times. He dug deep to keep his expression blank and avoid laughing his ass off. The picture Master Chief Jones painted was funny as hell, and he didn’t want to lose his composure in front of some of the most powerful men in the Navy. He took a seat and cleared his throat.
“How’s the standup going at Fort Huachuca?” the admiral asked.
“It’s going great, sir. Now that the Recon team is in place, we’ll be operational by the ETA Senior Chief Walsh promised.”
“I’ve looked over your plan about using the old tunnels, and I like it, lieutenant. So far, Recon hasn’t seen anyone go in or out. We’ll need to get in and take a closer look to see if the tunnels are sound enough to get us back and forth. It’s risky. If your tangos follow you inside. Its close quarters fighting, and any explosion may cause a cave-in,” the admiral cautioned.
About that time, Shaq and Cobra joined them. They’d been working with the Air Force Intelligence Command at Lackland Air Force base to determine what kind of activity had been going on in Mexico in their theater of operation.
“We’ve thought about that, sir. We figured we’d rig charges throughout the trail we take in and out. We think the charges need to do just enough damage to collapse the tunnels in sections as we go and not bring the whole thing down while we’re inside. We’re still working with the Army Corps of Engineers to figure out how to do it, or if it’s even possible,” Dan said.
“You’re late, Cobra. The meeting’s already started,” JJ said.
“Well, I promise my news will give me one hell of an excuse. There’s been a huge uptick in traffic over the last month. Satellite’s picked up activity around a compound eight klicks away from the Montenegro complex,” Cobra said.
“What kind of activity?” Rock asked.
“Don’t know, they’re looking at it right now. There’s something going on around an old abandoned building, lots of big machinery and covered trucks going in and out.”
“Do you have coordinates on that old building?” Dan asked, sitting up.
“It’s our building,” Shaq said.
He’d been talking with Shaq off and on about the tactical planning. Satellite images had revealed a set of dilapidated buildings less than twenty klicks from the Jensen ranch. Dan remembered those buildings because he’d seen them before and the mining tunnels under the Jensen ranch. The ranch had once been owned by a mining company in Mexico. The company played out the silver mine and later sold the ranch to Juan Jensen. He and Shaq had decided to see if the tunnels were viable and came out at the buildings on the Mexican side, which they’d use for cover. They’d been fairly certain that the narco-traffickers who ran out of Sonora knew of the tunnels. At the suggestion of the group’s executive officer, Commander Corbin, the SEALs had enlisted the aid of a new Marine Recon unit stationed at Fort Sam to ensure that no one was using the tunnels. The Marines were now in-theater and laid-up along with the CBP to secure the area. With this development, all of their careful planning might be in jeopardy.
“What do you want to do, Rock?” the admiral asked, sitting back.
The captain looked off into the distance, and Dan knew he watched genius in action. When Rock got that look one hell of an airtight plan would follow.
“Honestly, I don’t like using those tunnels. Something about it isn’t sitting right with me, but I can’t get down there to look and figure out what it is.”
“I can go down and look,” Cobra offered.
“No, I’ve got something else for you,” Rock said. He shifted his gaze to Shaq. The captain and Shaq thought alike. At times, he depended on Shaq to be his second pair of eyes when working through a problem. “I’ll send you, Shaq. Get down there and look over that tunnel, and get a good feel for the place, then we’ll nail this thing down. Dan, finish dealing with the Corps of Engineers and see if this thing is even doable.”
“Will do, Rock.”
“Well, boys, how about we meet at the O’Club and throw back a few?” the admiral asked.
The captain stayed seated. “You guys, go ahead. Cobra, I need you to hang back a minute.”
* * * *
Commander Lance “Cobra” Corbin kept his seat. Something had been brewing since the admiral arrived a few days ago. Rock had deliberately left him out of the loop for some reason until he sent him to Air Force Intelligence to work with Shaq. It was unlike Rock to keep anything from him, so he wanted to see if Rock would finally give up his secrets.
“What’s up?”
The captain exhaled and looked away. “I hate keeping things from you.”
“I’m sure you’ve had your reasons.”
“I need to know if I give you an assignment that I can count on you no matter who’s involved.”
What the fuck is this?
Cobra didn’t understand why his integrity had all of a sudden been called into question. Th
ere had never been an issue when it came to his motives. In fact, he’d been pretty damn clear whenever he said or did something.
“Have I given you a reason to doubt me? If I have, I need to know, so we can straighten this the fuck out, right now.”
“You and Rafe were close—”
“So? Is that what this is about? The fact that I was buddies with a greedy dumbass?”
Rock’s gaze turned hard as he lifted an eyebrow at him. “I’m on your side, remember?”
Feeling the anger rise, he stood. “What the fuck does that mean? Who the hell is questioning my motives and my loyalty now? I was the one that helped you bring him down, remember?”
“Cobra, calm the hell down and take a seat. I need you to do something, and I don’t want any questions if this thing goes south, and believe me when I say, it might. I don’t need you going off the reservation because you’re still pissed off at Rafe. Now sit the fuck down and listen to me.”
Opening the deep wound that was Rafe Wilson was like suffering a compound fracture. It hurt like hell and brought up memories he didn’t care to revisit. Rafe had been his best friend and dive buddy. Together they’d survived BUD/S and SQTs, and had many a fucked-up mission together. At times, he’d been blind to all of Rafe’s high-handedness, but in his eyes, Rafe had been right most of the time. He mourned the loss of a man who’d become like a brother. He remembered going home after the funeral, getting drunk, and then crying like a baby afterward. Rafe had been the only dead SEAL he’d ever shed a tear for. They were close, or so Lance thought.
When he discovered Rafe had been involved with the Russians to sell out the United States military he’d been beyond furious. At first, he’d been stunned to learn that Rafe had staged his death and he’d been certain there had to have been some kind of mistake. After he’d seen the facts for himself, his grief passed, and his feelings of betrayal boiled into hatred. He made it his personal mission to take Rafe down and ensure he’d been really gone this time. He swore he’d kill the bastard himself if all others failed. But they hadn’t, and they’d managed to get him and the bitch that had brainwashed him, his stepmother, Katrina Wilson.
But Lance’s reputation as an officer and a SEAL had been tarnished. Rafe and Katrina had left destruction and heartbreak in their wake. Guilt by association had been cast on Lance as well as Rafe’s remaining family. Rafe’s sister, who also served in the Navy, had been removed from her duty station and investigated before she’d been allowed to look at so much as a classified sentence in a document. Rafe’s stepfather, a US Congressman who sat on the Armed Services Committee had to bury the scandal after he’d had a microscope shoved up his ass by the CIA and Naval Intelligence. Everything had slowly returned to normal, but deep scars remained.
Even though Lance knew the men he worked with were beyond reproach, he kept them at arm’s length, except for Rock. When the fallout from Rafe had landed squarely on Lance, Rock went to bat for him. Ensuring that Lance’s reputation remained intact, he’d made Lance his executive officer and hadn’t withheld anything from him until now. Lance needed to understand why. Taking a deep breath, he resumed his seat and remembered Rock was the one man he did trust.
“What’s going on?”
“The George Washington is about to test and possibly deploy a new laser weapon system when it’s out on maneuvers in the Gulf. We’ve leaked this information to the General Assembly at the UN in advance of our announcement to test this weapon in a few days. Intel from inside Iran has let MI-6 know that the Iranians don’t like it and feel they need to do something about it.”
“Feeling and doing are two different things.”
“You know they’ll try to stop it somehow. We need to figure out how. And stop them before they do some real damage.”
“If we’re deploying a new system, anyone that’s got so much as an ink stain on their clearance or record would be sent somewhere else. They’ll only have the safest people on board.”
“Remember when Dan found those EMPs in Afghanistan? And how before we destroyed that facility, he took a crew back in and found two more cases? The first one Dan found in the lab was sent to Los Alamos. The other two were left at Camp ECHO. When you rotated out, the two cases went missing,” Rock said.
Ah, shit! Not again!
“Where are you going with this? I rotated out with six hundred people.”
“Did I say it was you? If I thought for one second it was you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Lance breathed a sigh of relief and focused.
“I still don’t see the connection. I’m sure the Washington will be at damn-near general quarters the whole time she’s out, and most of the crew won’t even know why.”
“We told the Russians about finding the weapons and how they went missing, so we could force their hand to give us an official request for support. In the meantime, we suspect that once we formally announce the intent to test that new system, Iran will lose its shit and try something. The Russians want those weapons back in a bad way. Part of why I sent Dan and Shaq into Mexico for six weeks was because those stolen cases went there, and one is still there. We may be dealing with a different enemy—guys we’ve trained. We learned that from the interrogation of Bakri’s secretary. Since Dan’s been in Arizona he’s briefed me that Montenegro has hired his own Special Operations unit. Obviously Bakri and Montenegro have bigger plans, and maybe this is why these guys blend in so good. Regardless, Langley’s afraid that someone will try to cripple the Washington with the missing EMP devices while she’s out and then attack her.”
Lance’s mouth went dry. Special operators would be damn near impossible to find. How many missions had he done, and the people he came into contact with had never even known he’d been there. They’d been trained to blend in and disappear without a trace. Lance would never be one step ahead. He’d always be playing catch-up, and anything he could do would be after they’d deployed a weapon. He tried to find a silver lining in the mission.
“What’s the worst they can do? It’s a carrier, four acres of sovereign US soil. Even if they pull alongside and try to blow it up, they’ll cripple her but won’t stop her.”
“What if she’s limping out at sea and hit, again? Remember Iran has an Air Force, too. They’re experts at playing the oops card. What’s to keep them from deploying a device with a few fighters, loaded with basic bombs, near the Washington? They don’t give a shit if they lose a couple of planes and pilots. She’ll be in the middle of the Persian Gulf.”
“How far of a reach do those things have? There’s a whole fucking battle group out there.”
“Depends on how and where it’s detonated. If they’re detonated from a boat near the ship or inside, people tell me it’s not much of a reach, maybe a couple of hundred square miles. If it’s detonated from an aircraft, those things have a radius of at least one thousand square miles. I’ve been told the higher it is, the worse it gets. We really don’t know. Los Alamos is taking one of them apart to figure it out. There’s still a lot we don’t know.”
The chaos that would ensue with the detonation of an electromagnetic pulse weapon in the middle of a battle group that depended on digital communication for warfare was unimaginable. The avionics that ran the navigation, weapons, and comm lines for all of the aircraft on the ships would be rendered useless. At best the Washington would be crippled in the Persian Gulf. At worst, all of the Persian Gulf region would be blacked out including the military theater of operations in the area. There would be complete loss of command and control. In essence, coalition forces would be fighting blind and deaf.
“What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to take a cruise with the Washington as the mission commander and keep an eye out. I’ll be sending a small team with you. Smoke them out. Find those missing devices if they’re anywhere near the Washington, and make sure nothing happens to interrupt the testing of that new weapons system.”
Basically, his captain had
just asked him to stick his finger in a dyke and look for a needle in a hayfield while he was at it. If he’d ever looked an impossible mission in the face, this one had to be it.
“Is that all?”
“No.”
“Jesus Christ, Rock! There’s more?”
“I need you to keep an eye on someone I can’t get removed from that deployment without an act of Congress. And the reason I don’t need you going off the map.”
“Who?”
“Commander Cheryl Wilson will be on that cruise as the Reactor Department head. Her department on the Washington is critical. I need you to keep an eye on her.”
Chapter 20
Jensen Ranch
Near Bisbee, Arizona
July 23, 2010/1318 Zulu
“Damn! You’re about to bounce me right out of this thing!” Shaq complained as they drove through the scrubby terrain.
The first strains of daylight were starting to peak through the low clouds as they drove to a nearby mesa on the ranch. Dan had run all over this land while growing up with Davey and recalled very well the spot they needed to find because Mr. J had threatened to beat them both if they ever went near it. Of course, that had been all the invitation two mischievous boys needed to do exactly that.
“Quit your bitching, will you? You’re starting to sound like Friday.”
“That whiny bastard? Oh, hell no. He got soft sitting in Rock’s office all day.”
Dan slowed the Jeep he’d borrowed from Davey and looked for his landmarks. Shaq had returned with him a couple of days ago, and since then they’d been doing nothing but mission planning from dawn until dark. This had been the first time they’d left the building with any light in the sky. This had to be the spot, because he’d climbed that mesa and taken pictures from it a hundred times. Dan used to be able to find this place in his sleep, but almost ten years had passed since he’d last set foot on the mesa and southernmost point of the two- thousand-acre ranch. He stopped and dug out some of the old pictures he’d taken of the surrounding land.