Boxers looked impossibly scrunched in the small space of the flight deck. He peered back at Henry through the A-frame formed by his armpit. “A bit of a power struggle,” he said.
“Who are the players?”
“People I’ve already paid, and people who want me to pay them, instead.”
Henry waited for the rest of the explanation.
“Some government minister is tweaked that we flew in without proper clearance and vetting,” Boxers explained. “That translates in this swamp of a bureaucracy to he didn’t get his slice of the pie. But my guy is a more important minister and he has access to guys with guns. Shouldn’t take too long.”
“So, they’re not really going to board?”
“Um, no. That wouldn’t be good or healthy for any of them.”
“Or us.”
Boxers didn’t reply.
In the end, the crisis ended—however such things play themselves out—and the vehicles all pulled away.
“Score one for the good guys,” Boxers said.
“How are we going to off-load all this stuff?” Henry asked.
“I rented a private hangar and a couple of trucks.”
“Holy shit,” Henry said. “What’s the final price tag on this operation?”
The question seemed to annoy Big Guy. He exited the flight deck, and as he squeezed past Henry, he said, “My friend’s life.”
It was hard to judge travel distance from the back of a plane while taxiing, but it felt like a mile or more as the Gulfstream drove from one slice of tarmac to the other, over and over again, for every bit of fifteen minutes. Finally, the pilots eased the aircraft across a threshold into a space that looked just like many other spaces of its kind that Henry had launched missions from over the years. As the engines spun down, Boxers pulled the lever for the door and the self-deploying stairs. He looked anxious to be able to stand straight again.
For no particular reason, Henry chose to bring up the rear as they deplaned. The humid heat hit him like a two-handed push as he climbed down to the hangar’s concrete floor. The equipment could wait for a while. In fact, they all had to wait for a while. For nearly five hours, in fact, until it was time to depart for the rendezvous with Torpedo and Bomber, the boat driver and his son. This was the most out-of-sight location for them to kill time, and with nighttime being key to their mission, there were no bonuses for arriving at the embarkation spot early.
“I don’t suppose anyone knows where the thermostat is for this place,” Madman said. All of their faces were already glimmering with sweat.
“Hey,” Jolaine said, pointing out the open doors. In the distance, a tiny blue car approached at a speed that seemed too high for the space.
Henry’s hand moved reflexively to the pistol on his hip. He didn’t draw it, but he was ready to, if needed. The others all braced for their own fight with the incoming driver.
“What the hell is he doing?” Henry thought aloud.
“Making dangerous people very nervous,” Boxers said.
As it closed in, the car revealed itself to be a little Fiat, and it slowed as it closed to within fifty yards, and then stopped completely twenty yards out.
“If that’s an IED, we’re toast,” Madman said.
“Different Sandbox,” Big Guy said.
The driver seemed to understand that he’d put people on edge. When he opened the door and climbed out, he led with his hands, fingers splayed. “I’m a good guy!” he yelled in English.
“I recognize that voice,” Boxers said.
Madman added, “You’re shitting me.”
As the new arrival rose to his full height and stepped away from his vehicle, he held his arms out, cruciform, his fingers still splayed. He was about six-two, sported a battle beard, and still had the physique of the operator he used to be, all compressed into a T-shirt and faded Levi’s.
“Boomer Nasbe,” Jolaine said. “I thought he was dead.”
“Not dead, She Devil,” he called. “Just disappeared.”
Dylan Nasbe, aka Boomer, was a former D-boy who’d gotten seriously sideways with Uncle Sam when he took it upon himself to mete out justice on some CIA shitheads who righteously deserved what they got. The intelligence community could forgive a lot of sins, but that was not one of them. He’d taken to the mattresses, as the Mob liked to say, a while ago, after the same West Virginia op that got Jolaine fired from Jonathan’s team.
“What are you doing here?” Madman asked. His tone was leaden, 100 percent disapproval.
Dylan let his arms drop to his sides and he walked toward Team Yankee, a big grin decorating his face. “Ah, come on, Stanley. Bygones and all that.” He stopped in front of Boxers and offered his hand. “Howya doin’, Big Guy?”
To Henry’s eye, there was genuine affection when Boxers said, “It’s good to see you, Dylan. Glad you’re still breathing.”
“I heard that Digger needed help,” he said. “And I happened to be in the neighborhood.”
“The family?”
Dylan looked away. “Don’t see them anymore. This is no life for a teenager. I want Ryan to run toward his life, not away from mine.”
Jolaine stepped forward to shake his hand, as well. “Nice to see you again.”
Dylan grinned as he said, “You still a batshit-crazy killer of innocents?”
She smiled through pressed lips. “I’m here by specific request,” she said.
Henry figured the jab hit a little too close to home. When it was his turn, he shook the newcomer’s hand. “Henry West. Conan.”
“You’re not a Unit guy.” It sounded a little like an accusation.
“DEVGRU,” Henry said.
Dylan shook his hand aggressively. “A squid!”
“I’ll try to use small words,” Henry said.
Dylan gave a hearty laugh. “I like working with you SEALs. We never run short of mirrors or hair gel when you guys are on the team.”
“How’d you hear about the op?” Boxers asked.
“There’s a watchful hen in Virginia who may or may not have my contact information,” Dylan said. “And not because I gave it to her.”
“Is this where you’ve been serving your exile?” Jolaine asked.
“I’m a no-fixed-address kind of guy these days. As luck would have it, I happened to be in Mexico when your balloon went up.” He held his arms out again. “So, do you have room for another shooter or not?”
“Always got room for you, Boomer,” Boxers said.
Dylan held up a finger. “Nope, remember the rules. I’m not Boomer anymore. For that matter, I’m not Dylan anymore, either, but for your purposes, Dylan is fine.”
Henry knew there was a backstory here, but he also knew that it was none of his business. What mattered was that the others seemed to get it, and they, likewise, seemed cool with it all.
“So, do we have a plan?” Dylan asked.
“We were just about to get to that,” Big Guy said.
* * *
Jonathan asked, “Is there any high ground we can occupy that will let us look down on the resort itself?” They were progressing slowly and carefully through the jungle, intentionally staying off the paved areas. He knew from overheard radio transmissions that hunter-killer teams had been dispatched to find the people who had been killing the invaders. Given the disparity in numbers, invisibility at this point was hands down their strongest weapon.
“Not really,” Jaime said. “I mean, there are areas where you can look down on one cluster of bungalows or another, but there’s no place that will give you a complete view.”
“When you design a resort, you want all the sight angles to be interesting,” Tyler added. “I guess the good news is that all green stuff keeps people from seeing us, too. Cuts both ways. How come we haven’t seen any of these killer teams yet?”
Jonathan had been wondering the same thing. “I’m gonna guess that they don’t care a lot if we stay on the marina side of the island. As we get closer, I expect securit
y to get tighter.”
“That’s how I’d do it,” Gail agreed. “Are you boys sure you want to do this thing?”
“Less sure all the time,” Tyler said.
Three minutes later, the flora thinned quickly, and they were on the edge of the golf course. Impossibly green grass covered gently-rolling hills far to the left and far to the right. Jonathan wasn’t much of a golfer—in fact, he hated the game—but to his eye, this looked like a pretty tough course.
This was about to get a thousand times more intense. From here forward, they’d be in the open, moving in the daylight, clearly visible to anyone who happened to be looking.
“Okay, listen up,” Jonathan said. “First things first, you two ditch the guns, the vests, anything that’ll make you look like anything other than wayward guests.”
“Can we leave them here?” Tyler asked.
“Sure. Stash everything under leaves and stuff. Be sure to pull the flashlights.”
As they did just that, and Gail supervised, Jonathan looked out over the course, planning his next move.
“Do you know exactly where you are?” Jonathan asked.
Both of them nodded.
“Show me on the map.” Jonathan unfolded his copy and they pointed at the correct spot. That had been a test and they’d passed. “Now show me where the nearest stack is, where you’re going to enter.”
Jaime pointed to a spot in the middle of a cluster of bungalows that were hidden by the tree line on the other side of the golf course.
“You’re sure you can get anywhere you want within the utility tunnels from that spot?”
Jaime dangled a ring of keys from his finger. “With these, I can get through anything to go anywhere.”
“And there’s no security down there?” Gail asked. “No alarms to set off?”
“If there are, I’ve never seen them.”
“Not the most comforting response,” Jonathan said under his breath.
“What about making noise?” Gail pressed.
“We’ll be careful,” Tyler said.
“Noise shouldn’t be a big problem until we get in close to where the hostages are.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Jonathan warned. “Fact is, we only think we know where the hostages are. And to really put a fine point on it, we have no clue where the children are being kept. That’s the info I need you to get. That, and anything else you learn.”
“Anything else like what?” Tyler asked.
“Anything like anything,” Jonathan said. “I don’t know what we don’t know.”
“And communicate in real time,” Gail added. “If you uncover an interesting something, let us know right away.”
Both kids gave the same cocked-head, puppy-dog look of confusion.
“You can’t forget to tell us if you communicate it right away,” Jonathan said. What he didn’t add was the reasonable likelihood that they wouldn’t be coming back out, once they went in. “This guest map will be the key. All locations need to be communicated as they are represented here. This is the only point of reference we have in common.”
“Got it,” Tyler said.
Jonathan continued, “So if there’s something important we need to know about under the ground in the tunnels, that needs to be conveyed relative to the things we can see aboveground. Observations are useless if they can’t be tied to a place.”
Jonathan saw the fear and anticipation in their young faces, and the cautious enthusiasm brought a kind of sadness. There was so much that they didn’t know, so much that they were on the brink of learning in the hardest possible way.
“All right,” Jonathan concluded. “Here’s the way it will work. Slinger and I will move out first, and we’re going to take cover in those sand traps—”
“Bunkers,” Jaime said.
“What?”
“They’re bunkers. There’s no sand in them.”
“I deeply don’t care,” Jonathan said. “We’re going to go out there and establish a position from which we can cover your advance across the open spaces. When I tell you to move, you move. When I tell you to stop, you stop. If I tell you to get down, do it quickly and stay down. That will be your clue that bullets may be about to fly, and you won’t want to catch any of those. Are you with me so far?”
Tyler and Jaime nodded to each other.
“To me,” Jonathan said. “I’m in charge, you address me.”
“I’m with you,” Jaime said.
“Me too.”
“Which one of you is working the phone?” Jonathan asked.
“I am,” Tyler said.
“Okay, then let’s establish that connection now.” Jonathan dialed Gail’s number and the phone in Tyler’s hand buzzed.
“Hello?” he answered, bringing it to his ear. Then he smiled an assurance that he knew he was being stupid.
“Keep the earbuds in and the line open,” Jonathan instructed. “That’s your lifeline back to us. If we lose the connection when you’re underground, I will work to reestablish it. If you need to sign off in a hurry, say the word red and get off. I’ll know what that means.”
“You’re giving them a lot to remember,” Gail observed.
“Because there’s a lot to remember,” Jonathan said. He hoped that his tone did not show the irritation he felt. He hated to be interrupted in the middle of a briefing. “Has anything I’ve said confused you?” he asked the guys.
“A little bit,” Jaime said. “If we get caught with a phone, they’re going to be very upset.”
“If you get caught at all, there’s going to be hell to pay,” Jonathan agreed. “The best I can offer is to advise you to dump the phone the instant you think capture is on the way.”
“Then what?” Tyler asked.
“Then you wait for us to come and get you.”
Gail said, “If that happens—if you get caught—say nothing about having seen us. Your cover story should be that you heard shooting last night, and that you’ve been hiding ever since. If they link you to the deaths of their colleagues . . .” She let her voice die away.
“You’ve got to resist the urge to run,” Jonathan coached. “You can walk with purpose, but if you’re seen running, all the assumptions will stack against you.”
“We’re not going to get caught,” Tyler declared.
“I like the attitude,” Jonathan said.
“We’re going to have to mingle,” Jaime said.
“Not the same thing,” Tyler said. “If we can slip back in with the crowd, then we should be able to slip back out again. Especially after dark.”
“You know,” Jaime said, “I just want to say there’s merit to staying in, once we get there.”
They all waited for it.
“It cuts our exposure in half. It’ll be hard enough to get inside without getting caught. That’s the big risk. If we can avoid having to get out again, that’s a big deal.”
“But they’re torturing people in there,” Tyler said.
“And you can be the eyes that help us stop the torture,” Gail said.
Jonathan held up his hand. “Enough,” he said. “You know the ups and the downs, the pros and the cons. Decide. We’re going to move out to the bunker. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to approach. If you come, you come. But I’m not flaying this cat any more than it’s been flayed.” He looked to Gail. “You ready?”
She adjusted her vest and did a press check on her M4, pulling the charging handle back half an inch to make sure that a round was in the chamber. “Ready.”
Jonathan rose to his haunches. “Now.”
They dashed together out of the concealment of the tree line and out across wide-open rolling hills of the golf course.
* * *
“How come they can run and we can’t?” Tyler asked. It was more an attempt at levity than a real question, but Jaime answered, anyway.
“Because they can shoot back. Are we really going to do this thing?”
Tyler’s heart pounded, and he wasn’
t sure he was breathing right anymore. He’d never been this scared. This . . . amped. “Yeah,” he said. “I am. I think I have to.” He looked to his friend, praying that his eyes didn’t show his fear. “And I’d really like for you to come along.”
“If it’s so damned important to those guys, I don’t get why they don’t do this themselves.”
“Because we’re meant to be the ones,” Tyler said. As he heard his own words, he realized that he’d just articulated something he’d only felt, something that was lurking beyond his consciousness, but was the root of why he proposed this insane mission.
“Think about it,” Tyler continued. “All the shit that we’ve done together. Not the weed, but the exploring and troublemaking make us the ones who are qualified to do this. It’s like that was our training ground. We know all the hiding places. If we don’t do anything stupid, I think we can sneak back and blend in.”
“And if we don’t, we’ll get killed.”
“One way or another, people are going to die tonight, Jaime. Maybe we can help keep that number down. You never know.”
The phone earbud startled him when he heard Scorpion’s voice say, “We’re set if you are.”
Tyler and Jaime each waited for the other to say something. Finally Tyler said, “Do it for Baker?”
Jaime’s shoulders sagged and he rolled his eyes. “For Baker, then.”
They stood together, straightened their clothes, and set out onto the golf course for a nice afternoon stroll.
* * *
Baker Sinise sat alone on a straight-back wooden chair in his executive dining room, his hands cuffed behind him and his right ankle shackled to the pedestal of the fabulous granite-topped mahogany table. His captors had not said a word to him since he’d been kidnapped. How long had that been? He honestly didn’t know. He’d spent too much of it unconscious. His head still boomed from whatever they’d done to him.
He’d never seen any of these men before, and he could only guess what mission brought them here. As they paraded him from the boat dock to the Plantation House, they made sure that he saw the evidence of their atrocities. Bodies of guests lay where they fell, clad in nightclothes or perhaps nothing at all. Birds of prey had already begun to feed on them, and the image of that alone was forever stenciled on his brain. As his captors did not speak, neither did Baker. He stifled his gasps and swallowed his bile if only to deny them the pleasure of hearing him.
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