Tinderbox (Flashpoint Book 1)

by Rachel Grant

  He grimaced. Cal had a point.

  “Before Morgan, you were determined to be a badass Special Forces operator twenty-four seven. Guys used to ask me if you powered down at night in the CLU, as if you were some sort of soldier-bot. Then Morgan showed up, and you hit puberty.”

  Pax rolled his eyes but figured Cal was right. Morgan had changed him. She’d cut a new facet on his previously single-faceted existence. He grabbed his water bottle to wet his suddenly dry mouth.

  “You ever going to tell Captain Oswald you triggered her tracker during sex?” Cal asked with a cheeky grin.

  Pax had a mouthful of water, and it took all his control not to spew over the computer in front of him. He glanced over at the tech, relieved to see the guy wore headphones. He managed to force the water down his throat and faced Cal. “Hell no,” he said softly. “How long have you known?”

  “I figured it out when we all learned Morgan had a tracker. I was shocked you were in such a foul mood after you got laid. It was obvious things were cold between you and Morgan after that, which made no sense, unless you couldn’t get it up. But don’t worry, I had faith in you.”

  “Fuck off,” he said with faint laugh.

  Cal flashed another grin. “Then during the first debriefing after she was abducted, someone asked if James was certain the tracker worked properly. She said it had been tested upon injection and that it went off once in the middle of the night, when Morgan had slept on her arm. James’s gaze flicked in your direction when she said that. It was subtle. I doubt anyone else noticed. You sure as hell didn’t. You were fixated on the monitors.”

  Pax shook his head. So Savvy knew. Had, in fact, known this whole time. It didn’t surprise him. The only thing that did surprise him was that she’d been the one to keep him in the loop when she could have easily seized on that to shut him out.

  Hell, it would have been right for her to shut him out.

  Pax met Cal’s gaze and spoke the words that would get him ejected from the room if he said them to anyone but his CLUmate and closest friend. “Every hour the damn tracker remains silent, I feel like another part of me dies. Pretty soon there won’t be much of me left.” He tightened his jaw against tears he could not allow. Alone in their CLU, he could break, but not in SOCOM headquarters.

  On the other side of the room, the tech, who’d been sitting with his feet on the desk, sat up straight, his feet hitting the floor with a dramatic thump.

  Shit. Was he wearing the type of headphones that amplified whispers while cutting out background noise? Had he just overheard Pax’s confession?

  Stupid of him to have spoken. The words served no purpose.

  The tech hit some buttons and a monitor flashed to life. The words ACQUIRING SIGNAL lit the screen. The young man yanked the headphone jack out of the console. “Sergeant, you’ll want to hear this.”

  Pax had been told the transmitter signal was basic Morse code, utilizing the three-letter combination recognized throughout the world: three short beeps, three long, three short, or S-O-S.

  Tears rushed to Pax’s eyes after the first three short beeps. He surged to his feet and crossed the room. The cycle started again. The beeps were the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

  Morgan is alive.

  “Have you got a lock on her location?” he asked.

  “Working on it,” the tech said as his fingers flew over the keyboard.

  Cal turned on the public address microphone and broadcast the signal to the main buildings on base. Those in the know would understand what it meant and show up at SOCOM.

  In minutes, the room was full of special forces operators from every branch of the military. Savvy James arrived with General Adler in tow. Both had damp eyes.

  Hell, even Pax’s XO swiped at his eyes.

  With the signal coming in one hundred and forty-five hours and thirty-odd minutes after being abducted, Morgan was officially an outlier. The statistics no longer applied to her.

  His woman was a survivor who’d busted the odds.

  “I’ve got a lock!” the tech said.

  Pax’s heart pounded as he waited for the monitor to show her location on the map. A satellite image appeared. Rugged desert. Unremarkable terrain. No reference points marked.

  “Zoom out,” Savvy and several others said all at the same time.

  The tech did as instructed, and it took a moment for the image to reform. Another moment passed before the geopolitical markings appeared. Pax’s heart went into overdrive as the words on the map became clear.

  Morgan was a mere twenty-six klicks away. However, the distance put her firmly inside Somalia.

  Chapter Thirty

  Somalia changed everything. Sure, SOCOM had run through Somalia drills and planned a Somalia extraction just as they had an Eritrean one, but no one believed that would be the eventual plan. They’d all been counting on Ethiopia. After all, intel had indicated Desta’s stronghold was in his home country.

  An extraction from Somalia—even a mere sixteen kilometers past the border in the self-declared autonomous state known as Somaliland—wouldn’t be simple. It would be akin to Yemen, a much riskier intrusion into a hostile nation.

  Pax glared at Savvy James, wanting someone to blame for the lack of intel that led to this surprise. Savvy considered Morgan a friend, but she’d also made it clear everyone was expendable in the big picture.

  The tracker had transmitted for three minutes. There were any number of reasons the signal could have been cut off. Morgan could have moved too far from the cell phone. The phone battery could have died. The tracker itself could have failed. They had to assume there would be no further signals and plan the extraction, updating the plan if they caught a break and more data came in.

  Within thirty minutes of the initial transmission, a spy satellite captured updated images of Desta’s compound. The idea of sending an unarmed drone in to collect better intel was considered and discarded. A drone, if spotted, would alert Desta.

  The powers that be at SOCOM formed a plan to send in a SEAL team to extract Morgan. They would kill Desta if he crossed their path. If not, they’d call in a drone strike.

  “Where are we with the buy-off on a drone strike?” the SEAL team commander asked.

  “We have a joint target coordinating board analyzing the aerials now,” the commander in charge of Joint Targeting said. “Given that Desta’s compound is far from any population center, I expect the board will give the green light.”

  “I want Desta captured, not killed,” Savvy interjected. She was determined to have her puppet.

  She was overruled, and plans for the drone strike were solidified. The strike would give Desta no opportunity to escape. Odds were, the warlord and everyone within his compound would die.

  If the SEALs were unable to obtain Morgan, the strike would be delayed, unless they had reason to believe Desta would escape or the SEALs discovered the warlord had advanced or chemical weapons on hand that must be destroyed. In that situation, there would be no canceling the strike. Not even for Morgan.

  Pax knew the rules. In Yemen, they’d followed the same protocol, and he’d identified a nonnuclear EMP in Desta’s possession. The mistake on that mission was twofold. Bastian had continued the search for the hostage and overstayed in the building after the EMP had been identified. Pax, unaware Bastian hadn’t given up on finding the hostage, made the call for the strike.

  Bastian made it out of the building. Barely.

  Bastian maintained Pax had called for the strike early, and the radio log showed Bastian was right. Pax had shaved thirty seconds from the mission clock. But Bastian had also screwed up, pushing past the evacuation window by a full minute.

  Timing on rescue ops was that tight. A minute on one end, thirty seconds on the other, and Pax nearly lost a brother-in-arms. And it would’ve been his fault, because he didn’t have eyes on the bastard when he made the call.

  Pax was no different from any other soldier. The real reason he fought was
for the men next to him. The brotherhood sustained them. Kept them fighting in the face of defeat. Not to save themselves, but to save each other. Ripley had children who needed a father. Cal had parents and two little brothers who worshipped him. Pax had parents and a little sister. And now he had Morgan.

  Reasons to live. People to notify in the event of failure.

  Bastian the bastard had a girl in every port and a major chip on his shoulder, but that didn’t mean Pax didn’t feel a kick in the gut over having made the call that could have killed his teammate.

  Things hadn’t been the same between them since Yemen, and until Bastian hit on Morgan, Pax had accepted Bastian’s animosity as his due. But hitting on Morgan was a step too far, and even Bastian had known it.

  Now here they were, a year after the Yemen mission that destroyed their friendship, and the hostage in question was the woman Pax was in love with. One of the SEALs at this very table could make the call that would bring in the bombs that would kill her.

  Pax didn’t think he could play that kind of odds game anymore. After today, he doubted he’d ever be able to make that call again.

  Was that what had happened to Bastian? Had he undergone a fundamental shift when he realized that the bombs were coming for him and his own teammate had—however inadvertently—ordered up the Hellfire?

  Satellite photos of Desta’s compound filled the screens. Twenty-six klicks to Morgan. Ten kilometers to the border, sixteen on the other side. A total of sixteen miles. He’d driven farther than that from his parents’ home outside Eugene to his high school.

  Hell, over a panya smuggling route, the drive would take only twenty minutes.

  He glanced up at the men around the table. They let him sit in on this meeting as a courtesy, he knew, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help. He looked to Lt. Randall Fallon, the leader of the SEAL team, and said, “Do you have intel on the panya routes near Desta’s compound?”

  “Just aerial photos. We haven’t run ops in that area.”

  “We’ve got locals we’ve been training who know the rat routes. Some of our guys were freedom fighters for Somaliland before they joined the officially recognized Djiboutian Army. They might even have been on the ground at Desta’s place. They could have intel on the layout.”

  Fallon sat up straight. “How soon can you get them here?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “Do it.”

  Pax called in his team, feeling renewed energy. Cal and the others would round up the trainees with the most knowledge on the panya routes. The SEAL team would enter from the air, in the same type of stealth Blackhawks used for the bin Laden raid. A quick in and out. But intel on the smuggling routes—likely to be Desta’s escape route when things went south for the warlord—could mean the bastard was less likely to get away.

  “If we can get intel on the smuggler’s routes, why not just go in that way? Why use Blackhawks?” General Adler asked.

  The head of SOCOM answered the general. “Six months ago, when Etefu Desta was still in Ethiopia, we learned the location of his stronghold. We also discovered—the hard way—that he protected the perimeter with landmines. Desta escaped, and we’ve been searching for him ever since. We don’t have time to determine if he’s surrounded the property with landmines again. If this weren’t a rescue situation, we’d send in drones and be done with him. A quick extraction via Blackhawk is the best way to rescue Dr. Adler with the least risk to the SEAL team.”

  Pax had studied the plan, and he knew it was the best option. It would work. Morgan would be back in his arms in just a few short hours. And later, they’d meet in a hotel in Rome, and he’d work his way up his list of forty-two places on her body he wanted to lick. In order.

  The woman who’d taken care of her while she was ill looked apologetic as she locked the cuff on Morgan’s ankle.

  She really should have learned more Arabic so she could communicate with this potential ally. The woman was another victim of Desta’s. She looked to be no more than twenty, but her eyes revealed a different kind of age, making Morgan wonder at the atrocities this woman faced as housekeeper to a warlord.

  Was there any way to save this woman, or would the drones take her?

  Morgan grasped her hand. “What is your name?” she asked in a combination of Arabic and English.

  The woman paused, then said, “Esme.”

  “Esme. Beautiful name.” She studied the woman’s eyes, searching for understanding. The lessons with Hugo had taught her what to look for, and she saw it in Esme’s eyes. The woman understood more than she let on.

  “Esme, if you hear sounds. Big engine noises. You must run. Outside. Far.” Morgan made hand motions, trying to convey the whirr of helicopter blades, the motion of running.

  The housekeeper’s eyes dimmed. “No run. Desta kills she who runs.”

  Morgan didn’t dare tell the woman more. Aside from the language barrier, sharing knowledge of the coming attack was far too risky. “Run. No need to worry about Desta. Just run.”

  “Desta shoot.” She made her free hand into a gun to demonstrate.

  Morgan squeezed the woman’s fingers. “The guns will shoot him.” She hoped trusting Esme with this truth wasn’t a mistake, not that the woman would believe her. But still, she needed allies, especially one with the key to the ankle chain.

  “Desta die?”

  “Yes. They’re coming. For him.”

  A smile spread across the woman’s face. “When?”

  In all likelihood, late tonight, but Morgan didn’t dare say that. “When you hear the big engine noise. Listen for big noise.” She touched the ankle cuff. “Can you…give me the key? So I can run?”

  Esme pursed her lips. “You run, Desta shoot me.”

  “I won’t run until they shoot Desta.” She would never sacrifice another person to save herself, but this woman had no reason to believe that.

  Esme extracted her hand from Morgan’s. The crease between her eyebrows deepened. Finally, she said, “No. Now you better, Abdi take key. I no have key to give.”

  The extraction was scheduled for oh-dark-thirty, because SEALs loved their poetry, even when it was overused. Oh-dark-thirty was a generic term for the start of an op, and in this instance, it meant one in the morning, a little less than twelve hours after Morgan’s tracker had reported in.

  Four trainees had provided information on the panya smuggling routes. One of the men had, indeed, been to the compound a year before, when a Somaliland rebel leader occupied it. He swore Etefu Desta was not the leader in question. Desta had seized the compound, much as he’d seized territory in Ethiopia.

  Thickets of acacia trees surrounded the property and crowded the roads near the house. The trees were what made the rat routes successful. Aside from the brutal thorns that prevented climbing or hiding within the vegetation, they provided cover. There were tracks that connected the rat routes to the compound, some of which were almost certainly peppered with landmines. But Desta would have left at least one route open, one safe exit.

  The trees gave way to a deep wadi, another escape route full of hiding places. Odds were, Desta would flee to the wadi when he realized the SEALs were coming for him.

  The trainees offered to scout the rat route. They were locals and could get in position before the raid. If spotted, they wouldn’t be taken for being part of a US military operation, and they could identify the safe route to Desta’s compound, if there was traffic leading in or out. They wouldn’t tip off Desta, and the SEALs would have valuable, up-to-the-minute intel.

  It was a good plan, and the four men were among the most trusted of the trainees. Not to mention they were damn good guerilla fighters nearing the end of their training.

  Plan set, a break was called so the SEALs could prepare. Pax, forced to sit on the sideline, opted to go to the gym and beat the shit out of a bag. He held on to the belief that the mission would go off without a hitch. He had to.

  But deep down, he couldn’t help but feel li
ke something was off. Like Desta was calling the shots somehow. But that idea was batshit crazy.

  He kept coming back to the question of why Desta had abducted Morgan in the first place. If she was right about the aquifer, he’d just called attention to her suspicions instead of burying them. But even so, Djibouti didn’t seem inclined to give a damn about the missing geologist. Morgan could have made a lot of noise, and she still would’ve been ignored.

  Then there was the fact that Morgan wasn’t the best bet for a lucrative ransom. Her family wasn’t rich, and everyone knew the US government didn’t negotiate with hostage takers. It was the only way to ensure Americans weren’t snatched off the streets of every marginally hostile nation in the world.

  Her father was a two-star general, however, and the head of INSCOM—Intelligence and Security Command—and that made her very valuable, just in a different way. That same major general had traveled to Djibouti after his daughter had been threatened. Add to that the fact that she was an American who’d been under the protection of American forces, and Desta must be aware that while the US wouldn’t pay ransom, they’d do whatever they could to bring Morgan home.

  Then there was Savvy’s suspicion that Imbert was behind the bomb under her car, which had merit. Imbert made more sense than Desta. The natural resources minister could have been trying to get her to leave the country before she saw the same signs Broussard did. Plus, the warning they’d received over the cell phone in Morgan’s apartment had been straightforward: “Dr. Morgan Adler, leave Djibouti.”

  So why was Morgan taken? What was in it for Desta, or Imbert, or whoever was behind it? And how was it that she had beaten the odds and initiated the tracker so much later than other hostages?

  Morgan was smart. She knew not to trigger the tracker too soon. Which meant there hadn’t been an earlier opportunity. But why? Cell coverage was decent that close to the border. If she’d been there all along, she’d have had plenty of opportunity.