Chapter Forty-Three
Graham
The present…
I flattened myself back against the wall as Dillon moved into position. I hit the button on my wrist to start the clock. Two minutes. Not enough fucking time, I would have told them if any of the experts had bothered to ask me.
Through the greenish tint of night-vision goggles I watched Dillon set the explosives against the reinforced exterior door, then take position back against the wall. The countdown started in my head.
Boom.
We were in.
We filed through the door and the bullets started flying. Pop, pop, pop. My men peeled off to the zones they were assigned.
I advanced down the main corridor of the bunker toward my HVT—high value target. Movement, pivot, shoot. One tango. Whirl, shoot. Second man down. If the intel was correct, four more to go until the chamber where…
Whirl. Shoot.
Bang.
A hard hit to my chest.
I stopped, breathing heavy, and slid to sit with my back against the wall. The lights came on and I pulled off my NVG as my men fell in around me.
Jena Garret strode into the training simulator.
She glared down at me. “What the fuck is the matter with you, Carson? Do I need to replace you as team leader? You just died at forty-seven seconds in. Mission failure. There can be no fuckups. No men down. Do I need to explain it to you Barney-style or something because the briefings aren’t doing fucking shit to get it in your head that this is about as real-world critical as it gets?”
My jaw clenched.
Dillon shook his head. “Fuck, Jena. We’ve been standby to standby for two months, running the same mission simulation every day. We’re all starting to lose our edge.”
“You can’t afford to lose your edge,” she snapped, glaring at my team. “All of you, get the fuck out of here.” Then she pointed at me. “Except you, Hound.”
I watched my men hustle out of the building, knowing this wasn’t going to be good. The fucking experts from the CIA thought they knew everything, could allow for every risk and neutralize it before it happened, but that wasn’t how combat went down. It was shit flying, adrenaline pumping through our veins, and training and instinct and the will to live taking over, and nothing else.
The door closed, leaving me alone with the skirt from the CIA who’d been pretty much up in my shit since we landed there.
Jena crouched down. “Talk to me straight, Graham. We go back a long way. If your bus ticket is all punched up and you can’t do one more op, tell me and I won’t send you in.”
My jaw was so tight it was painful. “I haven’t failed a mission yet. You send in my team without me, we’re all going to be…” How she looked at me caused me to break off.
“Fucked. The word you’re looking for is fucked. Don’t you think I know that? I picked your team because you don’t fail, Carson. If you had a dozen bullets in you and half your men were down, you’d still finish the op and get every one of team on the Hawk out of there. So tell me what the fuck I’ve got to do to get your head here instead of where it’s been.”
I ran a hand across my hair, then sank my fingers in. “You want to know what’s wrong with my head? This whole mission is fucked, Jena. We’re being sent in to assassinate a world leader. Missile Man may be insane, but what we’re doing is insane as well. And my team is the lucky one that gets to be dropped into a country we’re not at war with, with Russian tactical gear and weapons, so when the world blows up, the stiffs in Washington can claim we didn’t do it. Don’t think I don’t know what this mission is or think I don’t know why we’ve been holed up here so long. Those bastards in DC can’t make up their mind whether to pull the trigger, say mission go, and risk starting World War Three. They’ve forward deployed us, Jena, but we’re not going in. You know it and I know it.”
Her brows slowly inched up. “We all know where we are and why we’re here, Captain. Do you think the Chinese would have let us put a black ops camp inside their border if it wasn’t mission go? Don’t doubt we’re going in, Carson. We’re short of options. Your team’s going in. The only question is if you’re going with them.”
“Dillon was right. You’ve never fought in combat before. If you send in my men without me, then it’s on your head that you started World War Three, not them.”
She straightened up, her hand flying to the Glock she wore strapped on her hip I was pretty sure even to bed, lifted her arm, and without looking emptied a full clip into one of the targets.
Dead on.
Tight grouping.
Heart.
“You haven’t been in combat where I’ve been, Captain. And sending you guys in wasn’t the first option on my list. But the fucking agent I sent in botched it. And this is where we are. Are we done measuring cocks now?”
“Good shooting.”
She growled hooah then laughed as she held out a hand to help pull me up. “You’re going to be all right, Carson. I can feel it. I just need to get your head in the game before kickoff.”
Outside the building, she pulled out her smokes and offered me one. As she held the flame of her lighter for me, I studied her.
“Between you and me—old friends—you don’t have a problem with what we’re doing?”
Her brows shot up. “Problem? It’s my intel, my mission, my plan. No problem at all or we wouldn’t be here. The president and the joint chiefs wanted a solution before it was bombs away on the US, and this is it.”
As we walked toward the barracks, I was certain Jena Garret had ice water in her veins instead of blood. “It’s really that critical we do this now? All other options no longer viable?”
“Yep,” she said stiffly, then tilted her head to study me. “I would have thought you knew how critical it is before we landed here.”
That came as a surprise to me. “Why’s that, Jena?”
She shrugged and my senses prickled. She had more to say but wouldn’t say it. The expression on her face was one I was familiar with, classified shit turning in her head behind a benign smile. A fucking tight-lipped spook like the one I was married to, always mouthing cryptic ambiguities.
I jutted my head. “This is me. Thanks for walking me home.”
“You need to talk, Carson, I’m here. You got any questions left, now’s the time to ask them.” And as she stomped out her smoke, she squeezed my arm. It almost felt fucking friendly. I was taken aback by her offer and the gesture.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass, Jena. No questions out of me. I do my job as ordered. You know that.”
Her sharp blue stare rapidly assessed my face and then she frowned. “See you at 0430 tomorrow, Hound.”
0430. Great. She was joining me on my run before chow. “Looking forward to it, Garret. Nothing like a seven-klick run with you to start my day.”
She laughed and I stood there puffing, watching as she walked toward the spook hut, as the guys called it. There wasn’t much to our black ops site. Three buildings—a barracks for my team, the spook hut/comms center, and the training structure that was supposed to be an exact replica of the bunker we were going to someday be dropped into for our mission.
Around us nothing but thick trees and foliage, a special signal-scrambling mesh covering the small area we trained/ lived in, and the ubersecret high-tech radar invisible Black Hawks to carry us across the border. Beyond were two electric high-security fences surrounding the compound. No one was getting the fuck outta here until mission complete and we were airlifted out.
In two months no one had come in and no one had gone out. The only communication capabilities were with the CIA experts. Our personal effects, clothes, fuck, even the men’s wedding rings had been collected and locked up. Anything that could identify us as Americans removed from our person. Everything for our operation here when we landed.
I debated going inside the barracks to my room, then strode toward the area where the guys had set up a makeshift outdoor lounge. Jared had converted a metal trash can into a barbecue and stood roasting steaks—at least they kept us fed well—and Dillon and Jamal were seated at the picnic table, flapping their gums. Who knew where Clark had found the plastic folding beach chair, but he’d claimed it and reclined there, reading. Weston and Harrison were off alone somewhere, like always.
“How’d it go with the skirt from the CIA?” Jared asked. Laughing, he lifted with a fork a steak that had caught on fire. “Hopefully better than this.”
I shook my head and Dillon jeered, “Asshole, did you burn dinner again?”
“Just yours,” Jared said, laying the meat back down on the grill.
When I got to the bench, Dillon grabbed a beer from the ice chest beside him and handed it to me. “You doing OK, buddy?”
“Yeah. Fucking great.” I twisted off the cap and tossed it toward the trash. I met Dillon’s gaze. “Hey, thanks for having my back in there.”
“Sure. You’d have mine. Don’t let the experts fuck with your head, Graham. You know how it is. They don’t know shit about what we do or how we do it. It’s not the same sitting back watching it on a video screen as it goes down. Doesn’t make you an expert watching someone else do the work.”
“True that, brother,” Jared said. “All those YouTube videos and I still can’t barbecue worth shit.”
This time when the men laughed I joined in. “Then why the fuck do you do the cooking?” I mocked.
“Gotta find something to do with my hands at night to keep me from doing something else.” He made a jerking motion and someone tossed an empty bottle at him. I rolled my eyes. Jared hadn’t changed much from the smart-ass recruit who’d joined my team fifteen years ago. “You staying out here, Hound, eating with us or do you want me to bring you your dinner?”
“Bring it to my quarters. I’ve got some stuff to review before lights-out.”
Dillon arched a brow. “Does that mean we’re going out soon?”
I rolled my shoulders then turned on my heels and headed into the barracks. All the men slept bunkhouse style except me. I bedded down in the small, private space in the back.
We were a team and lived like a team, or at least my men did. I’d always kept myself separate, never wanting to get too close to any of them and then watch them die.
A lot of good that did. We were as tight as brothers. Fuck, before Lee they were my family.
Shutting the door, I banished the thought of him from my head. But the second I did, Jena’s comment weirdly popped up to fill the vacant mental real estate.
Why would she think I might have questions for her or need to talk to her about anything? We were friends, but not that kind of friends. It was Lee who babbled to her, never me. Which annoyed the hell out of me, but fuck, it wasn’t going to change so I never tried to force it.
Stripping down to my briefs, I stretched out on my bed and turned on the reading light. Every book on the shelf I’d already read, but I sure as fuck didn’t want to spend another night only thinking.
Turning, I pulled out the envelope from Lee I kept hidden from view beneath my mattress and the wooden frame. My mouth puckered as I studied Lee’s neat, precise printing on the outside.
Two months I hadn’t opened it.
I hadn’t wanted to violate my golden rule: during a mission I kept home from my reality, and when home I never brought the mission there. It fucked with the head. It fucked with the emotions. And with where things had been left with Lee, it would doubly fuck with my heart to read this.
There was a knock on my door, and I set down the envelope before I turned to sit on the bed. “Yes?”
Dillon’s face peeked in. “I brought your dinner.”
“Thanks.” I jutted with my chin. “Just set it there on the table.”
“You want some company while you eat?”
“Nah. Not tonight.”
He pointed at the brown paper envelope beside me. “Mission intel? You ever going to open that?”
“What? This?”
“I figured it was something important with how often you stare at it and turn it in your hands.”
I felt ice run my body. I wasn’t even aware I did that. “It’s personal. From Lee. He likes to write old-fashioned letters and tuck them in my gear before I head out.” As his expression changed, I kicked myself for telling him that because I hadn’t intended to.
“Oh.” His mouth pursed as he nodded. “Everything OK at home for you?”
Heat rushed my face. “Of course. Why’d you ask?”
He shrugged. “You’ve been off. And I noticed you didn’t have a wedding band to turn into the spooks like the rest of the men.”
“Just forgot to grab it when I left Newport Beach. No big deal.”
Dillon’s eyes drilled into mine. “Married men don’t forget their rings. Tell me it’s none of my business, but don’t try to bullshit a friend.”
Fuck. “Fine. There’s an issue at home. Nothing major. I’m thinking some things through.”
He settled in the chair. “Is that why you’ve been in a fog since you got here? It might help to talk it out with someone.”
Crap. A second time tonight I’d been offered that. I must not be holding up as well as I thought I was pretending to. “Thanks. When I’m ready to, you’ll be the first I come to.”
“Good.” He stood up. “And whatever is in that folder Lee wrote isn’t going to be as bad as what you’re imagining. It never is. Take it from me. Married ten years.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
“See that you do. Whatever the problem is, you owe it to him to read whatever he wrote you. And you owe it to yourself. Until you do that, your head’s going to be home and not here. And that’s not good for any of us. Need you in the op one hundred percent, Hound. I’ve got a wife and a son I wanna go home to.”