Chapter Three

“Our intel was incorrect, the target is not here. I’m aborting this mission, and I’m ordering you,” Shane said, looking steadily from Rick to Owen to Magic to the senior chief, “to go back over the border, with the rest of the team. With the understanding—”

“With all due respect, sir,” Owen interrupted earnestly, looking up from the equipment he was using to try to tap into the mystery team’s radio signals. He, like the senior and Rick and Magic, was now dressed like a goat herder—down to the cap that helped cover his face. “We’re not leaving you here, alone.”

“That’s enough,” the senior spoke over him, giving the kid his best dead-eye glare.

“With the understanding,” Shane repeated, talking over them both, “that you may be delayed by humanitarian efforts to help innocent civilians move to safety in the face of a coming attack from an unknown, unidentified, potentially deadly enemy.”

“Jesus, sir, that was a mouthful,” the senior said.

“Semantics, Senior Chief,” Shane told the older man. “And this is where you say Aye, aye, sir. All of you.”

They murmured it back to him without a whole hell of a lot of conviction, and he went on. “I’m in command. I made the call to abort, and gave the order. You obeyed said order. If and when you’re asked, you’ll be telling the truth. These are now simple facts that will protect you.”

Because of the SAT signal jamming, there’d be no timeline or record of when the team had left the area. And since Shane alone would remain, and would be picked up by the helicopter at the planned extraction point, he would insist that he’d acted alone in his efforts to save the misidentified woman.

The wording he’d been so careful to use would allow his men to pass lie detector tests, if it came to that.

Except for Magic Kozinski, who knew the truth, but who had the bizarre ability to control his pulse and blood pressure while lying wildly.

They’d all been trained to fool rudimentary lie detectors to some degree. But it was actually kind of freaky how adept Magic was at achieving the necessary calm. In fact, he’d once lowered his pulse to fifty in the middle of a firefight.

So Shane wasn’t worried about him, which was a good thing, because Magic knew details, like Tomasin Montague’s name. Shane had decided it was best to withhold that information from the rest of the team. The less they knew, the better their chances of surviving the administrative shitstorm hovering on the horizon.

“And what protects you, sir?” Magic asked now. The tone of his sir was back to asshole. “From the senior corporate officials who want the incorrectly identified target taken out anyway?”

“I’ll be okay,” Shane said again. Maybe, with Ashley and her powerful father and uncle on his side … Maybe he could survive this.

But it really didn’t matter. He didn’t have a choice.

He wasn’t going to give the order to kill an innocent woman.

The senior chief broke the silence. “With all due respect, LT,” he said, repeating the very words that he’d glowered at Owen for saying, “we’re not leaving you here.”

Shane was ready for that, too, as he took out the needle and syringe that he’d been hiding up his sleeve. “The pain got too intense, so I—just now, after giving the order to abort this mission—used the meds Rick gave me,” he told them as he handed the team’s hospital corpsman the syringe he’d in truth emptied while Magic had been fetching the senior and Owen. He’d drained the powerful painkiller into the dusty ground—a fact they all no doubt knew, but couldn’t prove, especially since he’d gone to the trouble to make it look as if he’d just given himself the injection.

“I’m gonna need a refill of that,” he told Rick, who was carefully disposing of the sharp, “plus several more doses of the local.”

“Oh, that’s fucking perfect,” Magic said crossly. “Make it so you’re not only blacklisted, but you walk with a fucking cane for the fucking rest of your fucking life. What is wrong with you?”

Shane ignored his friend as Rick looked to the senior chief who, absolutely, would have been instantly in charge had the team’s commanding officer really taken that drug. According to the revised military code of 2024, the act of taking a powerful painkiller automatically meant Shane had willingly relinquished his command, due to his being medically unfit to serve. No words to that effect were necessary. It was simply so.

And now, for all intents and purposes, Shane was just another guy that his former team would help, as he—as a civilian—assisted Tomasin Montague and her family.

“Give Lieutenant Laughlin what he needs,” the senior ordered Rick gruffly, then shot Magic a “Keep your opinion to yourself, Kozinski.”

Shane glanced at his dive watch. He was right on schedule. “I know I’m no longer in command, but we should move into position to intercept, Senior Chief,” he said as Rick handed a new packet of wrapped syringes to him and he stashed them in his vest.

They’d all studied the terrain in advance of the op. There were two possible exit routes out of the village and farther up into the mountains. Tomasin Montague and her son would have to take one of them.

The senior chief frowned. Rick and Owen, too, were perplexed.

Magic was the only one who’d caught Shane checking his watch, and because he knew Shane as well as he did, he also knew what was coming.

Boom!

There it was. The first hit of the airstrike Shane had called in. He’d radioed the coordinates of that abandoned farmhouse that they’d passed on their way up the mountain.

Boom-bah-dah-boom! Bah-boom! Bah-dah-boom! It sounded like fireworks going off as the land mines that surrounded the farmhouse began exploding, too.

“I had Dex check to make sure the farmhouse was still abandoned,” Shane told the senior as he gave himself another healthy dose of the local and pulled himself up to his feet. His ankle still ached like a mother, and it felt weird as shit, but it held his weight. He didn’t need Magic’s glower and dire words to know that walking on an injury like this could make the damage permanent. But his choices were limited, and he had to do what he had to do. “I figured I might as well take out as much of the minefield as possible—two birds with one stone.”

The noise of the attack was like a red alert siren down in the village, and sure enough, from their hillside vantage point, Shane could see a small group of people streaming out of the back of the school’s Quonset hut. They moved quickly but carefully, heading toward the steepest of the two paths up the hillside, as if this were something they’d drilled.

“Move into position on both paths,” the senior ordered. “In case this is a decoy. Eyes out for our mislabeled former target, ID her, let her pass, but then follow. We’ll catch up to her when she’s feeling more secure.” He looked at Shane, who nodded back.

That was exactly what Shane had intended and planned for. Montague, and the people protecting her, were no doubt frightened by the sound of the nearby bombing. They’d be likely to shoot first, without asking questions, at least at this stage of the game.

“Rick with Kozinski,” the senior continued. “Owen and the LT with me.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Owen said, looking from Shane to Salantino to Shane and then back, as he corrected himself, “I mean, Senior. But I finally broke into the rogue team’s communications, and the order’s just gone out to launch a mortar attack.”

And there it was. Shane heard it, and he knew his SEALs did, too. The whump of a mortar launching was unmistakable, as was the silence that immediately followed. There was no way to know what the target was, because you couldn’t hear the damn thing coming.

No whistle, no warning. Just sudden instant death.

But then it hit—a direct blast to the school’s Quonset hut—and they all heard that, loud and clear, as the explosion ripped through the night.

The place was still packed with people—mostly children.

Another whump followed, and the SEALs all started to run.

“Do whatever you have to, to end those motherfuckers, whoever they are,” Shane ordered the senior chief as he scrambled down the hillside, even though he had no right to dispense orders anymore. “Make them stop, then help the wounded! I’ll get the woman and her family to safety!”

“Don’t you dare get your ass killed by friendlies, LT,” the senior shouted back as he headed directly into the kill zone, Rick and Owen on his heels, even as he opened a radio signal to Dex.

“Magic, you’re with me,” Shane shouted, but the taller SEAL was already at his shoulder.

“My Pashto’s shitty, so I’ll start with French,” Magic said. “Because of the whole Canadian-father thing.”

“Just start talking, and don’t stop until you’re sure they’re not going to kill us,” Shane said as the group of villagers that were halfway up the steeper of the two trails stopped, turning to watch in horror as yet another mortar hit, and this time a car went up in flames.

And then, because they’d started to move back down the hillside, no doubt going to help the injured escape the fire that was now burning in the school—a move that would mean certain death for Tomasin Montague—Shane didn’t just walk toward them on his injured foot.

He full-out ran.