***
Sterling
“Come on, come on,” I growled as I called Ruthie once more.
“Shit!” I yelled, pulling my teammate’s attention from their own musings to me.
“What the fuck?” Beacon, the weapon’s specialist for our team, said.
“I can’t get her to fuckin’ answer. Do you realize what’s going to happen? She’s never going to give me the time of day again. Goddammit. Motherfuckin’ piece of shit!” I seethed, pressing redial on my phone once again.
Once again, I got seven more rings before it went back to the generic voice message of a woman said, ‘you have reached the voice mailbox of 9-0-3-7-7-7…’
“Motherfucker,” I growled, hanging up before the numbers were finished. “Motherfucker!”
When I went to call Silas, the sign on the plane went on indicating that all cell phone devices should be turned off, and I realized I was out of time.
Goddammit!
Seems that was my favorite word for today.
As well as all the other words.
I’d been called in less than an hour before on a mission that was ‘paramount’ to national security.
Seven hours before my date with Ruthie.
I’d totally forgotten about her in my haste to get my things packed and get to base.
And why it hadn’t occurred to me in my six hours driving to base that I had a fuckin’ date today, I didn’t know, but I did forget.
And now I’d royally fucked myself.
In the ass.
With a fire poker.
A fuckin’ hot one, too.
“Fuck!” I growled.
“Dude, learn a new word,” another teammate, Ruben, growled.
I glared at him.
“Fuck off,” I growled, roughly shoving my useless phone into my backpack and zipping it closed.
As of one hour ago, myself and my seven teammates, Parker, Ruben, Beacon, Chace, Donnie, Ellis, and Estes were all being sent to the Middle East, Iran to be specific.
The specifics of the mission hadn’t been explained to us as of yet, we’d only gotten the ‘get your ass on a plane’ speech, and that was it.
I hadn’t even realized that it wouldn’t be a ‘practice mission’ which narrowed the amount of time it took us to get back on base and get ready until our CO was ushering us into the back of a fuckin’ plane.
“Someone pissed in your cornflakes,” Donnie said lightly.
I turned my glare onto him, but the man didn’t flinch.
Which wasn’t surprising.
He was a badass, stone cold killer.
Then again, we all were.
That was what Uncle Sam trained us to be.
“Does anybody know what we’re going for?” Donnie asked, looking away from my scowl with a smile.
It wasn’t Estes, our CO, who answered like I thought it would be. It was the man I’d seen in the pilot’s uniform that answered the question on all of our minds.
Usually in a circumstance where we’re called in like this, we know ahead of time what’s on the agenda.
This time, though, we had no clue.
And I knew why moments later.
“The speaker of the house’s ex-wife was visiting an army base when she was captured,” the man in front of us said.
I blinked, surprised.
Why the fuck wasn’t he flying the fuckin’ plane?
“That’s the speaker of the house,” Donnie whispered at my side.
It was then I realized where I’d seen him.
On TV the night before, the one where the Speaker of The House spoke about his pregnant ex-wife who was missing.
He’d said that at that time, nothing was being done to bring her home, and he pleaded for her life.
And with us now on a plane to the very location she was stolen from, I assumed that something was now being done.
Must be nice to have that kind of power, I thought darkly.
It wasn’t that I was objecting to saving a pregnant American’s life, it was that there was no forward planning that’d taken place.
It was all thrown together too quickly, and we should’ve deduced a plan before we went off half-cocked.
Because that was how people got fucked up and killed, was by assholes like this who had too much power and money.
Chace was the one to ask the question that I knew everyone wanted to ask.
Chace was what I’d like to call blunt.
He said what was on his mind, and didn’t give a shit who he offended in the process.
“And why are we going in without any knowledge of what’s going on? Why rush this when this is a still hostile country? Are six lives worth it when we may get killed before we even get in there?” Chance asked.
The man, Jason Reid, turned towards Chace and narrowed his eyes.
“What your job is, Marine, is to follow orders,” Reid growled.
Chace narrowed his eyes and stood, moving closer to the man.
Estes stopped him before he could get up in his face.
“I’m a fucking SEAL, not a goddamn Marine. And maybe you should get that straight before you send us in somewhere where we won’t come back out alive…unless that’s not your main priority here,” Chace hissed.
I looked around the belly of the transport plane we were currently flying in, and wondered if it could withstand hurricane Chace. I decided that it should hold up to him if we were able to take Chace’s rifle away from him.
Silence continued, so long that you could practically cut the testosterone filled air around us with a fuckin’ knife.
“All you guys have to do is find my ex-wife, get her out, and we’ll get home. She’s in a hotel with a man named Yamir Drakmar. She was taken the moment she got off the plane. He’s got no men in the hotel and, as far as we can tell, she was meant to meet him there. However, my ex-wife sent me a picture of the man the moment she touched down just to be safe, and I had my closest advisor run the picture through facial recognition software. And he’s wanted in over fifteen countries, and is on our Most Wanted Terrorists List for a bomb threat at the Seattle Airport in November of 2007.”
I should’ve known that this mission wouldn’t be like all the rest.
Should’ve known that it wouldn’t be that easy.
Should’ve known that we’d all die.