Cindy Dees - Night Rescuer

“You were a mule for Huayar? You moved his drugs for him?” she demanded in disbelief.

Mike didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. The answer swam miserably in his eyes.

“What the hell were you thinking? Didn’t you think about Mom and Dad? About me?”

“I told you. I needed the money. It was quick and easy. Pick up a package, drive it across the border into the States. Drop it off. Two grand for two days’ work.”

“Jeez, Mike. You could’ve asked me for a loan if you were that hard up. Look at the mess we’re all in now.”

His face crumpled. “I screwed up. Bad. We’re all gonna die, aren’t we?”

He sounded on the verge of tears. She was angry enough at him to take a certain satisfaction in his remorse, but a kernel of love for her idiot brother-buried very deep at the moment-stilled her tongue from any further recriminations.

“I’m doing my darnedest to get us all out of this thing alive. I need your help. Do what I tell you to and go along with anything I say, okay?”

“Do you have a plan?” Mike asked eagerly. “What is it?”

She glanced at the walls unsure if Huayar’s men could hear them or not. “Just go with the flow, okay?”

He nodded, a pitifully hopeful look in his eyes.

She murmured, “I’m not going to get to leave with you guys. I’ll need you to lead Mom and Dad out of here. I’ve got maps. Supplies. Some contacts for you. Can you at least handle that without screwing it up?”

He nodded eagerly, grasping at the flimsy straw of redemption she’d held out before him.

She sighed, not at all sure he could pull it off. After spending the past week with a man like John Hollister, she understood just how immature and incompetent Mike really was by comparison. John she would trust with all their lives. Mike? Not so much.

The door opened and her guide stuck his head in. “Time to go. You owe the boss a recipe.”

Mike’s gaze snapped to hers in dismay. “You’re handing it over?”

“What the hell other choice did you leave me, little brother?” she snapped at him. And with that, she turned on her heel and stalked from the room. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. She’d lose it if she did. Her relief at seeing her parents safe and sound and her disappointment in her brother were almost more than she could bear. She wanted to sit down in the middle of the floor and cry her head off. Not yet. Not until they were out of here, away from Huayar and his fists and his hired guns.

Walking into the middle of an operational Special Forces hide with so many familiar faces around him, their movements and equipment as natural to him as breathing, was disconcerting. John had been roaming around out here with little more than camping gear for so long, it felt weird to strap on a utility belt and a headset and a submachine gun. It was like coming back to the land of the living after wandering in some alien landscape for a very long time.

Sadness hovered close to the surface of his soul. The last time he’d been out in the field like this, he’d been with his guys. His team. Oh, a few of the old Alpha Squad faces were here-Scotty and Stoner and Ripper-but so many more were missing.

He’d known guys before who’d died. It was inevitable in their line of work. But to lose so many at once, to carry the memory of their bloodied bodies and empty eyes, that was hard.

“You okay?” Hathaway murmured from behind him.

“No, I’m not okay.”

Hathaway nodded soberly. “That may be the healthiest thing I’ve heard you say since you got back from Afghanistan.”

John managed a reasonably casual shrug.

Hathaway looked down at the ground. Back up at John. “I’ve lost some men on my watch. There’s no explaining what that feels like to someone who hasn’t experienced it. It’s a knife that cuts all the way through you, but doesn’t quite kill you. It leaves you hurting so bad you wish you were dead, but instead you just suffer.”

John nodded wearily. Oh, how he knew the feeling.

Hathaway continued, “The shrinks would probably tell me to b.s. you and say it gets better. But it doesn’t. You just learn to live with it, and after a while, the pain dulls enough to stand. It sucks.”

For some reason, hearing rock solid Brady Hathaway admitting to the same weakness he’d been laboring under helped. John looked his boss squarely in the eye. “Thanks.” No need to explain what for. They both knew.

Hathaway nodded. After a moment of silence, he smiled grimly. “Ready to go kick us some bad guy ass?”

John smiled back, actually feeling a faint glow of the old passion he’d once carried for his job. “Let’s do it.”

Melina smelled the meth lab before she saw it. At least Huayar’d had the good sense to set the building a little ways away from the others. Meth manufacturing was a notoriously touchy process. Even with a knowledgeable chemist like Vito around, meth labs had an unfortunate tendency to blow up without warning.

Not surprisingly, the guard stopped well shy of the entrance to the lab and gestured for her to go in alone. She nodded and entered the building.

The crackle of a spotter’s voice came over John’s headset. “We’ve got a problem. One of our friendlies just entered the lab. The young woman.”

John swore under his breath. Huayar was wasting no time putting Mel to work reproducing the synthetic drug formula for him.

Hathaway nodded tersely, and without missing a beat said, “Change in plans. Cowboy, it looks like you get to sneak into camp and rescue the damsel in distress after all.”

John nodded grimly. “When do I go?” If he were in charge, he’d send himself down to infiltrate the camp after staging some sort of minor diversion elsewhere. Nothing big enough to alarm folks, but enough to cause everyone’s attention to be elsewhere for a few minutes.

Hathaway turned away. “Scotty, when you wire the water tower, can you cause one of the legs to partially buckle without collapsing, and then wire a second charge to bring it down separately so it looks more like a natural collapse?”

The demolitions man nodded. “No sweat. I had a look at it a few minutes ago. Pretty flimsy construction. Very small charges will work. Minimal noise or flash.”

Scotty, Stoner and Ripper had still been in the Middle East debriefing a civilian woman who’d helped them nab a notorious terrorist last fall when John had gotten the call to take the rest of the team over to Afghanistan. To die, as it turned out. Pure luck had saved the three of them from the same fate that had met the rest of their team. Memory of the carnage threatened to surface again.

John forced the images away. Now was not the time to indulge in agonizing flashbacks. Mel was counting on him.

Hathaway came up over John’s headset. “Everyone say status. Final checkoff before we move.”

Which was to say, this was everyone’s last chance to add any information to the battle plan that might cause it to be tweaked. The checkoff went quickly, and no one had anything to add or clarify. They all knew what they were supposed to do. The plan called for a combination of stealth, diversion and positioning for a frontal assault, should it become necessary.

At the end of the roll call, Hathaway said, “Time hack on my count. The time is ten forty-two local time in…three…two…one…hack.”

John’s watch was two seconds fast. He made a note of the disparity to make corrections as needed later, and said a silent prayer that this night’s work would not come down to two-second anythings.

Hathaway said briskly, “Let’s move out, men.”

Melina looked up from the worktable in the lab at the pesky guard. “What do you mean, come with you? I’m not going anywhere! I’ve barely had time to look at this facility, let alone check if the equipment I’ll need is here.”