Page 5 of SEAL the Deal

Smith stared him in the eye. “You’d take Travis’s word over mine?”

“Carl, do both.” Hank stepped back, his pistol still aimed at Smith’s face.

“Really? You mean it?”

“Just do it.”

His partner flicked the extendable baton from his pocket and stepped in over the top of Smith.

“Carl, we’ve been friends for a long time–”

The sickening crack of his leg snapping cut him off. A blood-curdling scream filled the air as Carl lifted the baton and smashed it into his arm, crushing more bone.

Hank pushed his partner out of the way. “Shut the fuck up. Shut up or I’ll shoot you in the goddamn head.”

Smith managed to clench his jaw and stifle his cries.

“You see that, Hank? You see that? Barely had to swing the bastard. Did all the work for me.”

He turned to his partner. “Shut the hell up and get the truck.” Waiting till his partner disappeared he leaned in close. “You tell anyone who did this and you’re dead.”

The man nodded with his jaw clenched.

“Andy, where are you?” a female voice called from the farmhouse.

“You’ve paid for your transgression. Things are square. Don’t do anything you or your family is gonna regret.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t me, Hank.”

Hank left him whimpering against the barn strode across to the truck and climbed inside.

“That was fun,” said Carl as they drove back down the track.

“You’re a sick fuck,” he murmured as he took a pinch of chewing tobacco from a tin and stuffed it into his lip.

“Goddamn thief deserved what he got.”

“So we’re told.”

Carl turned to him with a confused look on his face. “If he hasn’t been stealing the dope, who has?”

Hank spat into an empty coke bottle. “How the fuck would I know?”

ChapterTwo

The beat of rotor blades penetrated the Plexiglas windows of the cockpit and reverberated through Mike Saunders’ chest. The square-jawed twenty-nine-year-old wiped his hands on his knees. His palms were sweaty despite the frigid air inside the helicopter. He glanced out the window at the snowcapped mountains and exhaled slowly.

A Navy Special Warfare Operator, the grey-eyed SEAL was a veteran of two major campaigns and a dozen covert operations. He’d spent hundreds of hours in helicopters flying over mountains, jungles, deserts and the ocean. However, never in his career was he ever this nervous. The plan was elaborate. There were so many things that could go wrong.

“How you doing bud?” asked the pilot over his headset.

He raised an eyebrow at the man and gestured over his shoulder at the other passenger.

“You’re all good. She can’t hear us.”

“What’s our ETA?” asked Mike.

“Couple more minutes. The guys on the ground have everything ready. They’re standing by for your arrival.” He made an adjustment to the aircraft’s controls. “So relax and stop looking so damn nervous.” He nodded ahead. “OK, we’re coming up on our landing zone.”

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