Page 18 of The Team

This one was different though.

These were two of his team that were missing.

Rhett checked his watch again. It was 0515. Kowalski and Myles had been no-contact for almost twelve hours.

And that was really fucking bad.

Everyone dressed in silence. Everyone checked their weapons without a word.

Rhett avoided looking at the two unopened lockers. Kowalski and Myles.

It wasn’t unusual for the team to break off into smaller factions for a short op. Kowalski and Myles were more than capable and had done ops together before. They all had.

Theirs was supposed to be a simple three-day op. Covert deploy into Armenia, acquire footage and intel of a target, and get out.

They could do this shit with their eyes closed.

Which meant something had gone very wrong.

And their last known location was Baku, Azerbaijan?

Yeah. Something wasn’t adding up.

Rhett rechecked his Glock 17, slid it back into his thigh holster, and turned around.

His team was watching him, waiting.

He had to treat this like any other mission, as if it weren’t two of their own they were extracting.

Slipping into that go-mode mentality helped him compartmentalise. Detaching any and all emotions was the only way to go. “Kowalski and Myles failed to make rendezvous; they were supposed to make contact twelve hours ago and failed to do so. We’ll be making a covert drop into Azerbaijan, southeast of Baku.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Sid mumbled.

“Twelve hours?” Echo whispered.

Rhett gave a nod. “We’ll know more enroute.”

Then the door opened, and Director King walked in. He had with him Frankston and Malla, who were, as always, glued to their iPads.

They were tech nerds who watched everything, knew everything, collected intel and data for every move their team made. Tactical intel from iPads and satellites washow wars were won these days. They got to sit in the comfort of HQ playing real-life chess games, moving their pieces—Rhett and his team—around the chessboard with no more than an earpiece and a live satellite feed.

King looked around the bunker and paused for a millisecond when he saw Yin and Chen. He turned to Rhett, and he knew what King was about to say.

They were untested, too new to be thrown into a mission so soon. It had been barely twenty-four hours, after all, and the lives of two of their own were on the line.

“I was expecting to send six,” King said.

Rhett stepped forward, deliberately putting himself in front of Yin and Chen. “I’m taking my team. My team of eight, remember? You make whatever signal adjustments you need to, but all of us are getting on that plane. Do we have a problem?”

Director King stared at him.

Was this a test of Rhett’s team alliance? Did King want to know if Rhett already included Yin and Chen as part of his own? Rhett didn’t think for one minute that King thought Yin and Chen weren’t capable. So this was a trust issue.

Rhett stared right back. Unblinking, unmoving. If this was a test to see who had bigger balls, Rhett would win every fucking time.

King’s nostrils flared before he turned to Frankston and Malla and gave a nod.

“Full authorisation, full comms,” Rhett added, looking at the two techs. “And just out of interest, who was working on the Kowalski and Myles job?”

---