Page 19 of Tate
She’d almost become the closest thing to a best friend that a logistical teammate could get in the Navy.
Any closer and he’d be breaking the kind of rules that could get him kicked out.
Off SEAL Team Three and back to Montana to herd cattle.
Yippee ki yay. No thank you.
Down in the compound, they’d dragged Martha to a hut ten feet from the wall. He didn’t want to imagine the smells, the heat, or what it might feel like to be Martha, alone, bruised, grief-stricken, terrified.
Frankly, he already knew.
“You’re a go, Team Three.” Precious words, spoken with verve, the slightest hint of caution.
“Roger.” Ford relayed the info to the team.
It happened fast, just as they’d planned, practiced, and run over in their minds.
Sonny and Kenny C threw a Yates climbing hook over the wide wall, yanked down on the folding hook to extend the ladder, and were up and over the wall so fast they could have bounced.
Cruz took out Tango one with a quiet shot to the head, silenced by his QD sound suppressor.
Leviticus ghosted the second man, but the third took off running.
Meanwhile, Nez headed for the entrance of the compound, where they’d extract Martha.
“Do you have her?” Ford asked as he headed toward the back entrance, just in case their plan went south and Sonny and Kenny C needed support.
“We have the package. Headed toward the entrance.”
Tango three—where had the bugger gone? Ford hadn’t heard shouts rising from the compound where Nasir al-Rimi probably slept, armed to the teeth with militants.
He stood in the darkness outside the back entrance, watching the gate when Nez came over the headset. “We have the package. Exfil, exfil.”
“Roger.” Ford toggled the mic. “Operations, we have the package. Exfiling to the extraction point.”
“Roger.”
He turned, but Scarlett’s voice came back through the pipe. “We have movement. Three—no, maybe four—bodies headed out the back.”
He hunkered down, his heart thundering hard.
Their extraction point was a half mile back into the hills, the closest they could get without alerting the village.
Apparently, HQ didn’t want a full-out war with these guys,yet.
Carrying Martha would slow them down. A little.
Shouts, and although he could speak Arabic, he couldn’t make it out. If he were to hazard a guess, he would bet it was something along the lines of “Run faster, kill them before they get away with the goods.” That was his G-rated, simplified version.
Because Martha was young, pretty, and these guys weren’t above a little slave trade.
He could break away, exfil through a contingency route, and meet his team at the chopper. Follow the plan.
Or…
He stood up. Squeezed off a shot, and the leader dropped.
Ford dusted the one behind him, too, before the two in back littered him with shots.
