“If you call going private retirement.” Harris’s voice was grim. “I don’t. What matters is after we were done and came back from that mission, we were split. Our unit was reorganized and each of us was reassigned.”
Not good. Someone high up was involved then. And whoever it was wanted these men alone and constantly on edge. Even if their new units weren’t a part of it, there’d be no way to know who could be trusted. Who was involved, who wasn’t, and who would stand aside and let a hostile sniper take you out just to make life simpler for the rest of them.
“One of us wanted to talk anyway—and maybe he talked to your friend, Calhoun—but he took a shot to the back on an easy search-and-retrieval mission a few weeks later. Message came across to the rest of us loud and clear. Back out or talk about the deal and we wouldn’t know when a hostile bullet would take us out. Our own team wouldn’t have our backs. Or worse—we’d take out some poor innocent bastard who’d have no idea why one of us was being left to die.” Harris swallowed hard. “I’m not willing to have that kind of blood on my hands. You don’t need to know more details. I wish I didn’t know. But I’m going to see this through to the end or until I can see my way clear without harm to my family.”
“Could take years.” Cruz understood. The position this man was in was a waking nightmare. Any mission could be the one: the time when a teammate stood aside when they should cover him. No way to know, and no man could be completely vigilant a hundred percent of the time.
“This was always going to take years.” Bitterness flavored every word from Harris’s mouth. “And for people who believe honor is an outdated concept, it isn’t a problem. But some of us are still burdened with a sense of things gone to shit.”
“Calhoun was going to blow this open; I get it.” Cruz fished for more. “But who was he going to tell? How?”
“I don’t know.” Harris shrugged. “Does it matter? This needs to be zipped up tight. No way to know how news of this could impact the future. For now it’s a business deal.”
“Later, it could be a political skeleton.” Cruz continued the thought. Never knew when a military veteran was going to run for office. This kind of thing could play havoc with a campaign for senator or the presidency, or however high the main person wanted to go. “How was the other SEAL going to opt out?”
Silence. Harris obviously didn’t want to continue. But Cruz’s foot was still in the doorjamb and the man had already spoken more than intended. In for an inch, in for a mile and all that.
“He reached out to all of us first and said he didn’t want to be a part of it. Swore he wouldn’t tell a soul, just didn’t want to be involved any longer.” Harris sighed. “E-mail went out encrypted.”
Not easy to intercept then. And not as likely to have been read by just anyone.
Cruz nodded. “So one of you either eliminated him or passed on the information to make it happen.”
Harris didn’t respond. His face was grim. The anger simmering behind his eyes wasn’t for Cruz anymore. Otherwise, Harris would’ve shoved Cruz off his front doorstep already. No. The anger was directed someplace else, toward the people responsible for holding all of this over Harris’s head.
Good. Talk more. Give up a way to get to the real people responsible for Calhoun’s death.
“When you’re out there, you have to make the best choice out of the options you’ve got. And they’re not good. Ever.” Harris glared at Cruz. “Who do you have out there in the world to worry about? Who will be hurt based on the choice you make today? Who could pay the price if you make the wrong one?”
Cold washed over Cruz. He pushed words through gritted teeth. “No one.”
Harris raised his eyebrows. “You and I both know better. There’s a certain kind of person that’s alone with no one to care if they live or die. You might’ve been one of them in the past, but it’s been a good while since. You’ve got people who will get caught in the blast radius if this explodes in your face. Family isn’t just by birth.”
It was Cruz’s turn not to respond. Lying would only insult both of them. He had shown up with Lyn at his side. And he could pretend hers was a friendship but their connection was something more even if he hadn’t admitted it to her directly. Didn’t surprise him to have Harris hint at it. Man wasn’t stupid. He was just a man caught in a foxhole with no way out.
“Think hard about how much further you want to take this.” Harris wasn’t threatening. Hell, there was some sympathy in his voice. “We all want to do the right thing by our brothers and sisters in combat. But our first priority is to look to the living. Don’t bring down the kind of shit storm that’ll hurt the people you care about. Calhoun wouldn’t want that.”
Anger burned away the hesitation. “What do you know about what Calhoun would’ve wanted?”