“So what are you thinkin’?” Rawls asked, craning his neck for a glimpse of Faith, but the bounce of flashlight beams ricocheting off the rock walls blinded him.
“Hell, I don’t know.” Cosky scrubbed a hand through his hair and picked up his pace. “Just keep your eyes open.” But then he slowed again and glanced at Rawls out of the corner of his eye. “So this ghost? He around now?”
“Nah, we’re good.” Unconsciously Rawls’s hand climbed, grazing the slight bump lifting his T-shirt where the weaving burned slightly against his skin. “Where we headed, anyway?”
An odd silence greeted the question.
And then Zane gave a bemused laugh. “To the elevators.” At Rawls’s double take, he snorted. “I’m not shitting you. They have a helipad on top of this hill and two elevators from the tunnels to the helipad.”
Two elevators. It would be a hell of a lot quicker to the top of the mountain by elevator than stairs. But what the hell powered them this far from their compound?
“They have a chopper waitin’?” Rawls asked, although he was pretty certain of the answer.
“Two birds,” Cosky corrected him dryly. “And according to Wolf, his team neutralized our visitors and took out their helicopter.”
“Mightily accommodatin’ of ’em.” Rawls drawled.
“No shit,” Zane said, his voice a cross between suspicion and admiration.
But the same question weighted the air between the three of them.
Who the hell are these guys?
“What?” One rigid finger at a time, Eric Manheim forced his grip to relax around his cell phone.
“An unidentified squad of highly trained mercenaries slipped in behind my men and took them out.” His new—and widely acclaimed contractor—delivered the news evenly.
In the midst of a battle, either in the boardroom or out in the wilds of Washington State, one prepared for every foreseeable possibility. Considering his current contractor’s reputation, Eric couldn’t believe the fucking imbecile hadn’t prepared for this one.
“You didn’t post guards? Mackenzie and his crew got the jump on you?” Eric didn’t smooth the edge from his voice.
“Negative. The targets were holed up in their cabins. This was an unidentified team.”
Eric’s jaw tightened until his entire head throbbed. “How the fuck would you know? You said you never saw the men who struck.”
His soon-to-be-deceased contractor had the intelligence to remain silent.
Forcing himself to rein in his anger—strong emotions were so unproductive, often blinding you to the possibilities inherent in the moment—he regrouped, and looked for a means to salvage the mission.
“The Chastain boys’ signals are still broadcasting. They’re moving up the mountain. Likely there’s a second entrance into this tunnel system somewhere on top of the mountain and they’ll emerge there”—some of his anger slipped out—“along with those fucking SEALs. So how about getting your bloody helicopter into the air? Target them from above when they emerge from the tunnels.”
It was so damn simple he couldn’t believe the idiot hadn’t considered it himself.
“Our chopper”—this time the even tone tightened—“is no longer in play.”
Eric froze. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means it was taken out.”
There was a hint of a snap to the voice, as though the man it belonged to didn’t appreciate the scolding. Which was too bloody bad and justification for terminating his contract.
“By what?”
“Some kind of experimental aircraft.”
“The hell you say? You lost your helicopter and most of your men and didn’t find that news worth reporting?”
This time he didn’t bother to relax his fingers when they started to cramp. The pain gave him something to concentrate on, something to combat the urge to throw his coffee cup across the room and watch it shatter.
“I’m reporting in now. And FYI, these SEALs are hooked up,” his facilitator said, his accent thickening. “Much more than you indicated.”
Really? Really? The bloody fuckhole was blaming him?
In an effort to calm himself, he stared out the rain-beaded window of the penthouse’s breakfast nook. Central Park, in all its sprawling, wild glory, sparkled like a glistening emerald beneath the misting rain.
For once, the view failed to soothe him.
It was too bad there was so much time and distance between him and the man on the other end of the line. The bastard had talked himself into a painfully slow execution. His family as well.
“No excuses. I don’t care how you do it. Just get it done.” Eric cut the call, knowing the man wouldn’t be calling back.