Page 69

“What about you, Miguel? What about what you’ll have to see?”
“It’s not about that.”
“Yes, yes, it is. You have a kind heart too. Down deep inside, you hate injustice of any kind. I know that about you.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen things, and I hate injustice, but you’re different. You’re clean and unblemished by evil,” he said. “I’m a hard man and I never wanted this for you, Raven.”
“You’re not a hard man, though. You’re a good and decent man who laughs at Nightcrawler’s reviews, who loves my nana, who always makes Dolly feel important when you compliment her cooking. You’re a man who adopted a tiny, white kitten to chase your demons away. I know you, Miguel Huerta. I don’t want any of this for you either.”
He lifted our clasped hands and kissed my knuckles before resting our hands on his thigh. He faced forward again, blowing out a long breath, and closing his eyes again as we flew ever closer to our destination.
MIGUEL
Several non-descript vehicles awaited us at the airport. We deplaned quickly, letting the FBI Spec. Ops team file out and take up positions before we descended the steps. I noticed that Sarah, Jarrett, and one of the tac team members carried sniper rifles as they disembarked. Even though I knew we had some great snipers on our team, it was nice to note that they probably felt as close to their own weapons as I had when I was stationed in Afghanistan. It just meant that they had lots of practice with the guns.
I watched the FBI sniper with a rifle case stop beside Sarah at the bottom of the stairs. He looked her up and down, no doubt noting her short, blonde hair, slight build, and the fact that she couldn’t be more than five feet tall. He nodded at the weapon she held in a zippered case.
“Sniper,huh?”
“Yep.”
“Seen combat?”
“If that’s what you call heading up the ATF office in L.A., then yeah, seen plenty of combat.”
He laughed. “What you got there?”
She grinned. “Treated myself to an FN HerstalM249s PARA semi-automatic for my birthday last year.” She patted the weapon like it was a newborn.
“Damn, that’s some hard-core hardware, woman.”
“You’d better believe it,” Sarah said.
“That fires 5.56 caliber NATO 200 rounds?”
“Yep.”
“Respect,” the guy said, reaching out a gloved fist which she bumped with her own.
“Okay, let’s get going,” Lincoln said, standing near the vehicles with the Viking at his side. I’d yet to learn the man’s name. Lincoln waved us over and Raven and I jogged to him. He held the back door open of one of the cars. We dived inside and he and Mac climbed into the front seat. I glanced around the tarmac one last time, noting that several of the FBI tac team were standing in a square around us, automatic rifles drawn, muzzles down, clearly providing protection until we’d all loaded up.
Once we were on the road, I leaned forward between the seats. “Where are we staging?”
“We’ve secured a warehouse about two clicks from the compound,” Mac replied. “We’ve got about five miles and we’re going fast. We’ll be there in no time.”
“Compound?” Raven asked. “I thought we were talking about a house here.”
Mac fished in his duffel, withdrawing an iPad, powering it on. “These are the SAT photos Mark Evans sent to us. We got them just before takeoff in Houston.”
Raven leaned forward to look with me.
“There’s the main house. We’ve seen men going in and out here and here.” Mac pointed to the front and back. “That’s a pool. That appears to be a gardener’s shed, too small to be anything else. That structure is big enough to be barracks, just like we thought, and those are most probably guesthouses.”
I pointed to a small structure. “What’s that?”
Mac turned the iPad to look at it. “Looks too small to be a cottage. Could be electrical or pool equipment, I guess.”
“Could be an armory,” I suggested.