Page 44 of The Team

He heard the door open, the quiet shuffle of boots on the floorboards. He knew his team was behind him, and Giardello’s team too.

“So that was fucking hot,” Jay said.

Rhett knew Jay would always aim for humour. It’s what he did. But this wasn’t the time or place for that. He turned around to find the two Alpha teams all standing there, with some variation of smiles across the board.

Coyote laughed, Azrael grinned, and even Echo gave him a smirk. “Probably not how I would have phrased it,” Echo said. Then he stopped. “I meant what you said to King. Not what Jay said.” He raised both hands. “No offence.”

“Well fucking said,” one of Giardello’s guys said. “Waste of fucking time.”

Yin walked over to his seat, and with a small nod to Rhett, he began to clean his gun.

The rest of the team filtered their way to a chair and began doing the same. Giardello came over and gaveRhett’s shoulder a bump with his fist. “Well said,” he murmured.

But Jay walked up, leaned his ass against the closest table, and looked at Rhett. “So what do we do now?”

“We have the location and the time,” Rhett said, checking his watch. “We have three hours.”

“No,” Jay said. “What do we do now?”

Rhett met his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“The intel here is shit,” he said quietly. “Either King is being held off, or he is compromised, or he’s lying to us. So what do we do? You said yourself that you’d go over his head.”

Rhett stared at him, realising what he meant, and then he smiled. “Echo?” he called out.

Echo stopped cleaning his weapon. “Captain?”

“I need to make a call. Off the record, untraceable. Can you do that?”

Echo smiled, reassembled his gun in about two seconds, and stood up. “Can I do that, he asks,” Echo said with a laugh. “Of course I can.”

Two minutes later, Rhett was in the latrine for privacy, a satellite phone to his ear. It rang three times before a gruff voice answered.

“Whassup?”

Rhett was immediately relieved. “Hey, big guy. Sorry for calling in the middle of the night, but shit’s going down and I need you to do something for me.”

NINE

The set-upfor this mission was simple.

Well, as simple as stopping two crazed bioterrorists, plus two extractions, and shooting to kill anyone else who tried to stop them. If Askarov and Gordian skulls weren’t intact by the end of the day was not Rhett’s problem.

He was toldwhatever means necessary, and apparently,necessarymeant calling in some outside help.

Did Rhett trust King?

Normally, he’d say yes.

Whether he liked the man was a different question.

But was something off about this? Was information being withheld from them? Were they sent on a time-wasting mission, risking the lives of civilians, wasting money and the time of the Iranian military?

Yes.

Something wasn’t right.

Something was being withheld, and Rhett was left with no other choice, by any means necessary, to seek outside help.