Page 18 of Defended By the SEAL (HERO Force #10)

The men of HERO Force gathered around a rough-hewn table in the dimly lit room at a small coastal airport, a set of hastily printed maps and weather reports spread out before them.

Austin, Champion, Booger, and Deke had tracked the storm's progress for hours, their faces tense as they assessed the best way to reach the island where Cowboy, Charlotte, and her family were stranded.

Austin—the de facto leader for this operation—leaned forward, his brow furrowed.

“We’ve got maybe a one-hour break in the storm window, if we’re lucky.

The chopper’s fueled up and ready, but we’re still looking at limited visibility and high winds over open water.

I give us a thirty percent chance of enough clearing to get us out to that island.

We’ll have to call it when we get there. ”

Champion tapped a laptop, grimacing at the shifting Doppler radar on the screen. “No kidding. This thing’s huge. Even with a break in the weather, the chop on the water is going to be dangerous as fuck. I’m not confident the bird’s our best option.” He shook his head. “Too much wind shear.”

Booger leaned over the maps and stabbed a finger at a section of coastline close to the island.

“I’ve got a contact at the Coast Guard station here.

They’ve got to have icebreakers, and they’re used to doing runs in bad weather.

We could put the chopper on a boat and ask them to take us as close as possible.

If we can get them to meet us here, we’ll be on the water by the time the storm lets up. ”

Deke crossed his arms, nodding. “Yeah, but the Coast Guard moves on their own timeline, and there’s no guarantee they’d get us there faster. Even if we can convince them to help, we could already be on the island another way. Shit, an inflatable across the closed bridges ought to do it.”

Austin rubbed the back of his neck, deep in thought.

“Roads are closed. They may not have been plowed in hours, and are completely impassable. But if we take the chopper and the storm closes back in, there’s a good chance we’d be stuck up there—or worse.

I’d rather have a fallback plan than risk losing the entire team to a snow squall over the Atlantic. ”

Champion glanced up from the laptop. “What if we use a tandem approach? Split up, two of us take the HERO Force chopper from here, the other two head out on the Coast Guard boat and use their chopper once you get close.”

Austin furrowed his brow. “And why, exactly, would the Coast Guard do all this for some private citizens in the middle of a blizzard?”

“Because Booger here’s been buggering the captain.” Champion grinned at his play on words until Booger bonked him in the back of the head.

Like a parent in a minivan full of preschoolers, Austin seemed not to notice any of it. He eyed Booger skeptically. “Would she do that for us?”

“She might,” Booger said with a shrug. “I haven’t talked to her since she transferred to Boothbay from Staten Island. Only one way to find out.”

Austin nodded decisively. “Given our lack of decent options, go ahead and call her. I’ll get Jax on the horn to see if he can grease any wheels at the Coast Guard to help make it happen.

” He looked back at the map of the island, then the weather forecast on Champion’s screen, mentally superimposing the two.

Getting backup to Cowboy in these conditions was a cluster fuck of epic proportions, and each man in that room knew what none of them would say aloud. Both ideas were terrible, with little chance of success and a high probability of complications or injury.

He only hoped at least some of their team could make it onto that island to cover Cowboy’s six, without endangering themselves—or anyone else—along the way.