Page 57 of Romeo

We all continued to watch as we waited for the smoke to clear. Eventually, it dissipated enough for Talon to move with his rifle up and three men with him.

His camera tipped down and we could see a body on the floor.

I held my breath as I looked over at Liv and silently prayed…Please don’t let it be Jarret.

She looked a bit white as she stared at the same feed as the rest of us. Stepping closer, she studied the screen and finally whispered, “It isn’t him.”

The whole room seemed to release a breath of relief.

“It’s a guard,” Talon said.

Again, a team member knelt to take a pulse then he shook his head.

“Must be another toe tag,” Dante commented.

Talon and the other two spanned their rifles around the room.

As Talon’s camera swung around, we could see caskets everywhere. “Take it slow and search for anyone living.”

Romeo scoffed. “Such an odd thing to say in a casket room.”

The men all did as Talon said. They would stop and look at a coffin to see that it was hermetically sealed.

“Careful,” I said into the mike.

“Yeah, there could be more explosives,” Talon stopped moving and said over the comm, “Ranger, what are your coordinates? We need an OPX kit.”

“At the convent doors, boss,” Ranger replied. “Or what is left of them.”

“All of you stop moving,” Talon ordered his men in the crypt room. “We need to wait for the OPX.”

The men in the room with him that we could see, stood still and waited.

I glanced at Liv for clarification.

“OPX is a detector for explosives,” she explained.

“Wow, it's like watching Mission Impossible,” Dante exclaimed.

Romeo laughed.

“No, really, it is,” Dante reiterated. “I mean does Talon do this all the time?” he asked as he glanced over at Liv.

Nodding, she shrugged. “From what I know, yes. He is not in the military anymore, but we put together a successful rescue for Glory just recently. The man used to be a rescue phenomenon in the Middle East.”

“Well, he is far taller than Tom Cruise, that’s for sure,” Dante joked.

Romeo chuckled at his brother’s usual smack talk. “He’s more like a younger, larger Chuck Norris, maybe.”

“Very clever, Romeo,” Dante said. “Walker, Texas Ranger!”

“Per tutto ciò che è sacro,” Stephano chided his sons, “Stop with the infantile antics. Can’t you see this is serious?”

“Ok everyone, back up,” Ranger’s voice came from the speaker.

Talon’s camera seemed to move backward. Then it picked up a figure of a man that we assumed was Ranger. He swept this detector that he held in his hand over one coffin, then the next. We couldn’t tell how many were in the room, but Talon’s body-cam seemed to follow Ranger along three caskets so far.

I gasped as I saw something on his camera, so I bent over to speak into the comm, “Talon, you just passed something along the wall.”