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“Yeah. Totally crap if you ask me.”
All excellent points. Conversation floated around him as Diego kicked back in the corner. Boots propped on the table and his chair tilted back, he considered his next shot of whiskey.
“You’d think I’d be drunk by now,” he said, the words slurring in his ears.
“Dude, you are shit-faced,” Lansky corrected, his bloodshot eyes as round as dinner plates.
“Yeah?” Not sure why he didn’t trust Lansky’s word—after all the guy spent half his time drinking—Diego looked toward Savino. “You think I’m drunk?”
“I think Lansky might be a few ahead of you, but you’re well on your way.”
“I’d better catch up, then.”
“Yo, Torres. There’s a pool table back here. I figure you being three sheets to the wind is the best chance I’ve got to beat you.”
Diego pulled his eyes off his glass to look at Aaron Ward. He tried to return the guy’s smile, but found he could only shake his head.
“You go ahead. It’ll take another fifth before I’m drunk enough for you to beat me.”
Amid laughter and a few crude suggestions, everyone headed for the poolroom except Diego and Lansky. His cell phone chiming, Savino stepped away, too. Diego felt like a jerk, but a part of him was glad to see them go.
“The last guy to ask me to play pool was Ramsey,” Diego realized, feeling like shit all over again. “This sucks.”
Images of the mission played through his head like a movie reel. They’d fast roped from the helo, landing just over the hill from the enemy base. Powers, Lansky and Ward had headed into the compound to rescue the hostage while Ramsey, Prescott and Lee secured the control center to begin downloading secret files. Everyone had been in place; everything had run exactly as planned.
Until it hadn’t.
The explosion had come just as Lee had signaled the all clear. Lee and Prescott both moved with their usual stealth as they exited the building, Diego provided cover. Then it had all blown to hell. The explosion had taken out half the building, the fire burning too hot for any survivors.
Diego had been faced with the choice of going into the flames in search of Ramsey’s remains or getting an injured Prescott, the rest of the team and the extracted hostage the hell out of there.
He’d chosen the unthinkable.
He’d left a man behind.
Eyes hot, he poured more whiskey, knocking it back before pouring again.
“You didn’t fuck it up,” Lansky said quietly.
“Listen to MacGyver,” Savino ordered as he rejoined them from wherever he’d gone to take his call. The guy spent more time on the phone than a teenage girl. Diego figured he’d mention that when he was a little more numb.
“Why should I listen to him?” he muttered.
“Because you didn’t fuck it up. There was no way to retrieve Ramsey. The fire was too intense. When support hit the site the next day, there wasn’t even enough of him to ID. Your orders were explicit. Your first duty was to the hostage. You got him out of there and Prescott to medical care so he didn’t die. That’s enough.”
It wasn’t, though.
It’d never be enough.
“He was a damned good SEAL,” Diego said quietly.
“He was a strong officer,” Savino murmured, his eyes scanning the room.
“He was an asshole.”
“What?” Lansky’s eyes widened when Diego glared at him. “I’m supposed to lie? Like getting himself blown to hell suddenly makes the guy less of an asshole?”
“You never liked him.”
“And he never liked you. The guy wanted to take you down in a bad way. He’d have done anything to screw you over.”
“Would he?” Savino asked. His voice didn’t change. Nor did his expression. So Diego couldn’t tell why Savino’s tone pierced through the alcohol hazing his brain.
“What are you thinking?” he asked his commander, studying Savino’s face. He had to blink a few times to bring it into focus.
“That things aren’t always what they seem.”
Even well on his way to drunk, Diego could see the dots Savino was laying out. But they didn’t connect.
“Ramsey is dead. We saw him go up in flames when that command center blew.”
His throat dry as the images pounded through his brain again, Diego grabbed his glass.
Savino laid a hand on his arm before he could drink.
“What?” His gut clenched when he looked at the other man’s face. Serious as a heart attack didn’t come close.
“Sober up” was all Savino said before glancing at Lansky. “Make your excuses. Then the two of you take a room nearby. Don’t return to base until you hear from me.”
“What—”
“Sober up,” Savino said again as he got to his feet. Diego was drunk, but not so drunk he didn’t see the flash of concern on his commander’s face as he glanced toward the other room, where their team played a loud game of pool. Diego’s buzz starting to fade, he lowered his feet to the floor, unconsciously coming to attention.
“Let me know where you land. Just me.” He waited until Diego and Lansky nodded. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
He left, calling a friendly goodbye to the rest of the team as he went. Then Lansky looked at Diego. Diego frowned back.
“What the hell?” Lansky muttered.
“I don’t know, but I guess we’re calling it a night.”
His head swimming in whiskey and confusion, Diego could pinpoint only two things.
One, they had their orders.
And two, Savino was worried. So whatever those orders led to, it was going to get ugly.
* * *
TWENTY HOURS LATER, Nic Savino strode through the night-drenched parking lot like a man on a mission.
Which, of course, he was.
The run-down motel was lit by one stingy streetlight; the others looked like they’d been shot out. Trash heaped against the cyclone fence as if it were trying to climb free, and the air smelled of the ocean on a bender, week-old fish, rotten eggs and rust. A bored-looking hooker leaned against the graffitied wall three buildings down, and the sound of an argument heading toward violent rang out over the desperate plea of a car alarm.
He noticed it all.
He gave none of it his attention.
His entire focus was on reeling in the fury pounding through his head before he reached room 207. He was a man known for his control, and he was going to need every shred of it to deal with this situation.
Situation, he thought bitterly. That’s what the admiral was calling it. Savino’s SEAL team was under investigation. Or as the directive from Naval Intelligence had put it, a duly authorized official had been assigned to look into Operation Hammerhead, which had resulted in the death of one team member, the hospitalization of another and the dissemination of classified information to the enemy, possibly for profit.
It hadn’t taken much to read between the lines.
They were looking at his team for treason.
His men.
Him.
Savino climbed the cement stairs to the second floor, stepping around the bum sleeping under a pile of rags in the corner of the landing, breathing through his teeth to avoid the stench.
Three doors down the concrete walkway, he knocked once, then walked in.
“Lansky, you have crap taste in motels,” he said by way of a greeting. The room was wood veneer and orange polyester coated with a thin layer of grilled onions.
“You told me to find a place close to the bar. This is close.” Lansky shrugged from his spot on the floor. His back against the flowered bedspread, he had a notebook on one side of him, a bag of chips on the other and a computer in his lap.
“How’d you get a laptop?”
“Guy on the corner was selling them.” Lansky flashed a boyish grin. “You didn’t think I was just going to sit here watching Kitty Cat work off his drunk, did you?”
In other words, Lansky was trying to figure out what was going on. Good. Savino considered the shiny new MacBook Air. He knew it was hot. But it shouldn’t be traceable.
His gaze shifted to Torres.
He’d installed a rod in the bathroom doorway about three-quarters of the way up from the floor. Shirtless and with one hand tucked behind his back, he used the other to pull himself up, lowered and did it again. And again. His unshaven face was set, blank. Sweat poured and his breath huffed, telling Savino he’d been at it for a while.
Savino took in the man’s mood with a single glance. An IED was less dangerous than Torres right now.
“You get the pull-up bar from the same guy?”
“Found it by the Dumpster,” Lansky said, frowning as he peered at the laptop. “Mood this one’s in, he’d have ripped a pipe from the wall if I hadn’t come up with something.”
Torres’s only response was a grunt as he switched arms.
“He been at it long?”
That got Lansky’s attention. His frown didn’t fade, but he did look from Torres to Savino before shrugging.
“We been here, what? Almost a day, give or take? He’s clocked about two weeks PT in that time, and about two hours sleep.”
The team generally spent between ten and twenty hours a week on physical training, depending on their status. Torres had put that in already? It didn’t bode well.
Savino raked his hand through his hair. Giving in to the stress pounding in his head, he gripped the back of his neck as if he could squeeze the pain away.
Torres was a SEAL. He’d step up and do the duty when Savino assigned it. But the weight of it would be a lot easier to dump on the guy if he wasn’t in a pisser of a mood.
It was rare that Savino worried about that sort of thing. But this was a rare situation. And the duty would be more in the lines of a favor.
“You want a beer?” Lansky offered.
“Thought you were sobering up.”
“I’ve only had three. That is sober.” He tilted his head toward Torres, who’d flipped himself around so his knees were anchored over the bar and his head toward the floor, doing sit-ups. “He’s the one who was drunk anyway.”
“Right.” Though procrastination wasn’t in his nature, Savino had a desperate urge to put this conversation off for a month or five. But the betrayal gnawing at his gut wasn’t going to go away. And this situation was only going to get worse. So...
“Fall in, men.”
As expected, the quiet command had instant results. Lansky closed the laptop, got to his feet and waited with his hands clasped behind his back. Torres grabbed the bar with one hand to free his legs, then flipped to the floor. He didn’t bother to grab a towel but stepped over to match Lansky’s stance, pausing only to wipe a rivulet of sweat from his eyes before coming to parade rest.
“Word has come down through sources I trust that we’re being investigated on the QT. The team in general, Poseidon in particular.”
Lansky’s minuscule flinch made it clear that he hadn’t ferreted that much out yet. Good. He was one of the slickest hackers around. If he couldn’t find it, others wouldn’t, either.
“Let me make this clear. I consider this a bogus investigation. But some of the brass are taking it seriously because, if my intel is correct, it’s happening at the behest of the CIA.”
That got a frown from both of them.
Savino gave a satisfied nod. He wouldn’t have to explain just how potentially FUBAR this situation was. The CIA digging its sticky fingers into Navy business was never good. But into Special Ops and the SEALs? Poking at the DOD’s classified protocols? That had the potential to be beyond fucked up.
“It’s been determined that classified information has been sold to the enemy. Information believed to be available only to those participating in Operation Hammerhead.”
“Believed to be?” Lansky asked, his eyes sliding toward his notebook. At Savino’s nod, he leaned over to grab it and started taking notes.
“The information they intercepted could only have come from the compound in Kunar,” he said quietly, referring to the base they’d infiltrated during Operation Hammerhead. “The scientist you rescued had been close to a breakthrough on the formula for a particularly lethal chemical weapon when he was grabbed. Because he is also a member of the Russian government, every piece of information, every byte of data he produced during his capture, he covertly tagged.”
He waited for both men to nod their understanding. Tagging the data didn’t make it traceable. But it did pinpoint and time-stamp its source.
“The chemical weapon formula was discovered in the hands of jihad militants.” He named the faction, a particularly violent extremist group who’d claimed responsibility for three European bombings the previous year, including an amusement park.
“One of the militants could have sold it,” Lansky pointed out, although he didn’t sound very confident.
“The electronic signature pins the data to a specific time frame.” He ignored the clutch in his gut and continued. “The CIA believes it’s unlikely to be one of them given that the militants themselves were under attack and their compound in flames at that time.”
He waited a beat, then arched his brow.
