Shane shook his head. “No.”
Magic was a smart son of a bitch, and he knew where Shane was heading, and he didn’t like it. He crouched down again next to him. “Shane. Please. Whatever you’re planning…Letmetake the blame for it.”
“And how’s that gonna work?” Shane asked. “You, what? Knock me unconscious?”
“I didn’t think of that,” Magic said, “but…Yeah. I could. Do that. Or…maybe you hit your head when you hurt your ankle. That’s possible.”
“Except I’ve been talking on the radio,” Shane pointed out. There would be a record of that.
“Maybe that was during the watchamacallit,” Magic said. “The lucid interval.”
“And no one’s going to be suspicious when I’m in the hospital and the injury to my headisn’tsevere enough to—”
“Maybe you got better,” Magic said, then swore, because he knew how stupid he sounded.
“It’s called mutiny. You’ll go to prison,” Shane said, “and I’llstilllose my command.”
“There’s gotta be another way,” Magic started.
Shane cut him off. “I gave you an order. Don’t make me repeat it.”
Magic stood up. “Fuck you, Lieutenant Ass-hat. I’m not letting you do this.”
“Yeah, you are,” Shane gently told his friend. “Because maybe this is some kind of mistake, the thing with the inaccurate face-rec, and I’ll get a medal for saving the day.”
“Youseriouslythink—”
“No,” Shane said. “But I’m going to play it that way, with maybe a littlenegative reaction to the pain medsthrown in for good measure. With luck, I can sell it, and I’ll be okay. I’ll get through this, too.”
Magic didn’t believe him. Probably because Shane himself didn’t believe it possible. Someone among their superiors had wanted Tomasin Montague dead. And Shane was going to be burned—badly—for his refusal to get the job done.
Still, he pushed, adding, “You know how it works, Dean. The team leader always pays for any mistakes. And if we’re both gone, who’s going to find out how this happened? Who’s going to make sure this doesn’t happen again? We didn’t work and sweat and bleed to get where we are, only to have them—whoever they are—turn the teams into some kind of goddamn private hit-squad.”
Magic shook his head. “Double fuck you, for always being right.”
“Go,” Shane said.
Magic finally nodded. And turning, he vanished into the shadows of the night.
Shane got busy, taking out the syringe that Rick had given him even as he broke radio silence to contact the SEAL who was following the mysterious team that Scott Linden had said was heading their way. “Laughlin to Dexter. Report in if you can, over.”
Chapter Three
“Our intel was incorrect, the target is not here. I’m aborting this mission, and I’m ordering you,” Shane said, looking steadily from Rick to Owen to Magic to the senior chief, “to go back over the border, with the rest of the team. With the understanding—”
“With all due respect, sir,” Owen interrupted earnestly, looking up from the equipment he was using to try to tap into the mystery team’s radio signals. He, like the senior and Rick and Magic, was now dressed like a goat herder—down to the cap that helped cover his face. “We’re not leaving you here, alone.”
“That’s enough,” the senior spoke over him, giving the kid his best dead-eye glare.
“With the understanding,” Shane repeated, talking over them both, “that you may be delayed by humanitarian efforts to help innocent civilians move to safety in the face of a coming attack from an unknown, unidentified, potentially deadly enemy.”
“Jesus, sir, that was a mouthful,” the senior said.
“Semantics, Senior Chief,” Shane told the older man. “And this is where you sayAye, aye, sir. All of you.”
They murmured it back to him without a whole hell of a lot of conviction, and he went on. “I’m in command. I made the call to abort, and gave the order. You obeyed said order. If and when you’re asked, you’ll be telling the truth. These are now simple facts that will protect you.”
Because of the SAT signal jamming, there’d be no timeline or record of when the team had left the area. And since Shane alone would remain, and would be picked up by the helicopter at the planned extraction point, he would insist that he’d acted alone in his efforts to save the misidentified woman.
