HUM04: Something is wrong. Call off the mission.
SOF69: What? No. Who is this?
HUM04: Braedon Foster’s sister. Something is wrong. CALL OFF THE MISSION!
Her gaze snapped to the big screen. The team was in position, ready to enter the compound.
Her heart thudded in her chest, threatening to burst through her sternum. She looked over her shoulder and up to the top of the theater where the Joint Operations Center, or JOC, commander paced across the walkway.
Pushing back from her chair, she took the stairs two at a time.
“Sir? Sir!”
“What is it?” Colonel Jefferson asked.
“You have to call off the mission,” she said.
“What?” He removed the left cam of his headset off his ear.
“You have to stop the mission,” she repeated. “Something is wrong.”
“What exactly is wrong?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s a feeling. I can’t explain it—I’ve never been able to explain it.”
“I’m not calling off a mission because you had bad food at the chow hall,” he said.
Captain Petrov stepped between her and the commander. “Major, you should go back to your station.”
Addison glared at him hard enough that he shifted his weight and looked at Colonel Jefferson over his shoulder.
“You need to listen to the captain, Major, before I have you removed from the floor.”
“Ready to breach.” This came from the team on the ground.
“Please, sir. I am begging you to call off this mission.”
He settled the cam back over his ear and adjusted the microphone near his mouth. “You are a go.”
Her stomach plummeted, and only her iron will kept her knees from buckling. She spun and faced the screen. At the bottom of the theater, Elise watched her with worried eyes.
A five-man team breached the compound and hugged the walls around to the back of the main building.
“Team One is set.”
The second team set up at the front of the building. Ten seconds later, the first team entered the building from the rear and their heat signatures disappeared. Two minutes after that, the second team entered.
An eternity later, the call out. “Target is clear.”
The colonel turned to her and cocked an eyebrow. “See, Major? Nothing to worry about.”
No. Something was still wrong. Very wrong. And now she knew for sure. “Get them out of the building. Get them out of the compound.”
“It’s fine, Major,” Captain Petrov said.
“It’snot. The house should not be empty.” The intelligence said the house and compound were a main staging base for ISIS. “Get. Them. Out.” Her clenched teeth acted as a barrier to keep her scream inside.
The image on the wall of screens, all twenty of them—half as large as an IMAX screen—exploded in a bright ball of white light. Seconds later, the boom, caught by the mics of the men outside the compound, reverberated through the room.
