It was a good bet.
“So fourteen SEALs are killed on a covert operation, and the president thinks she can sweep it under the rug?” Colt shook his head. “She’s nuts.”
A story that big couldn’t be contained; it would eventually come out.
“What’s she supposed to do?” Ryan asked. “Admit an act of war—that we had men in Russia illegally on a military mission for WMDs? That will go over really well after Iraq, especially with no proof and fourteen dead men to show for it.”
“Not to mention that it would force Ivanov’s hand,” Moore said. “He swore to declare war if there was another ‘unlawful American incursion in Russian sovereign territory.’ You know Russian pride.”
“He’d be a fool,” Colt said.
“Maybe so,” Moore agreed. “But it isn’t a chance the president is going to take.”
“Not with reelection in a couple years.”
No one said anything. They all knew how it worked.
Fucking politics. Colt hated everything about it. Even in the Teams as a senior enlisted petty officer, he hadn’t been able to escape it. It was one of the best things about what he did now. Politics didn’t play much of a factor in his kind of operations. Neither did the law, for that matter.
“It’s bad enough with Blake’s supposedly estranged sister coming out of the woodwork and fanning the flames with her ‘Lost Platoon’ articles, and Ivanov using the stories as an opportunity to poke fun at the US for ‘misplacing its soldiers all the time,’ when we all know what he did. Privately the general is calling for his balls.”
Colt didn’t blame him. “Don’t you care about finding out what happened?”
“Of course we do,” Ryan snapped. “They were our men, too. But as the admiral said, our hands are tied. We’ve been ordered not to interfere.”
But Colt hadn’t been. His gaze went to Moore’s. Clever bastard. Was that why they’d agreed to this meeting?
“How did the Russians know they were there?” Colt asked.
“We don’t know,” the admiral answered. “They must have made a mistake.”
“No way,” Colt said. “Taylor wouldn’t fuck up something like this.”
“You saying that doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you trained him when he was a junior officer? Or that you were close friends?” Moore asked.
Were. Until his “friend” had fucked Colt’s wife. Make thatex-wife. “Doesn’t make it not true.”
Colt stood. It was clear he’d gotten as much out of them as he was going to. The rest was up to him. “Gentlemen,” he said, tipping a nonexistent hat and reaching for his glasses.
It was Moore who asked what they were all thinking. “What are you going to do?”
“Get some answers.”
He had to make sure they were all dead. He wasn’t taking the navy’s word for anything. And he knew just where to start, although she wasn’t going to like hearing from him.
Seven
Annie didn’t stay up waiting for Julien to return. When the door opened about an hour after the captain had left her standing on the doorstep, she was already in bed feigning sleep.
She woke the next morning to the incredible aroma of coffee. Good coffee, not the murky brown water they had downstairs.
Julien had decided to surprise her with breakfast in bed, including a latte and her favorite egg and cheddar croissant. Knowing that he viewed any kind of condiment or adornment to a croissant (or what passed for a croissant outside France) as akin to a defilement, she knew he must be trying to make up for the night before.
It wasn’t enough; she needed an explanation.
“I had them put mustard on it,” Julien pointed out. “They didn’t have that yellow kind you like, so it’s English. I hope that’s all right.”
The fact that he managed to say “yellow” without making a face told her how much he was trying. He didn’t think much of her American mustard. Usually it made her laugh, and she teased him about making him eat corn dogs with her at the state fair.
