“A lot of tequila and a special woman who loves life and has a good heart,” Chase said.“Now, let’s go get her back, or my marriage will set records for how short it was.”
“You thinking of staying married?”Trevor asked.“If I recall correctly, you always swore you’d stay a bachelor for life.”
“Things change,” Chase said, his answer short, almost terse.He didn’t want to waste time explaining himself when he wasn’t all that sure of why he’d married Alana in the first place.The argumentbecause it felt rightseemed lame, though it was true.Whatever the reason, he had to save Alana from Delgado, or none of his reasons would matter.
As they were loading into Carson’s SUV, Chase’s cellphone buzzed in his pocket.He dug it out.UNKNOWN CALLERdisplayed on the screen.Thinking it might be Delgado, he hit the talk button.“Yeah.”
“Flannigan?Hank, here.”
“Hank, we’re about to head out.Do you have any suggestions on how to handle this situation?”
“Yeah, wait for us,” Hank said.
“What do you mean?”Chase stared out at the lengthening shadows.“I can’t wait.We’re taking the fight to Delgado at his place in the hills outside of the city.If we don’t leave now, we might not catch him at home.”
“Then go but send me the GPS location.We’re at the airport, loading into vehicles as we speak.”
“You’re here?”Chase’s heart swelled with hope.“In Cabo San Lucas?”
“We are.”Hank chuckled.“Me and five of my best men.Send us the location.We’ll join you as soon as we can.”
Chase sent Delgado’s address to Hank in a text and then asked, “What about arms?”
“We arrived in a private plane.We have what we need,” Hank said.“Don’t wait on us.If you can slow them down long enough for us to get there, we might even the odds a little.”Hank paused.“Any word on the girl?Have you located her?”
“No on both counts.All we have is Delgado’s deadline.Midnight tonight.If the preemptive attack doesn’t work out, I’ll fall back on the original demand,” his gut knotted, “and pray the bastard doesn’t change his mind and kill Alana first.”
“Right,” Hank said.“We’re on our way.”
Trevor stood at Chase’s side as he ended the call.“Was that Hank?”
Chase nodded.“I can’t believe he made it here in just a few hours.”
“Here in Cabo?”
“Yup,” Chase said.“With five of his best men.”
Trevor grinned.“That’s Hank for you.He’s there when you need him.And he has a network of friends with money and assets who can get him where he needs to be, when he needs to get there.”Trevor clapped his hands together.“Gang, we have backup.This mission’s odds just got better.”
Chase wasn’t as quick to think everything would turn out roses.“We still don’t have a bead on Alana.She might not even be in Delgado’s compound.He could’ve taken her to some other cartel location.”
“From what my sources tell me, Delgado likes to run his operation out of his house.He has it set up the way he likes, and the high wall around it slows down or keeps out the riffraff.”
“Speaking of which,” Gina said, “we’ll have to scale that wall.I was never good at vertical leaps, and I’m barely five and a half feet tall.”
“We’ve scaled walls in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Trevor said.
“We’ve got this,” Carson said.“And we’ll get you over it.No worries.”
“Good,” Gina said.“Then maybe we’d better get going so we can get into place before sundown.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Hank and his men?”Carson asked.
Chase shook his head.“I’m afraid that if we wait too long, there might not be anything left of Alana.He has the address and GPS.He’ll be here in time to provide the backup we’ll need.In the meantime, we can scope the surroundings and come up with a plan to breach the compound.Hopefully, Hank and his guys will get there before we’re in so far over our heads we can’t dig our way out.”
Carson chose a 9mm Glock and stuffed explosives into one of his pockets and detonators in the other.“Let’s get moving.”
Gina and the three former Navy SEALs piled into Carson’s SUV and headed out of the city and up into the hills overlooking Cabo and the ocean in the distance.The sun was just slipping into the ocean when they arrived at a location where they could hide the vehicle.At a mile away from their target, they’d continue on foot to the compound and perform a quick reconnaissance of the walls, the security system and take a count of the number of guards on duty.With only the four of them to start with, they could easily be bested in a matter of minutes if discovered.An all-out attack wasn’t an option.They had to sneak in by scaling a wall.Then they’d have to take out the exterior guards, enter Delgado’s home, locate Alana and get her out without her being harmed.The chances of them getting in, extracting Alana and getting back out without alerting Delgado’s men were slim.But they had to find Alana before Delgado used her to force them to lay down their arms and surrender to him and his men.Just like surrendering to the Taliban, the odds of the SEALs surviving once that happened were nil.
