His stomach sank when Gael responded with a shake of his head.
“Damn.”
“One, Four.” Jericho’s voice crackled softly through the comm. “No heat signatures beyond the far hut. But the upside is I’ve found no tripwires or shit.”
“Copy.”
“One, Three,” Dawsyn called on comms.
“Go ahead, Three.”
“I’m sending you an image, sir.” Dawsyn said, “You might want to send it through to TOC to confirm.”
Crap, that’s not good.
“Send it.” He resisted the urge to shift from foot to foot as the grainy image populated on his wrist device, and it took him a hot second to figure out what Dawsyn had sent him and another couple of heartbeats to figure out why his operator had sent it to him. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Gael grabbed his arm and twisted it almost to the point of pain so he could look at the image too. “Those are Ariat boots. There isn’t exactly a Boot Barn or the like around here for someone to pick up a pair of those.”
“Yeah.” He knew what they were; he wore a similar pair almost every day of the week. The seasoned Operator he was trained to be urged caution. But the one who wanted to execute thismission and save the girl, wanted action now. If she was here, they could fire this mission up to another level. “Doesn’t mean they are hers, though.”
“Nope,” Gael agreed, “but it’s enough to cover our asses if TOC can confirm they match the ones our girl wears.”
“Our girl?”
Gael shrugged. “We’re hunting her. If we find her, she’s ours until we get her home.”
Sometimes his brother didn’t make a lick of sense, but he was too damn relieved that Gael appeared to be dealing with being back here better than he thought he would to worry about it.
“TOC, Seahorse One.”
“Go ahead, One.”
“I’m sending you a shot of some boots.” Theo was going to think they’d lost their minds. “See if you can confirm they are what our package wears.” He sent the image and prayed the connection was strong enough for it to go through, then pressed a button on his watch.
“Roger that, sir. Got it.”
Hurry up and wait. The bane of any operator’s existence. It drove him nuts. He glanced at his watch.
Sixty seconds.
Too soon to hit up Theo for an update.
I’ll give him five minutes. If he can’t do it by then, we’ll change tactics and…
“Seahorse One, TOC.”
“Go ahead, TOC.”
“That’s an affirmative on your boots, boss,” Theo said. “Well, as sure as I can be with a still from her run in El Paso. G-TOC agrees and reminds you that FRED has pinpointed this area.”
Rowan glanced at Gael and waited for his nod. “Seahorse Six, get up here.”
“Copy.” Calloway moved up the file and dropped into position next to Rowan.
“Tell me what you see.” He wanted his extraction expert’s opinion before they walked into something he’d missed.
“Put Four on that slight rise on the back end of the camp,” Calloway advised. “That way we can flush ‘em toward him, and he can pick ‘em off if we need to.”
