“Um.” He felt his jaw tighten as he fought back the need to tell Rock to go fuck himself, it was none of his business. An alarm blared through the war room, saving Rock from the punch Castello really wanted to give him. Saved by the damn bell. Cliché, maybe, but it was true.
Rock pulled out his cell and opened the screen, from where he was sitting Castello could see a view of the tunnel as trucks passed. Facial recognition flashes confirmed as their faces were caught on camera in the first truck. “Guys are back.” Rock frowned at the screen when the driver of the second truck’s face caused a red box and ‘not confirmed’ to flash on screen.
“Cade?”
“Ya, Boss?” Cade turned from where he had been working on the computers to look at Rock.
“ID the driver of vehicle two.” Rock twisted his phone around, making the image bigger, before pressing two fingers on the screen and drawing them apart.
“Dude with the shemagh and shades?”
“Yup.”
“That’ll be Zack.” Castello moved around the table to look over Rock’s shoulder. He smirked at his second’s go to cover, the Arabian scarf up over his nose and the shades covering his eyes, the bill of a ball cap ensuring almost nothing of his face could be seen by any camera or surveillance system. “Yup, that’s Z.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” Castello pointed to the screen, “tiny nick on his left ear, that’s McGuire.”
“Cagy bastard,” Rock grumbled. “He even keeps his shades on in here.”
Castello shrugged, he wasn’t about to tell anyone Zack’s story, it wasn’t his to tell. But if his second could hurry his ass up and give them a sitrep, Castello could do something about his harder than hell dick and the need to either fuck or be fucked into submission by the man making him batshit crazy all week.
Three hours—it had taken three hours for them to wrap shit up in the war room and decide they were done for the day. Some of the team would stay in the war room, checking on any and all informants in the villages the train schedule said were options for Krystal to have traveled to. There was nothing to say she couldn’t have traveled onward. But they at least had a
starting point. The clerk in the ticket office had confirmed he had seen her there the previous week. Castello wanted to be able to tell Axel they had found her, but he couldn’t. All they had right now was a lead, but he would take it.
Following the directions Rock had given him, he went out the door of the war room and took a right, heading deeper into the cave system. Every step he took through the tunnel, lights illuminated the way, turning off behind him once he had passed. Rock, Grif, and their team had put a hell of a lot of work into this place, and it showed in the power supply, the satellite feed, every little detail. Typing the code into the box next to the door at the end of the hall, Castello’s eyes widened when he entered a hanger. “Holy fuck.” He whistled low at the sight of three Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
He could tell by the number of Hellfire missiles mounted on the External Stores Support Systems that these were US Military issued. He’d flown in enough of these babies over the years to recognize a bird loaded for war when he saw one.
Starkly aware of the freedom Rock and his people had given him, Castello didn’t take a closer look at the hanger, but moved straight through it to the other side. Before typing in the code on the box on the door at the other side, he looked up, expecting to see open skies. Instead, the roof was covered by metal doors. “It is the fucking bat cave.”
“I know right?”
Castello had his Sig in his hand, cocked, and ready to fire by the time the voice registered as Axel’s in his brain. “Shit, I could have shot you.”
Axel pointed to Castello’s left. “There is a stairway over there, come up with me?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “I want to show you something.”
“We shouldn’t be poking around in someone else’s house.” Even though Castello grumbled, his feet were already moving to where Axel had directed him.
“It’s good,” Axel leaned over the railing, enjoying the view as Castello walked away from him. Well, a pretty toned ass always deserved a second look, even if that ass was attached to almost six foot five inches of muscle.
“Grif brought me here.”
Castello climbed the stairs and walked around the metal catwalk to join Axel.
“This way.”
Castello followed Axel to an exit, which led into yet another tunnel.
Jeez, this was as much a rabbit warren as the systems in the Hindu Kush, where usually when Castello came down the tunnels it was in the wake of flash bangs and a hail of bullets.
“See it?”
Axel’s question put a stop to Cas’ musings about this bolt hole of Ghosts and he focused on what his guy was showing him. Ahead a small yellow beam of light flooded the tunnel,
“Sunlight?”
