“Yup.”
“He’s in bed with Hezbollah.”
“You know better than to make assumptions, babe.” Biker man’s voice came from deep within the locker. He made a triumphant noise and emerged with a cord for the computer. “I think you will find that he was in bed with Three.” He plugged it in and hit the power button. “Hezbollah, we haven’t proven yet.”
“Ugh, I hate when you are right.”
“I’m gonna text our girl and tell her you said I was right.” Biker man pulled out his cell phone and tapped in a quick message.
“Don’t get used to it.” the boss grumbled.
Rio watched them interacting with each other with fascination. He didn’t know if they were aware that even though they were all the way across the room and speaking in whispers, that their voices echoed just enough that he could hear them both clearly. Both of them shut up and put scowls on their faces at the first sound of the door opening. Interesting. They weren’t as pissed with Cade as they were making out to be. Now Rio had to figure out what the hell that meant and how he could use it to get the fuck out of here.
“Here.” Cade walked across the room and pushed a pair of sweats and socks through the bars of the cage. “It’s the best I can do, your clothes still have blood on them.”
“Thank you.” Rio fumbled with the sweats but managed to get his feet into them and to pull them up over his ass. He didn’t even bother with the socks. There was no way he was struggling with them and making himself look like a damn idiot.
“Out.”
Rio resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the demand from Cade’s boss. But as soon as he spotted Cade’s mouth opening, he shook his head and mouthed, “Go.”
Cade stood in front of him for a heartbeat or two, before he nodded and left the room.
* * *
“TOC, this is One.” Rock turned down the volume and tapped the speaker on his coms unit. “Do we have a status on our recon team?”
“They have just cleared the hotel, One.”Harper told him.“Ah, you’ll have visuals online as soon as you log into the system.”
“TOC, Two.” Grif joined the conversation, “I am just logging in now.”
“Recon are almost back at the truck.”
“Any issues?”
“Negative.”Harper responded,“Four may have knocked out a cop and borrowed his hat and uniform jacket. But they got in and out with both Three and his… err… friend’s gear.”
“Good.” That’s what Rock liked to hear. As much as it bugged him to send his guys into a downtown hotel which was probably swarming with cops, he knew the two hunters his team had trained were some of the best there were at covert infiltrations. But maybe he should have a word with Danny Reich about how covert meant not knocking out cops.
Having served in the Canadian Military, Danny’s team had taken a major hit during a friendly fire incident in the Middle East. The US had spent a long time denying what Rock had known was true. His side fucked up and fired first. Then refused to admit they were wrong. Assholes. It was one of the incidents that had soured Rock on serving on the ground. The main incident that made him listen when JSOC came with an offer from the President. The offer of his own team. Ghost Protectors.
It pissed Rock off that the incident had happened. It pissed him off more at the insult the Government had given to their allies, to the fallen men. Canadian boots had hit the dust in Afghanistan shortly after the US went to war after 9/11. With Canada proudly saying, ‘We got your backs, neighbor.’
Rock had fought side by side with Danny in the Battle of Panjwaii, and when the opportunity to recruit the former Royal Canadian Regiment infantryman presented itself, he had jumped at the chance. He rarely regretted it. Unless Danny was messing with his truck or giving Rock’s five-year-old daughter, Lexi, tips on how to make him batshit. Those days he wanted to boot Danny’s ass back over the border.
“G One, this is Four,”Danny called out over coms,“Do you copy?”
“Go ahead, Four,” Rock wanted to know what they had found in this Felipe’s hotel room. “Switch on your bodycam.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Rock rounded the table to stand next to Grif, where they could see the camera footage come online. The laptop showed them a smaller view of the images he knew would be displayed on the big screens in their War - Room in Mexico. As soon as the body camera was switched on, multiple copies were recorded. One for their home base’s records. One went to the White House, where the president stored a copy in a vault. And a third, nobody else knew happened to it. That one went to a secure location that only Rock and Grif knew of. Oh, Cade knew the recording was there. He just didn’t know where their safe place was located. “Go ahead, Four.”
“Let’s see what we’ve got.”On screen they saw Danny empty a brown leather suitcase, rifling through all the items of clothing. The sound line rose and dipped with every breath he and his fellow hunter Serge took. He pulled out two small leather cases and handed them over to Serge.
“Boss, this is Five,”Despite the vocal cord scraping and the elocution lessons provided to him, Serge had never lost his slight Slavic accent. He unzipped the first pouch,“He has a shitload of cash.”Tipping the bills out onto his lap, he picked one up and looked at it,“American Dollars.”
“I see it.”
