“Y’all are dic—” He paused mid-word as cells all around the room beeped. “TOC?” He grabbed his phone and checked the screen. “Yup, Rick?”
“Yeah?”
“TOC, let’s go.”
“Coming.” Rick grabbed the punching bag, making sure to steady it to avoid a hit in the back of the head when he turned to follow the others out of the gym.
Saxon pointed to a box next to the door. “Drop the gloves there.”
Rick nodded in response and together they made their way to the war-room after the others.
“Do you know this dude?” Noble barely waited for Rick to be inside the room before he asked the question.
“Yeah. I know him.” Blood drained from Rick’s face. He planted his ass into a chair at the table, leaving room between him and Reese for Saxon.
“Boss?”What the fuck?Why the hell had Rick gone white? Saxon hadn’t even known that shade of pale was possible when it came to skin tone when death wasn’t involved. He grabbed the coffee pot and poured some into a mug, dumping two spoons of sugar into it, and handed it to Rick. “Drink.”
Noble leaned around Saxon so he could see Rick while he spoke. “When did you last see him?”
Rick placed the mug on the table. There was no way he could hold it up to drink. His hands were shaking. He hadn’t had this kinda of reaction to anything since the first time he’d taken a kill shot on his first mission somewhere classified in Africa. Then again, when your past came back to haunt you, it was known to cause a reaction. It looked like his reaction was going to be shaking like a nervous hound during a thunderstorm. “Fifteen years ago, on the White House lawn.”
Wait, what? Saxon spun around to look at the photo again. “Is that Former President McCarthy’s son?”
“Yup.” Noble nodded. “Hit it, Max.”
“At zero five hundred this morning, coded chatter on some of the terrorist lines indicated there was a credible threat against McCarthy.” Max said. “By the time the Secret Service was able to get people to McCarthy’s known location, he was already gone.”
“Why did this come to us?” Saxon felt bad for McCarthy and all, but unless this was the Taliban or similar, it had Jack shit to do with them. Right? They were military and didn’t deal with domestic issues.
“I’m getting to that bit,” Max pulled up a media player on the screen. “Less than an hour after the threat was deciphered from the coded message, this video came from an email within Black Squadron’s main compound.”
Fuck, Claudio hadn’t been paranoid that they had a problem and were being watched. Not that Rick had assumed his boss was any more paranoid than the rest of them were when it came to security. He knew better. Still, having confirmation like that… it sucked.
Max hit play, allowing them all to watch the grainy phone video. A bound man sat in a darkened room with a spotlight highlighting him, but plunging the rest of the room into shadows. The man’s arms were strapped to a chair. An IV drip was buried into his veins at both elbows. “We have Joe McCarthy.” a voice stated. “We will exchange him for Kendrick Jones Junior. Should we not get a response to this email by five AM tomorrow. We will pump enough heroin into dear old Joe’s veins to make his head explode.”
“Why the fuck does that sound like me?” Rick stared at the screen. His face blank, no expression showing at all. He didn’t even blink.
“Someone is shit hot at sound splicing.” Max said. “I’ve spent the last two hours analyzing it, and between each word when you slow down the recording you can see the different levels of pitch and volume.”
“This is why his mission records were accessed?” Shaun cocked his head to one side and drummed his fingers on the table.
“Yup,” Max nodded at Noble. “That’s what we think too.
“It’s fucking weird to have the voice of the one you want handed over be doing the demanding.” Castiel nudged Reese and pointed to the donuts in the center of the table. He took one from the plate when Reese pulled it close enough. “That’s kinda asking for someone to look a hell of a lot deeper than the one you are pointing the finger at. Isn’t it?”
“It’s pretty typical for some of the Bratva to do this.” Reese scrubbed a hand over his head. Especially the ones who would have been in Afghanistan during the war.”
“This is the intel I am finding too.” Max nodded in approval at Reese. “I’m surprised you know that?”
“Eh, I know a lot of shit about nothing,” Reese waved him off. “But every now and again, I do have some useful intel in this pretty head of mine.”
“What’s the plan?” Saxon’s stomach rolled and churned. He had a feeling about where this was going, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“Tell them I will hand myself over.”
“No!” Saxon grabbed Rick’s arm and turned him to face him, “No.” He repeated. “We’ll find another way.”
“I owe him.” Rick’s voice held no emotion whatsoever, making Saxon wonder where the hell the man he’d spent the morning in bed with had gone.
