“Nope.” Saxon snorted. “There’s something in the damn water Noble is giving us. Most of the guys, except Reese as far as I know, have someone.”
“I didn’t see any women.” Did it mean most of the guys lived as if deployed, rather than stationed overseas? That would be very unusual, especially as their base was in Italy.
“Am I a woman?”
Wait, he knew Drax and Noah were together, and he suspected Zenko and Shaun too. But theirs could be a bro-mance for all he knew. “You mean all are gay?”
“Pretty much.” Saxon shrugged. “I don’t care who they love or who they fuck, as long as they fight like they’re hell on wheels.”
“Truth.” Rick agreed. “I’m just surprised is all. That’s a lot of LGBT couples in one place.”
“Eh, you know us, we tend to gravitate toward each other, kinda like how we did at the club in Germany. I pegged you for military the second you walked in the door.”
“I thought I was more subtle than that.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the other two. “They’re getting back in.”
“Yup, we’ll dock in five minutes. You ready?” Saxon opened the door of the truck.
“For what?” Rick paused before getting in and looked at him over the roof.
“After today’s shitshow, Noble will be taking us on a class of Operator 101.” Saxon shuddered, “Operator 101 sucks.”
“Ugh.” Oh lovely, an asshole fucked up, and they had to pay the price. “I was hoping for just a fast debriefing.”
“Pray we get lucky,” Saxon snorted. “And that Max found something while we were gone.”
They got back into the truck and shut the doors, ready to disembark once the ferry docked.
* * *
No freaking waywas he admitting it, but Saxon was so fucking relieved that the handover of Rick to the ‘Ndrangheta had gone to shit. He knew Rick could handle himself. Now that he knew for sure Rick worked for Black Squadron, he knew he came under the DEVGRU umbrella, which meant he had been Special Forces. SEAL, as most of the Recon and reconnaissance people were. But gah, even if Rick was a badass, he had seen the vulnerable side of the man and Saxon wanted to protect him. “I think we have determined that someone out there wants Rick dead.”
“Agreed,” Noble tapped his fingers on the table. “What we need to figure out is do they really have Joe McCarthy, and if so, where the fuck are they holding him?”
“Everything I can find shows McCarthy is a reporter for CNN.” Max hit print on the computer and immediately the sounds of the Inkjet firing up filled the war-room. “His last assignment was Syria.”
“Fabulous.” Noble muttered. “What a glorious place to send the son of a former US President. They might as well have just sent him out there with a fucking neon sign saying, ‘kidnap me, my country will pay to get me back.’
“You are forgetting, the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.” Zenko sipped his coffee, and grimaced. “Cold shit, Drax did you make the coffee?”
“The US may not negotiate,” Rick scrunched up his face as if he caught a whiff of a bad smell. “But for someone like a former First Kid, they will send a team. Want to know, who would normally be first in?”
“Your team?”
“Yup,” Rick nodded. “We’d locate the target, keep an eye on him. Grab him if the opportunity arose. If not, provide all the intel for one of the assault squadrons or platoons to do a snatch and grab.”
“Black Squadron is compromised,” Shaun frowned at Zenko before reaching to pluck something off Zenko’s head. “At least that’s what your boss alluded to… Right?” he asked Rick.
“Yeah, and if the ransom demand came from my computer…” Rick had no idea how the hell he was going to get around this one. Even if it made no sense that they were using his voice to get him to hand himself over in exchange for Joe. “Take a WAG at who they are setting up to take the fall.”
“No need for Wild Assed Guesses.” Castiel muttered. “Even I can see that one.”
“What are we going to do about it.” Saxon studied all the intel Max had either printed out for them or put on the screen. He’d gone through it multiple times since they’d sat down. He couldn’t see jack shit. Nothing tied all this together.
“The job hasn’t landed on our table yet,” Noble said. “I have checked with the DOD, hell, I even called the CIA and the FBI.” He scrunched his forehead into a scowl. “They all say they have no information on it.”
“That’s a steaming heap of camel shit.” Roman pointed to the screens over their heads. “That email right there is from the office of the Secretary of Defense to Rick’s family, telling them of the ransom demand.”
“It’s the reply to that one that concerns me more.” Max clicked through the screens. “I ran a trace on that. It didn’t come from…”
