He opened his eyes and the past half hour came rushing back with mind-blowing clarity. He was in the back of General Sullivan’s Humvee. He’d been shot by General Sullivan, who could have only one reason for resorting to such extremes. Sullivan was the one dealing intelligence secrets. And the bastard had left with Rachel Flores.
Rachel Flores, who’d put her life on the line for him. The only person to believe in him. He couldn’t leave her out there alone.
He lifted his hand. Or rather, he tried to. God, it hurt, really hurt like nothing he’d ever felt, and he’d been messed up mighty bad in that marketplace explosion. He clamped hold of the seat and hauled himself upward. If he could get out of the vehicle and shout for help… He pulled a handle. Locked. He fought down devastating frustration, the kind that could make him surrender now.
Of course the doors were locked so he couldn’t run while they were driving. Pressing his palm to the worst of his wounds, he leaned over the back to look for something. Anything. Maybe a way out the rear hatch.
Runway light illuminated a tarp draped over gear. Inching his fingers to grip, he tugged aside the canvas and uncovered—
Oh God, a body. He’d exposed a face—a woman’s face. Her features were masked by her red hair. Her shell of an ear peeked out, a simple pearl earring on the lobe. He stared at the red hair, his chest gripped in a panic tighter, more painful than the gunshots. It couldn’t possibly be Catriona. He’d seen her get in another Humvee with Sunny Rocha.
He wanted to sink into his seat and howl out his grief. To surrender completely. This time, no waking up in a hospital. Just. Quit.
Silence echoed.
In that silence, he thought of her. Catriona. The way she waited patiently while he got his head together rather than telling him what he should be feeling or thinking. With her, he wasn’t a PTSD patient or a wounded mess. He was a man, a cop, a guy who could take a regular walk on the beach and make love to a woman.
And the cop within him was shouting, loudly, not to let blood loss and shock cloud his judgment. Catriona got in a different Humvee.
He edged up on the seat again and looked closer at the auburn-haired woman. Auburn hair. Darker and coarser than Catriona’s whispery ginger hair. His arm slid over the seat and he brushed the strands clear until he could see more clearly.
It wasn’t Catriona. He didn’t recognize her, but some other poor woman lay lifeless from a broken neck.
He collapsed back into his seat. Sullivan was a traitor and a murderer. And he had Rachel.
Each breath rattling harder than the last, Brandon searched the Humvee. He didn’t know if he would make it out alive or not, but he refused to let Rachel die because of him. He scoured the inside of the vehicle that was fast becoming his coffin, hunting until his eyes landed on the radio on the front dash.
One inch at a time, he crawled forward.
“He did what?” Liam asked, stunned.
Less than ten minutes into his interview with the OSI, questioning had been interrupted. He was told the base commander wanted to see him at the command post.
Pronto.
No sooner did Liam arrive than he was pulled into a small room with the base commander—a young colonel—who said General Ted Sullivan had stolen an airplane. And damn it, that made him want to pound a wall. He’d known something was wrong back on the flight line when they’d all been separated, and there hadn’t been a thing he could do about it. Refusing to go with their escort hadn’t been an option. Drawing his weapon… also not a good idea then. Demanding that Rachel stay with him would have netted zero results, given that he was outranked.
Their plan to come in had turned into a cluster f**k and he had no idea how. Most important of all, where was Rachel? Last he’d seen of her, she was with the OSI captain.
Colonel Mary Zogby stood with her hands behind her back, a pulse ticking in her forehead along her dark hairline. “General Sullivan stole an airplane off the flight line. The only logical conclusion I can draw is that he has something to do with Lieutenant Harris’s data that’s being processed by our decoders.”
He didn’t need her to spell out the obvious. Protocol dictated the plane would be shot down without delay. “And I’ve been brought in, ma’am, because…?”
“Just as we became aware of the plane taking off, we received an emergency call over the radio in General Sullivan’s Humvee—from Lieutenant Harris. There’s no easy way to say this. The general shot Lieutenant Harris and then abducted your friend Rachel Flores.”
Liam reeled back a step, the air whooshing from his body as if he’d been kicked in the gut. Rachel was going to die. Either at General Sullivan’s hand or when that plane was shot down. And Liam had brought her here. To what he thought was safety. He couldn’t speak. He could barely stay on his feet.
Thank God, the colonel seemed to understand and continued talking while he got his shit together.
“We’re not sure how exactly, but the HC-130 on alert fired its engines and was rolling down the runway before security could get to it. Once we received the call from Lieutenant Harris, General Sullivan’s Humvee was recovered near the airplane, hidden between some aerospace ground equipment—generators, to be exact.”
“Lieutenant Harris?” he choked out.
“On his way to the hospital. Critical condition. He passed out before we could learn anything more from him.” She drew in a bracing breath. “In the back of the Humvee, a body was discovered. Special Agent Sylvia Cramer. Preliminary signs indicate she was strangled to death, and since she was in the vehicle Sullivan was driving, we can assume he’s the one who killed her. Right now, General Sullivan has nothing to lose.”
Liam closed his eyes briefly as he absorbed the news of Sylvia’s death and how her plans to bring them in had led to it. He would mourn the loss of his friend later. Right now, he had to focus on Rachel. They couldn’t have called him in to watch her die too. “And I was brought here because…?”
“NORTHCOM has a track on the craft and is launching fighters from Homestead.” Silence hung in the room for a few seconds.
Finally McCabe spoke. “They’re going to shoot it down.”
Colonel Zogby nodded. “General Sullivan is over the water, heading south, so he isn’t an immediate threat to homeland security. But once he turns toward land, we’ll have no other options.”
Options? She was talking options?
Hope stirred and took root tenaciously. “Ma’am, are you telling me we have a window of time to come up with a better plan before NORTHCOM launches that shot?”
“That is exactly why you were called in and exactly how I expect my elite force to react. My battle staff is already convening, awaiting you and your team.” She walked through the door, talking as he kept stride with her. “We want General Sullivan taken alive. And of course we want to prevent the loss of an innocent life.”
His creaky old knees didn’t give out on him, but it was a close call, with relief threatening to down him. He would hold strong, focus, and work with this colonel who’d offered an unexpected second chance for him.
For Rachel.
“Yes ma’am. I assume you are already getting a new alert aircraft fired up.” Determination powered his steps.
“We are.”
“Do you have a track on the aircraft?”
The colonel opened the door into the “war room.” A wall-size screen lit up. Rows of manned computers packed the room. She gestured toward the screen. “Our stolen aircraft headed away from the coast and is now turning south. Fighters have launched from Homestead, but they really can’t reach out to them until a tanker from MacDill gets to the area. Any idea where the general’s headed?”
“No, ma’am.” McCabe cleared his brain of distracting thoughts of Rachel playing with her dog. Or her standing down an alligator. Of her face just before he kissed her.
He focused everything he was and everything he’d learned on this moment. He studied the electronic map showing the stolen aircraft and the F-16s waiting farther south.
“Looks like we could cut them off if we took an angle and stayed near the coast.” The logical plan of action took shape in his mind, the one a team leader should propose. He was zeroed in for Rachel. “What do you think about getting my team on the alert plane? Have the F-16s force the airplane down in the water instead. Then we can parachute in with rafts and secure survivors until the chopper arrives.”
“Roll it,” the colonel said without hesitation.
She’d accepted his long-shot plan, one that stood such a miniscule chance at succeeding, even he couldn’t believe he’d suggested it. Yet what other choice did he have, to save Rachel?
Less than ten minutes later, Liam and his team piled out of a bus up the back ramp of an HC-130. Propellers were already turning. The loadmaster pointed the team to the troop seats lining the walls in the rear of the aircraft, the same red nylon and metal tubing, uncomfortable seats they had spent countless hours strapped to. Before they were even settled in, the ramp was coming up and the plane was taxiing toward the runway.
He took in the faces around him, the gritty resolution in their eyes, the readiness to give their all for the pararescueman’s motto, “These Things We Do, That Others May Live.” That today, Rachel would live.
These were his men. His team. There wasn’t anyone on earth he’d rather have with him. And yet something about his plan didn’t sit right with him. His team would follow him. He didn’t doubt that for a second. However, something tugged at the back of his brain, a sense that there had to be another way, one that didn’t involve Rachel stuck inside a plane crash-landing into the ocean.
McCabe unstrapped from his seat and moved up to the cockpit and the communication station. Studying the radar screen, he watched the blip, blip, blip of light pulsing like a heartbeat. That light was his only connection to Rachel.
He tapped the staff sergeant manning the position on the shoulder. “What is the status of the target?”
The sergeant moved one of the cups of his headset off his ear. “The F-16s have just left the tanker and will intercept in ten minutes.”
“What are their orders?”
“They are going to intercept and attempt to turn them back toward the United States, forcing them down into water. Air traffic controllers tell us he’s having a helluva time flying the plane. He’s all over the place.”
“And if they don’t turn back?” he asked, even though he already knew. Hope was a crazy bastard that ignored reason.
“They were told to be prepared to shoot them down, but they are weapons tight right now.”
Weapons tight, not allowed to shoot yet. He didn’t like the notion “yet.” And he wasn’t feeling as good about the plan of an erratic pilot’s ability to crash-land in the ocean.
McCabe patted the sergeant on the back and headed aft to the team waiting in the cargo bay.
Barely contained fury welled inside him for coming back to the base. Anger at himself. Had he been so eager to push her away with both hands—so cry-ass scared of taking a chance with her—that he’d missed a warning sign that they were walking into a trap? He would not accept, could not accept, that anything would happen to her on his watch.
He paced the metal deck, then stopped and stared at a winch fixed to the aircraft. An alternate plan formed in his mind. An even crazier plan than the one he’d proposed first, and a plan he would never assign to anyone on his team.
But then he wasn’t asking them to carry it out.
This was his mission. His woman. No room for failure, because a world without Rachel…
Facing his team, Liam cleared his throat and his thoughts. Lining up his plan. Becoming one with the uniform as he’d intended since he was eleven years old, patting his mother’s hand while they watched old war movies. He would win this battle or die trying.