‘Dude, what were you thinking?’
‘I don’t know. I just got no patience for that shit.’
Ross was so dumbfounded he had to laugh. ‘Next time you give me some warning.’
Pepper was about to reply, but the Seahawk had swooped down toward the beach and landed.
Ross leaned over and cried in his ear, ‘We got him, old man. We got him!’
Pepper nodded and forced a smile as the crew chief, along with Rugg and two of his Marines, came jogging up the pier.
SEVENTY
A squad of Marines retrieved Valencia’s body from the disabled APC. He’d slowly bled out. He was a doctor unable to save himself, and this was justice served to a man who’d turned his back on his oath to save others.
30K, the most seriously injured of the Ghosts, was stabilized back on board the LCS, as were Pepper and Kozak, the latter of whom had suffered some broken ribs and a punctured lung.
During stabilization and triage, Wagner ordered the Sea Stallion to be reconfigured for medevac. The CH-53 was capable of carrying twenty-four stretchers, eight more than the number of wounded requiring critical trauma care. Singapore’s two trauma care centers, Gleneagles Hospital in Tanglin and nearby Mt Elizabeth Hospital in Orchard would split the casualties to reduce overload at either center.
Ross stayed with his men, having been told that he’d need to have the shrapnel removed from his arms and legs. All Kozak could think about was whether or not the Warhound had been retrieved, and Ross assured him that yes, the big boy was back on the hangar deck, looking about as battle worn as they were.
Pepper was resting easy, the morphine drip keeping him in a good place for now, and 30K was completely out, eyes slammed shut, face ashen.
With a deep lump in his throat, Ross reached out and took 30K’s hand in his own. ‘You can be a real asshole, you know that? Yeah, I guess you do.’
During the next few weeks, while he and the team recovered, Ross kept tabs on Hamid and Delgado, learning what he could through Mitchell and Diaz. For his part, Hamid would not talk no matter how many times he was interrogated and didn’t seem to care if he spent the rest of his life in prison.
Delgado, on the other hand, knew the game all too well and was already working out his deal before federal prosecutors ever came to him with one.
Because Hamid’s partner Amir Bahar had been seen on the island but not captured during the raid, those prosecutors wanted to locate him. They also wanted everything Delgado knew regarding Hamid’s operations with Bahar, and they wanted the truth about what Delgado had done after he’d been kidnapped. The little man spun quite a tale:
Once he learned his cover was blown and ten years of work in Colombia as the Agency’s most valuable asset was shot to hell, he got desperate. He knew the Agency would punish him for his failure, assign him to a desk for the rest of his tenure, so he did something radical. He hacked into his personnel file and altered the photographs as part of a plan to go underground with some money he’d socked away. Unfortunately, the FARC caught up with him before he could vanish, and it was Mitchell’s friend, Adamo, who’d learned of the kidnapping through his own contacts and called it in to the Agency.
The FARC troops who captured Delgado and the cabdriver decided on their own that they’d make a switch in order to get paid twice: Hand over a cabdriver for some ransom money, then hand over the real guy, which was why they had dragged the cabbie out to the submarine.
Ross’s team got caught up in that mess, Delgado escaped, and then, instead of going underground, he decided he’d go for broke. He struck a deal with Valencia and Hamid, who went for it because Delgado’s European drug contacts were valuable to them and Delgado threatened to expose the group if they didn’t take him under his wing. To ensure against any retaliation, Delgado proved that he had a partner who would blow the whistle on Hamid if he wound up getting killed. His partner was Tamer, whose family Delgado promised to take care of so long as the man remained loyal to him. Despite killing himself, Tamer knew that Delgado would keep his promise. Delgado was going to further open up the European drug markets for Hamid and Bahar, as well as tip them off to any known American intelligence assets. For this, he would be paid handsomely.
Ross had never known a more opportunistic, conniving, treacherous son of a bitch, and to top it all off, Delgado said the Agency had driven him to this. They’d put too much pressure on him and made him risk his life for an insulting paycheck.
He would spend the rest of his life in prison, but his deal kept the death penalty for treason and espionage off the table.
Every military base had its local sports bar, and every sports bar had its regulars, which in the Liberator’s case included men whose work was never discussed. These were the Special Forces operators like Ross whose motto, ‘Liberate the oppressed,’ had given the bar its name. Their conversations ran the usual gamut from sports to beer to family and girlfriends.
It’d been nearly eight weeks since Ross and the others had all been together, so this night out was a reunion of sorts. He sat at a long booth, realizing what a dork he was for showing up so early. Pepper finally arrived, giving him a hearty handshake and warm pat on the back.
‘They done picking the metal out of you?’ he asked.
‘Not quite.’
‘I hate that shit.’
‘Me, too. How you doing these days?’
‘Serving with you left me feeling bloated and emotionally scarred, but the bullet holes healed.’
Ross nearly spat out his beer. ‘You been rehearsing that all day?’
Pepper grinned. ‘Kinda. You here for the early bird special, Grandpa?’
‘You’re two for two and on a roll.’
‘They tell me I’m a crack shot.’
‘They don’t lie.’
‘And here they are,’ said Pepper, rising from his seat to allow Kozak to slide in, while 30K ambled over with an aluminum hospital cane in his right hand. He cursed, flumped into his seat, then looked up and asked in utter disbelief, ‘Who stole my beer?’
‘Easy now, Sergeant,’ said Ross. ‘Just ordered a warm-up for myself. Pitchers are coming.’
‘You know the GST doesn’t like us drinking booze,’ said Kozak.
‘And when the hell has that stopped you?’ asked Pepper.
Kozak flashed his guilty-as-charged grin. ‘I heard Mitchell can toss back quite a few …’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ said Ross, cocking a thumb over his shoulder as Mitchell approached, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt simply labeled: ARMY.
The team was about to snap to when Mitchell said, ‘Relax, boys, I just heard you were all getting together, and I wanted to stop by.’
‘We appreciate that, sir,’ said Pepper.
Mitchell’s gaze grew distant. ‘You know every time I went downrange, I came back with new stories and new scars — and sometimes a heavy heart, but you know what the best thing was?’
The major waited … a dramatic pause.
‘Shit, the best thing was I came back! So enjoy your nonalcoholic beverages tonight, and as soon as the doctor clears you, I’ve got plenty of work. Are you in, gentlemen?’
‘Hoo-ah!’ they all shouted.
‘Very well. See you soon.’ With that, a living legend strode away from their table.
After they’d eaten their fill, traded jokes and relived the more hair-raising parts of the mission, they said their good-byes, and Ross made it a point to escort 30K out to his car, a red Mustang Cobra, of course.
‘You didn’t come out here to give me help, did you?’ said 30K.
Ross shook his head. He closed his eyes for a moment and began to choke up.