“Nor do I.”
“She’s the love of my life,” Animus said.
“Me, too. But if we let her go off on her own, she will be in more danger and more likely to disrupt our mission.”
Animus swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Did you reserve the hotel rooms?”
He cleared his throat. “There is a symposium in London and most of the hotels were booked. The closest to our target was the Sofitel St. James, but there weren’t enough vacancies for our whole team so I also reserved rooms at the Grosvenor House.”
“It is probably better that way. If one hotel is compromised, the whole team won’t be compromised. And we’ll be less suspicious if we’re not all in the same building. Top-notch work.”
Animus smiled.
“I will stay in the Sofitel with some of the men,” Xander went on, “and you and Evelina can stay in the Grosvenor House with the rest of the team.” He looked at his watch again. “It is time.”
8
Chris, Hannah, and Sonny arrived at the Naval Support Activity in Crete and turned Michael’s body over to the SEAL Team Six commander of Blue Squadron. The SEALs placed Michael in a body bag and zipped it shut. One moment, he was full of life, and now his body was an empty shell. The part of him that mattered most was gone, like a projectile fired through the barrel of a gun, and there was no bringing it back.
The Blue Squadron SEALs’ faces and shoulders drooped as they loaded Michael onto the plane. They’d gotten all psyched up for a rescue, and they weren’t even given a chance to try. Now there would be no back slaps, high fives, or stories of momentous heroism — only feelings of helplessness and defeat. On top of all that, Michael was dead.
The plane’s hatches closed, and soon the big bird ascended into the clear blue sky. The higher it ascended into the expanse of the heavens, the smaller it became, and Chris felt himself become small with it. Then it was gone.
He wanted his senses to become numb. He wanted to take the emotions welling up inside and shove them in a box and store them with the others in the depths of his psyche, never to see the light of day again. But his emotions were loose. They started coming out of one eye, and soon a tear crept down his face. He was conscious of being in a public place, with Hannah and Sonny standing beside him on the tarmac, and he wiped it away.
Beneath his feet, the tarmac seemed to tilt and spin, like the teacup ride at Disneyland, and nausea overcame him. When Nikkia had died, little Chris had sat in a closet and wept, and now he longed for a closet to hide in.
Breathe, he tried to remind himself. He inhaled weakly, but he didn’t get much oxygen. It was more like a convulsion, an inward sob.
He sensed Hannah’s eyes on him. He turned to look at her but couldn’t maintain eye contact.
“Chris?” It was her voice. “Your shoulder… It’s all wet.”
Chris peered down at it. Wetness spread across his dark polo shirt like a sweat stain, but when he touched it with his finger, the wetness was thick and sticky. He pulled his finger away and it was red. More than once he’d been on an operation where he and his Teammates were flying home and a guy would suddenly realize he’d been shot. With all the adrenaline and laser focus on the mission, guys sometimes didn’t notice until later. He kept staring at the blood, still not feeling a thing.
Now Sonny was staring, too. “Dude, I thought that was water or some shit. You’ve been shot.”
“We need to get you to a doctor,” she said before flagging down a sailor for help.
“When did you get shot?” Sonny asked.
Chris pressed his hand on the wound, and the pain came, slicing through his flesh as he applied direct pressure. “I… I don’t know. Maybe after we crashed the BMW… I thought I felt a sharp pain, but with my adrenaline banging and everything else going on, I guess I forgot about it.”
With the sailor’s help, Hannah and Sonny got him to the Branch Health Clinic on base. While a Navy flight surgeon took care of Chris, Hannah stepped out of the room to make some calls. The surgeon removed the bullet, cleaned the wound, patched him up, and gave him some meds. He told Chris to avoid strenuous activity, which Chris interpreted as, Give your shoulder some rest when you can.
When Hannah returned, he was already finished in the clinic, and they walked with Sonny to the parking lot to claim their new vehicle.
“The Agency took our shot-up car, and the Navy is loaning us this for use on base,” Hannah said. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Doc said to rest it when I can,” Chris said, fudging the truth.
They sat in the car with Sonny in the driver’s seat this time. He turned on the engine. “Where to?”
Hannah gestured toward the airfield. “We fly back to Langley for debrief.”
Chris’s brow furrowed. “Back to Langley? Why?”
“The mission is over,” she said.
He shook his head. “Don’t take me out of the box and wind me up just to stick me back in the box again. Please don’t do that to me.”
“What’re you saying?” she asked.
“I’m saying I want to get Xander. Dead or alive.”
“Hell, yeah,” Sonny cheered. “This has just turned into a kill-or-capture mission.”
Hannah gave Sonny a blank stare.
“Well it has, hasn’t it?” Sonny asked. “We’re not going to let that piece of shit get away with this, are we?”
“I can tell Langley we think Xander is trying to interfere with the construction of TAP, and I can request a mission to capture-or-kill him for the kidnapping and murder of Michael Winthrop. But I don’t know what they’ll approve.”
Chris nodded as Hannah took out her phone and made the call.
“We should clean up a little so we don’t stick out,” Sonny said. “Then stop by Xander’s house. He’s probably not dumb enough to return home after what he did, but we might find clues to where he’s hiding out.”
Sonny drove to the Gulfstream jet, where they freshened up. While they were on the plane, Hannah received a phone call. After she ended it, she turned to Chris and Sonny. “That was Langley. They’re going to send up our request.”
Chris and Sonny smiled at the news.
“It’s no guarantee,” Hannah said, “but it’s a start.”
“We better get busy,” Chris said.
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Sonny added. “Let’s go.”
Sonny drove them off base to a local restaurant in Crete for a meal, but Chris didn’t have much of an appetite. The trio sat in a quiet corner of the restaurant, talking in hushed tones.
“We could drive within a couple blocks of Xander’s house and do a quick vehicle recon,” Chris said.
Sonny nodded. “If it looks safe, I say we move in on foot and take a closer peek.” He took a bite of roasted lamb in a pita wrap filled with tomato, onion, and tzatziki.
“If Xander is there, and he’s not heavily guarded, we can bag and drag him,” Chris said.
“And if he’s not there?” Hannah asked.
“We search for clues as to where he might be.”
“And if we encounter Xander’s assistant or others?”
Sonny swallowed a bite of his gyro. “We wrap ’em up.”
Chris nodded, and Hannah pursed her lips. She was warier than they were about going against orders. Or not waiting for them.
They spent the rest of the meal eating in silence, Chris only picking at his food. When they returned to the base, the Navy gave them a ride to the Greek mainland where the Agency loaned them another vehicle. And soon they were parking their new car within a block of Xander’s estate.
Hannah turned to Chris. “You know we’ll blend in better as a couple than as individuals.”