Caraway shouldered the shotgun and moved inside, his finger on the trigger as he crossed the empty kitchen. He smelled a faint odor of spoiled food coming from the fridge. He slipped through the dim of the empty living room and made his way to the foot of the stairs. On the floor by the front door was a small wooden knickknack sign that read “Home is where the heart is” in tacky red lettering. He picked it up and turned it over to see the tiny loop of wire on the back. He hooked it over the trim nail sticking out of the door and returned quickly to the Bronco, concealing the shotgun behind his leg from passing traffic.
He got in and took his sunglasses from the dash. “We can go. This ain’t the place.”
“What was the thump?” asked Samir.
“A friggin’ tchotchke fell off the wall.” He looked out the passenger window and shook his head, muttering, “Son of a bitch.”
Brighton paused with his hand on the shifter lever. “What’s wrong?”
Caraway lifted his foot. “I blew out my flip-flop kicking the door in.”
One of the SEALs in back chuckled as Brighton pulled away from the curb. “You didn’t bring your tactical flap-jacks, Senior Chief?”
Caraway took off both flip-flops and threw them out the window in disgust.
A short time later, they parked across the street from a single-story house on the corner of Second Street and Alameda Boulevard. It was a simple, boring-looking home with half-brick siding. The curtains were drawn, and an American flag flew from a pole mounted beside the house. Pope’s email listed the place as having been up for rent, but there was no sign in the yard now, and there was a late-nineties Jeep Cherokee parked in the drive with Texas plates.
“Anybody else think this is the place?” Brighton said.
Caraway looked over the seat at the SEAL who’d almost shot him back at the hotel. “Santiago, gimme your piece. I’m going to the door.”
Santiago handed over the Sig Sauer .45.
“Hold on a second,” Brighton said. A pair of Coronado police cruisers pulled to a stop on the NASNI side of Alameda Blvd. “What the hell is this shit?” A faint smile flickered across his face a moment later as he imagined his son saying, “Daddy said shit!”
“Cat’s out of the bag,” Samir said. “SOG must have put word out over the wire.”
“No,” Caraway said, “SOG doesn’t do that. This is something else. Somebody with the FBI must have sent word to the local fuzz.” He checked the pistol to make sure there was a round in the chamber. “This is gonna get fucked up in a hurry, Commander. Whattaya wanna do?”
“Beats me,” Brighton muttered, opening the door. “Everybody stay put.”
Caraway gave the piece back to Santiago. “Somebody get Cox on the phone and tell him to roll this way.”
They watched as Brighton made his way across the street toward the lead cruiser.
One of the SEALs kept an eye on the house. The curtains parted briefly and then closed. “I got movement inside.”
“Everybody get ready to dismount the vehicle,” Caraway ordered.
Brighton went around the front of the cruiser to the driver’s door, keeping a smile on his face. “Good morning, Sergeant. I’m Lieutenant Commander Brighton, SEAL Team Three.”
The cop glanced over at the Bronco, but with the sun glinting off the dark-tinted window, he couldn’t see into the vehicle. Judging by the “bone frog” tattoo on Brighton’s upper arm — along with his military bearing, the sergeant trusted that he was probably who he said he was. “What can I do for you, Commander?”
“I absolutely know how this is gonna sound, Sergeant, but I came over to find out what you guys are doing here.”
The cop stared at him, sensing that the SEAL knew more about what was going on inside the home than he did. “We were sent over here to keep an eye on that house on the corner. What can you tell me about it?”
Brighton kept the smile on his face, feeling they were being watched by unseen eyes. “Sergeant, the Special Operations Group back in Langley has intelligence to indicate there may be a live nuclear weapon inside that house. To make matters worse, it could well be set to go off in less than an hour.”
The cop glanced over. “You mean it’s here? On Coronado?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it, with two nuclear aircraft carriers docked less than half a mile away?”
The sergeant got on the radio to the car behind him. “Mike, pull on past me down the block and park out of sight of the house.”
The cruiser behind him pulled away to the east, and the sergeant looked up at Brighton. “You got more SEALs in your rig over there?”
“I do,” Brighton said. “We were about to move on the place when you guys pulled up. Do you mind if I ask where your intel came from?”
The cop shook his head. “Mine came from dispatch; don’t ask me where dispatch got theirs. Listen, I’m gonna pull over there behind my man and get on the phone to my captain. As far as I’m concerned, this just became a military operation — hell, we’re thirty feet from the base. I’ll let my people know the navy already has men on the scene in plain clothes so this doesn’t turn into a big mess.”
“Thanks, Sarge. Tell ’em we have an EOD man on the scene as well, will ya?”
The cop nodded. “What are you guys gonna do?”
Brighton smiled. “We’re gonna get inside that house and disarm the weapon.”
“Semper Fi.” The cop winked and stepped on the gas, pulling away from the curb.
Brighton went back to the Bronco and got in. “The jig’s up. This corner’s gonna be swarming with local heat any minute, so it’s now or never. Anybody got any doubts?”
“None,” Caraway said. “They’re in there peeking out the goddamn windows at us.”
“We’ll pull around the corner and double back on foot.”
As they were pulling around the corner, three black SUVs came racing up the street toward the house from the south. The front door to the house opened, and two Caucasian men came running out with AK-47s, firing on the SUVs from the sidewalk before the drivers even had time to stop. The SEALs opened up through the back window of the Bronco as Brighton made a right around the corner. He hit the brakes just out of sight, and the team dismounted in flip-flops and bare feet.
Caraway grabbed Samir. “Stay here. If you get hit, we won’t have anybody to work the bomb.”
The SEALs ran between the houses, making their way back to Second Street, where they spotted four bloody FBI agents crouched behind the wheels of their SUVs. Several agents were dead in the vehicles. One of the panicked survivors spotted the SEALs and fired his M4, hitting Santiago in the chest and killing him instantly.
“Cease fire!” Brighton screamed, knocking away the barrel of Caraway’s Mk 12 before he could shoot the FBI man. “US Navy! Cease fire!”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” demanded the agent who had pulled the trigger.
“He’s dead!” one of the SEALs shouted, his fingers on Santiago’s carotid artery. “You motherfucker!”
Caraway grabbed his shirt and jerked him close, shouting, “Enemy front — eyes on!”
The SEAL forgot the FBI man for the moment and maneuvered for cover as a high volume of AK-47 fire from the house raked the line of SUVs. The sergeant and the other Coronado cop appeared at the corner gripping M4s as they maneuvered through the yard. They were both hit by grazing fire and immediately fell back under cover.
“The bottom of that house is brick,” Caraway said. “It’s gonna be tough reducing these guys in a hurry.”