voice. “We see it from this side, too. Whoever these clowns are, they’re amateurs. We’ll go in tonight. At oh-dark-hundred.”
Cowboy had to risk a full sentence. “I recommend we move now.” He could hear Cat’s surprise in the silence that grew longer and longer.
“Jones, the sun’ll be going down in less than three hours,” the CO finally said. The SEALs worked best at night. They could move almost invisibly under the cover of darkness.
Cowboy switched the powerful lenses to the infrared setting and took another quick scan of the building. “We should go now.”
“What do you see that I don’t see, kid?” Joe Cat’s question was made without even a trace of sarcasm. Yeah, Cat had a wagonload of experience that Cowboy couldn’t begin to compete with. And yeah, Cat had recently gotten a pay raise to O-6—captain—while Cowboy was a measly O-1, an ensign. But Captain Joe Catalanotto was the kind of leader who took note of his team’s individual strengths and used each man to his full ability. And sometimes even beyond.
Every man on the team could see through walls, provided they had the right equipment. But no one could take the information that equipment provided and interpret it the way Cowboy could. And Cat knew that.
“At least fifty T’s inside.”
“Yeah, that’s what Bobby tells me, too.” Cat paused. “What’s the big deal?”
“The pattern of movement.”
Cowboy heard Cat take over Bobby’s place at the bedroom window. There was silence, and then Cat swore. “They’re making room for something.” He swore again. “Or someone.”
Cowboy clicked once into his lip mike—an affirmative. That’s what he thought, too.
“They’re clearing out the entire east side of the building,” Joe Cat continued, now able to see what Cowboy saw. “How many more tangos are they expecting?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Cowboy answered it anyway. “Two hundred?”
Cat swore again and Cowboy knew what he was thinking. Fifty T’s were manageable—particularly when they were of the Three Stooges variety, like the ones he’d been watching going in and out of the embassy all day long. But two hundred and fifty against seven SEALs…Those odds were a little skewed. Not to mention the fact that the SEALs didn’t know if any of the soon-to-be-arriving tangos were real soldiers, able to tell the difference between their AK-47s and their elbows.
“Get ready to move,” he heard Cat tell the rest of Alpha Squad.
“Cat.”
“Yeah, Jones?”
“Three heat spots haven’t moved much all day.”
Catalanotto laughed. “Are you telling me you think you’ve located our hostages?”
Cowboy clicked once into his lip mike.
Christopher Sterling, Kurt Matthews and Melody Evans. Cowboy had been carrying those names inside his head ever since Alpha Squad was first briefed on this mission in the plane that took them to their insertion point—a high-altitude, low-opening parachute jump from high above the desert just outside the terrorist-controlled city.
He’d seen the hostages’ pictures, too.
All of the men in Alpha Squad had held on to the picture of Melody Evans for a little bit longer than necessary. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three at most—hardly more than a kid. In the photo, she was dressed in blue jeans and a plain T-shirt that didn’t show off her female figure but didn’t quite manage to hide it, either. She was blue-eyed with wavy blond hair that tumbled down her back and a country-fresh, slightly shy smile and sweet face that reminded each and every one of them of their little sisters—even those of ’em like Cowboy who didn’t have a little sister.
And Cowboy knew they were all thinking the same thing. As they were sitting there on that plane, waiting to reach their destination, that girl was at the mercy of a group of terrorists who weren’t known for their humanitarian treatment of hostages. In fact, the opposite was true. This group’s record of torture and abuse was well documented, as was their intense hatred of all things American.
He hated to think what they might do—had already done—to this young woman who could’ve been the poster model for the All-American Girl. But all day long, he’d kept a careful eye on the three heat sources he suspected were the hostages. And all day long, none of them had been moved.
“Fourth floor, interior room,” he said quietly into his mike. “Northwest corner.”
“I don’t suppose in your free time you found us a way into the embassy?” Cat asked.
“Minimal movement on the top floor,” Cowboy reported. Those windows were broken, too. “Roof to windows—piece a cake.”
“And gettin’ to the roof?” The south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line voice that spoke over his headphones was that of Lt. Blue McCoy, Alpha Squad’s point man and Joe Cat’s second-in-command.
“Just a stroll from where I’m at. Connecting roofs. Route’s clear—I’ve already checked.”
“Why the hell did I bother bringing along the rest of you guys?” Cat asked. Cowboy could hear the older man’s smile in his voice. “Good job, kid.”
“Only kind I do,” Cowboy drawled.
“That’s what I really love about you, Junior.” Senior Chief Daryl Becker, also known as Harvard, spoke up, his deep voice dry with humor. “Your humility. It’s rare to find such a trait in one so young.”
“Permission to move?” Cowboy asked.
“Negative, Jones,” Cat replied. “Wait for Harvard. Go in as a team.”
Cowboy clicked an affirmative, keeping his infrared glasses glued to the embassy.
It wouldn’t be long now until they went inside and got Melody Evans and the others out.
* * *
It happened so quickly, Melody wasn’t sure where they came from or who they were.
One moment she was sitting in the corner, writing in her notebook, and the next she was lying on her stomach on the linoleum, having been thrown there none too gently by one of the robed men who’d appeared out of thin air.
She felt the barrel of a gun jammed into her throat, just under her jaw, as she tried to make sense of the voices.
“Silence!” she was ordered in more languages than she could keep track of. “Keep your mouths shut or we’ll shut ’em for you!”
“Dammit,” she heard someone say in very plain English, “the girl’s not here. Cat, we’ve got three pieces of luggage, but none of them’s female.”
“If none of them’s female, one of ’em’s a tango. Search ’em and do it right.”
English. Yes. They were definitely speaking American English. Still, with that gun in her neck,
