“Oh, come on!” he muttered, almost swearing as he stumbled over a box someone put in the middle of the room, hidden just around a corner constructed by the placement of the tables. “What the f—”
He fell silent, his hand automatically dropping to his belt where his forty-five was resting against his hip. The last time I stumbled through a mess like this was in Iraq, and there was a Kalashnikov waiting for me at the end of the maze.
He picked his way through the room, glancing in each door as he passed until he spotted a lump on a sofa against the wall of the deepest office in the place. The lump already had a Smith and Wesson pointed at the door, however, and given that it was snoring, Rankin threw himself to one side and really did start swearing.
“Holy fuck, you crazy bastard!” he snarled. “Lower that damned hand cannon before you twitch in your sleep and blow a hole through someone!”
Hawk Masters snorted and yawned. “Relax, you wuss. I heard you coming from so far off I even had time to disable the claymores.”
“Claymores!” Rankin ducked his head around the corner. “You’d better be…”
He trailed off as he noticed two of the little green cases staring at him from the other side of the door.
“You’ve fucking lost your mind,” he said, his voice flat, as Masters rolled off the couch and holstered the big 500 revolver.
“Probably,” Masters admitted as he stretched out and yawned. “What time is it?”
“Almost 0900,” Rankin scowled, making sure that the antipersonnel mines had indeed been disarmed. “You mind telling me what’s with the damned ambush setup?”
“Someone tried to gut me last night.” Masters shrugged as he walked out and headed over to the coffee pot and prepared it to brew. “It woke up my paranoia a bit.”
“Hold up. Time the fuck out.” Rankin crossed his hands, signaling the play. “What do you mean, someone tried to gut you?”
Masters drew a wickedly curved blade from his belt, holding it up. “Chopped right through my sidearm with this thing and did a fair impression of Jackie Chan while kicking me all over my base housing. I’m living down here from now on.”
Rankin shook his head, trying to process the first statement. “Holy hell, man. Was it…one of them?”
“He seemed as human as we do, but I guess a doctor will determine that.” Masters shrugged. “He was nothing or no one I’ve ever met.”
“And he tried to kill you?”
“Gut me,” Masters corrected as he waited for the coffeemaker to do its work. “With a knife, all personal-like.”
That was an interesting point: You didn’t go after someone with a knife when you knew there was a better-than-fair chance he or she had a gun nearby. Not unless you had a personal stake, or were a total idiot. A silenced forty-five with subsonic rounds would be a much safer proposition, though he was personally partial to a good assault weapon from at least five hundred feet.
“Shit. You must have cut him off in traffic or something on your way down here.”
“I took a cab, jackass,” Masters growled, feeling more than a little put out by the whole situation.
People trying to kill him was par for the course while on the job. It wasn’t normal while he was on base in California, however, and usually he had some sort of idea why he was being attacked.
His thoughts on the matter were interrupted when a rumbling set of curses was heard from the office’s entryway. He and Eddie twisted around in time to see Admiral Karson hopping on one foot as he pulled one of Hawk’s makeshift caltrops off his shoe.
Eddie Rankin went near as white as a sheet, and stiffened to attention as the admiral got his feet back on the ground and stalked in their direction. Hawk just yawned again and took a seat by the closest desk, throwing his feet up as he took his first sip of coffee.
“Who the hell made this mess?!” the admiral thundered, an angry yet frightened-looking Captain Andrews following in his wake.
Hawk waved his free hand lazily. “That would be me, sir.”
Karson glowered at him, then stalked over to loom above him. “You can’t booby-trap your offices!”
“I’d say I managed a decent job of it. Caught Eddie with some of it too.” Hawk looked up to meet the admiral’s gaze, his expression bored. “I should have the lights rewired so that you can’t turn them on from by the door. That’ll make it even easier.”
“Let me rephrase,” Karson spat out. “You may not booby-trap your offices.”
“Put me up on charges.”
“Commander, you are riding my last nerve. I brought you back into the fold in good faith—”
“You yanked me back in because I know things you don’t know,” Hawk corrected, “and, while you don’t realize it yet, you really don’t want to know. Don’t try and play it off like you did me some kind of favor. I’m the one who’s going to get his ass killed doing your bidding, and I’m not about to make it easy for the killers.”
Karson seethed visibly for a time, while Andrews and Rankin watched as quietly as possible from the sidelines. It wasn’t every day you saw a lieutenant commander tell an admiral to go suck it, but it looked like Masters was actually going to get away with it.
“Yes, let’s talk about that, shall we?” Karson ground out through clenched teeth. “What the hell happened?”
“It was an assassination attempt.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Karson warned him. “I mean, do you know what it was about?”
Hawk shook his head. “Not a clue. Never met the man, and I don’t think I’ve pissed off anyone to the point where they’d try to kill me on a naval base. Any hits on his identity?”
Karson glanced over to Andrews, who shuddered but managed to snap out a response to the question.
“Nothing. Complete blank. No hits from the CIA, NSA, Interpol, or any federal or state agencies,” she said. “He doesn’t have a record, criminal or military.”
“Fabulous,” Karson muttered, turning away from the insubordinate lieutenant commander whom he needed too badly to discipline the way he’d prefer. “So I’m stuck with the same question. Was it someone who’s interested in the program, or did you just annoy someone other than me into a killing rage?”
“No answers for you there,” Hawk said, dropping his feet to the floor and standing up as he finished the last pull of his coffee. “All I know for sure is that the guy was trained. He was good — really good — and I’m only breathing because I got lucky.”
“Oh, much better. So he was trained well enough to outmatch a SEAL, even if it was one like you.” Karson rolled his eyes. “Any other good news for me?”
“No, that’s about it.”
“Fantastic,” the admiral muttered. “Well, I’ve got some for you. You can stop worrying about the kill attempt last night.”
“Oh yeah? Says who?”
“Says me,” Karson glared, daring Masters to say anything this time. “I have something new for you to worry about. Now shut up and pay attention. We’ve got a situation that was bumped over to me by the NRO after some captured signals from a guard operation up north raised some eyebrows.”
The admiral tossed a computer tablet into Masters’s chest, turning away as the SEAL tried to catch the device before it bounced off him and hit the ground.
“Look it over. I want a report and options in one hour,” Karson said as he started to pick his way out of the office. “And clean this mess up!” Captain Andrews followed him silently after giving Hawk a withering glare.
“Yeah, yeah, right away, sir,” Hawk mumbled as he started to look over the files that were open on the tablet, “just as soon as the sun shines out my ass, sir.”