Sean laughed and met the other guy with a big hug. He slapped him on the back and put his hand on the man’s shoulders. “Tommy, am I glad to see you.”
11
Tommy sat on a stool next to Fitz, across from Sean and Emily. The SEALs had loaded up their fallen comrade in one of Toli’s trucks and left for the exfiltration point.
Their leader, Fletch, had hesitated. “They could come back, you know. You sure you don’t want us to stick around and help clean up?”
Sean had insisted they get medical treatment and take care of their own. He and his friends would be fine. “Besides, most of those kids are probably miles from here by now.”
Fletch had asked who Sean was, but all he could get out of him was a first name. “Don’t worry about the rest,” Sean had said.
“Good enough.”
They’d driven off toward the east. Sean figured a helicopter would be on its way to get them out of the area.
He looked over at his childhood friend and took a swig of water from a bottle. “I gotta say, I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Tommy shrugged. “When I got back from the dig site, Fitz told me what was going on.”
Fitz put his hands out. “I figured he was a friend of yours so it was okay.”
Sean’s head twisted back and forth. “Not very classified of you, Fitz.”
“You should be glad he did,” Tommy said, raising a finger. “That was a crazy idea you two had.”
“To be fair, it was Emily’s idea.”
She backhanded his shoulder and jolted him. “Hey.”
Sean guffawed and put up a defensive hand. “Sorry. Agent Starks’s idea.”
She raised her hand again but didn’t strike.
Tommy interrupted their little play fight. “Either way, it wasn’t a good call. I mean, the diversion thing was pretty good. But always have two moves planned. Not just one.”
Sean raised an eyebrow at his friend. “What are you, the chess master now? We had a good plan. And a second one.” He struggled with the last sentence, giving away his bluff.
“What was it? Get shot by a Tanzanian warlord?”
Fitz cut in. “The point is that you guys are okay and Toli is dead. We won! Mission accomplished.”
Sean shook his head and stood up. “We won the battle, Fitz.” He walked over to the closer of the two trucks in the compound and opened the back tailgate. The cargo area was empty. A stack of crates sat against the wall on the other side of the courtyard.
He wandered over and pried open a lid. The others joined him around the wooden boxes and looked inside. The crates had been packed with shipping popcorn to keep the contents stable during transport. Sean brushed aside some of the foam to reveal a six-foot-long missile. It was only about five inches in diameter.
“We need to get these somewhere safe,” Sean said.
“Yeah. And we need to confirm whether or not these things can do what Toli said,” Emily added.
Fitz appeared confused. “I don’t understand. These are short-range missiles. Relatively speaking, of course.”
Tommy’s area of expertise was in history and archaeology. So he was lost. “What do you mean, relatively speaking?”
“These can only travel two, maybe three hundred miles at most.”
“That’s a pretty long distance.”
Fitz nodded. “Hence why I said relatively speaking. They aren’t like long-range nuclear missiles. Those things can travel thousands of miles.”
Something troubling had been on Sean’s mind since the SEALs left. “Fitz, before we stormed this place, you said trucks had been coming and going all day.”
“Yep.” He realized what Sean was getting at before he spoke.
“So where did the other missiles go?” Emily asked, voicing the question they all had in their heads.
Sean pointed at the first truck. “I’ll check the cab and see if there’s anything inside. You guys check this one.”
Before they could ask what to look for, he ran over to the other truck and jumped in the cab. He sifted through the glove compartment, checked under and behind the seat, and even under the floor mats. Nothing.
He hopped out, ran around to the back, and climbed into the cargo bed. The truck was loaded with crates, but there was nothing that suggested where the load might be headed.
Sean walked back to the others, disappointed but undeterred. “Find anything?”
The others shook their heads.
“Nothing,” Fitz said. “I doubt Toli was dumb enough to leave manifests lying around for this sort of thing.”
“Maybe. But we have to try. If we don’t find those other missiles, there could be a lot of people in danger.”
Tommy interjected, somewhat uncertain. “I don’t mean to interrupt your special ops thing here, but isn’t the bad guy dead?” He jerked his thumb at Toli’s body on the ground. “I mean, threat eliminated. Right? You guys won!”
“He’s got a good point,” Emily agreed. “With Toli gone, his little army will fall apart.”
“And then what?” Sean asked. “Whoever has those weapons will sell them on the black market. Or there could be something else going on.”
“Something else?”
“Yeah.”
He walked back over to the open crate and flipped the lid off completely. Again he brushed away the foam popcorn and ran his fingers along the missile body. “We need to find some paint thinner.”
Fitz frowned. “Paint thinner? Why?”
“These have been painted recently. Who paints a missile unless they want to cover their tracks? I’m willing to bet there might be some markings that could indicate this thing’s origin.”
“There’s a shed over there that might have something like that,” Emily said, pointing at a small building with a tin roof in the far corner.
“Worth a look,” Sean sighed.
Emily stopped them in their tracks. “Wait.” She took a slow step to the crate and inspected the missile’s body. “This is American made.”
The other three exchanged questioning looks and then stared at her, awaiting explanation.
“You don’t need any paint thinner. I’ve seen these before.”
“You have?” Sean asked. “You’re sure?”
Emily nodded. “These were designed to be surface-to-air defense missiles. They were part of a new defense program for Israel called Reaper.”
“Project Reaper,” Fitz added.
“Right.” Emily went on. “No other missiles this small can travel two hundred miles. These can.”
“And because of their size, they can slip by defenses much more easily than larger payload weapons.”
“Much.”
Tommy still couldn’t put the pieces together. “I don’t understand. What would someone like Toli want with these?”
“Apparently he figured out a way to arm the warheads with a bioweapon. What that is, isn’t clear at this point. We’ll need the labs to confirm it.”
“By the time that happens,” Sean said, “it could be too late. We need to know where those other rockets went. And I want to know how in the world someone like Toli got his hands on so much American tech.”
Emily took a step back and looked around the courtyard. “First things first. We need to search this place high and low for anything remotely close to a manifest or shipping order.”
A groan came from the other side of the truck, like someone was in excruciating pain.
The four Americans stepped around the vehicle and looked out into the courtyard. There on the ground, grabbing his head with both hands, was the driver Tommy had tossed out of the cab.
Tommy pointed at him. “Or we could just make him tell us everything.”