Jawwad hesitated.
“I won’t tell you again.”
Jawwad laid the pistol on the ground. His gaze lowered. Chris needed to question him about Mordet’s whereabouts, but Jawwad’s eyes rose again, full of determination. “I can’t surrender.”
Chris had seen that pride in an enemy’s eyes before. “I know.”
Jawwad reached for his gun, but Chris shot him twice in the face. He pulled in a long breath, exhaled and then put his carbine on safe.
He returned to Hannah and Sonny. She’d already patched his wound and was on the phone, calling for an ambulance. “I’m with the FBI, and one of my partners has been shot…”
“How you doing, Sonny?” Chris asked, crouching down.
“What do you mean, ‘how am I doing,’ you moron?” Sonny snapped. “Can’t you see I look like a damned doormat?”
“I see you haven’t lost your sunny disposition.”
“Just leave me here to die in peace.”
“You aren’t going to die,” Chris said.
Sonny’s voice became serious. “I don’t want to leave the Unit. More than anything in this world, I don’t want to leave the Unit.”
Chris understood. Like Sonny, most SEALs weren’t too afraid of losing money, receiving demotions, suffering pain, or even dying, but they were afraid of being ostracized from the fraternity. The job was their lifeblood. “You’re not going to leave the Unit.” He didn’t know if Sonny would be able to recover enough to stay in the Unit or not, but he said what he thought Sonny wanted to hear. Everyone deserves hope, even if his situation is hopeless.
“Ambulance and police are on their way,” Hannah said. “And the police are on their way to secure the tangos’ van.” She gave Sonny a peck on the forehead, and he looked like he might be able to stand up and walk purely from the euphoria.
She laughed. “Stay still until the ambulance arrives, will you?”
Chris leaned over Sonny and puckered up for a kiss.
“Oh, no,” Sonny cried in disgust, “don’t you do that. I can’t use my legs, but I can still shoot you.”
Chris smiled. “I’ll search the tangos for intel. Hannah, can you call Young to see if he has any new intel on Mordet?”
“I’m on it,” she said.
Chris searched Jawwad and Lateef carefully, and when he stepped back to his team, Hannah was off the phone. “Young and Frank aren’t answering their phones,” she said. Her voice shook slightly.
“Don’t wait for me,” Sonny said. “I can still shoot to defend myself if I have to. Young might be in trouble.”
Chris and Hannah nodded.
“Be careful,” Chris said.
“You, too.” Sonny tightened his grip on his weapon and laid his head back.
Chris and Hannah ran into the trees from where they’d come, and as they ran, Chris called the pilot to confirm she was still standing by. They were going to need her help.
33
Chris and Hannah raced back to the park and rendezvoused with their helo, its rotors already spinning. As soon as the pair were inside, Moose lifted the helo off the ground. The last time Chris had found Young, he was in a shit state, almost dead. He called Young — still no answer. Hannah called Frank — nothing. Moose flew them to the school in Annandale and landed.
Chris and Hannah dashed from the helo and off the school grounds. Soon Young’s house came into view: there were two marked police vehicles and what looked like at least two unmarked vehicles parked next to the curb, but there was no uniformed cop out front. As Chris and Hannah cut across Young’s lawn, they slowed to inspect the sidewalk — stains. Blood-stained footprints from three or more men led away from the front door. Chris packed Young’s previous shit state and their friendship and all related emotions into a box and stacked it on top of the stacks of boxes in the dark warehouse in the suburbs of his mind, but the adrenaline coursing through his veins wouldn’t be stowed away so easily.
Hannah stopped and pointed to the space between the bushes and the front door where a uniformed cop lay still.
Chris clicked his rifle’s safety off. Upon inspecting the door-frame, he found two cracks — one near the doorknob where someone had kicked and one close to the lock where the door gave way. Up higher, he spotted a third crack, near the deadbolt. He gave Hannah hand signals that they were about to do a soft clear: no noise.
She nodded and moved in close behind him — she was ready.
Chris gently pushed on the door — it swung open freely. There was no give in the doorknob, and the metal strike plate from the latch assembly lay on the floor.
Chris’s adrenaline continued to surge, but he was in control, scanning for targets. He cleared the doorway and stepped over a body before quickly taking command of the left side of the room all the way back to the corner. He sensed Hannah enter behind him and take the right. The crimson-soaked carpet squished with each step. In his peripheral vision, bloody bodies lay on the floor. He experienced a vague hope that none of them were Young, but he’d seen corpses before, and if he didn’t want to be one of them, he had to stay focused on his responsibility and remain alert for living threats. He moved to the far corner of the room — no bad guys. Then he scanned to the cross-corner; at the same time Hannah would be scanning to her cross-corner and their fields of fire would overlap in the center of the room. The whole process took less than five seconds, but there was also a closet on Chris’s side, so he opened the door and looked inside — no threat. Room clear.
The bodies in the living room area appeared to be five armed Arab males and two plainclothes law enforcement officers. Agent Garnet lay there, too, and Chris frowned. Some of Young’s computer equipment was missing, and so was Young.
They moved toward the kitchen, where blood was splattered across the table, countertop and walls. Another uniformed policeman lie on the floor with eyes open and his pistol still in his hand. The puddle of blood beneath him glistened on the ivory tiles.
Chris and Hannah cleared the other rooms in the house quickly and found traces of blood on the carpet throughout. No Young. Now that they were sure the house was empty, they returned to the living room.
“It looks like the tangos killed the uniformed officer in the front of the house before breaching the door,” Chris said.
“Then Frank and two others opened fire on the tangos, and the tangos returned fire. A uniformed officer came out of the kitchen to help but was gunned down.
“The three surviving tangos searched the house for Young, tracking blood throughout.”
“Do you think they found him?” she asked.
“Unless he got away.”
She touched the side of Frank’s neck, where the artery lay, checking for a pulse. Her voice was filled with melancholy: “Do you ever get used to friends dying?”
Chris thought for a moment. “Yes and no.”
She pulled her hand away and shook her head. “Yes in what way?”
“Yes, I’m used to it sucking every time,” he said.
“What’re you not used to?”
“Never got used to seeing their families and friends suffer.”
She nodded.
Chris helped her examine the other officers to see if anyone had survived, but they were all deceased. Next, they checked the tangos to see if any of them had survived, but they were all dead, too. Chris grabbed a plastic trash bag from the kitchen, and then he and Hannah searched the tangos’ bodies for intelligence — not just their pockets, but every inch of their clothes. The pair dumped wallets and personal belongings into the plastic bag. Chris found an almost imperceptible bulge on one side of a jacket worn by one of the tangos. Inside the coat, a secret pocket had been sewn in.