Page 17 of Red Line

“We need to pick him up in the next few hours and get him someplace with American jurisdiction. Poole can’t reach EU territory,” Watts said. “He’d fall under our friends’ laws, and we simply don’t have time to wrangle red tape. We need Poole’s information. And honestly, it would have been better to have had our hands on it yesterday.”

“Why didn’t we?” T-Rex asked. “Was there a hold-up getting this signed off?”

“The field officer got the information during an early lunch meeting today in the Middle Eastern time zone, is my understanding. That means we received this information five hundred hours East Coast time—we pulled people out of bed. We’ve now had the information in hand for just over an hour. We’re pushing this along as quickly as possible.”

“To clarify, sir, you’ve sent us an intelligence package,” T-Rex asked, “not orders?”

“Not all the stakeholders have signed off. They’re in discussion in the Situation Room. We’re waiting to hear back. We think we know where Poole is right now. We lose him at dawn. Until we hear back, you need to act as if—” Watts looked over his shoulder as someone handed him a piece of paper. He paused to read it over, then handed it back. “That can wait.” He turned his attention to Echo. “Gentlemen, we’re staging as if we have the green light. You’ll agree, it’s easier to pull down a mission that’s ready to go. No sense in wasting time twiddlingyour thumbs. You have commercial tickets on a flight from Ankara to Adana Sakirpasa at your sixteen twenty hours. That’s the closest airport to the base.”

The team scribbled notes on the pads in front of them.

“The flight takes an hour and twenty minutes. We’ll have someone there to pick you up. It’s thirty minutes by vehicle to the base. They’re bringing in a jump plane as we speak. Your intelligence package suggests a HAHO.” Watts used the term for a High Altitude High Open parachute jump. “Everyone is packed up already, and you have your bags with you?”

“Yes, sir,” Echo said in unison.

“Then I’ll leave you to it. T-Rex, once you’ve come up with a cover story and a list of items you’ll need, send them to the base contact. They’ll do their best with it. Gentlemen, we trust your training and your professionalism. You’re the right team in the right place and time. I’ll let you know as soon as we get the nod. Good luck.”

Here was one hell of a twist. He was moving from the robotic tedium of hall pacing to a HAHO into a hotspot, chasing an American traitor.

Nomad was ready for it.

Chapter Six

Nomad

Echo moved from the SCIF down to the embassy’s gym.

If Rory was going to be on a commercial plane, he’d have to burn through some of his excitement first. Rory could smell a mission rolling up, and his coat twitched with anticipation.

With a Marine guard standing outside the gym’s door, keeping others at bay, giving the team the freedom to talk things through, Ty had Rory on a treadmill sprinting a five-mile run. Usually, ten miles was about what it took to wear off Rory’s go-go-go energy and keep him comfortable on a plane. But this was his second run of the day. Five should top him off just fine.

The rest of the team dragged chairs to the snack table nearby and found a spot to plunk down.

“Who developed this package?” Spinning his chair around, Havoc sat, crossing his arms across the backrest.

“John Grey.” The way T-Rex said it, Nomad interpreted the source as known and trusted. T-Rex’s attention turned to the ping on his phone. He swiped the call open as he moved from the table to a back corner.

Jeopardy scowled. “Color Code is involved with an AWOL traitor?”

“Color Code?” Nomad asked under his breath.

“Their focus is on thwarting terrorists from getting their hands on funding,” Havoc said. “They work around the ex-USSR block countries up to—I’m guessing—Ukraine, maybe? Down to the Mediterranean, then east into Lebanon and Syria. We’ve worked with their intel from Eastern Africa, too. I guess they go where the money trail leads.”

“All that’s speculation,” Ty said. “We don’t actually know much about Color Code.”

“From what Echo’s seen,” Jeopardy grinned. “Syria is definitely their stomping grounds. My guess is that, in this case, they were in the field and came across an American soldier in a place they weren’t supposed to be, doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing.”

“AWOL inSyriaof all places.” Nitro scratched his fingers along his beard-covered chin. Long enough to touch his clavicle, Nitro had tamed his unruly facial hair into something that might be construed as fashionable for their time with the legislators—more likely, his wife did that.

Since Echo’s typical assignments required them to blend with local populations as they moved through their missions, the entire team masked their profiles behind beards. Their hair reached their shoulders. While wearing suits in Ankara, the team pulled their hair back into neat ponytails.

It was rare that Delta Force wore anything approaching a uniform, instead choosing to put on what everyone else was wearing in that locale. Blending allowed for success. And survival.

This was all new to Nomad.

He’d been clean-shaven in the Green Berets with a tight military haircut, wearing a camo combat uniform.

Since he’d joined Echo, his beard was filling out, and he’d categorize the length of his hair as unruly. It would be a few more months before he could gather it in an elastic band like his teammates had. For now, it was just in his way. “This guy who developed the intel package, Grey, he works out of the Syrian region?” Nomad asked Nitro.

---