Page 125 of Frisco

I settled more firmly on my stomach, my elbows helping keep the goggles steady for me as I scanned the rest of the house. Heat signatures showed me where each person was, including the hostages. Both were on the floor. One looked restless, or antsy. The other was holding still. I had a guess the one being antsy was Claudia.

“What do we know about Granddad’s niece?”

I passed the goggles off to Corvette as I replied to Boise, “There a reason you’re asking?”

He gave a shrug, turning to watch the house with his own set of binoculars. “Just a feeling. Something’s wrong. I can’t hear anything, but they’re treating her differently than Machete’s woman.”

“We know how Machete is doing?”

Corvette answered, “I’ve been getting updates. He’s getting stitched up. Stripes knows the nurse and asked her to take her time.”

Boise grinned. “He’s going to hurt for that one. You know Machete is fully aware of what we’re all doing.”

“Yeah. They confiscated his phone. Same nurse passed it to Stripes or Machete would be blowing up all our phones.”

“No, he wouldn’t. He’d track our GPS and hunt us while we’re hunting Estrada’s guys,” I commented.

The guys all grinned because they knew I was right.

“What’s the plan here, Boss?”

Plan. Fuck. We always needed a plan.

I got serious. The slight moment of jokes was refreshing, but now it was onto the killing business. “You have reason to believe they know this place? Have traps set up for some reason?”

“Nope. I think they are fully and completely alone. I don’t think they’ve even been able to send word to their big boss, which is why that one guy keeps pacing up the place.”

“Okay. Then the plan is that we converge on the cabin. Use silencers. Masks. Plan to capture all targets if possible.”

“And if that’s not an option?” Corvette asked the question, but all the guys were waiting.

I had to be the one to give the go-ahead.

I said, “Then you take them out. I want Roadie and Corvette handling the women.”

“I call Granddad’s niece,” Roadie piped up quick.

Corvette threw him a glare. “Fuck you. You know it doesn’t happen that way.”

Boise asked me, “How many Reds do we have back there waiting for your order?”

“They’re waiting for us to return and then figure out a plan.”

All of my guys stopped and stared at me.

They knew me. “That’s why we’re going to go in now, and I’ll call them once everything is taken care of.”

Crow said he had men he didn’t trust. I sent orders for him to round them up, put them in a location, but the truth of that matter was that I didn’t know if there were men I shouldn’t trust or Crow himself. And with the attacks, getting back who we could took first priority. So I wasn’t going to bring in anyone that I didn’t trust to have my back in a situation like we were going to enter.

Knowing that, all of these guys got real serious real fast.

“Suit up.”

We went in, silencers added to our guns. We were already in camouflage, but as we converged on the house, Boise and I went to the front. Roadie and Corvette went to the back. I wished we had more of our guys, but there hadn’t been time. Half needed to stay back, watch over Kali and whoever else was there. The others were with Machete. And just as we arrived, Roadie told me he got a notice from our computer guys. They found the second vehicle.

It was already in Arizona by now.

We got to the door, and over our comms, we did roll call.

---