Page 43 of Casey's Hero

Casey and Kalea hurried toward the door and the hall table where Jacob had laid his nine-millimeter pistol.

Before they reached it, the entry door crashed inward, the wooden doorframe splintering into a hundred jagged pieces.

Two men dressed in dark clothes and ski masks stormed in, pointing handguns at Casey and Kalea.

With her own gun out of reach, Casey had two choices: throw herself at the gunmen and pray they didn’t shoot or raise her hands and pray they didn’t kill them anyway.

She shoved Kalea to the ground and launched herself at the gunmen, screaming like a banshee.

The lead man fired one shot. Casey expected to feel the bullet slamming into her body. She didn’t change her trajectory, ducking low like a football player on the defensive line, plowing into the quarterback.

As she neared the lead man, she shoved his hand holding the gun, tucked her shoulder and rammed into his belly with as much power as she could muster in the short distance she’d crossed.

The man grunted and stepped back one step. He raised his gun hand and brought it down hard, hitting her on the side of the head with the flat side of the metal, sending her flying across the hallway.

Casey hit the wall and sank to the floor, her head spinning, a gray fog consuming her. She fought to stay conscious.

Kalea screamed somewhere in the cave of Casey’s apartment, and then she heard nothing.

Rough hands lifted and threw her over a hard-muscled shoulder. As she was carried out of her apartment and into the night, darkness consumed her.

CHAPTER 10

Surf splashedin Jacob’s face as he leaned forward on the bow of the dive boat they’d commandeered from a friend of a friend of Hank’s to make the trip along the coast under the cover of darkness.

Each member of the Brotherhood Protectors and Jacob wore a wetsuit to guard against the cold water of the Pacific and to blend into the night once they made it to the shore. They’d brought along a spare wetsuit for Hawk once they extracted him from the cartel’s compound.

From the intel they’d received from Swede’s contact with the DEA, the compound was more of a resort home, perched on the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean. They probably assumed they wouldn’t be attacked from that direction.

The cartel had never gone up against the Navy SEALs and other special operations Operatives.

Jacob welcomed the cold water that soaked his hair and face. It kept him focused and charged for what would come next. As they neared the GPS location several yards off the coast, they could see the lights streaming from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the home that was surrounded by a concrete wall. All they hadto do was scale the cliff while carrying weapons, climb the wall and storm the building.

Piece of cake.

He prayed the cartel didn’t kill Hawk before they got inside. They’d timed their arrival for a couple of hours past dusk, hoping the structure's inhabitants would be lulled into a false sense of peace and security that sometimes comes with nightfall and the lack of overt attacks from land.

Hank stood beside the captain of the boat as he brought the craft to a halt. They’d carefully snuffed all onboard lights to avoid detection from the building the DEA had indicated as the cartel’s current stronghold.

Jacob removed the monocular from inside his wetsuit and fit it over his right eye, focusing on the structure clinging to the side of the cliff. The walls around it and the cliff rising out of the sea made it a veritable fortress. Thankfully, they’d known what they were up against before attempting the extraction from this direction.

The dive boat had come fully equipped with some of the latest equipment. The captain, a former Navy SEAL, was more than willing to lend his boat, equipment and time to get the team to their location to rescue one of their own.

Hank, Reid and Jacob would carry waterproof bags full of weapons. They would operate diver propulsion vehicles (DPVs) that would propel them and their heavy bags through the water at speeds up to three miles per hour. The other team members would follow at their own pace. When they arrived at the base of the cliffs, they’d deploy the grappling hook launcher Reid had among his collection of weapons and equipment. Once they had several ropes anchored at the top of the cliff, they’d work their way up the cliff and into the cartel’s compound.

As soon as the boat stopped, the team went into action. They slipped the buoyancy control devices (BCDs) with the attachedscuba tanks over their shoulders and buckled them across their chests. Regulators fit in their mouths, and they slipped their feet into fins.

The waterproof bags, or “dry” bags, loaded with their weapons and the grappling hook launcher, were lowered into the water off the back of the boat.

Jacob, Hank and Reid hooked the dry bags to their BCDs and let them float alongside them.

Once the diver propulsion devices were lowered into the water and the engines started, they were ready to go.

Hank gave the thumbs-up and slipped beneath the surface.

Jacob slipped in beside him on the left, and Reid flanked Hank’s right side. The other SEALs, Marines and Deltas adjusted their masks and stepped off the sides of the boat.

Soon, they were all moving toward the shore and the cliff they’d have to scale in order to enter the compound, hopefully utilizing the element of surprise to overcome the opposition and get Hawk out alive. Their DEA undercover informant had noted several sentries on the road leading in but couldn’t vouch for the ocean side of the structure. They were on their own and would have to deal with whatever stood in their way. With an entire special operations team, they should have no trouble taking the compound.

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