Page 89 of Leading Conviction
She found herself hugging Tommy in one arm and a rigid-as-stone Callie in the other before the light flared back to life. Heavy thumps stomped above as Hannah held her breath and Tommy tensed against her body. Callie shook her off and raised her gun, aiming it at the door above.
“I guess he didn’t need to figure out how to get into the war room,” Nora muttered.
“How would he know to look here? Has he been here before?” Hannah asked.
“No, of course he hasn’t—oh,fuck. Henry has, though. It was Henry. It had to be.”
“Henry? The officer you guys put behind bars?”
Nora nodded. “Marco said he had a visitor the other day. Henry must’ve tattled the layout to his little visitor.”
Hannah looked behind them to see if there was anywhere to hide other than the jail cells, but the stark hallway was bare and if they went into the cells, they were practically asking the General to make them his prisoners.
A thought occurred to her with another thump above them. If this was meant to be a jail or a dungeon, then…
She whispered to Nora and jerked her chin above them to the trapdoor. “Does that door lock?”
Sweat had sprouted on Nora’s forehead as she murmured back, “Not from this side. But if the self-destruct sequence shuts down in time, he won’t be able to open it until Wes or I use our phones to reactivate the facility.”
“How much longer until it shuts down?” Hannah breathed.
Nora checked her watch and cursed. “Ten seconds.”
Hannah’s eyes closed in a silent prayer, just as the footsteps stopped… right above them.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-ONE
Two years ago
After he’d agreed to work for Satan himself, Eagle had been escorted off the premises and driven to the plane that would take his team to Yemen. They’d gotten orders that quickly, so often his teammates didn’t even bat an eye at the abrupt assignment.
The journey took a day of hopping through different military bases. Each second had been pure torture, fighting the urge to take control of the plane at every bout of turbulence, every flight change, every time anyone even spoke a word to him. Half his teammates were pilots anyway, it wasn’t like they wouldn’t be able to figure out how to land the damn thinganywherefucking else besides their destination.
But the General’s threat loomed large in his mind, keeping him seated, silent, and compliant.
Once the team had landed, they’d set up their base a few miles outside of a small Yemeni village. Out of respect for the villagers, the team kept to their camp as much as possible, not wanting to make them feel on edge with a more constant presence than the men already had. It didn’t matter how friendly the team got with the locals, no one felt comfortable surrounded by men in fatigues, decked out in fifty-plus pounds of military gear and weaponry, not even fellow soldiers.
As time went by, it grew easier for Eagle to forget the role he would be forced to play. Whenever he did have a moment of weakness that tempted him to warn Hannah or his team, it’d hit him that he didn’t know where she was or how to get in contact with her. He’d wanted to look for her himself, but getting caught red-handed by the General last time he did his own research was how he’d gotten into this shit in the first place. By the time he’d finally figured out how to trick Snake into looking for the house, it was already for rent and Hannah was in the wind.
So instead, he got lost in training the villagers, convincing himself that though he was destined to let their target go and fail his team, at least the villagers would be left with the ability to protect themselves against the trafficker he left behind. One of the locals they paid as a translator, a woman named Masuma, even became a friend.
She helped the MF7 team help themselves, and along every step of the way, the angry screaming guilt over betraying his team got quieter. During the day, he imagined hanging up his boots at the end of all of this, maybe even trying to pursue things with Masuma. She was a beautiful, strong woman, and reminded him so much of Hannah, but with anactualconnection this time. Not like the one he’d fabricated in his mind.
Everything was peaceful and perfect.
Until he got the encrypted message through his laptop.
As he deciphered it, knowing it was from the General, he still prayed like hell there would be a different command. That the General had changed his mind. There was no way the madman wouldactuallywant him to let a trafficker go, right? It was only after he read it a third time that he realized the dire nature of his situation.
Shit just got way too fucking real, too fucking quick.
He was going to betray his team. He would have to let a trafficking scumbag go free. And there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it.
He sent the message late at night after the team finalized their operation plan and warned his contact when to leave with the target. A proxy would be left in the ringleader’s place, one that had vowed to give his life to protect his leader, if necessary, and sex trafficking could continue unhindered in the area. Just like the General wanted.
“It’s time, brothers,” he informed them as he entered the big communal tent they called their “living room.”
The simple prompting was all his teammates needed to kick them into overdrive and gear up for the mission. Draco and Jaybird readied the weaponry. Hawk helped supervise and organize the packs, and Phoenix prepared the Little Bird. After Snake ensured their communications and headsets were a go, Eagle snuck in after him, changing his own headset to include another preset frequency so he could be on the same line as the locals and the target.
