Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(101)

Wolf wheeled on Jude and a spat of urgent Arapaho words crackled between them. Pivoting, Wolf closed on Mac. “Team two’s down.”

Rawls winced. Christ, of all the bad luck. The bird must have been way behind them. If it had gone down in the vicinity, they would have heard the impact and been able to backtrack to offer support.

Mac swore, sympathy in his eyes. “Casualties?”

“We’re assessing,” Wolf said, his voice grimmer than Rawls had ever heard it.

Zane and Cosky glanced at each other, and Rawls knew exactly what they were thinking.

How had they known the chopper had gone down? Nothing had come over the comm.

Although Mac didn’t react or question Wolf—it was hardly the time for demands and questions—Rawls knew he was silently asking the same questions.

Hell, maybe the Shadow Mountain team monitored two channels.

“For this operation to continue, your team will need to step up,” Wolf said, back to wearing his flat, expressionless mask.

Mac nodded, the gesture both an agreement and an acceptance. “What do you need from us?”

Their original instructions via Shadow Mountain Command had been to remain with Faith. Protect her. They’d been assigned guard duty, not a breachers’ position. While the order had sat fine with Rawls—he had no intention of abandoning Faith—it had rankled something fierce with Mac. As experienced operators with hundreds of successful missions beneath their boots, he’d felt command should have made better use of their talents.

Wolf glanced at Rawls. “You remain with Dr. Ansell.” His gaze shifted, landing on Mac’s face. “You, Cosky, and Zane take the ground. My team will take the roof. Give us time to scale the wall.” Without another word, Wolf turned and launched himself forward in a crouching run.

Simultaneously his teammates erupted from the tree line, joining him, and together they swarmed the left side of the building. Through his NVDs, Rawls watched a large luminous green bag disgorge a pneumatic grappling gun. The hook went flying, the attached rope unraveling behind it. As soon as the hook caught and secured the line, Wolf’s first man started climbing.

The double breach was under way. Wolf’s team would access the roof and insert from above. Mac, Zane, and Cosky would breach the building from below. The Tangos inside would be cut off and pinched between the two flanks of attack.

While the insertion hadn’t gone quite as planned, and Wolf’s team would be clearly visible to anyone who bothered to look out one of the left windows, so far nobody inside seemed aware of, or at least reactive to, the imminent attack. Still, the alert should have been given as soon as Wolf’s team took out the cameras and the inside monitors went dark.

Which meant any second now things could go to hell in a hand basket because operations never went so smoothly. At least not for long. Some overlooked or unknown detail always stepped in to f*ck things up.




“Let’s go,” Mac whispered, lifting himself into a half crouch. With Cosky three feet to his left and Zane three feet to his right, he advanced on the house in a truncated run.

About halfway across the yard, with the grass spongy beneath his boots, it occurred to him that Zane hadn’t had time to do his prebattle ritual of touching everyone in the hopes of psychically pinpointing possible threats. Since the ritual was f*cking eerie as hell, and didn’t always yield the intended results, he refused to consider the omission as bad luck. They’d survived plenty of insertions blind to what their futures held.

Seconds later their target’s front entrance loomed large. From the number of vehicles parked to his right, the place was obviously inhabited. The sudden dearth of cameras should have tipped the Tangos off to the fact that something was wrong. But the place stood silent and still, its barred windows illuminated and shedding bright light into the darkness beyond them.

The lack of a sentry and absence of defensive positioning rang warning bells. Someone should have noticed them by now.

This whole damn setup smelled foul.

Mac took the right-hand position beside the front entrance, while Zane took the left. Cosky waited center stage to breach the door. Mac held up five fingers. Cosky nodded, tried the door handle, which was locked, and on the five-second mark drove his boot into the door just below the knob. The jamb held. The fact that it held indicated some degree of home security, but Mac’s internal alarm system continued ringing.

With a muffled grunt, Cosky abandoned brute force in favor of weapons. Lifting his semiautomatic rifle, he riddled the left side of the doorframe next to the handle and locking mechanism with bullets. Wood splinters peppered the air.

If the bastards inside hadn’t realized they had company before, they sure as hell knew now. By the time Cosky stopped his assault on the doorframe, the wood strip stood fragmented and warped. Two floors above them, gunfire hammered the night. Wolf and his crew had inserted.

Cosky’s second try with his boot laid the door wide open. Already firing in case a welcoming committee was positioned on the other side, Cosky eased forward. Mac fell in behind him and Zane brought up the rear. The hall was empty, narrow, and straight, with four doors on the left and two on the right. Cosky and Zane slipped into the first room, a cramped office with a desk and file cabinets, while Mac stood vigil in the hall.

Within seconds, Zane called “clear.” They repeated the process and cleared the first floor offices and conference rooms, while periodic bursts of gunfire stippled the floors above.