Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(47)

Once the guy stopped moving, Rawls lowered him to the ground and knelt to take a quick pulse. Slow and thready. The poor bastard wouldn’t be getting back up again. Locking down regret—God knows the bastard wouldn’t have hesitated to take his life—he stripped the rifle and the pistol along with its holster off the limp figure. Then he quickly unbuckled the knife holster, with its fixed-blade knife, from the guy’s thigh.

The blade would come in mighty handy.

Undoubtedly Pachico would make a play for the weapons upon his return—but it was just one more thing to guard against. He couldn’t afford to be weaponless in the coming battle. Although how he was going to warn his team about the danger of their weapons going momentarily berserk for no apparent reason . . . yeah.

Locking his frustration down, he backtracked to his sleeping bag, shoved his filthy socks into his boots, and laced them up in record time. Then he grabbed the radio. He couldn’t afford to use it yet to warn his team. At least not unless he ran out of options.

Too likely his voice would carry and alert the wrong people. Even if he concealed the message in some fashion, just the fact that he’d radioed from the woods would give the game away and send the rest of the Tangos, who were holding on the perimeter, swarming into camp. What they were waiting for was unclear. Maybe for the entire team to assume positions, or—his mind flashed back in time, to the helicopter hovering over the driveway while Wolf’s Sierra Nevada home exploded.

Alarm lifted the hair on his arms. If the Tango he’d taken out was part of the mop-up team, and a chopper was on the way . . .

Sweet Jesus . . .

He needed to alert his team pronto.

He kept the radio in hand, in case he ran out of time, as he eased back into the woods and silently made his way toward the closest cabin, which happened to be the one he shared with Mac. He could access the structure through his bedroom window. It struck him as ironic that the window he’d left unlatched to facilitate his return or departure from his bedroom in the hopes of avoiding his teammates might just end up saving all their lives.

Assuming he could get there without notice. He had no clue how many Tangos stood between his current position and the cabin.

As it turned out, that number was two. The team hunting them had taken up position along the tree line, which made sense for monitoring and targeting. But the tactic left them at a clear disadvantage from the rear. They had no one guarding their sixes. No doubt they considered that vulnerability negligible. They were attacking at dawn after all, while everyone lay sleeping. There shouldn’t have been anyone in the forest for them to worry about. Hell—there wouldn’t have been, if it hadn’t been for a bitchy ghost.

Taking advantage of their vulnerability, Rawls fell back, easing from tree to tree. The second Tango blended into the shrubbery, but Rawls’s experienced eyes picked up on him immediately.

With the element of surprise on his side, and his visitor’s blade in his hand, Rawls had the second guy limp and on the ground in seconds. The third Tango was posted several yards to the right of the cabin. Another few seconds and his path to the window was clear. He wiped the blade on a tuft of grass and holstered the knife.

So far the team members had been positioned every fifty feet, give or take. Which meant he should have easy access to the window. Should being the operative word. You couldn’t count on logic or patterns, and leaving cover for open ground was always a gamble.

Still, it had to be done. So he crouched and rushed the window. With each abbreviated stride, the muscles of his back twitched in anticipation of a bullet or a blade.

Behind him the forest remained silent. Tranquil.

Reaching the window, he crouched and carefully pushed it to the left. So far so good . . . one last quick scan behind him, and he hoisted himself up and swung his feet inside. Carefully he eased himself back down, simultaneously shifting the rifle to the front so it wouldn’t get hung up on the window seal.

“What the f*cking hell, you stupid motherf*cker,” a harsh raspy voice growled as Rawls’s boots touched down on the wood floor.

Rawls raised his head and found a fully clothed and booted Mac glaring at him from the open bedroom door.

“The f*cking window? Are you shitting—” His tirade cut off at the finger Rawls held to his lips. Mac’s dark eyes dropped, completing a quick up-and-down scan that took in every smear of blood on Rawls’s clothes.

Pivoting, Rawls eased the window closed again, and when he turned back, Mac was inches away.

“How many?” Mac asked in a low rumble.

“Every fifty feet.” Rawls calculated the length of the compound and doubled it. “Twenty-five—give or take.”

“How the hell did they get past the sensors? Wolf has this place wired to the gills,” Mac growled.

Rawls shrugged, but he could guess—Pachico. The bastard must have done something to the security system. Damn it, he should have expected something like this, took steps to prevent it. Instead, he’d let his preoccupation with Faith and his current situation blind him.

Mac glanced at the bloodstains.

Rawls shook the frustrated guilt off. Wallowing in regret wouldn’t help them. “I dropped three. We’re clear from here to west of the helipad.”

With a curt nod, Mac snatched the radio from Rawls’s grasp. “Zane and Cos can get their women into the tunnels. We need to grab Amy and her kids. Faith is in their cabin too. We’ll grab all four of them and hustle them below.”