Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(53)

But she swallowed her reservations and tried to project confidence. There was nothing they could do about their lack of outside communication at the moment. At least they had the phone on them. Worst case, someone could sneak outside and send off an SOS.

“Flashlights on,” Rawls said, lifting the duffle bag from his shoulder and easing the strap over his head until it hung from his upper back. “Stay on my six. Yell if I go too fast.”

He didn’t wait for her confirmation, just turned toward the steel shelf beside them and pressed a lever on the inside of the top rung. He stepped back as the metal unit jerked and slid out from the wall, revealing a thick, black hole. Once it stopped moving, he dragged it back another foot.

“Pull the door shut behind you.” He grunted with satisfaction as the beam from his flashlight ruptured the profuse darkness.

With a deep breath, Faith followed his bent back and the jiggling canvas bag into the tight enclosure. Bending slightly herself, she stopped just inside the tunnel, her flashlight beam bouncing across water-streaked concrete walls. The thick metal door with its attached shelf slid back into place with remarkable ease and hardly any effort on her part. She aimed the flashlight at the door’s bottom, it had to be mounted on some kind of roller.

“You need help?”

A hint of impatience sharpened the question. Apparently she wasn’t going fast enough for his liking.

“I got it,” she said, turning to follow him.

This obviously wasn’t the time to let her curiosity get the better of her. Not that they were in any real danger being twenty feet beneath the ground and protected by a multitude of locked, electronically sealed steel doors.

She studied the walls, floor, and ceiling of their current tunnel as they struck out for the rendezvous point. It looked like some kind of huge concrete pipe—the thick, round ones used for sewers or flash-flood drainage. It was tall enough for her to stand upright, although there wasn’t enough room for the two of them to walk side by side.

The cylinders must have been difficult to handle, considering how huge they were and the fact that they were buried so deep in the ground. Installing them would have required excavation equipment, which must have been brought in by helicopter since the camp was so removed.

“You okay back there?” Rawls’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“I’m fine,” she said, looking up. A metallic shimmer drew her attention toward his left hip.

She squinted to get a better look in the murky light.

That was odd . . . it almost looked like the rifle hanging from his shoulder beneath the duffle bag had drifted up and was pointing at her. It had to be a trick of the flashlight beam bouncing off the concrete at her feet. Lifting the torch, she aimed it toward his side and the offending rifle, which was quite visibly hovering there—in midair—pointing directly at her. With a stifled shriek she jerked hard to the right, colliding with the wall.

He stopped hard, and turned, the duffle bag scraping against the concrete. “What’s wrong?”

“That wasn’t funny!” she snapped, aiming the flashlight at his face. Her heart skipped a beat, only to take two in rapid succession. Groaning beneath her breath, she fought to get her breathing and heart rate back under control. “Is that thing loaded?”

Of course it isn’t loaded. There’s no way he’d point a loaded gun at you!

Then again, it wasn’t like him to point an unloaded gun at anyone either. What’s gotten into the man?

Her heart stuttered, then resumed business as usual.

With a deep, tension-releasing breath, she relaxed.

“What are you talkin’ about?” A scowl slammed down over his forehead, and his eyes looked burningly blue.

“The rifle,” she shot back. “I don’t appreciate the joke.”

“What joke?” His voice rose to as close to a shout as she’d ever heard from him.

“Pointing the rifle at me. It’s not funny. If anyone should know how dangerous aiming a gun at someone can be . . .” She trailed off to glare.

He froze, his expression falling perfectly still. A fraction of a second later an explosion of pure rage lit his face. The blue of his eyes burned so bright they looked almost incandescent.

“Pachico!” he roared, turning in a slow circle. “Goddamn you!”

Pachico?

The name—somehow she knew it was a name—echoed in the tight confines of the channel. She puckered her forehead, repeating the word beneath her breath. It was so familiar, lingering there at the back of her mind. She knew it from somewhere . . .

And then it burst into her head like the flashlight beam had illuminated a deep, dark, repressed memory.

Pachico . . .

A bald head wrapped in a bloody bandage . . . a long face . . . muddy brown, resigned eyes . . . a huge knife sticking out of a thin chest. A thin trail of crimson trickling down a white dress shirt . . .

Pachico.

The man Jillian had killed at Wolf’s Sierra Nevada home six days earlier. The man whose body had been cremated courtesy of a helicopter-to-house missile. Six days? Good lord, it felt like sixty.

She shook her head in disbelief. Pachico was dead. So why was Rawls bawling the man out. Because that’s what the tone of his voice sounded like. Not to mention he’d swung around as though searching for the culprit. He was reading someone the riot act. Only the man he was searching for was dead. Very, very dead.