Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(63)

He’d told her in the kitchen the day before that he’d been mortally wounded and Kait had healed him. Maybe he’d experienced something akin to a near-death experience while he was out, and the experience had paved the foundation for his delusion.

“My ghost,” he repeated beneath his breath in a disgusted voice.

Who was that irritation directed at? Him? Her? Pachico? All three of them?

Nor did it escape her notice that he hadn’t answered either of her questions. Obviously he didn’t want to talk about what he’d gone through. She swallowed her brewing sermon on the scientific veracity of near-death experiences. As someone with wide experience in the medical profession, he would have heard all the competing theories.

His ghost, on the other hand, that was just too tempting a subject to ignore. “Is Pachico here?”

A slight twitch of his shoulder was the only indication he’d heard the question. But once again he refused to participate. Apparently the topic of his ghost was off limits too.

Well, that was just too bad.

However, her plan to pester the information out of him vanished beneath a wave of exhaustion. Apparently, her body recommended immediate sleep to offset its recent ordeal. It didn’t help that his arms were warm and comforting or that with each step, he rocked her. Her eyes drifted closed . . . she’d just rest for a while . . . plenty of time to ask about his ghost later.




Eric Manheim scowled as he dropped his cell phone on the breakfast table.

Breathing deeply, he counted to ten while sitting perfectly still. Damn it. Another delay. Another f*ckup. They’d found their targets, even had the camp surrounded. They’d had every f*cking thing in place. Was it too much to ask that things go according to plan?

“Problem?” Esme murmured, commiseration warming her pale blue gaze.

He focused on her face. Breathed in her light, breezy scent, and the frustration eased. Her eyes never failed to fascinate him, shifting as they did between pale icy-blue and brilliant azure, depending on the whim of the lighting or her emotions of the moment.

“The signal’s gone underground,” Eric told her tightly.

“How far and where underground?” Esme folded her newspaper in half and set it neatly on the glass table beside her cup of tea.

“Twenty feet, give or take, within a thousand feet of their camp. Apparently, the campsite was built over some kind of rabbit’s warren.”

He hadn’t taken any chances this time. He’d surrounded the camp with snipers before calling in the air strike. He’d covered every angle—except the damn ground.

Irritation flared. If he were lucky, eventually the signal would simply cease, indicating that the boys had died beneath ground. With the compound exploding above them, there was a good chance the tunnel had collapsed, burying them.

But he couldn’t count on luck.

“Are you sure the SEALs are with them? From the satellite images, their camp is a cluster of small cabins. What are the chances they’re all living in the same space? Or that Chastain’s widow is staying in the same one with them. As a mother with young children, she’ll want her privacy.”

Eric nodded absently. The men could have been staying in different cabins. But it didn’t matter. If Mrs. Chastain and her kids had been able to escape into the tunnels, the frogs could have too.

“We’ll just have to wait them out. Eventually they’ll surface to find food or water. When they do, we’ll move on them. If Mackenzie and his men are in the tunnels, we’ll take them out at the same time as we hit Chastain’s family.” He relaxed and smiled across the table at her.

He saw the flash of regret cross Esme’s face and reached for her hand, squeezing it comfortingly. His wife had a soft heart. While she understood that the deaths of Amy Chastain’s children were for the greater good, an absolute necessity, she didn’t like it.

For her sake, if there had been a way to kill the SEALs without involving the two boys, he would have taken it. He didn’t derive pleasure from the slaughter of innocent children either. But the SEALs had gone to ground, and there’d been no other way to flush them out.

So for the sake of the millions of lives he’d be saving in the future, he’d see Amy Chastain’s sons die in the now.

And he’d bear that black mark on his soul with no regret.

But then he froze. His whole plan rested on the kids exiting the tunnels at some point. But what if they didn’t need to? Mackenzie’s men were seasoned veterans. They’d have prepared for a retreat. Stocked for it. They’d have food and water stored in the tunnels. His best bet was to call in another air strike. Hit the bastards with a lot more firepower, enough to blast a twenty-foot hole in the ground. Make sure they never emerged from those tunnels.

Of course, it was also highly possible, probable even, that the boys would remain in the safety of the tunnel, while the men snuck aboveground to clear the camp of intruders. They were SEALs after all. Trained warriors with years of battle experience behind them. They weren’t going to wait belowground while their enemies destroyed everything.

They’d join the fight. Or even take the fight to Eric’s crew.

He swore beneath his breath and reached for his phone. Last time one of his teams had tangled with Mackenzie and the rest of those bloody sods, they’d paid for it with their lives. Every last one of them. He’d lost an entire team, along with their chopper, and those bastards had escaped without a scratch.