Tuc snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“Tell the men to be at their local airport for a 0400 pickup,” Gabe said to Quinn. “I’ll swing by Louisiana and grab Cavalier, then meet you at…” He trailed off.
“I have a private airstrip about forty miles outside New Orleans,” Tuc suggested. “My pilots all know where it is.”
“That works. Thanks. We’ll come up with a plan of attack once everyone is together and we have more intel, but we need to get moving.”
“On it,” Quinn said, already dialing. He tucked the cell phone between his shoulder and ear as he strode toward the relative privacy at the other side of the balcony. “Hey, Marcus, it’s Quinn…”
Tuc turned toward Gabe and held out a hand. “I’ll have all the information you need before you leave. Welcome to HumInt Consulting, Bristow.”
Gabe shook the offered hand. And tried to tell himself he hadn’t made a pact with the devil.
NEW ORLEANS, LA
Jean-Luc Cavalier was drunk.
And naked, buried underneath a pile of equally drunk and naked women. Three women to be exact.
None of them moved when Gabe knocked on the wood doorframe of Cavalier’s shack, so he let himself in through the screen door.
“Cavalier.” Gabe nudged the guy’s head with his boot.
Jean-Luc mumbled something in French and palmed one woman’s ass, gave it a squeeze, then drifted back to sleep with a smile.
Jesus Christ. This is what his life had come to? Scraping a drunk linguist off the floor so that he had enough men for an op? He never would have found one of his SEAL teammates like this if they were waiting for a call to go wheels up.
Gabe sighed, picked a half-empty bottle of wine off the end table, and dumped the contents over Jean-Luc’s face.
“Huh? Wha—?” Jean-Luc sputtered and blinked up at Gabe. “Merde!” He scrambled to his feet and cussed in a lively string of Cajun French. His shoulder-length blond hair looked as if someone had styled it with a handheld mixer. “I didn’t know she was married. I swear. She didn’t have a ring.”
“Which one?” Gabe asked, eyeing the women as they stirred to life. Girls Gone Wild, the morning after. Not pretty.
“Any of them!”
Gabe had to clear his throat to hide a laugh. “I’m nobody’s husband. I’m your new boss, Gabe Bristow.”
“Oh.” He looked confused at that and ran a hand over his face. Then, “Ohh. HORNET.”
“HORNET?”
“I thought all you military types like acronyms.” He rooted around through a heap of discarded clothing, tossed some to the women, and pulled on a pair of khaki shorts. “HumInt Inc.’s Hostage Rescue and Negotiation Team is a mouthful, so I shortened it. HORNET.”
Leave it to the linguist to come up with something like that. “We have a job in Colombia. That is, if you’re still interested.”
“Fuck, yeah. I’ve been bored mindless.”
“Looks it,” Gabe said.
…
The plane arrived at the private airfield fifteen minutes past 0800. Thank God. If Gabe had to listen to another of Jean-Luc’s tone-deaf renditions of whatever song came over the radio, he might just draw his firearm and shoot the man.
It was a big plane. Bigger than Gabe had expected, and each of the five men already aboard had claimed a row of the plush seats for himself. The former FBI agent, Marcus Deangelo, dozed in the second row, a plaid fedora pulled down over his face, his legs crossed at the ankle, blocking the aisle. Jean-Luc reached over the seat and flipped the fedora off his head.
“Hey!” Marcus snatched his fedora back, blinking against the light. “Asshole. I should—whoa, it’s the Ragin’ Cajun.” He laughed as he sat up and slapped Jean-Luc a high five. “Dude, you smell like a wine cellar.”
“Better than a Calvin Klein cologne ad.” Jean-Luc grinned and plopped into an empty seat in the fourth row beside Eric Physick. “Harvard! Where y’at? How’s post-Company life treatin’ ya?”
Former CIA analyst Eric “Harvard” Physick chuckled and set aside the crossword puzzle he’d been working on. “I should have figured you’d sign on for this. I’m fine. How about you? Learn any new languages lately?”
Jean-Luc answered in a musical string of words. Harvard tilted his head to one side, listening. “Is that… Yucatec Maya?”
“That it is. I said ‘you bet your ass, I have.’”
“Fluent?” Harvard asked.
“Pretty damn close.”
“That’s what, thirteen now? You’ve been busy.”
“You have no idea. Let me tell y’all about the night I had.”