Second Chance SEAL(95)

Except he underestimated me. When I kicked in the door, my gun ready, I had surprised him. He drew pretty fast, but his face betrayed his shock. He didn’t expect me to know he was there, probably figured I was just some dumbass military boy. Fortunately, we were both professionals, and neither of us got spooked and fired. Most other men might have pulled the trigger in that moment, but not Culver, and that said a lot about the man.

But I had a few tricks up my sleeve, the sort of tricks Culver wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t just some dumb military boy in over his head. I knew what I was about, and Culver and everyone else was going to have to figure that out the hard way.

I had planned on holding off on this operation for another day, but the Mafia was clearly getting a little antsy. I didn’t want them to do anything stupid, and so I decided to move forward despite possibly not being ready.

I parked the car in the woods, about a mile away from the Caldwell compound. I was wearing my dark combat clothing with a combat vest, and Hartley was wearing her darkest functional clothing. She looked nervous, and I couldn’t blame her.

“You’re not getting too close,” I said as we got out of the car. I turned on a flashlight and held a little map down flat on the hood of the car. She got out and looked over my shoulder.

“This is the compound, here. We’re parked over here. The plan is for us to sneak out there, keeping quiet. You’ll stay here, on the edge of the forest, waiting. I’ll do a quick recon through the compound, see what I can see. When I’m done, we head back.”

“I want to come with you,” she said.

I smiled, because I knew she was going to say that. “I know, but you can’t. There are too many cameras, and you don’t have the training to avoid them.”

“I don’t like the idea of just sitting there. What’s the point? I might as well wait in the woods.”

“Here’s the point. If I get into trouble in there, which is possible, I’ll need a distraction. While I’m inside, you’ll sneak to here and here. You’ll set up some fireworks, run the fuses down along the ground to here, and you’ll wait. If something goes wrong and you see something isn’t right, you set off those fireworks, and then you run.”

“That’s it? Just sitting there with fireworks?”

“Trust me, Hartley, those things are going to make a pretty loud fucking sound. Anyone in the compound will be more worried.”

She frowned but nodded. “Okay. I can do that.”

“But listen to me. As soon as you light them, you run. You can’t stay. They will catch you if you hesitate even a second.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay. I promise.”

“Good. Hopefully we won’t have to use them, but it’s good to always have a backup plan.”

“Sound advice,” she said, and I couldn’t help but grin at her.

The girl was brave, damn brave. Most civilians wouldn’t be able to do something like this, but I trusted her. Despite my best judgment, I trusted her to pull this off if she needed to, and to run once the fuses were lit. She wanted to get caught by the Caldwells about as much as I wanted her to get caught.

I popped the trunk and we got out our gear. I checked my gun and twisted a silencer onto the barrel. I didn’t like the weight that added, but I’d rather the stealth if this came down to gunplay. I gave Hartley the fireworks and showed her how to lay the fuse, which wasn’t really complicated.

Once that was finished, we headed out through the woods on our long walk.

It was really only about a ten- or fifteen-minute hike, but I could feel the tension in Hartley. She’d never done anything like this, and I couldn’t blame her for being nervous. We were going into enemy territory with only a single weapon and some fireworks. She probably thought this was insane.

But the truth was, I couldn’t imagine a situation where the fireworks would be necessary. Even if I got caught and the whole compound woke up, they wouldn’t be able to take me. I was trained in evasion tactics, trained to be able to escape from almost any situation. The Caldwells were gangsters and violent thugs, but they weren’t professionals like I was. A highly motivated and dangerous civilian was still just a civilian.

We didn’t talk much as we approached the compound. I didn’t feel like pressing her, and I wanted her to be in the right state of mind when we got there. I took us through the woods, using the moon as a guide, until we reached the ridge overlooking the back of the buildings. We crouched down next to an outcropping of bushes and looked down at the compound.

It was basically dead, with only a few outside lights on. It was around three in the morning, and everyone should have been asleep.