“It is.”
I decided to take the risk. I cleared my throat lightly. “So what were we doing?”
He turned his head to the side and gazed into my eyes. “Making love,” he said.
I fucking love you.
“Michael?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you,” I said.
His eyes smiled. “I love you too, Terra.”
Chapter Eighteen
Michael
Following my promise to Agrioli, I spent a considerable amount of time struggling with what I perceived as right and wrong regarding the anticipated recovery of his son.
I lived in a world of black and white. Good was clearly on one side, and evil the other. Everything I did, I did with the belief that I was standing on the side of what was inherently good. Evil was wrong, and I did nothing if I believed in my heart that it was wrong.
Cap looked at me as if I had asked him to commit murder. In some respects, I suppose I had.
“You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me, right?” he asked.
I shook my head. “We’re extracting a fucking hostage. Were you thinking we’d be met with open goddamned arms? ‘Hey fellas, he’s right over here.’ I don’t think so. They’ll be armed, or at least have access to weapons. Christ, we just sold them a fucking truckload of AK-47s.”
“So, we’re going to kill the same guys we did the deal with the other night? Then, instead of havin’ Italians on us, we’ll have those crazy fuckin’ Bulgarians on us. I’m thinkin’ you need to rethink this, Tripp.”
“Listen.” I stood and began to pace the floor of my office. “I should have never let them take him. You were here when Agrioli came. I made a mistake. I was thinking it served Agrioli right for having his guys try and hijack us. But he’s right. That kid surrendered. Agree or disagree?”
Cap nodded. “He surrendered, no doubt about it.”
“So, we let the Bulgarians execute him if Agrioli doesn’t pay? And remember, he’s not going to pay. If we don’t get his ass out of there, that’s what they’ll do. They won’t think twice.”
“Well, fuck,” he said. “You got a point.”
“This isn’t about money, Cap. It’s about righting a wrong. I made a mistake.”
“I see that now,” he said. “We made a mistake.”
Cap stood, sauntered to the corner of my desk, and removed the bottle of scotch from the drawer. He cocked an eyebrow slightly and raised the bottle. I nodded. My stomach was in knots thinking about the possible options, none of which included the Bulgarians living through the mission. A glass of scotch wouldn’t hurt things.
“How ’bout this,” he said as he poured two glasses of scotch. “We create a diversion. Blow half their shop to fuck with some C-4, and then when they’re all tryin’ to figure out what the fuck happened, we go in and snatch the kid?”
He handed me a glass. I took a sip of the whiskey and considered his suggestion. “They’ll realize it’s a diversion, so they’ll leave at least one man with the hostage. If we time it just right, we can have Trace do a thermal image with a drone at the same time. We’d know if there was one man or ten men with the hostage.”
“Doesn’t matter if there’s one or fifteen. Once we blow the wall on that place, we’re going in no matter what. Agreed?”
“Agreed. If there’s one, we’re in and out. If there’s fifteen...”
“If there’s fifteen,” he said. “We’re fucked.”
I took another sip of the scotch. “We’ll need to add Trace to the team. Have him as our driver and operating the drone. You, me, Trace and Lucky. We get the kid, Lucky guards the exit.”
“There’s about a hundred ways this thing can go to shit. You know that, right?”
I raised my glass. “And only one way it’ll go well.”
He took a sip of whiskey and cleared his throat. “Odds are against us, brother.”
“They were against us in the Anbar Province, but that didn’t get us down.”
He raised his glass. “Here’s to bein’ outnumbered two hundred to one and livin’ through it.”
“Makes ten to one sound like a walk in the park,” I said.
“You know we’re gonna have to kill any of those sons-of-bitches who recognize us,” he said. “Even with our faces covered, they’ll recognize our voices.”
I finished my scotch and walked to the end of my desk. He was right. Anyone who would be able to identify us would have to be eliminated. The remaining occupants of the building would be left to assume Agrioli’s men extracted the hostage.