Swift Strike (SEAL Team 14 Book 2) (7 page)

The only real problem was that Hazel Eyes had evaded capture. And despite the Navy and FBI’s assurances, she just could not feel one hundred percent safe until the creep was caught and jailed.

“Philip is coming to visit you next month,” her mother said, barging into Lena’s thoughts. Claire had no doubt seen the distant look on her daughter’s face and was now trying to change the subject of a conversation that she clearly thought had run its course. “He wanted to fly out immediately,” she continued, “but you know that he just started the school year. He’s going to visit you on his first break.”

“Yeah, I know, he told me. I talked to him yesterday.” Philip, her younger half-brother, just started business school at Northwestern. She was surprisingly close to her half-brother who was nearly ten years her junior. “I’m glad that he is doing well.”

Claire had found out about Philip’s existence three years before she filed for divorce. An affair of any kind would have had the power to make tongues wag in the small Virginian town Lena had grown up in. But to add fuel to the flame, Philip’s mother, Penny, had also been Claire’s best friend at the time.

The whole situation was one sordid union of lies, lust, and deceit. But somehow despite their screwed-up family history, Philip and Lena had forged a pretty healthy friendship—all things considered. As crazy as the other members of her family were, Philip’s logic and perpetual level-headedness was a breath of fresh air to her.

“I’m proud of the two of you,” her mother said. “All of the...difficulties that the both of you have been through. A lot of people wouldn’t have handled the same circumstances so well. The both of you have a lot of grit.”

“I’m proud of you too,” she begrudgingly admitted. “The fact that you’ve managed to be cordial to Penny, after what she did, and accept Philip as part of the family has been...I think, a positive show of character on your part. I know it must have been a very difficult thing for you to do.”

It had taken Claire a long time after her divorce to get her life back on track. She’d taken several wrong turns into the joy-filled land of Gin and Percocets.

Claire sat silent with her thoughts for a long moment before putting a voice to them. “Philip couldn’t help the circumstances of his birth. I realized that after a while. I couldn’t hold a grudge against an innocent child. I think for the longest time, I wrongly blamed Penny for breaking up my marriage to your father. But really, the truth was that our marriage was in a shambles long before Penny entered Alfred’s life in that way.”

Lena was taken aback by the bluntness of her mother’s words and the genuine look of sadness in her eyes.

As much as Claire protested that she barely even thought about Alfred Westlake anymore, Lena knew better. And if she hadn’t been sure before, what Claire had just said gave it away. But really, how could Claire not think about her ex-husband from time-to-time? She’d been married to the man for close to thirty years before their divorce, almost half a lifetime. Having someone be a part of your life for so long, and then separating from them must’ve have felt like dying a small death.

Her mother used to delight in telling Lena the story of how the two of them had first met. Claire, a precocious and cheeky girl, had by age thirteen, already developed a cigarette habit that would take her decades to quit. Alfred’s personality contrasted sharply with his future wife’s. He’d been a somber and sensible boy of sixteen who was more concerned about his schoolwork than too much else. The pair of them had met when Claire started high school. Both were from “dirt poor” families as her mother often said, but Alfred had had the wherewithal to pull himself out of his circumstances. Her mother took notice of Alfred, and actually had the stones to ask him out. Back then, a girl taking the initiative to ask out a guy was a big deal. The rest was, as they say, history.

Later on that evening, after her mother had long gone to sleep, Lena lay awake in her bed. Tossing and turning, she kept replaying the events of the previous weeks over and over again in her head. She was mostly convinced that she would be able to progress from her ordeal, but a part of her wondered whether she would truly ever get past it.

Heaving a big sigh frustration, she made a concentrated effort to focus on something positive in her life, and the first picture that popped into her mind was of the green-eyed soldier who’d saved her life.
Jesse Denison
.

By the time Jesse and his team members had come bursting through the door, Lena had already given up all hope. Soon after Hazel Eyes had stabbed Steven to death, he’d order one of his minions to drag her down to a small room in the basement where she’d been sure the man was going to rape and then kill her. But just when she thought her fate was sealed, she’d heard the first round of shots being fired by the SEAL team.

At the time, she didn’t know it was the good guys shooting the place up. She’d feared that the rest of the men holding her were now methodically executing all of their captives. When she realized that she was actually being rescued, the adrenaline that rushed to her head caused her to pass out.

She could still remember the feel of his strong embrace around her as he picked her up and cradled her close to his chest. The world seemed to stop spinning on its axis while he held her there, sheltering her in the safety of his arms. No man had ever made her feel so protected before.

Not even her ex-fiancé had ever made her feel that safe. She and Kevin had been together for four years and planned on walking down the aisle together before she broke up with him. Maybe part of their relationship issues stemmed from the fact that Lena never felt that special “spark” with him. After all, Kevin was Claire’s pick for her from the beginning. That fact alone should have been a huge red flag that things weren’t destined to work out. However, Claire hadn’t been concerned about whether Lena had chemistry with Kevin. Instead, she was focused on the fact that he was the heir to a multi-million dollar medical device company.

Sure Kevin had been a well-educated and successful businessman. That should have been enough, according to her mother. But it wasn’t because he also happened to be a narcissistic jerk. Of course, he always managed to be cordial to Lena, but he acted like a pretentious jerk to other people. His poor manners were generally directed to individuals who occupied a lower social status than he did. Besides that particular type of disgusting behavior on his part, she’d never felt a deep connection to him.

It had been a terrible thing to do to anyone, even a self-absorbed jerk. She hadn’t quite jilted him at the altar, however, it’d been pretty close. But she couldn’t breathe whenever she tried to imagine herself being married to Kevin for the rest of her life. She’d rather live her life alone than be tethered to someone like him. There was more to life than money and luxury; she had always understood that.

Lena didn’t just want to settle into the life that everyone had planned for her. And despite her protests to the contrary, she did want an all-consuming, unyielding, heart-stopping passion. She wanted to burn hot for a man, and she wanted to find someone who felt the same way about her. Someone who would lust for her even after she could no longer chase away the wrinkles with the myriad of lotions and potions she religiously utilized. Someone who would think of her destined-to-turn-gray hair as regal and elegant. Someone who would look past her countless flaws and love her in spite of them, or perhaps, because of them. Someone who would still dream about her long after her physical body had left this world. She wanted to find a love that would last a lifetime.

****

Jesse and his team had landed in Bayla one week ago, and they were now on their seventh afternoon of surveillance. So far, there hadn’t been any sign of Saverin Tarasov or any other Al-Jaazeez members. There also hadn’t been any other bombings since the small band of SEAL Team Fourteen members arrived on the scene. Maybe AnSawar had moved out of the area. Of course, it was also possible that they’d never been in the region to begin with and this whole mission was a false alarm.

Regardless, Jesse and four other SEAL Team Fourteen members were tasked with monitoring a linen factory in the heart of the city. They were working with a couple of CIA field agents who’d first alerted top Washington brass regarding the irregularities at the site. According to the agents, several known organized crime couriers were spotted entering and exiting the building on multiple occasions throughout the past few months. Jesse had personally seen zero evidence of to support this, but he trusted the field agents’ assessments.

Couriers were becoming an increasingly important tool in the toolkit for terrorist organizations around the globe. The concept of why a courier was basically mandatory in most criminal operations was exceedingly simple. The couriers were the middlemen who provided the necessary distance between the financier and the terrorist organization they were colluding with. Distance between the two parties was needed because usually the financiers were men of stature who could not afford to be linked to any untoward criminal activities.

“Look alive, Denison. Potential target is moving in.” Jesse perked up from his position as a black SUV rolled up to the warehouse.

“Copy that,” Jesse said into his headset. He watched as four men exited the vehicle. Three of the men were wearing traditional Islamic clothing. The fourth man wore a tailored business suit. None of the men looked familiar to him. Whoever they were, they definitely weren’t high up in the ranks of the Al-Jaazeez network. But like their CO intimated earlier, they could have some connection to the most recent threat presented by AnSawar.

“Any positive identifications?” Jesse asked from his perch on top of a building located a thousand yards from the warehouse. He and the rest of his teammates had set up posts at different vantage points outside of the target location. Squinting against the sun, he peered into the scope of his bolt-action carbine Scout Rifle.

“Hawk has the guy on the far left pegged as Hassad Abbas, a lower level operative who acts as a free agent for various crime organizations,” Malcolm’s voice filtered in through his headset again. Hawk was the code name for one of the CIA field agents that they were working with on this mission. Hawk had touched down in Somalia a year prior to SEAL Team Fourteen’s arrival. He’d spent the last few weeks gathering important intel into the recent terrorist attacks that were presently rocking the country.

“Right. I have a bead on him.”

The quartet stood talking outside of the building for several minutes before they entered. The sun had started to fade from the sky by the time the men walked back outside. This time, however, the men had a woman in tow. She was older, maybe fifty years old, and her hands were tied in the front. Her hair was in a state of disarray, tears streamed down her face, and the clothes that she wore were torn and dirty. Her face was swollen and bloody; she’d clearly been beaten.

“Okay, what the hell is going on here?” Jesse asked, his eyes glued to his scope, his finger on the trigger.

“No clue,” Luke replied.

“I have a shot. But it’s a little dirty,” Jesse said, his voice even and hands steady. “Are we going in?” The group was walking slowly, probably in order not to draw too much attention to themselves from the passersby on the street. They were only a few hundred yards from their SUV. A few more seconds and the Team would have to pursue them on the road.

“Not yet. Hold fire and hold your position,” Lieutenant Malcolm Clarke’s voice sounded in over the wire. As the most senior Team Fourteen member on this mission, Malcolm was their leader for the op. “Preferably we need to snatch Abbas still with a pulse. If we go in now, the odds of that are slim to none.”

“Lights,” Luke’s voice filtered in again.

Jesse watched as another black SUV pulled up right beside the suspect vehicle. Seconds later, another older man in a fancy suit got out of the SUV. This guy wasn’t familiar to Jesse, either. Unless Al-Jaazeez had recently held a membership drive, the odds that this group was connected to that terrorist organization weren’t good.

This new arrival strode up to the hysterical woman, and every muscle in Jesse’s body tensed up. He still had a shot, but it would be close. He watched as the mystery man stroked the woman on her cheek. Shrinking away from her captor but unable to escape his grasp, the woman sobbed uncontrollably.

What the hell was going down?

“All right, Denison, Russo, Kincaid break away to position two,” Malcolm instructed. Heart pounding, Jesse packed up his scope and rifle and raced toward the rooftop door.

Sprinting down ten flights of stairs, he was not even a little winded as he rounded the corner. Slowing his movements to a degree, he made sure the keffiyeh was wrapped securely around his face. His rifle was secured under the traditional black thawb in a specially designed carrying case.

Jesse carefully weaved in and out of the sea of people who had begun to mill around the city center. A young Somalian mother carrying her infant in a cloth sling around her neck walked onto his path, and he spryly moved around her. Walking up to a black sedan that was situated two blocks away from the target warehouse, he opened the door.

“You’re thirty seconds late, Denison,” Malcolm barked out as Jesse entered the vehicle.

“Yeah, Denison,” Luke retorted with a grin, pulling the car away from the curb. “What the hell, man? Taking your sweet-ass time, don’t you know we’re on a mission here?”