Chapter Nineteen

Ghost

S imultaneously aiming at the hacker and Echo as Echo drew on me, I repeated my order to the SEAL. "I told you to leave."

"Not a fucking chance," Echo countered.

"If you were going to shoot me, you already would have." Echo didn't do threats. He pulled the trigger. "Last warning. Exfil."

November glanced at Echo and tipped his chin.

"Not that you can't wipe the floor with this motherfucker, but this isn't Bosnia," Echo warned November. "What're you gonna do? Rearrange his face with your keyboard?"

I knew about the Bosnian incident. As the Air Force's top Cyberspace Operations officer, November had traveled with security. The one time he hadn't, he was taken hostage. Alpha's Team was called in for recovery. A twenty-two-hour standoff later, they finally breached, only to find eight dead terrorists lying at November's feet. I knew what the hacker was physically capable of.

But Echo was right.

This wasn't Bosnia, and I was done fucking around.

Adjusting my aim, I pulled the trigger.

My round went through November's keyboard, then I pivoted and trained both Glocks on Echo as I stepped into the barrel of his 19x. "Who do you think will die first?" The second thing I knew about Echo? Limited patience and even less tolerance, he didn't do crazy. Playing the psychological advantage, I used the third important fact I knew about him and switched to Italian. " Come sta la tua giovane moglie? è pronta per diventare vedova? "

Jaw rigid, Echo still didn't pull the trigger. "Do you know why you're still breathing, motherfucker?"

"Yes." Cunning was no match for intel. "Leave."

"November?" Echo asked, not taking his eyes off me.

"Alpha's on his way up. Give us a minute."

"How about I do us all a favor and stand here until this motherfucker bleeds out?"

With zero intonation, November stated the SEAL's call sign. "Echo."

His glare fixed, Echo feathered his trigger. "What?"

"Intercept Alpha," November calmly ordered.

Echo tipped his chin at the computers. "A dozen and a half addresses, a bleeding ghost, and a more-secretive-than-usual hacker. I either picked the wrong fucking morning to come in early or shit's about to go down." Lowering his arm, he holstered his Glock. "Shoot me in the back, and I'll fucking gut you before I take my last breath." Switching to Italian, he told me if I ever mentioned his woman again, being gutted would be the least of my problems. Swapping back to English, he glanced at November. "You got sixty fucking seconds with this motherfucker." Echo about-faced and walked out.

Dropping my aim, I turned.

Slowly standing, November glanced from my shirt to the floor as he reached across his desk for his cell. "I'll have Talon Talerco come in."

"Make that call, and it'll be the last thing you do." I didn't need the former SARC combat medic that AES used for all things medical to throw some stitches. I needed to know how the fuck November had tapped in to the remaining locations. Nodding toward the computers, I shoved one of 9mms into my back waistband. "Who gave you those addresses?" They weren't even on my network.

November glanced again at the floor by my feet, but he didn't speak.

"You have five seconds to start downloading." And convince me not to eliminate him where he stood. I didn't need my Glock to end his life. "Who the fuck was it?"

"No one." Turning away from me, he picked up the keyboard on the desk behind him, moved the one I'd shot aside, and started typing. "I followed the trail." One by one, the computer screens flipped from the eighteen addresses to eighteen headshots.

Not just any headshots, but the images of my eighteen women, including Safiya.

Fucking speechless, I watched the screens flip again.

This time, eighteen IDs with eighteen aliases came up.

My arm was up, my Glock trained on him before I got the question out. "How?"

Standing over his keyboard, the hacker looked at me and hit two keystrokes. The screens started populating with maps and new headshots, this time of men, as he began listing a resumé of geographical locations—in the order I'd been to them. "Turkey, Abu Dhabi, South Sudan, Eritrea, Mexico City, Bolivia, Syria, Dubai, Columbia, Yemen, Houston, Belarus, Afghanistan, Libya, San Diego, Cuba, New York, Australia, and Dubai again." Arms at his sides, November stood to his full height. "Eighteen major human trafficking rings run by eighteen different HVTs, and with the exception of Turkey, you purchased a woman from each of them." Eyeing me with his blank stare, he made one more keystroke and the screens switched to documents. "You also married them. All under aliases. Except one."

The command room door opened, and Alpha strode in.