Chapter Ten

Nomad

Nomad sailed the air, and it was glorious!

The arc of the Milky Way, unimpeded by light pollution or much of a moon's glow, was a river of stars.

The landing, though …

The success of a HAHO depended on precision. Nomad toggled this way and that, using the current to help him get to the exact X to meet up with his team.

This X was in the desert, where a layer of dust and sand covered a surface baked into a hard crust. It was hell on the ankles. Sand landings were abrasive as hell when you hit a dune. But sand landings on baked earth were the worst.

As soon as he got his boots under him, Nomad yanked off his protective clothing and oxygen. Gathering the chute and equipment, Nomad checked the GPS, then jogged the distance to the rendezvous.

He'd come close to the X, but a new pin had dropped, signifying an updated rallying point.

When he joined the team, Nomad saw why. There was a slight indentation where they dumped everything that wouldn't serve this mission and its cover. The dirt was too hard here to do much with it. They had a shovel with them, but any digging would be obvious, hence the utility of the indent.

"There he is," Havoc said. "We thought we'd lost you, sunshine."

"Had my head in the clouds." Nomad piled his things with the others'.

T-Rex sent that pin to headquarters so the brass could make a decision. American soldiers at a base to the southeast might be able to retrieve the equipment.

They stretched the camo cloth over their pile and moved heavy rocks along the edges so a high wind wouldn't send one of their parachutes sailing off to some sheep farm and rouse curiosity.

Meanwhile, Ty and Rory had gone in search of the vehicle intelligence had promised them. Aside from the multitool that each of them had clipped to their belts, Rory was the team's only weapon.

And if this turned out to be some kind of ambush, Rory could sniff out any bombs or bad guys that might be in the area.

The ping of a pin dropping onto their map told the team that the vehicle had been located; they were good to go.

With Havoc at the wheel, the team drove through the dark of night.

It was an hour's drive, and there was literally no one and nothing out this way. Not even the goats mentioned in jest.

There was no way they would have made it if Grey hadn't come through with an SUV for them.

A day late, a lost opportunity, a traitorous terrorist in the wind, four US operators, and a K9 in a volatile country without food or water.

Yeah, things could have gone to hell.

But they'd arrived at the second X. With the engine off and the car in neutral, Havoc let gravity roll the vehicle into a low-lying area, where he threw the gear into park.

The house was a silhouette against a black nightscape.

Making their way forward, there wasn't much in the way of cover. The men lizard-crawled to keep even the sliver of a moon from spotlighting them.

While the team left every extraneous piece of operational equipment back at the fill site, they had to keep a headset with night vision to drive with the lights off and also the equipment to trick Rory out with his high-dollar electronics.

It was possible—though not probable—that someone declaring authority would believe that the group of friends, lost wandering the Syrian desert, were indeed content developer hobbyists who used their doggo to make side money. There actually was a Tik-Tok with Rory fans, though, on social media, they used his official name, "Glory."

Nomad was told the team call him Rory because that's how Rory pronounced his name himself. They'd laugh like it was the funniest thing ever while Nomad shook his head. Had to be an inside joke.

Glory's fame, though, was developed to cover just such a case when equipment might need an explanation. Rory's doggy helmet had a place to attach a camera that fed to Ty's tablet. There was a two-way mic attached to his collar. He wore a protective vest rated for small-arms fire and stab wounds to his vitals.

And when Rory dressed out, he knew he was badass.

He embraced it, strutting around, tongue hanging long as he panted with anticipation.

Send me in, coach!

Ty dispatched Rory to circle the farmhouse, managing Rory's movements through commands softly spoken over the comms collar. This skill was trained and drilled until Rory could work independently. From past experience, Nomad knew that the images that would come back were, unfortunately, only as high as Rory's head, about hip height to most. Even though Ty had taught Rory to lift his chin and scan, the angle still wouldn't be ideal. But it would still be invaluable information.

Besides showing the team the exterior, Rory's current task was to draw any dog barks so there wouldn't be surprises later.

While their dog was a force multiplier, the other guy's dogs were an impediment.

"Rory, sit." Ty pointed at the tablet's screen with the eerie green images. "See the open window there? I can get Rory up onto that wall. There, he gets up some speed for momentum as he moves over this lower roof and jumps through the window."

The team's eyes had adjusted to the dim light. And they could see enough to have a sense of the environment, losing only details and color.

"There's enough clearance for his equipment?" Havoc asked.

"Rory will figure it out." Ty was confident.

"That looks like a good place to infiltrate from a ground game," T-Rex said. "Depending on what's on the other side of that window. Yup. We can try that. I didn't see another access point that's workable. And I'd rather not kick a door down and go hand to hand tonight."

"Agreed." Ty recalled Rory.

When Rory came back to Ty to sit and wait for commands, Nomad noticed that he caught Ty's eye in the meaningful way that dogs do. From working alongside dogs and their handlers for nearly two decades, Nomad knew they passed pictures back and forth, silently communicating. After a moment, Ty handed off the tablet to T-Rex and came up to a crouch. When Rory turned to focus on the window, Nomad knew that Rory agreed with the game plan. "Rory, sit and wait."

Rory's body quivered with the effort to follow the command as Ty lined himself up with the window and jogged to the wall. Rory's ears twitched toward Ty, waiting for the command so soft that only Rory could pick it up.

Once Ty reached the wall, he used his body to make a ramp.

Rory was a bolt of lightning. He flashed across the ground, ran up Ty's body, and up the wall until his front paws looped over the top of the second-story roof and scrambled over.

Ty moved back so the team could assess the images and get a feel for the interior.

Nomad watched as Rory stopped and assessed the window, then took a run at it. Leaping through, he dropped to a crouch, completely silent and still to avoid notice.

No other heat signatures were showing up in the warm end of the spectrum. "Rory, hold," Ty commanded through the mic.

"Door's shut," Nomad whispered.

Ty enlarged the screen. "If it's not locked, Rory can open that kind of lever." He toggled the mic and made his command. Slowly, silently, Rory cased the entire house following Ty's instructions.

The team evaluated the heat signatures and relied on the AI readout to tell them the approximate heights of the people asleep in their beds. From this, the team had a good idea of where Poole was and how to get to him.

They were risking their lives on the intelligence packet.

Some terrorist cell might well have set a trap for the Deltas to step into.

It could also be that there was no Poole in this house, and they were about to break in on an innocent family.

Life was rarely clear-cut and well-defined.

In this line of work, that was especially true.

Nomad prepped three syringes and taped them to his chest, ready.

Ty recalled Rory, who continued out in stealth mode. He made his way over to the edge of the roof, and Ty held out his arms as Rory leaped down. "Good job, buddy." The reward would come later. Rory could be patient. He knew Ty wouldn't forget.

T-Rex handed off the night vision to Nomad since it would be his job to administer the meds to Poole.

Ty moved back out of view with Rory, his job done.

Now, T-Rex, Ty, and Havoc were up.

Over at the compound, Havoc put his hands on the wall as Nomad and T-Rex bent and grabbed his lower legs. Havoc stepped into their palms and, walking his hands up the wall for stability, T-Rex and Nomad stood, then extended their arms to their full length, lifting Havoc cheerleader style.

Havoc reached up, gripping the edge, then did a Russian pull-up, swinging a leg over. There, he secured a rope. And moments later, walking up the wall, Nomad then T-Rex climbed the rope hand over hand to join him.

Through the window, down the hall, Nomad, with night vision in place, led the way to the bedroom where they had identified a figure that was their best guess on Poole.

Comparing a guy with his face pressed into a pillow, mouth wide to accommodate heavy snores, to a memorized photo could be tricky with night vision. Sometimes, they needed an AI assist, but not this time. This guy was obviously blond. He sported a fresh military-tight hairstyle. And then, there was also the big old bald eagle with the American flag tattoo on his bicep, right where it was supposed to be.

When Nomad gave his teammates a thumbs up, T-Rex turned his hip to sit violently on the sleeping man's back, pressing all the air from Poole's chest. Simultaneously, he wrapped Poole's mouth to suppress any noise. T-Rex's pinky and ring finger curved under Poole's chin, trapping his jaw together so Poole couldn't bite or spit.

"Hey there," T-Rex curved to whisper into Poole's ear, "your buddies were missing you back at the base. Looks like you got a little lost. We're gonna take you home."

Guttural sounds resonated from Poole's throat, and Nomad thought he might be trying to barf.

Nomad stepped forward, pulling the first syringe from his t-shirt, and plunged it into Poole's deltoid.

Poole flailed his feet, pounding them into the bed to make noise.

Havoc simply laid across them as Nomad took the top off the second syringe and administered that dose, carefully putting each top into his pocket. Leave no trace.

"This is what we call a B52," T-Rex explained, lifting his weight off Poole so he could breathe again. "You know why? ‘Cause it's the bomb, man."

As Poole sucked in a giant gulp of air, Nomad plunged the third shot into his thigh.

Havoc stayed on Poole's legs. T-Rex kept Poole's mouth tightly shut.

Soon enough, he was out.

As they pulled back his sheet, they found Poole was naked.

Of course, he was.

They wrapped him up in his covers, and Nomad threw him over his shoulder.

Havoc grabbed Poole's belongings and shoved them into his duffle. The men stole their way down the hall, back through the storage room, and out the window. They handed Poole down to the rooftop. Then they tied the rope under his arms and lowered him to Ty.

"Naked? Serious?" Ty was dressing him as the three climbed back down the rope.

"He's ready?" T-Rex asked. They put Poole in the middle of the blanket. T-Rex and Nomad took hold of the front corners since they were the same height. Havoc took both back corners with the weight of Poole's legs and feet.

With Rory leading the way, on the command, "Rory, find the car." They headed to their vehicle, dumped Poole in the back with Nomad, and made a beeline for the coast.

So far, so good.