Chapter 20 My Dragon

Chapter 20

My Dragon

The house Skipper rented for us was nothing short of spectacular. Gator’s youth and computer prowess demanded that he be our IT guy, and he embraced the role. It took him less than half an hour to convert the great room into a war room. By the time the rest of the team planted themselves on the plush sofas and chairs facing the massive television above the mantle, Skipper was on a secure satellite link and filling the screen. A pair of cameras perched on the hearth and mantel delivered our image back to her in the CIC aboard the Lori Danielle .

Skipper kicked off the meeting. “Nice work on the aerial shots. I compiled them into a mosaic. You should see that on the television screen as well as each of your tablets.”

“Yep, we’ve got it,” I said.

She continued. “I’ll do the zooming from here, but if necessary, you’ll be able to do the same on your tablets in the field.”

The picture on the TV expanded until the roof of the house filled the screen. “Now I’ll turn on the floor plan layers. We’ll start with the ground floor. Keep in mind that the floor plans I have are what were submitted for the building permit. They should be reasonably accurate, but there could’ve been some remodeling or changes during construction.”

We studied the layout and moved through the second and third floor.

I asked, “How about the security system schematics? Can you overlay those?”

“Of course,” she said, and in seconds, the entire security system was displayed over the floor plans as well as the circuits to the exterior cameras.

I said, “Great job, Skipper. I wish we had intel like this on every op.”

Anya squinted and leaned toward the screen. “What is that symbol at top left of schematic?”

Skipper said, “I saw that, too. It says ‘stub’ in the legend, but I don’t know what it means.”

Mongo, the big brain in the room, said, “It could be a stub-out for future expansion if they decide to build on or add another exterior circuit.”

Skipper said, “That’s as good as anything I could come up with, but I can check with a couple security system guys if you think it’s important.”

“Make that happen,” I said. “I don’t like loose ends.”

She said, “Consider it done. Now, there’s one more thing I want to bring up that might qualify as a loose end.” The picture on the screen zoomed out until we could see several hundred feet around the house. “Take a look at the structure northwest of the main house. It’s not on Google Maps, so it’s likely new construction.”

“It’s a barn,” Disco said. “A nice one, but it’s just a barn.”

Skipper said, “The barn isn’t as interesting as what’s between the house and the barn. Look at the grass.”

I pinched the picture on my tablet until I was zoomed in on the area. “It’s new grass.”

Skipper said, “I don’t know about new, but it’s definitely a different color than the rest of the property. Maybe it’s a septic drain field and the grass gets more nutrients there than anywhere else. I don’t know, but there’s something different about it.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “What else do you have?”

“I’m sure you already know, but I marked the obvious ingress and egress routes from the northeast.”

“We picked those up, as well, but I’d like to come up with some alternates. Do you see anything that would prevent us from egressing to the west?”

She said, “There appears to be a fence running north and south, about a thousand feet to the west of the house, but it doesn’t look substantial on the aerials. If you can get through, over, or around the fence, there’s a county road running south. That could be a way out if things fall apart inside.”

I took the floor. “Here’s the plan. We’ll recon that fence before sundown, and if necessary, we’ll weaken or dismantle it. We’ll hit the house from the northeast.”

Singer raised a finger. “The only high ground I saw was the barn, so if you want me on overwatch, I’ll put myself on the roof.”

“Hold that thought,” I said. “Disco, how close can you get the Huey to the house without waking anybody up?”

“Not close enough to be a sniper platform if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s loud in cruise flight, but at a sustained hover outside ground effect, it would sound like thunder.”

I sighed. “So much for that idea. I guess we’re stuck with the roof.”

Singer said, “Let’s take a look at this from a tactical standpoint. There’s no way Barbour is expecting us. There was no evidence of physical security other than a couple of toy gates. This place isn’t Fort Knox, and who am I supposed to shoot?”

“Are you suggesting that we don’t need overwatch?” Kodiak asked.

Singer shrugged. “Can you come up with a scenario that would result in me pressing a trigger tonight?”

I knocked on the arm of my chair. “I hear you, but I’m putting you on that roof. I want your eyes on the environment while we’re inside.”

Our sniper nodded. “That settles it. Drop me in a direct line with the house and barn. I’ll move in just after dark and be in position within two hours, undetected.”

I said, “Let’s talk about QRF. Mongo, that’s you and Anya. Where do you want to stage?”

He glanced at the Russian. “Are we staging with the chopper or an SUV?”

Anya said, “You can fly Huey, yes?”

Mongo shook his head. “Absolutely not. But I assumed you could.”

“I can fly helicopter, but I have never flown Huey. Flying strange machine in darkness is not good idea. We should use vehicle.”

“Let’s make it plural,” I said. “We’ll take the seats out of the back of both Suburbans and stage the two of you at opposite ends of the property. That way, we can all quickly mount either vehicle. If you’re staged together and get cut off, that leaves us without support.”

“This is very good plan,” Anya said. “Who will bring Singer out for egress?”

“That depends on how Barbour wants to play it. If he gives us what we want, Singer will stay in place to cover our retreat. We can pick him up with the chopper or either vehicle. At that point, it won’t matter who sees us. We’ll have the goods, and we’ll be on our way home.”

“What if he doesn’t want to play ball?” Shawn asked.

“That’s when we get to have a little fun with him. I doubt it’ll take much persuasion to get him to tell us everything he knows. He’s a CEO, not a SEAL.”

Shawn lowered his chin. “You and I need to talk privately.”

I glanced around the room at the team who was as much a family as a fighting force. “I don’t know how you did it in the SEAL teams, but here, anything you need to say to me is perfectly fine to say in front of all of us.”

Shawn’s face hardened. “It would probably be better if we talked privately.”

A thousand scenarios poured through my head. Was Shawn unhappy on the team? Did he disapprove of how we planned missions together? Perhaps he was accustomed to having orders come down from some unseen officer, but I would never run my team on that formula.

“Can it wait?” I asked.

He never looked away. “It shouldn’t wait.”

I stood. “Excuse us for a minute.”

Shawn followed me through a set of double doors and onto the deck overlooking the stand of weather-beaten trees in the distance.

“What is it?”

He glanced back across his shoulder as if someone from inside might be listening in, and he seemed to consider what was about to come out of his mouth.

“Come on, Shawn. We’ve got a lot to do. Whatever’s on your mind can’t be as bad as you seem to believe. Let’s hear it.”

He took a long, deep breath. “It’s just something you need to know about me. We should’ve discussed it before now, but I haven’t been in a position with you guys for it to matter before this mission.”

“Spit it out. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it.”

He said, “I don’t have limits.”

I stared through his eyes in search of the depth of his revelation. “We all have limits. What are you talking about?”

He dusted off the top rail around the deck. “I mean, when it comes to interrogation, I don’t have limits. I’ll do whatever has to be done to get the information we need.”

I leaned against the rail. “I think you may have the wrong idea about what’s going to happen tonight. We’re going to wake up a man who’s most likely unarmed, and most certainly unprepared for a team of operators in his bedroom. He’ll be scared, confused, and most likely more than willing to tell us whatever he knows to get us to walk away. It’s not like we’re going to waterboard the guy.”

The newest member of my team shrugged. “I just want you to know how sharp the tools in your tool chest are. I don’t know if you’ve got an interrogator, or if maybe you are that guy, but I need you to know that I’m that guy if you need me.”

The emptiness in his eyes left me questioning my decision to bring him on board. Had I missed the signs of severe PTSD? Had I invited a psychopath inside my sacred circle?

I said, “Listen, if you need some time off to get your head straight…”

“My head is fine. I just need you to know that when you need a fire-breathing dragon, that’s what I am.”

The timing was wrong. I needed hours, and maybe days, to explore the inside of his head, but I had to take advantage of what little time I had. “Were you trained as an interrogator?”

“Yeah, but like all the meaningful lessons we learn in our world, the brutality of war was my teacher. I didn’t become a monster in a classroom. It happened in a cave in Afghanistan.”

Sometimes, just listening is the best way to ask a question, so that’s what I did.

Finally, he said, “I pushed a Taliban fighter to my limit instead of his, and I let him lie to me because I didn’t have the guts to push him over the edge of my cliff. I believed him when he spit out the location of his team through bloody lips and a broken body. I believed him, and we made our move based on what I pulled out of that lying, godless piece of trash. We made our move straight into the ambush his team had planned from the moment that bastard let himself get captured.”

He caught his breath and looked out over plains where I saw scrub brush and trees begging for water under the Texas heat, but what he saw was something impossibly different. He saw a cave in a mountain in Afghanistan, ten thousand miles from home, and a million miles from humanity.

He spat over the rail and drove his fist into the wood. “Six men. Six badass, hardcore frogmen died because I wouldn’t break one more bone and deliver just one more punch to make sure my prisoner was telling the truth. It should’ve been me. I should’ve been on point, but I wasn’t, and I survived while my six brothers died in that hellhole.”

Perhaps out of frustration or self-loathing, Shawn grabbed my shirt with a fist of iron and stared through me. “I killed those men. That’s on me because I was too weak to push that seventeen-year-old kid just a little further. Their bodies died that night, but part of me went with them. The part of me where limits live… That part of me is gone forever. And that’s what you need to know.”