He hadn’t wanted to involve too many team members in the rescue, but he decided on having enough fail-safes in place that any miscalculation wouldn’t end with a loss of life.
As the boats inflated, the men changed into their scuba gear, geared up, and double-checked their equipment. Then he and three of his men climbed into one of the boats and five went into the other to wait for his signal.
Glancing down at his watch, he saw it was almost time. Adrenaline was coursing through his bloodstream as he raised the high-powered scope, watching for the plane that should be within sight any minute.
Spotting it, he climbed into the four-man, black, powered boat that would blend into the sea swells, making them invisible to the naked eye. Raising his hand, he waited for the signal he was looking for, and when the wing of the plane dipped, then righted itself then dipped again, he dropped his hand and immediately lowered his body down to the belly of the boat as it took off.
As the plane dove toward the ocean, all he could do was wait for the final act of his meticulous plan to play out. Every part of this mission rested on his shoulders. Not only had he chosen the men in the boats, he’d picked the pilot because of his expertise in flying high-risk missions.
He wasn’t as good a pilot as Bull, but he was damn close. Bull could set a chopper or an airplane down on a dime, and he needed that expertise for the mission’s success.
This was his last mission, and he had no intention of ending his command on a failure. He had spent years kissing higher-ups’ asses to get the promotion he was about to step into. He earned it by sacrificing the woman he loved and the life they could have had together. He hadn’t been willing to leave his career, which was the only thing that meant more to him than her. As much as he wanted to, the time for making a different choice had come and gone; it was too late for regrets.
Turning his head, he maneuvered himself to the dive door. He would be the first one in the water. The man he picked as his replacement would be readying to do the same thing from the other boat. Like him, failure wasn’t in his vocabulary.
Body taut, he watched as the plane took a nosedive toward the ocean. As it did, his own stake in the success of the mission had him wanting to get in the water too soon, like a competitive swimmer too impatient to wait for the signal to go off. However, a false start could not only cost the lives of the girls they were rescuing but also the future he worked so hard to achieve.
It didn’t dent his conscious one bit that he was cold-bloodedly going to use the mission he commanded to further his own agenda. He wouldn’t be the first government official who sacrificed his morals to attain his level of power, and he wouldn’t be the last. The meticulous preparation the military drilled into him assured the success of the calculated operation he’d devised for the mission. The only thing standing in his way was the survival of the three-year-old little girl on the plane, who had the potential to ignite a powder keg between nations from her knowledge. Not only did she unwittingly hold their fate in her hands, she held his. His enemies would laugh their heads off that Major Timothy Cooper, who had destroyed more than one military career with a single word, now had his own career hanging in the balance.
As soon as the nose of the plane was within kissing distance of the ocean, he would be in the water. Fear that the plane could come crashing down on him was nothing compared to the horror his life would become if his private life was exposed. Unlike the man who would be expertly swimming by his side, who still believed in the job he would be taking over, but who didn’t know it had been carefully maneuvered into a shadowy plan without his knowledge.
The sound of the plane coming closer had the muscles in his thigh bunching, preparing to push himself through the open door. For the first time, he feared he wouldn’t succeed.
In this position, he had to turn over the split-second timing to another team member to give the final signal; too soon and the plane could come crashing down on them, too late and the girls—most importantly the three-year-old—would drown.
The hairs on his body tingled under his suit as two other divers prepared to follow him into the murky water, visible from the see-through door.
“Go! Go!”
Within a millisecond he was gliding through the water, toward a future that not even a body of water as vast as the ocean was strong enough to keep him from claiming.