“We are.”
“Do you have a track on the aircraft?”
The colonel opened the door into the “war room.” A wall-size screen lit up. Rows of manned computers packed the room. She gestured toward the screen. “Our stolen aircraft headed away from the coast and is now turning south. Fighters have launched from Homestead, but they really can’t reach out to them until a tanker from MacDill gets to the area. Any idea where the general’s headed?”
“No, ma’am.” McCabe cleared his brain of distracting thoughts of Rachel playing with her dog. Or her standing down an alligator. Of her face just before he kissed her.
He focused everything he was and everything he’d learned on this moment. He studied the electronic map showing the stolen aircraft and the F-16s waiting farther south.
“Looks like we could cut them off if we took an angle and stayed near the coast.” The logical plan of action took shape in his mind, the one a team leader should propose. He was zeroed in for Rachel. “What do you think about getting my team on the alert plane? Have the F-16s force the airplane down in the water instead. Then we can parachute in with rafts and secure survivors until the chopper arrives.”
“Roll it,” the colonel said without hesitation.
She’d accepted his long-shot plan, one that stood such a miniscule chance at succeeding, even he couldn’t believe he’d suggested it. Yet what other choice did he have, to save Rachel?
Less than ten minutes later, Liam and his team piled out of a bus up the back ramp of an HC-130. Propellers were already turning. The loadmaster pointed the team to the troop seats lining the walls in the rear of the aircraft, the same red nylon and metal tubing, uncomfortable seats they had spent countless hours strapped to. Before they were even settled in, the ramp was coming up and the plane was taxiing toward the runway.
He took in the faces around him, the gritty resolution in their eyes, the readiness to give their all for the pararescueman’s motto, “These Things We Do, That Others May Live.” That today, Rachel would live.
These were his men. His team. There wasn’t anyone on earth he’d rather have with him. And yet something about his plan didn’t sit right with him. His team would follow him. He didn’t doubt that for a second. However, something tugged at the back of his brain, a sense that there had to be another way, one that didn’t involve Rachel stuck inside a plane crash-landing into the ocean.
McCabe unstrapped from his seat and moved up to the cockpit and the communication station. Studying the radar screen, he watched the blip, blip, blip of light pulsing like a heartbeat. That light was his only connection to Rachel.
He tapped the staff sergeant manning the position on the shoulder. “What is the status of the target?”
The sergeant moved one of the cups of his headset off his ear. “The F-16s have just left the tanker and will intercept in ten minutes.”
“What are their orders?”
“They are going to intercept and attempt to turn them back toward the United States, forcing them down into water. Air traffic controllers tell us he’s having a helluva time flying the plane. He’s all over the place.”
“And if they don’t turn back?” he asked, even though he already knew. Hope was a crazy bastard that ignored reason.
“They were told to be prepared to shoot them down, but they are weapons tight right now.”
Weapons tight, not allowed to shoot yet. He didn’t like the notion “yet.” And he wasn’t feeling as good about the plan of an erratic pilot’s ability to crash-land in the ocean.
McCabe patted the sergeant on the back and headed aft to the team waiting in the cargo bay.
Barely contained fury welled inside him for coming back to the base. Anger at himself. Had he been so eager to push her away with both hands—so cry-ass scared of taking a chance with her—that he’d missed a warning sign that they were walking into a trap? He would not accept, could not accept, that anything would happen to her on his watch.
He paced the metal deck, then stopped and stared at a winch fixed to the aircraft. An alternate plan formed in his mind. An even crazier plan than the one he’d proposed first, and a plan he would never assign to anyone on his team.
But then he wasn’t asking them to carry it out.
This was his mission. His woman. No room for failure, because a world without Rachel…
Facing his team, Liam cleared his throat and his thoughts. Lining up his plan. Becoming one with the uniform as he’d intended since he was eleven years old, patting his mother’s hand while they watched old war movies. He would win this battle or die trying.
“Hey, did you ever see that movie where a special-ops guy is lowered from one airplane to another to save the president?”
Rocha stared at the winch and shook his head. “Yeah, and I thought it was bullshit Hollywood glitz. Besides, that was a different kind of plane than this. I don’t think that would have a chance of working unless the back ramp was down. You can’t just open the doors from the outside, and the props are way too close anyway.”
“Valid points”—which was why he had a team, to think through all angles—“but if the ramp is still down… If Sullivan didn’t close it after takeoff because he’s a fighter pilot, unfamiliar with the cargo plane… If we flew at just the right altitude above him so he can’t get a visual on us…”
Cuervo asked, “What makes you think that he just won’t crash the plane once the PJ boards?”
That part was easy. He’d had a wealth of training on getting inside a person’s head after all his time in therapy. And from the start, he’d had the general’s number—an intense narcissist. Once he was face-to-face with the guy, he knew just how to play the bastard. “I don’t believe that anything is more important to General Sullivan than General Sullivan. He won’t risk a crash landing. If he was on a suicide mission, he would have shot himself back in his office.”