Into the Storm Read Free Page A

doing both that was going to be a challenge.
    “I’ve got enough C4 to blow that cave shut,” Gillman said.
    “Yeah, with you in it,” Silverman pointed out. Mr. Doom and Gloom.
    “Not necessarily,” Izzy said.
    “Are
you
volunteering?” Silverman came back at him, his normally half-closed eyes opening wide. “Because that’s a strong sign that a plan is totally fucked.” He looked to Jacquette for confirmation. “If Psycho here actually wants to—”
    “I didn’t say that,” Izzy spoke over him. “I say we call in the airstrike, then run like hell to safety, which just happens to be across the border. With an immediate extraction, who’s going to know?”
    Jenkie glanced at his watch, on top of every detail, as usual. “Helo’s not available for extraction for another six hours,” he reported.
    “What the fuck?” Izzy said, speaking for all of them, looking to Jacquette for confirmation. Six
hours
? “Sir?”
    The lieutenant nodded. “Secretary of Defense is visiting Kabul today.”
    Holy Jesus. Was that really a mission with priority over this one?
    So in other words, they didn’t just have to run, they also had to hide. For six freaking hours. And yes, there were caves aplenty out there in the mountains, but the enemy had the advantage. They knew this terrain inside and out. Plus,
they
didn’t give a flying fuck about any alleged borders.
    “We can take photos, get faces for intel to identify,” Silverman suggested.
    “But if we don’t stop them…” The new guy, Orlikowski, started to protest as if it were an actual possibility that all they’d do was take snapshots.
    Doing that—the equivalent of nothing—wouldn’t sit well with any of them. Izzy knew that each time some boots-on-the-ground grunt was killed by a sniper or an IED, they’d all get a bad taste in their mouths and a twisting in their gut, thinking about all those weapons and ammo that got away.
    “We’re not walking away from this,” the lieutenant intoned in his best voice-of-God imitation.
    Jenk spoke up. “I got an idea,” he said, in that barely-old-enough-to-vote, gee-whiz-sounding voice that made Izzy think his next words were going to be
We can hold the pep rally in my dad’s barn!
“Permission to liberate one of the insurgents, sir.”
    Lieutenant Jacquette was African American. He had a broad face, with dark skin and a nose similar to the one Jacko had traded in, back when he was handsome. Jacquette was a very good-looking man—Izzy knew because he’d dated plenty of women who’d made a point to tell him so. But the lieutenant’s default expression was of having just stepped in shit. It could have won him a fortune playing Texas Hold ’Em, because it never changed.
    Never.
    Well, okay, maybe it changed a little, depending on whether the shit he’d stepped in came from a dog or a bull. But you had to know him really well to be able to tell that difference.
    The man was also about twice the size of Jenkins. But Jacquette clearly knew Jenk well enough not to be fooled by his about-to-turn-nineteen, grade-A student, baby-faced Boy Scout appearance.
    “Anyone in particular?” he asked Jenk dryly. “Or just any old insurgent?”
    “His name’s Yusaf Ghulam-Khan,” Jenk said, because no matter where they went and what they were doing, he automatically knew everything and everyone. And the best way to manipulate them. Izzy knew right then that the SEALs were not going to leave this mountainside dissatisfied. Or in body bags.
    Jenk continued. “Let me tell you, sir, exactly how he can help us….”
             
    “Yusaf! Thank God!” Jenk dug deep, using all of his experience and talent as the team’s best liar to give the man a sincere-sounding greeting. It took everything he had in him to look into the bastard’s eyes without fear of betraying his true desire, which involved use of his KA-BAR knife.
    The man was terrified. Who wouldn’t be after getting grabbed by Izzy and Danny Gillman