“Got something,” he croaked into the troop net. “Something dead.”
Instantly their platoon medic, Cade, and Jaxon were by his side. Geo let his rifle hang from his shoulder as he slid the powerful flashlight from its sheath on his belt and switched it on, illuminating the single room.
“Jesus Christ.”
The interior of the small structure was splattered in blood, huge rusty pools of it soaked into the earthen floor. A machete lay on a table underneath some frayed ropes that dangled from the ceiling.
At his feet, the dog let out a distressed whine, something Geo had never heard him do. He reached down to give him a reassuring pat. “I feel it, too, bud.”
The evil permeating the room seemed to brush along Geo’s skin, echoes of screams lingering in his ears.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Jaxon said grimly. Cade’s face was bone white, eyes stark as he backed from the doorway.
“Boss?” Kelly called out. “Something wrong?”
Jaxon put his hand up to stop him from striding over. “Spare yourself. We’ve seen what they wanted us to see.”
Which was what? A warning? A diversion? Why was the cell phone planted to lure them here in the first place?
Geo could see the wheels turning in Jaxon’s head as his sharp gaze darted around the compound. This dude was a leader Geo would follow into the fiery depths of hell itself—calm, decisive, his emotions locked down and firmly in check. In contrast, Cade was shaking, his upper lip gleaming with sweat in the moonlight.
A frisson of alarm moved through Geo. This was not the time to be losing it. They had to get their asses out of this mess first.
As if hearing his thoughts, Cade made a visible effort to pull himself together, and when he spoke, his voice was calm. “What’s the plan?”
Jaxon turned to Geo. “Is there any other way out of here?”
Instantly he knew what he was thinking. “Yeah. There’s another gate by the animal pen.”
The small pen and nearby shed had just been searched—no bad guys or explosives—so if the cell phone wasn’t planted to lure them here and blow them up, then the ambush must be waiting for them outside.
As they grouped up to move toward the secondary gate, Bosch suddenly tilted his head back, sniffed the air, and bristled. Although he hadn’t made a sound, Geo paused. He knew all his tells, and this one was saying, “I smell something.”
Had the wind shifted? It had been coming from the north, and the dog hadn’t hit on anything before now. Geo held up his wind gauge. Sure enough, it was now coming from the east.
He gestured to get Jaxon’s attention. “I think we’re looking at contact from the east,” he said quietly. “They’ve crept up on us while we’ve been busy in here.”
“What’s over that way?”
Pulling up his mental maps, Geo replied, “Palm groves. A shit-ton of irrigation ditches. If they’re coming from that direction, the sniper couldn’t have seen them from here.”
The men shuffled their feet in anticipation, and one of them growled, “If they’re lookin’ for a fight, I say let’s give ’em a goddamn fight.”
They had a choice. Jaxon could call in air support, get an A-10 to swoop down from the sky and strafe the area with its powerful cannons. The bad guys would never know what hit them, and the last thing they’d hear would be the roar of a plane. They’d look up, and boom, lights out.
Geo glanced around the circle of grim faces. No. The men in the grove were ones who didn’t hesitate to burn young pilots alive in cages, or behead journalists on camera, or hang people up by their wrists and butcher them like pieces of meat. They deserved to see their death coming straight at them.
“Let’s go.”
In an overabundance of caution considering the rest of the compound was clear, Geo sent Bosch to inspect the secondary gate before anyone touched it, the hair on his arms prickling when the dog took a few whiffs, then sat.
“Nobody come any closer,” he said urgently. “He’s on odor.”
The SEALs froze.
Pulling out his flashlight again, Geo crouched and aimed the powerful beam at the base of the gate. Sure enough, a few thin wires gleamed.
“Fuckin’ toe-popper,” he pronounced. “Not enough to kill, but it would’ve taken off a leg or two.”
Heartfelt curses all around as the realization hit.
If someone had triggered the gate, in those first few minutes of confusion and chaos, the insurgents would’ve had the advantage. They would have swarmed in from the palm grove to pin the SEALs down in the compound like sitting ducks, turning them from aggressors into victims forced to fight for their lives. Booby-trapping the back gate instead of the front showed that the insurgents had a better understanding of SEAL tactics than they’d given them credit for.
But the bad guys had made a fatal miscalculation. They hadn’t expected the dog.
Jaxon didn’t have to give any orders. No one made any covert hand signals. They slipped out through the main gate and moved swiftly, silently, toward the palm grove. Next to Geo, Bosch trotted, head held high. His whole demeanor was different now—muscles coiled, body straining, as if he knew his next command wouldn’t be to search, but to attack...
“Reveiren!”
At Geo’s hiss, the dog streaked off, low to the ground. He veered straight toward a thicket of heavy brush, and with no hesitation, plunged through it. A beat of silence before unearthly screams pierced the air.
Not bothering with stealth anymore, the team ran into the thicket, ignoring the thorns that tore at their uniforms. Busting through to the other side, they were greeted by the sight of Bosch crushing a man’s right arm in his powerful jaws. Blood sprayed everywhere as the dog shook him violently, the dude’s AK-47 falling uselessly to the ground.
Arrayed on either side of him, his fellow insurgents knelt frozen in shock and horror. One of them caught sight of the SEALs looming out of the darkness, and with a shout, he raised his weapon.
Too little, too late. A ferocious burst of gunfire later, six enemy fighters lay dead.
Growls and screams suddenly came from yet another thicket, and Geo darted over to see Bosch clamped onto the forearm of a man who didn’t look to even be out of his teens. He eased his finger from the trigger when he saw no sign of a weapon, and called the dog off.
The boy was sobbing, his arm a mess of blood.
Bellowing “Medic!” Geo jerked the barrel of his gun to motion the kid out of the brush, only then seeing a narrow black tube with some familiar-looking shells lying next to it.
An RPG launcher.