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“She’s back here in the United States. That’s all I’m at liberty to share.” She turned back to Captain Hale. “Thank you again for your hospitality, Sir.”
She eased out of the door, kind of like a snake would, and everybody remained silent until the door clicked shut and they heard the sound of her high heels fade away.
“Gideon, what is the latest report on Kostya?” Hale demanded to know.
Gideon looked down at his tablet. “Still in surgery. More blood is on standby, but they don’t think he’ll need it.”
The Captain gave a quick jerk of his head.
“Okay, this is what the CIA isn’t telling us. They’ve done ops with Kraken Elite before. They don’t want anybody to know, because Frank Sykes is psychotic, but according to Langley, he and his team have been known to get things done when they can’t.”
Ryker couldn’t stop his lip from curling. “Was Callahan covering for Sykes in her report, or was she telling the truth?” he asked.
“Her job is on the line. She can’t finesse it with the Navy like she can with her superiors, so she’s telling the truth.”
“Then she might want to stop wearing so much perfume, it just makes me think she’s lying,” Mateo sneered.
“Yeah, well, you’re sitting in the back,” Gideon griped. “Think how bad it was for the Captain and me.”
“Captain,” Linc raised his hand. “Do you think the CIA had anything to do with them finding out who we were?”
“I truly can’t answer that question, Lincoln. But I’m going to have Gideon, Kane, Dev, and Clint looking into Kraken. Looking deep. I want to find out if two hundred years ago one of the Kraken men ever shared a saddle with a relative of someone who currently works at the CIA.”
“That would be our pleasure,” Gideon smiled.
“Tell me who all interacted with Kraken Elite, and specifically Sykes?”
Four voices shouted out, “Ryker.”
Ryker slumped down in his chair. “Come on, Nolan, you were the one who told him he would need surgery on his balls.”
“That was only after you called him needle dick for the seventeenth time, and he made a point of saying he would remember you,” Nolan called back.
Captain Hale sighed. “So it’s fair to say you both made an impression.”
Ryker and Nolan nodded.
“From what I remember in the debrief, it was only Landon, Nolan, Ryker, Linc, and Kostya who were there in Bismil, is that correct? So you were the ones who had real interactions with the man?”
“Not Linc,” Ryker said. “He was our sniper from the other building. They never saw him.”
“And they never saw the lieutenant,” Landon said. “He was hidden back inside the house, covering everything that was going on in the courtyard. So they really shouldn’t have targeted him.”
“They would have though, because he’s the leader of our team,” Gideon explained to Landon. “But how did they find out about our team?”
“That is the question, now isn’t it?” Captain Hale said. “Thanks for coming in tonight. You’re all dismissed. I’ll be in touch.”
23
“You do realize that Jada freaked Amy way the hell out, right?” Ryker asked Gideon.
Gideon rubbed the top of his head, then nodded. “Yeah, she can get that way sometimes.”
“I really wished she wouldn’t have done that. Amy has enough on her plate right now.”
Gideon looked over at Ryker from where he had been writing names on the whiteboard. “Are you saying you would have liked Amy flying down here last night? Come on, get real. Amy freaked out about some possible shit going on, or you and I really freaked the fuck out because Amy could be the target of a bomb at any goddamn minute, are two different things.”
Ryker shook out his hands, glad he wasn’t writing on the damned whiteboard, because his lettering would be unrecognizable. He kept thinking about Jerrod’s friend Lee, and how that psycho had his parents killed.
