Page 15

“We told her exactly what I explained to all of you. We said that we basically had a miniaturized stingray unit embedded in her phone.”

“So, she’s going to be expecting us to not only know exactly where she’s at but also who has her, and what they’re talking about. Is that correct?”

Jerry said nothing. He just nodded.

“Asshole,” Lincoln mumbled to his friend Jase Drakos, who was sitting beside him.

“Tell us what we do know,” Captain Evers demanded.

“Agent Hopkins—”

“Elijah?” Captain Evers clarified.

“Yes.”

“Don’t switch names mid-stream,” the captain told him.

Jerry nodded.

“We’ve got a feed here in Langley that shows Elijah’s progress. They still haven’t made it far enough out of Damascus to determine if they are going to one of the two highways.”

“I want that feed sent here,” Kostya said.

“We need—” Jerry started.

“All we’re asking is that you give us the coded transmission so that we can access the feed. The ship, as well as our team, has the necessary security to keep this information from being breached.”

“I can understand sending it to an aircraft carrier, but are you suggesting I send a feed to a deployed Navy SEAL team? That’s preposterous.”

“Seems to me like your feed isn’t worth a shit, so why should you care?” Jase Drakos drawled.

Linc kept his features neutral, and he noticed everybody in the room did, too, including the captain. It was good old Jerry who looked ready to blow a gasket.

“We’re going to get this worked out. We’ve already demanded that they get their development team here immediately to work on this situation. The chief technology officer has promised to come to Langley. They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

“Meanwhile, your team could be dead by then,” Kostya said. “Send the feed.” He stood up and looked at Captain Evers.

“You heard the man establish two channels.” Evers glared at the screen. “I want it done in less than an hour. These men will be heading in.”

“I’m not sure we can get that done in an hour,” good ole Jerry admitted.

“Yes, you can. If you can’t, fire yourself and have your boss hire someone who can.” The captain picked up the remote and turned off the screen. He turned to the second in command on their team, Gideon Smith. “I’ve heard good things about you, Smith. Come with me, and I’ll have you meet some of the people who work in comms. I think you might enjoy checking out some of our equipment.”

Even from the back row, it was easy to see Gideon’s grin. He might be a SEAL, but he was a tech geek at heart.

“Kostya, you have the mission plans on getting into either Lebanon, Syria, or Turkey. Why don’t you run through those and tell me what you need.”

“Will do.” Kostya nodded as the captain and Gideon left the room. Their lieutenant turned his attention back to them. “Since Gideon decided to go play, you’re stuck with me running things.” Kostya opened up the laptop that Gideon had left at his seat and started keying. He only swore once before he picked up the remote control that the captain had used to turn off the monitor. The screen fired up and there was a map of Syria, along with a cursor.

“We have three different plans to infiltrate Syria, depending on where we want to go.”

Lincoln looked at the map. He’d been betting that they were going to Turkey; showed how little he knew. The fact that either of the two countries was busy with internal political power plays when they were still dealing with catastrophic human and infrastructure losses after the earthquake was unbelievable.

“Where are you thinking they’re headed?” Ryker asked their lieutenant.

Kostya gave him the side-eye.

“Yeah,” Ryker grinned. “It’ll be Highway 2 or Highway 7. Either will get them started to Northeast Syria.”