Pushed to the Edge (SEAL Team 14)

by Mathis, Loren

  “Since we started receiving intel from the CIA that a rogue terrorist group was in the market for smallpox samples, the CDC has been working overtime, jointly with several U.S. laboratories to create a stockpile of the smallpox vaccine. But as of today, we are still tens of millions of vaccines short of what we would need to effectively vaccinate everyone,” Admiral Taylor said. He leaned forward against the table, stretching his hands out.

  “We’re going to be deploying sixteen men from Team Eleven and twenty-eight men from Team Fourteen to their respective areas and they will be wheels up within the next forty-eight hours. On the plane ride, each member will be briefed on what the plan of action is which we hope to have formulated within the next few hours,” Taylor said.

  “Our intelligence agents in the regions have tight deadlines to get back to us with the needed information—and they will use whatever means are necessary to get the intel to us in time,” Gerard added.

  “Okay men, if there are no more questions, you need to go ahead and notify the soldiers that we will be sending out. You are dismissed,” Taylor said, concluding the meeting.

  Chapter Thirteen

  J

  oshua dropped his duffle bag with a loud thump on the wooden floor that covered the entryway of his three-bedroom rental home in San Diego.

  Because he was one of the senior members of Team Fourteen, he had had the choice of living outside of the military base. Joshua had decided to rent a small bungalow, which was only a few minutes’ drive from the base. After a decade of living in military housing—he had needed the space to stretch out.

  In addition, after their parents died six years ago, he and his sister Emmani had become close—they were all the family each other had. Even after moving away to attend college, his sister still frequently spent time with him, at least when he happened to be stateside. She was living in Texas now and working at a children’s hospital as a pediatric nurse.

  Both Emmani and Josh had inherited their mother’s dark hair, olive skin tone, and shimmering light brown eyes. Their mother had been Italian American, and their father had been French American. Given all that they had been through, he was exceedingly protective of his little sister, who had flown the coop by moving to from their home in California for college. But she adored her big brother and still visited him for every major holiday.

  After almost a year of overseas missions, he was happy to be home. He and a few other members of his team had been called away from Germany in mid-October to complete a special assignment. Upon the assignment’s conclusion, their CO had ordered them back to NAB Coronado.

  The group was still waiting for the go ahead to move on the members of the Haqqai network, but until then they were to remain stateside. As one of the best snipers on SEAL Team Fourteen—really one of the best sharpshooters in the country—Will had been sent on yet another special ops mission and was still OCONUS.

  Since his return to California, Joshua had been completing a series of training exercises with the section of his team that had returned home from various missions. Today, he had requested a couple of days off given that he’d virtually been on duty without any break days for the past ten months.

  Joshua closed and locked the door behind him and then immediately headed straight for the shower. He stepped out about twenty minutes later to the sound of his cell phone ringing. He quickly wrapped a towel around himself and picked up his phone. He didn’t recognize the number that appeared across the screen.

  “Laurent, here.”

  “Josh,” a lowered female voice replied.

  “Hey, who is this?”

  “Josh, it’s me Victoria. I need your help.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Joshua asked. He couldn’t believe that she was contacting him after all this time. He hadn’t heard the sound of her voice in two years, but could tell that she was scared to death by the way that her voice was quivering.

  “I think I’m in big trouble. I’ve been looking into Congressman Henning’s kidnapping. I was with him two days ago when he was shot,” Victoria said softly in that gravelly voice of hers.

  “What? Why?” Joshua was completely confused. Victoria was a local crime reporter so it didn’t make sense that she would be investigating such a big national case for the Dallas Star Gazette.

  “It’s a long story, Josh. It’s too long to go over it on the phone. Can you pick me up?”

  “I’m not in Texas. I’m in San Diego,” he responded. “I have the next few days off, so I can catch a flight out—”

  “No, I’m in San Diego. I took the Greyhound and got in this evening. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “What? You took the bus?” Joshua stopped before he asked her what happened to her car, it didn’t really matter how she got here. What mattered was that she was here. “Are you still at the bus station?”

  “Yes, I’m at the passenger pick up area.”

  “Are you calling from your cell phone?” Joshua wanted to know so that he could save her number on his phone in case he needed to contact her before he arrived at the station of if he couldn’t find her when he got there.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’m on my way right now.” Joshua hung up the phone and threw on a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. He crammed his feet into his sneakers and grabbed his holster, gun, and a couple of extra clips. Joshua never left the house without his weapon and extra ammunition.

  After locking up, he hustled to his vehicle and jumped behind the steering wheel of his grey 2008 Land Rover. It would take him a little over fifteen minutes to drive down to the Greyhound station on National Avenue.

  His mind was reeling. He had heard the news about Richard Henning’s most recent attack. Joshua had been in this business a long time. It didn’t take a genius to realize that Henning’s recent string of misfortune wasn’t just bad luck. Someone had been gunning for him, quite literally.

  Unfortunately, this time Henning’s good luck had completely run out. He’d been shot through the chest and stomach at point blank range with a .44 caliber weapon. He hadn’t even made it off the operating table.

  Henning had been actively hunted and had been marked for death, likely by the very same people who had kidnapped him—terrorists. Now Victoria had managed to get herself twisted up all of the chaos. His Victoria. It was funny to think that after all this time, he still thought of her as his.

  Joshua’s feelings weren’t just some base male instinct that recognized Victoria as an object to be possessed. No, despite the distance that had formed between the two of them over the past year, he still cared for her. Joshua wanted to protect this woman—a woman whom he had desperately been in love with at one point in his life.

  Truthfully, a part of him didn’t want to see her again, to risk the chance of forming another emotional attachment to her. But whatever had happened between them in the past, he couldn’t actually bring himself to say no to her when she needed his help, especially if she was in physical danger.

  Approximately fifteen minutes later, Joshua pulled up to the passenger pick up area of the bus station. There were at least a dozen people milling around outside, either waiting to be picked up or waiting for a bus to depart. Also, standing outside, close to the taxicab service area, was Victoria Sanchez.

  At last, they meet again.

  He pulled up to the curb and Victoria recognized his jeep immediately. She quickly moved toward his vehicle, meandering around a couple of absent-minded passengers who were clutching their luggage and peering at the widescreen monitor that displayed the daily bus schedules.

  Joshua unlocked the doors and reached across the push open the door for her. He would have helped her with her bags too, but she only had one carryall that was hanging from a loop off her shoulder. He studied her as she got into the car.

  She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, her long chestnut brown hair hung loose, down past her shoulders. She had lost a little weight since the last time he’d seen her—but she still had th
ose amazing curves that had always made him drool. No anorexic model types for him, thank you. Joshua was the type of man who liked a woman with a little meat on her bones.

  “Vicki.”

  “Hi Josh,” Victoria said, looking at him with big brown eyes. Her sunglasses were resting in a perch on top of her head. Her dark brown hair was hanging in loose waves down past her shoulders. She looked completely stressed out. Her eyes were bloodshot and her normally vibrant, tanned face was pale. She looked jittery, her hands were shaking slightly—as if she’d consumed one too many espressos. She actually looked fragile.

  He watched wordlessly as Victoria locked the passenger door and buckled her seatbelt. Joshua then checked the rearview mirror and waited for a speeding orange taxicab passed by on his left side, before pulling away from the station.

  “Thank you Joshua, for picking me up. I’m sorry for calling you and just showing up unexpectedly like this. I know I don’t have a right to ask you for any help … I just, I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know where else to go,” she said in a rush.

  “Whoa, take a breath, slow down. Why were you so scared? Was someone threatening you?” he asked, looking back at her quickly. She had to have been beyond terrified to leave Texas and seek him out in California.

  “I’m not sure. It’s probably nothing, I’m probably just overreacting. But someone broke into my apartment.”

  “What?” Joshua yelled.

  “Yesterday morning, I came back to my apartment from a meeting with my editor. Someone had broken into my house.”

  “What? Wait, did someone hurt you?” He took his eyes away from the road briefly to take a hard look at her, to assure himself that she didn’t have any injuries.

  “No, no Joshua, I wasn’t there when they broke in. By the time I’d arrived back to my apartment, whoever had broken in had already gone.”

  “What was taken?”

  “That’s just it. Someone trashed my whole apartment, but the only thing that was stolen was my computer. My jewelry and cash that I had in my bedroom were still there. So it doesn’t seem like a random robbery. I’m not sure why they took my computer. Maybe they wanted my interview tapes? But I hadn’t had a chance to digitize those yet. I had the original tapes with me for my meeting with Edward.”

  “Edward?”

  “Edward Linton. He’s my boss at the Dallas Star Gazette.”

  “Did you contact the Dallas Police Department?”

  “Yes. I filed an incident report with the police and they sent someone out to take fingerprints. To be honest, I’m not hopeful that they’ll find anything. I mean, it could be nothing. But I live in a very safe area of Dallas and I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I mean, what are the odds that someone would break into my apartment the day after Richard Henning was murdered—the day after I interviewed him?”

  “Yeah, it’s not very likely,” Josh said. Whoever had broken into Vicki’s home and stolen her laptop didn’t sound like a terrorist at least. If a terrorist had been in Vicki’s apartment, Joshua was certain that he’d be picking up a black suit to go to Vicki’s funeral right about now. So that meant that he still had to figure out who had broken into her house and why.

  “Why were you with Richard Henning?” he asked.

  “I was interviewing him about his kidnapping for a news article that I am writing for my weekly crime column.”

  “Okay … but your column at the Dallas Star Gazette is a local crime column. Why were you writing a story on Henning’s kidnapping in Pakistan?”

  “Well, Richard Henning is from Texas and his office is in Dallas. So I thought it would be a good addition to my newspaper article,” Victoria replied, looking out the window.

  “Did your boss okay this story?”

  “Well, not exactly …” she trailed off.

  “Vicki,” Josh said.

  And that’s all he had to say. He knew Victoria Sanchez. He had loved this woman for two years of his life and for those two years, they had been inseparable. He and Victoria had surprisingly had a lot in common. They both loved to cook. They both liked listening to classic rock artists like Iron Butterfly, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix. They had spent many nights together, just a beer (a glass of wine for Victoria), great music, and talking about anything and everything. It had gotten to the point where they could’ve completed each other’s thoughts. So now, as she sat in his car with him, Joshua could tell that she was holding back.

  He glanced at her. She was still quietly staring out the window. “Vicki, I can’t help you unless I know everything. And in order for me to know everything, you have to tell me everything.”

  She turned to look at him, her hands shaking slightly. She cleared her throat, “You know, I’ve always wanted to be more. To do more, than just report the local news. So when I heard about Richard Henning’s abduction, I decided to look into it more on my own.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You can call it a hunch, I guess. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.”

  Joshua remained quiet as he stopped at a red light.

  Victoria continued, “I started investigating into his shipping company, you know, the Henning Cooper Company?”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Well for starters, that the Henning Cooper Company has some interesting client contracts. One in particular is with this business called Nava Drug Corp, which is based in Russia.”

  “Uh huh. So what’s so interesting about it?” Joshua asked, taking his eyes off the highway in order to hazard a glance in her direction.

  “The company looks like it was created about ten years ago. The individuals associated with its management have had connections to various members of the Russian mafia.”

  “How did you find this out?” This type of information just could not have been found out on a company website. And to his knowledge, Victoria had never been to Russia.

  “Let’s just say, I’ve been working some of my sources really hard.”

  “Sources?”

  Victoria was silent for a moment and then she said, “One of my contacts also told me that Richard Henning was under a DEA investigation. Well, at least his company is under a federal investigation.”

  What the hell. “Who told you that Victoria? Did you tell Henning that?”

  “Josh you know I can’t reveal my source’s identity to you. But my contact is extremely reliable and works in law enforcement. I thought that maybe there’s a connection with Nava Drug Corp.”

  Umm huh. Joshua wasn’t a moron. By “law enforcement” Vicki meant federal law enforcement—so either the FBI or someone within the DEA itself. That was the only type of contact who could get her that type of information.

  “Did you tell Henning that his company was under a federal drug investigation?” he repeated his second question that she had left unanswered.

  “Well yeah, I may have mentioned that in the interview right before he walked outside and was gunned down.”

  May have mentioned it to him. Yeah right. “Shit Tory.” Tory was a nickname for Victoria that only Joshua had called her. And he only used it when he was particularly exasperated with her.

  “Did you see the shooting, yourself?” he asked. He had stopped at another red light, so he turned his head to get a good look at her. He knew that as strong as Victoria tried to be, she hated violence and weapons. The whole ordeal had to have been tearing her up inside. Sure, she had torn up and burned his clothes—destroying personal property could be considered extreme. But, she’d never tried to hit him or anyone else in anger.

  “No. No, I didn’t see the shooting. I heard the shots and ran out, and there he was, bleeding all over the place. I tried … I tried to help him … he was just bleeding so much …” she trailed off again.

  Victoria didn’t say anything else as Josh drove the jeep back to his house.

  By the time they made it back to his home it was close to nine p.m. “Hey Victoria, we’re here,” he
said.

  “Come on,” he said. Victoria hesitated, but then she opened the passenger side door. He picked up her travel bag to carry it inside for her.

  “You moved, out of the base? I didn’t think you would ever do that,” she said, walking up the porch steps with him to his one story bungalow.

  “Yeah, I did. I moved in here around January of this past year.”

  “Wow, congrats. It’s a beautiful home,” Vicki said, stepping inside the living room. Joshua had already turned on the lights and closed and locked the front door.

  “Yeah, it’s not a mansion, but it’s enough space for me to stretch out. I’ve been thinking about taking a mortgage out on it instead of just renting it. It really just depends on how the next year goes, and whether I’ll be moving to another location with the Team.”

  “Oh. Where will you be moving to?” Victoria asked, staring intently at him.

  “Like I said, I’m not sure if I’ll be moving, but it’s a definite possibility. Anyway, you must be exhausted. How about you go ahead and take a shower and get settled in? I’ll fix up my guest bedroom for you okay?” Joshua then showed her where the bathroom was and where the towels and bath supplies were located in the hall linen closet.

  “Sure, thank you again Joshua,” Vicki said.

  Hearing the shower start up in the guest bedroom, Joshua picked up the phone and dialed his friend Malcolm Clarke who had just returned to their home base in Coronado. He would have called Will as well but he was still OCUNUS.

  “Yo, what’s up Pope?” Malcolm’s deep voice filled Joshua’s ear. Joshua and Will would sometimes joke and call Malcolm “Freeman” due to the mellow tenor of his voice being similar to Morgan Freeman. Malcolm also had movie star good looks and could have passed for Denzel Washington’s younger brother. Both of these attributes explained why his friend got more ass than a toilet seat.

  “Hey Malcolm. How have you been man?”

  “All is good … I can’t complain man. I just got back from a wonderful extended vacation in hot as balls Turkmenistan. Now that I’m back Stateside, I’m feeling footloose and fancy free. What’s been up with you?”