“Just do it!” He hadn’t meant to bark, but there wasn’t time for her questions.
“Okay.” Her fear and uncertainty hung on that one word. “W-What’s his number?”
Marco rattled it off, and in less than thirty seconds, he saw the two men bolt from the truck and rush up the driveway, scanning the area for whatever the problem was. When they were close enough so he didn’t have to shout, he spoke with a calmness he didn’t feel. “Boomer, I need you to crawl under the porch and tell me I’m wrong.”
“Huh?” His teammate’s eyes first narrowed in confusion and then flashed to horror a split second later. “Oh, fuck! Don’t move!”
“As if I didn’t figure that out for myself, jackass.” While Boomer ran to the end of the porch, Marco saw the moment Foster put two and two together. They needed to get Harper out of the house and had to assume the rear entrance was rigged as well. “Call Ian for backup. Tell him to have the team on her mother and baby move them to the compound ASAP.” When the man pulled out his cell phone and weapon, Marco turned his head slightly, so Harper could hear him. “Sweetheart, I want you to grab my keys and go back out through the garage to Cain. Don’t touch anything else. He’s going to put you in my truck. As soon as the rest of the team gets here, he’s going to take you back to the Trident compound and keep you safe.”
Her voice dropped to a frightened whisper. “Marco, what is it?”
He didn’t want to scare her, but he needed her to obey him without question. “I hope I’m wrong, but I think I just stepped on a landmine.”
A loud gasp was followed by the jingle of his keys and the interior garage door opening. From under the floorboards of the porch, the sounds of Boomer belly-crawling in the small space became louder until he was almost underneath where Marco stood. Terror and impatience battled for superiority within him as he awaited his friend’s verdict. His gut sank when a muffled “fuck” came from below, then his life flashed before his eyes, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Polo, don’t fucking move. It’s not a landmine, but damn fucking close. It’s a homemade job with a pressure trigger. I gotta get my tools, so just hang on.”
“Sure. No problem. Have someone get me a beer and a pizza, and maybe the sports section of the newspaper to make the time go faster.” If they’d all learned one thing in the military, it was that wry humor tended to ease a person’s panic. Most of the time. Some of the time. Oh, fuck, it wasn’t helping his panic at all this time.
As Boomer crawled back out to retrieve his EOD—Explosive Ordnance Disposal—kit and protective gear from his vehicle, the overhead garage door finished sliding open, and in his peripheral vision, Marco saw Harper emerge. She was wide-eyed and pale from fright and he wished he could be the one to comfort her right now.
Proving he knew how to protect a principal asset at a time like this—well, he was a former Secret Service agent, so he’d better—Foster grabbed Harper’s arm. He rushed her to the waiting truck with his gun in his other hand, ready to fire at any threat which might appear. Harper clicked the remote, unlocking the door, and with a worried glance over her shoulder at Marco, she jumped into the passenger seat at Foster’s urging. Taking the keys from her, he instructed her to climb into the rear seat and lay down out of sight, before slamming the door shut. Hopping into the driver’s seat, the man started the engine with a roar and sped toward the end of the driveway, away from the potential blast. While it wasn’t an ideal location for her at the moment, it was better than the alternative, and Marco didn’t want them heading back to Trident without reinforcements. Confident Harper was in good hands, he concentrated on staying perfectly still as beads of sweat rolled off his forehead and temples. And for the first time since Nina was alive, Marco began to pray.
Was this how it was supposed to end for him? Was fate going to be so cruel as to kill him on a beautiful sunny day, far away from the hells of war, right after he found out he was a father? Yeah, he wasn’t thrilled about that, but…damn. Was his teammate going to die with him? Jeez, Baby Boomer had just reunited with the love of his life a few months ago, after thinking the woman had been dead for twelve years. Marco would curse the universe if he was the reason those two were separated by death once again.
He didn’t know how much time had passed—it felt like hours…eons even—before two Clearwater P.D. patrol cars with their lights flashing came screeching to a halt in front of the property, followed by several unmarked vehicles. Ian emerged from a black suburban, barking out commands. From another SUV, Marco saw Drew Murdock climb out and give two uniformed officers their own orders. The cops split up, heading for the houses on either side of Harper’s, probably to evacuate any occupants.
Following Ian’s command, their new sniper, Lindsey Abbott, and the Omega team’s Mancini jumped into Marco’s truck and Foster floored it before both doors were fully shut. The rest of the crew dashed across the front lawn, with Brody and Devon skirting the house to check for more explosives. Marco didn’t miss the worried look, followed by a thumbs up that his regular ménage partner sent his way, before disappearing around the corner. While they hadn’t spoken since yesterday’s fist fight, he knew it was his best friend’s way of saying that no matter what, Brody was watching his back and always would.
“Sit rep.” Ian stopped at the bottom of the porch steps with Murdock and Darius Knight. While it was great to have the newly retired SEAL on board with them again, a proper reunion would have to wait for a bit. All three had put on bullet-proof vests as a precaution. Not that the protective gear would stop flying shrapnel from ripping them to shreds if the explosive went off, but there was no way of knowing if an ambush was planned if the bomb wasn’t successful.
Ignoring his boss’ request, Marco asked, “Are Harper’s mother and the baby covered?”
Ian nodded. “McCabe and Tiny have them en route to the compound. No signs of trouble at their end. Boomer?”
“Down here,” came the answer from under the porch. “I’m going to need someone to come in from the other end to hold this flashlight for me.”
Ripping the Velcro straps of his vest open to remove it, Knight responded, “I can do that. Which is the ‘other end’?”
When Marco shifted his eyes and gave his head a minuscule tilt to his right, the experienced newbie hurried over, pulled off the piece of lattice covering the crawl space, then dropped to the ground to drag himself underneath. Marco wasn’t surprised their old teammate jumped right into a fucked-up situation on his first day, and he planned on thanking him. That is if they all survived the next fifteen minutes.
Boomer filled the newcomers in on what he’d found. “It’s a homemade bomb, Ian, with a pressure switch. The good news is, it’s a bomb any idiot can make if they have access to a Wal-Mart and the Internet. The bad news is, it’s a bomb any idiot can make, and I can’t guarantee this guy followed the directions to a ‘T’.”
A round of curses came from all of them. Brody and Devon came back from the rear of the house and the now dirt covered geek ducked into the garage. Just as dirty—they’d obviously crawled under the back porch—Devon approached his brother. “All clear back there. No signs of forced entry and there’s nothing to indicate the alarm system was bypassed, but we’ll do a run through inside just in case.”
By this point, the sweat on Marco’s forehead was rolling into his eyes and down his neck, but he didn’t dare try to wipe it away. Any movement could cause him to shift his weight and then it would be bye-bye time. “Dev, get him out. Ian, you guys have to get out of the blast range. You, too, Murdock. It’s bad enough Boomer and Knight are fucking toast with me if this thing blows.”
“Oh, ye of little faith.” Boomer was obviously a tad insulted.
A large black van with T.P.D. Bomb Squad in large white letters on the side pulled up to the curb in front of the house along with two more patrol cars. Tampa PD’s specialized unit also covered the smaller cities and towns in Pinellas County. Their arrival caught everyone’s attention f
or a moment before Ian turned back to face Marco with a frown. “Fuck you, Polo. This is no different from combat. When one of our asses was on the line, the others didn’t bail back then and it’s not fucking happening now either.”
Marco watched as Devon also ignored his plea and headed toward the garage door while Ian just stood at the bottom of the steps and crossed his arms. Marco knew it would be like trying to move the Hoover Dam ten feet to the left, but he had to try once more. “Boss-man, please. You’ve got a fiancée now. One who, I might add, won’t be happy if I get you blown to smithereens.”
“And you have a daughter now, so, I repeat—fuck you. Besides, no one is going to get blown to smithereens. Boomer can do this shit with his eyes closed”
“Hey, how’d you know my eyes were closed?”
Usually, the inane banter in stressful situations didn’t disturb Marco, but at the moment, he wanted to punch his younger teammate’s lights out for shits and giggles. Shaking his head at the bad joke, Ian eyed the detective standing next to him. “You, on the other hand, have procedures to follow, so go fill your squad in.”
If Murdock took offense to being ordered around, he didn’t show it. In fact, Marco wasn’t surprised to see a flash of relief come over the other man’s face and didn’t blame him. As the detective proceeded down the driveway, two bomb squad members were on their way up. After a brief conversation with Murdock midway, they approached the porch with their own equipment. Thankfully, this wouldn’t turn into a pissing match, since Boomer had done some cross-training with several local, law enforcement bomb squads, including T.P.D. and the F.B.I., over the past few years. There were always advantages to having government security contracts, and this was one of them. Both men had worked with the former Naval E.O.D. expert before and respected his skills as much as the Trident teammates did.
The two-man team, consisting of Sgt. Barry Templeton and Officer Freddie Mendoza, acknowledged Marco’s precarious position, but wisely ignored him after that. He needed all his concentration for the task at hand—remaining perfectly still—and it was getting more difficult as the seconds ticked by. After being told Boomer was under the floor boards, Templeton raised his voice to be heard. “Boomer, how you doing down there?”
“Pretty good. I just beat Knight’s straight with a full house, but I could use another beer and some buffalo wings. How you doing up there?”
Marco growled at the quip from under the porch and silently swore he was going to kill Boomer if they lived through this.
“Not bad. Mendoza’s with me. You need us down there?”
There was an extended pause before the answer came. “Uh, yeah, actually. I can’t completely remove the cover and do what I have to do without an extra set of hands. The wires are too short. The FNG came from the other end and is holding the flashlight, so you’re going to have to come in from the side. Avoid the plank Polo’s standing on and the two on either side of it, for a total of five.”
Squatting to inspect the lattice covering the space he needed to get to, Mendoza’s eyes narrowed. “Who or what’s an FNG?”
Ian, Boomer, and Knight all gave the same droll response. “Fucking new guy.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
Marco’s torso was now as sweaty as his face and it was starting to itch like crazy. He wished he could yell at everyone to shut the fuck up, as well as hurry the fuck up, but it would be a waste of breath. It would be done when it was done, and working any faster could kill them all. “Ian, can you check on Harper and Mara for me?”
While his boss stepped away to make the call, Marco realized it was the first time he’d said his daughter’s name aloud. Up until now, he’d referred to her as ‘the baby’, ‘the kid’ or anything else along those lines. Carter and Brody had been right, and if Marco got out of this alive, he was going to make sure Mara knew he’d always be there for her—and not just financially. Nina would come back from her grave to haunt him if he didn’t man-up. An image of her holding her niece popped into his head and the corners of his mouth ticked upward, despite the situation. Remembering how good she’d been with her school children, he knew Nina would have made an awesome aunt and mother if only things had been different.
Muffled comments came from below after Mendoza joined the party and it seemed as if hours had passed, instead of only ten or eleven minutes, before Boomer finally announced, “We’re clear! You can move, Polo.”
Move? Hell, he almost dropped to the ground and kissed it. He didn’t realize how tense he’d been until he sighed in relief and every muscle in his body screeched in pain as they tried to relax. From behind him, someone grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. Turning, he found Brody standing in the doorway, grinning at him.
“Glad you made it,” the geek teased. “Because I’m still planning my revenge for the whole ‘trunk-junk’ thing, and it would really suck if you weren’t around for it.”
Marco held out his hand and when his friend shook it, he pulled him in for a man hug with lots of back slapping. “Can you wait a week before you spring it on me? Not sure my nerves could handle anything before then.”
Stepping back, the man snorted. “No problem. In the meantime, we need to head back to the war-room and check out the video feeds. Hopefully, we got our bomber on film.”
As Ian hung up his cell, the two teammates joined the others at the bottom of the porch steps while Boomer, Knight, and Mendoza crawled out from under it, all covered in dirt and cobwebs. Even though the bomb had been deactivated, they all moved a little further down the driveway. Marco endured some more back slapping, as he tried to get his heart rate back to normal and his knees to stop shaking. He raised a questioning eyebrow at Ian who nodded. “They’re all safe and secure. I told Foster to tell Harper you’re okay and her house is still in one piece.”
Well, he wasn’t exactly okay, since he was now going through a massive adrenaline crash, and the shaking in his knees started to spread throughout his body. But it was far better than being dead, so he’d take it. “Thanks.”
“I’m going to go talk to Doc Dunbar and see if she’s come across any wife-beaters through Friends of Patty, who know a thing or two about explosives. I’ll try to get some names from her if it doesn’t violate the organization’s rules.”
Devon exited through the front door, side-stepping the planks that the explosives were still attached to, and declared, “House is clear, inside and out.”
Brushing himself off, Boomer added, “I’ll stay and help dispose of this thing. Once we pull it out, we’ll take a better look at it and see if we can find any signatures, but I’m not counting on it. It was pretty crudely made. A sixth grader could have made it as a science project.”
Most experienced bombers styled their explosives a certain way, creating their own ‘signature’ into the design. However, with bomb making ‘how-to’ sites all over the internet, wannabe bombers could easily transition to actual bombers. But they weren’t usually as intelligent as the experts, so signatures were sometimes absent nowadays.
Marco lifted the bottom of his sweat-soaked shirt and wiped his face with it. Brody smacked his upper arm and pointed to his truck in the street. “Come on. I’ll give you a lift to your place so you can shower and change, then we’ll head to the compound.”
“No, let’s go straight there. I’ve got clothes in my go-bag in my truck. I’ll take a shower in one of the bunkrooms.” He had to reassure himself that Harper and Mara were okay. After thanking his team and the others one more time, he followed his best friend down the driveway. A butterfly came out of nowhere and fluttered around his head before taking off again. Nina had mentioned once that if a butterfly did that, it was a loved one in the afterlife letting you know that everything was going to be all right. Hmmpf. Their roles were now reversed and she was watching over him. Rubbing the remembrance tattoo on his left upper arm, he glanced skyward and said a silent prayer of thanks.
CHAPTER 9
Pacing back and forth in the compound’s parking
lot, Harper tried to hold it together. He was safe. Ian had called and said Marco was alive and out of danger, but she wouldn’t believe it until she saw him again.
Nearby, Kristen and Ian’s fiancée, Angie, kept a close eye on her from the grassy ‘backyard’ which had been created between the last two warehouses in the complex. The building to her right, she was told, housed the gym, training rooms, indoor gun range, and storage. The one to her left had been transformed into four huge apartments. Angie and Ian had the bottom one on this end, with Kristen and Devon’s unit above them. The units on the other end mirrored those, and Ian’s goddaughter, Jenn, had the bottom, while the youngest Sawyer brother, Nick, had the top one, with his partner, Jake. She was happy for the two men. Though she’d only met Nick once, she thought he was the perfect mate for Jake. While Marco’s teammate was a Dom, she’d always gotten the feeling he needed someone as Alpha as himself outside of the bedroom.
Angie had come out of her apartment and introduced herself when Harper had arrived under guard, a short time after her mother and Mara. She had gotten the older woman and baby settled in her spare bedroom, but Harper declined the invite to rest inside. Upon Kristen’s arrival, the two women did their best to ease Harper’s growing anxiety. Her last panic attack had been shortly before Nina’s death and thankfully hadn’t been in her dying friend’s presence. She’d had them a lot in her teens, but had never been able to pinpoint the reasons for them. They usually popped up when she was stressed, but not always. With the help of a counselor in college, she’d been able to ward them off by concentrating on something or someone she loved. Right now, she kept images of Mara laughing and playing in her mind, and hopefully, it would be enough for her not to break down and start to hyperventilate.
The compound had been sealed after her arrival, only letting in Kristen and several contract agents from Blackhawk Security. Armed men now had the gates and surrounding fence line covered. Someone was inside the offices monitoring the many cameras, and even Beau was on alert, his ears and nose twitching in search of danger to his humans.
Watching From The Shadows: Trident Security Book 5 Page 8
