Nothing but air came back to him.
He tried again.
“Nightbird, Nightbird, this is Echo Actual, come in, over.”
Another moment of silence and then the voice of the pilot came drifting in over the radio.
“Echo Actual, this is Nightbird.”
Inwardly, Riley breathed a sigh of relief.
“I need an immediate evac at…” he glanced at Baustista, then read out the coordinates the Third Squad sergeant relayed to the pilot. “Be advised our backs are to the wall and we are surrounded by angry shifters. No room to land, so aerial evac by ropes needed.”
This time the silence went on for a few moments longer than before.
What’s wrong with this guy? Riley thought, his patience wearing thin. Doesn’t he understand we’re in a bind here? He was about to repeat his message when the pilot’s voice finally came over the line again.
“Negative on that evac, Echo Actual. I say again, negative.”
What the fuck?
Not wanting the others to hear, Riley took a few steps away and replied, “What’s the problem, Nightbird?”
“No longer on station, Echo Actual.”
No longer on station? Riley couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Barely holding his anger in check, Riley said, “Then get your ass back on station, Nightbird! We need an evac and we need it now!
This time the answer was immediate.
“No can do, Echo Actual. Been rerouted elsewhere. Will try to find you another bird, over.”
Another bird? Unless there was one in the immediate vicinity, getting another chopper onsite was going to take hours at a minimum. They didn’t have that kind of time!
He was furious. He wanted to shout and rage at the pilot on the other end of the radio, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good. The man was following orders, just as Riley was, and losing his cool wouldn’t do anything to help the men whose lives were in his hands. He needed to keep things in check and work out the problem if they were going to have any hope of getting out.
The radio crackled and Nightbird was back. “Got you a new ride, Echo Actual. ETA ninety, repeat nine zero, minutes.”
Ninety minutes? We’ll be dead by then, Riley thought, but didn’t say it aloud. It wouldn’t do him or the guy on the other end any good.
“Thanks, Nightbird. Appreciate the help.” Riley paused a second and then, on a whim, asked, “Who retasked you, Nightbird?”
The answer that came back was less than helpful.
“Somebody above my pay grade, Echo, that’s all I know. New contact will be Red Eagle. Good luck.”
“Thanks, Nightbird. Echo Actual out.”
Riley turned back toward his men, thinking that all the luck in the world wasn’t going to help them. They needed a plan and they needed one now.
He glanced around, searching frantically for something that could help them survive the next hour and a half, but unfortunately no one had thought to stash a fifty caliber machine gun under a nearby bush and the chances that it would start raining rocket launchers was slim to none. All he had were trees, rocks, and a damned steep cliff, none of which were going to be all that helpful.
Or were they?
The trees stopped about thirty feet from the edge of the cliff, creating a section of open ground that the shifters were going to have to cross in order to reach them, creating a near-perfect killing ground.
To their left was a rock outcropping that rose about twenty feet off the ground and was surrounded by several oversized boulders leaning up against each other. If they used the rocks as cover, they’d at least have a wall at their backs when the shifters tried to rush them.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Luck be damned, Riley thought. I’m getting them through this!
Determined to keep them from getting caught in the open, Riley wasted no time in ordering his men to take up positions amidst the nearby rock cluster. He deliberately took a point in the center of the line, as close to the front as he could get while still getting some protection from the rocks around them. For one crazy moment he imagined himself standing atop the outcropping and shouting out Israel Putnam’s famous order from the Battle of Bunker Hill, then he laughed at the absurdity of it. His men were professionals; they knew to conserve their ammunition.
Besides, he mused, he was pretty sure that shifters eyes were yellow, not white.
He was able to confirm his supposition as fact moments later when the shifters finally decided to rush the Templar position.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The guard posted in front of the Preceptor’s office saw Riley coming from the other end of the hall and made the mistake of stepping in his way and raising an arm in a sign for him to stop.
“Hold on just a minute, Knight Capt-”
That was as far as he got. Riley never even paused; just delivered a smashing right hook that felled the guard like an ox with a single blow. Stepping over the unconscious man’s body, Riley barged into the Preceptor’s office unannounced, interrupting some kind of a meeting.
Johannson was inside, leaning over his desk while studying a map spread out across it. Three men from his personal guard were there with him and all of them looked up as Riley entered. Johannson’s eyes narrowed momentarily, but he then turned his attention back to the map, wordlessly dismissing the other man and not so subtly telling him that he’d deal with him when and if he got around to it.
That was a mistake.
Riley wasn’t in any mood to wait.
To say the Echo Team commander was pissed would have been an understatement.
He and his men had barely made it through the night. The shifters had attacked again and again and if it hadn’t been for the protection of the rock outcropping behind which they’d taken cover, the Templars would have been torn to shreds. As it was every man, Riley included, came away with some kind of injury, and two of his men hadn’t lived to see the arrival of the backup chopper that plucked them from the ridge just moments before they ran out of ammunition.
He’d come here for a reckoning with the person he believed responsible for the disastrous mission.
Riley moved quickly for someone of his size and he was halfway across the room before the three guardsmen realized he might be a threat. The head of the guard detail managed to get around the desk in time to intercept Riley but it did little good; no sooner had he held up his hands in a “stop” gesture than the Echo Team commander did it again, pulling back his fist and punching the other man square in the face, sending him tumbling over backward to hit the floor with a meaty thud.
Riley stepped over him without a glance and continued forward, his gaze locked on the Preceptor and his hands curled into fists. He reached the desk and began to move around it.
The other man apparently didn’t recognize just how close he was to taking a beating, for he glared at Riley moving toward him and, in a stunning show of arrogance, asked, “Are you insane? I’ll have you court-martialed for this!”
Riley was too furious to even register the man’s comment. He was drawing his fist back, preparing to strike for the third time in as many minutes, when the two remaining guards grabbed his arms from behind in an effort to restrain him. The Echo Team commander struggled against them, never taking his gaze off the Preceptor’s face.
“You set us up, you sonofabitch!” he said, shaking with fury and the effort to free himself from the other men’s grip. “You knew there was more than one shifter on that mountain and you deliberately sent my people in unaware and unprepared to deal with them!”
The Preceptor glared back at him. “How dare you barge in here and-”
Riley managed to take another step forward, despite being restrained by the Johannson’s guards, and the Preceptor took an involuntary step back, perhaps finally realizing that he might actually be in danger. A look of fear crossed his face, there and gone again in an instant.
The Echo Team leader barely noticed, too consumed by the
fury racing through his veins.
“You sent my men into a trap and then left us hanging in the wind without transport to get us out of there. I checked the logs! It was you! You ordered our chopper to leave us there and I lost two good men as a result!”
Riley trailed off, too consumed by fury to continue.
Now that he understood what his combat team leader was talking about, the Preceptor seemed to have regained his composure.
“Now you listen to me, you addle-brained idiot,” Johannson said. “You’re right; I did pull that chopper. I needed it to deal with a pack of harpies that decided tonight was the night to suddenly start hunting the skies over Greenwich. I assumed you could handle a simple track-and-arrest.”
“Simple, my ass!” Riley snarled back. “There was an entire pack of shifters on that mountain and someone tipped them off that we were coming. We were sitting ducks from the moment we arrived!”
The Preceptor waved the accusation away with the flick of a hand. “Perhaps before accusing anyone else, you should look to the men in your own unit,” he said with more than a hint of derision. “They had more information about the mission than anyone else, aside from you!”
The accusation only angered Riley further. “What?!” he cried, struggling to free himself. “You stupid sonofabitch! I’m going to rip your damn…”
Riley didn’t get any further.
“Get him out of here!” the Preceptor ordered. “Throw him in the brig for a few days until he calms down!”
It took all three of the the Preceptor’s guards, but they managed to drag Riley out, still cursing and vowing that he’d see to it that the Preceptor would pay for what he’d done.
# # #
Riley had been cooling his heels in his cell for a couple of hours, a position he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with, when a voice spoke out of the darkness at the back of the adjacent cell.
“Seems you and Commander Williams have something in common.”
Riley started in surprise and then watched as a familiar figure moved out of the shadows to stand at the edge of the light.
It was Seneschal Ferguson.
Where the hell had he come from? Riley wondered. The cell was empty moments before, he was sure of it, and he hadn’t heard or seen anyone enter the cell block for over an hour.
“Yeah, what’s that?” he asked absently, while turning the question of the Seneschal’s sudden appearance over in his mind. He remembered the secret tunnels the Seneschal had shown him that honeycombed the walls of the Templar headquarters in Rosslyn, Scotland. Maybe all Templar commanderies have something similar?
“You both have a remarkable distaste for Preceptor Johannson.”
Riley scowled. “That’s because the man’s a class one asshole. He’s lucky I didn’t break his neck.”
He was still pissed; no one had the right to put his men in harm’s way unnecessarily.
It was only after the words were out of his mouth that he realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to threaten the life of a superior officer to another, even higher ranking officer. That was the kind of thing that could get him court-martialed. Given the present state of the Order, it could just as easily get him shot for treason.
He waited for the Seneschal to reprimand him for such talk, but the reprimand never came. Instead, Ferguson cocked his head to one side and asked, “What has the man done to warrant that severe a reaction?”
Riley laughed, but there was no humor in it. “What hasn’t he done?” he said. “His personal vendetta against Commander Williams cost us one of the most brilliant and effective knights I’ve had the pleasure of serving with; something the whole Order should be up in arms about. And now the men in the field are having their lives put at risk unnecessarily to feed what I can only imagine are the man’s personal ambitions!”
At the Seneschal’s insistence, Riley went on to detail how he and his men had been sent after a target with shoddy intelligence and then abandoned onsite for hours because the transports assigned to the mission had been rerouted elsewhere on the Preceptor’s orders.
“Two of my men paid the price for that man’s interference and that’s simply not acceptable. The men in the field need to know that they’ll be supported properly or before long they’ll be finding excuses not to go out!”
Ferguson nodded. “When you put it that way, I couldn’t agree more, Captain. I’ll bring the matter to the Grand Master himself without delay, I assure you.”
The Seneschal was silent a moment and then he asked, “Where do you think he is?”
Riley was confused. “The Grand Master?”
“No, Commander Williams.”
He didn’t know why, but all of a sudden the hair on the back of Riley’s neck stood on end. On the face of it, it seemed a relatively innocuous question – after all, it had been Riley himself who had brought up the fact that Cade had been driven from the Order by the Preceptor’s actions – but something in the way Ferguson asked the question had Riley’s subconscious sounding the alarm.
In as nonchalant a tone as he could manage, Riley said, “I don’t know.”
Ferguson scoffed. “Come now, Captain. Do you honestly expect me to believe that? You were Williams’ right hand man for years. If anyone knows where he is, it would be you.”
“Ordinarily I’d agree with you, Seneschal, but I haven’t seen him since the night we fought and defeated the Adversary.”
“He just vanished into thin air? Hasn’t tried to call or text you? I find that hard to believe.”
I don’t care what you believe or don’t believe, Riley thought, his discomfort at the Seneschal’s sudden interest in Cade increasing. He was struck by the distinct feeling that the Seneschal’s only reason for being here was to locate Cade.
Was he in league with the Preceptor, too?
On the surface, it sounded ludicrous. After all, it had been the Seneschal who both helped Riley free Cade from the dungeons beneath Rosslyn Castle and had provided the money, IDs, and airline tickets they’d needed to get safely out of Scotland and on their way back to the United States. Ferguson was one of the good guys and the notion that he had so utterly reversed his allegiance in so short a time frame seemed crazy to Riley.
And yet…
And yet every fiber of his being was screaming at him that something wasn’t right, that the man in front of him was not the same man that he had last seen deep beneath the stones of Rosslyn Castle.
Tread carefully, a voice in the back of his mind told him and Riley had every intention of listening to it.
“I assure you, Seneschal. If I knew where Knight Commander Williams was, I would tell you. I want to find him as much as the next man. We need leaders of his caliber now more than ever.”
Ferguson nodded. “I agree. For the first time in a long while the Order is in a precarious position and it would certainly behoove us to have our best available when we need them. You’ll let me know if you hear from him, yes?”
Riley forced a smile. “Of course, Seneschal.”
“Good.” The Seneschal paused a moment, as if gathering his thoughts, and then asked, “Anything I can get you?”
“Well, you could get me out of here for starters,” Riley said, unable to keep the hopeful tone from his voice.
The Seneschal, however, was unswayed by his tone or request. “Sorry, Knight Captain. I can’t, unfortunately, be seen to be playing favorites and you did strike the Preceptor’s guards, after all. What is that saying you American’s have? Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time?”
Riley kept the smile frozen on his face as he said, “You got it in one, Seneschal.”
“Good. I’ll keep my eye on your team until your seventy-two hours are up. In the meantime, remember what I said. I need to get in touch with Commander Williams, so if you hear from him…”
“…let you know immediately. Understood, sir.”
Ferguson stepped out of the neighboring cell, gave Riley a curt nod, and then walked to the end
of the cell block and disappeared out the door without another word, leaving Riley to stare in his wake, wondering just what the heck was going on.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Half an hour later, Seneschal Ferguson paced the confines of his office and considered his next move. His little chat with Knight Captain Riley hadn’t been as productive as he’d hoped; the veteran had seemed to become more reticent as the discussion went on, almost as if he suspected something. Ferguson didn’t see how that was possible, given that there was no external indication that anything about him had changed, but perhaps the Echo Team commander had simply been listening to those finely-tuned instincts of his and recognized that there was something a little off about “Seneschal Ferguson.”
Either way, it seemed clear that Captain Riley could become a problem, just like his predecessor.
He needed eyes and ears in Riley’s inner circle, someone who could keep him informed of what was happening so that if things did come to a peak, he would be prepared to deal with it appropriately. Riley’s executive officer would be the most logical choice; he was involved with Echo Team’s every action. But Ferguson was concerned that any change in – Dalton’s? Davis’? – behavior would be noticed by Riley and therefore become suspect. He needed someone who interacted with Riley regularly but not on such an intimate level.
A few minutes of thought gave him what he hoped to be the perfect candidate.
Ferguson picked up his phone and called the duty desk, where he confirmed the man in question was not currently in the field and put in a request for a meeting in his office an hour later.
His chore finished, the Seneschal went to make the necessary preparations for the meeting to come.
# # #
Right on time there was a knock on his door, which opened to admit the commander of Gamma Team, Silas Green.
“You wanted to see me, Seneschal?” Green asked.
“Yes,” Ferguson replied, coming around his desk with a “come hither” gesture. “Please, come in. Have a seat.”
The other man did so, but not without some obvious trepidation. For years the only contact between the teams and their ultimate superior had been Knight Commander Williams, so Ferguson knew Green was likely a bit concerned as to why he was being summoned now.
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