Mission: Impossible to Protect (The Impossible Mission Romantic Suspense Series Book 6), стр. 51
Unable to save Sten and powerless to rescue Danni, who was barely forty yards away if the GPS tracker could be trusted, he was living his worst nightmares of losing control, his brother, Danni, all rolled into one day.
He had never considered breaking the chain of command. He was used to waiting for the green light on a mission. It was his life as a team leader and an operator—Lars Jenkins, Marine Raider, chill attitude, remarkable control, mind in the zone to perform. But not today. This wasn’t K-stan or Syria with a possible highly valued target. This was Brooklyn, and Danni was in the building, suffering whatever torture Miro’s perversion could conjure up.
And right when Lars was at the point of smashing protocol and charging the building himself, they were given the signal to engage. He took his position in line, ready to hit the front door. Lars would be the sixth man in, followed by Logan and then SWAT as rear.
The SWAT team was split. He and Dylan would be included in the team of eight taking the warehouse’s front door. Ryder and Logan were with the team in the rear. Grayson, on overwatch, was positioned in a mobile command center that was parked on the street. Finally, Reeves, in Seattle, was online with the FBI.
Lars had been adamant with Grayson that he wanted Reeves in the loop to have the ability to communicate with Lars and his team, to focus on rescuing Danni. The FBI and DEA maintained that their first priority was to rescue the hostage, but they also wanted to take down Miro and Lopez. It would be a big win and a career mover to make the connection between the Bushwick Crew and the Sinaloa Cartel. Lars didn’t want Danni caught in the crossfire.
He wanted to assume that the SWAT team would perform perfectly and do their jobs, securing Danni and taking down the bad guys. But Lars had too much experience and knew that nothing ever went as planned on the ground. And he didn’t know any of these guys.
Marine Raiders were trained for assault and hostage rescue. He trusted his men to do their job if anything went sideways. Lars had a backup plan with his team. All teams had backup plans to pivot if the unexpected happened. If Danni’s life were endangered, Lars and his team would shift into protection and save mode.
Both front and back teams moved simultaneously, wanting the element of surprise since they were going in blind.
The front team battered the door open, and Lars’s team moved forward like a well-oiled machine. The familiar sound and rhythm of the men moving in sync helped Lars focus on doing his job and block the gruesome images of how he might find Danni.
The team cleared the entrance and moved methodically down the hallway. It was a slow process since there were what appeared to be side offices from the days when this building was a functioning factory.
The back team took down two guys loading a big cache of heroin and cocaine into a van with no shots fired. DEA would soon seize the site.
The hallway was cold, dark, and smelled of garbage, sweat, and urine. No different than any other hellhole he had been in. But Danni was here with brutal men. Sweat rolled down his back and neck from the armor and the terror of what they might find.
Where were all the men guarding the millions of dollars of drugs? Was the Bushwick Crew so feared that they didn’t need a lot of manpower? The little hairs on Lars’s neck rose as they moved to the end of the hallway. Were they walking into a trap? Was the GPS a ploy to bring them here?
His steady heart rate went careening out of control as he finally entered the room where the GPS had indicated Danni would be found. He steeled himself as he watched the team fan out to cover the rooms off the main area.
His heart pounded against his ribs in a loud, relentless beat as he searched in the dim room for Danni. She wasn’t here. Lars combed the floor for her cast. Had she ever been here? Or was this another sick game of Miro’s?
A Hispanic man lay moaning in the middle of the room. A splintered chair was on the ground next to him. Lars prayed that it was Danni who had broken the chair and escaped. He scanned the area around the chair, looking for any signs of Danni’s presence. Nothing to give any indication that she had been there, except for the location emitting from the tracker that had been here twenty minutes ago.
The team continued to sweep the room and then the side offices, but Lars crossed to the man on the floor. He was their only lead. The only possibility of finding any clues to Danni’s whereabouts.
Tom had his M-4 pointed at the sprawled-out man who had been flipped onto his stomach. One of the men searched him before securing his hands.
Tom directed the team guy, “Get him up.”
The overweight man staggered to his feet and grinned like some maniacal clown.
Tom Harris spoke into his mic to command. “No sign of the hostage yet. We have another male, in his thirties, in custody. We’re still clearing the warehouse.”
Tom’s words delivered a liver punch of reality that sent him reeling. Danni was still in the hands of Miro. Lars grabbed the guy by his stinking bloodstained shirt to beat the truth out of him. “Where is she? Did Miro take her?”
The man flinched with the mention of Miro. Judging by his wide dilated eyes, white powder on his fingers, and the mad smile, he was flying high.
“Donde esta ella?” Lars tightened his hold on the guy’s shirt.
The asshole shrugged and smiled again.
Lars was stopped from punching the crazy-ass