past where the team sat back, hid, waited for trouble to come to their door, this time his squad was going in to blow the roof off the mother - first.
"So, I guess there's nothing I can say to you?"
"Nope," Carlos muttered, pulling his foot down from the white wall and collecting a snubnosed pump shotgun off the coffee table to stash in his long, black leather coat. Damali stared at the huge boot print he'd left on the wall for a second and sighed hard.
"Don't you think we should have a full team meeting about this?" She stepped away from the bedroom door, worry blotting out the fury in her eyes.
"Nope."
"Well, at least won't you tell me where y'all are going?"
"Nope," he said, hoisting up an Uzi to sling over his shoulder.
"Stop," she said, walking deeper into the suite, now talk ing with her hands. "Team protocol. One half of the team will not know where the other half is - not done, brother.
And you all just can't up and leave Tahiti on a dime, no explanation, no nothing, Carlos!" He stared at the door. "You'd better go put some clothes on before the brothers get here."
"Carlos Rivera, are you listening to me?"
His response was very simplistic and to the point as he went to the door. "Nope." Big Mike was two steps from the door as Carlos swung it open. Carrying a shoulder launcher, Mike pounded Carlos's fist.
"Ride or die, brother," Mike said in a low, ready-for-war rumble, and then nodded toward Damali. "Evenin', D."
Consumed with frustration, she raced into the bedroom, grabbed a T-shirt and her jeans, and hurriedly threw them on. She looked at her ten-carat engagement ring and matching diamond-studded wedding band and sighed, then slipped them into her small front jeans pocket. Clearly, the honeymoon was over for everybody, and there was no sense in getting her rings fouled by nasty demon gook if she had to go to war. Men! They'd lost their minds. She came out of the bedroom like a bee had stung her, just in time to see Rider roll through the door with Shabazz, both giving Carlos a silent fist pound and her a brief nod as though she were a civilian.
Shabazz slammed a clip into Black Beauty, his eyes ablaze, locks lifted off his shoulders by two inches, blue arc crackling. Rider's forearms bulged as he carried some thing ridiculous that looked like a custom-made Gatling gun. Damali's eyes tore around the stone faces, hoping that the younger male members of the team would bring some sanity to whatever had set the senior brothers off. But as soon as Jose rolled through the door with a red bandana tied around his head, wearing a long leather coat, toting a crossbow with a snub-nosed welded to it, and J.L. stepped in behind him looking straight Samurai, her hopes considerably dimmed. By the time Bobby and Dan came in, she'd sat down heavily on the edge of the nearby dining room table.
Dan strolled in wearing a leather coat that swept the ground and clutching dual AK-47s. Bobby gripped handheld Ingram semis in both hands. Berkfield was with them, his seniority providing no rational balance whatsoever. He was strapped with grenades on a flak-jacket vest like he was going to 'Nam and carrying an M-16. There would defi nitely be no reasoning with them.
"I got black-box vamp on all scents coming off artillery. Everybody's ammo demonreadied, hallowed-earth shells and shit?" Carlos asked in a low rumble, gaining nods all around. "Then let's do this."
"Hold it, hold it, hold it," Marlene yelled, running down the hall, breasts bouncing, barefoot, wearing only a purple lace-and-satin robe. Her eyes wild, she circled on Shabazz, breathing hard and pointing at him. "Not after all we've been through, and not without saying good-bye - ever."
Marjorie was on her heels, her eyes frantic, as she clutched the front of her pink silk negligee closed. "Richard, have you lost your mind?" For Damali, it was an out-of-body experience. She knew the delay might take a few minutes, but she wasn't even wasting her breath to argue. These men were already as good as gone. She knew her husband. There was that certain look that Carlos got in his eyes that she'd come to learn - that "no means no" stare. She sighed as Inez burst in behind Marlene and Marj, trying to make an impact against a stone wall. Before her girlfriend opened her mouth, she