darkness of zero-dark-whenever.
Using cars to canvass potential sites would put the target on red alert. The bastard would be waiting for them.
“If cars are out, the cops are too.” Tram’s voice was thoughtful. He frowned, the skin of his forehead wrinkling.
As far as Tag was concerned, that was the only bonus to the situation.
If the cops found the Impala before Tag or Tram or any of their buddies from ST7 who’d turned out en masse to cruise the streets, Tag would be banned from participating in the rescue. It was against federal statute for USA military forces to act in a law enforcement capacity. Which meant he’d be sidelined during the action.
No fucking way was he sitting Sarah’s rescue out. No way.
Hostages died all the time during botched infiltrations. Hell, just the other day some poor woman had been killed by an inexperienced SWAT officer who’d mistook her for her gun-toting ex-husband. It was too damn easy for some fucking banana with an itchy trigger finger to kill the wrong damn person.
He wasn’t trusting the cops with Sarah’s life—fuck federal law. He’d make sure Sarah got out of this alive, even if he had to die to do it, even if he got eighty-sixed from the teams, even if the feds brought him up on charges.
Sarah’s life was more important than all of that.
And…yeah…maybe he wasn’t as over her as he’d thought.
“Might as well call the rest of the boys. Have them canvass out here.” Tram broke the building silence. “They can run the road. Hell, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll pass the Impala. Or see it parked in front of a house.”
Tag scowled. With the way their luck was running, the car had probably been garaged. Still, the more eyes the better. It was just too bad all the eyes were on the ground. He glanced up, frowning. They needed some eyes in the sky. Trees and shrubs wouldn’t obstruct an aerial view.
“What are the chances Radar could hook us up with a satellite feed?” Tag asked.
Rerouting SAT feeds was predominately through JSOC mission intelligence. While Radar wasn’t with HQ1 intel, he did have major connections. As the assistant to Commander Kovach, who’d taken over as commander of ST7 after Mackenzie had been goat fucked off the teams, Radar knew how to get things done. Hell, he probably knew just the person to discreetly approach about getting a satellite rerouted for a few minutes. Long enough to get some aerial footage, anyway. A white car would stand out like a bullseye on the SAT feed. Which would narrow down their search.
Or hell, if Radar couldn’t work that miracle, Pienkowski could probably get the satellite redirected through the ambassador’s military connections.
Tram squinted up at the blue sky. “We don’t need a satellite feed. Not with Danny Kinard into drones.”
A drone. Tag tilted his head, considering it. While it would give them an aerial sweep, the damn things were noisy as hell. Recon with a drone would be no better than using a car.
“Too loud. That buzzing carries.” He shook his head. “Hell, you can hear the damn things long before they hover overhead.”
“The old ones, yeah. But Danny has this new one. A quiet one. He was telling me about it during that training stint out in the dunes. He said this new one is barely audible at fifty feet and undetectable at a hundred feet. We can run it at a hundred, drop it to fifty if we need to check a plate.”
Okay, that sounded interesting. A drone would cover the terrain a hell of a lot faster than they could by foot—or hell, even by car. Plus, if they found the Impala, he could sit on the news, handle the rescue personally, something that would be impossible if the intel came off a satellite.
“Is ST3 on the ground?” Tag asked.
Danny was the senior enlisted in SEAL Team Three’s Alpha Platoon. The guy was obsessed with electronics. On stand down, while the rest of his crew were out at the shooting range, punching holes in various targets, Danny was out in the boondocks, flying his expensive toys.
“Far as I know.” Tram reached for his phone. A minute later Danny was collecting a few of his machines and heading out to join them.
A half an hour later, Danny stepped back from the Mavic, a four-armed, four-propellered, silver-gray mechanical bug squatting on the grass to the right of the assembled vehicles.
“There’s no wind, so we’ve got around thirty minutes per