Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,107
was so, the SEALs would find them first—after leading them on a wild goose chase.
Shane activated his radio, flipping on his lip mic. “Dexter and Linden,” he ordered the two SEALs who’d been silently standing watch ever since this goatfuck began. “Give Slinger a head start, then trail him. I want zero contact with whoever is out there. And watch where you step.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
They were all aware that this entire region was dotted with abandoned minefields. They’d studied the maps and knew not all were marked as clearly as the land around an abandoned farmhouse that sat just a few clicks to the south.
But chances were, if a building was abandoned, it was not safe to approach.
Shane looked at his remaining men: Magic, Rick, the senior chief, and Owen, who now had Slinger’s souped-up mini-tablet in his possession.
“Let’s do this,” Shane said. “Let’s move.”
CHAPTER TWO
Their terrorist target was one of a fairly large audience sitting in folding chairs and on mats on the floor, at one end of an ancient Quonset hut dating from the 1940s. The structure had been well cared for and reworked into some kind of school gym. The gym, in turn, was now being used as a makeshift theater.
And that meant that their target was surrounded by civilians, most of whom were children, sitting and watching a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore. In a Pashto dialect.
“Their Buttercup’s pretty awesome,” Magic announced as he crouched down next to Shane, who’d been left in as secure a position as possible with Rick standing guard, hidden on a hillside that overlooked the village.
“And Suliman’s definitely in there?”
“I didn’t have eyes-on contact myself,” Magic told him as he handed Shane the visual imager. It was more than a camera, although it recorded digital images, too. However, it was most useful due to the fact that it utilized face-recognition software to confirm targets like Rebekah Suliman. “But the senior says it’s a match.”
Shane brought the device up to his eyes, then clicked on the imager’s night vision setting, which allowed him to view the images without compromising his pupils’ adjustment to the dark. The flexible shield conformed to the shape of his face, keeping even the smallest glow from being seen—even by Magic, who was right beside him.
The senior chief was a firm believer in overkill, and he’d recorded an abundance of digital photos.
The outside of the Quonset hut; the sign for the school, announcing all were welcome, not just boys but also girls; the stage with its crudely assembled set and its crowds of badly costumed, ill-at-ease performers—all children between ages twelve and eighteen.
And there she was. Rebekah Suliman.
The CSO file on Suliman was thin, but the analysts at the U.S. Covert Security Organization ranked the woman not just as a One on the most-wanted list, but as a One-X. Which meant she’d confessed or had been proven—without a doubt—to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians, including children. That X identified her as someone who had intentionally targeted a school or a bus or the pediatric wing of a hospital. That X meant that Shane’s mission was to find her and mark her—and anyone who harbored her—for elimination via stealth missile.
His team was to move in as close as they could, and take pictures that would be used to identify other members of her terrorist cell. Then, after calling in the coordinates, they were to create a perimeter and watch for squirters—those who tried to escape the flames and destruction raining down upon them.
As Shane clicked through the images, he saw that the senior had marked Suliman with an identifying circle in a series of shots of the audience. There were twenty rows of seats set up in two sections with a center aisle, and each section was a dozen seats across. Which meant there were close to five hundred people in that Quonset hut, not including the kids on the crowded stage.
It was mostly a group of women and children watching the performance, with only a sprinkling of men here and there. And even if every single adult in that crowd knew who Suliman was, and were actively harboring her despite her crimes, Shane believed that those kids were innocent.
The day they started targeting schools was the day they should just burn the American flag, because they’d be no better than the scumbag terrorists that they put down.