Special Forces Father - By Mallory Kane Page 0,57
do that. My four-year-old son is in there. If half a dozen men storm in, dressed in full SWAT regalia, how do you think it will affect him?” he demanded. “I’ll go. You find the house. I’ll get in and rescue them.”
Ryker was shaking his head before he finished. “No,” he said. “I can’t risk sending in a civilian—”
“A civilian?” Travis spat at the same time as Lucas muttered, “Uh-oh.”
“Ryke—” Dawson said in a warning voice.
Travis glared at his cousin. “Ryker, I’m an army Special Forces operative. I’ve had the most specialized training available. I know how to make myself virtually invisible. I can walk through a tangled wood without breaking a twig. I can sneak up on a building set in the middle of an airport runway—no cover anywhere. I can pick any lock. I can break a man’s neck with one hand.”
“No disrespect, Travis, but you’re too close to the situation,” Ryker said in a calm but firm voice. “I can’t risk you going off half-cocked, or—”
“Ryker,” Lucas said. “Hang on a second, if you don’t mind.”
Travis looked at his older brother. He hadn’t expected to see him. The last he’d known, Lucas was still in Dallas, where he’d gone as soon as he’d graduated from high school, declaring he would never again live in the same city as their dad. At some point, somebody was going to have to bring him up to speed on everything that had happened in the Delancey family in the past five years since he’d been gone. But now, his son and the woman he’d driven a thousand miles to see were in danger.
Ryker turned to Lucas. “What is it?” he asked.
But Lucas ignored him. He watched Travis. Travis stood there, holding his gaze, until finally, Lucas cocked his head. “What’s different about you, little brother?” he asked.
Travis shrugged. “Five years of training, missions and—difficult situations,” he answered.
Lucas shook his head. “You’ve changed, a lot.” He laughed self-consciously. “Don’t mean to wax poetic, but you’re not carrying around that sullen fury anymore. I can see it in your eyes.”
Travis nodded. “All it does is drain your energy and dull your focus.”
Lucas nodded again. “That’s right. Congratulations. You’re smarter than I was at your age.” Then he turned to Ryker. “I say let him try. Reilly and his SWAT team can be standing by in case Travis needs them.”
It took a while and a long telephone discussion between the twins, Ryker and Reilly, but finally Ryker agreed. “This is unorthodox,” he said with more than a touch of irritation in his voice.
“Of course it is, Ryke,” Dawson agreed. “Which part of what we’ve planned is orthodox? We’re not doing this on the books, so it’s already a covert op.”
Ryker didn’t answer Dawson. He turned to Travis. “Reilly and his team are set up at the U.S. 51 exit off Airline Highway, as I told you earlier. Reilly will communicate with you via a communications device that uses an earpiece and a throat mic, so that no one can overhear either of you. If you get into trouble, say Mayday and they’ll storm the house.”
Dawson stepped up. “Dusty’s got the equipment set up. It’s time to put everybody in place and get ready to make the call. Remember, we’ve only got one chance to latch onto that signal—one chance to pinpoint where the kidnapper is keeping Travis’s son.”
Chapter Ten
By midnight, Travis was in place in a wooded area behind a small mobile-home park located about seven miles from the intersection of U.S. 51 and Airline Highway. When Dawson had called the kidnapper’s phone, Dusty had managed to get a GPS location and a tower triangulation that put the kidnapper about two hundred yards from where Travis was standing. Dawson’s agent would be flying over in his helicopter in—Travis checked his watch—less than five minutes. If MacEllis Griffin saw the dark green sedan, that would be the final verification that the kidnapper was there.
Travis had the kidnapper’s GPS coordinates programmed into his phone and he was ready to go in. All he was waiting for now was for Reilly to get the report from Griffin, then he’d give Travis the okay. The waiting was torture, especially now that he was so close. Kate and their son were less than a football field’s length away from him. He wanted more than anything to break in the mobile home’s door, take the kidnapper down with a carefully placed blow designed to render him unconscious, then grab Kate