“Would you please sit down?” Hawk grumbled at Bran from his place in an overstuffed chair. “You’re wearing a hole in the carpet.”
Bran blew out a frustrated breath. “I was hoping we’d get the report back by now.” He flopped down on the sofa next to Jessie. He wasn’t a patient man—except on a mission when a silent vigil could last for hours. Then patience could mean the difference between success or failure, even life or death.
“Nothing ever happens that fast in the military,” Jessie said. “You ought to know that by now.”
“Unfortunately,” Bran grumbled.
“I’m starving,” Maddox said. “Why don’t we order something to eat?”
“Now there’s a good idea,” Bran said.
“You two are always hungry,” Jessie teased, smiling.
Bran cast her a heated glance she correctly interpreted as true, but in my case, not necessarily for food. He grinned when she flushed. At least she was still thinking about sex. F-ing Ray Cummings hadn’t screwed things up completely.
And Bran had enough self-confidence to figure he could make things right again with just a little more effort on his part. He smiled, the sultry look Jessie tossed his way making him even more certain.
Maddox grabbed the room service menu from the desk. He took a quick look, then handed it to Jessie. “Fried chicken for me. What’s everybody else want?”
She opened it and held it for both of them to read, but just then Bran’s phone rang. He reached over and snatched it off the mahogany coffee table, checked the screen and recognized the contact name.
Bran pressed the phone against his ear. “Sir.”
“Captain Garrett, this is Colonel Bryson.”
Old habits had him snapping to attention, squaring his shoulders and sitting up straighter on the sofa. “Colonel.”
“I have news. I can’t tell you everything, but I’ll tell you as much as I can. After our conversation, I spoke to Lieutenant General David Tanaka, director of Special Operations/Counterterrorism Strategic Operational Planning. According to the general, your information was correct. In an effort to gain power in Yemen, a group of rebels backed by Iran began an assault using chemical weapons against Yemeni civilians. Fortunately, we arrived in time to stop a full-scale attack and destroy what remained of the weapons, keeping the number of casualties to a minimum.”
Relief filtered through him. But those few casualties would have suffered deadly symptoms, starting with nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, severe blisters, and burns on their skin and mucous membranes. The most critical side effect was a pulmonary edema caused by filling the lungs with fluid, which killed in less than thirty minutes.
“Why gas their own people?” Bran asked.
“They were trying to replicate attacks made by the Saudis in the Saada province in 2015. The rebels wanted the US and the UK to believe the Saudis were guilty of war crimes and intercede against them on the rebels’ behalf.”
“Were you able to locate the supplier?”
“Not yet, but Army Counterterrorism is on it. NSA and Homeland are also involved. With the information you provided, we know the cell is located in San Diego. Rounding them up shouldn’t take long.”
“That’s good news, sir.”
“I managed to keep your name out of it, but know that the army is grateful for your part in this.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
Bryson ended the call and Bran turned to Jessie, who waited impatiently on the sofa beside him.
“They found the chemical weapons in Yemen and destroyed them. Casualties kept to a minimum.” He filled her in as much as he could on the attack and the reasons behind it.
“When you say ‘they’ you mean army Delta, right?”
He just shrugged. He couldn’t talk about the actual mission, even if he knew, but given Bryson’s involvement, it would likely have been a Delta operation.
Jessie seemed to understand. “So the gas attack was meant to be a false flag. The rebels set it up so the Saudis would take the blame.”
“That was the idea. The colonel says NSA and Homeland are working together to find whoever supplied the munitions to the rebels.”
She gave a sigh of relief. “That’s great, Bran. The majority of the weapons are no longer a threat. Now we just have to prove my father wasn’t involved and find the rest of the weapons.”
“Yeah...piece of cake.”
* * *
It was close to noon when the call came in requesting their presence at the medical examiner’s office. Before they left for the base, Bran went down to the business office and printed the information Jessie had assembled.
Then all three of them piled into Maddox’s Jeep Cherokee and