Page 65 of Unintended Love

His wonderful wife smiled as she waggled two keys in front of his face. “I listened. Kayla said this is a fifteen-bedroom B&B. There are only fourteen of us, and you and I share a room. That means there are two vacant rooms somewhere, so I grabbed the last two keys from the bucket.”

His beautiful wife handed him his salvation. “Mine says one-twenty. That should be right down here.”

The room was similar to Kayla’s, a little too white and frilly for Clint’s liking, but he didn’t hate it. They made good use of the new room, catching almost an hour of sleep before supper and then several more before they left for the mission.

At two o’clock in the morning, Clint took one more look up the hill, where he knew Ashlin was hidden. He trusted her to protect them. Kayla had flown over and confirmed fourteen human heat signatures. Ten were asleep in tents matching those in Montana. He hand-signaled for everybody to move forward as they inched closer to the camp. He was only a tiny bit concerned because, at the last minute, everyone on Bravo Team had to readjust.

Shadow had been throwing up blood as they were gearing up to leave for the Air Force Base. He finally admitted to Clint that he had a torn esophagus where it went into his stomach that sometimes flared up. He blamed the Italian food he’d eaten at supper for irritating it. Clint couldn’t spare a second member of his team to take Lukas Murillo to the hospital. Thankfully, Homeland made the arrangements, and someone picked him up minutes before the team left.

“The north and east guards have met in the middle and seem to be talking.” Ashlin’s voice came through his comms.

Clint blew two short bursts into his mic in answer and signaled for his team of five to quietly move forward. Mick, Boomer, Mia, and Piper silently took out the guards by injecting them with anesthesia. The other ten tangoes never woke up, thanks to their injections. Clint was extremely impressed with the women. They moved quickly and silently through the camp, carrying out their part of the mission.

“All clear,” Clint finally announced.

“Copy that,” Mick replied from his sniper position on a Western hilltop. “Still need me here?”

“No, come on down,” Clint ordered. He looked at the top of the hill, where Ashlin was supposed to be hiding. Of course, he couldn’t see her. “Lady Tiger, check in.”

Silence.

“Lady Tiger, tap twice if there’s a problem with your comms or danger is near.”

Silence remained. No verbal reply. No taps.

“I’m going to fly closer and check on her,” Kayla offered. Clint felt better now that Kayla was going to take a close look at Ashlin’s location. “She’s not there. Checking the area.”

“No need for that,” Shadow said through his own comms as he walked into camp from the far end with Ashlin in a fireman’s carry. “I brought her down.”

Clint was relieved to see his wife, but she was completely limp in his teammate’s arms. Not a single gunshot had been fired, so he was pretty sure she wasn’t shot. What the hell was the matter with her? He started to run toward her.

Shadow slid Ashlin off his shoulder, holding her up under her arms with his left arm and a pistol in his right, pointed at her head. “Stop right there.”

Clint’s boots kicked up dust as he skidded to a stop.

“Now, big shot Mr. Riggs, if you want your insolent wife to live, you will order everyone here to drop all their weapons onto the ground in front of them.”

Clint let out a slow, measured breath as he surveyed the area without moving his head. He knew where every member of his team stood. He also knew that Dog was up on the other hill with his sniper rifle pointed toward the camp. But he didn’t know whether Dog had a clear shot. His men were very capable of handling situations with nothing but their hands. The women were trained like Xena and were extremely skilled in the lethal arts of hand-to-hand combat.

“First, what did you do to my wife?” Clint demanded. She looked like a limp ragdoll in his arms.

“Nothing you didn’t do to these men.” Shadow grinned. “I love how, in the afternoon meeting, you simply opened the box of needles already filled with the proper dose to put a man to sleep and let us take as many as we wanted. I’m going to keep the extras. I’m sure I can put them to good use sometime in the future.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint saw Mia and Piper move so discreetly that if he hadn’t been watching carefully, he wouldn’t have noticed. He wondered what they were up to?

Shadow’s face changed. His eyes went dark. He jabbed the barrel at Ashlin’s drooping head, and it flopped to the side. “I answered your question; now order them to drop their weapons.”

Clint needed time to come up with a plan, but his brain was filled with fear for his wife. He couldn’t live without Ashlin. He wouldn’t want to live without her. She was everything to him.

Focus, he mentally yelled at himself.

Even if Clint ordered his ground team to place all their weapons at their feet, he was quite sure that most of them had hidden weapons. He carried throwing stars, five knives, three pistols, and a garrote. He would love to wrap his serrated wire around Murillo’s neck and pull it with all his strength. How dare he touch Clint’s wife.

In his peripheral vision, he noticed Mia and Piper had moved quite a bit. He wondered what was in that direction that they wanted so badly. Clint couldn’t remember what was there. He decided to buy the women more time.

“Lukas, you don’t want to do this,” Clint tried to reason.

“My name is not Lukas,” he said through gritted teeth. Then he laughed. “I am Rashid Mantzour. I killed that piece of shit Lukas Murillo in Afghanistan. All my teammates who had ambushed those stupid Americans said I looked just like him. We stripped him bare, and I wore his uniform out of that valley, carrying the injured CO. I’d taken a few minor hits, so we were separated once we got to triage at the small camp. The commanding officer died, but not until after he profusely thanked Lukas Murillo for checking every soldier and realizing that the officer was alive. Your army gave me all these wonderful benefits and money, called me a fucking hero, then kicked me out because of my injuries. But then your recruiter, Hank, came along and offered me even more money. And all this time I keep getting my real orders from Adeel bin Laden through people right here in the United States.”