max. I’ll have the car ready.”
“Bless you!” Donita took the stairs two at a time.
When the three of them drove off to the base a short time later, the town of Coronado was just waking up.
“I meant to ask you, Nic,” Donita said from the backseat where she was nursing yet another espresso, “last I saw you last night you were dancing it up with Trond Sigurdsson. How did that go?”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask.”
Gay?
Seven
Mission Impossible . . . ?
T he entire SEAL Team Five was assembled in the conference room of the command center, along with a half-dozen WEALS, and various other military personnel. The mood was serious.
Nicole quickly scanned the room as she sat in the back row with her WEALS mates. There were JAM, F.U., Sly, Cage, Geek, and several others who must have just come in off active duty . . . another indication that this mission must be important. The latter group included the Viking Torolf “Max” Magnusson, the Arab-Native American Omar ben Sulaiman, aka “Teach,” Luke “Slick” Avenil, Kevin “K–4” Fortunato, Travis “Flash” Gordon, and Cody O’Brien.
Commander MacLean stood at the front of the room behind a podium on a raised dais. Geek sat below at a desk with a keyboard in front of him. Rumor was, Geek graduated college at sixteen, got his doctorate at eighteen, and had been in the Navy ever since then. Geek used his boyish charm to hide a wicked way with the ladies.
At a click of the keyboard that resounded around the silent room, the large screen behind the commander flashed an ominous message: “OPERATION OCTOPUS: Najid bin Osama.”
The commander cleared his throat and pointed to the screen. “Gentlemen and ladies, we are about to embark on one of the most ambitious SEAL missions ever. Even bigger and more ambitious than Geronimo.” He paused, then added, “Lieutenant Avenil will be leading this operation.”
The SEAL best known as Slick stepped up onto the dais and stood next to the commander. Slick was old for a SEAL, mid to late thirties, she guessed. Very good-looking, with neck-length, black hair sprinkled with a tiny bit of gray. The rumor mill said he was divorced, badly, and still returned to court intermittently to counter his ex-wife’s greedy alimony demands. In fact, she’d once overheard him telling a fellow SEAL, “You don’t really know a woman until you’ve met her in court.” Slick cleared his throat and told them without any preliminaries, “I just got back from Afghanistan with Max and Teach, and this is what we found.”
An aerial photograph flashed onto the screen. Using a laser pointer, he showed them several strategic locations that would be of importance to them. “This is where we believe Najid’s headquarters is located, his Afghan home, but that won’t be our main target. Over here”—he pointed to what appeared to be another concrete complex of buildings a quarter or so mile away—“is Najid’s harem, or the recent additions to it, anyway.”
About twenty sets of male eyebrows rose with interest.
Men!
“But this isn’t just any harem.”
The next frame showed photos of several well-known girls and women . . . well-known in that they had disappeared or been presumed dead over the past few years. The daughter of a New York billionaire hedge fund owner who’d gained notoriety over contributions to a militant Israeli organization, a minor English princess whose stepfather had presided over the trial of terrorists, a Greek starlet who was married to a Jewish politician, the ten-member class of a private Christian girls’ school in Switzerland who had presumably drowned on a boating field trip, and the Arab novelist Selah ad Beham, who’d written a blistering attack on Muslim treatment of women.
A communal gasp passed over the room. Alive? They were all still alive. Oh my God! Nicole studied the background of the photographs. The girls and women were lined up against a bare concrete wall,
“Bless you!” Donita took the stairs two at a time.
When the three of them drove off to the base a short time later, the town of Coronado was just waking up.
“I meant to ask you, Nic,” Donita said from the backseat where she was nursing yet another espresso, “last I saw you last night you were dancing it up with Trond Sigurdsson. How did that go?”
Nicole rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask.”
Gay?
Seven
Mission Impossible . . . ?
T he entire SEAL Team Five was assembled in the conference room of the command center, along with a half-dozen WEALS, and various other military personnel. The mood was serious.
Nicole quickly scanned the room as she sat in the back row with her WEALS mates. There were JAM, F.U., Sly, Cage, Geek, and several others who must have just come in off active duty . . . another indication that this mission must be important. The latter group included the Viking Torolf “Max” Magnusson, the Arab-Native American Omar ben Sulaiman, aka “Teach,” Luke “Slick” Avenil, Kevin “K–4” Fortunato, Travis “Flash” Gordon, and Cody O’Brien.
Commander MacLean stood at the front of the room behind a podium on a raised dais. Geek sat below at a desk with a keyboard in front of him. Rumor was, Geek graduated college at sixteen, got his doctorate at eighteen, and had been in the Navy ever since then. Geek used his boyish charm to hide a wicked way with the ladies.
At a click of the keyboard that resounded around the silent room, the large screen behind the commander flashed an ominous message: “OPERATION OCTOPUS: Najid bin Osama.”
The commander cleared his throat and pointed to the screen. “Gentlemen and ladies, we are about to embark on one of the most ambitious SEAL missions ever. Even bigger and more ambitious than Geronimo.” He paused, then added, “Lieutenant Avenil will be leading this operation.”
The SEAL best known as Slick stepped up onto the dais and stood next to the commander. Slick was old for a SEAL, mid to late thirties, she guessed. Very good-looking, with neck-length, black hair sprinkled with a tiny bit of gray. The rumor mill said he was divorced, badly, and still returned to court intermittently to counter his ex-wife’s greedy alimony demands. In fact, she’d once overheard him telling a fellow SEAL, “You don’t really know a woman until you’ve met her in court.” Slick cleared his throat and told them without any preliminaries, “I just got back from Afghanistan with Max and Teach, and this is what we found.”
An aerial photograph flashed onto the screen. Using a laser pointer, he showed them several strategic locations that would be of importance to them. “This is where we believe Najid’s headquarters is located, his Afghan home, but that won’t be our main target. Over here”—he pointed to what appeared to be another concrete complex of buildings a quarter or so mile away—“is Najid’s harem, or the recent additions to it, anyway.”
About twenty sets of male eyebrows rose with interest.
Men!
“But this isn’t just any harem.”
The next frame showed photos of several well-known girls and women . . . well-known in that they had disappeared or been presumed dead over the past few years. The daughter of a New York billionaire hedge fund owner who’d gained notoriety over contributions to a militant Israeli organization, a minor English princess whose stepfather had presided over the trial of terrorists, a Greek starlet who was married to a Jewish politician, the ten-member class of a private Christian girls’ school in Switzerland who had presumably drowned on a boating field trip, and the Arab novelist Selah ad Beham, who’d written a blistering attack on Muslim treatment of women.
A communal gasp passed over the room. Alive? They were all still alive. Oh my God! Nicole studied the background of the photographs. The girls and women were lined up against a bare concrete wall,
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