Leo thought about it. Cullen was right. His woman was calm, cool, and collected, but when she was advocating for a patient she roared like a lion. Daisy would be like that too, he just knew it. But if subterfuge was more expedient, she would go that route, which is what she’d done yesterday.
“So, Tom has eyes on her? She’s there at the hotel?” Max asked.
Leo nodded. “She said she would call me if she got any information that might be useful. She hasn’t called, so I guess she didn’t hear anything.”
“Did you really think she would find out anything more than Kane would?” Max asked.
“I thought it was possible,” Leo said. “She’s a force to be reckoned with.”
“If you feel like that, call her,” Max said. “After the briefing.”
Leo nodded.
Kane continued going over where they would be landing and what they could expect according to the drone pictures.
“If things are set up as we’ve seen before, Dr. Squires should be held in the back of the cave. We have no idea how deep it goes. What would be best is if we could get them coming out of the cave instead of us going in,” Kane explained.
“That’s where I come in,” Asher said as he stepped up and pointed at the map.
“Wait a minute,” Raiden interjected. “Are we sure this cave doesn’t link to any other cave or caves?”
Kane shook his head. “This is uncharted territory for us. There is no way to know. The drone has done an intense grid pattern for a kilometer around this area, and there is no other sign of life. No people or vehicles. So hopefully, this is the one and only hiding place.”
Sounded like all possible recon had been done.
Max nodded to Asher so he would continue. “With Raiden’s help, I’m going to set explosives under the jeep and two trucks. That will act as the diversion we need to get the terrorists to vacate the cave.”
“But we don’t think all of them will leave,” Max said. “While Asher plays with C-4, Cullen, Nic, and I will be positioned on either side of the cave. During the chaos, we’ll head in and look for Dr. Squires.”
“What time is this going down?” Leo asked.
“We’re expecting some bad weather from twenty-one hundred hours until zero one hundred hours, so we’ll take off after that. Our ETA is zero two hundred. That would put us at the caves at zero three hundred.
Leo examined the topographical map. He glanced over at Ezio. As the team’s snipers, it was their duty to find high ground so that they could cover everybody as they did their jobs.
Kane would monitor everyone’s position on his laptop so that he could coordinate movements where needed. He’d be with either Leo or Ezio. If things fell to shit, Leo, Ezio, and Kane could go in.
“Are we going to get more shots of the target area?” Max asked Kane.
“They’re planning another at eighteen hundred hours tonight, before the bad weather starts,” Kane said.
“Who’s coordinating this?” Max asked Kane.
“Captain Miller, USAF. This is what she does.”
“Have you met with her?” Max asked.
“Yep. Did yesterday,” Kane answered. “She knows her shit. The only downside is this is a new area to them, which is good and bad. Good, that they’ve now got something else nailed down. Bad in the sense that she doesn’t know the area inside and out like she normally does. She’s hating life. That’s the reason for more drones and more photos.”
Max turned to Leo. “Go make your call. Let me know if anything new pops up. I don’t want any more surprises from the doctor’s daughter.”
Leo nodded, grabbed his briefing binder, and hauled ass out of the cramped conference room. It was only seven o’clock in the morning. The heat was already oppressive, but the outside fresh air still felt better than the stifling conditions of the indoors. He walked around the building and leaned his shoulder against a wall, then called Daisy.
“Hey, Handsome, aren’t you calling pretty early? Weren’t you worried you’d wake me up?”
“No, can’t say I was.”
There was a long pause.
“So, do you know exactly what I had for breakfast?” she asked with a hint of a laugh in her voice.
“Nope, just that you called for room service. Everybody on Team Good-Guy is happy to know that you’re tucked safely in your room.”
She chuckled. “Team Good-Guy, huh? I’m not sure I would want to be affiliated with those fucknuts that I had to deal with at the embassy yesterday if I were you.”
“You have quite a way with words, Miss Squires,” Leo smiled. He liked it. She cut through all the bullshit and didn’t make him try to decipher what she was thinking and feeling, she just said what she was thinking.
“Just calling it the way I see it. So tell me, is the good-guy team part of the embassy clown-car?”
“Just one of the guys. He didn’t do any talking. He was in charge of yesterday’s tail. Now that he realizes just the quality of woman he’s up against, he’s upped his game.”
“Tom Ludlum?”
Leo stared at his phone for a second.
“You know, you’re kind of scary the way you get information.”
“Leo, do you know what’s really scary? The fact that Tom’s supposed to be good at what he does and I still managed to lose his men. Anyway, they think they have me pinned in today, so they must be happy little campers,” she exhaled slowly. “So tell me, Chief Petty Officer Perez, the man who was one of the top marksmen
