Read Online The Recruit: A Taskforce Story by Brad Taylor - Free Book Online

phone. It connected and she said, “You want it, you have to come get it.”
    Then slipped out the door.
    Knuckles said, “Wow. She’s a piece of work.”
    “Yeah. I know. I might go in even if there are twelve guys.”
    They waited, and Knuckles heard the noise grow in his phone, then a shriek loud enough to cause him to pull the phone away from his ear, followed by shouting. In a raised voice, as if she were hysterical, he heard, “Five men, five men, all dressed like waiters. People are on the floor blindfolded. All are on the floor. Near-end of the ballroom. Men are there. Standing with pistols.”
    Knuckles thought,
Perfect
.
    He said, “Collapse on the floor. Lay down. We’re in.”
    To Decoy: “Five hostiles at the near end, armed with pistols and dressed like waiters. Hostages are on the floor, blindfolded. Shoot anyone standing in uniform.”
    Knuckles saw a grim smile, the same one he’d seen before a hellacious firefight in Haditha, Iraq, when they’d been outnumbered and needed to break free. A long time ago.
    Decoy said, “Let’s get some.”
    They broke the plane of the door and moved at a fast crouch to the end of the hallway, seeing the light from the ballroom ahead. They stayed just inside for a split second, Knuckles catching Decoy’s eye. He nodded, and Knuckles flowed into the room, sighting down the barrel of his weapon.
    He saw the red of Carly’s dress, a man above her in a waiter’s uniform, holding a weapon. His own spit fire and the man went down. He heard gunfire from his right, a rapid double-tap from Decoy, before he’d even lined up his next target.
    He saw a man go down, then the remaining three, one looking at him slack-jawed. He squeezed the trigger seeing a red blossom smear the man’s face, hearing Decoy’s gun spitting death. The final man got off one round before both Decoy and Knuckles rained fire on him, pummeling his torso with rounds.
    In the span of three seconds, it was over.
    Without a word, both men began clearing the room, kicking out weapons and searching under tables. A minute later, they were done. Carly sat up, eyes wide, a little stunned at the violence that had just erupted around her.
    Decoy pulled her to her feet and said, “You okay?”
    She rapidly nodded, the voltage of the fear still flowing through her. She said, “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. That was some scary shit, though.”
    At the far end of the ballroom, away from the hostages, Knuckles felt the adrenaline subside. He said, “Now what? How are we going to explain this?”
    The hostages began tentatively to stir, craning their heads to see, wondering if they were okay. Decoy said, “What do you mean
we
? You’re the damn team leader. I have a date.”
    One hostage began to pull off his blindfold. Knuckles said, “Not quite yet. Carly, shout in Spanish. Tell them to leave the blindfolds on. Act like a terrorist.”
    She did so, and Knuckles said, “Grab a blindfold. We’re going to become hostages.”
    Decoy said, “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

13
    The plane hit the runway of Charleston International, and Decoy turned on his phone, saying, “Remind me why we flew down here again? Selection starts in DC.”
    It had been two weeks since the debacle at the embassy, and Knuckles’s cockamamie plan of pretending to be hostages was holding up. Nobody knew what or who had stopped the attack, and theories ranged from an inside disagreement—a possible female terrorist the hostages had heard—to someone from the overflow room attacking them before fleeing for his life.
    Since the terrorists had only half of their forces, most of the diners in the overflow room heard the gunfire in the main ballroom and immediately fled out the front, screaming and yelling. This had brought a rapid police response, and a standoff as they tried to communicate with the dead terrorists from outside.
    The police had added to the confusion by taking credit for capturing the van in the loading bay, crowing about