Mantis (K19 Security Solutions 4)

—:—

“We’re in,” Striker told him and Dutch. “We’ll head out at twenty-one hundred.”

Mantis nodded. He’d hoped to have more time to talk to Dutch, but it would have to wait; they were leaving in fifteen minutes.

“Who in the hell is that?” Razor asked. “Jesus, what the fuck is Orlov doing here?”

Mantis looked in the direction that Razor was pointing, and watched as Sergei Orlov, paid assassin, touched Alegria’s face. He took a deep breath, knowing he had to wait for Razor’s signal, but right now, he wanted to storm in and rip Orlov’s arm off. His being here was definitely a complication they hadn’t anticipated.

“Shit,” he heard Striker mutter. He’d gone around and scoped out where they might be able to go in on the side of the building, and was just now seeing Orlov. “What is he doing here?”

“Who?” asked Dutch, who walked up with Striker.

“Oruzhiye.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“That’s four for four, gentlemen. No one knows why he’s here, and worse, no one knows what to do about it.”

“Alegria is our target,” said Mantis. “We go in. We get her. We get out. If we aren’t supposed to upset Kilbourne’s op, then we can’t go in there and shoot up the place.”

“You should know that Alegria’s father agreed to pay whatever Ghafor wants,” said Striker.

“A hundred million bucks? Are you kidding me? Did you know her family had that kind of money?” Dutch asked Mantis, who shook his head.

“I don’t think Alegria knew.”

“Her family is pretty weird.”

“Her mother has stage-four pancreatic cancer.”

“Shit,” murmured Dutch. “Now I feel like an asshole.”

“That’s because you are an asshole,” said Razor. “Now shut up so I can think this through.”

“We should wait it out until Orlov leaves,” suggested Striker.

Mantis thought the edict from the agency was bullshit. They should be able to go in, get Alegria, and whatever casualties there were would be collateral damage. As far as he was concerned, as long as they were here, they should pull Malin Kilbourne out too. What the hell? Why not take out Ghafor and Orlov while they were at it, and rid the world of two more wastes of flesh?

Would the Islamic State be able to endure without Ghafor? Mantis doubted it. Al-Qaeda was far less of a threat once bin Laden was assassinated. They struggled along, raised their ugly monster heads from time to time, but were they considered the biggest threat to the United States? Hardly.

“What’re you thinking?” asked Razor.

“You don’t wanna know.”

Mantis should’ve known that was the absolute wrong thing to say to Razor Sharp. “I sure do,” he said, smirking.

“I don’t give a shit about what the agency wants. One of our own is inside, and we need to get her out.”

“So you don’t want to wait.”

“Hell, no.”

“And Orlov?”

“Good excuse as ever to take out that sonuvabitch.”

“If Doc was with us, Orlov would already be dead. Same for Gunner. He’d kill the man with his bare hands.”