Another thing they get wrong in most movies is how much time you wait before you rush in. And you don’t really “rush” in; you go in with a plan. Our plan was up on the tallest hill they could find with Sergeant Hudson and Sutton, their sniper. They were going to use the tech on Sutton’s gear to see what they thought of the door. There were maps of the cemetery, but not specifics of the crypts and what their doors were constructed of; the way we got to “knock” and enter depended on the kind of door. It might be better to use small explosives on the lock than to blow the door open, because the stone construction of the crypt meant we couldn’t see inside with infrared, so we didn’t know where the hostages were standing. It would suck to blow a hole in Manny’s kids because they were on top of the door we blew. We were waiting for more intel, as in intelligence, so we could go in smart. Slow is steady. Steady is smooth. Smooth is fast. Fast is deadly. I knew it was true, but if I hadn’t had the rest of the team to keep me steady, I might have rushed in, because it was Connie and Tomas. I’d known them since Connie was Tomas’s age and he was a toddler. I didn’t want to go back to Manny with anything other than a win on this one.
“If Blake were the size of Saville the ram would work,” Monty said. He was the same size and build as Hermes, so only Hermes’s slightly broader shoulders let you know who was who, unless you saw the nameplate, or knew how they carried their gear. I knew, because I’d been training with them at least once a month for a year. They’d seen what my more than human speed and strength could do on the tests they had to pass to keep their place on the team.
“I’ve known a few guys Saville’s size that are even faster and stronger than I am.”
“Lycanthropes?” Hermes asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’d like to see what one of your guys would do on the obstacle course,” he said.
“And the weight room,” Saville said.
I grinned. “You’d need specialty bars in the weight room for them to max out.”
“You mean like the bars made for power lifters, so they don’t bend the steel?” Jung asked.
“Something like that.”
Jung was still the only green-eyed Asian American that I’d ever met, but now I knew that he was a Korean/Chinese/Dutch American whose grandparents had met during the Korean War, and his mother had married a Chinese American man whose family had been in the country generations longer.
The radios in our ears came to life, and it was Hudson. “Crypt door just opened, but one of the hostages is tied up in it.”
I touched my mic. “Say again.”
“Strung up in the doorway,” Hudson said.
“Shit,” I whispered, but it carried over the earpieces.
“We need a new entry plan,” Hill said.
“Sutton and I will regroup.”
“Can’t kick, ram, or explode a hostage to get inside,” Jung said.
“Which hostage?” I asked.
“Woman.”
My stomach tightened at the thought of Connie strung up in the doorway of the crypt like an animal for slaughter. “Any sign of other hostages?” I asked.
“Negative,” Hudson said.
Sutton said, “Sorry, Blake.”
“Don’t be sorry yet, Sutton. We get them out, no sorry needed.”
“I hear that.”
“We’ll get them out,” Killian said.
“Cheerful is good,” Hermes said, “but we have to get past the door to get them out.”
“We have to get through one hostage to get inside,” Saville said.
“We don’t go through Connie,” I said.
“Hostage, just hostage. Names cloud the issue, you know that,” Monty said.
I wanted to protest, but . . . “Fine, we don’t go through the hostage like she’s a fucking door.”
“We do what works best to save the most lives,” Hill said.
I shook my head. “Not good enough.”
“It’s all we got, Blake,” Saville said.
“Define ‘go through the hostage,’” I said, and glared at Saville.
“You’re too close to this,” Hill said.
“I know.”
“Don’t let your emotions compromise the rest of us,” Monty said.
I nodded. “I won’t get you guys hurt trying to save them.”
“It’s our job to risk ourselves to save the hostages,” Jung said.
“Monty knows what I mean.”
“We need an idea for entry,” Hill said.
“I need to see it,” I said.
“See what?”
“The door, Connie, I mean the hostage.”
“Seeing it won’t make it easier,” Saville said.
“I need to see how she’s tied up in the doorway, Saville.” I hit the button on my throat mic. “Sutton, is it just her hands tied, or hands and feet?”
“Wrists tied over her head to something inside the room.”
“Is she in the doorway, or just inside the door?”
“Inside, but she still blocks the entrance.”
“I need to see,” I said, and pushed away from the side of the truck.
Several of them pushed away to stand around me. It was Hill who said, “You wait for Hudson and Sutton to regroup.”
“I am, I just want Sutton and his high-tech gadgets to help me see into the crypt.”