Seven Days to Forever by Ingrid Weaver Read Free Book Online Page A

flipped the power locks on the doors and threw the van into reverse.
    Abbie braced her hands on the dashboard, trying to catch her breath. She saw that Flynn had stopped running. His lips moved, as if he were talking to himself again.
    “No problem, Sergeant,” the woman said. “I’ll take it from here.”
    Flynn smiled and lifted his bloody hand to his forehead in a crisp salute.
    Abbie whipped her gaze back to her rescuer.
    The blond woman palmed the wheel as she changed gears, expertly sending the minivan into a skidding half circle so that it was pointing up the ramp instead of down. She gave Abbie a tight smile. “Relax, Miss Locke. If you had the good sense to run away from Flynn O’Toole, then you won’t have any trouble understanding what I’m about to tell you.”

Chapter 4
    T he warehouse looked as if it had been empty for years. The weeds that poked through the cracks in the asphalt loading area were waist high in places. Rust stained the overhead doors and trailed down the brick wall beside the corroded rain gutters. High in the wall beneath the eaves, the rising moon glinted from a row of windows. The darkness behind the broken panes stood out like missing teeth.
    Flynn eased back on the throttle and let his bike coast toward the middle door. “It’s O’Toole,” he said quietly.
    The door lifted on well-oiled rollers. Staff Sergeant Lang was on guard duty. He averted his rifle and motioned Flynn to drive inside.
    The bike’s headlight revealed several parked vehicles beside a canvas tarp that formed a wall directly in front of him. Flynn took off his helmet and waited until the warehouse door rolled shut, then swung his leg off the bike and headed toward the tarp.
    In fact, the tarp was one side of a large canvas military tent that the team had erected inside the warehouse as part of their security precautions. The ruse was low-tech, fast to implement and surprisingly effective when it came to ensuring the outside of the building continued to appear dark and deserted.
    The operational detachments from Delta Force were accustomed to working on their own—after some spectacular failures decades ago when the force was first formed, they had learned the hard way not to trust outside intelligence. They’d also learned the more fingers there were in the pie, the more likely that matters would spiral out of their control. The best way to keep a secret was not to tell anyone, so besides the president and the brass at the Pentagon, no one knew that Eagle Squadron was here.
    Flynn lifted aside a flap, stepped over a bundle of electrical cables that snaked along the cement floor and strode into a blaze of light and activity. The tent was organized into two areas: one for equipment, the other for personnel. To his left he saw two soldiers cleaning their guns while Rafe Marek sorted out the ordnance they’d assembled. On Flynn’s right, the team’s communications center had been set up on a table crammed with radio, telephone and computer equipment. Scale maps of the area and photos of known members of the LLA had been taped to the poles that supported the roof. Some folding chairs, a trestle table, a small refrigerator and a microwave oven marked the mess hall and beyond that were two rows of cots that would serve as their barracks for the duration of the mission.
    They’d brought only the bare necessities to Washington when they’d loaded the transport plane at Fort Bragg—vehicles, equipment and shelter. This self-contained temporary base of operations could be packed up and stacked in the back of a truck as quickly as it had been assembled. The living conditions were cramped and far from comfortable, but the plumbing in the warehouse bathrooms worked, and Gonzales had coaxed hot water out of the showers. Compared to other places where Eagle Squadron had set up shop, this tent was downright luxurious.
    As far as Flynn knew, the mission was still a go. According to the latest news, the damage done by