Free SEAL Team 13 (SEAL Team 13 series) by Evan Currie Page B

her head. “You can’t keep the details to yourself, Commander. That’s not how the Teams operate.”
    “The Teams operate on need-to-know,” he countered. “My team already knows the details, and you don’t need to know.”
    “That’s not how it works!” she snapped. “Command decides who needs to know what.”
    “Not this time.” He shook his head. “Not for this mission.”
    “Bullshit!” she snarled at him, infuriated that he’d gotten her to curse, then doubly angry when he just seemed amused by it. “I’m not putting these in until I get some answers.”
    “That’s all right, I already did.” Masters shrugged, pulling a second sheaf of papers from a pile and handing them to her.
    Captain Andrews blinked, grabbed them, and quickly scanned the pages. The single word “approved” stamped on the bottom glared back at her.
    “No way in hell did you get these through so fast,” she breathed out as she shook her head. “No way in hell .”
    Masters just shrugged. “You have a lot to learn about the Teams, Andrews. I had Admiral Karson copy us onto the testing division’s supply authorization. We’ll get whatever new gear is being considered for deployment.”
    He stood up as she gaped at him, and then brushed past her on his way out of the office. “Don’t worry about it, Captain. Just think of all the time you’ll save by not having to fill out requisition forms.”
    The hurled epithet that followed him out the door brought another wide smile to his face. He’d always wanted carte blanche to fuck with the brass, and as long as Karson needed him, there wasn’t a thing anyone short of another admiral could do about it.
    They may have dragged his ass back in, but Hawk Masters was going to extract every ounce of value from the situation he could.
    After all, he only had just so long before the whole thing fell in on him anyway. One way or the other.

    “Well?”
    “He’s begun recruiting.”
    “Anyone we know?”
    The young man shook his head in response to Percy’s question. “Mostly no. We know their names, but they’re drifters. Not expected to last much longer anyway.”
    “Interesting,” Percy acknowledged.
    “We do know one person on the list, however,” the young man added, frowning slightly. “Alexander Norton.”
    Percy stiffened, thinking. “I know that name. I can’t remember where.…”
    “He crossed over when he was eight.…”
    “Eight.” Percy reached up and grabbed the paper the younger man was holding out to him. “That seems…highly unlikely.”
    “Yes, sir.” The young man nodded, agreeing.
    Crossing the veil at eight years old was practically a death sentence—there was just no way a child could hope able to defend himself against the things that would take notice of him. Heck, few adults survived the experience. Most were slaughtered within minutes, some within days, and the largest chunk of the rest went insane and killed themselves.
    Children took the shift in reality with more equanimity, but physically they were meat for the grinder.
    “He was taken in by Emilio,” Percy whispered, reading the paper. “The Black. Is he a practitioner?”
    “We believe so, yes.”
    Percy thought back to the matriarch’s orders and sighed, shaking his head. “All right, go. Send Robert back.”
    The young man nodded, falling back before turning and leaving the room.
    It was clear that Masters knew more about the actual situation than anyone had realized; otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to find someone like Alexander, who had survived across the veil since he was eight. No, for Masters to have contacted Norton, he had to know a great deal indeed.
    That made him dangerous.
    A few moments passed, and then Robert Black walked into the room. He was a nondescript sort of man, the kind you would miss in a crowd. Percy knew that that was one of his main skills, actually, and only that knowledge kept him from severely underestimating the man. Robert was five foot