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“SecDef,” the man replied, to everyone’s surprise.
“I’m contacting Shepherd now,” Smith reported through comms.
“Don’t move a muscle,” Garcia warned the two men in front of them.
On the ridge, Cooper and Doc were in a similar stare down with the four men who were now close enough to take a seat at their campfire. It occurred to Doc that with the current standoff, the intruders had achieved their goal. While standing there staring at the four men, he and Cooper weren’t monitoring their equipment or what was taking place in the target area.
Cooper and Doc had also heard, through comms, the exchange with Garcia and the unknown visitor who issued orders to stand down. They truly doubted these men were there on SecDef’s authority. With a side glance at each other and the nod from Cooper with the ‘go’ signal, they both then raised their weapons at the four visitors.
“Keep your hands where we can see them,” Cooper ordered.
“This isn’t necessary, friend,” Mister Texas Twang said. “And I doubt you’re going to shoot us.”
“Then you don’t know who we are,” Cooper replied.
“Mister Wells has security well in hand,” Texas Twang said. “Your presence is an unwanted hinderance.”
All six of the men from Shepherd Security were surprised to hear him mention Wells by name, as shocked as they were to hear SecDef spoken.
“Is that a fact?” Cooper asked. “How about you do your thing, and we’ll do ours? Just don’t do your thing here.”
“Thirty minutes. Well, twenty-five now,” the man said.
The standoff at both locations continued for five more minutes. In the van, Roth and Smith monitored the small convoy that had departed Wells’ property while they waited for Shepherd to get back to them. They gave a running verbal account of the movements of the three vehicles. Oddly, the three Suburbans ventured further into the barren wilderness beside the Wells ranch.
“They just went off-road,” Roth reported. “Like out in the middle of freaking nowhere. And hey, it just occurred to me that these guys obviously don’t know we have a satellite on them if they think this Mexican standoff is preventing us from seeing what their boys in the Suburbans are up to.”
“Speaking of which,” Smith cut in, “I think our boys reached their target, and I’ll admit, I’m perplexed by what I’m seeing.”
Roth focused on the feed. “Holy shit. How did we not see that?”
“Care to share boys?” Cooper’s voice came through comms.
The men who’d come into his and Doc’s camp thought he was talking to them. Texas Twang answered. “Share our thing? I don’t think so, no more than you plan to share yours.”
Cooper merely smirked and nodded.
“There’s a small UAV down that they’re recovering. And it’s still smoking,” Roth said. “Went down very recently and we never saw it while it was in the air. Not on radar and not on satellite imaging.”
So that was what Wells was working on. Stealth UAV technology. All the men knew it. “They just loaded it into the back of one of the Suburbans,” Smith said. “Took six men to lift it,” he added. “Looks like it’s about five feet in length, fixed wing, no markings.”
“Can you make out what type of propulsion it has on it?” Shepherd’s voice cut in.
Roth was glad Shepherd was finally on comms. Hopefully he’d had a conversation with SecDef.
“Negative Big Bear,” Smith replied. “I don’t see solar panels, so it must be battery or fuel.”
“Coop, Razor, I need you to stand down. Hold your position with Wells’ men, protect our equipment, but don’t escalate the situation. We’ve gotten what we need. They’ve gotten what they need. It’s a draw and they’ll be out of there just as soon as their recovery team is back at their home base.”
“Affirmative,” Cooper’s voice whispered, but he didn’t like it.
None of the men did.
“I’ll stay on line until your guests leave. Then we’ll reconvene in my video meeting room,” Shepherd said.
At that exact moment the three Suburbans drove back onto Wells’ property, the men who’d dropped in at both Shepherd Security locations retreated with a polite nod. The men at the campground took the two men Garcia had subdued with them.
“That was interesting,” Cooper said upon joining the video meeting. The others, plus Sheperd, were already in the room.
