An Eye For An Eye Read Online Free Page B

camera, Rob?” he whispered.
    Behind him, Agent Rob Portman nodded. He held up the camera and flicked it on. Ortega flinched as the red “on” light flashed in his goggles. Damn! he thought. They had forgotten about that. Finding what he needed in the pouch on his web belt, he ripped a small piece of tape off the roll and covered the light. He leaned back and studied his handiwork. Satisfied, he looked up at Portman and grinned, then held up the roll of tape.
    “Duct tape,” he whispered. “Never leave home without it.”
    “We’re really going to do this?” Portman asked nervously.
    “Intelligence says that the factory is empty,” Ortega responded. Then he smiled mischievously. “No guts, no glory.” Before Portman could respond, he turned back to the tunnel. “Camera’s on,” he said into the microphone.
    His radio hissed. “Okay, Juan. We have the feed. Looks good.” There was a pause. “Uh, boss? You sure about this?”
    Him too? Ortega thought. “Yeah. Let’s do this thing.”
    The radio was silent for a moment. “Okay. Take it nice and slow now.”
    “Roger,” Ortega responded then whispered over his shoulder.
    “Stay right behind me, Rob,” he instructed.
    He took a breath, held his gun in front of him, and began creeping forward. Despite his height—he was five-eight—he had to hunch over periodically to keep from banging his head into the overhead supports.
___
    Matthew Richter placed his boots in front of the locker then unzipped his tactical suit. As he slid his arm out of the sleeve, he felt a twinge in his shoulder and cursed under his breath. He hadn’t noticed the pain before but, when he thought about it, he realized that he had fallen pretty hard. He grabbed a towel and headed toward the shower.
    Camp Smith was located on the Hudson River in Cortland Manor, New York, forty miles north of Manhattan. The FBI, the DEA, and a number of other federal agencies maintained a permanent presence at the National Guard base, and it was a location that Richter’s team used for training from time to time.
    Moments later, standing in front of the mirror, he thought about Patty. They were supposed to play tennis tonight. He winced as he rubbed his shoulder. As much as he wanted to see her again, they might have to find something else to do. He turned slightly and noticed the reflection. There was an ugly purple bruise extending down the back of his shoulder to just below the shoulder blade. This was why they trained as hard as they did, he thought. Inevitably something went wrong and they had to be able to react instantly to the ever-changing scenario. They had been in the live-fire room—what his team had dubbed the Play Room—which was a large warehouse-like structure that had mockups and flexible building facades that allowed them to run a variety of training scenarios so that when they were called out on a real raid and were facing armed and dangerous terrorists face to face, the odds were stacked in their favor. Repetition followed by more repetition , Richter thought, remembering something the HRT trainers liked to say. One day it was an aircraft, the next, a school, the following, a mockup of the UN building.
    At the end of the week, he knew, they would be training at the NYPD’s fifty-four acre facility at Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx. Then, in two weeks, they would travel to the FBI facility at Quantico, Virginia. Repetition followed by more repetition, in every conceivable scenario , Richter thought as he rotated his arm. He winced and shook his head. He was going to need some Tylenol.
    The training instructor would have to confirm his suspicions, but he knew what had happened. He had been following the point man, an energetic and capable former Marine, as they scrambled through the dark sewer pipes. Right before Agent Reardon, the point man, hit the ladder, he tripped. Richter, who had been following, perhaps a little too closely, had gone over Reardon’s heels. If he had to guess,