“Vandal is on the X and ready for dust off,” the lead pilot reported.

“Sixty seconds,” Jed replied as he watched his teammates dumping a couple of cell phones and a laptop into a canvas bag that Johnny had pulled from his kit. Behind him, Carl and Hyeon were dragging their prisoner toward the north hangar door as Nisha and Bex photographed and inspected the empty wooden crate.

There was precious little else to take.

Jed scanned the dead bodies littering the floor of the hangar and prayed their prisoner would have something to say.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE

177TH FIGHTER WING, NEW JERSEY AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE

SOUTH END OF ATLANTIC CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

1538 HOURS LOCAL

The conversation with Johnny was one Jed wasn’t looking forward to having but one that needed to be had. The two of them needed to sort out all the emotional baggage they’d both been carrying before they next found themselves in combat. The stress had been weighing on Jed for weeks, but there simply hadn’t been time before now to have a one-on-one.

Jed motioned for Johnny to join him, and the Shepherd’s sour expression signaled what he thought of that.

“You summoned me?” Johnny said with an edge to his voice.

“Yeah,” Jed said. “I think we need to talk about the dynamic here—about the friction we’re having, you and me—before it degrades the team.”

Johnny looked at him with bemused defiance, arms crossed, as he took a seat in the makeshift ready area they had created in the hangar. “So you’re gonna give me some sort of reprimand, I suppose?”

Jed sighed and took a seat opposite him. “Nope. I want to talk to you as a teammate—brother to brother.”

“Not as team leader?” Johnny asked, cocking his head to the side.

“As teammates,” he said, leaning in. “Look, man, it’s pretty clear you have a problem with my leadership of Joshua Bravo, but we need to sort it out or it’s going to affect our readiness—affect the entire team. No holds barred, brother. What is it?”

Johnny looked surprised, disarmed even.

“It’s not you personally,” Johnny said, clearly softening. “It’s just, I came up the hard way in this organization. After my time in SOF, I felt the calling—you know what I mean? It’s like, you don’t exactly choose the Shepherds, right? It calls to you. It’s a God thing . . .”

Jed nodded and smiled. That he definitely got.

“When I came here, I was put on the security detail with Sanderson and the other guys. I don’t know why. Morvant said he felt that was God’s plan in the short term. That short term turned into two years—two years before I got called up to a team. I’ve been with Joshua Bravo since, serving and doing everything asked of me without complaint. Then you come along . . .”

“And I cut to the front of the line and take the leadership job?” Jed said. “A job you hoped to grow into?”