Noah only shook his head.

“How much time do I have?”

Noah checked his watch. “Nine minutes.” He stared at Zack, waiting.

“I need to give them a chance,” Zack said earnestly, desperately pleading with his friend and teammate. “You have to cut me free, brother. They don’t deserve to die,” he said, reminding himself of the classic Clint Eastwood western, Unforgiven, where Eastwood’s character says at the end, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Yet in this case, it was everything.

“I already did,” Noah said matter-of-factly. “Just pull your hands apart. Do you really think I’d let him kill innocent women and children, no matter what Langley says? You should know me better than that. I was a cop, remember? Protect and serve. I took that oath seriously, hombre, and I still do.”

A wave of relief washed over Zack as he realized what Noah had done while he was unconscious—cut through the connecting piece of zip-tie between his hands. He twisted and pulled, and his hands snapped free. He brought his wrists forward and saw that Noah had also sliced through each binding encircling his wrists, and within seconds, he was free and moving toward the table, where his weapon and gear lay untouched.

Zack felt the seconds tick by as he secured the grenades and magazines for both the HK and the full-size Glock 17 9mm pistol secured in his thigh rig. The pistol was a backup weapon for last resort or very tight spaces, but the G17 was as reliable as any weapon manufactured in the last thirty years. He grabbed the team’s internal Motorola push-to-talk radio, attached it to his vest, and wound the microphone through a loop in his Kevlar vest before clipping it to another loop near his shoulder.

The pounding in his head subsided with each beat of his heart and the surge of adrenaline, and he turned back to Noah. “You got the keys?”

Noah smiled a wide Texas grin and held up his right hand, dangling the keys to the second black Range Rover. “But I’m driving. He hit you hard, and you may have a concussion, no matter how tough a sonofabitch you are.”

Zack smiled. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”

Both men jogged through the open front door, left ajar to allow the ocean breeze to permeate the farmhouse. Once inside the Range Rover, Zack and Noah pulled down their tan balaclavas and Noah started the SUV and slammed the vehicle into gear. The tires gripped the tan dirt and gravel, and the Range Rover shot down the two-hundred-foot driveway toward the main road. As soon as they hit the worn asphalt, the SUV accelerated left out of the driveway, rocketing down the old road.