Delta: Retribution (2 page)

His CO stepped forward. “Everyone’s sorry about Michael, but it’s not an excuse. Missing check-ins. Disappearing without notice—”

“I have my reasons,” Trace growled.

“You’re a bad day away from dishonorable discharge and time in the brig.”

Trace dropped his gaze. He knew that. Fuck, he knew it. But it didn’t matter. Nothing did.

The dark-haired man wiped his nose. “You’re a good fighter, kid.”

“I know,” Trace said.

“You’ve got an attitude for shit, you pussy-face bitch.”

“What’s it to you?”

“My name’s Jared Westin, and I’m your only chance.” He pointed to the other man. “That’s Brock Gamble, Delta team leader for Titan Group.”

Well, hell. That got his attention. Titan was legendary. “Okay.” Trace bent over, grabbed a shirt, pulled it on, and then kicked on some shorts.

Brock nodded.

“We’re recruiting.” Jared eyed him. “Twelve months of training and testing says you’re a smart fuck. Two years of combat operations says you’re a skilled operator. But you’re deteriorating, and no one wants anything to do with you.”

Trace coughed a bitter laugh. “I have my reasons.”

“I know what they are, and I don’t care.”

Brock stepped forward. “You want a spot on my team, you get a pass from Uncle Sam. Titan owns you.”

“No one owns me.”

Jared shook his head. “I would. But you’ll get your time to do what you need to for your brother. You work ghost jobs, and when you’re off, you’re off. I don’t care if you sift through desert sand or fuck pretty girls. I don’t care. But when I say work, you work.”

He belonged to no one. Not even the infamous Titan Group. “No.”

“Fine.” Jared turned and walked through the downed door. Brock followed, and neither turned back when two military police walked in.

His CO shook his head. “You’re AWOL, Reeves. You didn’t show up. Hell, you didn’t have permission to leave. Your ass should be in Afghanistan with your team. Not goddamn Germany.”

His muscles tensed. He could get past two MPs and a CO. He could fight and take them out, or die trying.

“Before you do anything stupid, there’s a dozen more of them outside the door. Choose wisely, Reeves.”

“Goddamn it.” He rubbed his face.

Jared Westin stepped back into the doorway. “You come with me now, you walk out unshackled.”

“Fuck!” Trace tore at his close-cropped hair. “Goddamn it.”

But there were no options. And it was Titan Group. Hell, Delta team was an urban legend, and he was being recruited for it? With time to continue his hunt without anyone asking questions?

He looked from the MPs to his CO and over to Jared Westin. “Fine. Titan. You own me.”

CHAPTER THREE

Two weeks later…

The leather chair creaked as Trace leaned back into it. He stared down the giant war-room table. All around them were computer and television screens. It was his first time at Titan’s HQ, and after running through hell with Jared and Brock, he was okay with a cushy leather chair—for a moment.

Delta had been called home and was in a rebuilding phase. The men already on the team had seen it coming with the recent catastrophe in Somalia. They’d lost four men, then Brock had become their new team leader. Everyone seemed about as comfortable as Trace had been with the idea of returning to civilization, even if no one minded a comfortable chair every once in a while.

Delta was a ghost team. They weren’t meant to traipse into war rooms. They received their orders wherever they were, appeared, did their work, and disappeared. They defined “off the grid,” melting into their own shadows when they were done with a job.

Trace found comfort in that, more than he had in the last few weeks with his SEAL team. God, that had killed him, and he’d changed. Cracked, really. There was no saving him.

And then Delta became an option, and he thought he might make it. No trails, no existence, no life—nothing other than a team he meshed with, who let him dance with his demons without comment. That was how they liked it.

Brock Gamble, Titan’s former second-in-command, was the team leader. He got what made Trace tick, pushing his anger into training and letting him roam wild without any questions.

Brock threw a pile of key rings onto the table. Sudden apprehension tickled Trace’s nerves.

“We’re grounded for a couple weeks.” Brock glanced at Trace. “Temporary, but expect to stay a while.”

Apprehension churned itself into anxiety. “Keys?”

“One of them is for a townhouse, the other a car.”

“Temporary,” Brock had promised. A house and car didn’t sound temporary. The urge to puke hit him hard. He’d been tricked… He had to get back overseas and work on his own projects. He didn’t have time for team building and trust games or whatever else was planned for them.

Jared walked in, cracking his knuckles, and dropped into a chair. A bulldog trotted—slowly—into the room and plopped down next to him. “Never thought I’d see you boys sitting around a conference table.”

No shit
.

But no one said anything. Brock leaned forward and ran his hand over his chin but stayed mum.

Jared continued, “As you may’ve heard, GSI is gone, has been for a few months, and we’ve secured their contracts.”

GSI had been a Titan competitor in the black-ops, private-security world. Jared flashed a look at Brock, but nothing registered across either man’s face. But it was noteworthy, if for no other reason than it seemed to create an interesting dynamic between the two.

“You’re still our ghost operations team. But I need Delta filling in where the main team can’t be. Standard jobs based out of the States. Anyone who can’t handle it, I’ll understand.” Jared glared directly at him.

Hell. All eyes in the room shifted to Trace.
Great, fuckers
. Trace made no show of noticing.

Brock cleared his throat, pulling all eyes forward again. “Everyone good?”

No one said a word, and that was the right response.

Jared nodded. “If you want out of your contracts, that’s fair. I’m changing the ground rules on you, even if it’s only temporary.” He stood, and his bulldog did the same, pacing along the length of the room. “If you want to stay off the grid, go underground, then take a sabbatical. Go off the clock until Delta’s back on the darkest, dirtiest missions that exist on earth.” Trace could feel the eyes begin to drift his way again. Jared cleared his throat. “But for now, until I add a few more bodies to the main team, I need you.”

Brock nodded. One by one, Delta nodded. Ryder. Luke. Javier. Colin. Everyone except Trace. He hadn’t nodded, yet no one seemed surprised.

“Trace?” Jared crossed his arms.

Maybe a sabbatical was what he needed—but what guy in his twenties did that? A guy who was cracking up. The key ring of doom was going to be his death. A car and house? The thought made him itchy. He couldn’t handle the humdrum of civilian life. Seriously, what was he supposed to do? Find an ammo store he liked, buy a coffee maker, and watch TV until Brock called him up and said to grab his go bag?

Grounding the team was a death sentence. Delta was starting to feel like the only way he’d survive after Michael’s death and the questionable falling-out with his SEAL brothers.

Once a SEAL, always a SEAL? Didn’t feel that way.

If Jared would put him to work right away so he didn’t have time on his hands, maybe Trace could handle life with a leash around his neck. He chewed the inside of his mouth. As long as he was busy, he wouldn’t leave Delta. He couldn’t. It was how he functioned at the moment.

Trace squared his shoulders. “If the team’s in, I’m in.”

“First job, high-value-target rescue.” Jared opened a folder and passed out intel packets. “HVT’s Marlena McCloud. Abducted by a South American arms dealer whose legitimate business dealings revolve around sugar production. His name is Marco Romatar. Intelligence has her in his compound in northern South America, somewhere in the Guyana region.”

Trace paged through the packet of papers. He studied the strategic details more than he studied the girl. How hard would it be to pinpoint a chick wandering around the jungle? If he focused on an easy HVT operation, then maybe he’d be able to take a deep breath.

“Guyana? Like the land of Jim Jones and the Jonestown suicides?” Brock asked.

Jared nodded. “Romatar has several sugar growers down there. Satellite images and recon from a British ops team shows them farther back in the jungle. A remote, decently equipped house on a marshy river. Armed guards patrolling water and land. Questions?”

Javier nodded. “British ops didn’t extract?”

“HVT to us. They didn’t know why. I don’t know why, and I didn’t ask. They saw an American, passed the intel along in a friendly, FYI kinda way. She means something to someone. This HVT is a high priority, no other details provided.” Jared turned toward the television screen and picked up the remote. Hitting Play, he went back to his chair, and his dog dropped to the floor as the screen lit up and a surveillance video came to life.

The grainy parking-lot footage showed a woman in heels making her way down a row of cars. A van rushed up. Two men grabbed her. The van peeled out. The entire scene took less than ten seconds.

Jared paused it again. “That was from a secure CIA ops site outside Washington, DC. Underground, security badges, the works. The van was let out by the guard on duty without so much as a second glance, and no one heard from her again. But she fit the description from the British team. We’re not 100 percent confident, but it’s what we have to go on. Brock, more to add?”

“We’re itching to go. It’ll be a complicated extraction, but based on what we’ve mapped out, it’s doable, using local resources and floating the river.” He leaned forward and slapped the table. “We’re a go. Plan to load up in three hours.”

Trace breathed a sigh of relief. Three hours he could manage. The only downside was that he wasn’t in the desert looking for the only thing that might give him peace.

CHAPTER FOUR

Marlena woke on the dingy bed and sat up. Days of waking in this compound hadn’t done great things for her belief that she was getting out anytime soon. No one from work would miss her, and she routinely cut classes to keep up with the workload, so none of her classmates would think twice about her absence.

Mr. Romatar was in charge. That much she knew. He was the reason she’d been brought to wherever they were. It was hot and humid. The flight had taken hours, and no one spoke English unless they wanted her to work. Then it was English with a thick accent and a serious agenda. They all called her “the kid,” and it drove her crazy, but they knew what she was working on. They had classified information. She’d known from day one that this stupid job she’d agreed to do for the government would get her killed.

So much for all the security-clearance hoops she’d jumped through and the assurances that anyone who had an inkling of what she was doing was also cleared.
You’re safer working with us than you are in chemistry lab
. Ugh. Liars.

Mr. Romatar had armed guards, but Marlena mostly met with intelligent employees who asked many questions and took copious notes. Could her project be replicated? How would they make adjustments for any number of caveats? Part of her was pissed that her contemporaries were taking the shortcut in creating their weapons based on her knowledge, and part of her was pleased that they didn’t question what she told them.

And she’d told them only enough. If they tested her descriptions and plans, they would work. If they tried to put various parts together, they would mesh. But she hadn’t told them the one key part to her plan, the engineering component that had taken her a few semesters to figure out. On paper, everything looked as it should. She could swear that she’d shared everything, and when it didn’t work, she’d have both protected whomever they were intent on attacking and maybe prolonged her life by prolonging her usefulness.

There was a rap on her door, then it swung open. The same man who met her every morning stood there, a container of milk and a breakfast bar in hand. “Ready?”

“I think so.” She smiled because there was nothing else to do. Brian would’ve laughed at her. Called her weak. He would’ve thought she should outwit them. But out-talking men with guns wasn’t her forte. As a matter of fact, if she hadn’t been lured in by the idea of being patriotic, she never would have thought about how biological engineering could help protect her country. Now look at her.

Marlena rubbed her temples.

“Miss McCloud?”

Her stomach churned. She’d meant to change her name, wanting nothing to do with her father, but it would’ve messed with all the paperwork it took to keep her college grants and scholarships. Marlena shook her head and stood, accepting the breakfast offerings with a verbal “thank you” and mental middle finger.

***

The HVT rescue op was underway. Trace moved beneath the murky jungle water. His goal was to find the boat that would give them an under-the-radar arrival. He’d drag Romatar’s men down after Ryder picked them off with his sniper rifle.