Secret Maneuvers (3 page)
“Hey, Baker!” Riley Sullivan, fellow member of the EX Ops team bellowed from the end of the hall in front of me. “You’re late for the meeting! Get your ass in here before the Comma
nder has a hissy fit and abandons you to some tropical shit-hole as punishment.”
I turned on my cat-who-ate-the-canary grin and continued my lazy saunter down the hall towards the room. Abandoned to a jungle? Been there, done that. Got the stinking t-shirt to prove it, too. By stinking t-shirt, I meant the shirt I’d had to take off in the middle of the jungle and throw away because a monkey had thrown rotten fruit at me. Only the guys swore the brown stuff flung at me was not rotten fruit. The second that mission was over, I’d taken a shower so hot it could have boiled my ass alive if I’d stayed in there too long. However, if Jaxon, my stick-up-the-ass Commander, wanted to send me on a jungle vacation, I sure as shit wasn’t going to complain. All I had to do was make sure to pack my weapons, ammunition, bug spray and plenty of fresh shirts. A machete might come in handy, too. I’d be happy to prove that I could take anything Jaxon threw my way, monkey shit and all. It was better than sitting in my house, staring at blank walls.
Stepping through the door, I peered around the room at the unit before making my way to the back of the room to take the last available seat at the table. It was your standard conference room, equipped with dull, white walls and cheap, commercial grade, gray carpet. No windows were allowed so that whatever sensitive data being passed around in the room could be kept protected by those few select souls who were privileged enough to receive it. The room was lit by bright, halogen bulbs from the ceiling; lights that reminded me too much of the ceiling fixtures I’d had to stare at while I’d been laid up in a hospital bed years ago, immobile, with a bullet in my knee.
The only decorations were a giant, dry-erase board that was centered on the front wall, and oversized, framed quotes from heroes like Patton, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country.”
My personal favorite, Eisenhower’s quote, hung several feet down from Patton’s, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight—it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
On the opposite wall hung Patrick Henry, “The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave...”
The fourth frame stated, “In war there is no substitute for victory,” from MacArthur.
These were the extent of Commander Jaxon’s attempts to keep his unit motivated. I thought that was crazy because we had the ultimate form of motivation whenever we were on a mission. You either stay focused or you got dead. See? Motivation. Anytime we were out doing what we were paid to do, we were on our own.
Those framed quotes existed in the real world a whole hell of a lot more than the EX Ops team did. Off the record, we were supervised by the Director of the CIA in conjunction with the Department Of Defense, and the men in this unit were mainly comprised of ex-military. We had one exception on the team because he’d been recruited from the CIA.
Most of my teammates had been actively recruited while they were still in service for whatever branch they worked for; Navy, Army, Marine Corps, and even one from the Air Force. Apparently, paperwork was nothing to those who ran EX Ops behind the scenes. Still in your four year contract with the Army? Not a problem. Suddenly you’re miraculously and honorably discharged. Already submitted your paperwork to re-up for another six years in the Marine Corps? No biggie. Wouldn’t you know there was a paperwork mix-up? You actually decided to go civilian instead of staying in the military. Lookie there, no more obligations to hold you back from joining us now.
I’d just been medically discharged due to a bullet to the knee when I was approached. Apparently, the Army thinks you can’t be a fully functioning, bad ass Ranger if your knee cap is replaced with a few metal bits. Which makes them entirely cracked in my opinion. It’s not like I was the tin man and they had to keep me loaded up with body oil.
So after a year of physical therapy, energized by nothing more than my dogged determination to still be all that I could be—despite what the Army thought—I was out of my soldier’s career. Walking around in civilian life with nothing fun to do and too much time to think about shit I didn’t need to think about. Like her. Next thing I know I’m approached by a couple of guys that make spies working for the CIA look like jackass amateurs. With one question, they had my full attention, “Would you like to serve your country in ways you’ve never dreamed were possible?”
Does a monkey like to fling shit?
In other words, “Hell yes,” but I want to know a few things first. With a few well-placed questions like— “Who the hell are you?” and “What’s in it for me?” —next thing I know, I’m signing the dotted line to hand my life over to Uncle Sam in ways the Army never owned it.
I’m not talking about Uncle Sam on the Army recruitment poster, either. No, I’m talking about my new boss, codename ‘Uncle Sam.’ No one knows what his real name is. I was informed during my orientation that all I needed to know was that Ex Ops was secretly owned by the United States government with directives handed down by the President, sometimes at the behest of the DOD, and issued to us through our CIA handler, ‘Uncle Sam’.
Fingerprints? Who needs those? Let’s wipe the records of those suckers off the face of the earth so they’re not an issue for later. Fake IDs needed for undercover jobs? No problem. Weapons and ammunition? Step over to what we like to call Toys ‘R’ Us for grown men. Pick a weapon, any weapon. Watch out for that flame thrower, though. It goes a lot farther than you think it does.
What are the catches? Well, now that you asked…we own you. As in, you don’t take a crap without our sanctioning it first. Might as well go ahead and accept that. You have an initial six year contract you have to fulfill, with the option to renew after it’s completed. No way out of it except going six feet underground, or wherever else your body may be dumped. Also, never, ever, talk about the team. We don’t care if you’re being tortured with bamboo under your fingernails or doing the dirty with your girl in the sack. Information about your Unit never leaves your mouth.
On paper, you are a privately funded Special Operations Team hired out for hostage rescue, high target bodyguards, and security specialists. Yes, you will take the occasional side job to help keep up this public opinion. Off paper, you are the U.S. government’s go-to guy. In other words, if we can’t legally send someone in to do the job, we’ll send you instead. That way, if you screw up, there’s no blow-back on us.
Uncle Sam decided they wanted a group of the best combined into a highly classified strike force for the most delicate situations the great U.S. of A. had to handle. Okay, so maybe we weren’t just the best. Some of us also might be considered broken—such as myself—problem children who didn’t follow orders well, or were flat out wild to the bone, but we all held skills other men failed to excel at. Not to mention, these were missions that were in places that Uncle Sam had no legal ground to send in military teams, like the Navy Seals or the Green Berets. So, lucky guys like me were approached and recruited to join EX Ops because we seemed like the most unlikely characters that the government would use. Then, Uncle Sam could send us off on missions we might not return from without losing sleep at night.
Have I mentioned that I love my job, yet?
For three years now, I’d been working with a group of eight men that made Rambo look like a jackass. I trusted each and every one of them implicitly to watch my back and work side by side with me on our missions. They weren’t just my brothers in bullets and blood, they were also men I was fortunate enough to call my friends. We were as close as a bunch of guys who blew shit up and rescued sniveling politicians on a regular basis could get. That didn’t stop me from snorting in disgust at the bright orange paper on the dry erase board that caught my eye as I parked my ass in a chair. Written on it in black marker, it read, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning!’ Shaking my head in disbelief, I looked over to the only idiot who would possibly tape that up there. The dumbass I grudgingly called my best friend anytime our asses were drunk at a bar and being rowdy. Declan Sullivan.
“You reject. You’ve been having one of your military movie marathons again, haven’t you?” His cheesy smile was all the answer I needed. Shaking my head in disbelief I continued, “I knew I should have dragged your ass out of the house this weekend. Now you’re going to try and do impersonations again until someone threatens to disembowel you with their KA-BAR. Fuckin’ great.”
A growl of annoyance cut through any further response I would have made. “Now that Ranger Boy has decided to grace us with his shining presence, we have a few minutes to go over some facts before our guests arrive to brief us on the mission,” Commander Jaxon barked.
“Gentlemen, Uncle Sam has become aware of a situation involving the ATF. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been conducting an investigation in regards to black market firearms and ammunition buys from all over Texas. These supplies are being sold and then smuggled to a drug cartel in Mexico. However, recently they have received some intel from contacts that the Cartel is now in the process of a deal that would involve a bulk buy and shipment of firearms from an undisclosed location here in the U.S.”
“The President of Mexico has been in contact with our President and the Director of the CIA. He has asked for our assistance in stopping any more buys from occurring and any more shipments that may take place. Our mission is to assist the ATF agents assigned to this investigation so that they can uncover the source of the thefts and sales, as well as a possible raid of the buyers in Mexico.”
A shrill beep cut through the silence of the room, and the eight men sitting around the table in their various forms of civilian clothes watched Commander Jaxon Wall, a former Navy Seal, answer his secure SAT phone. After a few tense seconds, he gave a gruff, “show them in,” before closing the phone to face his men again. The sounds of booted steps echoed closer to our conference room until the door was opened by the escort, allowing a man who looked to be in his late thirties into the room. He had short, brown hair with hazel eyes and sported a slim, well-built body encased by khaki’s and a black polo embroidered with the ATF logo on the chest.
The man was nothing noteworthy, just your average looking Joe. What made my breath catch was the woman who walked in behind him. Dirty blond hair, streaked with natural white-blond highlights was pulled back into a braid that fell halfway down her back. She wore low rise jeans that showed off a flat tummy and well-rounded ass. Her badge was belted to her waist with her gun in its holster on the opposite side. A fit, black, short-sleeve polo—also embroidered with an ATF emblem—did nothing to hide her more than ample breasts; the kind that overfilled a man’s hands. Even large hands like mine.
Moss green eyes scanned the room, roaming right over me. As if she didn’t even know who the hell I was! It might have been fifteen years, but I damn sure knew who she was, despite the changes in her appearance.
Her body had changed a lot over the years. She’d been considered stick skinny back in those days because her shithead of a dad couldn’t have cared less about whether there had been food in the house as long as he’d had a bottle of whisky to drink and cigarettes to puff on like a chimney. Now her belly was slightly rounded out instead of devastatingly caved in, her hips were lush, and her damn chest looked as if it were at least two sizes larger than what I’d lovingly held in my hands long ago. She’d filled out in ways I’d dreamed about when we were kids and all I could think about was having my girl safe under my own roof, feeding her regular meals, and making her happy. Her hair was way longer, but I bet that once it was out of that tight, confining braid that it was still the same mass of loose curls I had run my fingers through a thousand times before.
Unbelievable. Fifteen years later, and Annabelle Smith was standing in my unit’s meeting room as a freaking ATF agent after disappearing from our small hometown of Sylvania, Georgia. My first love—the one who I’d foolishly let get away—stood right in front of me, looking better than any of my vivid memories could ever do justice. My Belle.
I clenched my fists on top of my thighs to stop the urge of rushing up to grab her and drag her home with me. Years of looking, private investigators who gave me nothing except broken dreams, and she just waltzed in here like she didn’t have a care in the world. I did my best to calm the heart racing in my chest like it was jacked up on meth.
“Gentlemen, these are Agents Boyd and Roberts.”
I felt my face morph into a mask of confusion. Roberts? Belle’s last name wasn’t Roberts. That was her best friend, Teagan’s, last name. What the hell was going on here?
Jaxon continued speaking, “They’re the two agents in charge of this investigation. We’re on a short time table to get these two back to Texas, so let’s get started with a brief introduction.” Turning to face Belle and her partner he pointed to himself and said, “I’m Commander Wall. The men seated in front of you are Riley Sullivan, Declan Sullivan, Logan Price, Bobby Baker, Wyatt Brooks, Arturo Chavez, Chase Anderson, and Lucas Young. Now with that out of the way, would you please inform us of your operation as it stands right now?”
My confusion was quickly morphing into anger. Belle’s eyes had passed right over me as if she didn’t even know who I was! I knew better, though. She knew exactly who I was and when this meeting was over I was damn well going to get some answers from her.