Marked man, p.8
Marked Man, page 8
It’s an elaborate mission that is by no means going to be carried out quickly. Seeing the scope of it, I realize that we’re here for the long haul—at least some of us. A few of the earliest arrivals have already been brought up to speed and sent off to find one of Amador’s many militia outposts to join. Others trickle out over the next few weeks as solos or pairs. It turns out the team is larger than I thought, but there’s never been more than a dozen in camp at any given time.
The rest of us keep training each day, acclimating ourselves to the unfamiliar jungle. The temperate climate makes most of it a breeze, aside from learning about a multitude of venomous critters that might not be thrilled to have a bunch of mercenaries tromping around their native habitats. It turns out the anaconda Watts impaled in the shower that first morning after my arrival was the least worrisome creature that could’ve slithered in. Snakes that big aren’t even common in Belize so I feel a little guilty that she had to stab the thing to death on my account.
Aside from that tearful morning in the shower, Watts never shows an ounce of emotion during the subsequent weeks. I’m aching for another connection, but she doesn’t give me a single opening, despite us spending several more early mornings bathing in the same space. Gone are the old insults too, which I actually start to miss, even if my respect for her grows tenfold for the way she embodies everything I’d expect to see in a capable leader.
The only thing that gives me hope is that with the gradual thinning of our ranks as more men head off to their assignments, the shower schedule has opened up. Yet neither of us make any overtures toward changing our routine.
“It’s just me,” I announce on my way up the steps one morning.
“I thought so. It was too fucking hot last night. I wish like hell the water were colder.”
I drop my shorts and stash them along with my towel on the same shelf the anaconda died on, then turn on the water and step beneath it, enjoying the refreshing cool of spray over my heated skin. But Watts is right; the tepid water is nice at first, but soon enough stops doing its job of cooling, even at its coldest setting.
After dousing my face, I turn to her. Though she’s in shadow, I can make out the shape of her arms stretched wide and resting on the ledge of the low wood wall behind her, the high-mounted shower head angled down.
“Lucky you get the blast from above. I have to duck to get it on my head,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at the direction of the stream that will never make it higher than my neck.
“You could go swimming in the river.”
“Yeah, fuck that. I’m just happy to have a shower.”
“A cool bath would be nice. I’ve never been a bath kinda girl, but just lying there in it would be amazing. Once this mission’s done, I think I’m switching to baths.”
One thing that’s changed is that our showers last longer, now that no one’s claimed the slots immediately after ours. Hearn shifted to mornings, claiming he wanted to give the captain his space, but his new slot isn’t for another two hours.
“I can’t picture you in a bathtub. Katrina maybe. But definitely not you.”
“That’s because Kat embodies the kind of sensual elegance you’d expect of a woman who lounges in a clawfoot tub filled with lavender-infused water. She actually owns one, you know. I’ve shared it with her.” Her gaze grows distant, wistful, and she sighs and turns, sticking her head beneath the spray.
I swallow, still not quite used to these mini-glimpses I get of her life. Despite being naked, she keeps a tight cover on her emotions, only allowing the tiniest peek at what’s beneath. I almost wish for her to bare herself to me again the way she did that first week, but I also couldn’t bear to see her hurt that much.
“I’m trying to channel her for our part of the mission. I need to be a woman who acts like her, but who looks like me. Evidently, I look close enough to what Amador is attracted to that it made sense for me to take on this role. Do you think I can pass for a Colombian cartel princess?”
She cocks a hip and flips her wet hair over one shoulder. The dark strands are about an inch longer than they were when I arrived. She keeps her hair pinned up under a cap most of the time just like she did during BUD/S, determined to look as much like one of the guys as possible.
My heart stutters just like it always does when my dumb brain chooses to see the woman more than the fellow sailor.
“Do the accent again,” I say, turning away and willing my arousal back in check, which is a habit for me now. When she starts reciting what sounds like the mantra of a rich South American socialite in a nearly perfect Colombian accent, it’s all I can do not to stare at her. Her voice has always been on the husky side, but she’s never had a trace of an accent. The relatives who took her in after her mother was committed were a military family too, so she spent her formative years on bases, which means she can blend in almost anywhere. But you’d have to be blind not to see she has Hispanic ancestry.
I turn and stare and she trails off, grinning. “What? You didn’t know I could speak Spanish, did you?”
“You’re like a fucking chameleon. I guess I should have known, but it’s really goddamn impressive.”
“What you didn’t know is that when I’m not busting my ass training with you jackholes, I’m sitting in front of a screen with an acting coach. I need to be ready to face the fucker when we finally get to our part of the mission.”
She tosses me a quick glance, then averts her eyes, but her avoidance is telling. I’m tempted to poke fun at her, but don’t, because I’d only draw attention to my own preoccupation with the plan.
Watts, Hearn, and I are the Omega team on this mission. We’re the ones slated to position ourselves on the inside, which is both less dangerous and infinitely more so, because we don’t have any wiggle room when it comes to winning Amador over. This is also why it’s so crucial we get a layout of his compound so we aren’t going in blind.
Jake and I have it easier than Sadie, though. We’re just pretending to be hired muscle for the Colombian drug princess, who’s got some valuable infrastructure we’re hoping to dangle in front of Amador to entice an invitation to his compound out of him.
So far, she only exists as a digital avatar. Ana María Blanco has been interacting with several of the world’s drug kingpins via the dark web for a few months now, ever since Amador put out feelers throughout the community, seeking alternatives to move illicit goods between Cancún and any other ports where he has a foothold.
The plan is to position Ms. Blanco as the woman with the item he wants before he knows he wants it, but in as circumspect a way as possible to avoid suspicion. We secured a state-of-the-art personal submarine, which is the kind of equipment drug lords will kill for. Though if we play our cards right, it won’t come to that.
We aren’t sailing the actual submarine to Cancún, though. At the end of the week, we’ll be flying to Colombia, where we’ll pick up a yacht loaned to us by a certain Greek shipping magnate known to have ties to organized crime.
Drake Stavros didn’t volunteer to help until after he started dating my sister, though he was already doing business with Arturo Flores and had been for quite a while. The yacht he’s sending will come pre-packed with the submarine in its hold. All we have to do is sail to the Cayman Islands, where Ana María is slated to be shopping for buyers. It’s close enough to Cancún that there’s a high probability of Amador coming in person to inspect the goods, during which we can make a deal with him, and Ana can work her magic to convince him to invite her for a visit.
At least that’s the plan, which I hope to hell goes smoothly despite the tension in my gut telling me it’s likely to be a complicated trip, and who knows what we’ll find when we arrive, now that Amador is waging war against Delgado?
I can’t let my feelings get in the way of carrying out my orders, though.
“You’re going to nail it,” I say, painfully aware that half my apprehension about this mission is knowing the reason the powers-that-be chose to give her this role. She’s the honey trap, which means at least half the goal is enticing a brutal killer to want to fuck her.
She lets out a slow sigh and smiles. “I’m glad you’ll be with me for the ride.”
I stare at her in the growing dawn, her slight figure gaining proportion and definition with each second. She runs her hands through her hair, the dark strands contrasting harshly with the gray light. Her eyes are wide and earnest, like she’s desperate not to feel alone in this, and it hits me how very lonely her life must have been all these years, having only her father as a confidant.
We rarely look at each other during these early morning showers—out of a sense of modesty, mostly, but all that registers in this moment is the look in her eyes. The determination, the strength, and above all, the sheer conviction that she knows what the fuck she’s doing in spite of the moments of vulnerability she shares while we talk.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Rocket.”
13
Sadie
I could cut the tension with a knife in the days that follow. With fewer men on hand to carry out patrols near the Mexico border, the captain takes on several himself. We’re stretched thin, all of us ready for the mission to be fully underway while ensuring our camp isn’t discovered by any wayward members of Amador’s militia. Belize doesn’t want the man’s organization operating within their borders any more than the US wants him up north, which is part of the reason the local government agreed to let us set up our base where we did.
I’m too busy with my transformation into Ana María Blanco to help. I can’t risk getting more scars than I already have. The persona I’ve cultivated so far is of a woman who abhors working with her hands, and it takes time to get rid of calluses. To say it’s an adjustment is an understatement, but Marco’s right; I’m a chameleon. Most people see only what I want them to see, and I’ve been good at wearing masks all my life. They’ve become a kind of armor for me that I feel safer hiding behind.
Marco may not realize it, but he’s one of three people in my life who have ever seen me raw and undisguised. I don’t like thinking about why I chose to tell him the truth about Mom, but it’s done now. Perhaps because after alienating Kat, I needed someone to help shoulder that burden, and there’s no one else in the world I trust as much as him. Not even my own father, the man who chose to lie to me about Mom’s condition until it was too late for me to try to help.
If I had only been there . . . I know in my gut that even a fucking phone call could have stopped her.
It’s the last thing I need to think about now as I stare at the screens in our ops trailer. This is the only building in camp with air conditioning, so it’s not a bad place to be trapped for an evening. Except for the fact that I’m not out there on patrol with the others. I’m watching through the drone camera and communicating via coms while they work their way through the jungle toward one of Amador’s outposts.
We’ve nailed down a pattern of movement among Amador’s men close to the Mexico border. It’s impossible to tell whether they’re planning something. The intel we have suggests they’re trying to move goods through Belize, since it’s only slightly less work than bringing them through Guatemala. This is why the arrangement my alter ego has with Amador is so crucial—he needs a way to move his drugs undetected, and he needs it even more since Delgado betrayed him and gutted half his business in the process. Trafficking by land through Mexico got a lot harder for him.
We’re short on intel about his compound, though, so with any luck, we can capture someone who knows the layout. Saint Marco himself is the strongest lead we’ve had in months, but even the secrets locked inside his head aren’t enough. But they did lead us to a few names, and after a handful of drone sweeps over the border outposts, we’ve identified one of Amador’s lieutenants, who can actually provide us with the details we need. We just need to grab him and bring him back to camp to interrogate.
The captain leads the current team, which includes Santos, Hearn, and Martinez, our one Belize native who’s familiar with the landscape and the politics of the region, along with Whiteside and Garcia, who will be holding down camp once the rest of us have departed to complete the mission. No one’s supposed to return here if anything goes wrong, but they’ll keep watch via satellite and drone and report any issues in case we need assistance.
Nothing’s happening on the screen right now, but I keep my eyes fixed on it anyway. The thermal sensors on the drone show the bright glow of six warm bodies slowly working their way toward the outpost. Two break off to scout the perimeter.
“Closing in. You’re clear for about a hundred yards,” I report into the headset.
I try not to pick my nails while I wait because I really don’t want to have to wear artificial ones, but a girl might have to make sacrifices to stay sane. Normally I’d be out there having the captain’s back. Once my training was complete, we went on dozens of missions together, some in active war zones, and discovered we make a pretty great team. The two of us worked well in places a larger team would have trouble infiltrating. I wasn’t thrilled that I never earned my trident with the rest of my class, but being a team of two with my dad has been more rewarding in a lot of ways.
“Target spotted, one o’clock,” reports the captain. “He’s alone. Looks like he’s bunking down for the night.”
“Confirmed,” I say, watching the target move, then appear to lie prone. “But he has friends not far off. Be careful.”
The drone shows an aerial view of the outpost, which is an old farmhouse on stilts, like many of the structures in this coastal country. A handful of outbuildings are scattered around the area. There’s not much cover for them, but it’s nighttime in the middle of nowhere and they’re a bunch of stealthy motherfuckers, so I’m not worried.
The lead figure moves along a fence toward the rear of the house, then pauses. Coms are quiet, but the jungle sounds filter in, and I can almost feel myself standing with the team. Dad tosses a grappling hook to the roof to climb into a window. He ascends while the other three men stay behind.
The two scouts keep moving, and I shift my attention to them for a moment. One is closing in on another figure, his glow on the monitor creeping up until he’s on the guy. For a split-second, their glowing thermal images merge, move backward, then part again, the enemy’s body lying still.
“Nice takedown.”
“Thanks, Rocket,” Santos murmurs, and damn if my insides don’t quiver just a little. It’s like he just whispered something sexy right in my ear.
I force my focus back to Dad, who’s in the room with the guy now, crouching close at the head of the small bed. He works fast and silent, injecting the target with a syringe full of sedative that’ll keep him unconscious long enough to get him out of there without a fight. It’ll be a slow trek at first, though, since he’ll be dead weight.
Dad’s movements speed up as he attaches a harness to the body to lower him out the window. I hear a few soft grunts of exertion, my eyes glued to the screen. A cell phone rings, and Dad lets out a curse. That’s when I see the vehicle approach from the edge of the screen, stopping just outside the building. Six figures jump out and run up the steps.
“You’ve got company. Hurry up. Half a dozen coming up your ass.”
“Fucking hell, where did they come from?” Dad says.
“No idea. Maybe you tripped an alarm we didn’t know about.”
Dad’s glowing silhouette is standing at the window, still carefully lowering our target to the ground. The new arrivals are at the door now, the knocking audible through his earpiece.
“I see the goddamn sensor on the sash. Fuck me. You boys get the target back to camp. I’ll run interference with these assholes.”
“We’re not leaving you behind,” Santos says.
“Do what the captain ordered you to do,” I snap. “Another truckload of hostiles are inbound.”
“Sir . . .”
“Son, we need that man’s intel more than you need me right now. I’ll be okay.”
“Not if they fucking kill you,” Santos says, voicing the worry I have to force myself to swallow.
“Rocket, you know what to do,” Dad says. Then he touches his ear and flicks his earbud away, followed by a soft thump as it lands in some dark corner. I wince at the loss of a connection with him, but he’s safer if they don’t catch him with it.
The group of men on the ground below the window move as one, an inert body supported between the other five as they sprint for cover.
The next thing I hear is a smash, then shouts. Dad drops to his knees, arms behind his head, and is immediately overrun by the new arrivals. I brace myself, waiting for gunshots, and I’m grateful when they don’t execute him on the spot.
It’s all I can do not to keep the drone hovering over him. The rest of the team needs my eyes, so I pull away to follow them.
“We good, Rocket?” comes Santos’ breathless query.
I scan the area around the farmhouse, then the sugar cane field between the structure and the jungle beyond. A few figures are scattered around, searching in all the wrong directions.
“You’re clear. They’re clueless. Get your asses back to camp.” I follow them with the drone but it’s all I can do not to turn the thing the other way and keep it glued to my dad. It isn’t until they make it well clear of the perimeter that I realize I’ve completely bitten the nails of my free hand down to the nailbeds.
14
Marco
No one says a word as we haul our captive back to the Humvee we left parked about a mile away, through a swath of forest. Whiteside takes the wheel with Garcia riding shotgun. Hearn, Martinez, and I watch our new friend who’s laid out on the floor between us, still dead to the world.
