THE EDGE OF TRUST (TEAM EDGE) Page 5

  Chase opened the door, tossed in a flashbang grenade, and immediately took cover against the outer wall.

  The jarring, intermittent blast thundered through the room and into the night. The team rushed the door--a phalanx of men, hardware, and fury.

  Six startled rebels looked up from what they were doing, mouths open, eyes wide. Hands reached for weapons. Team One went full auto. The Colombians never stood a chance. They went down, all six eliminated in less than three seconds.

  Dillon glanced around. Something wasn’t right. According to their intel, there should have been, at the very least, a total of twelve men. So far they’d only seen eight.

  He signaled for his men to break off into groups of two and check the other rooms. They were all back in the central room in less than one minute. All of them except Chase and Wolf.

  Wolf’s voice came over Dillon’s headset a little freaked. “We’ve got trouble, boss.”

  His muscles tensed. “Location?”

  “Third room southeast of the entrance.”

  “Roger.” Damn. This op was supposed to be cut and dried. Take out the lab goons. Capture and secure whoever was in charge. Get intel on Sanchez. Then blow the place.

  Before Dillon could signal his team, shots sounded down a hallway. Chase and Wolf came hauling ass backward, spraying bullets.

  Dillon shouted over the gunfire. “Sit-Rep!”

  Chase fired another burst. “Trap door. About thirty guys down there, maybe more. I recognized Sanchez. Heard Vega’s name mentioned. They’re having a friggin’ Lord of the Cartels meeting down there. Room’s packed. They’ve got an alternate exit east side.”

  Wolf yelled, “Op’s over. Let’s go!”

  Sanchez is here. Right now, just yards away, El Tigre is in his den.

  Dillon ran a dozen scenarios through his mind in seconds. Nothing played out. Thirty-plus men, all armed to the teeth, against his eight--

  His team wouldn’t stand a chance. If they’d been able to take the targets by surprise, maybe. If they’d had better intel, been more prepared, had different weapons--

  Too late, and too close quartered, to toss in a grenade.

  Footsteps pounded. Up, and no doubt out, that friggin’ east exit.

  Shit. They needed to move. He pumped his arm and yelled, “Everybody back! Take the boats!”

  He waited until his last man was out the door before starting out himself. He would’ve made it too, except that he tripped, like an Olympic champion, over a dead body.

  Voices raised, teeth bared, five tangos rounded the corner firing their weapons at anything that moved.

  Off balance, Dillon fired a double burst into the fray. Before he could get off another round, a bullet ripped into his thigh, and his first thought was, damn, the movies got it right. First, there was that wide-eyed shock, then the ow-holy-fuck-I’ve-just-been-shot split second before the white hot pain hit and he went down. What the movies didn’t show was the person who’d just been shot screaming like a schoolgirl when they landed with a hard thud on the injured leg. Good thing Dillon wasn’t much of a screamer. Whoever said it took a while to feel the searing offense of a bullet had probably never been shot. Unless by a while they meant all of about two seconds.

  Vision blurred around the edges, Dillon gave the shooter fifty points for a body shot but then subtracted twenty since he wasn’t dead yet. Just as his senses were swimming back into focus, shots erupted behind him and the five men went down.

  Uzi tucked securely against his side, Marco Sanchez appeared out of nowhere on Dillon’s left.

  Hatred swelled, became huge, monstrous, merciless. For a split second each stared at the other. Dreena, Dillon thought. This is for the child I loved, you murdering fuck. And just as Marco’s fingers tightened, Dillon squeezed the trigger. He squeezed harder, crushing the trigger, ruthless, never yielding, crushing and squeezing until the automatic weapon was finally spent and Marco’s blood stained the walls, the floor, his body ripped into ragged pieces.

  Dazed, Dillon felt himself being yanked and lifted, then dimly heard Shane’s voice asking, “Can you walk? Are you with me, Commander, can you walk?”

  Dillon straightened, put some weight on his leg, and thought, oh shit. His leg didn’t want to cooperate and he pitched forward, nearly landing on his face.

  Chase snorted. “Whoopsie daisy, sir.” Then he said to Shane, “Fuck it. Grab him and let’s go!”

  They barely made it to the boat before more automatic weapon fire erupted around them. Leaves scattered. Birds burst into flight.

  Doc had the boat revved and ready. Chase jumped for it. Dillon half dove, half fell, face first into the boat with Shane right behind him.

  Bullets slapped into the water, hundreds of tiny explosions of spray. Chase yelled, “Go, go, go!” and Doc hit the throttle. The motor roared to life and the boat bolted forward, whipped by the spray of gunfire racing up the wake.

  Dillon hunched against the side, head low, listening to the ping of bullets ricocheting off the transom. Eventually the sound faded and all he heard was the screaming motor driving them at breakneck speed up the river.

  Once they pulled up beside the other boat with the remaining four men inside, Dillon signaled to Shane to call in their coordinates. “And get a chopper down here before we get our butts blown up.”

  Doc took a look at Dillon’s leg and started to work on the bullet wound. “No arterial bleed and from what I can tell, no bone damage. Bleeding has slowed. I’m starting an IV.”

  Good news, but still, a hole in your leg was a hole in your leg. Nothing there to really party over.

  “Whoopsie Daisy?” Shane shook his head at Chase. “You keep watching chick flicks and I’m gonna think you got a v-a-g-i-n-a.”

  “I have a thing for Julia Roberts. So?”

  “Yeah, but she wasn’t the one who said it first. Hugh Grant did.”

  “And how would you know if you haven’t seen the movie too?”

  “Guys?” Dillon looked over at Chase and Shane. “They gonna follow us in that third boat?”

  Chase answered, “Nope. Doug blew the engine to kingdom come.”

  The expression on Shane’s face was odd. He looked like he didn’t know whether to puke or smile, and Dillon asked, “What? What aren’t you guys telling me?”

  Shane answered, “You...uh…do know you shot the shit out of Marco Sanchez?”

  Sanchez. The mention of the name triggered fury, the rage inside him snarled once again before Dillon forcibly pushed it back. His hands fisted and he sneered, “Yeah. Big brother Rafe isn’t going to be too happy about that.”

  Shane and Chase shared a look that said huge understatement...

  Hatred blazed back to life with soul-searing swiftness. Rafe was going to take this personally, hold Dillon solely responsible. Well, bummer for the drug lord. Dillon had nothing left for Sanchez to take. Or kill.

  Remembered words haunted him like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  “You fuck me and your life will be over. I will massacre everyone you love.”

  “I love no one.”

  So many lies.

  Shane settled himself out of Doc’s way and eyed Dillon. “I heard Chase mention Vega. What’s up with that?”

  Dillon backed away from the memory of that night in the bar and turned to Shane. “Manny Vega is Rafael’s right hand man. Elusive as hell. Nobody’s been able to pin him down long enough to get any decent intel. No photos. He’s been ingratiating himself with the SBC for quite a while now. Looks like he finally made it.” He’d also been behind the deal that killed Sara, and Dillon wanted to nail Sanchez and Vega more than he wanted his next breath.

  Disappointment at missing Sanchez was a bitter pill, but at least some small amount of vengeance had been achieved today. Not that killing Marco would bring Sara back, but somehow it helped make things feel a little more just in an unjust world.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Tuesday, January 4, - 6 months later.

&nb
sp; Cradling her sleeping child against her chest, Sara Caldwell glanced over her shoulder as she opened the door to yet another cheap motel room. Always looking, always searching, checking her back had become a way of life and she despised the monster behind her. Despised the life she’d been forced to lead. Sleeping days while the city worked, working nights while the city slept, and maybe, after work, having a drink with a kindred soul, mourning loss, mourning life.

  “It won’t always be like this, you know,” Craig Duncan had said.

  “It’s been almost a year!”

  “A year is not a lifetime.”

  It sure as hell felt like one. “When can I call my husband?”

  His gaze settled on her face with a look of resignation. “He…doesn’t know you’re still alive.”

  “What?” Surely she’d misheard. Craig wouldn’t--

  Not Craig. No way. He was supposed to be on her side. And Dillon’s.

  But the look on his face, the flatness in his eyes said otherwise. “You lied to me? All this time?” Even though things had gone all wrong between her and Dillon, even though she was still angry and confused an entire year later, for the DEA and government officials to let him think she’d died…

  To not let him know he’d fathered a child…

  She sank to her knees on the thin carpet. “Fix it. Fix it now. You tell him I’m alive, you let him know. Jesus, Craig, how could you?” She couldn’t believe the cruelty. Except that, well, yes, she could. The government didn’t have to abide by civilian standards. They could do whatever they wanted to Dillon. Or against him. He was officially their property. And by marriage, to a certain extent, so was she.

  Craig’s jaw tightened. “We had to let him think you were dead. Otherwise, he’d bust his ass looking for you, and then you’d both be targets. Or more likely, you’d both be dead. Not to mention Ellie. I’m protecting you.”

  “You actually expect me to let this ride?”

  Kind eyes turned cold. “I don’t need your consent. We have to find Sanchez, and we have to find the leak. Do you want Dillon to die? Or Ellie?”

  “Of course not, but what you’ve done is--”

  “Let it go, Sara. This won’t last forever.”

  She’d believe him later. When she wasn’t on the run, hiding, waiting for the next call telling her to move, to go now, yet again.

  For a year now, she’d been living with a bomb on her shoulder, tick, tick, ticking, counting down time before full detonation.

  How long before it went off? Another year? Ten? Thirty? Would she have to live like this forever?

  Sara dropped her suitcase on the floor and laid her sleeping baby on the chintzy floral bedspread. She gently pushed downy blonde curls off Ellie’s forehead and her heart stood still, filled to overflowing with a deep and wondrous love.

  Everything good in life, everything hopeful and pure, lay right there in front of her.

  In a cheap dive where hope was a rare occurrence.

  Ellie deserved more. She deserved pastel walls lined with ducks or kittens. She deserved to be rocked in a real rocking chair. She deserved a place in the world, a place she could call her own, a place where she felt secure, a place that didn’t change every week or every month.

  Most of all she deserved to know her father’s gentle touch, his voice, his very smell.

  Question was, what did Dillon want? More, what did he deserve?

  Sara sat down, feeling fear and grief bubble through her veins.

  Dammit, Dillon.

  She took the wedding band she never wore in public out of her pocket and slipped it on. Some days she just needed the reminder.

  Once, a lifetime ago, she’d been a regular woman with a regular job, married to a not so regular guy. But the not so regular hadn’t mattered. Until Sanchez. Now it mattered a lot.

  The heat in the motel room was stifling, and she punched the air-conditioning button to dark blue. In one practiced move, she ripped the brown, bobbed wig off her head and tossed it toward the dresser. It landed with a swish and slid across the walnut veneer until it bumped up against a square green lamp. She unfastened the clasp at the top of her head and let her blonde hair spill free.

  Freer now, but still so hot.

  God, she missed the cool water and gentle breeze floating inland off the Pacific. The feel of soft sand between her toes.

  She needed sleep but was too wary of the nightmares to even try. Instead, she peered out the window at the scorched landscape. The shimmering asphalt took her away to another time, another place. A happy place she hadn’t seen in forever -- a place where sun-kissed kites soared high above the heads of laughing children. A place where sailboats raced across the horizon.

  A place where the sun gilded a man’s bronze shoulders as he took her hand and guided her into the sea to splash and play. To love and be loved. To know a look, a smile, a touch, was a love so pure it was almost not real. The power of the place, the man, was neither fantasy nor imagination. It was real. And it was hers.

  In her heart.

  A place where dreams came true and sandcastles held a million memories.

  But those memories now stabbed with a pain so deep they almost broke her.

  She stepped away from the window, letting the drapery fall closed.

  There was a sad kind of sordidness in this small desert town. Nothing she could smell or hear, but present nonetheless. People striving to survive or looking for a way out.

  Maybe it was the used syringes and piles of trash forgotten in the gutter. Or the vacant lots where children eyed each other, already wary, soon to fall through the cracks into social exclusion. Or maybe it was just the sense of desperation and despair floating like mute history on the very air she breathed.

  She wanted the wind. A fierce wind of monstrous proportions to cleanse the despondence from her soul.

  As she turned toward the bed, toward her child, glass shattered.

  Tick.

  The door flew open.

  Tick.

  She lunged. Grabbed the gun from her handbag.

  Tick.

  The bomb finally blew.

  <><><>

  FRIDAY

  January 7 - Present day

  Dillon’s office at the complex in Coronado was furnished in hunter green and trimmed out in magnetic slate. The chairs were leather, the furniture wood, the carpet thick, and all of it was understated, plush, and expensive. This building was the admiral’s refuge, and he’d spared no expense for his team.

  Each office had its own touch-screen control panel for lighting, security, blinds, and temperature. A fitness center occupied the rear left of the building, while a state-of-the-art conference room, fitted with an 84” screen for full video conferencing capabilities, resided rear right.

  The security measures alone included motion sensors, silent alarms, armored glass and steel doors, and a Humatrek system that could all but read your mind.

  Dillon was glad it couldn’t. This ‘being assigned to temporary desk duty’ gig didn’t sit well. Not only was he itching to find Sanchez, but he’d take a third-world jungle or a hostile desert any day of the week if it meant being where the action was. Not that there wasn’t plenty of action on the SEAL training base in Coronado, it was just that the action here compared to the real world was like listening to an old man telling war stories – often interesting, but mostly repetitive. Maybe if he’d been assigned to weapons training or demolition…but no, he’d gotten assigned to teach psychological warfare from inside a SEAL classroom. Which was kind of like teaching the Third Reich meets Hannibal Lecter. Pass the Chianti.

  But, Dillon knew, this was the admiral’s way of keeping him safe. Tying him up on base, out of reach of all the scum who’d love to have his head. Since his team had missed Sanchez six months ago, John was keeping a big-ass safety net around Dillon.

  While he appreciated the thought, the reality was smothering. If he didn’t get out of here, and soon, he was going to lose his friggin’ mind. His re
asoning was simple--Sanchez was out there, free to do as he pleased. Dillon wasn’t. And the longer Sanchez was free, the longer Dillon wouldn’t be. Even if someone other than Sanchez had put that bounty on his head, which Dillon doubted, the end result was the same. Sanchez had gone dark and the admiral had nixed all ops to do with the SBC until he sorted things out. And all that sorting had been going on for six freakin’ months now.

  Everyone has a story--it makes them who they are--but so far Dillon’s was nowhere near what he’d expected. Some people identified with music. Some with books. They hear the lyrics or read the story and think, huh, that could be my life. Music especially tended to trigger memories and most people could almost always link a song to certain events in their lives.

  Dillon, however, had gone the movie route. Not that he’d planned on it, or even wanted to, but life had handed him a hell of a script over the last few years.

  Dillon was the dedicated government operative. Sanchez, the world’s most notorious drug lord who had murdered Dillon’s family.

  No face transplants, no bomb in L.A. or New York, no remote cement prisons or any other Hollywood coolness. But the hate, the need for vengeance, ran parallel to pretty much every good-guy-bad-guy movie ever made.

  Dillon’s twist -- somewhere along the way the lines had blurred and he’d become the bad guy. The really, really bad guy.

  He’d let his job, his obsession with Sanchez, spin out of control. What had started as a one-year assignment had dragged into three, and he’d crossed over that professional line and let things get personal.

  And his beautiful, lovely wife had died.

  He stared hard at the framed wedding photo taken seven years ago, the picture he kept on his desk and refused to remove despite the gentle coaxing of well-meaning friends and coworkers. He traced his index finger over the image of Sara before he set the picture down and poured another two fingers of Crown.

  Getting shit-faced drunk wasn’t going to bring Sara back, but by God, it sure as hell helped him live through the pain. Problem was, he was stone-cold sober and the pain in his chest was still as tight and bitter as ever. He’d never actually had a drink on the job before, but today he’d cancelled his classes and said fuck you to the world in general. Then he’d borrowed a bottle from the admiral’s guests-only reserve.