by S. M. Butler
In fact, he didn’t particularly like being within close driving distance of the old man. Not that he felt compelled to visit or anything. Their relationship was best when carried out over the phone.
But his mother would expect him, and he could hardly refuse her. He drew the line at regular Sunday dinners, though he’d have to show up for a couple here and there.
He didn’t plan on informing his parents of his new assignment for as long as possible. For all he knew, it wouldn’t last anyway. He’d piss this colonel off, and he’d be bounced back to Virginia Beach before he could count to ten.
Hell, he kind of hoped that was the case. Except, fuck, he was definitely curious now that he was here. This facility was equipped with stuff he’d thought was still in the testing phase, and the gear was more than a little bit interesting. He at least wanted to be here long enough to explore.
“Colonel wants us,” a man said, peeking his head into the room.
Everyone dropped what they were doing and headed for the door. Dane wasn’t planning to go, but then Chase stopped and looked at him.
“He means you too.”
Dane shut his locker and trailed after the group of men walking down the hallway. They passed into a big conference room and took seats around a table. There was a whiteboard on one wall and a projector overhead.
Dane took a seat in a leather chair just about the time someone shot to attention. The rest of the men followed suit. Dane automatically joined them as Colonel Mendez walked into the room.
“At ease,” he said, and they sank back down on their chairs. His gaze landed on Dane.
“We’re glad you could join us, Lieutenant.” Mendez opened up the laptop sitting at the head of the table and tapped some keys. “We have an interesting situation in Colombia. Our Navy man should be particularly fascinated.”
Dane glanced at the others. There were puzzled looks on a few faces as the whiteboard flashed to life.
A satellite shot of a jungle appeared on-screen. There were white-roofed buildings spread out around the area and a fence around the perimeter. Drug runners, probably.
There was also a curl of dark water winding through the jungle near the compound. And then Mendez zoomed in and revealed an object in a small clearing. It was big, torpedo-shaped—
Dane stood before he realized he’d done so. All eyes turned to him. The colonel was watching him with an uplifted brow.
“What do you see here?”
Dane moved closer, studying the object. He’d heard of these things, but this one was bigger than was typical. Yet it was what it was.
“I see a submarine, sir.”
Mendez nodded. “That’s right. Intel indicated there was only one of them finished, but another was in the process of being built.” He pressed a button and a new slide flashed up on the screen. This one contained specs for the submarine. Specs that chilled Dane. This wasn’t your typical floating coffin the drug runners used. This was something different.
“Sir,” Dane said, and the colonel looked at him. He cleared his throat. “Isn’t this the kind of thing the Navy usually deals with?”
Or the DEA since the damn thing belonged to drug runners. He hated thinking about the DEA because that inevitably brought thoughts of his ex-wife, but this was exactly the kind of thing they would be interested in.
“Typically, yes.” The colonel brought up another slide. “But here’s the reason we’re involved.”
This picture was of bodies strewn about the compound. The next picture showed a wrecked shipyard with charred debris—and no sign of the finished sub. There was another sub form, but it was clearly in the process of being built.
“We’ve had intel indicating the Freedom Force is pursuing a plan to make a dirty bomb and detonate it somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard. That’s not anything new. But then we received information two weeks ago that said they were in active negotiations with the Ruiz family to have them build a sub. There was supposed to be a meeting, an exchange of money—but it seems our friends from Qu’rim were impatient after being taken to inspect the equipment. They ambushed the makeshift shipyard and absconded with the finished sub.”
“Fuck me,” one of the other guys said.
Another cleared his throat. This one was the officer in charge of the team. Matt “Richie Rich” Girard.
“So the Freedom Force wants to detonate a dirty bomb on the Eastern Seaboard—and now they have the delivery system to get by our defenses.”
“The Navy will find that thing,” Dane said. “It can’t be that difficult. Set up a dragnet and go after them.”
The colonel shook his head. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But you saw the specs.”
He pulled up another slide, this one an analysis of the capabilities of the sub.
Silent… Submergible to a depth of eighteen hundred feet… ten days without refueling… could render radar detection useless… highly dangerous as a method of infiltration into US waters…
A chill ran down Dane’s spine. If the damn sub was undetectable to the Navy, that wasn’t a good thing at all.
“It gets worse,” Mendez said. “The DEA traced the sub to Cartagena, where a dockworker reported seeing something being loaded onto a sub like this one. What he saw wasn’t a dirty bomb. It was a little too big for that—and it fits the description of a warhead the Russians can’t seem to locate.”
Chapter Three
‡
Miguel Antonio Ruiz was not a happy man. His fingers toyed with the rim of his shot glass. He’d already downed two shots of the finest American whiskey, but he was not feeling in the least appeased.
“We are going to find that bitch,” he said to no one in particular. His lieutenant, Juan Ortega, stood by silently. He knew better than to talk. “And we are going to make her pay.”
Miguel snapped his fingers, and Juan obediently came over with the bottle. Miguel emptied the shot and Juan poured another.
Miguel was tired of the DEA getting all up in his shit. Sure, his submarine had been stolen by someone else—someone he’d let into his little jungle shipyard—but he knew where they’d gotten their information. The Americans had given it to them, most specifically one Special Agent McGill. That bitch had been a thorn in his side for the past couple of years.
He’d tried to buy her off—subtly, of course—but she wasn’t corruptible. It was like she had a specific grudge against all things Ruiz. Which, he supposed, she probably did.
It had taken him a long time to find out the truth about her because it had been buried so deep—too deep for even the DEA to find, it seemed.
She was Maya’s kid. Little Maya. He hadn’t thought of her in years. She’d betrayed him, betrayed the family, when she’d run away to America with her sailor man.
That hadn’t worked out, however, and she’d come crawling back. He picked up the shot glass and sniffed the liquor. His taste buds tingled with anticipation.
He hadn’t meant for her to die. He’d only meant for her to pay.
Miguel shrugged. Shit happened. It was not his fault.
Maya hadn’t needed to die, but her kid… that one was living on borrowed time. She was like a starving dog with a bone. She simply wouldn’t let go. She had a grudge because she knew the truth, and she would do anything she could to get to him. She was taunting him.
He picked up his phone and replayed the footage of her standing in his shipyard, wisps of smoke rising into the air around her, her long dark hair whipping in the breeze. Her mouth was a flat line and her eyes were grim.
He recognized that look. It was determination and a need for revenge all rolled into one. She wouldn’t let go of the bone. She would follow him to the ends of the earth to get what she wanted, which was the utter ruin of his business.
He couldn’t let that happen.
The door burst open and Sergio strode in. He threw his hands wide. “What the fuck, Miguel? They took our sub.”
“I know, brother.”
“We nee
d to get it back. That shit cost a lot of money.”
“I’m working on it.”
Sergio threw himself down in a chair and flicked a hand at Juan. Juan retrieved another shot glass and poured a drink.
“How are you working on it?”
“Ivy McGill.”
Sergio blinked. “What does she have to do with this? We should be thanking our lucky saints she didn’t get the sub. If the Americans had taken it, we’d never see it again.”
Miguel snorted. “You’re blind, Sergio. Don’t you see? She didn’t trust her government to move fast enough, so she gave the information to the thieves. Now that they have it, she will move to confiscate it in open water.”
Sergio shook his head. “That makes no sense. She landed in the jungle with a team only hours after it was stolen. Why would she do that if she already knew it was gone?”
Miguel waved a hand as if shooing away a particularly bothersome bug. “I don’t know her thoughts, but I know she was behind it.”
Because she was too determined, too obsessed, not to be. He could feel it in his bones. And his bones never lied.
“Then what do you propose to do?”
Miguel studied the fresh liquid in his glass. He was feeling better now. Warm inside. It had taken time to get this far, but he had a plan.
“I know how to find her now. Soon she will be dealt with.”
*
Ivy strode into DEA headquarters and went straight for her boss’s office. Leslie Webb’s secretary didn’t even blink as Ivy walked past and entered the room.
Leslie looked up from her paperwork, one eyebrow arched, as Ivy closed the door behind her.
“Been expecting you, Special Agent McGill.”
Ivy sucked in a breath. She’d worked herself into a good lather on the way over here, but she needed to be cool and calm or she wouldn’t get anywhere. “Ma’am, respectfully, this is bullshit. I don’t want the military taking this away from us. We’ve worked too hard to bring down the Ruiz family and their network.”
“Ivy, you have to think about this.” Leslie sat back and gave her the once-over. “This is out of my hands. There are terrorists involved, and that trumps everything. The Ruizes will still be there when this is over. The military isn’t taking this away from us permanently. But they have to be involved now.”
Ivy scrubbed a hand down her jacket and sank into a chair across from Leslie. It infuriated her that the military had taken over, and yet she knew there was no changing it.
“All right, fine. But I want to be involved. At least send Ace and me in to advise them, or whatever we need to do. Don’t let us be cut out of this.”
One corner of Leslie’s mouth twitched. “Do you know why I’m sitting here and you’re over there?”
“Because you’ve been here longer and have more experience?”
“That’s right, Ivy. Not only that, but this isn’t my first rodeo.” She picked up a piece of paper and handed it over. “You’re in. Get your ass over to Maryland—and don’t let those special operator motherfuckers forget who found the damn sub in the first place, all right?”
Triumph surged in her as Ivy shot to her feet and smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”
She hurried from Leslie’s office and found Ace, who was sitting at his desk and looking fierce as he flipped through the tabs on his computer screen. Ivy waved the paper, and Ace lifted an eyebrow.
“Want to go to Maryland with me? We’re paying a visit to the military.”
Ace grinned as he stood and grabbed his jacket. “Fuck yeah, darlin’. Let’s roll.”
*
The drive to Maryland didn’t take too long. Getting into the facility where the military had headquartered the submarine hunt took a bit longer. Ivy was steaming by the time she and Ace were stripped of all their technology and then read in to the super-secret military program before being led behind the thick walls and yards of razor wire. Eventually, they were shown in to see an Army colonel in camouflage who looked far more imposing behind his desk than he should for a man sitting down. He had salt-and-pepper hair, which at first glance made him seem older than he likely was—but his face was only lightly creased around the eyes. It was a handsome face, with a strong jaw and piercing dark eyes that had a way of boring into you.
He leaned back and gave them both the once-over. “Welcome to the Hostile Operations Team, Special Agent McGill. Special Agent Martin. I understand you’re here to observe my team as we work to locate this sub you found in Columbia?”
Ivy tried not to let her hackles rise, but it was damn hard not to. Ace had been in the military once, so he was far better at this kind of thing than she was. Not to mention she’d once had the pleasure of an Army general looking down his nose at her as if she weren’t good enough for his son.
Which, in General Erikson’s mind, she hadn’t been.
“That’s right, sir. We’re here to observe and advise,” Ace said.
Ivy very wisely kept her mouth shut. The DEA had found the damn sub, and they were the ones who worked to keep drugs out of this country. These guys… Well, she knew what they did was important, but they didn’t know the first thing about the Ruizes—or how drugs could destroy a family without anyone being a user.
The colonel got to his feet and came around his desk. He was as big and imposing as she’d expected a special-ops soldier would be. If he appeared in a Hollywood action film tomorrow, she somehow wouldn’t be surprised. He looked the part.
He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms and ankles. Deceptively harmless.
“I’ve heard from your director, and we’ll cooperate with you. But you won’t get in the way of my mission, understood? Because if you do, your ass is mine, and not in a pleasant way.”
“Yes, sir,” Ace said.
Ivy didn’t speak.
“Agent McGill?” the colonel said, his voice as calm and cool as it could be. Inside, she seethed. But she couldn’t let him know that.
“Without us, you wouldn’t know the first thing about this sub, Colonel,” she said coolly. “Without us, I don’t believe you’d even have a mission—but no, I won’t get in the way.”
Her heart thumped as she met the colonel’s gaze. He didn’t say anything, merely studied her for a long minute.
“I like passion in a special operator,” he said. “The job should be personal sometimes, though you always need to strive to stay objective about it. I’ll accept your irritation at having this case taken away from you, Agent McGill—but I won’t tolerate insubordination. You’ve had your say. Now I expect you to follow orders if you’re going to remain here. Is that clear?”
He hadn’t moved a muscle, and yet she felt as if she’d been flayed alive with a very sharp knife. And since she’d never heard of HOT before about an hour ago, she knew this man was in a position of far greater power than her job was worth. A word to the director, perhaps, and she could find herself bounced to the curb. She suddenly got the impression she was here because he’d allowed it and not because of anything Leslie had done.
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.” He pushed away from the desk. “Now come and meet the team, and we’ll get you both up to speed with what the plan is.”
Ace shot her a look as they followed the colonel from his office. His eyes widened for a second, and his expression said he wasn’t precisely thrilled with her. She gave him a hard look in return.
Dammit, she knew she shouldn’t mouth off, but she’d worked hard—they’d worked hard—to crack this case, and now the military was taking over. She didn’t have to like it even if she did have to respect it.
The colonel walked down a corridor and threw a door open. She heard the scrape of boots as probably a dozen people shot to their feet. It reminded her of the one time she’d met her father-in-law. Ex-father-in-law. He’d come to Dane’s graduation with an entourage that had practically bowed and scraped its way over the campus.
She’d never been fond of the military—and tha
t experience hadn’t changed her opinion, that’s for sure.
“At ease,” Colonel Mendez said.
Ivy kept her chin up as she walked into the room. The men ranged around a table with laptops and papers in front of them. On the screen was a snapshot of the sub and a rundown of the specs.
But it was the man standing beside the screen that caught her attention. Tall, dark blond hair, handsome. Familiar. Too familiar.
Ivy’s gut clenched and her heart pounded as she glanced wildly around the room. She felt hot and cold as panic spread through her belly, her bones. She told herself to breathe, not to pass out in front of these men.
This was the goddamn Army. These men were in the Army. She could not be standing here looking at her ex-husband, because Dane was in the Navy.
But it was him. Even with her eyes closed, she would know it. Bitterness rolled through her like a shockwave. He’d chosen the Navy over her, just like her father had chosen the Navy over her and her mother. She could still feel the shock of Dane announcing he wanted to be a SEAL. And her reaction. God…
Dane stared back at her with cold eyes, and a shiver washed over her. Of course he blamed her. She met his gaze evenly. She wouldn’t back down from that look. Not now. Not ever.
Even if her heart did ache with memories of what they’d once been.
Chapter Four
‡
Dane could only stare at the front of the room and the woman who’d walked in behind the colonel.
He wanted to blink and make the apparition go away, but it didn’t work that way. Ivy was no apparition. She was a flesh and blood woman with long dark hair and curves he’d once worshipped with his mouth and hands. Curves he’d been unable to get enough of at one time.
He remembered hot, dark, sweaty nights between the sheets with her. He remembered thinking she was the center of his universe, and then he remembered the pain that had sliced through him when he’d found out he wasn’t the center of hers.
