by Paige Tyler
Strong Silent SEAL
By
Paige Tyler
Copyright © 2016 by Paige Tyler
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the author.
Cover Design by Gemini Judson, Cover Gems
Editing by Wizards in Publishing
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Dedication
With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband, without whose help and support I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant any girl could ask for!
Thank you.
Wedding planner Felicia Bradford is in trouble. Mercenaries are holding her sister hostage and threatening to kill her unless Felicia helps them steal top secret information from the Navy’s Special Operations Headquarters. Having no other way to access the base, she pulls a gun on the first man in a Navy uniform she finds, demanding he get her through the gate.
Navy SEAL Logan Dunn just got back from a mission in Syria and is looking for a little downtime to relax. That plan goes out the window when a beautiful woman shoves a gun in his back and begs him to do something she clearly doesn’t want to do. Logan does what any Navy SEAL would do in the same situation—he saves the girl and takes out the bad guys.
But their actions that day kick off a crazy chain of events, including a fast-burning whirlwind romance, an out-of-control sister, an insane covert plot involving a defecting Russian pilot, a mercenary bent on revenge, and a sunrise wedding for a bride who never wakes up before noon.
Getting through her sister's kidnapping will look like a piece of cake compared to what comes next.
Prologue
Northern Syria
CAN YOU REMIND me who the good guys are again?” Nash Cantrell whispered to Logan as he scanned the ridgeline above the dark ravine where they hid.
Leading Petty Officer Logan Dunn peered through his night vision goggles at the ragtag collection of freedom fighters, covert government operatives, and men who were probably closer to being terrorists than allies with them in the ravine, and decided he could understand why his fellow SEAL had a hard time figuring out which people to keep in front of them and which ones they could trust to cover their six.
Logan and Nash, along with two other SEALs—Chasen Ward and Dalton Jennings—had been in Syria for over a month supporting the various fighters standing against President Assad’s regime and ISIL. The Syrian civil war some people already referred to as World War III via proxy involved a bewildering array of combatants, including the Russian Special Forces known as Spetsnaz, and even though this was Logan’s third tour over here in the last eight months, he had to admit it was damn near impossible to identify the players without a score card.
Bottom line, the situation over here was a cluster fuck, and a man intent on making it home alive would be smart not to trust any of these people.
Logan gave Nash a smile. “Easy—you, me, Chasen, and Dalton. Assume everyone else around is a bad guy and you won’t be disappointed.”
“I can work with that,” Nash said. “But does it include the guys from SOG too?”
Logan glanced at the four men crouching twenty feet away from them in the very darkest—and farthest—corner of the ravine. Being part of the CIA’s Special Operation Group tended to make those guys feel like they were in their own world, but, in this case, it seemed mostly by choice. Even though he and the other SEALs were supposedly on this mission to provide direct backup to the covert paramilitary operations officers from the CIA, the four men hadn’t said a single word to them the entire time. Not during the mission brief, the flight out on the chopper, or since they’d touched down. Logan didn’t even know most of the guys’ names. He thought the leader of the group was Joe—maybe.
“We cover those guys because it’s what we’re here to do,” Chasen answered Nash’s question. “But don’t put yourself in a position of having to depend on them to save your ass. You understand what I’m saying?”
Logan didn’t have to ask for clarification, and neither did the other guys. SOG operatives came from the top United States Special Forces programs, including SEALs, so it’s not like they were slouches by any means. But the CIA would never acknowledge they’d ever tasked them with missions. They wore generic uniforms and didn’t carry identification or anything else associating them with the US government. If captured, they’d be completely disavowed by the organization they would to die for. Real Mission Impossible shit. Not surprising they were a tight group. As a SEAL, Logan knew that better than anyone. But putting a wall between yourself and the people supposed to cover your back was stupid at the best of times. On a mission like this one, nearly suicidal. Because, tonight, they snuck through the hilly, mountainous terrain of northeastern Syria, an area crawling with bad guys, looking for a Russian defector before someone else found and killed him.
The Russian pilot of a SU-24M attack aircraft had been shot down three days ago by the Turkish military for violating their airspace. The rest of the world thought the pilot already dead, killed by Kurdish militia troops as he’d parachuted to the ground. Instead, the Kurds had rescued him. According to their mission briefing, the entire thing had been an elaborate operation to get the Russian away from his people with a buttload of intelligence information in his possession. No one revealed the classified intel, but it must be damn good to go to all this trouble.
Logan had to admit, as escape plans went, this one was out there. The pilot, Nikolay Maksimov, had let the Kurds shoot a surface to air missile at his ass and hoped he—and his weapons officer, who had no idea Nikolay was defecting—survived. A Russian special ops team had picked up the weapons officer a few hours later. When the Russians didn’t find Nikolay, the CIA hoped they would assume him dead. Instead, the Russians had somehow figured out his plan and flooded the area with their troops as well as their Syrian buddies. The SOG guys couldn’t meet up with the Kurds to pick up Nikolay until the area cleared.
“We need to move,” Joe said suddenly. “The Kurds holding our asset are getting antsy. They’re going to bail if we don’t meet them at rendezvous ASAP.”
Logan shared a look with Chasen. Getting there without the bad guys seeing them would be hard as hell, but if they stayed in this ravine much longer, someone would stumble over them sooner rather than later. He and Nash took point as they moved toward the small town of Roja toward the east, while Chasen and Dalton fell back to guard the rear.
They had to move slowly since most of the local fighters with them weren’t wearing NVGs. Logan hadn’t wanted them along on the mission, and not merely because they didn’t have proper equipment, but, in the end, the CIA needed them to help keep all the allied factions working together during the exchange, especially the Kurds with the pilot.
They hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when Logan caught a flash of movement up near the crest of the ridge. He immediately signaled with his hand for everyone to find cover. Either the locals resisted to taking orders from
an American or didn’t like the idea of hiding because they didn’t move fast enough.
Suddenly, automatic weapons fire shattered the stillness of the night. Two of the locals immediately went down. The Russians had found them.
Shit.
If Logan and his Team wanted to attack the Russians, they’d have to charge up the rocky slope, which didn’t offer a hell of a lot of cover. Better to defend themselves from their current location. Unfortunately, the locals didn’t like the idea any better and melted into the darkness even as Logan’s Team and the CIA guys laid down weapon fire.
Then Joe arrived at Logan’s side, shouting in his ear, “We need to pull back! The Kurds have bailed on the exchange and we have orders not to engage directly with the Russians!”
“It’s a little fucking late,” Logan pointed out as incoming bullets bounced off the rocks around him, throwing secondary fragments everywhere.
“You want to be the one responsible for starting World War III when Putin figures out Americans popped a few of his soldiers?” Joe asked.
Logan cursed silently. Definitely not the way he wanted to go down in the history books.
“Time to go,” he said into the microphone on his headset keeping him in contact with his Team, as well as the SOG guys. “Exchange has been canceled.”
Chasen didn’t even look their way as he and Dalton tried to keep a group of Russians from coming down the far left end of the ridge and outflanking them. “What about the pilot?”
Joe answered. “We have to hope the Kurds can keep him alive long enough for us to arrange another pickup. Until then, he’s on his own.” He paused to return fire on more advancing Russians. “Right now, he’s probably in a whole lot less crap than we are. Why don’t you guys do some SEAL shit and get us the hell out of here?”
Logan chuckled as he motioned for his Team to pull back and lay down cover fire. Maybe these SOG guys were all right. At least they had a sense of humor.
Chapter One
San Diego, California
FIGURE OUT A way to get onto the base or your sister dies.”
The threating words kept replaying over and over in Felicia Bradford’s head, freaking her out so badly her hands shook as she steered her SUV into a shopping center a mile from the gate of the Coronado Naval Amphibious Base and pulled into a space. Putting her Nissan Juke in park, she leaned forward and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t take the chance the people holding her sister would hear and think it meant she’d given up. They’d kill Stefanie for sure.
She took a deep breath and felt the tape holding the wire to her stomach pull a little, reminding her exactly where those horrible men had touched her as they’d attached the listening device to her skin. She shuddered at the thought her baby sister, a sophomore in college at the San Diego campus of the University of California, remained in their hands.
Felicia lifted her head and glanced at the clock on the dash. Two hours ago, she and Stef had been in their yoga class, something they did every Saturday morning at the same time. They’d been laughing and planning their next girls’ night out when three men with accents had come out of nowhere and surrounded them in a quiet corner of the studio parking lot, taken Felicia’s keys then hustled them into a white van at gunpoint.
The next ten minutes had been the most terrifying of her life as she and Stef sat huddled on the floor of the van while one of the men had kept his weapon trained on them the whole time. She’d feared the worst, thinking the men meant to rape and kill them, but when the van pulled into a warehouse and the doors opened, they dragged her and Stef into an office where they’d found two more men waiting. One tall and muscular with a buzz cut, the other not quite as tall or as muscled with long, shaggy hair. When Buzz Cut regarded Felicia and her sister like interesting bugs he’d seen crawling across the floor, a voice in the back of her head said this was a more complicated situation than she’d thought.
“What do you want with us?” she demanded, pushing her sister behind her.
Buzz Cut nodded at the men who’d brought her and Stef into the room. A moment later, one of them jerked her sister away and forced her down into a chair then duct taped her wrists to the metal arms. Felicia tried to stop them, but the second man grabbed her before she could do much good.
“You are brave,” Buzz Cut said in an Eastern European accent. At least she thought it was Eastern European. She wasn’t very good with accents. “Good.”
“What are you going to do with my sister?” Felicia demanded.
Buzz Cut crossed the room to stand in front of her. “I intend to kill your sister in the most painful way I can imagine unless you do exactly what I tell you.
Could someone so devoid of emotion be human? But the cold look in his eyes left Felicia with no doubt he told the truth.
“I’ll do anything you want,” she told him. “Just don’t hurt her.”
“Fortunately for you, what I need isn’t very difficult. I want you to take something onto the Coronado Naval Amphibious Base for me and wait at a specific location for a short period of time then come back here. If you do, you and your sister may leave alive and unharmed.”
Felicia almost started to hyperventilate. He made it sound so simple. “Coronado isn’t open to the public. There’s no way I can get on it.”
His eyes narrowed. “The gate pass on the dash of your car says otherwise.”
Crap. She’d forgotten she’d left it there. “It’s from last weekend, but it’s expired. I’m a wedding planner. I do a lot of weddings and receptions on the base.”
“Then get it renewed,” the man with the shaggy hair said.
Felicia looked at him. “It doesn’t work like that. I have to arrange a separate gate pass for each wedding and someone with a military ID has to agree to be my sponsor.”
Buzz Cut considered her statement. “How many times have you gone onto the station in the past six months?”
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty-five or thirty times.”
“With all those trips on base, are you trying to tell me a woman as attractive as you are couldn’t make an impression on the guards? I’m sure you could talk your way through the gate this one time. Say it’s for an emergency meeting with a client or something.”
She opened her mouth to tell him she was nothing special—at least not special enough to get an MP or security guard to look the other way while she drove through the gate without a pass—but then she hesitated, knowing this asshole would kill her and Stef in a second if he decided she wasn’t useful to him anymore. So, she’d nodded, telling him she could get on base.
The guy with the shaggy hair had then felt her up while taping the microphone wire to her stomach. When he finished, he and Buzz Cut took her out to where her Nissan Juke waited beside the van. Then Buzz Cut had handed her a black plastic box about the size of a box of Kleenex along with a map of the NAB with a building circled in red.
“You need to be at this location no later than ten-thirty,” Buzz Cut told her. “On the south side of the building is a picnic table under some palm trees. Sit at the table, turn on the machine, then wait there for exactly thirty minutes.”
She tensed, terrified even to be in the same room with the box much less holding it. “Is this a bomb?”
“No. It’s a listening device,” he said. “It will record a conversation taking place nearby. No one will be hurt.”
Felicia didn’t believe him. “If that’s all, why don’t you have one of your men take it on base? I’m sure there are lots of people who could do a much better job than me.”
Mouth tight, Buzz Cut jerked the box and the map away from her and handed it to Shaggy Hair. Felicia’s heart fell into her stomach as he grabbed her arm and hauled her across the warehouse to another office, then shoved her inside. She tripped over something on the floor, falling half on top of it. She pushed herself up and almost screamed when she realized it was a man in a Navy uniform, the front of his blue camouflage top
soaked with blood. He stared unseeingly up at the ceiling.
She scrambled off the man as Buzz Cut jerked her to her feet.
“This is the man I got to do the job, but he had a change of heart at the last minute, and I had to kill him.” Cold, dark eyes bore into hers. “Don’t make me have to find someone else to do this job. The time window I have to get it done is small and, if you make me miss it, I’ll take it out on your precious sister.”
She didn’t say anything as he led her back out to her SUV, which one of the men must have driven here from the shopping center, and shoved her behind the wheel. She thought she’d been as freaked out as she could be when Shaggy Hair leaned in and put a handgun in the center console.
“Why are you giving that to me?” she asked.
Buzz Cut shrugged. “If things don’t go the way you plan, you’ll need to improvise if you want your sister to live. If it means you have to shoot someone, do it.”
Felicia couldn’t kill someone in cold blood. But, to save her sister, maybe she could.
They took her phone out of her purse and wrote down her phone number.
“In case I want to contact you,” Buzz Cut said as he handed it back to her. “Don’t get any brilliant ideas about calling the police. With the wire you’re wearing, we’ll be able to hear everything you say, and if you say something you shouldn’t, I’ll kill your sister. If you don’t get to the location on the map in time, I’ll kill your sister. If you don’t get us what we want and come straight back here, I’ll kill your sister. And if we suddenly lose the audio from the wire. I’ll kill your sister.”
Felicia had been so shaken by images of her sister being tortured and killed, she could barely drive across the Coronado Bridge to the base. She’d raised Stef ever since their parents died six years ago. The idea of something bad happening to her made it hard even to breathe. She had no doubt Buzz Cut would kill Stef if she didn’t show up with the information they wanted. He might kill both of them anyway once he had what he wanted, of course, but she could deal with only one problem at a time.
