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Colin didn’t know was why they weren’t given a headsup on this assignment. This was nightmare inducing, the type of scene that would stop an operative in his tracks. What could be so confidential that they’d risk two teams going in blind to find intel or for a simple enough rescue had anyone been alive?
Colin turned around, following one of the many escaping from this gate of hell—
“Saa’adinii?”
His mind processed the scared, unknown whisperbefore his boots stopped moving. His ears tingled. The man to his right froze as well, and Colin cocked his head, hearing nothing but the crash of angry waves and the clomp of disgusted operatives stealing down metal catwalks to anywhere but here.
His skin pricked. The hollow metal wheezed in the frigid wind. Colin pivoted, as did the man next to him.
“Delta, hold up,” he hesitantly said.
The other team’s commander offered the same.
But no one advanced, wary of what had to be the impossible: that Colin had heard the quietest cry for help whispered from the black hole of hell.
Certainty surged through Colin, and he pulled his facemask up and grabbed his mag light off his hip. With a prayer, he hoisted himself into the container, crawling on top of the bottom crate and crawled towardthe darkness. “Hello?”
“Hww-llo?” a young voice mimicked.
He carefully aimed his flashlight toward the ceiling then at the sidewall panel. If they hadn’t seen a bright light in days, it would hurt. “My name is Colin. I won’t hurt you.”
“Hang tight,” Brock said. “Parker tried to pull that audio and may’ve got it. He sent Nicola an audio clip.”
Nicola Garrison, on Titan’s main team, could pickup a language and dialect faster than most people could use Google Translate. A minute later, thanks to Parker and Nicola, Colin was repeating very poorly spoken Arabic variations of, “I’m a helper. Here to help. A good person. Will rescue you,” before allowing his light to fall into the container.
His stomach turned with the first pass of his flashlight. Unsure he could find his voice, Colinlet his nausea pass before he admitted, “This is bad, boss.”
“We’ve seen bad. You guys will get through this.”
“Not like this.” Only a few young ladies were still standing. There were enough dead on the ground that they stacked on top of each other, and when all had been alive, they had been packed in like cattle—literally, like animals. His flashlight followed the top of the container wherea metal rigger looked as if it held a water supply that could be accessed the way his grade-school gerbil had in its cage. “We’ll do what we have to do.”
Colin reached into hell to save the first soul, lifting a woman so weak she couldn’t grip him, passing her behind until they’d found every survivor and confirmed the deceased were dead, different from those just dying.
Bodies lined the deck.Survivors awaited medical transport inside, and Colin walked to Ryder who had been quiet for the last part of the op.
“You okay?” He leaned against the rails that Ryder perched on. The sky had turned purple as the faintest sliver of the sun threatened them with the break of dawn.
“Nope.”
Colin nodded. Ryder’s wife, Victoria, had been trafficked years ago when she fell into a dire situationwhile working a private investigation job. “You will be.”
“I know.” Ryder nodded slowly. “I just want to get home and wrap my arms around something good.”
“Soon enough.” Colin hadn’t had that kind of special bond. The job always held that role in his life, giving back to him as much as he sacrificed. But Ryder had it right today. Colin couldn’t imagine what could soothe today’s misery. The jobhe relied on had been nothing more than a wicked sadist.
“Did you touch base with Javier?” Ryder asked.
Colin nodded. They watched out for their own, and Javier had spent more of his life fighting human traffickers than most. His sister, Adelia, had been trafficked. It wasn’t until many years later that they’d found her—in the middle of a gunfight. Funny, how a crazy memory at an awful timecould bring a half-hearted smile to his face. “He said something about Sophia, and my mind cut him off after that.”
Ryder chuckled. “I’d probably do the same thing if that crazy, tattooed fucker was my brother-in-law.”
Colin smiled, almost unsure how it was possible to do so on this hell ship after what they’d just seen. “Kinda love the guy though. Crazy family or not.”
In the distance, threechoppers appeared as dots in the brightening sky, one double-bladed Chinook flanked by two Blackhawks. That was their ride back to the States and a sure signal that the medical team should arrive any minute by boat.
Colin checked in with the second team. They planned to stay with the recovered women, and while Delta normally would see an op through, one the men from Titan’s main team had a bachelorparty on the agenda. They’d all be there to support Jax and his soon-to-be wife Seven, and Delta would be stateside in less than twenty-four hours.
The helos appeared larger over the ocean, and Colin caught sight of what had to be a medical ship. Would he be in the mood for Jax and Seven’s pre-wedding party? It wasn’t as if their wedding was this weekend. The idea of crossing the globe, headinghome, getting shut eye, only to wake up and head to Iowa… He grew more tired thinking about it.