Page 1 of Zorro

1

Rural border between Agusan del Sur and Davao de Oro, Mindanao, Philippines

“One hundred and ninety-two fucking inches of rain and we’re getting it all right now,” Dakota “Bear” Locklear drawled softly in that slow cadence that rolled off his tongue. Mateo “Zorro” Martinez stared straight ahead. They were on point, the rest of the team behind mopping up a previous firefight. He grinned at the big man’s grouching. “Do you know how much South Dakota gets?”

The Philippines was an archipelago consisting of just over seven thousand islands, with three main islands: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Bounded by the South China Sea to the west and the Philippine Sea to the east, it shared maritime borders with Taiwan, Japan, Palau, and Indonesia. The country was a rich convergence of cultures, languages, and ethnicities and a hotbed of tectonic tension, sitting squarely on the fringes of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Volcanoes. Earthquakes. A history shaped by upheaval.

But it was the jungle that made men disappear.

The region surrounding Agusan del Sur was a volatile stretch of thick, unforgiving green—remote, lawless, and riddled with decades-old insurgencies. Nominally under government control, the area was, in truth, a patchwork of tribal territories, smuggling corridors, and militant strongholds. Recent political instability, coupled with rising black-market trafficking in humanitarian supplies, had turned the jungle into a shadow war zone. Visibility was poor, movement slow—where every step forward meant entering terrain where maps meant nothing, alliances shifted like mist, and danger came from above, below, and all sides at once.

Zorro worked at not laughing, and Bear was so annoyed. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“Sixteen. Well, sometimes more.”

“Doesn’t look like you’re embracing the SEAL motto, amigo.” They were already six hours into a mission to rescue American hostage Henry Lucas, field communications specialist with Human Atlas, an international non-governmental organization, delivering trauma care access and logistical mapping to underserved and conflict-affected zones in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America. They had already been in three firefights.

“Don’t start with me, Martinez.”

“But it’s always so much fun.”

“Fun is in the eye of beholder,” he muttered. “Flint isn’t a big fan of water. Look at him. He’s bedraggled.” Flint looked like a war-weary ghost of his usual sleek self. His dark coat was soaked and dripping, ears pinned flat in visible disgust. Mud clung to his underbelly and legs like battlefield insult, and his tail gave a single halfhearted swish before he let out a long-suffering sigh. He cut a glance up at Bear, eyes narrowed as if to say, We train for hell. But this? Not even for the birds. No one wants to smell like a wet dog, bro.

“He’s a SEAL dog. You see the irony in that right, big man?”

“Of course I see that. Can’t change him, though. He’ll do what needs to be done, but he doesn’t have to like it. He thinks our motto, ‘only easy day was yesterday’ is a bunch of bullshit. In his opinion, there are no fucking easy days. Ever.”

Zorro muffled his laugh. “Goddammit, Bear. Stop using that dog to be passive/aggressive. We all know it’s your opinion.” The grin faded from Zorro’s mouth.

“Dammit,” Bear said, squeezing water out of his short braid. “Busted.”

Gunfire sounded in the distance. He, Bear, and Flint stopped moving. “Don’t these guys even break for dinner?”

Zorro depressed his comm. “LT, we've got contact, half a click away. Should we go around?”

“We stay on mission. Go around.”

“Copy that.”

The rain pounded them. Thick drops drummed against the canopy overhead, turning the jungle floor into a slurry of mud and moss. Zorro moved in silence, eyes sweeping the undergrowth, his body lowered in a crouched stalk, Bear and Flint at his back, two shadows in the green, both continuing onward to rescue Lucas. Rain-slick, slow breaths, all edges.

Something in the air, beneath the pounding rain, made his medic’s instincts twitch. Pain. He could feel it before he heard it, a sixth sense. The kind he couldn’t always detect but still felt in his bones. The ragged hitch in breath. The silence that followed a scream.

In the chaos of combat, that instinct was everything. He wasn’t just trained to kill. He was built to find the wounded during battle, to move toward suffering when everyone else ran from it. Being a medic meant hearing what others missed, carrying what others couldn’t, and bleeding later after everyone else had stopped."

Zorro froze mid-step. His hand shot up. Bear halted behind him, still as stone. He tilted his head, frowning into the noise. There. Just under the hiss of rain, a gasp. Ragged. Wet. Almost lost to the jungle. He held up two fingers, gesturing left.

“What is it?”

“Can Flint detect anything?”

“Wak?á?ška,” Bear growled.

Zorro just grinned. “You calling me an idiot again?”

“If the moccasin fits.” The rest of the team had learned that word a while ago. “Yeah, reassess, kola. In this downpour? He can’t smell his own ass.”

Zorro bit his tongue to keep from losing it. “That’s a tragedy for Flint.”