Page 44

Logan

The jumpmaster held up two fingers—two minutes. I passed the signal back, watching as each man repeated it down the line.

I turned to my team, making eye contact with each man.

Ty gave me a thumbs-up. Jace nodded, one hand on his gear bag.

Ben had Jolly secured in his tandem harness, the dog’s tail twitching with anticipation.

The Malinois tolerated flying but lived for the groundwork that came after.

Each operator returned my look with steady confidence.

I raised my hand, circled it overhead, then brought it down to point at the ramp—ready.

Across the cargo hold, Andrew Volante ran through the same check with Bravo team. He caught my eye and repeated the signal—his team was ready too.

We staged at the ramp in two lines, Alpha on the left, Bravo on the right. The yellow caution light bathed us all in its glow. Waiting.

The light turned green.

I stepped into the void. The slipstream hit like a sledgehammer, spinning me once before training took over. Arms and legs spread, I stabilized into a perfect arch. Around me, seven other bodies fell through the night—my team, every one of them here because Lauren mattered.

At 180 miles per hour, you didn’t think about much. But Lauren’s face filled my mind anyway. The way she’d looked that morning in Chicago, finally smiling. Finally believing we had a chance.

My fault she was here. My failure that let them take her.

The altimeter spun down. At 3,000 feet, I deployed. The chute snapped open with a violent jerk, slowing my descent from terminal velocity to a gentle drift. Below, the jungle canopy looked like a black ocean in the darkness.

The drop zone rushed up—a small clearing Jace had identified from satellite imagery. I flared at twenty feet, boots hitting soft earth with trained silence. Around me, the others landed like shadows.

I collapsed my chute and buried it quickly. The jungle pressed in immediately, humid and alive with night sounds. I flipped down the night vision goggles attached to my helmet, and the world transformed into that artificial green. Everything glowed with familiar clarity.

“Comms check,” I whispered.

Everyone confirmed.

“Compound is two klicks northeast,” Jace said, already working his tablet despite having just fallen from the stratosphere. “Aerial recon shows normal patrol patterns. They don’t know we’re here.”

“Let’s keep it that way. Bravo, you take the north approach to the helipad. Alpha moves to the storage shed from the south.” I chambered a round in my suppressed HK416. “Rules of engagement are simple—if it’s not us or Lauren, you can kill it.”

“Understood. My favorite type of ROEs,” Volante said. “We’ll secure that Bell 412 helicopter and hold for your signal.”

We moved out in tactical formation, the jungle swallowing us whole. Every step calculated, every sound cataloged. This wasn’t my first time in Corazón’s jungle, but it was my first time seeing the Silva compound.

Forty minutes of careful movement through dense undergrowth, around fallen logs, through streams. Two kilometers that would take fifteen minutes on a road stretched into an eternity when stealth mattered more than speed.

Finally, through gaps in the canopy, lights pierced the darkness ahead.

“Movement,” Ty whispered. “Two tangos, northwest, forty meters.”

I spotted them through the night vision goggles—guards walking a lazy patrol, AKs slung carelessly. They had no idea death was watching from the shadows.

“Ben, Ty.”

They moved like smoke. Two soft puffs from their rifles, the barely audible sound of rifle bolts cycling, and the tangos fell. We dragged the bodies into the undergrowth and kept moving.

The compound materialized through the trees—high walls, multiple buildings, exactly as the satellite imagery had shown. Lights blazed everywhere, turning night into day. Bad for them, good for us. All that light would destroy their night vision while we stayed in the shadows.

“Jace, you’re up,” I said.

He found a concealed position and opened his laptop. “Give me ninety seconds to loop their cameras and disable the motion sensors.”

While he worked his magic, I studied the storage shed through my rifle scope. Single story, concrete construction, one door visible. Two guards stationed outside. According to the thermal imaging from the flight, Lauren was in there. Alive. Waiting.

I tamped down my fury that Silva was keeping Lauren in a goddamned shed. She was alive. That’s what mattered.

“Done,” Jace whispered. “You’re ghosts for the next twenty minutes before they might notice the loops.”

“Bravo, status?”

“In position,” Volante reported. “Helicopter has two guards. Ready to take them on your signal.”

“Take those guards and verify the bird’s operational,” I told Volante. Without that, we weren’t going to have any way out of here.

“Copy.”

I turned to my team. “Ty, overwatch. Ben and Jace, with me.”

We crossed the open ground in seconds. The guards never saw us coming as we shot near silently through our suppressors. I caught the first guard before he hit the ground, easing him down silently. The second collapsed, his AK clattering against concrete as it was trapped under his body.

We froze. Ten seconds. Twenty. Eyes scanning, weapons ready. No movement from the compound. No shouts of alarm.

“Clear,” Ben whispered.

I moved to the opposite side of the door while Ben and Jace stood close, weapons ready. I held up three fingers. Two. One.

Then I noticed the lock. “Fuck. Check them for a key.”

Ben and Jace patted down the guards with quick efficiency while I stood watch, Jace suddenly holding up a key.

Seconds later, a soft click.

Ben and Jace stacked up again opposite me, and I counted down once more. I yanked the door open, and they flowed in, rifles leading.

The storage shed was smaller than expected—one main room, metal shelving along the walls, wooden crates stacked haphazardly around.

A shuffle noise from the back corner. Then suddenly, a shadowed figure charged forward, arm raised. Something glinted in the filtered light.

A broken bottle came rushing at my face, and I raised my arm just in time to stop the strike from connecting.

Lauren.

She bounced off my chest, and my hands shot out to grab her arms. “Lauren.”

She seemed to be stuck in fight-or-flight mode, eyes panicked, not seeing clearly.

“Lauren. Hey, it’s me. It’s us.”

My voice suddenly registered, and she stilled. Her head snapped up, and those green eyes went wide. “Logan?”

Still in the same clothes from this morning, though disheveled now. No visible injuries, but that didn’t mean?—

“We’re getting you out.” I pulled her to me roughly, and she melted in my arms. “Are you hurt?”

“Drugged me. It’s wearing off, but I’m still a little dizzy and?—”

A radio on one of the dead guards crackled to life. Spanish voices demanding a check-in. The repeated calls grew more insistent.

“They know something’s going on,” I said.

“Multiple tangos approaching from the north.” Ty’s voice came through the comms, barely above a whisper. “Looks like they’re sending a patrol to investigate.”

“Ty, can you make some noise on the south side? Draw them away from us and the helo?”

“Copy. Give me ten seconds.” He sounded like he was already moving.

“Nope, not going to work.” Ty’s voice came back tight. “Squad-sized element heading toward the shed. Looks like guard shift change.”

No choice now. Waiting meant getting pinned inside with Lauren.

“Ben, Jace—take them,” I ordered while checking Lauren over. “Buy us time.”

Both men swept out of the shed, rifles up, Jolly on Ben’s heels. The approaching cartel soldiers were still forty meters out, moving in a loose formation. Ben’s suppressor coughed twice, dropping the lead man. Jace followed up with a short burst.

For a moment, confusion. The cartel soldiers scattered, shouting in Spanish, trying to figure out where the fire was coming from. Someone screamed for backup.

I pulled Lauren forward, one arm around her waist to steady her. “We’re moving.”

Then someone hit an alarm. The klaxon’s wail shattered the night, and floodlights blazed to life across the compound.

Within seconds, the night was full of muzzle flashes.

“Go loud!” I shouted. “Bravo, secure that bird now!”

Silence wasn’t any use to us now. Gunfire erupted from the direction of the helipad. Our twenty minutes of ghost time had become about three.

I pushed Lauren back into the shed and pulled her behind a shelf unit as rounds punched through the walls. “Can you move?”

“I’ll have to.” Her voice held no panic, just that same determination I’d fallen for in the jungle.

I cupped her cheeks. “Any injuries I should know about?”

She grabbed my wrists and turned her face to kiss one. “I’m good. Diego’s plans, while sick, weren’t immediate and thankfully didn’t involve violence.”

I would take it. “Then let’s get out of here, beautiful.”

“Moving!” I half carried Lauren toward the door while Ben and Jace laid down covering fire. Even suppressed, the rifles made their distinctive coughs, brass casings ringing on concrete.

“Jolly, attack!” Ben commanded, and the Belgian Malinois became a fur missile, launching through the doorway at the nearest threat. I didn’t see it, but I heard the frightened scream from one of Silva’s men.

We burst into the compound proper and right into chaos. Muzzle flashes lit the night from every direction. Cartel soldiers poured from buildings, some half-dressed but all armed.

“Alpha team, bound back to the helipad,” I ordered. “Ty, we need cover!”

“On it.” His rifle spoke from the tree line, and a cartel soldier spinning toward us pitched backward.

I kept Lauren close, my body between her and the majority of threats. She stumbled—whatever they’d drugged her with still affecting her coordination—but kept fighting forward.

“Reloading!” Jace called out.

“Covering!” Ben’s rifle maintained steady fire while Jace swapped magazines.