looked down at the files. He hated cleaning up his country’s messes.
Too often, we’ve become our own worst enemy.
Two
South Carolina
Logan stared out the window of his house, watching the helicopter lower to the lawn, its blades stirring up the live oaks and palm trees, and gobbling half the flowers like an alien craft sucking up victims.
I’m not gonna like this.
Within moments, General Joseph McGill, a man he respected, climbed out of a plain black chopper. He’d wanted to speak to the team. ASAP. Although McGill gave nothing away as to the reason, he’d been overly polite. A three-star didn’t have to be nice to anyone except the President.
Logan sipped his beer as the general headed to the sidewalk, a memory shadowing; Cassie on her bike, reaming him for sulking like an “ol’ sour puss.” His lips curved. She’d been right. Around then, he was just about everyone’s pain in the ass.
His smile fell, her bloody handprints making a comeback in his mind.
Justice, that’s all she’d want. But Logan was thinking; severely avenged. This was too cleverly done to be anything less than a much larger operation than two men. Not with the total annihilation of the ship and witnesses. Pirates, my ass. They would have raped the ship clean and sunk it. It was too big and slow for the speed they needed.
What was in his hand? flickered like a taunt. He was still waiting for the inventory of the ship’s contents down to the cellophane-wrapped toothbrushes. It was the only way they’d be able to tell if whatever the diver took came from the crew or guests, or the ship itself. He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment. That attack was Mach 1 overkill.
Directly behind him on a desk once owned by Robert E. Lee, a laptop computer ran through photos, searching for a match from his admittedly vague composite of the killer. His partner, nearly blown in pieces by the exploding tank had a handprint. The time in the water and the explosion left little evidence for forensics, but Interpol’s face match gave them Felix Carona, Aymara Indian, born in Venezuela and once a captain in its Army. He’d been discharged with full honors, and like Dragon One, worked for the private sector. Though morally, there was no comparison. Carona and a few of his buddies had been linked to more than one assassination of anyone in power who opposed President Gutierrez’s “communal socialist” philosophy. Well executed and no witnesses.
Where have I heard that before?
He pinched the bridge of his nose. Scrape it as clean as they wanted, he could still smell it.
“It’s got to be serious shit for McGill to come himself, without his aides,” Max said from somewhere behind him.
Or his security, Logan thought. “Time to find out.”
Logan moved away from the window, taking his beer and heading to the door. He opened it before McGill met the sidewalk. In jeans, loafers and a polo shirt, he looked more like his own father than a man who commanded thousands.
“What?” Logan asked. “You couldn’t hop a cab?”
“Too slow. Thanks for meeting me.”
“It’s good to listen to the wise men once in a while.”
“I wish someone would.”
That didn’t sound good.
McGill shook his hand and stepped inside. The chopper lifted off behind him, a few thousand in landscaping going with it.
“Want a beer?” Max approached, holding out a cold one.
“Hell yes.” McGill took the longneck bottle and stepped farther inside, sipping. “Nice place, Commander.”
Dragon One had an unofficial headquarters above Sebastian’s restaurant, the Craw Daddy in New Orleans, so Logan wasn’t home often. He’d reacquainted himself with the four-bedroom house in the past days, filled with items that evoked a story. Probably why he didn’t hang around. Some stories should just fade away.
“It’s just Logan,” he said, and gestured to a chair. “You want to hire us.” Why else would he be there?
Joe McGill should have remembered he’d get right to the point. Logan Chambliss wasn’t one to waste time with pleasantries. Just like the rest of the team members. Dragon One was efficient and morally stronger than most teams because they’d all been so royally screwed by their own government. They’d been tested in fire and survived. It could have easily gone the other way. “Yes, we do.”
“We?”
“The Department of Defense.”
“That’s a big place.” Logan sat back, shrugging. “You’ve got field CIA or Spec Ops at your fingertips, so it’s something dirty.” Logan glanced at Max and smothered a smile when he started humming the theme from Mission Impossible. “Why aren’t you sending them?”
McGill shifted in the chair. He’d practiced this moment. It’s how he remained diplomatic when a bunch of self-important senators made him want to smack their heads together. But this was different. They had a problem that couldn’t be rectified through legal or diplomatic channels. “We did. They didn’t come back.”
Logan scowled. “Then the price just doubled.”
“Tripled,” Riley said loud enough for McGill to hear. “I’ve already died for one mission, I’m not doing it again.” On crutches, Riley limped into the room, munching on a sandwich and using his bad arm to do it.
Logan gave him his well-honed doctor look, and Riley rolled his eyes, yet lowered gingerly into a chair. The guy was in a coma a few months ago and had a long way to go still.
Logan focused on McGill. “You can understand why we don’t want to even hear this.”
“Hell, I wouldn’t.” McGill took a sip of beer, rolled the bottle between his hands. “I can tell you that without agreement, I stop here, and don’t say—wait,” he said when they grumbled. “Those are my orders. Now, this is what I can say—”
“The U.S. fucked up,” Max said.
“Bluntly, yes. We got too involved. Do you recall the recent coup d’état in Venezuela?”
“Who doesn’t?” Logan said. “It lasted two days and Gutierrez blamed the rebels. His troops killed a lot of innocent people, the Vice President was injured, and the general who supposedly helped stage the coup is still in power. So Gutierrez might be President, but his control isn’t that strong.”
McGill nodded, choosing his words carefully. “Before that, Vice President Garcia was a shoe-in for President and Gutierrez couldn’t run again. The two have been on opposite sides often. So much that Garcia’s opposition made him a target for pro-socialism supporters. He’d suffered two assassination attempts, one that killed his only brother. It put Garcia on a warpath for change, and within days the coup occurred. He was accused of instigating it.”
“Gutierrez has considerable support from other countries,” Sebastian said. “It won’t be long
