“I’ve got the agent. Get Gosling. He deserves a proper burial.”
Cursing, Gunny hesitated only a moment before pitching Gosling over his shoulder, muttering, “This wasn’t the way this was supposed to go down, damn it.”
Rip didn’t wait. With the deadweight of the wounded agent bearing down on him, he took off at an awkward lope racing through the trees and vines toward the boat they’d left in the nearby river. Silence wasn’t necessary. Speed was.
Montana ran ahead to get the boat engines started. Sawyer brought up the rear, covering their sixes as Rip and Gunny carried their burdens over the uneven floor of the jungle.
Shots rang out behind them. A vehicle full of angry terrorists raced toward them. Sawyer held them at bay, firing short bursts of rounds into the night. He ejected his clip and without missing a beat slammed another home while running backward to keep up with the other SEALs.
When Rip reached the boat, he jumped on board and laid his charge on the deck. He manned his position behind a grenade launcher, waiting for Sawyer to emerge from the tree line.
Gunny jumped on board, dropped Gosling on deck and took a position behind a machine gun.
As soon as Sawyer cleared the trees, Gunny opened fire on the oncoming sets of headlights.
Rip launched a grenade, aiming at the line of vehicles barreling through the underbrush.
As Sawyer leaped aboard, Montana hit the throttle, spun the craft around on the water and gunned it, sending it speeding downriver, bullets plinking off the hull and hitting the water around them.
Not until they were a good mile downstream did Rip glance down at Sawyer working over the body of the DEA agent.
Rip shook his head. The mission had gone like clockwork. They’d been out of the village, on their way back. What the hell had happened? Rip glanced at his teammate’s lifeless body on the deck of the boat. Gosling was dead. Two shots were fired and then none until the terrorists had loaded up in their trucks and given chase.
Whoever had fired the first two shots could have taken out more, if not all, of the SEAL team. Why hadn’t he?
When the boat reached the helicopter landing zone, Sawyer rocked back on his heels, his shoulders slumped.
Gunny shot a glance back at him. “Well?”
Sawyer shook his head. “He’s dead.”
“HEY, SWEETIE, WOULD you like a drink?”
Rip blinked up at the waitress standing beside him with a tray in her hands. For a full thirty seconds he couldn’t remember where he was. He’d done it again. The shrinks he’d seen in the past had said part of post-traumatic stress disorder was flashbacks to events that had an indelible impact on him.
“Excuse me?” he said, buying time for his mind to reconnect with his surroundings.
“Would you like a drink?” the waitress repeated.
He shook his head. “No, thank you.”
The woman moved away to the next customer in the casino.
Rip stared around at row after row of brightly lit slot machines, pinging, ringing or plinking in the darkness. For a long moment he wondered how the hell he’d gone from a hot, humid, bug-and snake-infested jungle to an upscale casino in Mississippi.
Then he remembered all the events that had led up to this meeting. All that had happened since getting back from Honduras.
He stared around the dimly lit room.
What’s keeping him?
The past six weeks since their failed mission had been a blur. Rip had been back on duty with his team, while covertly researching the odd medallion the DEA agent had shoved into his hand.
The medallion had been a clever disguise for an electronic storage device on which were stored hundreds of photos of the terrorist training camp and crates of American-made weapons and ammunition disguised as World Health Organization donations.
And based on the botched mission in Honduras, someone higher up didn’t want the agent or anyone else exposing who was providing the weapons from the States. How else could a sniper have known exactly when and where they would be unless someone had tipped them off?
Rip had pilfered a copy of the after-action report, developed the pictures and was in the process of piecing things together when an assassin started stalking him. He’d found out that details of their mission had been leaked. Not only after its failure, but before it had even been launched.
Someone, possibly in a high-ranking political position, wanted that agent dead and had sent the SEALs in to get him out of the village and into the open so a sniper could take him out. It was the only answer he could come up with given the limited information he had.
Rip was in hiding, officially missing and presumed dead. The Navy still thought he’d been swallowed by the Pearl River after being shot during a live-fire training mission with Navy SEALs Special Boat Team 22. If not for the help of former SEAL James “Cowboy” Monahan and Rip’s old friend FBI Agent Melissa Bradley, Rip might not still be alive. The two had persevered, and searched the river until they found him holed up in a shack in the Mississippi bayou.
Lucky me. Rip snorted.
Now, after spending the past three weeks recovering from his gunshot wound, Rip was finally able to pursue his self-appointed mission.
He’d gotten his commander and the few members of his team who’d been involved in his rescue to keep his survival on the down low until he could find the persons responsible for the death of the undercover DEA agent.
He couldn’t engage his team in this mission without disclosing to the world and to whoever was responsible for the assassination of the agent that the Navy’s Chief Petty Officer Cord Schafer was alive and well. In order to keep from becoming a target again, it was best if he remained “dead” until he resolved the situation.
Only, he knew he couldn’t do it on his own. He needed a partner, a cover and fake passports to get him down to Honduras without raising red flags to the terrorist organization or the traitorous Americans supplying them with weapons.
Sitting in a crowded casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, with a baseball cap pulled low over his brow, he waited for his contact, not knowing who he was or what he looked like, only that Cowboy’s new boss, billionaire Hank Derringer, was sending one of his operatives from Covert Cowboys, Inc.
Rip glanced up every time a man slowed near the slot machine he was only halfheartedly playing. He looked for a man in a cowboy hat and boots, but most of the men in the place were hatless, gray-haired and wearing comfortable loafers.
Glancing at his watch once again, he started getting nervous. He hadn’t been out in public since the mercenary had shot
