SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (12 page)

“Get this one on a chopper. I want to talk to him when we get back to HQ.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

Ivy frowned. “Very funny with the nautical stuff.”

Ace grinned and walked over to collect the worker. Ivy marched back into the jungle. The humidity was thick out here, and the stench from the nearby mangroves was strong. Men moved through the shipyard, searching for any signs of life.

Unfortunately, there was no one else alive. Whatever had happened out here, it hadn’t been pretty. It wasn’t unlike the Ruiz family to turn against the people who had helped put them where they were, but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to kill everyone. These were the workers who’d built the sub. They were skilled men, recruited from the shipyards and navies of South and Central American countries. It took a lot of time and money to assemble this kind of crew. It made no sense to kill them, especially since getting the men out would have been far easier than getting the sub out. Hell, the way the thing was built, you could fill it with men and sail away.

So why the slaughter?

Ivy shuddered as she raised her gaze to the sky. That was what she didn’t understand about these bastards. What she could never understand. They killed when they didn’t have to. Because they could.

Ivy took one last look around before she headed for the chopper. She had work to do, and time was running out.

*

“You want to
do what?”

Dane “Viking” Erikson stared at the two men standing across from him. He’d been training with his men at the Virginia Beach facility when he’d been summoned to this meeting. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but right now he was staring at an admiral in white and an Army colonel in desert camouflage and wondering what they’d been smoking.

The colonel—Mendez was his name—was the one to speak. “I need a SEAL team, Lieutenant. Your name came up as the one to lead it.”

“For the Hostile Operations Team.” Dane shook his head. “I thought that was a myth. Just a tale the Army guys told when they were feeling inferior.”

Mendez snorted. “Not a myth. And not strictly Army anymore either. HOT is joint service, and the SEALs are the next step. We’ve got a state-of-the-art facility in Maryland and more money than you can imagine. The missions are critical to national security, and their scope is widening. We need you.” Mendez glanced at Admiral Carter.

The admiral’s mouth was a grim line. “You’re the best fit, Dane.”

Dane’s gut tightened. “Because my dad is General Erikson, you mean.”

Mendez nodded. “Doesn’t hurt. You know the Army. Understand it.”

“I joined the Navy. I’m not interested in the Army.
Sir
.”

Mendez’s look could best be described as disgusted. For some reason, that made Dane feel contrite. He cleared his throat and stared at the wall behind the colonel’s head, not liking that this man could reduce him to feeling like a puny child in his father’s home.

Just like old times.

Mendez’s tone, when he spoke again, was conversational. But Dane didn’t kid himself that the man was as mild mannered as he appeared. No, there was steel in that tone and steel in his eyes.

“So you don’t care for the Army. I don’t much care for the Navy. But here’s the thing, son. We’re in this together. We’re fighting for the same goddamn thing, and if I need a SEAL team on my roster, I’m getting one. You can come willingly, or you can come with a grudge. Your choice. But you
are
coming. So pack your gear and get your ass up to Maryland. I’ll expect you at oh seven hundred the day after tomorrow. Any questions?”

“What about my team?”

“They’ll get their orders. In the meantime, you can come and get cozy with us while you wait. We won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Dane wanted to say something sarcastic. He very wisely didn’t. The colonel was yanking his chain at this point. He’d set himself up for it, so he could hardly blame the man. “Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.” The colonel pulled his cap from his belt as he turned toward the door. “Welcome to HOT, Lieutenant Erikson. We hope you enjoy the ride.”

‡

T
he colonel hadn’t
been kidding that the facility was state of the art. It took about half the morning to get clearance, a Common Access Card, and all the codes and various protocols needed to enter and exit on his own power, but finally Dane had everything and found himself in a locker room staring at a group of faces that looked at him curiously. There was no hostility, which he found encouraging.

“You the frogman?” one of the dudes asked.

“You the ground pounder?” Dane returned.

One of the other guys snorted. “Yeah, that’s Iceman all right. He pounds the ground pretty regularly. When he’s not pounding a certain senator’s daughter.”

“Shut up, fuckhead,” the one named Iceman growled. “That’s my fiancée you’re talking about.”

“Sorry, Ice. Couldn’t resist.”

“You’d better be sorry or I’ll pound your face for you. Then what, pretty boy?”

Dane turned away and opened the locker he’d been assigned. All his gear was there. He didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do with any of it while here, but he supposed Colonel Mendez would waste no time in letting him know.

“Hey, frogman, we didn’t mean to insult you or anything,” the second guy said, and Dane turned around again.

The man walked over and held out his hand. “Chase Daniels. Welcome to HOT.”

Dane eyed the guy for a second before he gripped the offered hand. “Dane Erikson.”

They engaged in that age-old ritual guys have of squeezing the daylights out of each other before they let go again.

The other guys in the room stood and came over to thrust out hands. After introductions and handshakes all around, the bones in Dane’s hand felt decidedly bruised. He couldn’t tell if they’d done it on purpose or if they were being nice. Though he nearly laughed to think of a roomful of Special Ops warriors being nice.

But they were a brotherhood, even if they were different services. SEALs worked with other services on operations. Dane had worked with Delta Force, Marine Force Recon, Air Force PJs, the CIA, ATF, and DEA in the past.

But he’d never worked with HOT. Hell, he hadn’t thought they existed. If Delta Force was the Army’s secretive arm, then HOT was their invisible one. The guys just didn’t exist.

Except they did, because he was standing here with them. Idly, he wondered if his father knew. General Erikson had been an Airborne Ranger back in the day. He worked at the Pentagon now, doing God knew what since Dane rarely spoke to him.

In fact, he didn’t particularly like being within close driving distance of the old man. Not that he felt compelled to visit or anything. Their relationship was best when carried out over the phone.

But his mother would expect him, and he could hardly refuse her. He drew the line at regular Sunday dinners, though he’d have to show up for a couple here and there.

He didn’t plan on informing his parents of his new assignment for as long as possible. For all he knew, it wouldn’t last anyway. He’d piss this colonel off, and he’d be bounced back to Virginia Beach before he could count to ten.

Hell, he kind of hoped that was the case. Except, fuck, he was definitely curious now that he was here. This facility was equipped with stuff he’d thought was still in the testing phase, and the gear was more than a little bit interesting. He at least wanted to be here long enough to explore.

“Colonel wants us,” a man said, peeking his head into the room.

Everyone dropped what they were doing and headed for the door. Dane wasn’t planning to go, but then Chase stopped and looked at him.

“He means you too.”

Dane shut his locker and trailed after the group of men walking down the hallway. They passed into a big conference room and took seats around a table. There was a whiteboard on one wall and a projector overhead.

Dane took a seat in a leather chair just about the time someone shot to attention. The rest of the men followed suit. Dane automatically joined them as Colonel Mendez walked into the room.

“At ease,” he said, and they sank back down on their chairs. His gaze landed on Dane.

“We’re glad you could join us, Lieutenant.” Mendez opened up the laptop sitting at the head of the table and tapped some keys. “We have an interesting situation in Colombia. Our Navy man should be particularly fascinated.”

Dane glanced at the others. There were puzzled looks on a few faces as the whiteboard flashed to life.

A satellite shot of a jungle appeared on-screen. There were white-roofed buildings spread out around the area and a fence around the perimeter. Drug runners, probably.

There was also a curl of dark water winding through the jungle near the compound. And then Mendez zoomed in and revealed an object in a small clearing. It was big, torpedo-shaped—

Dane stood before he realized he’d done so. All eyes turned to him. The colonel was watching him with an uplifted brow.

“What do you see here?”

Dane moved closer, studying the object. He’d heard of these things, but this one was bigger than was typical. Yet it was what it was.

“I see a submarine, sir.”

Mendez nodded. “That’s right. Intel indicated there was only one of them finished, but another was in the process of being built.” He pressed a button and a new slide flashed up on the screen. This one contained specs for the submarine. Specs that chilled Dane. This wasn’t your typical floating coffin the drug runners used. This was something different.

“Sir,” Dane said, and the colonel looked at him. He cleared his throat. “Isn’t this the kind of thing the Navy usually deals with?”

Or the DEA since the damn thing belonged to drug runners. He hated thinking about the DEA because that inevitably brought thoughts of his ex-wife, but this was exactly the kind of thing they would be interested in.

“Typically, yes.” The colonel brought up another slide. “But here’s the reason we’re involved.”

This picture was of bodies strewn about the compound. The next picture showed a wrecked shipyard with charred debris—and no sign of the finished sub. There was another sub form, but it was clearly in the process of being built.

“We’ve had intel indicating the Freedom Force is pursuing a plan to make a dirty bomb and detonate it somewhere on the Eastern Seaboard. That’s not anything new. But then we received information two weeks ago that said they were in active negotiations with the Ruiz family to have them build a sub. There was supposed to be a meeting, an exchange of money—but it seems our friends from Qu’rim were impatient after being taken to inspect the equipment. They ambushed the makeshift shipyard and absconded with the finished sub.”

“Fuck me,” one of the other guys said.

Another cleared his throat. This one was the officer in charge of the team. Matt “Richie Rich” Girard.

“So the Freedom Force wants to detonate a dirty bomb on the Eastern Seaboard—and now they have the delivery system to get by our defenses.”

“The Navy will find that thing,” Dane said. “It can’t be that difficult. Set up a dragnet and go after them.”

The colonel shook his head. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But you saw the specs.”

He pulled up another slide, this one an analysis of the capabilities of the sub.

Silent… Submergible to a depth of eighteen hundred feet… ten days without refueling… could render radar detection useless… highly dangerous as a method of infiltration into US waters…

A chill ran down Dane’s spine. If the damn sub was undetectable to the Navy, that wasn’t a good thing at all.

“It gets worse,” Mendez said. “The DEA traced the sub to Cartagena, where a dockworker reported seeing something being loaded onto a sub like this one. What he saw wasn’t a dirty bomb. It was a little too big for that—and it fits the description of a warhead the Russians can’t seem to locate.”

‡