CHAPTER 1
ADAM
SUMMER 2009
“Alpha One,this is Alpha Two. I have northern overwatch. How copy?”I requested confirmation.
“Strong copy, Alpha Two. Alpha team in position to breach,” Alpha One replied.
Alpha One was Foster Holt. He’d joined the team recently, and at first, I had worried about the fit. Legacies either went one way or the other. Foster definitely went the good way.
I’d wanted the job myself. Badly. I understood Mercer and the command’s decision. Foster had more time and a hell of a lot more experience, and…well, you couldn’t discount the fact that his daddy was one of the first SEALs ever. All that notwithstanding, he was shaping up to be a damn good team leader. So much so that the initial anger I’d felt at being passed over was burning out after being spun up and walking outside the wire with him.
“Bravo team in position to breach. How copy?” Finlay Ryan, Alpha Four, reported.
“Strong copy, Bravo team,” Foster replied.
“Alpha Six has southern overwatch. How copy?”
“Strong copy, Six.” I checked my scope. “TOC, this is Alpha Two. How copy?”
The radio crackled in my ear.
“Lima Charlie, Alpha Two. Strong copy all around. You are cleared hot. Repeat. You’re cleared hot,” Commander Mercer replied.
I took a deep breath. I’d been tapped by Foster to oversee this op since he was still getting the lay of the team. It wasn’t the first I’d ever led, but something about this one felt more significant.
“You guys heard that. Breach on my mark.” I checked my scope again, and then my watch. The seconds ticked down. “Three, two, one. Execute. Execute. Execute.”
I was too far away to hear the boys breach the building, so I eagle-eyed the site, watching the building for anything out of the ordinary. I swept the site and the surroundings over and over. The area was supposed to be a hotbed, but this was as cold as a witch’s tit in the dead of winter. Not a single fucking squirter.
I did another sweep. Everything was silent. Still. Eerily so. So much so, the hair on the back of my neck—hell, on my whole damn body—stood on end.
“Alpha Six, check in,” I called. Something was off. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones.
“All clear, Alpha Two. Too clear. Over.”
Alpha Six was Carson Wilcox. He was our best sniper, but covering a field this size, we’d drawn straws as to who would help him. I’d pulled the short one.
Fucking short straw.
I fucking hated doing overwatch, but we were a team. 2IC or not, I took teamwork seriously. Plus, I had confidence in both Foster and Rocket. They could handle their shit with or without me, even if I was used to being one of the ones busting through doors. We’d been training for this shit with Foster from themoment he took over. So, even though this was our first trip outside the wire with him, I knew we were humming like a well-oiled machine.
Another sweep through the scope, and I said, “Roger that, Alpha Six…”
I shut my trap and turned my radio down to a whisper. There was someone or something out there. I stilled my breath, listening for the slightest sound.
There it was. A noise. A small one. Just a tiny rustle. Whoever it was, they were damn good. It was hard as fuck to move silently in this terrain.
I keyed the distress signal on my mic, slowly pulled my sidearm, and waited. Moving was out of the question, but I was a sitting duck with my back exposed. I was damned if I did or damned if I didn’t at this point.
The team chattered in my ear to TOC. The HVT was not on site.
A fucking trap. That’s what this is.
A rustle of sand under someone’s feet sounded again, this time at five o’clock. Then another off to the left at nine.
Motherfucker. They’ve got me surrounded.
