“Oh, yeah, because no one ever gets shot in the city.” Boone shook his head. You couldn’t pay him to live in a big city. He needed to be able to see the stars.
“Damn, it’s hot as Satan’s balls.” Hustler lifted the front of his helmet just enough to wipe his forearm across his brow.
“Temp’s already a hundred and two.” On cue, sweat trailed down the back of Boone’s neck, and a bead of sweat dripped from the tip of his nose and landed on a small flat rock, where it sizzled before quickly evaporating.
Fortunately, the temp would drop pretty dramatically once that sun was completely over the mountains. That’s when they would make their move.
After deciding on this vantage point, they’d tucked the bulk of their gear—almost a hundred and ten pounds’ worth each—into a small cave about ten feet behind them. If necessary, they could be up off the ground and loaded up in less than thirty seconds.
“I noticed one of the females you were with last time we were at the base seemed kinda young.” Boone kept his voice light, his eyes focused on the valley below. “Think that’s a good idea?”
“Her dad didn’t seem to have a problem with it.” His response was disappointing but not a surprise. “Their family needs the money. Besides, there’s no law against it over here.”
Disgust roiled through Boone’s gut.
“That doesn’t make it right, Hustler.” He lowered his binoculars and turned his head to him. “She’s just a kid.”
“Tell you what, Rancher.” Udall lowered his own binoculars to glare at Boone, giving him a glimpse of the malevolence hekept masked behind his bullshit. “How about you stay out of my personal shit and I’ll stay out of yours? Sound good?”
Boone didn’t respond because he was pretty damn sure he couldn’t do that.
Udall’s involvement with females went beyond inappropriate dalliances with local girls. On more than one occasion, Boone had caught him venturing into the nearby refugee camp.
The one time he’d confronted Udall about it, he gave him some bullshit story about taking candy and toys to the children there.
His teammate didn’t have a benevolent bone in his body, and Boone knew in his gut there was something much more sinister going on.
He just had to figure out what that was.
CHAPTER ONE
Threeyearslater…
“Suspect’s heat signature, behind a shack about twenty-five feet ahead of you, on the right. One side of the roof has collapsed.” Luna Pannikos conveyed information to the OSI Dark Ops team through their high-tech earpieces. “Hang on, I’ll reposition the drone and mark his position for you.”
Darks Ops was a specialized group of covert operators who focused on human trafficking, and Luna was in charge of the ops center.
The team was currently working a mission down near Memphis, and she was providing overwatch from their base near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Her thumb manipulated the rocker knob on the handheld video remote control and repositioned the drone until it was hovering directly over where Hashir Al-Shamrami was crouched down behind the dilapidated building.
She pressed and held a button to shine a laser down to pinpoint his location.
“Suspect targeted.” Luna kept her attention on the screen on the remote.
The only way to see the bright green light was through NVGs, night vision goggles, like the ones the team was wearing. Al-Shamrami would never even know he’d been spotted until it was too late.
“Got it.” Cole Lambert, her boss and the head of the Dark Ops division of O’Halleran Security International, was leading this op. “Go ahead and bring the drone back to headquarters.”
“Will do.” She tapped the screen on the remote, the drone turned, and the team’s bright green images faded from view as the near-silent drone headed back to its preprogrammed destination.
Through her headset, she could hear the team’s breaths and the rapid thumps of their boots on the grassy terrain as they ran toward the shack. A moment later, all hell broke loose.
“Down on the ground! Do it! Now!” Cole yelled the commands in Farsi.
They had received solid intel that Al-Shamrami was trafficking people across the southern border and into the United States. He specialized in young women and boys between the ages of eleven and twenty. Dark Ops had been trying to take him down for several months, but every time they got close, he somehow managed to slip away.
Relieved the operation was successful and that no one had been hurt, Luna began to roll her shoulders in an effort to loosen them. Then, out of the blue, the sound of gunfire blasted through her headset.
