“Angel! Where are they?!” he barked into the mic.
“Gone,” Angel replied, breathless. “They’re not here. Repeat—not here.”
“Cole?”
“Negative. I’m at the east exit. No movement.”
“Lucas?!”
“I got nothing but corpses, man.”
Then—sudden silence.
The shooting stopped. Just like that.
The only thing left were the broken bodies littering the ground. As far as he could tell, they all belonged to the mercenary group who had taken his brother, the other man, and the girl based on their desert clothing and the patches on their shoulders. The brief glimpse he caught of the other, unknown group had them dressed all in black.
“What the hell?” Nikos muttered, rising cautiously as the silence stretched.
He stepped warily forward, keeping his rifle at the ready as he joined the other three men who moved down towards the center of the compound. Angel knelt beside one of the mercs dressed in desert fatigues and checked for a pulse that wasn’t there.
“They’re not from here,” Cole said grimly. “Eastern European, maybe. A few from Africa. From the looks of it, they’re all hired guns.”
Cole’s brows drew together. “Why the hell would they be here? What were they protecting?”
“Do we have an ID on the other assets?” Nikos asked.
“No. If they had any wounded or casualties, they took them with them,” Lucas replied as he rubbed a hand through his short hair, his mouth set in a grim line. “Markos’s team was assigned to escort a group of international doctors. Maybe that civvie was one of them.”
“Doctors don’t bring their daughters into war zones,” Angel muttered.
“It looks like this one might have. She didn’t look like a local,” Cole said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Nikos snapped, his voice cracking on the words. “Markos is missing. And I’m going to find him. I don’t care what it takes. I’ll tear this goddamned desert apart if I have to.”
Four Days Later
Forward Operating Base Echo-Zulu I
The sun was relentless, beating down on the compound like a curse. Nikos stood outside the operations tent, his fists clenched, the order still ringing in his ears.
Reassigned. Effective immediately.
Markos Aeto: missing. Presumed dead.
Bullshit.
He would know.
They were twins. Born into the world seconds apart, they had always had an unusually close bond. They finished each other’s sentences, knew when the other was hurt; hell, they even dated the same type of women! He would feel it if his brother were gone.
Cole, Angel, and Lucas surrounded him in a loose circle, saying nothing. What could they say?
Nikos turned away from them, staring out across the shimmering horizon. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“He’s not dead. I don’t give a fuck what the CO said,” he growled.
“We know, man. Hell, if you want to thumb your nose, we’ll follow. I’m up for a good court-martial, especially if we prove them wrong,” Lucas offered.
