“Not yet,” he said. “My flight is tonight. Brief in DC after that.”
“Good.” She lay back down and pulled him with her. “Then we’ve got a few more hours to make it hurt to go.”
He laughed quietly, then kissed her, slow and deep and full of all the things they hadn’t said before this morning.
And for a little while longer, there was no Sahel, no Krueger, no nukes, and no deployment clock ticking down. Just the two of them in a borrowed bed, holding on like they’d both finally decided they were worth holding on to.
CHASE SECURITY SCIF – 1903 HOURS
The SCIF hummed with low, constant noise of fans, servers, encrypted comms, all chewing on data no one outside this room would ever see. On the main screen, the Sahel corridor glowed in red overlays: Talba, Gao, the ghost villages in between. A convoy track pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.
Ford Cox stared at the highlighted route. Ian Chase leaned against the far side of the table, gaze fixed on the same projection. Dante dropped his go-bag beside a chair, eyes flicking between both men and the map.
Ian broke the silence first. “Ford’s going in undercover as a buyer.”
Dante didn’t bother hiding his reaction. “For a nuclear device.”
“Best assessment,” Ford said calmly. “Multiple. Suitcase packaging. Mobile. Hidden inside that convoy or one just like it. They’re shopping it to people who can afford to be ghosts.”
Dante’s jaw worked. “Whose idea was it to put your face in the middle of that?”
“Mine,” Ford said. “We need someone with a believable pipeline into that world. My history buys us credibility. My lack of a public footprint buys us time.”
Ian nodded once. “I volunteered him before Martin and Zach could talk me into something safer that likely wouldn’t work.”
Dante snorted. “Sounds right.”
Ford tapped the screen, shifting to a still of the burned-out storage site Bravo hit. “But we can’t explore this building with a drone and call it a day. Not without confirming what’s inside. We need hard proof. We think there’s a half basement with some digital information, probably computers, servers, or hard drives. Hell, if this mission gives the wrong hit, it becomes an international incident. The press could expose us and incite a conflict, especially if that building belongs to an unexpected nation.”
“And the right hit?” Dante asked.
Ford’s eyes hardened. “Ends a lot of heartache before it starts.”
Ian pushed off the table. “Ford goes in as the money. We needed to decide who goes in as his shadow. We had options.”
Dante met his gaze. “But you called me.”
“Ford requested you,” Ian explained.
Dante glanced at Ford. “Why?”
Ford’s expression didn’t shift. “You’ve run asset protection and undercover support. You understand Krueger’s psychology, you understand Bravo, and you understand what’s at stake if this thing gets out of that valley and into the wrong city. You’re not reckless. You’re not timid. And if I start making bad calls, I trust you to dislocate my shoulder and drag me out. You’d also take the bullet to get me out.”
Dante huffed once. “You really know how to sell a job.”
Ian added, “Shannon’s cleared now. You both knew this was coming.”
Dante looked back at the small, pulsing indicator where the convoy had last been confirmed. “What’s my cover?”
“Private security contractor with a mid-tier private military contractor out of the Gulf,” Ford said. “You’re there to vet the product and keep me breathing. You don’t shoot first. You don’t posture. You observe. You count guns; you read faces; you memorize ground and egress options.”
“And if this is a trap?” Dante asked.
Ian answered, “You get Ford out and give Bravo something to hunt.”
Silence settled between them for a moment.
Ford picked up a folder from the table and handed it over. “Full legend. Financials. Contacts. Backstopped accounts. You’ll have the night to burn it into your brain on the flights. Bravo’s awaiting you at Ramstein.”
