“Jesus Christ. The DEA sold you out,” Midas revealed. On the telescreen, layers of documents appeared, documenting what happened. “They sold you back to your own family.”
“In a manner. While my evidence had helped them hit the cartel, it wasn’t a killing blow. It only slowed them down for a bit. Somehow, they rebounded. It was suspected that they had outside help, but nothing could be found on exactly how or who. When the cartel began to gain strength again, Agent Salazar delivered my new orders. In a joint operation with the US Navy, I was asked to return to my family and rejoin the cartel. While there, I would carry out all orders from myjefeand report any and all information I was privy to—production, shipments, executions, restructuring, everything—but my primary mission was to find out who was helping the cartel and how they were funding their rebirth.”
“Your family just accepted you back?” TB asked incredulously.
“No. They were naturally suspicious. My half brothers made sure I paid the penalty for leaving, and I was not trusted with much of anything of real importance for the first two years.”
“But you were there for seven years, weren’t you?” Midas asked, still skimming through documents on his computer.
“Yes. Slowly, my father started to bring me back into the day-to-day operations, but he was still reluctant to trust me one hundred percent. He’s not a stupid man. He found a way to leverage my loyalty.”
“Your mother,” Midas guessed.
He put his visual focus on his hand, and with great effort, he unlocked the fingers he’d clenched into a fist, forcing them to lie flatand splayed on the table. One controlled inhale, followed by a controlled exhale, and he continued. “Partly. She was ill. She had early-onset dementia, most likely brought on by the violent bouts of abuse she suffered at his hands. There’s no way to know for sure. But he did threaten to retrieve her from the US, even kill her, if I didn’t do as he wished.”
“Why didn’t WITSEC just move her again?” Waters asked.
“They did. Several times. But my father always found her.”
“Someone was feeding him information.”
“They, along with the DEA, sanctioned my return, but in order for the long game to achieve results, they couldn’t help me in any way, or maybe it was that they wouldn’t. Either way, I had to fight my way back on my own. It was why I was given an immunity clause as part of my agreement to go back. If things went bad, there would be no extraction. I was completely on my own. The only way I could expect help would be if I was somehow swept up in a raid—there would be no reprisals for any actions I was forced to take, as they would be considered ‘for the greater good’ in bringing down the cartel.
“So, from the age of twenty-two to twenty-nine, I worked my way back into being the most trusted and feared enforcer for my father’s empire. Returning to that life cost me far more than I ever imagined it would. I’d already done reprehensible things before fleeing. Things that weighed heavily on my conscience. Going back to that life, doing those same types of things? Well… if I have a soul, let’s just say it’s pretty much doomed to an eternity in hell.”
“Not to appear insensitive to your eternal damnation,” TB interrupted, “but how does any of this connect to Ka-Bar?”
“While with the SEALs, I became friends with him. We watched each other’s backs. When my new mission was assigned to me, I obviously wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what it was.”
“But you did,” Waters surmised. “You told Ka-Bar.”
“Yes. Something—” He hesitated. He couldn’t tell them the truth. It was far too outlandish to believe, so he gave them the best answerhe could that their brains would accept. “I had a feeling I might need help somewhere along the line. I knew Ka-Bar wouldn’t say a word, so I told him the basics of what I would be doing.”
“How did they explain your absence to your unit?” Nemo asked.
“Transfers,” Midas mumbled, his eyes still glued to the screen in front of him.
Steel nodded. “It happened all the time. We’d get moved from different units within our teams, or even from team to team. Apparently, there’s a special subset of special operations members who are even more elite and on projects similar to the one I was assigned. It’s easy to hide us as teams within teams. So while I was always listed as Team 5…”
“You were really something else. Incredible,” Waters mused.
“Yes. There were approximately twenty of us. While we were aware we existed, we never saw each other. They called us Team Lone Wolf because we all worked solo.”
“Back to Ka-Bar,” God interjected. The comment was muffled because he spoke around one of his habitual caramel apple suckers. He’d been silent all this time. Steel had a feeling he wouldn’t stay silent for much longer.
“I had a complication. Something that was never part of my plans. When it became threatened, I called Ka-Bar for help. He went UA to help me and my family, and he nearly died in the process. I owe him everything.”
Nemo popped the bubble from his gum, drawing attention to himself. “There’s that word again. You’ve said it a couple of times.” He squinted. “The only family you had was your mother, and she was still here in the States, wasn’t she?”
Here came the sticky stuff. “Yes.”
There was another long pause.
“How long ago was this?” Demon asked. Figured. He always was the one who picked up on the slightest discrepancies. Must have been a doctor thing.
“Just over three years before Waters recruited me.”
“So you had family in South America you needed help relocating. He came down to help you escort them to the States,” he inferred.
