Chapter One
SPENCER NEWMAN looked around at the hundred or so SEAL operators of Team Ten currently stateside, along with their headquarters staff, trainers, intel analysts, supply guys, even the team’s doctor—everyone it took to keep the team up and running. God, he loved these guys, pains in the ass though they might be. Everyone was cleaned up and spit-polished for tonight’s retirement dinner and on their best behavior—a rare event for this motley crew.
This was a dining out, so the wives were here tonight also. Truth be told, they were as necessary to a mission as any logistics personnel or drone pilot.
Sometimes he got a little jealous of the other operators looking at dirty pictures of their significant others, taking Skype calls from home, and receiving the care packages that occasionally caught up with them in the field. A wife wasn’t in the cards for him, and a husband sure as hell wasn’t.
The rubber chicken had just been served when his cell phone—his work cell phone—vibrated in the inside breast pocket of his mess dress. Frowning, he reached for it. The caller ID said Work Wife. That was what he’d named the operations headquarters that sent him and his men out on short-notice missions. Except Team Ten was currently in a training rotation and not on call to be deployed.
He stood up and weaved between tables toward the exit as he pulled the phone out and muttered, “Go ahead.”
“Lieutenant Newman, we need you to come in to Ops ASAP for a mission brief.”
“You do know I’m training my guys right now, yes?”
“This is a special assignment. Just you.”
“Umm, okay. I’ll be there in five if you don’t mind my mess dress. Otherwise it’ll take me a half hour to run home and jump into field gear.”
“Be here in five. This is an urgent tasking.”
“Roger that.”
DRAGO THORPE’S cell phone vibrated, and he backed away from the window he was using to surveil the Berlin brothel across the street. He set down the binoculars and dug his cell phone out of his pocket. Only a handful of people had this number, and none of them would contact him for anything other than a dire emergency.
The text was anonymous, but it had been sent to a drop box he’d set up a decade ago. A drop box that had never once been used. Until now.
You were right. They pulled him.
A stream of curses erupted in his head. Only the operational necessity of being on a surveillance job kept him from shouting his fury and frustration to the heavens.
He typed back: Is he coming?
The answer made his teeth clench. They didn’t give him a choice.
Great. He was going to be pissed off when he got here, then. He typed quickly, Open the envelope I left with you. Follow the instructions, and get the pictures inside it to him. He’ll know what to do.
The response came back: Will do. Be safe.
Right. As if safe had any place in his world. It hadn’t ten years ago, and it sure as hell didn’t now. And all of it had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.
Chapter Two
“GOOD EVENING, gentlemen, Lieutenant Newman. This briefing is classified top secret, SCI, SAP.”
Spencer nodded tersely. Special Compartmented Information translated to: he was about to learn strictly need-to-know shit, not to be shared with anyone else without a need to know… and without the proper security clearance.
The Special Access Program designator meant it would be a black op—covert and possibly violent. Which explained the anonymous office in an anonymous building in Maryland, nowhere close to CIA Headquarters.
An unmarked SUV had driven him directly here from Norfolk. His bug-out bags were stowed in the cargo area, and in the back seat of the vehicle, he’d awkwardly changed into operational clothing he’d dug out of them. Thank God he hadn’t had anything to drink at the party before he’d been pulled out of it. His mind was clear, if confused.
He looked around the conference room. Four men. Four.
What in the ever-loving hell was this? A normal SEAL mission had a support team of more like 150 people—intel analysts, mission planners, backup support troops, transport crews, equipment technicians, translators, cultural and subject matter experts… and the list expanded from there, depending on the specific mission.
All his people could tell him was that a CIA tasking for him—him specifically—had come down a few minutes before they’d called him out of the banquet.
CIA, huh? He studied the other men. One of them would undoubtedly be his field handler, and one would have to be a supervisor out of the Directorate of Operations. The third guy’s face looked vaguely familiar. He looked like a subject matter expert on the Middle East who’d supported Team Ten on a mission a number of years ago. But he’d had a lot of intel briefings from a lot of intel guys over the years, and they’d all started to fade together. The fourth guy honestly looked as if he was just here to handle the audio-visual equipment.
The AV guy pushed the usual nondisclosure paperwork across the table, and Spencer signed it without bothering to read it. This was not his first rodeo. The upshot of the pages of legalese was that the CIA would, in fact, if he ever told anyone what he was about to hear, shoot him.
Because he’d specialized in undercover operations in the Navy Criminal Investigative Service before cross-training into the SEALs, he’d been pulled out a few times early in his SEAL career to run undercover ops for Langley that he was uniquely qualified for. But it had been a while since that had happened. Not since that last mission with Dray—
He sharply cut off that train of thought. Nothing good ever came from going down that mental road. Bile, or maybe just bitterness, burned the back of his throat, and he forced it down.
“Lights, please.” The CIA briefer—probably the handler—a lean, intense guy who’d introduced himself as Charles Favian, nodded at the AV guy, and the overhead lights dimmed, leaving a white plexiglass screen glowing in the wall. A grainy photograph flashed up on it. “Lieutenant Newman, do you recognize this man?”
Speak of the devil. Spencer had spent years learning the fine art of suppressing his emotions, but he barely managed to do so now.
Drago Thorpe. The name rolled through his mind, conjuring a string of conflicting emotions more quickly than he could catalogue them. The result was a turbulent stew of suckage in his gut.
“Yes,” he bit out. “I know him.”
“How do you know him?” That was the first time the gray-haired man at the head of the table had spoken. Spencer pegged him as the dude in charge of… whatever this was.
He’d met Drago on a CIA op, for crying out loud. Gray Hair surely knew that. So why ask? Probably gauging his reaction to seeing Drago’s face. Logical, given how disastrously the two of them had parted company.
It was hard to tell how much or how little Drago would have reported about their personal relationship after the mission from hell. Knowing the bastard, he’d written down every lascivious, humiliating detail of their affair and had taken pleasure in doing so.
It was a freaking miracle he hadn’t been court-martialed after that mess.
Schooling his face to be completely blank, Spencer answered stiffly, “I worked with Mr. Thorpe on a surveillance operation approximately ten years ago.”