“Tergan Rode?” Mason confirmed. “I’m the one who arranged for him to go up there. He’s a great kid.”
A glimmer of a smile cracked Mountain’s stony features. He nodded. “Indeed. A bright light in my often dark world. He’s a dozen years younger than me, just passed his BUD/s training this spring, and raring to go. Until his raring to go then got up and went.”
Oh, shit. Mason’s gaze zinged to the commander, who had kicked up his feet to rest atop the big desk. Stocking feet. With Mickey Mouse images dancing on them. Sidetracked, Mason struggled to pull his attention back to Mountain. “Meaning?”
“He’s disappeared.” Mountain let out a harsh breath, as if just saying that out loud, and maybe to the right people, could allow him to relax—at least a little.
The commander spoke up. “We need your help, Mason. You’re uniquely qualified for this problem.”
It didn’t sound like he was qualified in any way for anything he’d heard so far. “Clarify.” His spoken word was simplicity itself, but the tone behind it said he wanted the cards on the table … now.
Mountain spoke up. “He’s the third incident.”
Mason’s gaze narrowed, as the reports from the training camp rolled through his mind. “One was Russian. One was from the German SEAL team. Both were deemed accidental deaths.”
“No, they weren’t.”
There it was. The root of the problem in black-and-white. He studied Mountain, aiming for neutrality. “Do you have evidence?”
“My brother did.”
“Ah, hell.”
Mountain gave a clipped nod. “I’m going to find him.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” Mason said quietly. “Do you have a copy of the evidence he collected?”
“I have some of it.” Mountain held out a USB key. “This is your copy. Top secret.”
“We don’t have to remind you, Mason, that lives are at stake,” Doran added. “Nor do we need another international incident. Consider also that a group of scientists, studying global warming, is close by, and not too far away is a village home to a few hardy locals.”
Mason accepted the key, turned to the commander, and asked, “Do we know if this is internal or enemy warfare?”
“We don’t know at this point,” Alpha replied through the phone. “Mountain will lead Shadow Recon. His mission is twofold. One, find out what’s behind these so-called accidents and put a stop to it by any means necessary. Two, locate his brother, hopefully alive.”
“And where do I come in?” Mason asked.
“We want you to pull together a special team. The members of Shadow Recon will report to both you and Mountain, just in case.”
That was clear enough.
“You’ll stay stateside but in constant communication with Mountain—with the caveat that, if necessary, you’re on the next flight out.”
“What about bringing in other members from the Mavericks?” Mason suggested.
Alpha took this question too, his response coming through via Speakerphone. “We don’t have the numbers. The budget for our division has been cut. So we called the commander to pull some strings.”
That was Doran’s cue to explain further. “Mountain has fought hard to get me on board with this plan, and I’m here now. The navy has a special budget for Shadow Recon and will take care of Mountain and you, Mason, and the team you provide.”
“Skills needed?”
“Everything,” Mountain said, his voice harsh. “But the biggest is these men need to operate in the shadows, mostly alone, without a team beside them. Too many new arrivals will alert the enemy. If we make any changes to the training program, it will raise alarms. We’ll move the men in one or two at a time on the same rotation that the trainees are running right now.”
“And when we get to the bottom of this?” Mason looked from the commander back to Mountain.
“Then the training can resume as usual,” Doran stated.
Mason immediately churned through the names already popping up in his mind. How much could he tell his men? Obviously not much. Hell, he didn’t know much himself. How much time did he have? “Timeline?”
The commander’s final word told him of the urgency.
“Yesterday.”
Find Magnus here!
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Author’s Note
Thank you for reading Damon’s Deal: Terkel’s Team, Book 1! If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment and leave a short review here.
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Dale Mayer
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Dale Mayer is a USA Today best-selling author, best known for her SEALs military romances, her Psychic Visions series, and her Lovely Lethal Garden cozy series. Her contemporary romances are raw and full of passion and emotion (Broken But … Mending, Hathaway House series). Her thrillers will keep you guessing (Kate Morgan, By Death series), and her romantic comedies will keep you giggling (It’s a Dog’s Life, a stand-alone novella; and the Broken Protocols series, starring Charming Marvin, the cat).
Dale honors the stories that come to her—and some of them are crazy, break all the rules and cross multiple genres!
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DAMON’S DEAL: TERKEL’S TEAM, BOOK 1
Dale Mayer
Valley Publishing Ltd.
Copyright © 2021
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.