Isaksen grinned. “Why would I lie?”
“Maybe you were hallucinating.” Derek Tower, one of the co-owners of Cobra, hadn’t joined in the conversation until now, his face buried in his tablet. “Out there in the cold for three months at a time, just two guys and a pack of sled dogs—it must play tricks on a man’s mind.”
Tower had served as a Green Beret and knew all about mind tricks.
Isaksen’s expression grew serious. “We wondered the same thing.”
The conversation drifted after that, and Dylan tuned out, tried to sleep. This routine had been his life since he’d made the Teams—getting spun up at a moment’s notice and then flying home or moving on to the next job. He’d learned to sleep whenever and wherever he could.
When he woke, it was dark outside his window. Across from him, Shields slept with her head on McManus’ shoulder, the two of them sharing a single blanket.
Are you jealous,pendejo?
Nah, he was done with serious relationships. He loved women, but Valeria had proven to him that men in his line of work were better off single. Thank God he’d only been engaged to her and hadn’t married her. Even so, what she and Kruger had done had torn his world apart, ending his SEAL career and forcing him to start again.
His mother wanted him to move home to Puerto Rico, get a job at the pharmaceutical plant in Arecibo, and marry a nice Boricua girl. As much as Dylan loved Puerto Rico, he was afraid that the boredom of an ordinary life would kill him. Besides, he wasn’t interested in marriage.
Was he lonely sometimes?
He pushed the thought away. He had women in his life—if the women he met through Tinder counted. They got what they wanted, and so did he.
A hand came down on his shoulder.
Tower stood beside him. “Cruz, you, Jones, and Segal need to come with me.”
Dylan glanced at the others to see if they knew what this was about, but they were clearly as much in the dark as he. He stood and followed Tower and the others to the small conference room at the rear of the plane.
Tower shut the door. “I just heard from Corbray.”
Javier Corbray, Tower’s partner, typically worked in Washington, D.C., representing Cobra’s interests with Congress and Pentagon officials.
“We’ve been tasked with a top-secret recon and rescue mission, and you three are going to be our recon team. We’ll land in Denver in a few hours. Get some sleep and be ready to leave again by oh-eight-hundred hours. We’ll fill you in tomorrow morning.”
“Can you say where we’re headed?” Segal asked.
“Venezuela.”
Dylan gave a low whistle. “Are you serious?”
Tower was always serious. “We have to keep this completely off the radar.”
He didn’t need to explain. Venezuela’s current regime had an adversarial relationship with the US, accusing Washington of meddling in the country’s affairs. The US, meanwhile, accused the Venezuelan government of drug trafficking. If US forces were found on the ground there, it would create a political firestorm. That’s undoubtedly why they were sending in Cobra operatives rather than Delta Force or one of the Teams.
Jones didn’t seem troubled by this. “No polar bears there.”
“No polar bears,” Tower agreed, “just narco-terrorists, mafiosos, revolutionaries, and trigger-happy secret police.”
“I can handle those, boss. But a mama bear? Shit.” Jones shook his head.
Segal snorted. “Are you afraid of snakes and spiders, too, brother?”
“Hell, yes, I am.”
But Dylan was already thinking about the new job. A secret op in Venezuela. This was going to be interesting.
* * *
September 9