PROLOGUE
The Mark V-1 Special Operations Craft slid with a hiss onto a deserted strip of moonlit shore. Lurching to a stop, it delivered a four-man fire team of Navy SEALs at their insertion point on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River. Lt. Sam Sasseville stripped off his night ops jacket, stuffing it into the gunwale locker, before giving his teammates the go-signal and leaping ashore with a lightweight pack. His three teammates followed his lead, their footfalls swift and stealthy, even with the mud sucking at their boots and the added weight they carried.
Beneath the jackets they’d discarded, they had dressed to resemble civilians. Wearing dark cargo pants with pockets full of extra ammo and baggy black T-shirts to conceal an arsenal of weapons, they melted into the darkness. A Gerber blade splinted Sam’s left ankle. His backpack and every other man’s contained a helmet with NVGs attached, several Meals-Ready-to-Eat, baby wipes for keeping clean, and a fresh T-shirt. Sam’s pack also carried a satellite phone.
Sweeping jungle-green eyes over the flat, scrubby terrain, he assessed their location. A steady drizzle dampened waves of dark hair he’d inherited from his Cuban grandmother. A compliment of tan skin simplified his infiltration into the Mexican province of Tamaulipas.
Sam’s three teammates didn’t have it so easy. Bronco, Haiku, and Bullfrog had all slathered their bare skin in bronzing lotion. Bronco wore a floppy hat to cover his sun-streaked hair, while Bullfrog and Haiku, both brunettes, went hatless.
The lapping of water muffled the SEALs’ trek across the mud flats to their predetermined location. As the K50S water jets on the Mark V-1 carried the craft silently back to the Gulf, the squad rallied, squatting amidst the marsh grass. They wouldn’t need the delivery vehicle again. If everything went as planned, they would exfil via helo.
Sam checked his watch before shrugging off his pack and grubbing inside for his sat phone. A simple three-digit combination put him in touch with headquarters.
“Home plate,” answered the ops officer, Lt. Lindstrom, who sat before a computer monitor at the Spec Ops Headquarters back in Dam Neck, Virginia.
“Heads up, Home plate,” Sam replied, having fun with the baseball lingo they’d decided to use to encode their progress. “Tampa Bay Rays are at first base now, waiting for the ump to show up.”
“Play ball, Rays,” Lindstrom said with a snigger on his end.
“Here he comes now,” Bronco stated, apparently spotting the “ump,” through the high powered scope on his sniper rifle. “Right on time.”
Over the patter of rain, Sam detected the purr of an approaching engine. Twin beams sheared the tops of the tall grass that hid them. The “ump” was a DEA officer who’d volunteered to help out. He would escort them into Matamoros, the lawless town situated across the U.S. border from Brownsville, Texas. There, the SEALs would initiate a twenty-four hour reconnaissance, monitoring the movements in and around the site, before sweeping in to recover their target. If all went well, they’d drive to the exfil site and fly off on a Navy Seahawk.
Easy Day. Sam simmered as he slipped the sat phone back into his pack. This whole goddamn op wouldn’t be happening at all if Senator Lyle Scott’s idiot daughter had left Matamoros when the U.S. embassy there issued the mandatory evacuation of all U.S. citizens. If not for her, Sam and his teammates would be headed for Malaysia as part of the effort to take out an infamous arms smuggler. Instead, he was playing nursemaid to a humanitarian aid worker who didn’t have any sense of self-preservation. The silver spoon stuck in her mouth must have interfered with her deductive reasoning capabilities. He’d christened this mission “Operation Dumb Broad” in her honor.
“That’s our guy,” Bronco confirmed, lowering his weapon. The vehicle came to a squeaky stop and dimmed its lights.
“Go,” Sam ordered.
Bullfrog darted out of hiding first, providing cover for Haiku and then Bronco, who leapfrogged his position. Sam brought up the rear and was the first into the rust-colored taxi, taking shotgun, as was his due as the officer in charge. His three companions squeezed into the back seat, grunting at the tight fit. Cigarette smoke filled the car’s interior. The car boasted plastic-covered seats and a working meter.
The DEA officer tossed his Marlboro out the window and turned his head to glance at Sam. “Welcome to hell,” he rasped, his eyes glinting in the dark. Engaging the meter like he meant to charge them by the kilometer, he hammered the accelerator, flinging them all back in their seats as the taxi took off.
Beyond the swinging crucifix that hung from the rearview mirrors and beyond the slapping windshield wipers, the glow of Matamoros beckoned them into danger.
Sam’s resentment bubbled. The spitting sky, the time of year—late spring—and the circumstances of this op reminded him of an incident in high school, one that had formed his opinion of wealthy individuals, women especially. Back then, the source of his torment had been Wendy Fletcher—daughter of a real estate tycoon, prom queen, and the biggest tease in the twelfth grade. If he’d known the outcome of his heroics, he would have let her suffer the consequences of her flirtatiousness. Instead, her hoarse screams coming from the bedroom at an after prom party had awakened his protective instincts and sent him flying to her rescue.
Streetwise, with a private crush on Wendy Fletcher, Sam had thrashed her two male companions within an inch of their lives. He’d expected Wendy to at least thank him, but she hadn’t. Those boys had been her friends, after all. And when her father demanded an explanation for her bruises, she had offered up Sam as a scapegoat.
He’d suffered a month in prison, his single mother too poor to pay bail or repay a bond, before his court appointed lawyer managed to prove his innocence. But even then, being Latino, from the wrong neighborhood, he’d been cast into the role of criminal, and no one would see past the stereotype, so he’d joined the Navy.
Since then, he had broken every stereotype into which he’d been cast, never quitting, until he’d become a warrior worthy of every man’s respect—a US Navy SEAL.
Yet, here he was, as a Navy SEAL, putting himself and his teammates into peril for what?—to extricate the precious daughter of a wealthy politician who’d found herself in circumstances of her own making.
What the hell was she still doing here in Matamoros, when drug lords ruled the city? Or was she just too pampered, too naïve to realize what could happen to her in this lawless realm?
He supposed he was about to find out. Right now, the only certainty was that if he failed in this mission to extract Senator Lyle Scott’s foolish daughter from this corrupted city, his career would be over—just like that. He could feel it in his bones. Everything he had fought so hard to accomplish could be stripped from him as if it had never happened. Why? Because Senator Scott played golf with the Commander in Chief himself.
As the lights of Matamoros brightened the water droplets on the windshield, Sam’s stomach twisted with foreboding. The night he’d protected Wendy Fletcher and this one bore an eerie similarity, right down to the time of year and the weather. No wonder he suffered a premonition that history was about to repeat itself.