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  Nope, not their guy.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ross asked in Spanish.

  The middle-aged man with the thick mustache and the paunch hanging over his belt looked sweaty and terrified, his thinning hair flying in all directions. ‘Don’t kill me, please!’

  ‘Answer the question!’

  ‘I’m Raul Morales. I drive a taxi in Bogotá.’

  Ross softened his tone. ‘Well, Raul, we’re the good guys.’ He pulled from his pocket his Ghost Recon skull patch and reverse-print American flag. ‘See?’

  ‘Sir, this one’s still alive,’ said 30K, hovering over the soldier Ross had just shot. 30K grabbed the man by the jaw. ‘Where did they take him?’

  The rebel’s eyes were tearing, his fatigues darkening with blood. He sounded as though he were breathing through a straw, and his head began jerking involuntarily as his lungs began to collapse.

  Ross moved in beside 30K and stared hard at the man. ‘Listen to me. You’re going to die. If you believe in God, then maybe he’ll forgive you – if you help us. Now, where did they take him?’

  The man opened his mouth. ‘Timbiqui.’

  ‘What?’ 30K asked.

  Ross and 30K exchanged a frown.

  ‘Timbiqui is a town about eighty kilometers south,’ said the cabdriver. ‘I ought to know. I was born there.’

  ‘He could be lying,’ said 30K.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Raul. ‘Los Rastrojos do a lot of shipping out of there. They use the rivers. If they wanted to keep him on the move, it’s a very good place to take him.’

  Los Rastrojos. Ross had heard that name before. They were a neo-paramilitary organization, basically a private army commanded by a warlord. During the FARC’s cease-fire with the government, Los Rastrojos had moved in and struck up a deal. Some called them a ‘narcogang,’ others a fully-fledged cartel. They were now allied with the FARC to produce and export cocaine and heroin to the international markets. Initially, the group and the FARC had fought against each other; however, like many criminal organizations, their mutual enemy was the government. Like Colombia’s own military, they fielded the Galil assault rifle, originally made in Israel but produced under a license by Indumil, a Colombian weapons manufacturer headquartered in Bogotá. The standard assault rifle’s 5.56mm cartridge would make it hard to distinguish between them and friendly forces – not exactly welcome news.

  ‘The man you were driving … was he ever here?’ Ross demanded.

  ‘Yes, he was with me. Then we were separated maybe an hour ago. I heard the trucks leaving.’

  ‘Hold here a minute,’ said Ross, then he sprinted out of the hut, calling Captain Jiménez along the way. The SF officer met him near the front doors.

  Jiménez narrowed his gaze and backhanded sweat from his bald pate. ‘He’s still on the move, isn’t he?’

  ‘Timbiqui. Can we get some air assets to cut them off?’

  ‘Pretty remote. No LZ in the mangroves, and I’m sure they’re nowhere near the local airport.’

  ‘Fast rope some guys in there?’

  ‘We’d need exact GPS coordinates first.’

  Ross cursed.

  ‘Look, Captain, even if there was an LZ, it’d take them a couple of hours – if the weather holds, which it won’t. There’s another storm moving in.’

  ‘What else we got? Coast Guard?’

  ‘The Marine commando teams, along with some of your DEA advisors, are always running patrols through there. I could call them in, but I think we’d scare off our boys. They could panic and kill your man.’

  ‘So then we just drive.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ross considered that. The Ghosts and the AFEUR team had left their Humvees and the old M35 cargo truck a few hundred meters south of the main trail leading into the valley. Kozak could put the drone up ahead, depending upon how much battery life he had in the main and spare cells.

  Then again, the rebels would have at least a couple of hours’ head start. They had probably reached Timbiqui about now, if Raul’s estimates were correct, and they could already be moving yet again, perhaps smuggling their package down to a boat.

  Time to call higher for a little backup – but no, they would not break off the pursuit.

  ‘Do you agree?’ Jiménez asked.

  Ross nodded. ‘Let’s get back to the trucks and saddle up.’

  SEVEN

  The Group for Specialized Tactics had a streamlined organizational structure to ensure that communication was swift and clear. As Ross and every other Special Forces operator well knew, intel could go stale in a day, an hour, a minute, so it was vital for the group’s command structure to stay lean.

  To that end, Major Scott Mitchell was Ross’s sole commander, and Mitchell reported directly to US Special Operations Command/Joint Special Operations Command. Colonel David Evans was the primary liaison between JSOC and Mitchell, ensuring that budgets and bureaucracy did not interfere with the operational arm. To a former command master chief SEAL like Ross who’d spent the better part of his career navigating through a gauntlet of bureaucracies to get his job done, this was, in no uncertain terms, a dream come true.

  While Pepper drove and the caravan of four Humvees and the M35 headed south along a heavily rutted dirt road for the town with the semi-pronounceable name, Ross had a tablet computer with satellite link balanced on his lap. He’d established a secure link to GST headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and a window had opened to the major’s desk. Mitchell had a touch of gray at his temples and a few wrinkles and scars on his face; otherwise you’d swear he was still a twenty-five-year-old operator, as hard-core and gung ho as his first day with the Ghosts. Ross had seen pictures of Mitchell when the man was younger, and the major resembled the type of guy you’d see on a baseball card, youthful and intense. A few of the Ghost trainees had shared stories of the major’s exploits, rumors mostly, but there was an early mission in the Philippines where Mitchell had been stabbed with a unique, multibladed sword constructed in the shape of a Chinese character, and Mitchell had a scar of that same character on his chest. Someday Ross would ask him about that.

  ‘Hello, Guardian,’ Ross said, using Mitchell’s call sign for the mission, even though this was a video call. Better to be too formal than too casual with superior officers.

  ‘Good to see you, Delta Dragon,’ Mitchell said with a knowing grin. ‘Our Key Hole satellite from the NRO is still out of range. They’ll need at least another fifteen minutes. Some pretty dense canopy down there, though, so I’m not sure what kind of images we’ll get.’

  ‘I know, sir, but it’s worth a shot. Just need to get that bird in position before the storm moves through. After that, all bets are off.’

  Mitchell nodded. ‘Now I understand it got a little loud down there.’

  Ross winced. ‘One of our AFEUR teammates was compromised and inadvertently fired a round.’

  ‘You put that very carefully.’

  Ross shrugged. ‘I’m the new guy – and this wasn’t the first impression I wanted to make.’

  Mitchell steepled his fingers and sighed. ‘So the shot went off, and it all went to hell from there.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Ross, the Ghosts are about maximum impact with zero footprint.’

  ‘Absolutely, sir.’

  ‘You told me this was exactly what you wanted, that you needed to be a Ghost more than anything right now. I believed you. I still believe you – and I’m counting on you to get this done. So are the Secretary of Defense and the National Command Authority.’

  Ross’s breathing grew shallow. ‘I understand, sir. I won’t let you down.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Sir, we get anything more on Delgado?’

  Mitchell made a face, that same one he’d made during the first briefing in the isolation chamber back at Fort Bragg. ‘Langley won’t confirm a damned thing. Unfortunately there’s no love lost between us.’

  Ross repressed his grin.

>   It was no secret that one of Mitchell’s operations in southern Afghanistan had got him caught between his orders and a clandestine operation being carried out by the CIA. He’d almost gone up on murder charges until the spooks’ little conspiracy backfired in their faces. And here they were now, trying to bail out the same agency that had almost hung Mitchell.

  Trying not to sound as though he were prying, Ross said, ‘Sir, Langley could’ve sent in their own S and R team for this. So I’m still asking the same questions I had before we left: What was Delgado’s mission? Why is he so important? I mean, come on, they owe us that much, don’t they?’

  ‘He’s a spy working in Colombia. What more do you need?’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, it’s never that simple.’

  A gleam lit Mitchell’s eyes, as though he were proud of Ross for prying. ‘All right. It’s not much, but Delgado’s been in South America for the past ten years. He’s one of the Agency’s most valuable agents in Colombia. This, of course, I got off the record. Colonel Evans says there might be something more because the secretary made a point of requesting us to get this job done.’

  ‘Fair enough, sir.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch when the NRO has our bird ready.’

  ‘Roger that, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  Ross nearly lost his grip on the tablet as they hit a pothole and he thumbed off the link.

  Pepper looked at him and cocked a brow, hazel eyes flashing beneath his salt-and-pepper crew cut. ‘Mitchell’s a good guy, a straight shooter.’

  ‘He would’ve been a great Navy SEAL.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think that bothers him.’

  They exchanged a grin, then Pepper said, ‘That was some good work back there.’

  ‘Good work?’ Ross snorted. ‘It never goes as planned, does it?’

  ‘Why should it? That’d be boring.’

  Ross had to agree with that. ‘Well, thanks for the backup.’

  ‘That’s why I get the big bucks. So hey, you served with Matt Tanner?’

  Ross glanced at Pepper and frowned. ‘Yeah, Tanner and I go pretty far back, SEAL Team Four in Little Creek. Great guy. Saved my ass more than once.’

  ‘He said the same about you.’

  ‘He’s talking about bar fights. So how do you know him?’

  ‘Tanner was part of an operation in China, and he’d worked with the major. Mitchell brought him to the Liberator to meet the gang.’

  Ross’s eyes widened. ‘Tanner never told me that. So you’re saying that Mitchell brought a Navy SEAL to an Army bar?’

  ‘Hell, yeah, he did. And your boy Tanner actually survived. Good guy. I kept his e-mail. And when I heard you were coming over, I gave him a shout to see if he knew you.’

  ‘Spying on the new guy?’

  ‘No, I was actually glad you were coming. It’ll take Kozak and 30K a while to warm up, but you know how that is.’

  ‘Yeah, you gotta earn it.’

  ‘Kozak will come around pretty quickly. 30K? He’s another story. That guy needs some 550 paracord to tie down his ego.’

  ‘I like him.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He’ll keep me honest.’

  Pepper stared through a thought. ‘Oh, that he will. And, sir, I …’ He broke off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  Ross frowned. ‘Better spit it out now, or I’ll be thinking about it the whole drive out.’

  ‘I didn’t want to say anything.’

  ‘What’s bothering you?’

  ‘Okay. It’s just … Tanner told me about your boy. I wanted to say I’m really sorry about that.’

  Ross stiffened, and his blood turned cold. ‘That’s not something I talk about.’

  Pepper grimaced and shook his head, as though embarrassed. ‘No problem. I just wanted you to know that I’d heard, and if you ever want to vent or something …’

  ‘I wish he hadn’t told you.’

  Pepper took a deep breath. ‘Me, too.’

  Ross closed his eyes and rubbed the burning sensation. For the past two years he’d done everything he could to move on, to purge all the guilt from his mind, to avoid dwelling on it so he could perform his job. But it – 14 August – always found him, no matter where he was, even deep in a South American jungle.

  He snapped open his eyes and quickly activated his Cross-Com. ‘Kozak, what do you got for me?’

  EIGHT

  Kozak and 30K were in the lead Hummer, with 30K at the wheel and Kozak handling the UAV’s remote. One of the AFEUR troops stood behind them in the roof-mounted weapons station, manning the M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun (aka ‘Ma Deuce’). Rain poured off the gunner’s legs and boots and puddled on the Hummer’s floor. Kozak wished they could just call the man back inside and seal the hatch because he was getting soaked himself.

  At the moment, the drone crawler darted just above the treetops, skimming like a flat rock across an emerald-colored pond. The drone’s sensors were reaching out into the jungle ahead, data piped back from thermal and optic cameras, along with Forward Looking Infra Radar (FLIR) images indicating that the jungle on either side of the dirt road was still clear.

  Bad news was that the drone’s satellite link was beginning to deteriorate as the storm neared the coast, with even heavier rain on the way and wind gusts up to sixty miles per hour.

  ‘Ghost Lead, this is Kozak. Secondary battery on the drone down to thirty minutes. Doesn’t matter anyway. Gotta reel her in once the big rain hits.’

  ‘Roger that. For now, though, get her up as high as you can and focus on the rivers ahead. They might try to move our package by boat. We have a Key Hole coming within range, but I need something now.’

  ‘I’m on it. Taking her up. Kozak, out.’

  The drone crawler had been designed to remain on a fairly short leash, with a 1.5 to 2 kilometer range and sixty to ninety minutes of battery life, depending upon its power state: high drain occurred when in crawler mode, medium drain when quadcoptering, and low drain when stationary and just transmitting. Their load out included this UAV plus one backup, and while the UCAV – a tri-rotor drone with variants that included fragmentation grenades, missiles and a 5.56mm light machine gun – would’ve come in handy, they usually reserved that bird for interdiction, direct action and other assault-type missions, not hostage rescues.

  Kozak fought with the controls as yet another gust buffeted the drone. The images coming in turned grainy, occasionally popping with static like his mom’s old Sony TV wired up to that rooftop antenna. He caught sight of two intersecting rivers, where the tree line seemed to fold in as though the ground were plummeting into a fault line. Farther out, the sky had turned gunmetal gray, with a wall of black clouds approaching from the west like an invading mother ship. There wasn’t much time.

  ‘So how you liking the new boss?’ asked 30K.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What do you mean good?’

  Kozak refocused his attention on the drone’s monitor. ‘I like him.’

  ‘Better than Ferguson?’

  ‘They’re two completely different operators.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Kozak thought a moment.

  Captain Cedrick Ferguson, a thirty-eight-year-old African-American from Minneapolis, had formed a deep bond with them and had served successfully as their Ghost Lead on some highly volatile operations in Zambia, Nigeria, the arctic, and even Russia. Ferguson was a family man with two young sons and was married to a school principal. He was arguably the most levelheaded and decisive man Kozak had ever known, with both his professional and personal lives balanced in a way that only few soldiers could manage. The bullets could be flying, people could be dying, but Ferguson’s cool and curt commands would put you at ease. His absence was actually part of the larger Group for Specialized Tactics’ team availability and organizational structure.

  The GST had four operational detachments of between eight and twelve operat
ors each. The detachments, known as A, B, C, and D squadrons, fielded four-man teams, and very often Ghost Leads would rotate through several teams before a kind of natural selection took place and they settled in with a consistent group of operators, developing a shorthand forged only through time and experience.

  Teams rotated through three status levels: Ready, Standby and Hold, with two detachments always in the ready status to immediately deploy, one on standby, and one on hold. Ferguson had temporarily rotated to a team on hold so he could enjoy some well-deserved R & R and spend time with his family. And yes, news of a new Ghost Lead taking them out, one who wasn’t even an Army SF operator, had unnerved Kozak. The rumors had run rampant, the reservations so tangible that Kozak actually had a bitter taste in his mouth a few hours before he’d met Ross. But when he’d learned of the man’s credentials and listened to Major Mitchell speak so highly of one Captain Andrew Ross, Kozak was put at ease. What’s more, Ross said he had a grandfather on his mother’s side who’d been born in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

  Unsurprisingly, 30K had a problem with new Ghost Leads – especially those who were, as he’d put it, ‘members of Uncle Sam’s Canoe Club.’

  ‘Well, I get the impression Captain Ross thinks he’s above us. He was a Navy SEAL, serving with operators I’m sure he believes were the very best. You know, the SEALs got all the Hollywood hype, so now as he gets older, he’s just slumming with us, putting in his time.’

  Kozak glanced incredulously at his teammate. ‘When did you get that impression?’

  ‘First time I laid eyes on him.’

  ‘Or maybe after he corrected you for jumping the gun?’

  ‘I don’t like any of this. I don’t think bringing in people from other branches is a good idea.’

  ‘You afraid to learn something new?’

  30K snorted. ‘So if we watch the Army-Navy Game, who do you think he’ll root for?’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Aw, I’m talking to the wrong guy.’

  ‘I think Pepper likes him. And if Pepper is good to go, then so am I. Besides, when we’re out here, none of that shit matters.’

  30K muttered something under his breath, then said, ‘You’re in awe of the guy, aren’t you?’