Chapter One

Something in Shane Laughlin’s ankle snapped upon landing.

Or maybe it tore.

Either way, it sent him to the ground, and he bumped and scraped and bounced, jarring the injury over and over as his chute dragged him across the rocky terrain.

Shane bit back a curse. It was the least-graceful landing of his entire military career, and it took everything he’d learned in countless training sessions to get the parachute back under control, even though Magic and Owen both scrambled to help him.

“You okay?” Magic asked, as Owen took possession of all of their chutes.

Jesus, Shane’s ankle was on fire. What the hell had he done to himself? Whatever it was, it was bad. Still, he pulled himself to his feet and tried to put weight on it—and would’ve landed back in the dust had Magic not caught him—the pain making him see actual stars.

But he shook them away, giving Magic an “I’ll be fine,” because they didn’t have time for this. The mission not only required the drop-zone be fully sanitized—the SEAL team’s eight chutes rolled into vacuum packs and carried back out—but that it be fully sanitized quickly and quietly. And that meant sitting here shouting fuck was not an option.

Regardless of the studies done that proved swearing helped diminish pain.

“Yeah, I think I’ll take that as a no,” Magic said as Shane signaled his senior chief—a height-challenged but wiry forty-something named Johnny Salantino—who’d made note of the goatfuck in action and was already heading for them.

“Ankle or knee?” Magic continued.

“Ankle.” Shane dinged himself again, and again the pain was excruciating. “Fuck!”

“You okay there, LT?” the senior asked in his raspy Brooklynese as he crouched down next to Shane.

“Ankle,” Magic reported.

“Head count?” Shane asked the senior through gritted teeth.

“Eight. All here, sir, all in one piece. You’re our only casualty,” the senior replied, then turned to report as Rick Wilkie, the team’s hospital corpsman, joined them, “Ankle.”

It was un-fucking-believably inconvenient, considering they were in the middle of nowhere. It was a full-on double-fuck of inconvenience since Shane was supposed to be leading his team of SEALs both swiftly and stealthily up the nearby mountain, to a small town where a terrorist leader named Rebekah Suliman, code name Scorpion-Four, was enjoying her last supper.

But neither swift nor silent remained part of Shane’s current repertoire.

“Don’t even think about touching that boot,” Shane warned Rick. If he took it off, he’d be in far worse shape. “And keep your syringe away from me. I need a clear head and it doesn’t hurt that badly.”

Okay, so that was a lie, and they all knew it. But sooner or later, the pain would diminish. Sooner or later, he’d get used to it. Please God, let it be sooner rather than later …

“I could give you something local, sir,” Rick suggested.

“No, we’ll improvise,” Magic answered before Shane could respond.

But Shane outranked him. He outranked everyone here on the ground. “Do it,” he ordered Rick, pulling up his pant leg to give the medic as much access as he could without that boot coming off.

“With all due respect, LT, you run on this thing, it could end your career,” Magic said as the meds Rick injected quickly took the edge off the pain in Shane’s ankle, bringing it down to a steady but more-manageable throb.

“I’m not going to plan to run on it,” Shane told this man who’d been his confidant and friend since BUD/S training. “But I’ve gotta be ready. Because I can’t stay here.”

“I’m going to give you this to hold, sir.” Rick handed him a carefully wrapped syringe containing the heavy-duty painkiller. “Let me know if you use it.”

“I won’t.” But Shane pocketed the packet. It could come in handy, in the event they got pinned down and had to remain absolutely silent to keep from being discovered. The last thing he wanted to do was give away their position by breathing too hard.

“What is the plan, sir?” the senior asked.

Shane glanced at Magic, who had already shrugged off his pack, and was divvying up the contents, spreading the weight to Owen and the other SEALs. “The plan is to sweep and sterilize the area, and head toward the target,” Shane said. This wouldn’t be the first time Magic clocked a dozen clicks with Shane leaning heavily on him, or vice versa.

And as much as he hated the fact that he and his injury would handicap his team and slow his men down, putting this entire mission into the extremely capable hands of his senior chief while Shane spent the next two hours miserably stashed behind some brush or in a shallow cave simply wasn’t an option.

First of all, there were no caves in this particular region of this country formerly known as Afghanistan, and the sparse bushes wouldn’t have hidden a three-year-old, let alone a full grown man of Shane’s height and weight.

And recon patrols came through this area regularly.

Also?

The extraction point—the place where a helo was going to pull them out of this hellhole—was up in the mountains. In order to get there, Shane had to pass the village where Scorpion-Four was being feted.

So, nope. There was no quick fix, no easy way out. Shane was destined to be this mission’s PITA, this op’s representative from Murphyville. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong, was Murphy’s Law. And he was here as living proof.

But then, as if on cue, Slinger announced, “We got us a tracker, sir.”

Apparently Mr. Murphy hadn’t pointed his bony finger only in Shane’s direction. He’d also tossed an additional monkey wrench into the mix.

“A tracker?” Shane repeated, as he let both Rick and the senior help him to his feet. “Just one?”

The lanky SEAL with the good-ol’-boy accent was frowning down at his equipment. “Yeah,” Slinger said, “it looks like … Wait, I’m gonna calibrate and …”

“Don’t put weight on it,” Magic warned Shane. “You’re going to forget and put weight on it.” He then added a “Sir,” although from the way he said it, the subtext was asshole.

“This is fucking weird. It looks like it’s five separate trackers, but they’re all in a single concentrated area.” Slinger, known by his parents as Jeff Campbell, was Shane’s gearhead. He was more than a computer specialist—he was practically part cyborg. The equipment that SEAL Team Thirteen was issued was not supposed to be tampered with or adapted in any way, so Slinger used his own, leaving the military-issued gear to Owen, who was this team’s second tech, aka the pack mule who carried the crap they never used.

And even though the SEAL team had dropped into an allegedly technologically challenged part of the world, due to the locals’ severely limited access to the electrical grid, and even though Owen’s military-issued equipment bag didn’t contain a tech-sweeper, Slinger had automatically gotten out his mini-tablet-slash-sweeper, and was using it to fully scan the landing zone.

Because Slinger knew Shane. And anyone who knew Shane knew that he verified intel reports—all intel reports. When he was out with his team in the very dangerous real world, he refused to assume anything.

If he’d received an intel report that the sky was blue, he’d verify that, too. Sometimes verification required little more than a quick glance skyward, but more often it required reconnaissance—either technological or the humint kind.

Because their very lives depended upon it. And in the course of his illustrious career, Shane had yet to lose a single man.

“This,” Slinger said, “is motherfucking strange …”

“You’re picking up only five trackers?” Shane confirmed. “Total?”

Oftentimes, enemy forces would seed the terrain with nearly invisible miniature tracking devices. Those tiny trackers would become snagged onto pant legs or lodged in the treads of boots or sneakers. But in those cases, the seeding would be extensive, and the entire team would give a positive read.

“Affirmative, LT,” Slinger reported as Shane leaned on the senior, his arm around the smaller man’s shoulders, so he could move forward. “I’m picking up a small cluster of, yup, five trackers and … Shit, sir, it’s on me and it’s …” He cut himself off and thrust his altered mini-tab at Owen. “Effen, take this and see if you can’t figure out what-the-fuck.”

As the newest member of Shane’s team, Jim Owen was considered the FNG, or the f-ing new guy. Magic, who was the king of bestowing nicknames, had started calling him Effen for short, and it had stuck.

As Shane watched, Slinger held out his arms, as if he were going to be wanded by airport security, and Owen ran the sensor over him.

“That’s weird,” Owen said.

“Yeah, right?” Slinger agreed as he unbuttoned and pulled off his overshirt and then his T-shirt beneath.

“How would it have gotten onto your T-shirt, Campbell?” the senior asked, his voice loaded with skepticism.

Owen frowned as he aimed the sensor at the shirts that were now dangling from Slinger’s hand. He then brought the sensor back toward Slinger’s now-bare chest. “Uh-oh.”

Shane braced himself for more bad news.

“What the fuck?” Slinger said again, as he took the device from Owen.

Magic moved to look over Slinger’s shoulder as both of the tech guys stared down at the readout. “Told you she was too pretty for you, Slingblade,” he said, which didn’t make sense.

“No fucking way.” Slinger thrust the sensor back at Owen, then went for his belt, unfastening his pants and pushing them down his legs. Like most of the SEALs in Thirteen, he didn’t bother with underwear. And like most of the SEALs in Thirteen, modesty was not an issue for him.

Owen circled Slinger, reaching out with the device to touch the taller SEAL on the lower left side of his back. “I’m reading the entire cluster here,” he said, then came around to Slinger’s front, same side. “And here.”

And then Magic’s words made too much sense. “The trackers are internal,” Shane realized. They were inside of Campbell. Some beautiful counter-agent had fed him … What? A cupcake with trackers in the icing? And five of them had managed to not get crushed by his teeth.

It ranked up in un-fucking-believable-land, along with Shane trashing his ankle on a relatively easy jump.

But it meant that they’d just been reduced from a team of eight to six. Or, realistically, even fewer. Son of a bitch. The pain in Shane’s ankle was now the least of his worries.

“What did you eat?” the senior chief asked Slinger. “Or maybe the more pertinent question is, where did you eat?”

“Approximately twelve to fourteen hours ago,” Rick chimed in. “Judging from its placement in your lower intestines.”

“What the fuck kind of trackers are these, that they could survive stomach acids?” Slinger wondered as he yanked his pants back up.

“Can you somehow jam or alter the frequency of the signal that’s being sent out?” Shane asked.

Slinger shook his head. “No, sir. I mean, yes, if it was only one tracker, but I’m pretty sure these have five different frequencies.” He looked over at Owen, who still held the device. “Check my math, Effen.”

“Five trackers, five frequencies,” Owen confirmed for Shane. “Sir, we’d need five different jammers.”

And they only had two. Two is one and one is none. It was a Navy SEAL saying from way back, when the Teams had gotten their start during the Vietnam War. Carry two of everything, so that when a piece of equipment failed, the team would have a backup. But here and now, two was as good as none, since two wasn’t even close to five.

“Did you have a late lunch in town?” Rick asked, back to trying to figure out where Slinger had gotten tagged.

“No, I had lunch on base.” Slinger fastened his belt. “Dinner, too. I didn’t eat or drink anything between meals. Water. I had water. Out of a bottle that I got, also on base.”

So much for the cupcake with icing theory, which meant …

“I think maybe the question that needs answering is not where or what did you eat,” Magic said, on the same page as Shane, “but who.”

Slinger swiftly turned to look hard at Magic, then swore pungently. “Seriously?” he asked as he pulled his T-shirt back on, his movements jerky with his anger. “You seriously think …?”

“Hells yeah.” Magic turned to Shane. “Yesterday afternoon, while you were having your daily high-maintenance damage-control phone call with Ashley, we went over to the Schnitzel Haus. We’ve been having these epic pinball battles—me and Sling. They have an old-style machine with the real metal balls and—”

“Get to the point,” the senior chief interrupted for Shane, right on cue.

“Yes, Senior, sorry, Senior. The point. Is that Sling got his internally tracked ass, here, picked up by a woman who was gorgeous. Unnaturally so. I’m talking A-list movie-star worthy. Well, maybe more like B-list. I mean, considering it was the middle of the afternoon, and Slinger looks, well, like Slinger. No offense, man.”

Slinger just shook his head in disgust.

“Are you sure you didn’t eat anything in the bar?” the senior asked. “Peanuts, pretzels—”

“I’m very sure, Senior Chief,” Sling said grimly.

“So what are you saying? That she took you to her hotel and …?” Owen’s voice trailed off as Slinger turned and just looked at him.

“Oh,” Owen said, as light dawned. “Right. Sorry. Wow. I mean, not wow but, whoa. I mean—” It took a kick from Magic to shut him up.

Slinger sighed heavily as he looked at Shane. “Sir, I’m truly sorry.”

“This is a new one,” Shane told him. “For all of us.” He turned to Rick, who was sifting through his medical bag. “Is there anything you can give him—”

“I was thinking the same thing, sir,” Rick replied, “but …” He shook his head. “I mean, what’s worse? Having him traceable or having him stop every few minutes with explosive diarrhea? And even then, I can’t guarantee all five trackers will be expelled.”

That was good to know. Well, it wasn’t good to know, but it was important information.

“Sir, we need to move,” the senior reminded Shane. “With your injury, our pace is going to be significantly slower than planned.”

No shit. Shane looked from the senior back to Slinger. “Sling, I need you to trade equipment bags with Owen.”

Slinger sighed again as he nodded. He knew what was coming. “Yes, sir.”

“There’s another village due west of here. I want you to head in that direction. Let’s see who follows you.”

Whoever had targeted Slinger with those internal trackers had done it for a reason. Someone wanted to know what Shane’s team was doing, where they were going. But whoever that someone was, he or she was forced to use a short-range device instead of more traditional long-range satellite tracking, because this entire area was continuously staticked with SAT interference. All SAT images taken of this entire mountainside would be completely unreadable, and would screw with the signal from Slinger’s cluster of trackers. But while long-range tracking wouldn’t work, lower-tech short-range would. Ergo it was highly likely that whoever had planted the trackers on the SEAL already had both equipment and personnel here on the ground.

If that was so, the SEALs would find them first—after leading them on a wild goose chase.

Shane activated his radio, flipping on his lip mic. “Dexter and Linden,” he ordered the two SEALs who’d been silently standing watch ever since this goatfuck began. “Give Slinger a head start, then trail him. I want zero contact with whoever is out there. And watch where you step.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper.”

They were all aware that this entire region was dotted with abandoned minefields. They’d studied the maps and knew not all were marked as clearly as the land around an abandoned farmhouse that sat just a few clicks to the south.

But chances were, if a building was abandoned, it was not safe to approach.

Shane looked at his remaining men: Magic, Rick, the senior chief, and Owen, who now had Slinger’s souped-up mini-tablet in his possession.

“Let’s do this,” Shane said. “Let’s move.”