Duane stood at the threshold of the palapa and blinked against the sudden shade. Coming out of the bright sunlight while running on negative sleep wasn’t helping shit. Visibility wasn’t helped by the Panamanian noonday sun glaring harshly off the water that lay in every direction. The palapa stood on the end of a dock reaching well out into Portobelo’s harbor. The small town and the ruins of its ancient forts were lost in the shimmering haze.

“Goddamn it.”

“Chill, bro,” Chad thumped him cheerfully enough on the back to drive him forward out of the tropical blaze and into the shadowed interior. He slammed into an unoccupied table that his eyes hadn’t adjusted enough to see. It was only by chance he hadn’t slammed into one of the stout wooden poles that held up a heavily-thatched peaked roof over the entire end of the dock.

On their approach, he’d been able to see the silhouettes of a bar and two people seated at one of the otherwise empty collection of tables. It looked like a restaurant, which should be busier at midday if it was any good. Once in the covering shade, the open sides to the palapa still allowed the painful glare in, but at least it was now “out there.” On the plus side, “in here” the temperature was about a thousand degrees lower beneath the thatch—down to merely fucking brutal.

He rubbed at his forehead but it did nothing to ease the pain.

The tugs had nudged the disabled cruise ship against the dock in Colón at the mouth of the Panama Canal at straight-up, cook-your-brain noon. By noon plus twenty they’d turned in all of their training gear, been stuffed into a pair of minivans with no air conditioning, and driven ten kilometers north to Portobelo. The run-down harbor town wavered in the heat haze along the edge of the river.

He rubbed his eyes again, and then realized that his sunglasses were still perched on his head. No wonder his eyes hurt—Delta operators weren’t designed to function during daylight hours.

Especially not after nights like last night.

Women like Sofia were supposed to be attracted to smooth guys like Chad. It had been that way since the moment he’d walked away from the family fortune. That’s when he’d learned just how interested women were in money and not in him. But she gone now and his life officially sucked.

Chad nudged him ahead into the dim cool shadows. A restaurant big enough to hold twenty parties, had just the one table occupied. No one at the bar. Too bad, he really needed a beer.

“Well, look what the shit dragged in!” Chad sounded pleasantly surprised—the kind of joy he might show moments before taking out a major drug lord and all of his lieutenants with a Mother of All Bombs.

Duane’s eyes finally adjusted enough to see who was at the table. “SOG Agent Fred Smith! I’ll give you points for bravery showing up after that fucking fiasco.” He was completely on board with dropping a MOAB on the bastard and screw launch authorization.

“Misplaced bravery,” he heard Carla’s field knife slipping out of its sheath as she spoke.

“Sit,” the other man at the table spoke in a flat monotone.

“Whoa!” Carla whispered from somewhere near Duane’s shoulder and resheathed her knife with a slick, metallic sound.

Duane was finally able to focus on the second man at the table.

Holy shit!

It was the colonel. How had he not seen the commander of Delta Force sitting there next to Fred? Because Michael Gibson was the most seasoned warrior Delta Force had ever seen and if he wanted to be invisible, he was.

Without any fuss, the team sat around the table. Kyle and Carla, Richie and Melissa, and he and Chad—too often tagged as the Odd Couple. Then Sofia Forteza slipped into a seat, almost as quietly as Colonel Michael Gibson would have.

Thank you, Jesus! He was so sure that she was gone. No sign of her at breakfast or at the dock ramp. She must have gotten in the second minivan at the last second.

She moved like a shadow among the shadows, but her black eyes were clear and bright as she glanced over at him. He wanted to get up and change chairs to sit by her, but that would be… He wasn’t sure what it would be, but he knew it wasn’t right. Or practical. Instead he smiled at her.

She returned it in only the most tentative way. Shit!

Duane felt the vibrations on the floating dock under his feet before he saw the approaching waiters, coming down from the onshore kitchen. They served quickly. A large bucket filled with cans of soda and coconut water—he grabbed a Guaraná, made with one of the local fruits. A big spread of dishes were set family style in the middle of the table. A monster bowl of sancocho chicken soup, piles of empanada turnovers, a platter of banana leaf-wrapped tamales, and a big stack of his most recent weakness, patacones, twice-fried green plantain—he took a fistful—served with blazingly-hot aji chombo pepper sauce.

In moments the waiters were gone and they were alone at the end of the dock under the palapa.

Whatever the hell was going on was way above his paygrade, so he’d just keep his mouth shut. And whatever was going on with the woman across the table was even more mystifying. She’d evaporated after the incident with the SOG hardcores like a wisp of smoke and he’d half expected never to see her again. Expected? Hell! It had struck fear into his heart and left him thrashing in his luxury bed. He’d finally chucked a pillow on the carpet and found a little sleep on the deck.

Now, magically, like the stealthy Activity agent she was, Sofia Forteza had appeared out of thin air to sit down across from him. Across from him and offering only the chilliest of smiles. He—

Time to shut up his brain as well.

If only it could be so easy.

Sofia wished she had a pillow, though she couldn’t be sure where to place it. Under her butt, where the hard chair pressed painfully against the large bruises she’d received from the SOG agent who’d grabbed her? Or over her face so she didn’t have to look at Duane?

She’d been so preoccupied when he smiled at her, that she’d hardly returned it. This morning she’d barely caught the second van—the steward had forgotten to wake her, in that room off by herself at the stern of the ship. Duane must think she was avoiding him, or upset about his taking action last night against her advice.

By the time she saw the bastard leader gearing up to take a swing at Carla, he was lucky she hadn’t shot him in the head—twice plus one in the heart. She might have if Duane hadn’t already made the crack shot of hitting his gun hand. She’d always been proud of her skills on the range, something she’d been singled out for time and again. Watching a Delta-trained sniper like Duane made her realize just how much more there was to learn.

She’d looked up the team’s action reports last night after Carla left her suite—just out of curiosity so that she’d know exactly who she was dealing with…and not looking up Duane…at least not specifically. She had tried not to be disappointed that most of their individual records were, like any Unit operator’s, behind a need-to-know wall and she couldn’t think of a good enough reason even if her clearance allowed it. The team itself had formed straight out of training over a year before and had been instrumental in devastating losses for drug cartels from Mexico to Bolivia. Their success rate was phenomenal even by The Unit’s standards.

So how did an operator, especially one of Duane Jenkins’ caliber, end up looking like a wounded puppy dog because she’d been too busy thinking to smile back properly?

The other’s reaction to the table’s two occupants had forewarned her as she was last into the palapa. From that moment on, she’d been struggling to sort out the current situation’s factors.

A top Delta team that had beaten the CIA’s black ops team despite an overwhelming disadvantage in manpower and strategic situation—boarding an already “taken” ship.

Agent Fred Smith’s presence this afternoon despite his team’s recent loss.

The unexpected appearance of the Delta Force commander. It was hard to believe that Colonel Michael Gibson—the most decorated soldier currently serving in any branch of the military if the truth was ever known—had seen fit to come down and meet with this team.

His presence said that either there was real trouble brewing over last night’s events or—as she previously postulated to Duane—there was a very dicey mission in the works.

She knew his face from the files, but hadn’t ever met him before. He seemed the most unlikely version of himself. He wasn’t big like Chad, not even as big as Duane. He had dark brown hair down to his shirt color and was dressed in slacks and a black t-shirt. He looked harmless and a little lost.

It was hard to believe that he was the most dangerous man alive, even if the others were treating him that way.

Factoring in her own continued presence here didn’t shed much more light on the topic, but spoke against the likelihood of this being a punishment or dressing down.

The other thing she couldn’t piece together from the team’s profile was their modus operandi. Delta Force was known for its mastery of the unexpected, using a small force to leverage huge results. But Carla’s squad—already Sofia too was falling into that habit even though Kyle Reese was unquestionably the team leader—didn’t even operate as if there was a box to go outside of. Their solutions, like the retaking of the cruise ship, had never come from any book or prior training. It was as if they were making it up as they went along—though that didn’t make sense either.

“Thanks for coming,” the colonel called the meal to order.

Sofia realized that she hadn’t served herself and she had the only empty plate. She quickly did so to at least appear to fit in.

“About last night…”

Then she felt the tension snap around the table. Forks went down and hackles went up. Duane’s hands balled into fists. She carefully set down the spoonful of ceviche she’d been about to bite into.

“I believe ‘well done’ is enough said.”

Sofia was on the verge of protesting—there was a hell of a lot more to be said. Then she saw the team’s faces. They looked as if they’d just been given the Congressional Medal of Honor by the President himself.

“But—” the word slipped out.

The colonel turned to face her, his soft brown eyes so calm she could read nothing in them. His hands—at least as big and strong as Duane’s—were folded lightly. The dictionary definition of passively waiting.

She managed to hold onto her silence, which earned her a slow smile.

“This team,” the colonel spoke softly, “created a wholly new attack methodology for one of the most difficult scenarios we train for—ship recapture. It will be fully incorporated in all future trainings. Most Unit operators will see it as a new tool in their toolbox rather than a point of departure for creating new tactics as this team does. These people are aware of this fact.”

“What about—” slipped out before she could stop it.

“The CIA’s Special Operations Group,” the colonel continued somehow knowing exactly what she was going to say next, “lost six of its personnel last night—deemed unfit for duty. Though I fear they will next resurface in one of the contractor security firms. And not one of the decent outfits, because those have all been warned off.” He glanced at his watch. “Right now, the Director of that agency is instituting a retraining of all SOG personnel, a training to be led by a Delta Force cadre all of whom have been briefed with last night’s events and recordings. She has stood down the Special Operations Group from all future global operations until I personally sign off that they are capable of meeting The Unit’s minimum standards of conduct.”

This time she waited him out. There was no smile but there was a brightness to his brown eyes that said he was enjoying himself immensely.

No one else spoke, of course. She now understood why. Colonel Michael Gibson embodied everything that a soldier—a very highly decorated soldier—was supposed to be. His few words carried…gravitas and meant more than a thousand from any other man.

“I’ve told the instructor cadre they were also welcome to teach them some manners along the way. Though we will not be sharing how you beat them. That will be left as a lesson for the student.”

That earned him laughter from around the table as everyone started eating once more.

CIA Agent Fred Smith looked far less distraught by that speech than she’d expected.

He noticed her attention and sighed. “I’m a field liaison, not an analyst like you and definitely not part of the action teams.”

Was she still an analyst? Two actions in forty-eight hours, three if she counted the two separate encounters aboard the cruise ship. And clearly another pending with her still in the field.

Was this somehow her interim team? She certainly didn’t belong. The Unit were the top combat fighters. Five years active military followed by the six-month Operators Training Course—they were in a league she could never belong.

“I am concerned with the operation, not necessarily with who is doing it. Am I disappointed? Sure. Once I saw the videos? Pissed might be a better description. I know this team’s reputation—I helped build it, for crying out loud. So I stacked the cards against this team, against you,” his nod included the others around the table. “Minimum intel on the ship, four times your number on board. I might even have let drop exactly who was coming.” He shrugged and bit down on an empanada.

The others waited while he chewed. They didn’t look happy about it.

A flock of gulls circled above a returning fishing boat. Their cries were so loud, Fred had to wait a minute before continuing. He was the only one eating during the pause in the conversation. Once the boat passed, the midday heat once again pummeled the world into silence, other than the soft lapping of waves against the underside of the dock.

“My boss isn’t so cocky about not using ‘outside assets’ anymore. I bet him that you’d win and ‘lose’ under half your team in the process. I should have gone for double or nothing if you didn’t lose any team members but I never thought you folks were that good. I thought at least Ms. Forteza would go down. Nothing personal, I assure you, just a lack of field experience. Should have known,” Fred shook his head sadly for the lost opportunity. “Still, I made a quick three hundred bucks last night betting on you—not that I’m likely ever to see a cent of it.”

Sofia looked over at Duane. She’d survived because of how much he’d taught her, and how quickly. Ever since storming the gate of General Aguado’s compound, he’d been feeding her a constant stream of tips.

Here’s a 9mm tactical rope. This is a descender brake. Hold it like this and descend on the other side of the bridge.

Here’s a breaching charge in case they’ve locked the bridge wing doors. Trigger it like this and stand with your back to it when it blows so that it doesn’t mess with your night vision. The shaped charge shouldn’t have any blowback—no shrapnel—except the small pressure wave of the detonation.

He’d also treated her as if he simply assumed that she’d succeed which had made all of the difference in the world.

And then, when it had really mattered, the moment before the second attack on the group-enhanced machismo of the SOG in the elegant whisky bar, he’d given her permission to stand down on moral principles. Still no question of her capability.

His final comment before he’d descended the FAST rope to clean up a last-ditch altercation? A soft “Well done.”

Now she truly understood. It was The Unit’s highest form of praise. And that was all a Unit operator needed. They didn’t want publicity or bestselling tell-all books. They wanted to do the job and fade away.

Her answer? To slink away into the darkness and try to analyze what had just happened. Yep! That was definitely her. Analyze the shit out of everything, girl. Much like Carla’s “crazy bitch,” it had earned her a reputation as a cold bitch—an epithet that she’d embraced because it was true. Damn straight! became her standard reply. It had served as her only method of survival in her family and it had served her just fine so far in the military.

Duane, however, was not looking at her. Instead, he was still watching Fred Smith.

“So,” Duane toyed with a fried plantain patacone and managed to make it look like a steel martial arts throwing star that he might be embedding in Smith’s throat at the least temptation. “What’s the mission they wanted so badly that they’d risk so much to get it. And what dragged the colonel down to Panama?”

And Fred Smith, Mr. Unflappably Affable, suddenly looked grim for the first time since she’d met him.

“By the time we’re done, you may regret last night’s success,” Fred was inspecting his plate. He’d finally stopped eating like the complacent bastard he’d been making himself out to be.

Duane checked in with Gibson—absolutely no expression at all.

A glance at Sofia—he still couldn’t believe that she’d surfaced out of nowhere—revealed that she didn’t know either. That he found particularly unnerving. He’d watched her put seemingly random facts together so many times over the last two nights that he wondered if she was psychic. He’d given her the absolute minimum training for each action—because that’s all there’d been time for—and she’d picked up everything perfectly.

The one-two attack on the bridge had certainly saved his hide. He wouldn’t have even come up with the attack plan in the first place if she hadn’t pushed him.

And her backup at the skylight had been both perfect, and remorseless. She’d fired without hesitation, even when the men in the crosshairs had technically been friendlies.

Michael started to speak, but Fred held up a hand to stop him. Man liked living dangerously.

Fred looked up slowly, inspecting each person around the table carefully before speaking.

“Any of you know about Operation Prime Cause?”

Nothing Duane had ever heard of.

“More CIA hush-hush shit?” Chad tossed out then looked to him.

But Duane noticed Carla and Sofia both looked up quickly. Fred had their full attention, so he kept his mouth shut.

Fred nodded. “Ex-CIA field agents—”

“Special Operations Group?” Duane nearly spat on the table to clear the awful taste out of his mouth.

Fred’s shrug neither confirmed nor denied. “They’ve been joined by other ex-Special Ops personnel from several branches, not all of them US.”

“Another rogue contractor,” Chad didn’t sound any happier than Duane felt.

“Yeah, buddy,” this time he was completely in Chad’s court. “Why are we always cleaning up their shit?”

Yet, Sofia, his reality check across the table was having a different reaction that he couldn’t read. She certainly didn’t add the third line to their banter as she’d taken to doing.

“Quiet,” was all Gibson said and they all shut the hell up. Duane tried not to feel sick that he’d spoken at all—like his mother’s iced stare when he spoke out of turn at one of her dinner parties. It was no wonder he didn’t speak much, he’d been trained in shut-the-fuck-up since the cradle. It had probably been engraved on his silver baby rattle.

“Not contractors. Not mercenaries,” Fred Smith spoke into the void of silence. “They’re a strictly non-profit group. They make contact through the US Ambassador and receive full in-country cooperation from judicial and police—military if the others are too corrupt.”

“What’s their target?”

“Children.”

“What the hell?” Not what Duane had been expecting at all.

“OPC, Operation Prime Cause, is a team of ex-field operatives who rescue kids from human traffickers, prostitution-supply rings, and brothels. They get the kids out and into an aftercare program, and they get the traffickers’ asses on ice.”

“Kick ass!” Chad’s highest form of praise.

“Doesn’t sound like a Delta mission though,” Duane just couldn’t see what it had to do with them.

“It’s not,” Colonel Gibson agreed.

“So, you’re telling us this shit because…” Chad was watching the wrong person, which was weird because he always watched the hot women.

Duane could see the answer on Sofia’s face. Could see the hot anger beneath her Latina skin. But it wasn’t just anger. There was a hunger there. The kind of hunger that came from the sudden realization that having a real-world impact on something she felt passionate about was finally in her power.

She’d heard of OPC. Knew about them. Was—

Duane laughed aloud and everyone spun to stare at him.

“What?” Carla snapped.

Okay, maybe a laugh hadn’t been the right response, but he’d just had the tiniest flash of insight into what it must be like to be in Sofia Forteza’s brain. She worked for The Activity which meant she was one of the best intel analysts in the business. She was also trained in field tactics. Was brave as a Unit operator and performing above the profile of many of them.

Add to that, the powers-that-be choosing to embed her here. In their team. At this moment. It was the power and clarity—the pure certainty of the vision that had evoked his laugh. There was a far larger plan running in the background here and he could actually hear the gears meshing as they were all caught up in it.

Was that her mind was like? All the time? It sounded pretty damn busy to have all that going on constantly in her pretty head.

He thought back through his experiences of her and decided that the answer was an emphatic yes. He’d been trained by his mother, Carla, and Melissa to never judge a woman by her looks. Sofia Forteza was a stunning woman; one that blew him away. And that brain of hers that never stopped moving was equally, or maybe even more impressive.

Except perhaps for that sudden stillness of one soul-searing kiss. Then, there had been a deep silence as her eyelids had fluttered shut and for just that instant she’d given in to him.

He offered her the briefest nod of acknowledgement—that was one damn sharp lady sitting across the table—which only earned him a squint-eyed scowl.

“The reason,” the colonel spoke up when it was clear that Duane was going to be keeping his mouth shut, “that you may wish you had not succeeded so well last night is because a mission that OPC can’t handle is about to become yours.”

“Which is?” Kyle’s steady voice made sure no one else was going to interrupt. He’d done one of his leader things and suddenly the whole team, even Carla, had become an instrument for his command.

“The agents of OPC only go in with the full support of the government. They don’t take down the traffickers themselves—in fact they come in posing as buyers of services and are very careful to be arrested right alongside the traffickers to protect their cover. Local law enforcement—or federal if the locals aren’t to be trusted—and national courts make the arrests and dispense the punishments.”

“Dead clean,” was Kyle’s assessment and no one argued. Not mercenaries. Good men with a serious cause.

“However, they do hear of situations that are outside their carefully circumscribed ROE. Situations with potentially national impact.”

Rules of Engagement for a standard military op had elements like: you may not fire until fired upon, no return fire if it will put civilians at risk, and so on. It sounded as if OPC’s ROE was dead sharp as well.

Whereas ROEs were always an interesting area for The Unit. The Unit’s standard ROE was much looser: do what’s necessary and don’t let anyone know you were ever there. Civilians were rarely at risk from Unit operations because Delta Force didn’t drop five hundred-pound bombs, they typically took out villains one sniper shot at a time.

“General Aguado,” Sofia stated flatly in one of her gestalt jumps that Duane realized was typical for her—and was exactly correct now that she’d said it. “Human trafficking. He’s been talking.”

“He has,” Fred Smith agreed. “OPC are the ones who tipped us to them in the first place.”

“No. I’ve been chasing him for six months. We…” and then she tapered off to a silence Duane didn’t understand before swearing lightly in Spanish.

“OPC tipped me. I met with your boss, and he suggested that it be assigned to your desk. Colonel Richards thinks very highly of you.”

“He doesn’t tell me this,” Sofia was inspecting her untouched meal intently. It was hard to tell in the shady palapa whether or not she was blushing.

Smith covered for her, which made Duane think a little more kindly of him. “We’re here in Panama for planning and training. The geopolitical problems of Venezuela are escalating and destabilizing the region. My department,” he was smart enough not to mention the failed CIA team directly, “and now—because of your victory last night—this team have been tasked with fixing that. The general was our first key in that lock.”

No one else was eating, but Duane felt more relaxed than he had all morning and grabbed another patacone then dredged it in the aji chombo sauce.

This was exactly why he’d signed up. Why he’d fought to get into Delta. This was what had driven him to survive the testing that culled over ninety-five percent of applicants.

He’d known from the first day that The Unit was home. But this? Taking on a foreign government who thought abusing its population, especially the women and children, somehow made sense. This fucking rocked!

He bit down on the patacone and gasped. He’d forgotten the lethal heat of the aji chombo sauce.