Chapter Twenty-Three

Ghost

F or once, Trefor dropped the SEAL mask and looked at me like I was out of my goddamn mind. "The Baccalaureate?"

I hated the handle some low-level Agency suit had given the world's worst terrorist fifteen years ago when he was still a runner for an extremist group. Ferrying every imaginable weapon past every impossible border crossing like it was nothing, he'd been given the nickname because they'd said he had a bachelor's degree in smuggling.

Except they had it fucking wrong.

The Baccalaureate had a goddamn doctorate in trafficking.

Except now he wasn't just a jihadist moving contraband for al-Qaida.

Ibrahim al-Hashimi was ISIS.

Ignoring Alpha's condemning look and question, I cut to the chase. "Every second we stand here, we're losing ground. Sixteen women need to be relocated. You in or out?" Trefor was my first choice, but he wasn't my only option.

Dragging in a deep breath like he was more than pissed, Alpha locked his expression back down and got to business. "If there're two vehicles with known ISIS terrorists sitting outside my building, I have an obligation. My clearance, AES's contracts with the DOD, not to mention my rep—"

"I need an answer." Not a schooling on his fucking reputation.

"You know what the answer is. It's why you came to me. But that doesn't mean I'm going to allocate every available resource I currently have and stretch them thin over sixteen different locations when the Baccalaureate now knows you're on my doorstep and is watching our every move."

I nodded at his hacker. "You've got CYBERCOM's prodigy turned overwatch, an entire team of mission-tested SEALs trained for this exact type of coordinated extraction, and all of them are familiar with al-Hashimi's men and tactics." The entirety of ISIS could be armed with RPGs and have fucking front-row seats to our movements, and every Team guy at AES would still get those women out undetected with a clean exfil.

"Not the point," Alpha argued.

"Then what is?" I should've been out of here ten minutes ago.

"Parameters," he stated, drawing his line in the sand. "I'm not throwing away my direct line to the Secretary of Defense for a one-man crusade."

"Ibrahim al-Hashimi," I reminded him.

"Feralyn Alva Grayson," he countered.

My jaw fucking clenched, and the command room door opened.

Holding an open laptop, looking like the hacker, Conlon walked in and glanced from me to Trefor. "Not to interrupt your little tea party, but do you know who was sitting out front in two unmarked vehicles?"

No one said shit.

"Right." The Marine-turned-hacker nodded as he slammed his laptop shut and dumped it on a desk. Then he smiled. "This is going to be fun." Pointing to himself, he looked at me. "Should I tell them?" His finger aim redirected to me. "Do you want to tell them?" His hand dropped, and he nodded. "Right. You should probably do it. Is now a good time to mention I invited them up?" He glanced at his watch. "In fact…." Reaching behind him, he opened the command room's door. "This should be them now. Brothers from another mother." He winked. "I say we don't hold it against them they went Army. Although, it is curious. The Army part, not the Delta Force part."

Alpha glanced at me. "You have brothers?"

Before I could comment, Helios and Ares walked into the command room.

Conlon grinned. "Now it's a party."

Alpha threw Conlon an order. "Victor, out."

"You sure? Because—"

"Leave," he commanded.

Conlon walked out, and I glared at Helios. "Who's watching Feralyn?"

"Dropped her at a safe house before we came in."

"Alone?" I'd called him and him only for a reason. He should've left Ares with my half sister for protection.

"She's safe. We're here. Plane's equipped. Where's al-Hashimi?"

"You'll be read in after we're wheels up." And I had a chance to reengage the satellite I'd taken offline two hours ago as a tactical precaution.

Helios glanced pointedly at my blood-soaked shirt. "You going to last that long?"

"Yes." I looked at Trefor. "All the women need to be extracted by fourteen hundred hours. Hold them in the air until nineteen hundred, land only for refuels if necessary, then I'll be in touch. If I give the go-ahead, you can start dropping them off. I'll provide November with their new locations once it's clear."

"Six hours to retrieve sixteen women, hold them for another five, then relocate them on your say-so."

It was a statement, not a question, but I answered Trefor anyway. "Yes."

"And if you fail to check in or provide their new locations?" Trefor tipped his chin at my stepbrothers. "If they fail to report back?"

"Helios and Ares aren't involved in that part of the mission. If I don't report in, November creates new identities for the women, and you relocate them." He had the resources. That's why I was here.

"Was coming to me your plan all along? Or did you think you could do this by yourself?"

I'd been going at it solo for eight years. "I had a five-day plan to relocate all the women myself. The situation and timeline changed yesterday." And I'd made a critical error in judgment.

Alpha caught on quick. "Because of the profiler?"

A few months back, I'd found a digital footprint of the brunette looking into the Heesen's coordinates. Flying out to the yacht that'd been retrofitted into a practical destroyer to deliver the message in person, I'd warned the one person who was more of a ghost than I was that the profiler had picked up his scent. He'd disregarded it, and I hadn't stopped for two seconds to ask myself who'd tipped her off because she'd been benched from field work since she'd set me up on that bogus mission. Assuming she'd found the intel on her own, I'd retreated and stayed mission focused.

But that wasn't my critical error.

There'd been rumors since the beginning of al-Hashimi's rise that he had an inside source. That a leak in the Pentagon had enabled him to avoid assassination all these years. But the fucking leak wasn't in Arlington, it was in Langley, and my critical error was not putting it together sooner.

The brunette profiler was al-Hashimi's mole.

Something I should've fucking seen eight years ago, let alone yesterday morning. But now wasn't the time to analyze my mistakes. Safiya had been taken six hours ago, my strike teams were waiting, and the window was closing.

I gave Alpha fair warning. "If you want plausible deniability with the Secretary of Defense, you don't want me to answer that."

"Understood."

I asked him for the last time. "You in?"

His gaze on mine, he tipped his chin at his hacker.

Reading the silent exchange, November grabbed his cell, quickly texted, then went back to his laptop.

Trefor glanced at Ares, then studied Helios for a beat. "You look familiar. 75 th Ranger Regiment?"

Helios didn't answer.

Trefor glanced at me, but he spoke to his hacker. "November, confirmation on the location of those sixteen women yet?"

"Affirmative. All accounted for. No suspicious activity, digital or otherwise, at their current locations."

"Parameters?"

The hacker outlined a plan of action. "Furthest location is five hours out. Four of the Gulfstreams and your Falcon are ready to fly. Retrieval in six hours would take four two-man teams and you flying solo. If I pre-stage three of the women, the Gulfstreams can do three pickups each. You'll take the furthest location in the Falcon."

"Teams?" Trefor asked the hacker.

"Victor and Echo, Romeo and Kilo, Zulu and Blade, Delta and Whiskey."

"Kilo can't pilot right now," Alpha warned.

"Second chair with Romeo." The hacker typed on his laptop, and the monitors on the wall repopulated with flight plans. "He'll be good."

Trefor glanced at the large screens. "Three stops in six hours for each team is a tight timeline."

Knowing what he was getting at, I answered before the hacker. "Tight but doable. The locations are grouped." I'd purposely located the women in clusters for this exact scenario.

Trefor studied the monitors for another second, then eyed Helios and Ares before looking my way and reminding me why he was Team Leader. "Retrieving the seventeenth woman and going after the Baccalaureate with only two men isn't your only objective. You're taking out Ibrahim al-Hashimi's entire organization."

It'd be suicide if I didn't. "From the top down," I confirmed.

Being Alpha, he zeroed in on the most crucial part of the plan. "Simultaneously?"

I tipped my chin.

"Strike teams," Alpha stated.

It wasn't a question, but having put him and my former Team brothers at risk by coming here, already having told Trefor my objective, Helios and Ares in the room, I was past withholding intel. "Already in place."

Alpha glanced at my stepbrothers, then chose his wording. "The Dubai branch is dismantled."

"I saw." I'd watched the shitshow he'd been responsible for from my satellite feeds after I'd gotten out with my number eighteen. To his credit, he'd had a sweep team in place before I'd had to do damage control to preserve my mission.

"That still leaves seventeen locations," he warned.

"I know." I hadn't spent the last eight years simply scouting all the traffickers' constantly moving locations under the guise of shopping for stolen women. I'd been recruiting and assembling a team of former Tier Ones. All rogue, all with sniper skills, all who'd assembled their own teams. That'd been the easy part. Wiping identities, creating new ones, keeping everyone off the grid, making sure all the women were safe, setting up the satellites and shell corporations, collecting properties, constantly on the move, trading favors for intel—I knew exactly what the fuck I was dealing with.

Trefor eyed me. "Anyone at SOCOM read in on this?"

A mission neither they nor the CIA had attempted because there was a leak? I didn't bother answering.

He tipped his chin. "Understood. You trust your strike teams?"

I was about to find out. "You trust your men?"

Behind me, Helios grunted with impatience. "We done playing twenty questions?"

Ever diplomatic, Trefor glanced at him. "Almost." He looked back at me. "Yes, I trust my team. You should too. You served with most of them. If I know who else you've got in the field, I can provide support."

I knew all about his level of support. Global locations, operatives and sweep teams on every continent, enough equipment and munitions to start his own army, a fleet of jets, and every one of his Tier One guys trained to fly. Alpha had been smart. Clean. There was a reason he was the DOD's top military contractor. Which was why he'd never been right for this. "I'm all set."

"Good copy." Alpha briefly glanced at the flight plans still up on the monitors before focusing back on me. "Consider the women handled. Sitrep in six hours. November's overwatch. Last question."

I didn't exhale yet. "Shoot."

"How'd they narrow in on one of the women and not the others?"

Trefor's hacker glanced at me, then quickly looked back at his laptop.

I told the truth. "She's the only one I see on a regular basis." Eight years, thirty-seven visits. I should've fucking realized the profiler had never stopped profiling me.

"Understood." Then Adam "Alpha" Trefor held out his hand and showed his true colors. "Good luck."

We shook.

Glancing at my stepbrothers, Trefor nodded once at each of them, then walked out of the command room.

November handed us each comms. "Encrypted, long-range, closed-circuit. You'll hear one another and me."

Helios and I took ours.

Ares didn't. Usually quiet, always guarded, he crossed his arms. "We have our own comms."

November didn't back down. "Maintain mute setting or leave the device off, but keep it on hand in case you need overwatch."

Ares pocketed the comm.

I pulled out my burner and gave November the final piece of intel he needed. "The women are trained on protocol. They won't willingly exfil with your teams unless they're given a codeword. Texting it now." I quickly typed Paragon , hit Send, then watched for a reaction.

November glanced at his cell before looking at me. "Copy." Well trained, no tells, he didn't blink.

I maintained eye contact for another second, then checked my watch. "Sitrep in five hours, fifty-nine."

"Five hours, fifty-nine," the hacker confirmed, typing on his laptop before a timer came up on one of the screens.

I turned toward the door, and Ares followed.

Helios grabbed the med kit Alpha had dumped on a desk earlier.

The three of us walked to the elevator in silence.