Chapter 1

Sometimes in your life there is a moment when you realize you are so ungodly screwed that the remainder of your lifespan is apt to be numbered in minutes. This was that moment for Landon Cross. He stood next to the Mercedes that belonged to the cartel??s local boss, Jorge Sotolongo. Twenty feet in front of him, a number of men climbed out of a Cadillac Escalade. They were the projected buyers of the four thousand kilos of cocaine the cartel was selling. The meeting that day was about negotiating the price.

What Landon hadn??t anticipated was seeing Yuri Markov get out of that car. He??d arrested Markov three years earlier and thought the man was still serving jail time.

??You brought a fucking cop to the meet??? bellowed Markov.

The men near Landon all looked at each other, and him, uncertain who Markov was referring to.

??Him!?? Markov shouted and pointed a finger.

??I think you have me mistaken for someone else,?? said Landon, trying to remain as calm as possible. One of Sotolongo??s enforcers grabbed Landon by the arm and pressed the muzzle of his gun against Landon??s temple.

??He??s a god damn DEA agent,?? said Markov, stalking towards Landon.

Sotolongo cast a long appraising look at Landon. ??Perhaps. We??ll find out.?? He nodded at the enforcer and the butt of the gun crashed into the side of Landon??s temple. The world went black

* * * *

??Happy happy joy joy, we get to work with the feds,?? said Trey Jernigan. He filed into a briefing room along with five other Baltimore SWAT team members.

One of the other guys on his team, Joe Thompson, rolled his eyes at Trey. ??Don??t piss off the DEA dude.??

Trey just grinned at him. Six people from SWAT had been tapped to assist with a DEA operation Trey had only been with the team eight months and he wondered why he had been picked. All the others who were chosen were guys who??d been part of SWAT at least a decade.

They sat at several long tables facing a screen on the wall. A man Trey was unfamiliar with was fiddling with the laptop attached to a projector. The man huffed a sigh of frustration and turned to face the group. ??I??m Special Agent Craig Martinez of the DEA. I work for the DC field office. You??re all here because we need some extra manpower for an operation that??s going to take place in about thirty-six hours. I know that??s really short notice, but some very critical information has come to our attention, and needs to be moved on fast.??

He pushed a button to activate the projector. Photos of four men were displayed.

Trey had to blink. Aw hell, he knew the last one on the right. It showed a man with shoulder length dark hair, a sharp narrow face and a quirky half smile. Landon Cross. He had been Trey??s best friend up until the last year of high school. The two of them had been inseparable, closer than siblings, until Landon had betrayed him. What kind of friend outs you to your ultra-conservative fundamentalist parents? Why didn??t it surprise Trey that Landon was in deep shit with the DEA? Yeah, that sounded so fitting.

Martinez continued. ??The first one is Jorge Sotolongo. He runs the mid-Atlantic area for the Azor cartel. They specialize in cocaine but dabble in everything else, and I mean everything. There??s a little gun running, prostitution, extortion, you name it. The second guy is his right hand man, Luis Perez. The two of them have been operating together for about six years. Number three is a new player, Vigo Petrowksi. He??s recently begun moving into Sotolongo??s territory, and he??s got ties to the Russian mafia. We have Intel that there could be a war brewing; which brings us around to the last guy. His name is Landon Cross. He??s ours. I mean that literally. He??s DEA. He??s been involved in a deep cover op inside the Azor cartel for ten months.??

Trey had to blink. Landon? DEA? Uh??he didn??t know what to make of that.

Martinez switched the picture to a telephoto long shot of a group of industrial buildings. ??We were almost ready to pull Cross out and do a full scale raid when we got word his cover was blown. That was about twenty??four hours ago. We??ve been doing a mad scramble ever since. Rumor has it, he??s still alive, but the cartel is none too happy with him. We suspect he??s being tortured for information. You know how these people operate. It may already be too late. He may be dead. If he isn??t, we need to get him out of there fast. Six of us and the six of you are going to execute a search and rescue as covertly as we can manage. Anyone else we can take out or any information we can gain along the way, so much the better. Jernigan, you are our special player.??

Trey met Martinez?? gaze. When Martinez had gotten to the part about ??torture??, Trey had already begun to guess his role. Trey was ex-USAF, specifically an ex-PJ. PJ was the nickname of sorts given to the Para-rescuemen, one of the most hard-ass elite soldier divisions in the US. Also the only group whose main purpose in life was combat search and rescue. In addition to combat training on par with the SEALs, Trey was a combat paramedic. He??d still be a PJ if he hadn??t had an up close and personal experience with an IED that knocked him unconscious for more than twenty minutes and wiped nearly twenty-four hours from his memory. There was a rule in the regs that said any PJ with a loss of consciousness injury was automatically assessed for a medical discharge. Trey had suffered eight weeks of moderately serious post-concussion syndrome two years earlier. It had eventually resolved itself, but he was now a SWAT team medic because he couldn??t be a PJ anymore.