The Edge of Trust: Team Edge by K. T. Bryan Read Free Book Online

Sanchez win?”
    Dillon said nothing.
    “Commander?”
    “I--” Dillon started.  Then stopped and cleared his throat.  “Your bureaucratic big shots want Sanchez extradited.  No way I’m bringing him in so he can buy, or kill, his way out of the system.”  No, Dillon wouldn’t bring Sanchez in.  Not this time.  He had plans of his own and they damn well did not include a government op.
    “Maybe I’m not asking you to…bring him in.”
    Dillon sat down hard, just collapsed backward, stunned.  After all this time…“You’re issuing me a kill order?”
    John picked up a Montblanc pen.  Fiddled with it.  “I’m saying…terminate with extreme prejudice.  The op has been sanctioned.  Sanchez is in either Peru or Colombia.  Get your team ready.  You start in Bogota.”
    Dillon thrust a hand through his hair in frustration.  “Why now?”
    “Things change, Commander.  And now, well, now you have nothing left to lose.”
    No, Dillon thought, no he didn’t.  Nothing at all.
    Dillon nodded at the admiral, hating the truth, and silently wondered what unknowns the admiral was leaving out.  Like who’d blown his cover.  And why.  “This runs deeper than Sanchez doesn’t it?”
    The admiral didn’t answer.  Which, of course, was an answer in itself.
    “Who screwed me over, John?”
    John laid the pen down with, Dillon sensed, a great deal of suppressed anger.  “I’m starting to get a picture.  Like I said, I’m working on it.”
    “You do that.”  Dillon stood.  “Am I done here?”
    The admiral nodded. 
    Just as Dillon hit the door, John quietly said, “Commander?  One more thing.”
    Dillon paused, impatient to be gone.  “What’s that?”
    “Watch your back.  All your snooping over the last six months has pissed someone off.”
    Dillon froze, still facing the door, and asked softly, “You knew?”
    “It’s my job to know.”
    Dillon closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  “And?”
    “And now there’s quite a bounty on your head.”
    “Sanchez?  Vega?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “Proof of death?”
    He heard the admiral hesitate, then say, “Your head.”
    “How much?”
    “Ten million dollars.”
    Ten million dollars.
    Dillon’s headache roared back with the force of a twenty-ton nuke.  He’d been right.  Dark and sinister just nailed him in spades.
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Team One had just spent the last three days and seven hours trudging silently through the roughest, meanest jungle they’d ever had the miserable luck of dealing with.  And that was saying something.  Dillon’s team was intimately familiar with just about every hellhole on the planet, but this one was, by far, the worst.  What didn’t swarm or slither, sweltered.
    Colombia had three climate zones: soggy, soaked, and saturated.  The deluge of rain had eased off to a light mist in the last half hour and sunlight was just managing to poke through the canopy.  Which meant the steam factor underneath their rain gear was going to increase from woeful to downright wretched.
    No one complained, they wouldn’t, but they sure as hell weren’t happy about it either. 
    Dillon allowed himself an almost-smile in spite of the deplorable circumstances.  No, his men didn’t whine, but they did bitch once in a while.  And he had no doubt once his team had accomplished their goal, all seven of his men would be giving the old one-fingered salute to this godforsaken place. 
    Ahead of him by five meters, Bobby Hutchins, the team’s front man, slipped behind a tree and crouched.  He turned, and making sure Dillon had a visual, pointed two fingers to his eyes.  Target in sight.
    Finally. 
    Dillon whispered into his throat mike to alert the rest of the team, then signaled to Hutch that they needed to go back half a klick.  Idiot Rule Number Six in the Infantry Journal:  If the enemy is in range, so are you.
    Hutch nodded, and Dillon waved him off to go recon for trip wires, mines, toe