Page 1 of Javier

Chapter One

Javier

As missions went, my infiltration hadn’t been a breeze, but I did all right until I topped the hill. Surrounded by the tropical forest, sweating like a hot dog on a grill, I took a knee and examined the footprints in the drying mud. Small. Light. A group of women and children, coming up the hill and moving south. Damn the rains that had slowed me down.

Was my intel source on the move?

I’d come a long way and broken a ton of rules, not to mention countless international laws just to be here. After spending the night on the go, the idea that I might’ve missed my window of opportunity yanked at my guts.

Fuck, no.

I was damned and determined to get me some actionable intel out of this little field trip to Tango-land. It was go big for me, without the option of going home empty-handed. The safety of my team and the lives of three key assets depended on this mission.

I set down my machete and ruck, then identified an optimal surveillance spot behind a thicket of bushes. Carbine in hand, I elbowed myself between the low branches on the ground. When I got to the lip of the hill, I lay flat on my belly and wiped a sheen of sweat off my face.

The Nicaraguan jungle embraced me with all its suffocating power, wrapping its scalding tendrils around my body in an attempt to squeeze the life out of me. Even though it was still morning in late May, it was hotter than the devil’s ass crack.

The rainy season had just begun, and the air I sucked in by the bucketful was laden with water. No way my moisturewicking T-shirt was gonna keep up with the onslaught. The helmet and the tactical vest I wore over my BDUs didn’t help with ventilation. My cammies, designed to mimic the local military’s woodland fatigues, incorporated advanced cooling design features, and still, I felt like a well-basted turkey trapped in an oven.

I reached for the hydration hose attached to the bladder integrated into my ruck and swiped a long gulp. No sense in allowing the tropics to end my mission even before it started. My insect repellent barely held back the mosquitos swarming around me. They buzzed around my head, broadcasting their hunger. Best get to work before the jungle’s most vicious creatures ate me alive.

I clicked open the protective case of the BB-Tak mounted at the top of my tactical vest. My Tak was a private proprietary technology app that converted my cell into a mini mission computer. It provided integrated, secure, interactive geospatial tools for navigation and radio controls, and offered multifunction capabilities.

The Tak was fresh out of my outfit’s cutting-edge lab. The one I carried was an advanced prototype out for a test spin in the real world of special ops. A look down at the screen showed me my position on the 3-D map.

Right on.

I was exactly where I needed to be.

I pulled out my binoculars and homed in on the modest compound below. It stood in a small clearing carved out of the middle of the jungle. At the bottom of the hill, a few humble buildings anchored a muddy courtyard inside a rusty chain-link fence. No paint, just blocks stacked on top of crude concrete slabs and mostly metal roofs.

I identified the larger building as living quarters. Through the slats of the dilapidated windows, I spotted a kitchen, amedical station, and a row of deserted cots. Several closed doors obstructed my view of the north side of the structure, but so far, so good.

The second structure was open-aired. It sported a thatch roof, sheltering small chairs, rustic desks, and a few old-fashioned blackboards. A humble school, then. The third building was smaller than the other two. The aluminum louver windows were all shut and so was the door, but a wooden cross topped the roof above the entrance.

A church?

The heathen in me protested the presence of the little church in the middle of nowhere. So far, the only creatures I’d spotted around the compound were the ferocious mosquitos and the pesky white-headed capuchins chittering excitedly in the canopy above me. Didn’t think monkeys went to church, but hell, someone around here obviously did.

The monkeys’ ongoing ruckus annoyed me. It kept me from being able to assess potential noises below. One of the capuchins pitched a nut in my direction. It bounced harmlessly off my helmet. After twelve hours hacking my way through the bug-infected jungle and traipsing over all kinds of terrain, a territorial monkey was the least of my problems.

“You little fucker,” I muttered before I donned my earpiece, activated my mic, and clicked on my comms. “Control, this is Green.” I kept my voice just above a whisper. “Do you copy? Over.”

“Green, this is Control.” The melodic voice of Mina Moses, my team’s cyber expert and comms specialist, crackled through the radio. “We copy. Over.”

“Control, I’m in position,” I reported. “Over.”

“Bravo Zulu,” Mina said—well done. “Stand by for Top Dog. Over.”

I waited for Mina to patch me to the boss. To assist andmonitor my mission, she’d piggybacked on one of the CIA’s spy satellites. In her own words, she’d “borrowed” the thing so we could “stay in touch.” Yeah, that’s what happened when your team’s cyberwarrior-in-chief was also one of the world’s top hackers.

“Green, this is Top Dog.” My boss’s low, crisp voice hijacked the airwaves. “What do you see? Over.”

“Not a hell of a lot.” I scanned the site below me again. “A small compound. Recently abandoned. Footprints. A day or two old. Gotta go down there, take a look. Over.”

“Be advised, the satellite is about to move on,” the boss reminded me. “Over.”

I suppressed a snarky retort and went with the standard, “Copy that, Top Dog.”

---