Page 1 of Shadow Undercover

CHAPTER ONE

Trace Young raced through another nameless, stinking alley, the skin at the back of his neck prickling. In this backwater town run by one of the most dangerous terrorists on the South American continent, the tangos had found him.

Although his teammates were near, they weren’t near enough to take down the men closing the gap on him. At that moment, his ear piece clicked.

“Sit rep,” demanded his team leader, Nico Rivera.

“Got company.” He veered into another dark, putrid alley.

“Location?”

He glanced at his GPS and rattled off the coordinates.

“How many are on your tail?”

“At least two, maybe more.”

“Hold.”

At three in the morning, the main street through Puebla, Chile was deserted. His gut said he was far from safe. Heavy panting and a can being kicked out of someone’s path about one hundred feet behind him confirmed Trace’s gut.

Nico’s voice came through the ear piece again. “We’re circling to assist.” Shadow’s leader gave Trace coordinates. “We’ll meet you in two minutes.”

“Copy,” he murmured. Couldn’t deny the relief flooding his body at the thought of having his teammates for backup.

As he ran, Trace analyzed the op, frustrated with the perfect storm of events that caused this well-planned mission to go south in a heartbeat. Then again, when did Shadow’s missions ever pan out as planned?

At least he’d brought down his target. Pedro Torino was a top-of-the-food-chain scumbag. An equal opportunity torturer, he’d raped and killed countless women and children over the past few years, then decided to branch out into drugs and weapons smuggling into the United States. Trace wouldn’t lose sleep over killing a man who enjoyed hurting the innocent.

Besides, when the government requested unofficial assistance to squash a cockroach like Torino, Fortress assigned the task to Shadow since his team was already in the area for another mission.

Hearing a noise close to him, he moved deeper into the darkness, grateful for dark clothes and gear that absorbed light.

Trace made a quick left into another alley, this one smaller than the others. His stomach knotted at the stench filling the narrow passageway. If Torino’s flunkies caught up to him now, Trace was toast. Two doors were the only shelter available.

At six-foot-four with 250 pounds of pure muscle, hiding in a door threshold was impossible. Adding in his sniper rifle and Go bag, blending into six inches of shadow was impossible. With a passageway this small, he didn’t have Dumpsters to hide behind.

Trace lengthened his silent stride to create more distance between himself and his pursuers. With three more turns, he would escape this rat’s maze and be four minutes from the new rendezvous point.

From there, he and his teammates would either fight their way out of Puebla or slip out under the cover of darkness and board the jet headed for Nashville, Tennessee.

Home. He was looking forward to a little downtime, little being the operative word. Shadow was on mission rotation for another two weeks.

He sped to the mouth of the passageway, peered around the corner, and eased into the pool of darkness to his left. Warehouses. Fantastic. His spirits lifted. Nico was a genius. Warehouses meant myriad places to hide and fight if necessary. Once they took care of business, the SUV was parked half a mile from here, a two- or three-minute run at full speed. From there, they’d hightail it to the private airstrip.

Trace sprinted across the street and into the shadows between two warehouses. He pressed his back to the wall, weapon in hand, waiting for his teammates to arrive.

“Thirty seconds,” Nico whispered through the ear piece.

“Copy.”

A soft moan sounded from nearby.

Trace froze, listening. A homeless person, a drunk? He turned his head, searching the gloom for the source of the noise. Friend or foe? Someone injured? He didn’t want his teammates walking into a trap.

Muffled Spanish curses brought Trace’s attention back to the street. There they were. His eyes narrowed. Four of Torino’s henchmen. Lucky him. Maybe a security camera he missed in the darkness caught enough movement for Torino’s men to track his progress from the estate.

Trace activated his mic. “Four tangos,” he whispered.

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