Page 82 of Operation Heartbeat

“Tell me what happened,” Con addressed Henner. The SEAL’s clothing and gear were dusty from when he blew the door of that compound where they initially believed Deniz’s wife to be held.

“The insertion went as planned. We reached the target building without detection and located the hostage. I assessed the entrances and chose a back door as our point of entry. I wired the door with explosives and we entered with no incident.”

“You saw no guards?”

“Not at that time. We made it to the west wing before Mason spotted an armed man.”

Con turned his attention to Mason. “You neutralized the threat?”

Mason gave a stiff nod. “A single shot fired. No more were needed. We didn’t encounter any more threats. We located the hostage and verified her name before we got her out safely. She was moved to the nearest American embassy and then medevacked to the closest hospital.”

“Has she been reunited with her husband?” Con swept his gaze over the group of guys, almost prepared to see Sophieslipping in. It was too bad she was back at the hotel. She would want to hear this part.

Henner provided more information. “We were able to make contact with Deniz and he met us en route to the hospital. The couple will be provided with security courtesy of the CIA.”

“Good. Now.” He swept his gaze over the rest of the men who’d been assigned to stop that shipment. His gaze centered on Denver. “Tell me what happened.”

Denver Malone was always cool and calm. Even when he was bleeding out and they didn’t think he’d make it, he never batted an eye at what they were doing to save his life. It was almost as though he didn’t have anything to lose, therefore there was little to get upset over.

“We arrived on the dock on schedule with three minutes to spare. Upon arrival, several armed men jumped us, and we engaged in hand-to-hand combat.” Denver swiped a finger over the cut on his jaw and came away with a small smear of blood. He cleaned it on his tactical vest.

Con eyed him. He was there on that dock and he knew how everything went down. Why did he think that asking Denver for an accounting would give him another answer for why they’d missed that shipment? He didn’t have a better vantage point than Con did.

Denver went on, “I believe they were there to stop us from detaining the barge containing the shipment.”

He pushed out a breath. “That’s my take too.” He didn’t like making mistakes, but dammit, he should have guessed that the people sending that crate weren’t going to let them reach it so easily.

By the time they finished the skirmish, and several men lay dead—men with tattoos—the ship had left port.

Denver eyed him. “Should I continue?”

Con shook his head. “I made a bad call. The captain of the barge refused to stop, and until they’re in neutral waters, the Navy can’t stop them and board the vessel or search that crate. I’ll take the heat from Barrett when I debrief with him. At least we got the intel we needed about the group with the tattoo.”

Mason shifted his weight on the hard wood chair. “You captured one of the members of the gang.”

He nodded and folded his arms across his chest.

“Con made him sing,” Denver piped in with a grin that had all the other guys sharing the victory.

“Those guys are a bunch of common street rats. Thugs someone paid to do his dirty work. But they don’t have any idea who is giving them orders—they receive emails and texts anonymously and are paid the same way via a money app. I got his phone to hand to the analysts, but that group isn’t our focus now.”

Now that they were debriefed, Con wanted nothing more than to speak to Commander Barrett and put this mission to bed. So he could go back to the hotel and take a certain beautiful professor slash cryptographer to bed.

“Get out of your gear. Grab some food.”

His order made the men disburse to various parts of the safe house. Con didn’t hesitate to find an empty room and make the call to Barrett. While he got his ass chewed for the mistake on the dock, it wasn’t nearly as harsh as he expected.

It helped that Con already had a fix for his mistake. He shared the idea with his commander to get a team together to intercept the shipment before it reached its destination. Barrett agreed that it was a good plan B and told Con that he would put extra manpower on the task.

He stripped off his gear and took a brief shower. After an op, they all rode an adrenaline high for a short time, so the guys were in rare form, cracking jokes and bantering with each other.

Con would typically join in, but he had one goal in mind right now, and that was to return to Sophie.

Her words reverberated in his mind.Just come back to me.

The tender look in her eyes was something he’d carry in his heart for the rest of his life.

What would happen if he burned the rule book created for Blackout and claimed Sophie for his own?

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