A Covert Affair (Deadly Ops #5)(69)

Breathing as hard as he was, she simply nodded and let her leg drop. She didn’t ask if he’d call, didn’t ask anything at all. Just nodded. And there was a hint of resignation in her gaze, as if she expected that to be their last kiss.

No fucking way. Whatever had happened between them, they could move past it. He refused to believe otherwise. “I’m not letting you go,” he growled before turning and shutting the door behind him.

After whatever this op was, he was talking to Burkhart. He needed to be honest with Amelia if they had a shot at moving forward. He couldn’t ask for pure honesty from her and give her less. But it went both ways. They needed to start their relationship with nothing between them. There was still the matter of the information from the file on her that Burkhart had given him. Nathan didn’t care about how she’d gotten her start in business, though, only that she came clean with him about that too.

If she trusted him enough to tell him, maybe they had a real shot.

“No more movement along the perimeter,” Nathan said quietly into his comm as he looked through his NVBs—night-vision binocs. From his position on top of the abandoned warehouse across the street, he had a good visual of their target’s exterior. “Everyone report.”

Bell, Freeman, Dax, and the other men in his twelve-man team reported that they were in place and all saw the same thing he did.

As of twenty minutes ago, there had been no movement along the gated perimeter of a warehouse the NSA suspected of holding kidnapped women and children. Burkhart wasn’t certain if this was related to the operation they were trying to bring down, but they weren’t going to turn a blind eye to it regardless. Lopez had given Selene a tip that some Russians had been running a small slave trade and using this warehouse as their base of operations.

Fuckers were about to go down.

“Ten-four, headed down. Elliott, what’s your visual?”

“Except for a few homeless people, you’re clear for three blocks surrounding the target.” Elliott, as usual, was in the command center, keeping watch via CCTVs and other cameras he’d hacked into.

“I’m on my way down to ground level. In fifteen seconds we move in. Everyone knows their positions.” They’d put this tactical team together quickly, gearing up at home base and moving out in company-owned SUVs. They’d studied the blueprints of the place and, since it was basically a giant warehouse, it wasn’t hard to decide where to infiltrate.

With twelve of them, they were working in tandem, each pair entering together in a hard entrance.

“Explosives are in place,” Dax said quietly. He was the only one who’d already breached the fenced perimeter, using the cover of darkness to evade detection—and thanks to Elliott, who’d fucked with the video capabilities coming from the warehouse, it was a lot easier.

“Our guys just got off the phone with their ‘security provider,’” Elliott said, laughter in his voice. “They think it’s a widespread malfunction across a grid in the city. You guys are good to go.”

Nathan smiled to himself as he stepped out onto street level across from the abandoned building. The Russian thugs they were about to infiltrate had called their security company when their system went haywire, but Elliott had intercepted the call.

Now it was up to Nathan and his guys to do the rest. “Freeman and I are going through first. The rest of you follow in ten-second increments.”

After disabling the alarm system, they’d created a breach in the ten-foot fence line. Now they’d go inside in twos, fanning out to their designated position.

They’d all done enough ops similar to this that it was standard operating procedure, but Nathan never let his guard down.

M4 in hand, he slipped through the cutout in the fence, Freeman right behind him. Their soft-soled boots barely made a sound over the pavement as they moved quickly across the open space surrounding the warehouse.

Moonlight and the natural illumination from the city gave them enough of a visual that they didn’t need their NVGs.

There was no outer movement that he could discern as he raced to the far west corner of the warehouse. High along the building were a few windows. Light streamed out from them. Once he and Freeman were in place, he mentally ticked off the time, waiting for his last guy to check in.

Barely two minutes later, Dax murmured, “In place.”

He was the last one Nathan was waiting for. Their intel told them that they should expect a dozen armed men inside. He knew his guys could take triple that and still come out on top, but he liked these odds. He pulled his custom-fit gas mask down over his face. They all had on full headgear, covering their heads and faces except for eyes, nose, and mouth, but the gas mask was necessary for their next move.

“Everyone ready?” he asked as he pulled a canister from his utility belt. He and Freeman plastered themselves back against the outer wall.

“Affirmative,” came the replies from everyone.

“Hit it, Delta.” Delta was Dax’s call sign for this op. He’d set the charges; now it was time to blow everything.

A second later multiple explosions ripped through the air. The ground rumbled slightly beneath them. Excluding the rolling door at the front, there were four regular doors on each side of the building. Or there had been.

They’d all been blown free.

Adrenaline pumping hard, Nathan tuned out the shouts from inside as he tossed in a canister of tear gas through the newly created hole. Freeman did the same.