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Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Cheating the Devil
A Deimos/Trident Security/Delta Force Team Crossover - Deimos Book 2
Samantha A. Cole
Suspenseful Seduction
Contents
Deimos
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
Other Books By Samantha A. Cole
Author’s Note
About the Author
To my grandmother for giving me the love of romance.
Deimos
Deimos—the Greek god of terror; symbolized by the serpent; son of Ares, the god of war, and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love; twin brother of Phobos, the god of fear.
The United States fought for their independence, hundreds of years ago, and won. Now, they are faced with a new fight—the one against terrorism. The government has called forth operatives, hand-picked for their skills and intelligence, to defend America’s borders and shield its citizens from those who wish them harm. These men and women have willingly “died” for their country, only to be reborn under a new identity, with one common goal—to hunt, and terminate, if necessary, those hell-bent on destroying the American way of life. Joining forces with elite members of the US military, they rain terror down on their adversaries whose agendas include murdering any innocents disagreeing with their religious or political beliefs.
Enemies of the United States, there is no safe place for you to hide—Deimos will find you.
Chapter One
Slowing pulling down the sheet, Bradley Barton exposed his lover’s bare back, then laid light kisses across her shoulder blade. Her skin was exquisite—soft, smooth, and tanned. His morning wood nestled against her thigh as he ran a hand over her shapely ass.
“Mmm. What time is it?” Avery murmured as she stirred.
He brushed his lips over her spine. “Oh-six-hundred.”
“What!” The last of the covers went flying as she jumped from the bed and rushed into the master bedroom’s attached bath, unfazed by her nakedness. “Brad, you were supposed to wake me earlier! We have to be at the airport by 7:30! I swear, if I’m not wearing my bikini and sipping a Mai Tai by the pool in Aruba by 2:30, you’re going to be on my shit list.” He heard the shower turn on, then she stuck her head back around the door jamb and pointed at him. “And that’s not where you want to start our vacation.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She grinned at him, then shook her head and disappeared into the bathroom again. Brad debated whether to join her but figured there’d be plenty of time for intimacy during the next seven days. How he’d gotten so lucky to have such a gorgeous, kick-ass woman interested in him was beyond comprehension. At fifty-six, he’d had more than his fair share of women over the years, but they’d been nice and sweet, with safe careers, and had eventually gotten tired of sharing their man with the United States Army. Even his ex-wife had left him shortly after their fifth anniversary, unwilling to uproot their daughter, Lori, for a transfer to yet another base—the third one in as many years. Brad hadn’t been surprised when Diane had asked for the divorce, and he’d been relieved at the time. The only thing that’d hurt was the fact his visits with Lori had become few and far between. When he’d moved to Fort Hood to take a new assignment with Delta Force, they’d stayed behind in Fayetteville, North Carolina. After Diane remarried a few years later, they’d moved to Jacksonville, closer to the East Coast.
Following the divorce, Brad had run through a bunch of one-night stands, since his training and missions didn’t leave him with a lot of time for anything more—at least not for a few years—and he’d been fine with that. Then, as he climbed the ranks to colonel, he’d dated a few women here and there—some lasting a few weeks, others a few months. But none of them, not even his ex-wife, could ever hold a candle to Avery Knapp.
At fifty-five, she had a petite, yet fit, body women half her age would kill for. Her shoulder-length, platinum hair was natural and highlighted the brown in her hazel eyes. She was intelligent, witty, caring, and, most of all, a bad-ass when she needed to be. At twenty-five, fluent in Mandarin, Malay, and Nepali, and about to graduate from Georgetown University with a master’s degree in Asian Studies, Avery had been recruited by the CIA. After working for them for five years as a covert agent, she was then recruited to join the ranks of a new agency—one that was even more secretive. Until two years ago, Brad had never heard of Deimos—named for the Greek god of terror—and that was saying a lot, since he commanded some of the most clandestine military operatives on the planet.
He knew all too well Avery couldn’t talk about most of the things she’d done over the sixteen years working as a covert operative for Uncle Sam, but he was glad that was all behind her now. Having unofficially retired from the agency—one never fully retired from black-ops agencies—she’d gotten her nursing degree and was now assigned to help another female Deimos operative recover from injuries received on a mission that had left her in a wheelchair. Unable to work in the field anymore, Haven Caldwell had been appointed to the intelligence division, working from her handicapped-accessible house, and needed someone with a high security clearance to be her aide. Avery lived in a guest house on the secure Harker Heights property that’d become Haven’s home. She cooked, cleaned, and helped the younger woman with her rehab.
Ironically, some of Brad’s men had been on the same mission when Haven had been shot in the back. One of them, Lucas “Frisco” Ingram, had not only rescued her but had fallen in love with her in the aftermath. It had taken a while for him to win her heart, but now the two were an engaged couple. It was through them, and another joint mission, that Brad and Avery had met.
“Shower’s all yours. Get a move on, Shrek.” With a towel wrapped around her torso and another around her wet hair, Avery gave him a flirtatious wink, before reaching for the clothes she’d left out on a chair that sat in the corner of the bedroom. He loved the private nickname she’d given him since, at six foot three, he towered over her by a good eleven inches. She never used the moniker around others, for which he was grateful. The nickname he’d been given by his fellow Delta operatives, years ago, was “Tank,” but with his current rank, there were few people at Fort Hood who used it.
“Yes, ma’am!” He tossed the sheets aside, unashamed that he was still semi-hard. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before over the past four months since they’d started dating.
About fifty minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of the Killeen-Fort Hood Regional Airport as Avery disconnected the phone call she’d been on. Brad turned off the engine and glanced at her. “Roxie’s okay?” he a
sked, having caught a few tidbits of her conversation with Haven.
“Yeah, Haven said she’s mopey, probably just missing me. This is the first time I’ll be leaving her behind for more than a few hours.” Roxie was her golden retriever/border collie mix she’d left in Haven and Frisco’s care. The Delta operative had moved into his fiancée’s home last month after he and his team had returned from a three-month mission overseas.
Pulling the handle to open the driver’s door, Brad smiled. “She’ll probably give me an attitude when we get back for taking you away.”
“Nah. She loves you too much. You spoil her rotten with treats. And don’t deny it; I see you sneaking them to her all the time.”
“Hey, bribery works. She’s not climbing between us on the couch or in bed anymore.”
Avery laughed as she got out of the SUV and met him at the tailgate. He retrieved their suitcases and locked the vehicle. Taking the two smaller, carry-on bags, he sat them on top of the larger suitcases, then wheeled all four toward the small, private terminal. A friend of his, Randall Munro, had his own four-seater plane and had volunteered to fly them to Houston where they’d catch a commercial flight to the island. The guy had family in the city, so he often flew down there to visit, and Brad had taken him up on the offer.
After settling Avery into a seat inside the terminal and leaving the bags with her, he went out the back door in search of Randy. Brad spotted the man doing a preflight checklist on the plane a short distance away, at the same time Randy had looked up and noticed him. The pilot flashed his five fingers three times indicating he needed another fifteen minutes. Since they’d gotten there early, Brad had expected that and gave his friend a thumbs-up.
Stepping back into the terminal, Brad pulled out his cell phone and found the number he wanted, then waited for the call to be picked up.
“Bryson.” Captain Keane “Ghost” Bryson was one of the Delta Force officers serving under Brad’s command.
“Captain, it’s Colonel Barton.”
“Good morning, sir. Are you on your way to Aruba yet?”
He stared out the window as another plane took off with a roar from the main runway a mile away from the private terminal. “Just got to the airport and we’ve got a few minutes, so I figured I’d check in. Anything I need to know about?”
Bryson gave him an update on a few things that had popped up over the last fifteen hours since Brad had left the base to start his leave. There was nothing pressing on the agenda, and even if there was, his men could handle it. They were the best of the best, and he trusted them implicitly. “All right. Sounds good. I spoke to Colonel Sheppard last night. Notify him if anything comes up. I’ll also be checking in during the week.”
“Always have to have one foot on the base, huh? Everything will be fine, sir. Enjoy your vacation and your woman.”
Those last two words had him glancing over his shoulder to see Avery reading her Kindle, and he felt a stirring in his groin. Her hair was in a stylish bob that framed her pretty face. She’d chosen to wear a red, short-sleeved, Jersey-knit dress, that stopped just above her knees, and white, canvas, slip-on shoes for the five-and-a-half-hour trip to the island. Not for the first time in the last few days, he wondered what her bikini looked like since she wouldn’t let him see it until they got there. She really was a gorgeous woman no matter what setting or clothing she was in. And once again, he wondered how he’d gotten so lucky this late in life. “Thanks.”
Disconnecting the call, he made two more quick check-ins with other officers before striding back over to Avery. She lifted her head and smiled at him. “Everything okay?”
He took the seat next to her and tucked his phone into the thigh pocket of his khaki cargo pants. “Sounds like it. You know, it’s been so long since I took an actual vacation, I can’t help but feel everything will go to shit if I’m not ten minutes from the base.”
Smiling seductively, she set her hand on his thigh and squeezed. “Don’t worry, Shrek, you’ll remember how to enjoy yourself. I’ll do everything I can to make sure you do.”
“Yeah?” He asked while raising a brow.
“Uh-huh.” Leaning closer, she brushed her lips against his. “Everything.”
“Have mercy, woman.”
“Never.”
Chapter Two
When the huge Boeing 777 leveled off, Avery hit the button that would recline her first-class seat a little bit and took another sip of the champagne she’d been given prior to takeoff. Having a friend who worked in the executive offices of the airline had its perks. Avery flew first class for coach fares almost every time she went somewhere, which wasn’t often. Back when she’d worked as a field operative for the CIA, and then Deimos, she’d traveled all over the world on a regular basis, but since her semi-retirement, she’d only flown within the fifty states, depending on where she was needed.
After burning out as an operative, which wasn’t uncommon after twenty years of service, she’d decided to go into nursing. Yes, it had been a dramatic turnaround, going from espionage and assassinations to helping people heal from injuries or deal with a medical issue, but it’d been time for her to move on. She’d had too much blood on her hands, and saving lives instead of taking them gave her a sense of atonement. While she’d never killed an innocent person, she still regretted every time she’d had to end someone’s life, even if it was to ensure the safety of the citizens of the United States.
Glancing at Brad doing the Killeen Daily Herald’s crossword puzzle from yesterday’s Sunday edition, she smiled to herself. It was one of the habits she’d learned he had over the past few months. He didn’t do the smaller daily ones, saying most of them were too easy, but the Sunday puzzles were larger and more challenging. After he completed it, he’d move onto the Jumble and Sudoku puzzles, and then the cryptograms. Usually he did them after breakfast on Sundays, over a cup of coffee or two, but had saved this week’s puzzles for the trip. The man had brains and brawn, which, combined with a sense of humor, alpha presence, gentleness, and good looks, had drawn her to him the first few times they’d met, before he finally asked her to dinner one night. If he hadn’t, she’d been close to asking him out, but had held off as an unaccustomed shyness had come over her whenever he’d been around. Never in her life had she been tongue-tied in a man’s presence, nor did she blush often, but Bradly Barton gave her the butterflies in her stomach that hadn’t been there since she’d been a teenager. Every time he aimed his steel-gray gaze at her, her body responded in the way nature had intended when two people were attracted to each other. And when he winked and smiled seductively at her, her knees would turn to jelly and she’d grow wet from wanting him.
Reaching up, she brushed her fingers across the nape of his neck, where his salt-and-pepper hair was barely an eighth of an inch long. It was longer on the top, but still Army regulation length. He hadn’t shaved this morning, telling her she should prepare herself for some whisker burns on her inner thighs this week. He usually didn’t shave on the weekends, but she’d never seen him with more than a two-day beard, which just enhanced his good looks, in her opinion. From the appreciative looks he got from females of all ages, wherever they went, Avery wasn’t the only one who thought he was a silver fox.
When he glanced her way, she asked, “What time are Lori and her boyfriend landing in Aruba?”
Brad let out a sigh. She knew he was happy his daughter had agreed to join them on the island—he’d wanted the two women in his life to meet—but he was also nervous about it. Throw in the fact the twenty-four-year-old was being accompanied by the guy she’d been dating for a few months—the one who was four years older than her—and Brad was not exactly looking forward to the awkwardness that was sure to come.
“They’re supposed to land about twenty minutes after us. While we’re waiting, I’ll get our vehicle.” He paused. “I hope this kid she’s bringing isn’t an asshole.”
“She still didn’t tell you anything about him when you spoke to her
last night?”
He shook his head. “Nope. All I know is he’s twenty-eight and his name is Cameron. She wouldn’t tell me his last name because she didn’t want me investigating him before I met him. So, of course, I’ve got all these crazy thoughts going through my head about this guy. Does he have a prison record? Is he a drug dealer? Is he a bum that doesn’t even have a job? I mean, I know she’s a talented tattoo artist—not my first choice of a career for my only daughter, but it is what it is—but you never know who’s going to walk into the place. The clientele can range from frat boys, to skells, gang members, and criminals, or party girls and soccer moms.”
“Well, you said the place is in a nice part of town and the owner never leaves her there by herself, so it sounds like she’s safe enough. I’m sure her boyfriend’s a nice guy—and if he’s not, between the two of us, we’ve got plenty of people we can call to dispose of the body.”
Brad snorted then chuckled, the anxiety about meeting his daughter’s beau leaving his face. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“No problem. Now, finish your puzzles because when we get there, you’re all mine.”
The first few hours of the flight were pleasant with very little turbulence, which was the only thing Avery hated about flying. On a trip to China, early in her CIA career, she’d had a scary flight. While going through a storm, the turbulence had been so violent the aircraft had shaken and dipped up and down, overhead bins had popped open, the flight attendants had needed to be buckled in, and everyone had prayed. Avery, and every other passenger, had been white-knuckled, nauseous, and pale as a ghost until the pilot had finally gotten them through it. Ever since, at the slightest drop or shimmy of a plane, Avery’s heart rate spiked, and her gut clenched. She just kept telling herself the odds of becoming the President of the United States or being struck by a meteorite outnumbered the chances of being killed in a plane crash until the moment passed.
Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Cheating the Devil: A Deimos/Trident Security/Delta Team Crossover (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 1