“Happy happy joy joy, we get to work with the feds,” said Trey Jernigan. He filed into a briefing room along with five other Baltimore SWAT team members.
One of the other guys on his team, Joe Thompson, rolled his eyes at Trey. “Don’t piss off the DEA dude.”
Trey just grinned at him. Six people from SWAT had been tapped to assist with a DEA operation Trey had only been with the team eight months and he wondered why he had been picked. All the others who were chosen were guys who’d been part of SWAT at least a decade.
They sat at several long tables facing a screen on the wall. A man Trey was unfamiliar with was fiddling with the laptop attached to a projector. The man huffed a sigh of frustration and turned to face the group. “I’m Special Agent Craig Martinez of the DEA. I work for the DC field office. You’re all here because we need some extra manpower for an operation that’s going to take place in about thirty-six hours. I know that’s really short notice, but some very critical information has come to our attention, and needs to be moved on fast.”
He pushed a button to activate the projector. Photos of four men were displayed.
Trey had to blink. Aw hell, he knew the last one on the right. It showed a man with shoulder length dark hair, a sharp narrow face and a quirky half smile. Landon Cross. He had been Trey’s best friend up until the last year of high school. The two of them had been inseparable, closer than siblings, until Landon had betrayed him. What kind of friend outs you to your ultra-conservative fundamentalist parents? Why didn’t it surprise Trey that Landon was in deep s**t with the DEA? Yeah, that sounded so fitting.
Martinez continued. “The first one is Jorge Sotolongo. He runs the mid-Atlantic area for the Azor cartel. They specialize in cocaine but dabble in everything else, and I mean everything. There’s a little gun running, prostitution, extortion, you name it. The second guy is his right hand man, Luis Perez. The two of them have been operating together for about six years. Number three is a new player, Vigo Petrowksi. He’s recently begun moving into Sotolongo’s territory, and he’s got ties to the Russian mafia. We have Intel that there could be a war brewing; which brings us around to the last guy. His name is Landon Cross. He’s ours. I mean that literally. He’s DEA. He’s been involved in a deep cover op inside the Azor cartel for ten months.”
Trey had to blink. Landon? DEA? Uh…he didn’t know what to make of that.
Martinez switched the picture to a telephoto long shot of a group of industrial buildings. “We were almost ready to pull Cross out and do a full scale raid when we got word his cover was blown. That was about twenty—four hours ago. We’ve been doing a mad scramble ever since. Rumor has it, he’s still alive, but the cartel is none too happy with him. We suspect he’s being tortured for information. You know how these people operate. It may already be too late. He may be dead. If he isn’t, we need to get him out of there fast. Six of us and the six of you are going to execute a search and rescue as covertly as we can manage. Anyone else we can take out or any information we can gain along the way, so much the better. Jernigan, you are our special player.”
Trey met Martinez’ gaze. When Martinez had gotten to the part about “torture”, Trey had already begun to guess his role. Trey was ex-USAF, specifically an ex-PJ. PJ was the nickname of sorts given to the Para-rescuemen, one of the most hard-ass elite soldier divisions in the US. Also the only group whose main purpose in life was combat search and rescue. In addition to combat training on par with the SEALs, Trey was a combat paramedic. He’d still be a PJ if he hadn’t had an up close and personal experience with an IED that knocked him unconscious for more than twenty minutes and wiped nearly twenty-four hours from his memory. There was a rule in the regs that said any PJ with a loss of consciousness injury was automatically assessed for a medical discharge. Trey had suffered eight weeks of moderately serious post-concussion syndrome two years earlier. It had eventually resolved itself, but he was now a SWAT team medic because he couldn’t be a PJ anymore.
“Presuming he’s not dead,” said Trey. “Do we have any information on what might have been done to him?” He didn’t like the guy he was assigned to rescue, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do his job.
“None. I wish we did. Our last surveillance update implies we know where he’s being held. There haven’t been any signs of body disposal so we’re operating on the assumption that he’s still alive. I know that sounds like precious little information but it’s all we have. Let’s move on to what we know of the area he was last seen.”
The next hour was spent looking at partial floor plans and aerial surveillance views while talking about which entrances might provide easiest access.
As the SWAT team went to gather equipment, Trey lagged quietly at the back of the group. He was getting sent to rescue a guy he loathed. It wasn’t like he could back out. Maybe Landon would be dead. Did he still hate the man enough to wish for that option? Enh, maybe not quite that much.