Texas SEAL (SEALs of Coronado Book 3)

  Texas SEAL

  SEALs of Coronado

  By Paige Tyler

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2017 by Paige Tyler

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the author.

  Cover Design by Gemini Judson, Cover Gems

  Editing by Wizards in Publishing

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Dedication

  With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband, without whose help and support I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant any girl could ask for!

  Thank you.

  When a woman from his past shows up on his doorstep, Navy SEAL Trent Wagner isn’t sure what to expect. The little sister of his best friend back in high school, Lyla Torres is all grown up now and even more beautiful than he remembered. He’d always had a thing for her back then, but that damn bro code meant she was off limits.

  That was then—this is now.

  Before Trent can act on the sparks that obviously still exist between him and Lyla, he’s going to have to use his SEAL training to help her find her brother. His old friend has messed up his life pretty good since high school, getting into drugs and doing some time in jail, and now he’s missing. Trent knows it’s not a good idea to get involved in someone else’s problems, especially when they could end up getting both him and Lyla thrown into prison—or killed. But Trent has never been able to say no to a beautiful woman, especially when it’s one he’s had a crush on since he was in high school.

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  Prologue

  Al Qanat, Northwestern Iraq near the Syrian Border

  “YOU’VE GOT TO be frigging kidding me.”

  At the words, Navy SEAL Trent Wagner turned to the door of the small mud brick hut where he and the other members of his Team—Logan Dunn, Nash Cantrell, and Dalton Jennings—had been waiting for the past several hours. Dalton didn’t recognize the four men who’d walked into the building, but one look at his teammates’ faces suggested they definitely did. And none of them seemed happy to see the newcomers.

  So much for this mission being simple.

  Three days ago, ISIS fighters had captured a group of American and European missionaries providing aid to refugees in northern Syria and hustled them across the Iraqi border to Al Qanat. ISIS claimed the missionaries were instead spies and planned to spend a couple of days using the hostages to film a few propaganda videos to improve recruitment before beheading them and posting the clips on the Internet for the world to see. Trent supposed the terrorists probably thought that would convince people ISIS was still a force to be reckoned with, even as the rest of the world kicked their ass.

  The plan had been for Trent and his Team to slip into the encampment on the edge of Al Qanat and rescue the missionaries at precisely 0200 hours, when there’d be the least number of guards. They’d sneak in, deal with the guards, and rescue the missionaries without engaging in any serious fighting then load the missionaries on a helicopter outside the city before going back to laser designate the ISIS camp for an unmanned Predator bombing run.

  If everything had gone according to plan, the entire mission would be over and done with by 0300 hours. It was nearly 0430 now.

  Trent and the guys had been getting ready to move in when the secure satellite text message had come through, telling them to hold their position and that a second special operations team was being brought in to join them. That hadn’t made a lot of sense to any of them. This mission had been planned from the get-go for a small, four-man team. Why the hell would Special Operations Command suddenly think they needed additional resources?

  “Should have known,” Logan muttered. Tall with dark blond hair, he had blue eyes, which were currently filled with disdain. “The only agency SOCOM would be willing to hold up a rescue mission for is the CIA.” He glared at the four men who’d just come in. “Let me guess. ISIS wasn’t lying when they claimed one of the missionaries is a spy. You slipped a CIA plant into Syria posing as a missionary, didn’t you?”

  None of the CIA guys said a word, but they looked as pissed as Logan, Nash, and Dalton did.

  “Now might be a good time to remind you that I’m the new guy in this platoon, Logan,” Trent said. “Maybe someone could tell me what the hell is going on and make some introductions?”

  Trent had been on Coronado’s SEAL Team 5 since graduating from BUD/S, but only recently moved over to Logan’s platoon. While Trent loved the guys in his former platoon like brothers, he hadn’t minded the change. Logan’s platoon had a reputation for doing some crazy missions. That was cool with Trent. The way he figured it, if you were going to get shot at for a living, you might as well have fun while doing it.

  Logan pointed at one of the men on the other side of the hut, a stocky guy with dark, curly hair. “Say hello to Joe—he runs this SOG team.”

  Trent had to stop from whistling out loud. SOG—as in Special Operations Group. That explained a few things. The CIA’s special operations soldiers, they were responsible for carrying out military missions on behalf of the nation’s most secretive intel agency. Trent had never run into any of them before, but he knew there was no end to the kind of mischief they could get into. Except for hostage rescue. That wasn’t typically something they wasted their time with. Which meant Logan was probably right about them being here to save one of their own.

  That also explained why the air was tense with the possibility of violence even though they were supposedly all on the same team. Rumors going around SEAL Team 5 had it that Logan embarrassed the shit out of the CIA—and SOG in particular—about a month ago, when he’d slipped a Russian defector out from under their noses in order to help rescue his new girlfriend who’d been kidnapped. Trent didn’t know all the details, but, regardless, Logan and by extension, his platoon, weren’t on the best of terms with CIA SOG.

  But all that was in the past, or at least it should be. There were a lot of hostages in deep trouble who were depending on their working together. They could all be professionals here.

  “Don’t worry about what to call the other three,” Logan added with a snort. “I’ve come to think of them as Moe, Larry, and Curly. Though now that I think about it, I guess that would make you Shemp, wouldn’t it Joe?”

  Okay, so much for everyone being professional.

  “Logan, stick a sock in it,” Nash ordered before glowering at Joe and his guys. “Everyone else, take it down a notch.”

  Nash’s words didn’t seem to have much of an effect on Logan or the SOG guys. They looked like they were about two seconds from throwing haymakers.

  “Nash is right,” Trent said. “I know there’s some bad blood between you guys, but we don’t have time to screw around. We barely have an hour until sunrise. If we don’t get this rescue op going in the next few minutes, we’re going to have to wait until tonight, which means those hostages will hav
e to live through another day in this hellhole—if they lived that long. We need to move now, and we need to move together.”

  Something unspoken passed between Logan and the leader of the SOG team, and, a moment later, both men nodded.

  “Okay, we’ll do this together,” Joe said. “What’s the plan?”

  * * * * *

  Alongside his teammates, Trent carefully made his way across the dark, quiet courtyard toward the main building within the ISIS encampment. With no moon visible, it was nearly pitch black. Despite that, he and his guys hugged the wall of the brick building as they headed for the back entrance. The place used to be a food and medical supply warehouse for the small city before the ISIS soldiers had taken it over to house their troops and equipment as well as turn it into a makeshift prison for their captives. They didn’t need a lot of space for the latter. ISIS rarely let their prisoners live long enough for it to matter.

  If the intel they had was right, there’d be only three guards. At this time of night—or morning, rather—one would be on duty while the other two slept.

  Once Trent and his Team were inside, he and Nash would deal with the three guards while Dalton and Logan headed for the prison cells. In the meantime, Joe and his SOG guys would come in through a side entrance and take up a position between the cells and the main part of the warehouse where the majority of the ISIS fighters were sleeping. It was risky, but their job was to make sure reinforcements couldn’t get to the back of the building to help the guards—or interfere with the rescue. If the SOG guys hadn’t shown up, Trent and Nash would have done that job. The last thing any of them wanted was an unarmed hostage getting shot by some ISIS soldier who heard a noise and decided to see what it was.

  When they reached the heavy steel door, Trent grabbed the handle and gave it a careful pull. As expected, it didn’t budge.

  He pressed his ear to the door, listening for any sound of movement from within, but didn’t hear anything. Swinging his MP5 submachine gun over his shoulder, he turned off his night vision goggles and flipped them up. Making a motion to warn the others, he pulled the Tec Torch breaching tool out of his tactical vest and shoved the end against the door, right at the place the deadbolt would be located. The Tec Torch was about the size of a small flashlight and contained a thermite cartridge that burned at a temperature of over five thousand four hundred degrees when lit. The jet of molten metal that’d come out of the end of the breaching tool would only last for about two seconds, but during that time there wasn’t anything it couldn’t slice through.

  Trent checked to make sure Nash and the other guys were looking away so the flash of the blazing metal wouldn’t burn out their NVGs then flipped the arming switch, pressed the fire button, and averted his face to protect his eyes.

  The tool erupted in his hand, making a sound not much louder than a hissing cat. He moved the tool down the door a little, working by feel and experience, pulling on the handle at the same time. The torch cut the deadbolt away in less than a second.

  Trent yanked the door open, moving aside as the guys slipped past him. He tossed the spent and now useless torch aside and flipped down his NVGs then followed Nash into the small room where all three guards were sleeping. Unfortunately, the ISIS soldiers were already awake and reaching for their AK rifles.

  One of the terrorists opened his mouth to sound a warning to his ISIS buddies, but Trent and Nash fired their silenced weapons and dropped all of them before the men could make a sound. He and Nash hesitated only long enough to grab a ring of keys on a nail pounded into the wall by the door before heading out of the room.

  They found Dalton and Logan halfway down the hallway, their weapons pointed in the direction of the main part of the building. Logan motioned at several of the doors, giving Trent a nod. He nodded back, quickly getting to work figuring out which keys on the big ring went to which lock.

  Five open doors later, they had their eight missionary hostages and were ready to move out. Seven of the men were in fairly good shape. A little bashed, bruised, and weary, but mobile. The last man—who was almost certainly the CIA plant—had been badly beaten and was unconscious. Nash quickly checked him for major injuries, but in their current situation, he couldn’t do much for the guy. Nash and one of the other hostages draped the man’s arms over each of their shoulders and headed down the hall toward the door.

  Logan gave Joe and the other SOG agents the signal over the radio, letting them know they had the hostages and were moving out. The CIA guys had to hold their position long enough to ensure the hostages were clear and this mission was essentially over.

  Then a barrage of automatic weapons fire sounded from the direction of the main part of the warehouse, and Trent realized this mission was just getting interesting.

  “We’re cut off,” Joe said in Trent’s earpiece, the soft pop-pop-pop of the SOGs silenced weapons audible over the countless number of AK-47 assault rifles being fired. “Get the hostages out of here. We’ll slow these bastards down.”

  Trent looked at Logan, waiting to see what the senior ranking SEAL would say.

  Logan motioned toward the hostages then in the direction of back door. “Nash and Dalton, get them out of here and to the extraction point.” He glanced at Trent. “Let’s go save these damn spooks before they get themselves killed and blame it on us.”

  Nash and Dalton immediately hustled the missionaries out of the building while he and Logan ran toward the shooting.

  There were so many green tracer rounds blazing through the wide open central area of the warehouse that it nearly flared out Trent’s NVGs. But he didn’t need crystal clear vision to figure out what was going on. In the green shadows of his goggles, he made out four shapes huddled down behind heavy equipment racks. The CIA guys were returning fire, but they were pinned down and heavily outnumbered. They couldn’t stick their heads out long enough to properly defend themselves.

  Trent pulled a frag grenade out of his waist pack and yanked the pin. Nodding at Logan, he flung it toward the heaviest concentration of ISIS soldiers then ducked into the hallway after his teammate. A split second later, the grenade exploded, rocking the building and echoing in his ears.

  He and Logan darted back into the main room, immediately laying down fire. The grenade had taken out a lot of ISIS fighters, but there were more left to take their place, and they were fanatical enough to die for their cause instead of turning tail and running.

  In the end, it came down to training and discipline. Trent, Logan, and the SOG agents were simply better at hitting what they aimed at.

  “We’ll cover you,” Logan told Joe over the radio. “But move your ass!”

  The SOG guys might not like Logan, but they weren’t going to argue with him at the moment, not when their asses were on the line. The CIA agents moved fast, covering the distance between their side of the room and the entrance to the hallway in seconds while Trent blazed through a full magazine of ammo keeping the bad guys ducking.

  Logan tossed one of his grenades, and they were all halfway out the back door before it exploded. They didn’t slow down, leaping over the wall surrounding the courtyard and heading into the desert toward the extraction point.

  “We’re out of the building,” Trent called over the radio.

  The words had barely left his mouth before the soft drone of the Predator’s props churned through the air somewhere overhead. Seconds later, there was sharp crack as two five hundred pound bombs hit the warehouse behind them. Trent didn’t bother looking back to see what was left. There wouldn’t be much.

  The missionaries and the unconscious CIA spy were already loaded on the waiting Air Force CV-22 Osprey and the huge tilt-wing rotors beginning to pick up speed by the time Trent and the rest of the guys got there. Nash and Dalton were standing at the rear loading ramp, weapons ready and faces anxious.

  “Finally!” Nash shouted to be heard over the revving engine of the big aircraft that was half helicopter and half plane. “We were just about to go ba
ck to look for you.”

  Logan chuckled as they ran aboard the air transport and scrambled for seats among the hostages. “We would have been here sooner, but Joe and his guys slowed us down.”

  The engines revved more loudly as the aircraft leaned forward and took off, getting them airborne and away from the area quickly. Trent glanced at Joe and his SOG warriors, expecting a sharp retort to Logan’s jab.

  Joe laughed and shook his head. “It’s not our fault we don’t run as fast as you SEALs. You have more practice running away from shit.”

  Trent tensed along with everyone else as they waited to see what Logan would say, but his teammate chuckled.

  “Good one,” Logan said. “Did you come up with that on your own?”

  Trent laughed. Everyone else did, too, including the SOG guys.

  “But, seriously,” Joe said, looking at Trent, Logan, Dalton, and Nash each in turn. “We owe you, and that’s something we’re not going to forget. You ever need our help with anything, all you have to do is ask.”

  Then Joe and his guys were up and moving over to check out their spy, who was being tended to by an Air Force medic up near the front of the plane.

  “Might be nice having the CIA owing you a favor,” Logan said. “Never know when it might come in handy.”

  Chapter One

  “WHAT AM I going to do with two weeks of leave?” Trent asked, flopping back on the big sectional couch in his apartment and sipping his beer. “All we do in the SEALs is travel, travel, and travel some more. I sure as hell don’t want to travel somewhere on vacation.”

  On the other end of the couch, Nash was nursing his beer and clearly paying more attention to the Padres playing on the big screen TV than the conversation. “No one is saying you have to go anywhere on leave, Cowboy. They’re saying you have to burn some of it.”