Bad Cat Baby Blues (Shifter Squad Six 3) (2 page)

There were people piling out of the burning buildings, some ready to fight, some just ready to die. He heard gunfire starting to rattle the jungle below, a clear sign that the rest of Squadron Six was moving in. This wasn’t like it was supposed to be. This wasn’t perfect.

But that’s how their missions rolled sometimes. He had to be prepared for anything, and spirits above, he was. Nobody said Dutch had to like it, though.

“Movement in the warehouse,” Grim’s voice came over the comm, and Dutch turned his attention toward their main target.

Usually, they were tasked to take out every person there by either wiping them out or bundling them up for local authorities. Local authorities, of course, meant some rich prick who had paid them to take out some competition more often than not. Ultimately, Dutch didn’t care too much. His morals had been shaky for years and at the end of the day, any piece of shit that wasn’t roaming the Earth possibly killing innocent people anymore was a victory in his book.

This time, though, there were strict instructions not to leave anyone standing. It was unusual, to say the least, but not unheard of. The Firm was known for taking on jobs that weren’t completely kosher, and Squad Six knew about this first-hand.

They’d talked about it more than once, but the agreement was that they could turn down anything that didn’t quite sit well with their moral compass. Ridding the world of a bunch of drug dealers was squarely in the green for Dutch, though.

He didn’t hesitate for a second when he saw one of the burly guards running like he was chased by demons, heading straight toward Grant, who was covering Connor. Dutch let his finger hover on the trigger for a moment before pressing down, the satisfying sight of the man crumpling to the ground like a wet tissue following a second later.

“Warehouse stable,” he noted a second later, frowning slightly as he looked at the long, narrow building.

He knew there had to be at least five people in there, but none of them had run out yet. There were no back exits and the windows he could see showed no movement. He’d assumed that the warehouse guys would be some of the first people out, being on highest alert. But though he’d picked off the guards standing at the door, he couldn’t see anyone else trying to join the fight or make a run for it.

“The fuck’s going on here,” Dutch mumbled to himself, pushing the tobacco he was chewing into one corner of his mouth.

His knee throbbed with a dull ache, a present from a few years ago when he’d taken more than one bullet during the squad’s valiant show of hooking Connor up with his wife Cassie. He’d gotten caught in his nest by a wolf and it had almost killed him.

Since then, Dutch had been paranoid as all hell about his nests. There was nothing worse for a sniper than to get picked off while their attention was on a fight going on half a mile away. But still he never allowed anyone in the nest with him, no matter what.

“Cat Two, buildings three and seven cleaned out,” Grim called, trying to reinstate some order in the mayhem.

“Cat Five, building two cleaned out,” Grant confirmed.

The battle was getting more sporadic. Connor and the rest of the team had picked off the weak links and cleaned out the smaller buildings on the perimeter. The three huts that had been caught in the explosions were burning with an open flame, threatening to spread the devastation. But the would-be commandos were now nowhere in sight, sporadic gunfire from covered locations the only sign that there was anyone down there at all.

And the warehouse still stood like a beacon of silence, no muss, no fuss. Something wasn’t right. Dutch could feel it in his bones.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Ariadne

Everything was going… exactly the opposite of how it was supposed to be going.

Ari gritted her teeth, whiling her time away with the tiny packages of cocaine so pure she was pretty sure she could amuse half of Los Angeles with the little baggie she was packing. Sweat was rolling down her skin, licking at the delicate curve behind her ear, making it itch. She was annoyed and it wasn’t getting any better.

Can’t believe I’m still here,
she thought to herself, trying to determine what time it was.

It had to be past three in the morning, at least. The sun would be coming up again soon and she knew she had to be done with this shipment in time if she wanted to avoid Soyo’s misplaced anger. He never got too bad, admittedly, but she’d gotten a few smacks over the past few months and it was getting tedious pretending to be hurt by them.

“Are you about done?” she asked, remembering to flip from Spanish to English this time when addressing Roy, one of the guards who was on packing duty with her.

“I have to be. I’m falling asleep here,” he commented blandly, his cold, dead eyes staring at his work.

Peculiar. He’d never looked like the kind of guy who actually needed sleep. That went for most of the crew of the Silk Slayers, the dumbest name for a drug cartel she’d ever heard. But these weren’t just regular drug runners either. A good half of them were American, even though they had some Latin in their blood, and English was spoken as commonly as Spanish in the camp.

Ari had been in the business long enough to know that shit like that didn’t happen. Especially not in the middle of a jungle like this, with a big camp squirreled away like busy worker bees, everyone going through their tasks mechanically at best.

Yes, the coke was good, that much was obvious, and yes, they did move it in large shipments, but the longer Ari was involved, the more she felt that coke wasn’t the only thing getting transported by them between obscure South American nations and the United States.

Of course, The Firm wouldn’t listen to a word she said about it.

“You’re two months off schedule. Find out who they work for, who the main client is, and get out of there. We’re losing patience.”

That was the last message she’d gotten from her handler, and that had been more than a month ago. Ari figured she was lucky to still be standing. The Firm didn’t take kindly to having their orders ignored, or extended as she had done. But she couldn’t just drop the whole thing and walk out. It didn’t feel… right. There was something in the air that made her jaguar senses tingle and she couldn’t let go, couldn’t peel herself out of the operation and admit defeat.

Ariadne Jessica Gutierrez was a covert operative working for The Firm. Having been with them for little more than a year, this was her first big solo mission—to infiltrate the Silk Slayers and find out who they were working for. With her background in the Marines and later in the Narcotics Division of the New York Police Department, going undercover and getting the job done was something that she
lived
for. But this time, the plan wasn’t coming together and it frustrated her to no end.

The first day she’d met one of the Silk Slayers, a guy named Rollo, one of the only people involved in the crew who looked like a legitimate drug runner, Ari had gotten a vibe. They were too strict, too on edge. Too well-funded and careful to be random chumps trying to make it big next to the mega-cartels. It had taken a long time to become more than just a runner for them, smuggling drugs over the border in small amounts.

When she was invited into the fold, it had taken another month before she’d been allowed to “graduate” out of a dingy apartment in Rio to this wonderful stretch of jungle to slave away as a packer. The fact that she could boast a history of having nimble fingers and a finely attuned sense of scale for baggies of cocaine helped a lot, but that was a longer tale.

In any case, she was slowly gaining her spot in the organization, though she knew she was low on the totem pole. At least Soyo, the angry fuck running this particular operation, was willing to look her in the eye now and not treat her as some sort of a fancy wall-decoration.

She was one of the few women in the compound, and the fact that none of the men had tried to make awkward advances was also a pretty large flashing sign that there was something weird going on.

She just didn’t know what, yet.

Soyo was in and out of the compound all the time, sometimes spending days away with an armored guard. When the convoy came back, they sometimes carried in sealed wooden crates loaded with something that obviously wasn’t more coke, and hid it away under tarps at the back of the warehouse until it would get moved again. She was never allowed to see what it was, and by now she was sure that it held the key to this fucked-up nonsense.

You could call it quits, go back home. Sleep in a bed not covered by mosquito netting. Eat something that isn’t an unspecified type of gruel. Wouldn’t that be nice,
Ari thought to herself, letting her gaze roll over the people in the warehouse with her.

Roy, Shar, and Jola were packing like she was, and Tro was standing with his rifle in his hands, looking like he was as ready to fall on his face and sleep as he was to mow down any danger that came at him. Ari had no doubt that if she made the wrong move at one point, Tro or any of these other guys around her would be more than glad to put her out of her misery.

She was wiping sweat from her forehead, cursing the impossible heat, when the first explosion shook the compound.

“What the fuck!” Shar yelled, jumping up and going to the door as the rest of the bombs went off in quick succession.

Ari could see the flames from the window, reaching high and casting shadows against the dark green backdrop of the jungle.

“Shit, we’re getting hit,” Jola hissed through clenched teeth, getting out of his seat and starting to throw the packages into a big basket that had been sitting on the floor. “Cece, help me,” he said, snapping Ari into the moment.

She got up and started assisting, her hands doing the job with a notable lack of enthusiasm. All the while, her brain was running way ahead of her, trying to figure out who the hell would care enough to come and attack them. Drug-related cartel wars were common, yes, but the Silk Slayers had been extremely careful about staying out of the limelight, constantly moving the base to stay off of anyone’s radar that might have taken offense to their mere existence. And they were too small, too, to warrant bombs and carnage like this.

Most of all, though, Ari was trying to figure out how she could get her hands on a gun to avoid dying with the rest of these bastards.

They cleared the long table fast enough, with Shar and Tro standing at the door, peeking out. Neither one was running outside, like Ari would have expected from men who only knew violence. Instead, they waited. Muscles rigid, eyes alert, she couldn’t see an ounce of fear in any of the four men in the room. It was like they’d been waiting for this. While not happy about their camp going up in flames, they were sort of… blasé about it all.

Ari helped Jola carry the basket to the other end of the long warehouse and he yanked open a trap door built into the dirt floor. There was a big silo down in there, behind another safety door, with countless baskets of finely packed coke. Jola hauled the load in there and closed the hatches quickly, patting down the ground around the corners.

“So they won’t get our shit,” he announced mildly, taking Ari by the arm and dragging her back to the entrance.

Ari winced at his vise-like grip, but didn’t say a word. It was bad enough that she was stuck with these guys in the middle of a firefight, with no way to sneak out and disappear into the jungle until things calmed down. She didn’t want to piss them off while she was at it.

Jola checked his gun, his face stony.

“Soyo will be
pissed
when he gets back,” Shar noted mildly, watching the commotion outside with bored eyes.

“Good thing he got out with the shipment, then,” Tro commented, receiving an immediate, silencing glare from Jola.

“What shipment?” Ari asked, perking up a little.

She was faintly aware that her hands were rolling into fists and then loosening again time after time, like she was ready to go ten rounds with whoever came at her. It was a familiar feeling, that readiness to fight, kill or be killed. First Afghanistan and then the seemingly endless missions back in New York had taught her to always be on her toes.

It was hard enough existing in the life she’d chosen, but as a woman she had to be extra careful. Not that her gender would have any bearing on anything if she got caught. A bullet to the head was a bullet to the head, after all. So it was all the more surprising that she’d allow a slip like that.

Must be the heat.

“None of your business, Cece,” Jola gruffed, not bothering to look at her.