Page 1 of Operation: Defiance

Prologue

One Year Ago

The op is running long. It’s been nothing but endless problems, though no one’s saying the words out loud.

We’re three days past the extraction window. If we don’t get the target out of here in the next twenty-four hours, he’ll be dead, and the past week camping out in grimy, abandoned buildings will have been a waste.

Our cover identities are wearing thin. Every time I have to answer to a different name, hold an expression I don’t feel, or lie down on that dirty floor, my jaw aches.

I’m still alert, but that’s not the same as fresh, and the distinction matters.

Especially on overwatch.

The wall gives me enough cover no one notices me up here, but I still feel too exposed. And the target should have made contact with Martinez an hour ago.

The rooftop is too hot. My shirt sticks to my back—a sensation that makes my skin crawl—and everything feels wrong, all the way down to my toes against my socks. And these are my favorite socks. My go-to pair when the days run on too long and masking gets to be too much for me to handle.

On the street below, something’s…off. It’s too quiet. Too clean. No overlapping voices, no shoppers, no traffic surge where there should be one.

I shift my weight on the balls of my feet and press my fingertips hard against one another.

Recalibrating angles is instinctual. A habit burned into me over more than fifteen years in the field. I can almost see it. The problem. The space where people should be that’s simply…empt.

A figure moves below, just long enough to register. Bulky jacket. Wrong for summer in the middle of Romania. He’s moving awkwardly. Shoulders hunched. Gait stiff.

There you are.

Another man emerges from the darkened doorway a second later. He’s less than half a step behind.

“Central,” I murmur, keeping my voice low. “Asset is mobile. They’re moving him.”

“Copy that,” the low voice in my ear says.

“If he just disappears,” I add, even though the last time I made this argument, I was shut down hard, “the threat vector shifts to his associates. I flagged that risk during planning.” I scan the street, then refocus on the asset. “Anyone he worked with who doesn’t vanish with him is going to get burned. Not tonight. Eventually.”

“We’re not staging a death,” Central cuts in. “That decision’s been locked for a month and signed off at the Director level. Exfil only.”

“Acknowledged. Moving to extract in⁠—”

The impact comes from behind me. A sharp, burning pain rockets through my shoulder, the percussive crack almost an afterthought.

I tuck and roll without thinking. Training takes over, guiding me into a safer position. “Contact,” I say into the comm, my breath steady. “I’m hit.”

“Can you move?” the agent in charge—a senior operative with the Global Security Directorate—asks.

I test my limbs one at a time. Fingers first. Wrist. Elbow. My left arm responds cleanly. The right lags when I try to lift it, heat spiking along the back of my shoulder.

Not dead. Unreliable.

I file it away as the pain deepens, a hot poker now instead of a needle.

“Yes. Right posterior shoulder is compromised. Shot came from my oh-seven-thirty. You have eyes on him?”

“Negative,” the steady male voice says.

If the shooter was still in play, Central’s drones would have locked onto him already. He’s in the wind. That tells me more than the hit.

This wasn’t suppressive fire. It wasn’t meant to end me. They want me on the move, not bleeding out.