Read Unconditional Surrender for Free Online Page A

the top—and that usually meant all the way back through to Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina to Central Command, or CENTCOM, at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida—each team planned its own mission and the details were closely guarded. One tiny leak, one little slip-up, and lives could be lost.
    As the team leader it was up to him to make sure everyone’s head was in the game…starting with his. But their abrupt departure from San Antonio hadn’t left them much time to switch gears mentally. Slade hoped tonight would take care of that. A few beers, replaying some memories, and he expected them to be good to go.
    “I’m telling you,” Beau was saying, “that woman about knocked my socks off. Did you see those legs? They just about went on forever.” He grinned. “She’s a feisty one but the minute the door to that room closed she was on her knees and happy to be there.”
    “Mine was a little different,” Marc put in.
    Beau cocked an eyebrow? “In what way? I’m assuming she had all the right parts in the right places.”
    Marc balled up a sheet of paper he’d been glancing at and threw it at his friend. “Of course she did, numb nuts. I meant she seemed almost skittish, as if she wasn’t sure she should be there.”
    “You could have politely walked away and found someone else,” Slade reminded him.
    Marc shrugged. “Yeah, I could have. But there was something about her…”
    “Uh-oh,” Trey teased. “Words to be careful of.”
    “Will you back off?” Marc raked his fingers through his hair. “I asked Bruno about her on my way out that first night. Seems she’s been out of the scene for a while. Bruno said she has a habit of making bad choices where her Doms are concerned.”
    “Ouch.” This from Beau. “She may have more problems than you want to deal with. After all, who knows when we’ll get back to San Antonio and The Edge.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” March stretched. “I should have just played it light and enjoyed the pleasure. I know that. But I’m telling you, there’s something special about her.”
    “What about you, Trey?” Slade looked at his friend. “Did you meet someone who struck a nerve?”
    Trey nodded reluctantly. “I did. And I think we might have even exchanged names if I’d been around longer. We were just starting to find a rhythm. You know?”
    “And you, fearless leader?” Marc asked the question but they all stared questioningly at Slade.
    He shrugged. “Yeah. I met someone…interesting.” And wasn’t that putting it mildly. “But like the rest of you, we didn’t even get to the point of feeling safe exchanging names. I plan to fix that the next time I’m home. Whenever that is. And, by the way, y’all are invited to hang out at the ranch again when we get our next long break. I’ll get passes to The Edge like I did last time.”
    He’d been sitting with his feet on the metal desk, legs stretched out, leaning back in the creaky chair. Now he dropped his feet to the floor and sat up straight.
    “We’ve only got tonight left before it’s all hands on deck,” he reminded them. “Let’s get some decent food and some beer, and a good night’s sleep. We need to be sharp in the morning. Meeting’s at oh-nine-hundred.”
    But even as he ate and drank and joked with his men and tried to figure out what this mission would be, part of his brain was still on the very sexy auburn-haired female who had struck a chord so deep inside him. Maybe he could get a message to her through Bruno before they were on mission lockdown.
    Why the fuck didn’t I at least get her name?
     
    * * * *  
     
    The Hindu Kush was an unforgiving mountain system nearly a thousand miles long and two hundred miles wide, running northeast to southwest, mainly through Afghanistan, and dividing the Amu Darya River Valley and the Indus River Valley. It stretched from the Pamir Plateau, near Gilgit, to Iran and had over two dozen summits of more