Nori's Delta (Delta Team Three #1) - Lori Ryan

Chapter 1

His body made it on the plane but he felt like his stomach was still on the ground somewhere. Which wasn’t the least bit normal for him.

Heath Davis—known to his team and most everyone other than his dad and sisters as Woof—was the last to board the military transport set to take them to their next assignment. That was about all he knew so far. Waking up in the middle of the night and leaving for a mission with little or no notice came with the territory on Delta Team Three.

But he didn’t usually have to deal with the fog that surrounded his brain on this particular night and the crap feeling in the pit of his stomach. Even though the team had been out drinking the night before with Trigger and his team, a team they worked with often and had just finished a mission with, he didn’t expect to feel this way.

They’d met up with the guys at The Ugly Mug, a bar where they spent a lot of their down time. He probably shouldn’t have matched Doc shot for shot. That had been mistake number one.

When Grover and Oz joined in, shit had gone to hell fast.

Trigger and Lefty had brought their women and, truth was, it hurt to see Trigger and Lefty there with the women they’d fallen hard for. Somehow, despite the kind of work they do, those guys had made it work for them. They’d found amazing women who were nothing like the flaky, vain barracks babes who often threw themselves at them in bars, wanting nothing more than to say they’d fucked a special forces guy.

Heath had once hoped he might have the kind of love his friends had found, but it wasn’t looking like that was going to pan out for him.

So, yeah, he’d done something he hadn’t done in a long time. He’d gotten tanked and he was paying for it.

He opened his go bag and grabbed one of the small baggies he kept in the side pocket and tossed a handful of vitamins and supplements in his mouth. If it was a hangover, they might not help. But if he was getting sick, he needed to head it off now before it snowballed.

His teammate Zip, a guy who was all-smiles, all the time, handed him a bottle of water that Woof promptly used to wash down the pills and capsules. Jangles shook his blond head at both of them.

“They won’t save you,” Jangles said.

“But they won’t hurt,” Woof and Zip said in near unison. They both believed in the power of vitamins and homeopathic remedies and the team didn’t hold back on ribbing them on it.

Woof tipped his head back and finished the bottle of water. He knew the other thing that wouldn’t hurt was hydrating. Hitting the Middle East without feeling like he was all there would only get worse if he was dehydrated.

Merlin sank onto the bench beside Jangles, with Duff settling onto the bench across from them, rounding out the team. Merlin was the old man among them at thirty-five. Not that that was old, but his hair was starting to gray around the edges and there was no way in hell they weren’t going to point that out to him any chance they got.

Duff didn’t say anything, only gave a nod to each of them. He didn’t ever say all that much, though. He was a big son-of-a-bitch and if his size wasn’t enough to scare off most people, his personality was. He made a scrub brush look soft and cuddly. Come to think of it, he made a scrub brush look chatty, too. But he was one of the team and the men were loyal to the core to him, same as he was to them.

Merlin passed a heavily encased tablet around the group. “We’re heading in to grab Eleanor Bonham at the Adana airport in Turkey. She’s the Associate Counselor for the US Department of State. We’re going to escort her into the Republic of Kazarus for a covert meeting with Onur Demir.”

Woof rested his arms on his knees and leaned forward. “Head of the Kazarus Freedom Army?”

Merlin gave a nod as Jangles passed the tablet on to Zip.

“She’s been tasked with negotiating a covert agreement with the KFA. We support them off the books and, if they’re successful in overthrowing the current regime, they’ll support our efforts against Al Qaeda and ISIS,” Merlin said. “We’ve got intel that the Kazarus government has been