Hitting Xtremes - Em Petrova Page 0,1

their forty-ninth state which they spoke of. He’d spent a brief time in Alaska with a couple friends right out of high school, hiking and camping in the mountains, but he always hoped his work would take him that direction again.

“Xtreme Ops,” Nash concluded. “And you’re number one on the list for team captain, Penn. Now get your ass to Home-Sec HQ today and claim that spot. You’re getting one more chance not to fuck up the family name.”

Penn huffed a laugh at his brother’s harsh statement. “Whatever I’ve fucked up, you made up for.”

“Penn.” His voice sounded with warning.

“It’s gonna take me a while to get a flight out of Thailand, big brother.”

“What the fuck are you doing in Thailand? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear that you just risked your life in that fucking cave. I’ll let the head of OFFAT know that you’re coming. No stop-offs to get laid, either. Got it?”

“And here I had a little honey-skinned Thai beauty and her friend ready to wrap themselves around me.” He didn’t, but his lie made Nash groan, and anytime a little brother could get a rise out of his big brother, it was a good day.

“Don’t make me look like an incompetent ass, Penn.”

“On my way now.”

“Damn, you’re really going to take this opportunity?”

Now that Penn had the idea locked in his brain, he couldn’t think of letting it slip by. He grabbed his things off the ground, jammed his boots on his feet and started walking toward the small parking area where he’d left his rental.

Fighting traffickers, drug lords, Russian mafia, arms traders and any number of border patrol problems, all in the setting of a land that both awed and thrilled him, seemed like the most exciting opportunity he’d ever be handed.

“I’ll call you when I land in Virginia, Nash.”

“I’ll be waiting. And I’m fucking thrilled that you won’t be working solo anymore. That shit’s been scaring all of us since the day the Rangers gave you your walking papers. At least now you’ll have a team of men watching your back. I gotta run. Call me.”

“Will do. And Nash?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.”

Chapter One

“Welcome aboard, sir. I hope you enjoy your flight with Wild Alaska.”

Penn looked at the kid who couldn’t grow more than a patchy beard standing off to the side of the entrance to the puddle jumper aircraft. He didn’t even want to think about his hairless balls.

He hoped to hell this guy wasn’t his pilot, but he was glossing over the situation to himself. The young man wore the pilot’s uniform of starched white shirt and cap.

Penn gave a single nod as he crowded his six-foot-two frame under the plane door and hunched through the narrow aisle to his seat. He’d flown on everything but a hot air balloon in his line of work, but he was accustomed to catching rides on military fighter jets or chartering private planes in Central America. The puddle jumpers were the worst for their lack of space.

His shoulders took up his seat and projected into the aisle. Times like these he felt like a giant fitting himself into a child’s playhouse. He flipped the tiny window shade open to reveal a miniscule window smaller than his hand.

Staring beyond the wing at the airport tarmac, he reminded himself the adventure didn’t lie in the journey in this case. Once he reached the rendezvous point of Nanouk Ridge to meet up with his new team, then the real adventure would begin.

Xtreme Ops. He didn’t know why he’d been earmarked as leader, when he worked solo for the past five years. Though he considered himself a bit of a loner, he looked forward to the challenge of leading men.

He ran through his itinerary in his brain—arrive in Nanouk Ridge. Meet with his team. He planned to share a dinner and bond a bit, which was damn important in this line of work. If you didn’t trust the man on your six, you didn’t have a team. OFFAT commissioned them all living quarters and their equipment was on site, so he planned a training session to ensure all were up to snuff.

He also hoped their headquarters was better than the dump the Ranger Ops initially operated out of, but knowing government funding, he wouldn’t get his hopes up.

Two other passengers boarded, looked at Penn taking up part of the aisle and skirted past him to find alternative spots to sit. He fastened his seatbelt, which barely wrapped around his body,