Authors: Sandra Brown
By the same token, if that same anyone had told him that his best chance for survival from said AK round came in the form of a hot, petite redhead who was built like a Vegas showgirl, swore like a Force Recon Marine and flitted around like Tinkerbelle on speed, he’d have told them to go blow smoke up someone else’s ass.
If that same farseeing SOB had told him he’d not only fall in love with that sexy little fairy but marry her, he’d have asked them exactly what kind of ganja they were smokin’.
Look at her,
he thought with more pride than he’d ever thought he was capable of feeling. Lying on her belly, elbows planted in the dirt, sighting down the barrel of her AR-15 and holding off the baddest of the bad guys while bullets whizzed all around them. She was a pint-size warrior woman, fierce and fearless and ready to take on an entire battalion if she had to, to keep them both alive. And she just might have to if help didn’t arrive soon.
“God, do you have…any idea how much…you turn me on…right now?” Blood loss made him slur his words but that didn’t stop him. “If you weren’t…already my wife, I swear…I’d propose. At the very least…proposition you.”
“I said, shut up. Save your strength, Reed, because if you die on me, so help me, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
“That’s…my girl,” he ground out around a grimace then cursed his useless right arm. He pressed harder on the compress, gritted his teeth against the ripping pain and prayed to God the quick clot Tink had emptied over the wound would do its thing soon. Best guess—he was well over a pint low. He needed to plug the leak fast. And more grim news—he couldn’t feel his hand anymore.
This was bad. This was so freakin’ bad.
* * *
Crystal Debrowski Reed bit down on her lower lip, wiped a trickle of sweat off her forehead with the back of a grubby arm and slowly swept the jungle through her rifle scope. Several silent minutes had passed since they’d last taken fire. No muzzle flashes. No bang-bangs. All was quiet—for the moment. But the bad guys were still out there. No question about that. She glanced over her shoulder at her husband lying on his back in the damp, decaying leaves and fetid jungle heat. His eyes were closed. His mouth was clamped tight with pain. The pasty pallor of his skin scared her to death. She needed Doc to work his magic and fix Johnny up. But Doc and Gabe were out of radio contact, only God knew where. So it was up to her to keep him alive and keep Reyes’s thugs at bay until they could hook up and get the heck out of here.
“Did I…mention,” her husband asked with that crooked, arrogant and totally smart-ass grin she’d fallen in love with, “that you…are sooo turning me on right now?”
“Yeah, you mentioned it,” she grumbled and kept her head on a swivel, checking 360 degrees around them at all times. “Which just goes to show how much blood you’ve lost.”
Looking like she did, she couldn’t “turn on” a lightbulb let alone compel a second glance from this tall, blond and gorgeous elite operative who just happened to be her husband and who had better not, by God, die on her.
Her hair looked like it had been groomed by an orangutan. Hell, it looked like orangutan hair—orange/red, short and spiky—and not in a glitz and glamour way that had originally turned the head of this sweet-talking Texan. Her face and arms were covered with camo paint, bug bites and blood. Johnny’s blood.
Oh, God
. Her stomach sank as she thought of just how much blood he’d lost. She could not lose this man.
Please, God, do not let me lose him.
“So…d’ya hear the one…about the mercenary…who walked into the—”
“Damn it, Reed,” she sputtered, frustrated and afraid for him. “You do
not
get to make me laugh, either. You need to save your breath, not keep my spirits up. I’m fine.”
And she was. Because she had to be. She wasn’t going to let her guard down. She was going to hold on until help arrived because Reed could not, and
would
not, die here.
“Gambler, Gambler, this is Tinkerbelle,” she whispered, cupping her Micom 3 Pathfinder radio mic close to her mouth. She had to risk raising Doc. “Do you read me, over?”
Several silent seconds ticked off before she gave up on Doc and tried Gabe.
“Angel, Angel, this is Tink. Do you read me, over?”
“Nothing?” Johnny asked after more tense seconds slogged by.
She compressed her lips and shook her head, trying to hide her growing desperation.
“Either they’re…out of range,” he said, “or they…can’t respond.”
Which she knew. Which worried her even more. If either Doc or Gabe were down, hit by enemy fire, the chances of any of them making it back to the extraction point were about as good as Reed making it an hour without flirting.
Trouble didn’t get any bigger than this. They weren’t dealing with run-of-the-mill hired guns. They were dealing with Reyes’s mercenaries, men who dealt in money and gold and lead. This was their compound, their ground. They owned it. Anyone who came looking for trouble was going to get a faceful of it.
Or in Johnny’s case, a shoulderful.
“How many…left, do you figure?” Johnny asked as his head dropped back heavily onto the dirt. Once again, his eyes were closed; his jaw was clenched tight in agony.
Crystal’s chest tightened. “In this group? Three, maybe four. But they’re bound to have called in reinforcements from other parts of the camp.”
“You need to…get out of here, babe. See if you…can hook up with…Doc and Gabe and…send them…back for me.”
“You’re delirious if you think I’m leaving you here alone. You can’t even shoulder your rifle to defend yourself.”
“Cover me…with leaves. They’ll blow…right by me.”
She shot him a look. “You’re over six feet tall. There aren’t enough leaves in Guatemala to cover you up. Besides, unless that damn dog finds a rabbit to chase, he’s going to sniff you out like rot on rancid meat.”
“Nice analogy,” he said on a weak laugh.
“You know what I meant.”
“I do. And you’re right. I forgot about…Fido.”
“Fido” was a Rottweiler. A big one. So far the drug runners had kept him on a tight leash because they knew exactly where Tink and Johnny were pinned down: fifty yards from a direct hit.
But Johnny was dead right about one thing. They had to move out while he still could. He was fading fast.
Crystal popped off several quick rounds then crawled backward the yard down the ridge to his side. Keeping low, she quickly exchanged her empty magazine for a full one then helped him sit up. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
“Tink—”
“I’m not leaving you.” She cut him off with a sharp look. “And the longer you lay there and argue with me, the more time we waste.”
He was going with her if she had to drag him out. Considering he outweighed her by over a hundred pounds, she really did not want to do that.
He muffled a groan at the pain and the effort but with her help, managed to get to his feet. Digging deep for strength, she slung his good arm over her shoulder then reached down for his M-4 and shoved it in his good hand.
He
couldn’t fire it but
she
might need it before this was over.
Then feeling like she was carrying roughly a half ton of deadweight, she wrapped her free arm around his waist and headed south. The extraction point was a good quarter of a mile away through pulsing heat, dense undergrowth and rough, uneven terrain.
They didn’t make it ten yards before his knees buckled.
They both started to go down.
“Stay with me,” she pleaded and calling on reserves she hadn’t known she possessed, somehow muscled him upright again.
“Damn, Tink. You’re…the
woman,
” he gritted out as he fought his rubber legs and managed to stay vertical. Sweat poured down his face. “Your first life…I’m thinkin’…pack mule.
Pretty
pack mule,” he amended with what little breath he had.
“Shut up,” she grumbled again, fighting tears because she knew from the heavy way he leaned on her that she was losing him. “How many times do I have to tell you to save your brea—”
She stopped short when she saw movement up ahead.
“Company,” she whispered and quickly eased him down behind a clump of ferns.
Heart hammering, she knelt in a defensive position in front of him and raised her rifle.
“Tinkerbelle, Tinkerbelle, this is Doc. Do you read me, over?”
Still shouldering her rifle, she reached for the radio in the vest pocket near her throat. “I read you, Doc. What’s your twenty, over?”
“About fifteen yards from the end of your rifle barrel. Got eyes on, Tink, darlin’. Hold fire. We’re comin’ in, over.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Roger that.” She almost wept with relief. “Come on in. Johnny’s hit, over.”
She glanced at Johnny. Eyes closed. Breath shallow. Face pale. Her heart sank even lower. “Hang on, baby. Dammit, you hang on, do you hear me?”
Just when she thought he’d passed out, he cracked one eye open. “Nag, nag, nag.”
And just when she thought she had reason to smile, a barrage of AK fire opened up behind them again.
“How bad?” Doc—the tall, lanky former SEAL and team medic—appeared out of the thick foliage. He dropped to his knees and hunkered over Johnny as Gabe emptied a full magazine toward the shooters.
“No vital organs but he’s lost a lot of blood,” Crystal said over her shoulder as she continued to lay down cover fire with Gabe.
“Damn showboat.” Doc urgently assessed Johnny’s injury. “Do anything to impress your lady, right, pretty boy?”
“You know me well,” Johnny agreed with a pained grimace. “I’m just dyin’ to score with that woman.”
Doc turned quickly to Gabe, a former Delta Force lieutenant, who was on his belly beside Crystal, his M-4 hammering away. “He’s getting shocky. We’ve gotta get him out of here.”
“Cover me.” Gabe scrambled back to Johnny then hauled him to his feet.
Crystal stayed on her knees and laid down more return fire as Doc joined her, making sure that Gabe—who was an even bigger man than Johnny—had a running start.
“You my…free ride?” Johnny managed weakly as Gabe hefted him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and double-timed it away from the enemy fire.
“Always said that you former Force Recon Marines were nothin’ but a bunch of slackers,” Gabe grumbled over the concern in his voice. “Just hang on, bud. God knows you’re not worth the effort, but we’re gettin’ your sorry ass outta here.”
“Countin’ on it, Angel Boy,” Johnny mumbled then passed out cold.
“Let’s boogie.” Doc covered Crystal as she backed away, then quickly turned and followed her.
* * *
Johnny hung like a lifeless lump over Gabe’s shoulder as the big man pushed his way through the trees, vines and undergrowth. Crystal was hardly aware of the thick, dense foliage slicing tiny cuts in her arms and across her face as they hauled ass through the jungle. All she could think about was her husband as she alternately stopped and took a knee, returned the fire that kept dogging them, then jumped up and pressed on toward the beach.
The terrain was rough; the plants and vines grabbed at her feet. She tripped over a tree root and went down hard. She was just pushing to her knees when Doc grasped her backpack from behind and lifted her to her feet like she didn’t weigh any more than a gnat.
“That boat going to be there when we arrive?” she asked breathlessly as she raced alongside him.
“Ever known the Choirboy to let us down?”
Raphael “Choirboy” Mendoza, a native Colombian and charter member of Black Ops., Inc. like Doc, Gabe and Johnny, was their wheelman—in this case their outboard motor man.
“What? What are you doing?” she asked Doc frantically when he stopped beside her.
“Go,” he insisted as he pulled the pin on a frag grenade then winged it as hard as he could behind them.
The grenade had no sooner exploded with a deafening blast than Doc shrugged out of his pack, tore open a pocket and pulled out a Claymore. “Go,” he repeated.
“I’m not leaving you.” She took a knee again and covered him as he set the mine with a trip wire trigger while AK-47 fire lit up with a vengeance behind them.
“That’ll keep ’em guessing,” he said after setting a second mine. “Now scoot.”
They both took off at a run.
She’d lost sight of Gabe and Johnny and was frantic to catch up with them when the first Claymore exploded. At least one bad guy had bought the farm on that one. The others were either hurt or very wary about running blindly after them.
“They’re still on our ass.” Doc grabbed her arm as he ran alongside her. “Let’s double-time it.”
They’d just leaped over a huge, downed tree trunk and, thank God, caught up with Gabe when Crystal heard the roar of an outboard motor.
“Hallelujah!” Doc crowed and peeled ahead of Crystal to help Gabe maneuver Johnny down a steep, dirt embankment that dropped over twenty feet toward the river at a ninety-degree angle.
Crystal scrambled down behind them, digging in her heels as she half skidded, half ran down the vertical drop that ended in the mud of the riverbank, where a flat-bottom boat with a pair of 200 horse outboards plowed up onto the shore.
Their CO, Nate Black himself, was on his knees in the bow of the boat, manning an M-60 machine gun mounted on a tripod.
“Sight for sore eyes, gentlemen,” Gabe yelled above the
chuck-chuck-chuck
of the big gun as Nate peppered the bank with shells to the tune of 550 rounds per minute.
Gabe clambered into the boat and laid Johnny as carefully as he could on the floor. Doc was next aboard. He held out a hand for Crystal and she jumped in. Doc was already on his knees beside Johnny, digging into his medic’s kit when Rafe shifted the twin motors into Reverse, backed away from the shore, then fast-shifted into Forward again and shot down the river.
The M-60 had fallen silent and the threat from the AKs was in the far distance before Doc sat back on his heels. He’d done what he could for Johnny. He’d staunched the blood flow, wrapped his arm close to his ribs to immobilize it and hung an IV that dumped antibiotics and fluid into his body.
Crystal could tell by the look on Doc’s face that the risk to her husband’s life was far from over.