“Cover me!”
He could only pray that Hannah heard his shout.
Ricardo ducked low and broke into a sprint.
He dumped the M4 rifle—empty and no time to slot a fresh magazine—and pulled out his two Glock pistols as he ran.
Even if Hannah hadn’t heard him, she’d seen he was on the move and he could hear her bullets passing close by as she laid down protective fire.
His wounded leg was lost somewhere back in the land of adrenaline. He’d gladly pay the price in pain later.
As he neared the Humvee, a round plowed into the ground close in front of him. But it didn’t come from the direction of the camp. Hannah had shot exactly where his next step would be.
Danger ahead!
All the warning he needed.
He dove for the ground and rolled, once again ending up beneath a Humvee. This just wasn’t going to be his day.
That’s when he spotted the sky-blue cowgirl boots, tied together and dragging along the ground.
Dragging between a pair of legs dressed in camos and Army boots.
Ricardo shot one of the Army boots.
With a cry, the man dropped Michelle—then collapsed behind her.
No good angle.
No way to know who else was still in the game.
And no time to think about it. Ricardo knew the priorities in his life without thought.
He rolled out from under the Humvee. Let the roll turn into kneeling position—his leg managed to fire a massive jolt of pain through the adrenalin, but he ignored it.
With a clear line of fire over Michelle’s prone form, he executed the drug smuggler who’d kidnapped her. Not with one round, or even the more traditional three shots a Delta operator used.
He dumped the remaining fourteen rounds into the guy.
When he stopped, there were no other sounds.
Hannah had stopped firing; no one was firing back.
Michelle lay unmoving in fetal position by his feet.
She flinched and opened her eyes when he sliced her hands free.
He didn’t need any words as she threw herself against him.
Which was too much for his leg and he went over backward hard, banging his head against the Humvee.
Chapter 23
“The ribs at the BBQ Pit are the best,” Michelle bit into one to fill her mouth because she was afraid of what might come spilling out.
Screams?
Gibberish?
Begging for…she had no idea what?
Twenty-four hours ago she’d been within seconds of dying in the Honduran jungle, just as Ricardo had almost done.
But Ricardo had saved her.
Since then, she’d had to patch Ricardo’s leg together again long enough to deliver him to the medics at Soto Cano. There’d been so many debriefing sessions that she couldn’t recall if it had taken three hours or thirteen. It had felt like thirty.
Ricardo, once they’d pumped two units of blood into him and a proper surgeon had seen to his leg, was doing better than the colonel who’d caught three rounds to the gut from Jack Harper. Understandably, Ricardo had refused to stay in Honduras one minute longer than necessary. Since Jack Harper was still at large, that definitely sounded like a good idea to her.
They hadn’t spoken a single word since, aloud or not. Of course, Ricardo had gone from surgery to knocked-out by major painkillers on a litter carried aboard the C-130 Hercules Gibson had sent down to fetch them.
Once back home in San Antonio, he’d refused to be carried off the plane. It had taken Isobel to force him into a wheelchair.
Michelle had wanted to be the one to hold his hand on the flight home, but Isobel had looked so freaked when she’d seen them rushing Ricardo off the helicopter and into surgery that Michelle had just stayed out of the way.
Apparently the only way Isobel had managed to get Ricardo to accept the wheelchair was by promising him ribs at the BBQ Pit. The Pit looked just like it always did: sad. Splitting leatherette bench seats around battered Formica tables. The three items on the menu kept the choices simple: beef ribs, brisket, and pork ribs. She didn’t know why they bothered with the last in Texas, maybe for foreigners from Oklahoma or Louisiana. The Coca-Cola tap on the coke machine had recently been taped over, which left only the Dr. Pepper one. Again, all they really needed.
They were also the best ribs she’d ever had.
The chef had taken one look at Jesse’s battered face and Ricardo in a wheelchair before announcing, “On the house.” He and Anton had traded fist bumps. Old Army buddies, she remembered.
Anton waved a rib at Ricardo. “The colonel renamed you.”
“Something other than ‘that guy who got tortured’?”
“Yeah. Some shit about calling you a one-man Army. Like Hannah and I were just shucking corn.”
“Well, we know that’s all you were doing,” Hannah agreed. “What did you fire, one piddly little rocket?”
“Yeah, but it was righteous shot.”
Michelle remembered the shrapnel punching holes through the top of the metal shed and she wondered just how close Anton had come to killing her. She supposed that he’d missed by enough, which was all that mattered in the end.
“Need to find you a woman who won’t mind all your shortcomings,” Ricardo added his voice to the conversation for the first time.
“Hey, he’s back. Welcome aboard, bro.”
“God, I hate drugs. What am I on?”
“Mostly oxycodone.” One thing Michelle had absolutely tracked were the meds they’d given him.
“Done with that shit.”
“But you need it for the pain, Ricardo.”
:Drop it, Michelle.:
:But—:
:I’ve already spent too much of my last year drugged out of caring about anything.:
She couldn’t argue with that. “So now that you can, what are you going to care about?”
All conversation around the table ground to an immediate halt as everyone turned to look at her.
“Whoops. I guess that was my out-loud voice.”
“Kinda!” Anton scoffed.
Jesse looked puzzled.
Isobel and Hannah shared a common look…that she couldn’t interpret at all.
:Sorry. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot.:
“Look, they’re doing their thing again.”
She ignored Anton.
:There is one thing I really care about more than all the rest put together.:
:What?:
:Thought that was kinda obvious.:
Michelle couldn’t look away from the intensity of Ricardo’s gaze. Those dark, beautiful eyes that always seemed to be watching her.
:You don’t mean…:
No way.
:You couldn’t…:
But he didn’t look aside.
:But you called me an effing civilian.:
He barked an out a loud laugh, but showed no chagrin for interrupting everyone at the table again. :That’s what you get for listening to my thoughts. I was calling myself (emphasis) a fucking civilian.:
:Why would you do that?: She took a lesson from him and ignored that everyone was watching them.
:I am a civilian in all the worst ways.:
:Colonel said you were a one-man army.:
Ricardo shrugged uncomfortably. No stray thoughts for her to read.
:Seriously. You saved everyone. Even Hannah was impressed.: “Weren’t you?” Michelle turned to Hannah.
“Wasn’t I what?”
“Oh, never mind.” :She was.:
Ricardo did more of his silent soldier thing. But neither was he focusing on his meal, looking at the others, or about to fall asleep—even with the drugs still pumping through his system.
:Me?:
He remained still. Not as if refusing to speak, but more as if he was afraid to. The man who had charged one-legged into the middle of a jungle battle to save her actually looked afraid of… Her? Of what she might answer?
/> :Ricardo! I’m not some perfect angel of mercy.:
:No, you’re better than that, you’re a real live flesh and blood one.:
:No, I’m—:
:An EMT who saved my life. Again. But that’s not what counts.:
:What does?: Michelle realized that she was perched on the edge of her seat and leaning as close as his wheelchair allowed.
:Michelle. My lovely Michelle. Do you think that over the last year I haven’t gotten to know you at least as well as you’ve gotten to know me?:
That rocked her back in her seat. Could she ever know any man better? Or care about one more? Ricardo’s every action—even more, every thought—spoke so clearly of who he was. Brave, loyal, loving.
Who else could she ever care for? :Say it.:
His eyes flickered to the table, then he finally broke eye contact, looking down.
:So brave in action…:
Again the uncertain shrug.
:So just tell me.:
Ricardo looked up at her once again. And just a small quirk of a smile caught the corner of his mouth.
Taking the invitation, she leaned in and kissed him.
Just as their lips met, a thought whispered into her head.
:Love you, Michelle Bowman.:
Even if she couldn’t hear it on the outside, it was all she needed to hear on the inside.
If you enjoyed this book and want to really help the author, reviewing this title at the site(s) of your choice would be greatly appreciated.
If you enjoyed this title, you’ll love the Night Stalkers 5E series (a sample follows).
Target of the Heart
Target Lock on Love
Target of Mine
Target of One’s Own
If you liked this, you’ll love:
The Night Stalkers 5E romances
Target of the Heart (excerpt)
Major Pete Napier hovered his MH-47G Chinook helicopter ten kilometers outside of Lhasa, Tibet and a mere two inches off the tundra. A mixed action team of Delta Force and The Activity—the slipperiest intel group on the planet—flung themselves aboard.
The additional load sent an infinitesimal shift in the cyclic control in his right hand. The hydraulics to close the rear loading ramp hummed through the entire frame of the massive helicopter. By the time his crew chief could reach forward to slap an “all secure” signal against his shoulder, they were already ten feet up and fifty out. That was enough altitude. He kept the nose down as he clawed for speed in the thin air at eleven thousand feet.
“Totally worth it,” one of the D-boys announced as soon as he was on the Chinook’s internal intercom.
He’d have to remember to tell that to the two Black Hawks flying guard for him…when they were in a friendly country and could risk a radio transmission. This deep inside China—or rather Chinese-held territory as the CIA’s mission-briefing spook had insisted on calling it—radios attracted attention and were only used to avoid imminent death and destruction.
“Great, now I just need to get us out of this alive.”
“Do that, Pete. We’d appreciate it.”
He wished to hell he had a stealth bird like the one that had gone into bin Laden’s compound. But the one that had crashed during that raid had been blown up. Where there was one, there were always two, but the second had gone back into hiding as thoroughly as if it had never existed. He hadn’t heard a word about it since.
The Tibetan terrain was amazing, even if all he could see of it was the monochromatic green of night vision. And blackness. The largest city in Tibet lay a mere ten kilometers away and they were flying over barren wilderness. He could crash out here and no one would know for decades unless some yak herder stumbled upon them. Or were yaks in Mongolia? He was a corn-fed, white boy from Colorado, what did he know about Tibet? Most of the countries he’d flown into on Black Ops missions he’d only seen at night anyway.
While moving very, very fast.
Like now.
The inside of his visor was painted with overlapping readouts. A pre-defined terrain map, the best that modern satellite imaging could build made the first layer. This wasn’t some crappy, on-line, look-at-a-picture-of-your-house display. Someone had a pile of dung outside their goat pen? He could see it, tell you how high it was, and probably say if they were pygmy goats or full-size LaManchas by the size of their shit-pellets if he zoomed in.
On top of that were projected the forward-looking infrared camera images. The FLIR imaging gave him a real-time overlay, in case someone had put an addition onto their goat shed since the last satellite pass or parked their tractor across his intended flight path.
His nervous system was paying autonomic attention to that combined landscape. He also compensated for the thin air at altitude as he instinctively chose when to start his climb over said goat shed or his swerve around it.
It was the third layer, the tactical display that had most of his attention. At least he and the two Black Hawks flying escort on him were finally on the move.
To insert this deep into Tibet, without passing over Bhutan or Nepal, they’d had to add wingtanks on the Black Hawks’ hardpoints where he’d much rather have a couple banks of Hellfire missiles. Still, they had 20 mm chain guns and the crew chiefs had miniguns which was some comfort. His twin-rotor Chinook might be the biggest helicopter that the Night Stalkers flew, but it was the cargo van of Special Operations and only had two miniguns and a machine gun of its own. Though he’d put his three crew chiefs up against the best Black Hawk shooter any day.
While the action team was busy infiltrating the capital city and gathering intelligence on the particularly brutal Chinese assistant administrator, Pete and his crews had been squatting out in the wilderness under a camouflage net designed to make his helo look like just another god-forsaken Himalayan lump of granite.
Command had determined that it was better for the helos to wait on site through the day than risk flying out and back in. He and his crew had stood shifts on guard duty, but none of them had slept. They’d been flying together too long to have any new jokes, so they’d played a lot of cribbage. He’d long ago ruled no gambling on a mission, after a fistfight had broken out about a bluff hand that cost a Marine three hundred and forty-seven dollars. Marines hated losing to Army no matter how many times it happened. They’d had to sit on him for a long time before he calmed down.
Tonight’s mission was part of an on-going campaign to discredit the Chinese “presence” in Tibet on the international stage—as if occupying the country the last sixty-plus years didn’t count toward ruling, whether invited or not. As usual, there was a crucial vote coming up at the U.N.—that, as usual, the Chinese could be guaranteed to ignore. However, the ever-hopeful CIA was in a hurry to make sure that any damaging information that they could validate was disseminated as thoroughly as possible prior to the vote.
Not his concern.
His concern was, were they going to pass over some Chinese sentry post at their top speed of a hundred and ninety-six miles an hour? The sentries would then call down a couple Shenyang J-16 jet fighters that could hustle along at Mach 2—over fifteen hundred mph—to fry his sorry ass. He knew there was a pair of them parked at Lhasa along with some older gear that would be just as effective against his three helos.
“Don’t suppose you could get a move on, Pete?”
“Eat shit, Nicolai!” He was a good man to have as a copilot. Pete knew he was holding on too tight, and Nicolai knew that a joke was the right way to ease the moment.
He, Nicolai, and the four pilots in the two Black Hawks had a long way to go tonight and he’d never make it if he stayed so tight on the controls that he could barely maneuver. Pete eased off and felt his fingers tingle with the rush of returning blood. They dove down into gorges and followed them as long as they dared. They hugged cliff walls at every opportunity to decrease their radar profile. And they climbed.
That was the true danger—they would be up near the helos’ limits when the
y crossed over the backbone of the Himalayas in their rush for India. The air was so rarefied that they burned fuel at a prodigious rate. Their reserve didn’t allow for any extended battles while crossing the border…not for any battle at all really.
It was pitch dark outside her helicopter when Captain Danielle Delacroix stamped on the left rudder pedal while giving the big Chinook right-directed control on the cyclic. It tipped her most of the way onto her side but let her continue in a straight line. A Chinook’s rotors were sixty feet across—front to back they overlapped to make the spread a hundred feet long. By cross-controlling her bird to tip it, she managed to execute a straight line between two mock pylons only thirty feet apart. They were made of thin cloth so they wouldn’t down the helo if you sliced one—she was the only trainee to not have cut one yet.
At her current angle of attack, she took up less than a half-rotor of width, just twenty-four feet. That left her nearly three feet to either side, sufficient as she was moving at under a hundred knots.
The training instructor sitting beside her in the copilot’s seat didn’t react as she swooped through the training course at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Only child of a single mother, she was used to providing her own feedback loops, so she didn’t expect anything else. Those who expected outside validation rarely survived the SOAR induction testing, never mind the two years of training that followed.
As a loner kid, Danielle had learned that self-motivated congratulations and fun were much easier to come by than external ones. She’d spent innumerable hours deep in her mind as a pre-teen superheroine. At twenty-nine she was well on her way to becoming a real life one, though Helo-girl had never been a character she’d thought of in her youth.
External validation or not, after two years of training with the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment she was ready for some action. At least she was convinced that she was. But the trainers of Fort Campbell, Kentucky had not signed off on anyone in her trainee class yet. Nor had they given any hint of when they might.
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