by Lindsay McKenna - Course of Action: The Rescue: Jaguar NightAmazon Gold
“Probably just long enough to clear the third site,” she agreed.
Which meant site Number Three was most likely still operational. They wouldn’t have shut down because a half-starved girl escaped into the jungle. They had to have figured the chances of Maria making it to civilization and leading government forces back to this remote area were pretty well nonexistent.
Seeing this strip of charred and pitted earth, imaging the cruelty Maria must have endured here, fired Charley’s desire to take McMasters and his outfit down.
“God, I hope we get these bastards,” she muttered to Jack.
“We will.”
* * *
Charley navigated up the dark, narrow channel cautiously, alert for any canoes or dugouts that might come at them from the other direction. This time Jack had her put into ashore a good ten clicks from their target area. Her nerves went wire-tight as he and his team checked their weapons and reviewed their assault plan a final time.
They huddled together. Jack. Bushy-bearded Ed “Bear” Denton. Rail-thin Nate Hodgekiss. Quiet Marvin White Feather. The Peruvians who would go in with them. After two days and a night in their company, Charley felt almost as close to them as she did to her own crew.
“Remember,” Jack said, the review complete, “our orders are to take McMasters alive. If possible.”
Looking at the circle of grim faces, Charley doubted McMasters would survive an encounter with his former brothers in arms if he put up much of a resistance.
Moments later, the team was ready to go. Jack did a last comm check and started off. He took three paces, stopped and turned. A frown creased his brow as he caught Charley’s eye.
What now? Another round of last-minute instructions? A reminder he was now in command of the op? Wondering what was up, she waited while Jack strode back to her.
“I should have said this last night, Dawson.”
“What?”
“Your ex is a horse’s ass.”
“Ha! Tell me something I don’t know.”
He nodded and took her at her word. Lowering his voice until it was just her, just him, cocooned together in the steamy heat, he let loose with a slashing grin.
“Okay, how about this? When we get back to Iquitos, I’d sure as hell like to pick up where we left off last night.”
Her jaw dropped. Literally and figuratively. It was still hanging when Jack and his team melted into the jungle.
* * *
It took Charley a while to recover from that bombshell.
Once she had, there was nothing to do but make sure her crew was battle ready and listen to the assault team’s comm as it made its way through the rain forest. The tension aboard the RCB became so thick, so palpable, it affected even Snowball. The little critter abandoned Charley and took up residence atop Bubba’s helmet, where he perched like a furry pom-pom. He stayed there, clinging to his precarious position, while the riverboat crew listened to the assault team’s comm.
They kept transmissions to a minimum. The squawks that came through were short and to the point. The one that came in long minutes later, though, raised the hairs on the back of Charley’s neck.
“Viper One, this is Viper Three.”
“This is Viper One,” Jack responded. “Go ahead, Three.”
“Just spotted two bogeys,” Bear relayed in a gruff whisper. “Looks like they’re performing perimeter patrol.”
Charley’s pulse kicked into overdrive. That meant the site was operational. They wouldn’t have posted guards otherwise.
“Are they armed?”
“That’s a rog, One. Rifles and machetes. Want me to disable them?”
The query was casual, almost laconic, as though taking out two armed guards was a minor task for a long shooter. Which it probably was, Charley thought as her nails dug into her palms.
Instead of giving Bear the green light, Jack asked his location. “What’s your twenty?”
“Fifty yards ahead of you and halfway up a tree.”
“Hang tight until we regroup.”
“Roger, One.”
The next minutes crawled by. Charley abandoned the shade of the cockpit and went topside. Her tension spiking with every step, she paced the well deck. She hated this waiting. Hated being left behind. Hated her wild emotional swings when she tried to figure out just what to make of Halliday’s parting remark!
Was he serious about wanting to pick up where they’d left off last night? And what if he was? It wasn’t a one-sided equation, after all. Did she want to?
She didn’t have to dig deep for the answer to that one. She wouldn’t mind taking the next step. Halliday had rattled her chain from the moment she’d picked him up at the airport. She couldn’t deny the attraction. She’d felt the tug almost before they’d climbed into the putt-putt. She had to factor that in with her admiration for his cool head when operating on Sergeant Santos. And her respect for his unquestioned leadership of his team. And her resentment at the possibility he might have believed even one of Alex’s lies. And...
And why the hell was she letting Halliday get her all in a twist? She was in the middle of an op, for God’s sake. Lives were on the line. Twenty or so captives. Maybe half that many captors. Not to mention the team that had gone in.
Nerves as taut as an anchor chain, Charley did another turn of the well deck. Her agitated pacing made Bubba glance up from his position at the port-side machine gun. He followed her movements, each turn of his head threatening to dislodge Snowball from his precarious perch.
“This don’t go down so good with me, either, Chief.”
Charley paused and studied her gunner’s mate. God! Had she ever been that young? “What doesn’t go down good, Bubba?”
“This here sittin’ on our butts. We should be providin’ cover for Sergeant Halliday ’n’ his team.”
“We will, when they request it.”
“But the way I figure it, we should...”
She chopped a hand through the air, cutting him off as a curse came through her earpiece.
“Hell! Just tripped a hidden wire.”
The ear-hammering wail of a klaxon made her wince. She could barely make out the brusque communication that followed.
“Okay, team. We’re close enough. Go with the assault plan. Three...two...one...execute! Execute!”
Bubba shot to his feet, tumbling Snowball off his helmet. The monkey landed on his shoulder with an indignant squeak and made a flying leap for the deck.
“Our guys are going in.” The gunner’s boyish face flushed with excitement. “Jesus! Listen to all that rapid fire. Can’t tell if it’s our or theirs.”
Charley couldn’t, either. Her other two crew members crowded closer, their expressions tense as the firefight continued. Through the rattle and crack of the guns they could barely make out a series of rapid-fire communications.
“Bogey at eleven o’clock, returning fire.”
“I’ve got him in my sight.”
“Viper Four! Check six. Machetes coming at you.”
“I see ’em.”
“Two more bogeys emerging from the kitchen tent.”
“I’ll take them.”
“Viper Two and Three, cover those friendlies.”
“Roger, One.”
Charley didn’t wait to hear more. “Nav, in the cockpit with me. Boats, cast off. Gunner, activate your fire-control systems.”
As soon as she had the RCB midstream, she opened her up. The deck vibrated under her boot soles as the river craft raced up channel. Pumping pure adrenaline, she kept one eye on the instruments, one on the dark tunnel ahead and both ears tuned to the assault team’s comm.
A long, vicious stutter of gunfire turned the sweat at the base of her spine to ice. That was followed by an earsplitting boom and a deep-throated snort that could have come only from Bear.
“What idiots. They just hit their own fuel dump.”
She heard screams then, and more gunfire. Her heart thumped against her body armor as she
swept her boat around a sharp bend and Jack’s voice came through her earpiece again.
“How many bogeys accounted for?”
“Two here.”
One of the Peruvians replied in heavily accented English, “Same for us.”
“I’ve got four with hands up, wanting to surrender.”
Charley blew out a quick breath. Sounded as if the fight might be over before she got there. Or not. She tensed again at Jack’s terse query.
“Any of those bogeys our target?”
“Negative, One.”
“Okay, I’ll sweep the...”
“Hold on! There’s a small skiff tied to the dredge. Someone’s powering her up. Looks like a gringo.”
“Our target?”
“I don’t... Yeah! It’s him.”
“Do you have a clear shot?”
“Negative. The damned dredge is in the way. I’m circling now and...hell! He’s got a rifle. I... Ugh!”
“Two’s down!”
“Three, cover me. I’m going for the skiff.”
“Too risky, One. Your position is too exposed.”
“Cover me!”
Chapter 5
Charley knew that some tactician—she couldn’t remember who—had written a whole book about the fog of war. If she ever met up with the guy, she’d tell him it wasn’t always foggy. Sometimes everything came flying at you fast and sharp and crystal bright.
That’s exactly what happened when she brought the RCB around a bend and dropped smack into the middle of a frenzy of noise and color and action. Her mind clicked like a fifteen-megapixel digital camera operating at warp speed. In the blink of an eye, she registered another long strip of violated earth. Felled trees lying helter-skelter. Oily black smoke belching from a stack of burning barrels. A dredge platform anchored to the channel bank.
And a flat-bottomed river skiff coming at her full speed.
The instruments sounded a shrill alert, and a warning cackled through Charley’s headset. “Small craft dead ahead!”
“I see it.”
She also saw the sandy-haired gringo at the skiff’s controls. It was McMasters. Leaner and more leathery than the picture circulated by the Peruvian authorities, but Charley ID’d him the instant he wrenched his head around and spotted the patrol boat bearing down on him.
There was no room to maneuver in the narrow channel, no way to take evasive action if she’d wanted to, which she most decidedly did not—even when McMasters whipped up an assault rife. As a stream of bullets plunked against her boat’s armor plating, Charley responded with a cool command.
“Target that skiff.”
The remotely operated, Lemur-sighted machine gun on the RCB’s prow came alive at the flick of a switch. Mere seconds later, it had locked on.
“Target acquired.”
“Blow it out of the water.”
The prow gun erupted. Shell casings flew, the percussive pressure from each shot punched against Charley’s eardrums, and a thick cloud of smoke burned the back of her throat. Ignoring the searing stench, she gave a satisfied grunt as McMasters abandoned the uneven fight. He dived over the skiff’s side a heartbeat before the machine gun fire literally cut it in half.
Charley squinted through the smoke, searching the murky green water ahead. Since Delta Force training included advanced underwater ops, she knew it could be three or four or even five long minutes before McMasters surfaced.
It felt more like an hour. Finally, Boats gave a shout. “I see him. He’s crawling out of the water. About thirty yards ahead, starboard side.”
He could have been a giant water snake slithering ashore. Or one of the Amazon’s black caimans, so often mistaken for alligators by those unfamiliar with the rain forest’s most deadly predators. Soaking wet and draped with tangled vines, McMasters had barely climbed onto the bank before he shoved a hand inside his boot top and dragged a knife from its hidden sheath.
The knife didn’t make any sense to Charley. Despite its long, serrated blade, it wouldn’t protect him from the RCB’s withering fire. But it could, she saw with a sudden kick to her gut, inflict serious bodily harm if flung at the individual just emerging from the undergrowth lining the channel bank.
Jack’s eyes were a flat, dead blue in the canvas of his face paint. His rifle barrel never wavered, aimed dead center in McMasters’s chest. He said something, Charley couldn’t hear what. His former brother in arms responded with a sneer.
The gun barrel rose. Aimed now at McMasters’s face, one shot would blow away most of his head.
“No,” Charley murmured in a taut whisper, her gaze locked on the two men. “Don’t do it, Jack. Don’t kill him in cold blood.”
A court-martial might not convict him of murder. Judging by the comm Charley had monitored, McMasters had wounded, maybe killed, Bear. If Jack fired now, most of the world would accept that he was neutralizing the threat to the rest of his team.
But Charley knew there was more than neutralizing a threat hanging in the balance. It was the loyalty that bound all military men and women. The code of honor that went bone deep in the Special Ops community. They were etched in every line of Jack’s body as he faced the friend who’d made a mockery of everything he stood for.
McMasters saw it, too, and the sight spurred him to a last, desperate act. Was it suicide? Or an attempt to drag the friend he’d betrayed into hell with him? Charley couldn’t begin to guess. All she could see, all she could hear, was the sudden whip of McMasters’ arm and the crack of a single shot.
The knife flew in a disjointed arc. McMasters spun halfway around, staggered and fell to his knees clutching the bloody stump of his hand.
* * *
The cleanup took the rest of that afternoon and most of the next day. They radioed for the policia to send in a site-recovery team. They also contacted FENAMAD—the Federation of the Native Peoples of the River Madre de Dios and Its Tributaries. FENAMAD would arrange for more extensive medical care and repatriation of the captured mine workers to their villages.
During the long wait for the arrival of the Peruvian authorities, Jack and his team stockpiled and destroyed the guards’ small armory of weapons. They also secured the gold stashed in the safe aboard the dredge. A quick estimate put the cache at something over two hundred troy ounces—worth a cool quarter of a million at current market value.
The Delta Force operatives then joined Charley and her crew in treating the worst of the injuries. Bear had taken a hit to the fleshy part of his thigh and was embarrassed that it brought him down, even temporarily. He’d already dusted the entry and exit wounds himself and slapped on a bandage. After gulping down some ibuprofen, he declared himself fit for duty.
McMasters’s shattered hand received basic first aid, but the Delta Force team didn’t waste any sympathy—or painkillers—on him. Bear knocked him out with a vicious gun butt to the temple. When he came to, his hand had been treated and his wrists were tethered behind his back with plastic restraints. Jaw locked, he sat with those of his guards who’d survived the firefight while two of the Peruvian Special Ops troops used a handheld device to scan their biometrics into their database.
The abused, emaciated miners needed considerably more medical attention. Most were in horrific shape, with festering sores on their torsos and foot rot from constant immersion in the waterlogged pits. Many showed all-too-visible signs of mercury poisoning: the bright pink cheeks, noses, fingertips and toes; the shredding skin and profuse sweating; the loss of teeth and nails.
“Jesus,” Jack murmured as he wrapped a foot almost stripped of all skin. “What do they do? Walk in mercury?”
“They mix it in buckets of dirt with their bare feet,” Charley replied grimly. “And once they recover the mercury-gold mixture from the dirt, they heat it in a frying pan over an open flame to separate the gold. The vapor that releases is incredibly toxic. At some of the larger sites, where whole shanty towns have sprung up, you’ll find an entire generation of kids who’ll grow up witho
ut teeth. If they live long enough,” she added with a glance at the cluster of young girls who’d been forced to work in the kitchen and service the guards.
They weren’t in much better condition. Not even the sixteen-year-old selected by the patrone as his personal bedmate. She kept throwing half frightened, half imploring glances at McMasters while Charley swabbed ointment over an infected cut on her upper lip.
“The patrone did not do this,” she murmured between swabs. “It was another. He came to the tent when the patrone was away and used me. The patrone was very angry when he returned.”
“Yeah,” Charley muttered in English, “I bet he was.”
The girl didn’t understand the words, but she picked up on the scorn underlying them. She flushed, thinking it was directed at her, and salved her tattered pride by touching a tentative hand to her split lip.
“The patrone was very angry,” she insisted again. “He shot the one who did this in front of the whole camp.” A savage note colored her voice. “I helped hack his body into pieces before it was thrown in the river.”
After seeing her condition and that of her fellow captives, Charley could understand the savagery. She was sorry now that Jack hadn’t blown McMasters away.
Her glance shot across the site. The patrone and his thugs sat in the broiling sun, their arms bound. The Peruvian Special Forces guarding them were obviously just itching for one of them to make a move. McMasters looked up then, saw Charley with his bedmate and said something to one of the guards. The guard shot a look over his shoulder before treating McMasters to a smile of malicious delight.
Uh-oh. Charley knew what that smile signified. She’d seen it before, in previous takedowns. The macho Peruvians thoroughly enjoyed grinding the narcos’ and illegal mine operators’ pride into the dust by letting them know a female commanded the boat crew that had just put them out of business. Not just a female. An American female.
Sure enough, this group of illegal mine operators took the news with evil looks fired Charley’s way and spittle aimed at the dirt. Except for McMasters. His expression remained neutral. Too neutral. He had to know Charley had issued the order to blow his skiff out of the water. Yet she couldn’t read anything in his face except a white-lipped determination to ignore the pain of his shattered hand and a watchful, waiting stillness.