by Lindsay McKenna - Course of Action: The Rescue: Jaguar NightAmazon Gold
* * *
That changed some hours later, when Jack hunkered down beside Charley. They’d finished treating the miners and had let them raid the kitchen tent. The starved workers had emptied the generator-fed meat locker and ripped into every box of canned goods. They’d also found the guards’ stash of Iquiteña. The potent beer was brewed in Iquitos and delivered a special punch. As the sun slipped toward the treetops, the pile of discarded beer bottles reached pyramidal proportions.
“This could get ugly,” Charley murmured when Jack joined her.
“Yeah, I know.” He eyed the miners demolishing yet another case. “I told Marv White Feather to cut them off. They’re not going to like that, but I can’t risk a bloody reprisal.”
Her glance slewed to his face. It still wore jungle paint, smeared now by sweat and exertion. “For a few seconds there by the river,” she said quietly, “I thought that’s what I was going to see.”
“A bloody reprisal?” He swiveled on his heels. His eyes met hers. “You came damned close to it. I wanted to blow McMasters away so bad, I hurt.”
“I was glad you didn’t. At the time, anyway.”
“And now?”
“Now I wish you’d aimed lower and shot off his balls.”
His laugh rolled out, deep and rich. “Losing your shooting hand is just about as bad as losing your balls in this line of business.”
“Lord, I hope not.”
The quip came out before Charley had time to consider its sexual connotations. When she did, that was all she could consider. Her face heated as she grappled with an instant mental image of Jack naked and sweaty and lodged between her thighs, his equipment most definitely undamaged.
Damn her red hair! Not even her Amazon tan could disguise the flush that rushed into her face. She was probably glowing like a stoplight.
No probably about it. The smile in Jack’s eyes told her that much. And the knuckle that came up to graze her cheek told her that his thoughts were running along exactly the same lines.
“Remember what I said, Dawson? About when we get back to Iquitos?”
“Like I could forget.”
She’d tried for flippant, but came out sounding like a total airhead. Jack didn’t seem to mind the breathless response. The smile in his eyes deepening, he traced a circle with his knuckle.
“So what do you say? Want to pick up where we left off?”
She didn’t even try to deny the desire that had been building since the first moment she’d spotted this man at the airport.
“Yes.”
She caught a blur in the periphery of her vision. Had McMasters made a move? He was certainly sitting more stiffly, but that could be due to pain. Shutting him out of her field of view, Charley returned her attention to more important matters.
“What did you have in mind, Halliday?”
“Well...” The back of his hand made another pass across her cheek. “It’ll take me a few days to arrange McMasters’s extradition to the States. While that’s working, you could show me Iquitos.”
Damn! Who knew bare knuckles could rouse such erotic sensations? Charley had to fight to keep from mewling like a jungle kitten.
“I see two problems with that scenario,” she replied. “One, the paperwork maze in Peru is as bad as it is in the U.S. You could be stuck here for weeks.”
“Doesn’t sound like a problem to me.”
“Two, there’s not much to see in Iquitos.”
“Damn.” His grin turned so lazy and sensual she could feel herself getting hot. “Guess we’ll just have to think of something else to do.”
Okay, now she was officially smitten. And what the heck did that mean, anyway? Smitten. It sounded like a bite from a small, furry animal. The thought brought Charley surging to her feet.
“Oh, no!”
Jack shot up, as well. He did a quick 360 before whirling back to face her. “What?”
“Snowball!” Dismayed, she patted the pocket on her left sleeve. “He was here when I came ashore.”
Jack started to voice the observation that Snowball had no doubt taken this opportunity to return to his roots. Wisely, he refrained. Charley had remained remarkably cool under fire. She and her crew had patched up a dozen or more severely injured captives. If she erupted into frantic worry over her crew’s mascot, who was he to say that worry was misplaced?
Her dismay grew as her search progressed swiftly from her left to her right arm, on to her breast pockets, and finally to the half dozen flaps on her pants. The marmoset wasn’t in any of them. Nor did he turn up in the pockets of the rest of her crew. Finally they had to accept the fact that their tiny mascot had flown the coop.
“Look at it this way,” Jack said. “He’s got a much better chance of finding a mate in his natural environment than on a riverine command boat.”
“True.”
For the marmoset and for her, Charley thought ruefully as darkness began to descend and the jungle surrounding the site came alive with night sounds. As much as she enjoyed being skipper of her own boat, it did isolate her. Regulations and just plain common sense prohibited fraternization with the crew she gave orders to. Too much kidding around aboard ship and socializing ashore could lead to serious complications.
Not to mention screw up a marriage. Although she and Alex had been assigned to different fleets, scuttlebutt zinged from ship to ship via Skype and Facebook and Twitter and all the other electronic venues. Every Tweet involving Charley seemed to spark some suspicion or jealousy in her husband. So much that he was soon reading sexual overtones into each promotion or commendation she received. And this while he was getting his jollies during shore leave at various ports of call!
The ugliness of it all still left a bitter taste in Charley’s mouth. It also made her wonder if things would be—could be—different with another man. Someone like... Someone like Jack Halliday, for instance.
Her gaze drifted across the site. He’d joined the freed workers under a string of bare lightbulbs powered by the generator. He still wore his body armor, but had removed his helmet for a moment to thrust a hand through his hair. With that longer-than-regulation hair and the week’s worth of bristles darkening his cheeks and chin, he looked a lot like one of the newly liberated captives.
They were still feasting, although not as frenzied as before, and their mood had gone from jubilant to hostile. Jack had been smart to cut off the beer, Charley thought as several of the former captives snarled curses at the guards who’d brutalized them. He was also wise to make his authority felt by hunkering down with them. Even his presence didn’t keep some violence from exploding, however.
It came from one of the women. Her clothing tattered and her arms dark with bruises, she picked up a rusted pipe wrench and walked over to a row of prisoners. Bear intercepted her, but his admonition came with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
“Non, señora.”
“This pig,” she hissed, pointing the wrench at a heavyset thug with broken teeth. “He made my husband watch while he used me like a dog. Now my husband is dead.”
Without warning, she hauled back and delivered a vicious blow to the prisoner’s face. Metal cracked against cartilage, blood spurted and the thug screamed loud enough to startle a response from a howler monkey that obviously thought a rival had invaded his territory. An answering roar split the night, sounding so fierce and close that Charley instinctively hunched her shoulders.
“That’s enough.”
Bear planted himself between the woman and the writhing prisoner. She tossed the wrench aside and stalked to one of the tents, leaving behind a noticeable hike in tension levels. Jack defused most of it with a cool reminder.
“Those men are my prisoners. I’m responsible for them.”
“They’re murderers,” came an angry retort. “Worse than murderers.”
“And they’ll pay for their crimes. I give you my word.” He looked around the circle. “Comprende?”
The muttering subsided and exhau
stion gradually took hold. Most of the workers dropped onto the ragged straw mats that served as their beds. Some retreated to the tents. Only a handful remained awake, their anger banked but by no means gone.
“Bubba,” Charley murmured to her young gunner. “Go back aboard the RCB. The rest of us will remain in camp tonight.”
Bubba skimmed a glance around the primitive site. “You sure, Chief?”
“I’m sure. But bed down on deck.”
She wanted him close to the .50 cal. Just in case.
* * *
The rest of the night dragged like a sea drogue. Charley and her crew shared watch with Jack and his men. Using the traditional “dogged” system, they divided the night into three segments. The first watch remained alert from 2000 hours to midnight, the second from midnight to 0400 and the third from 0400 to 0800.
By luck of the draw, Charley got the middle watch. A steady chorus of chirps and barks and shrill hoots helped keep her awake, although they didn’t seem to disturb the prisoners and rescued workers. Both groups had settled into an uneasy slumber. Or rather, most of them had.
She’d brewed some coffee in the camp’s kitchen and had just taken a cup out to the Peruvian Special Ops troop sharing the watch with her when one of the prisoners gave a muffled half grunt, half groan.
She tracked the sound to the end of the row where McMasters was trying to push himself up. The pain to his mangled hand had to be horrific, but Charley was damned if she’d feel sorry for him. Yet when he finally got his upper body vertical and his legs crossed under him, she was human enough to ask if he wanted some coffee.
“God, yes!”
She fetched another cup and was careful to hold it to his lips in a way that gave him no chance for a head butt. As he downed the coffee, she had the chance to study him up close and personal for the first time.
Some women would probably consider him handsome. His sandy hair was thick and wavy, framing a face weathered by sun and wind. His eyes were too pale a gray for Charley’s taste, but the dimple in his chin probably scored him as many points with women as the bush jacket stretched tight across shoulders roped with muscle. Which begged the question of why he had to take them by force.
Thinking of the twisted pride of his recent bedmate, Charley sat back on her heels a safe distance away. “Why did you do it, McMasters?”
“Why did I go rogue?” His mouth twisted. “Why do you think?”
“You were one of the elite. The best of the best. It couldn’t have been all about money.”
“Who says?”
“C’mon. I wear a uniform, too. I know most of our lower-ranking enlisted troops qualify for food stamps. Yet they re-up in large numbers. As schmaltzy as it sounds, my crew and I actually think we’re making the world safer for our families and friends.”
“Yeah, well, I was one of those idealistic young enlistees, too. I thought I would go to Iraq or Afghanistan, kick some serious butt. Pound every terrorist-in-training into the dirt.”
“So what happened?”
“What happened was that after four tours down range I got tired of all those civilian contractors doing exactly what I was for eight, ten times the pay. Blackwater. Ronco. Dozens more high-priced security companies. Their guys were pulling in the big bucks with not even half the exposure.”
“That’s not the whole story,” Charley insisted. “It can’t be.”
McMasters released a slow breath. “No, it’s not.”
His chin dropped. His lids shielded his eyes. He stared at the ground so long she was beginning to wonder if he’d drifted into a pain-induced daze. When he raised his head again, the pain was there but it didn’t have anything to do with his mangled hand.
“The truth is I blew it.”
“How?”
“The details don’t matter. Not now. What matters is that I went from being the hunter to the hunted.”
His gaze shifted to the huddle of men asleep on their ponchos. He shook his head, as if to dislodge the unpleasant memories, and treated Charley to a sardonic smile.
“I saw you with Jack earlier. Saw the way he touched you. Better be careful, Chief. There’s no middle ground with Jack Halliday.”
She arched a cool brow. “Not for you, anyway.”
“Not for anyone. You’re either one hundred percent worthy of his loyalty and trust, or you’re not.”
The warning cut too close to home. Charley gnawed on her lower lip, remembering how she’d stubbornly refused to refute the slander her ex had poured into Jack’s ear. How much of it had he believed? How much did he still believe? Well, she wouldn’t let pride get between the two of them again. Once they returned to Iquitos, she’d set the record straight.
* * *
Across the campsite, two very different individuals watched Charley give McMasters another sip of coffee. One was young and sick with jealousy that the patrone would smile in such a way at another woman. The other was older, infinitely wiser, and if not jealous, then edging too close to it for comfort.
Jack knew McMasters. Had seen him finesse more than one willing partner into bed. And one who shouldn’t have been so willing. Before he could block it, the scene in that remote village high in the mountains north of Kabul rose up to haunt him.
The Afghan government had hushed up the massacre. U.S. authorities might have, too, if Jack hadn’t sent a classified sitrep up channel detailing the situation. The first to die was a young wife, strangled by her husband in front of her whole village as punishment for sleeping with an American. Then the husband, three of his brothers and an uncle, who went for blood to avenge their family honor. Then the Afghan troops operating with Jack’s team, who got caught in the crossfire. Their panicked squad leader called in an air strike, thinking they were under attack by a band of rebels holed up in the village. By the time it was over, almost thirty men, women and children lay dead.
As a result of Jack’s report, Sean McMasters was recalled to the States and informed he faced an official board of inquiry into the events in the village. He disappeared the next day. Now here he was, laying the charm on Charley. Despite her ex-husband’s drunken ramblings, Jack didn’t believe for a minute she’d succumb to it.
He didn’t like what he was seeing, though. Didn’t like it at all. Nor did it do any good to remind himself that he had no claim on Chief Dawson. Except for one blockbuster of a kiss, they shared no link outside this op. Yet Jack’s instincts at the moment were primal and fiercely possessive.
He didn’t rest easy until Charley pushed to her feet and resumed her watch. And at that point, all he wanted to do was get back to Iquitos, deposit McMasters in a cell and see about forging another link.
Chapter 6
The swarm of officials from various Peruvian government agencies arrived on scene by midmorning. They were accompanied by a pounding rainstorm that churned the strip mine’s denuded earth into a sea of toxic mud.
A medical team took over treatment of freed workers, while reps from the Federation of the Native Peoples began the process of identification and repatriation. After the usual jurisdictional negotiations, the policia assumed responsibility for all evidence at the mine site, including the gold. The military retained custody of the prisoners for transport to Iquitos. Jack and his team hustled them aboard the RCB and got them positioned in the well deck just as the rain let up. The sun came out then, steaming everything and everyone aboard until the strip mine fell well astern and the rain-forest canopy once again shielded them.
Hours later the RCB entered the broad waters of the Amazon. Since they were going upriver against a strong, rainy-season current, the lights of Iquitos didn’t come into view until well past midnight. Charley couldn’t remember the last time she was so glad to see the docks at the navy base. Exhaustion hammered at her as she brought the boat in, waited while her crew secured the mooring lines, and shut down the engines.
The Delta Force operators weren’t exactly gentle as they prodded the prisoners up on their feet. McMasters w
as the last to leave the well deck. Despite his bound wrists, he gained the dock with an agile jump and paused to give Charley a sardonic smile.
“Thanks for the coffee last night.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t say you’re welcome.”
“Move it, McMasters.”
That came from Bear, who loomed large and decidedly dangerous in the harsh floodlights illuminating the dock area. The prisoner took a rough shove between the shoulder blades but got in a last comment as he followed his cohorts up the ramp.
“Maybe we’ll meet again, Chief.”
“Not likely, unless I’m called to testify at your trial. I’ll tell you this, though. I’m going to treat myself to a shot of pisco at the Blue Iguana tonight to celebrate the fact that you’ll be looking at the world through iron bars for the rest of your sorry life.”
Pisco was a yellowish and extremely potent brandy. It was also reputed to be the only liquor indigenous to Peru. The Spanish had supposedly brewed it as far back as the sixteenth century as an alternative to importing more costly brandies from Europe. Charley couldn’t think of a more fitting way to celebrate the capture of someone who’d raped the Peruvian jungle and polluted its waters.
“I’ll join you,” Jack said in a voice that carried clearly to the dock. “I’ve waited too long for this celebration.”
McMasters’s lips curled back, but before he could respond Bear gave him another shove.
Charley watched them step off the dock and start up the grassy slope before turning to Jack. Beneath his now streaked and smeared face paint, he looked almost as whipped as she felt.
But neither of them could ignore the casual comment he’d tossed out back there in the jungle. The thought of resuming where they’d left off with that kiss hovered between them as Jack hefted his weapons and gear.
“I need to get the prisoners processed into the brig.”
“Right.”
“Could take a while.”