by Lindsay McKenna - Course of Action: The Rescue: Jaguar NightAmazon Gold
“You need to swing by the docks and take a look at this sight.”
“I’ll be by later.”
“Better...better come now, Chief. I think it’s been deliberately tampered with.”
Was that waver in Bubba’s voice anger or indignation? With the putt-putt’s engine roaring, Charley couldn’t tell. But the idea that one of the guns on her boat may have been sabotaged set off an instant alarm.
Maybe other systems had been compromised, as well! Maybe, just maybe, someone didn’t want the swift, heavily armed riverine command boat able to give chase. McMasters, her gut told her, or whoever had helped him escape.
She leaped from the putt-putt and thrust a wad of bills at the driver. Racing up to the front gate, she flashed her ID at the guards.
“Chief Dawson.”
They waved her through. Luckily the docks were within sprinting distance of the front gate. Her heart jackhammering against her ribs, Charley raced across the wide swath of manicured lawn leading down to the river. The RCB rocked gently in its berth, the river lapping at its camouflage-painted hull. Floodlights illuminated the boat’s exterior, but the only light showing aboard came from the interior compartment.
Five seconds after she jumped aboard, Charley located her young gunner’s mate. He was inside the compartment. On his knees. With his arms roped behind him and the barrel of a service pistol jammed against his temple.
Chapter 8
“I’m...I’m sorry, Chief.”
Charley’s glance whipped from the agonized apology in Bubba’s face to the grim determination in McMasters’s. He was crouched behind the gunner’s mate, both of them hidden from the view of anyone ashore or cruising past on the river. His unbandaged hand gripped the handle of the service pistol now jammed against Bubba’s temple.
“Glad you got here so fast,” he said with a smile that made her ache to blow it off his face. “Get on your comm and advise the command center that you’re taking your boat upriver on a night exercise.”
“The hell I will.”
The pistol barrel dug deeper, and Bubba grunted with pain.
“I killed one man tonight,” McMasters said with a chilling lack of emotion. “Possibly two. I don’t have anything to lose by killing another. Get on your comm, Dawson, then power up and cast off.”
He watched her every move, listened to every word as she contacted the command center. She and her crew had performed night exercises often enough that the notification elicited only a brief acknowledgment, followed by an alert.
“Be advised we have patrols out searching for an escaped prisoner. All evidence indicates he took to the jungle and is heading for Colombia, but request you remain alert for any suspicious river traffic.”
“Roger that.”
She searched frantically in her mind for some way to tip off the command center. Given McMasters’s Special Ops background, she couldn’t think of a signal he wouldn’t immediately pick up on. All she could do was sign off and power up the engines as he’d instructed.
Normally, the riverine command boat required a four-person crew. In combat, however, the RCB’s sophisticated instrumentation and emergency systems allowed operations with two or even a single surviving crewman. Charley and her men had trained for that desperate contingency, as McMasters damned well knew.
So why hadn’t he forced Bubba to operate the boat? Why had he risked waiting for her? As she navigated the RCB out onto the Amazon, Charley guessed the answer. She was a pawn, a very personal tool, in the life-and-death struggle between McMasters and his former Delta Force instructor. The realization didn’t offer any comfort.
As the RCB left the lights of the naval base astern and knifed through the dark river water, the sound of a sharp crack jerked Charley’s head around. Her gunner crumpled to the deck, his arms still bound behind him. Blood seeped from his lacerated scalp.
“Big man, aren’t you? Pistol-whipping a helpless, unarmed man.”
“He may be unarmed, but he’s also a riverine-boat operator.”
“So am I,” she reminded him with an expression of utter contempt.
She waited a beat, but he didn’t respond.
“Jack will come after us. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I brought you along.”
“I won’t buy you an extra day, McMasters. Not an hour. You’re a dead man.”
“Maybe. Depends on whether you get me to the rendezvous with my pals in Ecuador before Halliday figures out what’s going down.”
“Ecuador? Not Colombia?”
“No,” he sneered. “Not Colombia.”
Her jaw set, Charley pulled up a navigational chart. The display showed the four major tributaries that rushed down from the Andes to form the Marañón, which in turn emptied into the Amazon just above Iquitos. Three of those tributaries crashed through narrow gorges, dropped in thousand-foot cascades and churned whitewater for long, unnavigable stretches.
Only one tributary could be navigated all the way to the border with Ecuador. The Pastaza was narrow and studded with rapids in its upper reaches, but silty and shallow near the border. It was also dotted with sandbanks and snags. Except in rainy season, Charley thought grimly, when she would have to exercise some ingenuity to run a boat with shallow draft aground.
“I’m assuming you want me to chart a course for the Pastaza,” she said coldly.
“You assume correctly.”
* * *
Navigating the rushing river waters without a crew required almost every ounce of Charley’s concentration. This late at night there wasn’t much river traffic, thank God, but the fast-moving Marañón carried the usual rainy season debris. The RCB’s sensitive instruments helped her dodge uprooted trees, bloated animal carcasses and once, a capsized canoe.
Her jaw set, Charley ignored McMasters’s order to maintain speed and direction. Throttling back, she swept the RCB’s powerful searchlights across the black waters to search for possible survivors from the overturned canoe. She didn’t spot any, but the brief lull gave her a chance to ask the question that had been burning in her brain.
“How did you break out of the brig?”
McMasters snorted. “It wasn’t all that difficult. Not when you’ve got enough stashed in various bank accounts to tempt overworked, underpaid military guards with the promise of a new identity and a life of unimaginable sloth.”
“I don’t understand. If the guards let you out, why did you shoot them?”
“They were corrupt,” he said with a shrug. “If they turned for me, they could just as easily turn against me.”
“Hmm. Guess it’s impossible for one lowlife scum to ever trust another.”
“Watch it,” McMasters snapped. “I can use you. Your gunner’s dispensable.”
The utter ruthlessness of it coated Charley’s veins with ice. Throttling forward, she resumed speed. All the while she monitored the Iquitos Command Post’s communications. McMasters did, too. So when her call sign squawked, they both stiffened.
“Snowball One, this is Iquitos Base.”
“Answer it,” McMasters ordered.
When she didn’t respond, he dug the gun barrel into the skin at the base of Bubba’s skull. “Answer it.”
“This is Snowball One. Go ahead, Iquitos Base.”
“Viper One is standing by. He wants to talk to you.”
Jack! Charley’s pulse kicked, then roared in her ears almost as loudly as her boat’s engines. “Go ahead, Viper One.”
“What are you doing on the river?”
“My gunner’s mate contacted me. Said the Lemur sight on the aft gun was off. We made the necessary corrections, but decided to take the boat out to verify the fix.”
“In the middle of the night?”
She scrambled for an explanation that wouldn’t plunge a bullet into Bubba’s brain and threw out the only one she’d been able to fabricate.
“We need to make sure the sight’s true before we take the RCB out on another missio
n. We’re heading for the clear-fire zone to test it.”
The clear-fire zone was a ten-mile-long swath of deforested jungle north of San Ramon, only a few nautical miles from the mouth of the Pastaza. An illegal logging operation had cleared the area a year ago, and the Peruvian Navy subsequently designated it as a live-fire range.
Then, because Charley knew McMasters would expect it, she asked for a status report. “What’s happening there, Viper One? Have they captured the escaped prisoner?”
“No.”
The reply was short, terse and laced with rigidly suppressed anger. She glanced at McMasters and caught his smug smile.
“We’re mounting a jungle recon,” Jack informed her. “We leave in a few minutes.”
“Good hunting.”
“Thanks.”
Okay. Okay. It’s now or never.
“When you nail the bastard, we’ll toast his demise with a shot of pisc. Just like we did at the Blue Iguana yesterday.”
She could have wept with relief when Jack didn’t miss a beat.
“Sounds like a plan, Snowball One. Only this time, we’ll make it a double shot.”
“Roger that. See you there.”
“Viper One, over and out.”
* * *
Fingers of bright orange and red streaked the dawn sky when they cruised past the live-fire zone and made for the mouth of the Pastaza. Bubba had regained consciousness and now sat with his back to the bulkhead, where McMasters could keep an eye on both him and Charley.
Since the Iquitos Command Post tracked the position of all patrols and boats operating from the base, she fully expected a query as to why she’d overshot her supposed destination.
McMasters would expect it, too, so she held her breath, praying the command post would make the call even if they’d dispatched a chopper to effect an intercept. Which they had. She knew they had.
Jack had picked up on that bit about the Blue Iguana. His response had come too quickly, too smoothly. So he would be on that chopper. Charley didn’t doubt that for a moment. And once she heard the helo approach, she’d...
“Snowball One, this is Iquitos Base. Please confirm your position.”
McMasters kept his eyes on her and his weapon aimed at Bubba’s forehead while she advised the command post that they’d spotted what looked like a possible narco boat.
“It turned tail when it saw us and made for the Pastaza. We’re following. Will advise if we intercept.”
“Roger that, Snowball One.”
“Good job,” McMasters commented when she signed off. “Another hour and we’re home free.”
Not if Charley had anything to do with it. Jaw set, she monitored the instruments as the RCB entered the Pastaza’s wide, silty mouth. The shallow river meandered like a constipated snake, creating oxbows and sloughs all along its route. With the rainy season in full swing, many of those sloughs and snags were submerged. But they were there. Some not that far below the surface. And when Charley picked up the first, faint sound of a chopper, she’d damned well ram into one.
That was the plan, anyway, right up until both she and McMasters caught the distant whop-whop of rotor blades. He went rigid, head cocked, eyes narrowed. Then he gave a vicious curse.
“That better not be what I think it is!”
His face livid, he slammed the pistol butt against the instrument console. And suddenly all hell broke loose within the RCB’s interior compartment.
It happened in the space of a heartbeat. Charley heard a high, shrill chirp. Saw a blur of white as something flew from behind the console. Heard McMasters snarl and jump back, slapping his bandaged hand at the neck of his shirt.
His other hand, the one gripping the pistol, flailed wildly. Charley didn’t hesitate. She threw the RCB into a turn so sharp the starboard gunwale shipped water. McMasters fell into her, bounced off, hit the bulkhead. He staggered upright, clawing at the back of his neck, as Charley cut the wheel again. Two seconds later they rammed into a partially submerged sandbar.
With the engines at full throttle, the RCB’s reinforced bow almost plowed right through the barrier before jolting to a stop. The boat was designed for rapid insertion, for running up on shore. Still, the impact sent McMasters flying forward. He crashed into the command console at the same instant Charley leaped for the pistol. She couldn’t wrestle it free of his white-knuckled grip. All she could do was hang on with both hands when he tried to shake her off. He was bigger, stronger, but she had fear and desperation on her side.
She was still fighting for the weapon, still using all her strength to keep the muzzle aimed away from Bubba, when McMasters smashed his bandaged fist into her face. The agony to his injured hand must have been excruciating, but the blow was enough to send her to knees. Somehow she managed to hang on to him. Right up until a brutal backhanded blow sent her reeling.
She sprawled on the deck, her ears ringing, her vision blurred. A shadow loomed over her. She curled into a tight ball, shielding her head with her arms, feeling her killer’s savage rage, anticipating the bullets that would shatter her spine, splatter her blood across the deck and...
A burst of rapid fire shattered the RCB’s windshield. The accompanying acoustics boomed like cannon in the enclosed compartment. Charley curled even tighter, sure one of the bullets would rip into her.
As soon as she registered the fact that none had, she uncoiled. Heart pounding, she shoved to her knees and saw McMasters had dropped where he stood. The top half of his head was blown away. Blood and gray matter now spattered the RCB’s compartment.
“Bubba!”
She crawled to her gunner. His head lolled against the bulkhead. Blood still seeped from his scalp laceration, but she saw no other wounds. Her sob of relief turned to a hiccup of near hysteria when a tiny bit of white fluff scampered across the deck, chirping vigorously, and aimed for her sleeve.
“Oh, baby! Come here!”
She caught the marmoset before it could burrow in. It was clinging to her finger when Jack dropped into the compartment. He made a swift sweep with his SAW, his glance lingering on McMasters for less than a second before he squatted beside Charley. His eyes turned to ice when he saw the bruises she guessed were already flowering on her face.
“You okay?”
“I am now.”
His glance shifted to the unconscious gunner. “Bubba?”
“McMasters pistol-whipped him, then his head slammed against the bulkhead when we hit. He may be concussed.”
“The chopper’s putting down now. We’ll fly him back to base.”
“It’s just now putting down? Then how...? How did you...?”
“I had the helo come in low and slow. After I got off the shots, they made another pass and I jumped aboard.”
She looked from him to the shattered windshield to McMasters’s lifeless body. Admiration warred with disbelief as she swung back to face him.
“You angled your fire between the armor plating and reinforced hull? Then shot through a narrow strip of what was supposed to be bulletproof glass?”
“I loaded tungsten rounds,” he said with a shrug, as if armor-piercing shells were all he need to pull off impossible shots. “And that was fast thinking, running aground the way you did. The maneuver distracted McMasters long enough for him to present a static target.”
“That wasn’t his only distraction.” She held up a finger still wrapped in fur. “Guess who jumped down his collar at just the right moment?”
Two small black eyes stared unwinking at Jack. He stared back, his sun-bleached brows soaring. “Well, damn. Looks like your mascot didn’t return to the wild after all.”
“Looks like.” She stroked a gentle fingertip over the soft powder puff. “I don’t know what the laws are about bringing wild animals out of Peru and into the States, but I’ll tell you right now. Where I go, Snowball goes.”
Jack didn’t doubt it for a minute. First things first, though. Keying his radio, he signaled the chopper. “This is Viper One.
RCB secure, but we have a category bravo who requires aerovac back to base.”
“Roger that, Viper One.”
“Also a body bag to transport remains.”
“Will you accompany the remains?”
“Negative. I’ll go back with the boat.”
* * *
When Charley and Jack returned to base, they headed straight for the hospital. Bubba was awake and thoroughly indignant over the doc’s orders that he remain for a twenty-four-hour observation period. His straw-colored hair stood up in spikes above the bandage circling his forehead and his hospital gown dipped precariously as he pushed up against his pillows.
“I’m good, Chief,” he protested. “Better ’n you, from the look of it!”
That wasn’t saying much. Charley had surveyed her black eye and bruised cheek when she’d hit the head during the return to Iquitos. The sight wasn’t pretty, but she soothed Bubba’s ruffled feathers with an account of everything that went down while he was unconscious.
She left him grinning over Snowball’s role in the drama, then reported to the office of the U.S. JAG liaison on base to give a formal statement regarding the demise of Sean McMasters. The JAG requested a photographer to snap shots of the RCB’s interior. When Charley questioned the need to record the gruesome detail, Jack quietly set her straight.
“McMasters was on active duty when he deserted. There’ll be an official inquiry into his death.”
Grimacing at the thought, she left him to give his statement and accompanied the photographer to the docks. The rest of her crew had already assembled. They stood by while the photographer did his job, then set about cleaning their boat.
Although her face and jaw ached, Charley insisted on helping. This wasn’t the first time she’d swabbed up blood and gore. Many of the Special Ops teams she’d helped extract during her years as a river rat came out carrying their wounded. The task dragged at her spirits, though, and sapped her fast-draining store of energy. The heat and the rain that hammered down for a solid thirty minutes didn’t help, either.
Jack’s appearance on the dock just moments after the skies cleared gave her a temporary reprieve from the gruesome cleanup. She joined him topside for a breather and a little privacy. He looked as beat as she felt. His bristles were back full force and tired lines etched his face.