Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  Olivia’s narrowed gaze locked on Wolf for a couple long ticks of the clock. Then she swung her eyes over to Bran.

  “Hey, don’t look at me.” He held up his hands. “Wolf’s right. If you’re having a crisis of conscience, you need to hash it out with the big guy upstairs.” He pointed to the ceiling, and they all knew he wasn’t referring to God.

  “Fine.” She shrugged. “Then will one of you come up and take over piloting for him?”

  Bran exchanged a look with the two men sitting at the table with him and knew each of them was thinking the same thing. Time for a little ax waxing?

  They seemed to come to a unanimous decision, because Mason nodded at the same time Wolf said, “I’ll take over,” and Bran simultaneously blurted, “Wolf’s your man.”

  * * *

  12:32 p.m.…

  “So what’s with this whole ‘We need to talk’ song and dance?” Leo asked, his deep voice drifting back to Olivia as she followed him down the tight metal stairwell into the salvage ship’s small galley. A large stove, half of which was a griddle, took up most of the space along the far bulkhead. The rest of the room was crammed with old floor-to-ceiling cabinetry and a little square table that was surrounded on three sides by a booth with faded orange cushions. “Is there somethin’ about this mission you haven’t told me? Will a Russian submarine be waitin’ for us when we get there?”

  She perched against the edge of the table, turning to find Leo sliding off his aviator sunglasses and hooking one earpiece over the collar of his T-shirt. Maybe it was the reflection of the azure waters coming in through the portholes, or maybe it was the dim yellow light shining down from the simple overhead fixture, but his usually hazel eyes looked intriguingly, almost mesmerizingly green.

  Damn, he’s a handsome bastard.

  She’d noticed that about him before she ever met him, when she’d seen him walking across that airplane hangar on the outskirts of Aleppo. He’d been dressed head-to-toe in desert-drab fatigues and wearing a crap-ton of body armor. A combat helmet and those ever-present sunglasses had obscured much of his face, but there’d been no mistaking that impressively male mouth or the breadth of those fabulously wide shoulders.

  And speaking of…

  His sheer mass seemed to dwarf the already-tight quarters. She thought she could feel his body heat radiating out to her as he propped his lean hip against the countertop, crossing his arms and ankles. Or maybe she was just being fanciful, given she didn’t have all that many clothes on and any subtle shift in the dense, humid air registered on her bare arms and legs.

  Sidebar: She wasn’t the only one without a lot of clothes on. There was a whole lot of Leo on display too.

  And, okay, yes, so she’d caught herself staring at the crisp, brownish-blond hairs on his forearms more than a time or two since they pulled anchor and started making their way through the choppy seas toward the coordinates indicated on the handheld signal receiver Morales had supplied her with. It was hard not to stare, considering how deft he was at piloting the ship, and how every movement of his wide, capable hands on the controls caused his biceps to bunch and the tendons and veins in his forearms to stand out in harsh relief.

  Of course, if her ogling had ended there, she wouldn’t feel like a complete hussy. But you know it hadn’t ended there. In fact, more times than she could count, she’d found herself watching his big jaw work over a piece of chewing gum, or she’d caught herself glancing down at the long, tan length of his legs, admiring the flex of his muscular calves as he adjusted his position in the captain’s chair.

  Then, as if all of that wasn’t enough, she figured she’d spent a good ten to fifteen minutes lustfully gazing at the few whorling curls of burnished gold hair peeking from the center of the V in his T-shirt before she was able to pull her eyes away and concentrate on something other than—

  “Olivia?”

  She glanced up to find he’d paused in the middle of folding a stick of chewing gum into his mouth, one quirked eyebrow having nearly disappeared into his hairline.

  Oh, for the love of God. There she’d gone again. What was it about Leo that made it impossible for her to keep her mind on task?

  Oh yeah. Everything. From the way he looked—all golden and gorgeous. And the way he talked—all low and Southern. To the way he handled himself in every situation—with integrity and flat-out courage. In short, Leo Anderson was everything a man was supposed to be and then some. Which in turn made her insides go all soft and warm and malleable, making her feel like…well…like a woman.

  Sweet baby Jesus. And now I’m channeling old Shania Twain songs. Sheesh, Mortier! Pull your head out of your ass. That thing isn’t meant to be a hat!

  And speaking of hats…she hastily donned her imaginary CIA cap. “Uh, sorry. Yeah, I, uh…” She swallowed and crossed her arms over her chest just in case, you know, all that gawking had caused her to nip out or something. I mean, friggin’-A. “No. No Russian sub. I was…I was just hoping maybe you’d tell me about that promise Wolf mentioned in the kitchen back on Wayfarer Island.”

  Leo cocked his head, narrowing his eyes. Green. They were definitely green in this light. “Why do you care about that?”

  Okey dokey. That was a valid question. Why did she care about that? But, of course, she knew the answer.

  She cared because of Syria. She cared because she owed them. She cared because she’d already cost them so much, and she’d be damned if she’d be able to live with herself if she ended up costing them even more.

  “I just…I know how much you guys pride yourselves on your honor, on your integrity. And I would hate it if…if…” She stammered to a stop, trying to gather her thoughts. “I would hate it if any of you felt forced to renege on an…oath or something just because you all can’t say no when you think the lives of innocents are on the line and because, well, on top of that you need the money and here I am offering you some that is totally skeevy and sort of makes you hookers…er…gigolos I guess is the correct term since you’re men, but that’s not as bad as me playing the part of a big slimy government pimp that has you by the short curlies and I-I-I—” She realized she was talking without punctuation again. Twisting her lips, she shrugged, hoping he’d been able to make sense of that jumbled mess of run-on sentences.

  “Who are you?”

  “Huh?” She searched his face. Back when she first met Leo, she’d thought he wore those damn sunglasses to keep people from seeing his eyes, to keep them from discovering whatever he was really thinking in that consternating head of his. But it hadn’t taken her long to figure out that staring into the multihued pools of his irises, like she was doing right now, told her no more than staring into that old well in the woods out behind the orphanage. In a word: nothing. He would have made an excellent spy. “What do you mean, who am I?”

  “I mean, the woman I met almost two years ago wouldn’t have thought twice about our honor or our integrity. She would’ve used us and any means necessary to retrieve those capsules.”

  Each of his words felt like a knife slashing into her gut. Holy jeez. Is that what he thought of her? Ow! She resisted the urge to press a hand to her stomach. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” she whispered, glancing away from him because, for a split second before that good ol’ Langley training kicked in, she wasn’t able to hide the hurt in her eyes.

  Of course, she should have remembered that Leo was the most singularly perceptive man she’d ever met.

  “Shit, Olivia.” He pushed away from the counter to lay a warm hand on her shoulder. The calluses on his palm were scratchy, and up close like this he smelled of suntan lotion, sporty deodorant, and healthy sun-kissed skin. “I didn’t mean it like that. I swear. My uncle says sometimes I come off as rough as a corncob.” One corner of her mouth hitched at the analogy. “But I promise I wasn’t criticizin’ or disparagin’ you. I like that you kick butt and take names—and make no apologies for doin’ either.”

  No apologies? We
ll, that might be true. But that didn’t mean she didn’t harbor a boatload of regrets.

  She lifted her chin. His eyes looked more blue than green now. Deep, grayish blue. Ocean-after-a-storm blue. But she couldn’t let herself drown in them, even if she was really, really tempted to. “I don’t want to use you. Not if it means—”

  “Shh.” He tapped her lips with his index finger, and the stupid things tingled like it’d been his tongue. “You’re makin’ too much of this. Yes, we need the money. And yes, we wish we didn’t. But that’s life, right? We make the best of bad situations.”

  And she couldn’t help but notice she was the proverbial bad situation. Hell.

  “And about that promise,” he said, dropping his hand from her shoulder. The skin that had been beneath his palm felt cold and bereft, which was…weird and…dumb.

  I mean, bereftness—if that’s even a word—isn’t really something skin can feel, is it?

  “What about that promise?” she asked, her heart pounding.

  “It’s not like it’s classified information or anything.”

  “You could’ve fooled me. The way the guys were acting”—she gestured toward the door to the galley—“you’d have thought I asked them to reveal a state secret. They said I needed to talk to you in private.”

  When she stressed the last two words, a strange look slid over his face. His eyes became even more shuttered, and his mouth tightened into a straight line. If she wasn’t mistaken, a little muscle was ticking toward the back of his jaw. “No good, interferin’ sonsofbitches,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

  He shrugged one big shoulder, and she took that to mean he wasn’t going to expound on the subject. She was proved right when the next words out of his mouth were, “The promise Wolf was talking about has to do with Rusty.”

  And just like that, the air inside her lungs burst into flames and her stomach congealed into a ball of acid that was one part nausea and two parts heart-shredding guilt. Rusty Lawrence…the man she’d watched get leveled by five rounds of center-fire ammo. Rusty Lawrence…the man who had given his all, his last full measure of devotion to save her life and, ultimately, the lives of her assets inside the terrorist group that went by many names, one of which was the Islamic State.

  Chapter Six

  12:39 p.m.…

  Leo watched Olivia’s throat work over a swallow and her big, blue eyes widen until they seemed to take up her whole face. “R-Rusty?” she asked, her voice breathless and weak. Neither condition struck him as particularly Olivia-like.

  Then again, that awful day outside Aleppo had changed all of them, so…right.

  “You see, we made this…um…” He trailed off, trying to find a way to explain the unexplainable. How did one describe what it was like to spend a decade and a half working and fighting beside a guy, being scared and cold and hungry on the battlefield, or sharing beers and bonfires and bar bunnies back stateside? How did one explain what it was to be part of a band of brothers and the incredible weight of a deathbed promise to live your life to the fullest because one of you wasn’t going to live another sixty seconds?

  “Look, Rusty had been talkin’ about hangin’ up his combat boots and camo for a while,” he said, opting for the simplest of explanations. “He kept sayin’ that none of us were gettin’ any younger, that all of us had more than done our duty for our country, and that it was time to start makin’ real lives for ourselves. When we found him alive inside that asshole general’s compound—”

  “I don’t know how he lasted that long,” she whispered, shaking her head, her voice catching. “When I left him, I would have sworn he was dead. If I’d known he was still alive, I would’ve—”

  “He was the toughest sonofagun I ever knew,” he cut her off. “And he should have been dead. Don’t blame yourself, Olivia. There was nothin’ you could’ve done for him. Except maybe get yourself killed too.”

  Something flickered in her eyes, something that had him cocking his head. Then it was gone. Just like that. And, yeah. He reckoned no matter what he said, nothing could make her stop second-guessing that day.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “he brought it up again. So, we made a pact”—though covenant was really closer to describing the promise they all made while huddled on the floor of that helicopter—“that we would do what he wanted. Quit the Navy as soon as our contracts were up and start making real lives for ourselves.”

  He lifted his arm, showing her the tattoo and leaving out the part where tears and snot had flooded from his face while he held his dying friend in his arms, his fingers and the fingers of his men plugging gunshot holes—so many goddamned gunshot holes—in a vain attempt to sustain a life that was quickly slipping away…

  “Promise me,” Rusty said, the gurgle of blood making his words nearly unintelligible above the loud whump-whump-whump of the helicopter’s rotors beating the hot air overhead. The big bird lurched forward, its landing skids scraping the ground for a couple of heartrending seconds before it finally hopped into the sky. The sound of rounds pinging off the chopper’s metal skin grew fainter and fainter as they gained altitude and raced to get out of range. All the while Michael “Mad Dog” Wainwright maintained his position at the open door, raining death in the form of hot lead onto the rebels below.

  Bwarrrrrrr! Bwarrrrrr! The big floor-mounted .50-caliber machine gun’s mouth burned bright orange from the heat of the endless rounds it spat from its throat. Spent casings clinkety-clacked against the floor and walls all around them.

  “P-promise,” Rusty gurgled again, one side of his face covered in blood from the bullet that had grazed his skull and left his scalp torn.

  “Don’t talk, man!” Bran begged, yelling over the angry buzz of the weapon. Leo looked up to find his best friend’s face shiny with far more than just sweat. Great streams of tears streaked down Bran’s dusty cheeks and formed crystalline droplets in the bushy beard he’d grown to blend in with the local population. “Save your strength!”

  “Pr-omise me, LT…” Rusty insisted, lifting his hands to curl his fingers around the straps of Leo’s body armor. Considering most of Rusty’s blood was coating the floor of the helicopter, the little jerk he gave Leo was surprisingly strong, “…that you’re f-f—” He was racked by coughing then, blood filling his mouth to leak from the corners of his chapped lips in oozing rivulets.

  “Turn him onto his side so he can breathe!” Doc bellowed, ripping open a package of QuikClot with his teeth.

  “How is he?” Romeo yelled from his place in the copilot’s seat. Leo didn’t answer. He was too busy helping Bran, Mason, and Wolf keep pressure on Rusty’s myriad wounds while they carefully pushed him onto his side so the fluid filling his lungs and throat didn’t choke him to death. Rusty grunted, hacking up a puddle of blood that coated Leo’s knees. But that gruesome mess was nothing compared to the sight that met his eyes when Doc yanked up the side of Rusty’s fatigues shirt, revealing a ragged wound on his flank that pumped deep red, nearly black blood.

  Oh shit. Oh, please God, no. Leo was no doctor, but he’d been in the field long enough to know a punctured liver when he saw one.

  Doc glanced up at him, his expression a terrible perversion of its usual wholesome Midwestern self. And with that one look, he confirmed what Leo hadn’t allowed himself to contemplate since the moment they dragged Rusty into the helicopter. Their friend and teammate, their brother in everything but blood, wasn’t going to walk away from this one.

  Leo let his head drop back on the column of his neck, gritting his jaw so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn’t crumble. And for the first time in his life, he cursed God or Fate or whoever the hell else might be responsible for this unforgivable mistake. And it was a mistake. Because Rusty was the best of them. The man they all counted on to keep them sane, keep them grounded when things went pear-shaped and the bottom dropped out from under thei
r asses.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening. It couldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t be happening!

  Fuck you! he silently yelled to everyone and no one in particular. Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuuuuuuck you!

  If he’d been screaming the words aloud, he would have shredded his vocal cords, flayed his throat raw. But he held them in until they exploded inside his chest like a handful of live grenades, burning and flaming until his heart and lungs were reduced to ashes.

  And that’s when he felt it…the warm liquid pouring down his face.

  For a moment, he thought maybe he’d been grazed by a bullet. But, no. A second later he knew it wasn’t blood that coursed unchecked over his cheeks. Like Bran, he could no more stop the tears spilling from his eyes than the mighty Mississippi could stop itself from spilling into the Gulf.

  “LT! Madre de Dios!” Romeo called back again after Mad Dog finally laid off the trigger on the big sawgun. “How the hell is he?”

  Leo lowered his head and turned to Romeo. He didn’t need to speak the awful words aloud. His tears and the agony on his face said it all.

  Romeo’s mouth fell open, his nostrils flaring wide as his own eyes welled with wetness. And for a couple of seconds, the two of them shared the soul-shredding knowledge that these were Rusty’s last minutes. The moment stretched and contracted, taking an eternity and simultaneously seeming over in the blink of an eye. Using his hands to wipe the moisture from his cheeks, Romeo jerked his chin in a quick downward motion of understanding, casting Rusty one last, lingering look before turning back to the helicopter’s controls.

  There was nothing Romeo could do for Rusty now. Nothing any of them could do except maybe try to make him comfortable.

  It was as if Doc had read Leo’s mind. When Leo swung back around, he found the man reaching into his medical go-bag and pulling out two syringes of morphine.

  “N-not yet, Doc,” Rusty garbled when he saw what was in Doc’s hands “Not until you all p-promise me t-to—”