“Sh’yeaaah.” Ugh. She shouldn’t have let her jaw hang open on that last word. A wave took advantage of the opportunity, filling her mouth with salt water. “How about when we aren’t floating in the middle of an ocean full of sharks? Or maybe we wait until terrorists aren’t launching rockets at us. Or perhaps this conversation is better left until after Leo and the others are safe from—”
“But that’s what makes this perfect,” he interrupted. Good God, he made treading water look easy. His arms barely seemed to move below the surface.
“How do you figure?”
“Because we might not make it outta this thing alive.” And the unvarnished truth of that hit her like a wrecking ball, filling her with grief and a sense of dread so heavy it took everything she had not to let it drag her beneath the surface of the sea. Luckily, the sound of the motor on the dinghy finally catching and coming to roaring life distracted her.
When she looked toward Leo and the little boat, it was to see both headed in her direction, plumes of water jetting out behind the small outboard engine and catching the sunlight to create tiny rainbows. Hallelujah!
“And since that’s the case,” Bran continued, seemingly unmoved by the fact that the others were headed their way, “there’s no reason for you to lie to me. I mean, who needs that on their conscience so close meeting their maker?”
“You don’t really believe—”
“So what’s the deal?” He spoke over her as if she hadn’t said a word. “Are you two just hot and heavy for one another, or is it something more?”
And damn him, she felt herself answering with the truth. Not because she was scared she would be standing at the Pearly Gates and explaining herself to St. Peter anytime soon, but more because…well…it seemed disrespectful to Leo—to his bravery and honor and…and…everything he stood for—to lie.
“I don’t know about him,” she admitted. “But for me it’s…more. I like him, Bran. I really do.”
Okay, and she could not believe she’d just said that. Out loud. To another person. She’d never been very good at being vulnerable. Didn’t know why she’d decided to give it a try now.
He stared at her for a moment, then two. Finally he muttered, “I wish you didn’t.”
Her chin jerked back. “Why?”
“Because there’s no future for the two of you.”
“Why do you say that?” I mean, she knew why. It was because she could never tell Leo the truth about Syria. And even though she didn’t know a lot about personal relationships, having never had many of her own, she knew enough to know that a stable one couldn’t be built on a foundation of lies, but—
“You’re a spy and he’s a civilian,” Bran said simply. “Anyone with an ounce of brains knows those two things are oil and water.”
“I’m not banking on forever here,” she admitted, as much to herself as to him.
He bobbed his head. “Well, that’s good to hear. Now let’s—”
He didn’t have time to say more because the dinghy slid to a stop beside them. The next thing she knew, strong hands gripped her armpits and she was being hauled over the side of the rubber boat and straight into Leo’s warm, muscular arms.
And it didn’t matter that there was no future for them. It didn’t matter that their luck could very well take a turn for the worse—I mean, given its current trajectory—because she’d learned early in life to appreciate the little things, to luxuriate in the moment since by its very definition, it was fleeing. And for this second, for this one crystalline heartbeat of time, he was safe and whole. And he was hugging her to him as if he never wanted to let her go, as if he cared. And she’d take it. What little there was, she’d take it.
She squeezed him back with all she had before searching his face. “You okay?” she asked, wiping a smudge of soot from his furrowed brow with her thumb. She had to catch her bottom lip between her teeth. For some mortifying reason, tears were pricking behind her eyes.
What the hell? She wasn’t a crier.
Luckily, Leo didn’t see the mutinous wetness. His wonderful multihued eyes ran over her from head to toe, checking for injury. “Fine. You? Did I hurt you when I tossed you overboard?”
“No,” she assured him. “No, I—” She adjusted herself into a more comfortable position on his lap. Something was poking her. Then she realized that something was Leo. He was so hard a cat couldn’t scratch him. And that was just what she needed to keep herself from becoming a watering pot. “Really, Leo,” she tsked, shaking her head, “now isn’t the time to—”
Despite the gravity of their situation, he grinned. “Normally,” he told her, “that would all be for you. But right now I suspect it has more to do with the adrenaline. We call ’em battlefield boners. And why the good Lord saw fit to hamper a man with a hard-on during life-or-death situations, I’ll never know.” He turned to Wolf before she could come up with a witty reply. “Get us the hell out of here.”
The nose of the dinghy plowed over the top of a wave when Wolf laid on the throttle. Then Leo pulled her close again and stuck his nose in the crook of her shoulder. He inhaled deeply, like maybe he was trying to suck her scent all the way down to his toes. And then, right there in front of his men, with his ship sinking behind them, he kissed her.
* * *
2:24 p.m.…
Leo didn’t care that his friends were watching. He didn’t care that now was not the time or the place. All that mattered was that Olivia was safe and unharmed. Dripping wet and shivering despite the hot sun beating down on them, but safe and unharmed. And kissing him back as openly and passionately as any man could wish for…
“Leo,” she breathed against his mouth. His own name had never sounded so good.
Salt clung to her lips, and she might be a pickled form of Olivia, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still want to eat her up. In fact, he wanted to go on kissing her forever. And he might have given it his best shot had not the fire burning in Wayfarer-I’s big belly hit her fuel tanks. KABOOM! A ball of flames exploded from her aft section to belch into the sky like dragon’s breath.
“Jeez!” Olivia hissed as Wolf cut the throttle. The rubber dinghy glided to a slow stop as the heat of the blast rolled over them. It wicked the water from their skin, leaving nothing but salty residue behind and filling the air with the scents of melting metal and burning paint.
“Son. Of. A. Bitch,” Bran breathed.
Four sets of eyes quickly turned to Leo. And it was no wonder. His father’s legacy, his birthright was burning and sinking. But, more importantly, it was all of their futures.
What are we goin’ to do now? His friends had invested everything in this venture, put their trust in him. And just look what it got ’em.
“God, Leo,” Olivia whispered. “I don’t even know what to say. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t begin to cover—”
“It’s not your fault,” he told her, unable to take his eyes away from the ship during her death throes. She was going fast, the ocean swallowing her and the flames that covered her in one long gulp.
“Of course it’s my fault,” Olivia insisted. “If I hadn’t—”
“Save your apologies and recriminations,” Wolf growled, pulling back the charging bolt on his Colt and flipping off the safety. Both sounds seemed particularly loud on the open water despite the fact they were competing with the dinghy’s softly purring outboard engine. “Company’s coming.”
Leo glanced away from the charred carcass of Wayfarer-I—now nose down in the drink, only her mostly destroyed aft section and a portion of her rudder remained visible—to look in the direction of Wolf’s extended finger. And sure as shit, beyond the wall of smoke he could just make out a skiff detaching itself from the yacht. Five…no…six men were aboard. All armed. All, no doubt, with death in their hearts.
Well, they weren’t the only ones. His ol’ ticker pumped a toxic blend of rage and revenge.
Olivia scrambled off his lap, going down on her knees in the bottom of the dinghy and
leaning over the side so she could squint toward the yacht. He instantly missed her warmth, the feel of her pressed against him. But he registered that with half a mind. The other half was busy running through possible scenarios, trying to find one that allowed them to live.
Apparently Bran was doing much the same thing. “Should we try to outrun them?” he wondered aloud.
Leo nodded. “Olivia can call Morales and have him give our coordinates to the contractors. Even if they have to run on one engine, if they bust ass in our direction, they might have a shot at reachin’ us before we run out of fuel or before the tangos catch up.”
“I’d say that’s a negative,” Wolf said, grabbing the satellite phone from the small, webbed pouch attached to the inside of the dinghy. When he lifted it, water poured from the phone’s plastic case. “I stuck it in there thinking it’d be safe. I wasn’t banking on the skiff ending up facedown in the drink.” He punched a button on the satphone, then another, before shaking his head. “No go.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Mason grumbled, the butt of his M4 raised to his shoulder so he could use his scope to get a better view of their targets.
“Why’s that?” Leo demanded.
“Those cocksuckers have a six-HP engine on that fuckin’ thing. They’d catch us before we banged out two miles.”
“So we make a stand,” Wolf said.
Usually making a stand didn’t fill Leo with dread. He’d made plenty of them during his Naval career, been outnumbered and outgunned too many times to count. But he’d never had Olivia by his side while doing any of that. And, by God, he’d be damned if he’d have her by his side now.
“Get into a life jacket, Olivia,” he told her, grabbing one of the bright-orange preservers and thrusting it at her. “Then get out of the boat.”
“What?” Her face showed equal parts confusion and alarm.
“We’re about to have ourselves a real-life gun battle here. And I can’t have you in the middle of it.”
“No.” She shook her head, letting the life jacket drop to the bottom of the dinghy. “No, I can help you.”
He flicked a glance at the skiff and the terrorists now whizzing toward them. The heat of rage burning through his blood froze solid at the thought of her taking part in what was coming next.
Over my dead body.
But it was the thought of her dead body that had him picking up the life jacket and pushing it toward her again. “Put it on,” he told her in his best commanding-officer voice.
“I’ve got my…” Her eyes widened when she reached behind her back to feel for her pistol. It was gone. No doubt sitting on the sandy bottom some two hundred feet below them. He was pretty sure he’d inadvertently unclipped the top strap on her holster when he sent her flying overboard. But there’d be time for explanations later. For now, he needed her to Get. The. Hell. Out!
“Exactly,” he told her. “You’ll just be a distraction. One we don’t need.”
“But I—”
The gentle whir of an outboard engine reached his ears. Time’s up. Hating himself for what he had to do, but seeing no other choice, he stood and grabbed Olivia around the waist. Before she registered his intent, he tossed her overboard.
She hit the water a couple of yards from the dinghy, arms and legs akimbo, and came up sputtering. “Goddamnit, Leo! Stop doing that!”
He flung the life jacket after her. “Grab it before it floats away! And then stay put!” he bellowed. When he saw her reach for the bright-orange life preserver, he turned to his men. Yessir. In this situation they were certainly his men. “Okay, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s time to Jason Bourne some things. I know it’s been a while, but I suspect it’s like ridin’ a bike. So let’s give it to ’em with both smokin’ barrels and a punch to the throat, hooyah?”
“Hooyah!” three voices rang out right before Wolf laid on the throttle and they took off on an intercept course with the terrorists.
Chapter Eleven
2:29 p.m.…
I’m going to kill him! Olivia thought as she struggled to thrust her arms into the life jacket. If we live through this, I’m going to—
But that’s as far as she got before the bullets started flying and all thoughts of murder instantly turned to prayers for his safety. For the safety of all the men. Her heart became a black hole, sucking away everything but her fear as she watched helplessly—utterly, infuriatingly helplessly—as the two dinghies raced toward each other.
The rat-a-tat-tats of the tangos’ AKs were constant, but the distance between the little boats was too great for their rounds to hit their marks with any accuracy. In contrast, Leo and his men had yet to take a shot. Wolf was piloting the zooming skiff with one hand, his weapon raised to his opposite shoulder. Mason was in the middle of the boat, his M4 resting against the side, ready and willing. And both Bran and Leo had positioned themselves on the front of the dinghy, lying lengthwise along each side, one leg in, one leg out, their weapons poised for action like a couple of snipers, waiting until it was time to lay on their triggers and make their rounds count. She held her breath.
Suddenly—Thump! Thump!—Bran’s machine gun jerked once, twice. He was the best shot of the bunch, his reputation as a crackerjack gunman known far and wide within the spec-ops community. That point was proved a split second later when blood exploded from one of the terrorists’ skulls in a pink cloud. The tango toppled overboard, arms flying wide and AK-47 falling from his lifeless fingers before he hit the water and rolled in the wake of the boat.
Olivia had only seen two other men killed in her entire career—well, one, really; she’d only thought Rusty was dead—and those memories still haunted her, made her sick to her stomach anytime she replayed the gruesome scenes in her mind. This time wasn’t any different. Her gut contracted, spewing burning bile into her throat until she gagged. Being shot at with RPGs should have been a mitigating factor for squeamishness and a motivating factor for vengeance, but apparently she’d been absent the day they handed out steel stomachs in field-agent training.
She managed to blow out a breath, beat back the urge to spew, and whispered, “One down. Five to go.”
Her words drifted out over the waves, which is when she realized she’d basically been turned into a cheerleader, rooting from the safety of the sidelines. And that thought was a shot centered directly in the bull’s-eye of her pride. Missing steel stomach aside, she was a trained agent for the Central Intelligence Agency, for shit’s sake! Even weaponless, she was an asset, not a liability. She was just about to swing back around to thoughts of wrapping her hands around Leo’s stupid, gallant neck when she got distracted by the terrorists’ dinghy quickly changing course, pulling a U-ey and racing back toward the yacht.
And just like that, the game changed. Leo and his men were now the pursuers. Wolf altered course as well, steering their boat in a wide parallel line, no doubt trying to give Bran and Leo an opportunity to see past the great, white plumes of water jettisoning from the terrorists’ outboard so they could get a clear bead on their targets. But the tangos had more horsepower. And they were pulling away fast.
Still, that didn’t stop Leo from taking a shot. His weapon barked, the sound echoing over the water. Once. But that was enough. One shot. One kill. Olivia couldn’t see where he’d hit the terrorist, but the tango toppled overboard, smashing into the water and tumbling in the wake of the whirring engine before his body sank beneath the surface. The absence of gore allowed her to keep her stomach acid where it should be. Inside her stomach.
“And then there were four,” she murmured to herself, paddling against the current that was trying to pull her away from the action. The adrenaline surging through her body heightened all her senses. Her sight—it was like she was watching it all on a movie screen in HD. Her sense of smell—along with the pungent aroma of marine fuel, she would swear she could detect the iron richness of blood. And definitely her terror—Leo and his men were a far cry from being out of danger. And if one of t
hem was killed or injured because of her, because she’d dragged them on this mission, she’d never forgive herself.
With gritted teeth and ragged breaths, she watched the two boats slice and weave. She thought she heard one of the terrorists scream an order in Arabic above the whir of the engines. It sounded like Turn! But she couldn’t be sure. Of course, when their dinghy spun around in a tight circle a half second later, she knew she’d heard right. The tangos barreled toward Leo and his men like they were playing a watery game of chicken, or else they were friggin’ kamikaze-ing it.
The move caught the SEALs off guard, evidenced by the fact that Wolf didn’t adjust their course quickly enough, and Leo and Bran were forced to dive for cover in the bottom of the dinghy when the front of their rubber boat lit up with enemy fire. A second later, their engine took a round and sputtered and died.
“No!” she yelled, the skin over her entire body tightening until it was a wonder her bones didn’t poke through to the surface. Leo and his men couldn’t lose the boat. They’d be sitting ducks! Cannon fodder for the terrorists who—
What’s he doing? What’s he doing?
She couldn’t believe her eyes. Or maybe she didn’t want to believe them. Leo was standing up in the middle of the dinghy, roaring like the lion from which he’d taken his nom de guerre and squeezing his trigger until the barrel of his M4 was a nothing but a black blur, orange fire blinking from the end of the muzzle.
The terrorists returned fire, and a hail of rounds bit into the ocean around Leo’s little boat. Then one found its mark in Leo. An ugly spray of red burst from his shoulder.
“No!” she screamed again, just as a wave… a goddamn, mothersucking wave obliterated her view for a few interminable seconds. When she floated to the crest, it was to find the terrorists’ dinghy dead in the water, its engine smoking ominously. From the corner of her eye, she saw Wayfarer-I’s rudder finally slip beneath the surface, the big ship slowly sinking, leaving nothing but a swirling eddy of water and floating debris to mark its passing. She spared it barely a thought, because Leo and his men… They were nowhere to be seen, their boat completely empty and bobbing gently, silently, eerily with the current.
Hell or High Water Page 16