Where was Pepper? Jim couldn’t look for her now. He could only pray she was somewhere nearby, probably five thousand feet above him, coming down safely. The wind was fickle. He bobbled. Yanking the lines, he steered the parasail farther inland. Two thousand feet. The trees formed a thick, continuous canopy. Automatically, he bent his knees and forced his lower body to relax. If he hit the LZ, he would have a clearing about the size of a football field in which to land.
Another gust of warm wind coming in off the ocean hit him and spun him around. Damn! Gritting his teeth, Jim saw the canopy flashing beneath his boots. One more yank. There! The meadow opened up beneath him. Instantly, he prepared to land. On the very best of days, he was able to land on his feet. But the sixty pounds of gear was pulling him off-balance. Rather than risk a broken ankle, he pulled the parasail around at the last possible moment to face the wind. There was lift, about fifty feet above the ground, then, gently, he was eased downward.
It was a nearly perfect textbook landing. His feet hit the wet grass and he bent his knees, absorbing the shock. The parasail fell to the earth, and he quickly jerked it toward him. Breathing hard, Jim looked around for Pepper. Anxiously, he searched the sky. All too aware of the wind gusting off the ocean, he narrowed his eyes against the dark sky.
The sudden breaking of tree limbs made him freeze. To the left! Jim jerked around, dropping his chute and kneeling. The crash continued, a crescendo of snapping branches. Pepper had landed in the trees! Quickly releasing his harness, he dragged everything under the jungly growth at the edge of the meadow. He pulled off his helmet and substituted a utility cap in the same camouflage colors as his uniform. The submachine gun was in his hands as he raced quietly along the edge of the meadow toward Pepper, a hundred questions racing through his mind as he hurried toward the sounds.
Voice communication was impossible; he couldn’t risk it. Looking up, he finally spotted her. She was hanging about forty feet above the ground, dangling at the end of her lines from a huge rubber tree. He could hear her ragged breathing. Without a sound, he set his weapon aside and began to climb the tree’s gnarled expanse. As he drew closer he could see that Pepper was tangled in her lines, so she couldn’t just cut herself free and drop. Damn.
Pepper tried to steady her breathing and avoid making any more noise than she already had. When she saw Jim climbing the tree toward her, she nearly cried out. Biting her lower lip, she waited silently. He was like a dark panther scaling the smooth-barked tree almost effortlessly. Pepper knew she was in trouble. The shroud lines had somehow become wrapped around her neck and arms. If she tried to cut loose, she might garrote herself. Worse, the branches above her, supporting her for the moment, were not stout. She was hanging tenuously at best.
She knew enough not to move. But had Jim ever cut someone out of a tree before? she wondered. In smoke jumping it was a common procedure, but she wasn’t sure if he’d had the experience. She saw him study the situation. Their eyes met and he grinned a little. A flood of feelings tunneled through her. She tried to smile back but didn’t succeed. Knowing she shouldn’t break radio silence, Pepper merely waited, watching as he moved gingerly out on a limb above her. Good, he knew he had to cut the lines tangled around her neck and arms first.
Relief sped through her as the lines were shorn and fell past her. Just as she reached for her own knife to cut the remaining lines and fall, Pepper heard a loud crack. She jerked her gaze upward as the limb Jim had crawled out on broke beneath his weight. With a gasp, she watched in horror as it tore from the trunk behind him. He had no time to prepare for the fall. A cry escaped Pepper as he fell past her, and hit the ground, hard.
Rapidly, she unhooked her heavy pack and let it drop first. Then she grasped her knife and began cutting her lines, one by one. Hanging precariously, she bent her knees, preparing for the coming fall. Jim had crawled off to one side. She could make him out in the dim moonlight, his back against the trunk of the tree. Dropping, she hit the ground, her bent knees taking the shock. She rolled, absorbing more of the shock, and dried leaves and dirt flew up around her.
Gasping for breath, Pepper scrambled to her feet and hurried back to Jim, falling to her knees at his side. She saw the grimace of pain in his face and followed his gaze to his lower right arm, which he held tightly against him. Even in the darkness, she could see blood oozing through his uniform.
“I cut it,” Jim rasped, throwing his head back, the pain flaring up his arm and into his shoulder. To hell with communications blackout. He had to talk to Pepper.
Gently, she eased his hand away from the wound. Jim’s sleeve had been ripped open. Pulling it aside, she gasped. “It’s deep.”
“Tell me about it,” he groaned softly. Looking around, he said, “Do what you have to do. We have to get out of here.”
Pepper felt guilty. If she hadn’t landed in the canopy instead of the LZ, Jim wouldn’t be injured. Compressing her lips, she shoved herself to her feet and went to retrieve her pack. Her fingers were already bloody, a sign that his wound was bleeding heavily. Locating her first-aid kits, she took them back to him.
“Take this,” she said in a wobbly voice, putting several white homeopathic pills directly into his mouth. “It’s arnica—good for sprains as well as hemorrhage.” Setting the kit aside, she drew out more items.
“I cut it on that damn branch I was on,” he muttered angrily.
“I know…I’m sorry, Jim.”
He held her guilt-ridden gaze. “You couldn’t help it. The wind was all over the place.” He stopped, a wave of pain flooding him. Finally, he gasped, “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I’m fine…fine….” Pepper quickly dumped the contents of the bottle directly into his wound. It was too dark to see much of anything. All she could do was disinfect the gash, then wrap it in a dressing and an Ace bandage. “I can’t do much until it’s lighter.”
“I know. Just wrap it tight. We’ve got to move.”
Nodding, she worked quickly. Though her fingers trembled, she was fast. In no time Jim was pulling down his torn sleeve. She helped him stand. He wavered for a moment, caught himself and straightened.
Anxiously, he searched her drawn face. “No injuries?”
“No…”
He reached out, unthinking, and brushed her cheek. “I was worried….”
The brief caress sent her heart skittering wildly. Shaken by his unexpected tenderness, Pepper pulled away. “Let me put my pack on and we can go.”
“I’ll bury the chutes and other gear.” Jim tested his right arm. To his dismay, it hurt even to pick them up. The injury held far greater ramifications than he wanted to admit. Without his right arm, he was damn near useless.
By the time Pepper had situated her heavy pack, Jim had dug a shallow hole and laid the equipment in them. She noticed he wasn’t using his right arm, instead pulling leaves and debris across them with his left hand. Helping him finish the job, she knelt next to him.
“The arm is bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Grimly, he caught and held her gaze. “Listen, I’ll take point. Whatever happens, we can’t engage anyone in a firefight. Do you understand? I can’t even count on using my fingers to pull the trigger.” He looked with disgust at his right arm. “Maybe it’s just as well,” he muttered. “We’ll do what Recons do—be quiet and not engage the enemy.” He drilled her with a hard look. “Do you think you can do that?”
“I don’t want to kill anyone, Jim. I never did. It’s fine with me.”
With an abrupt nod, he forced himself to his feet. Luckily, he hadn’t lost too much blood before Pepper wrapped up his wound. He knew enough about anatomy to realize that his luck could have been worse—an artery could have been torn open and he could have bled to death. And he knew what the jungle environment with its high humidity and decaying bacteria would do to a wound like this. Once the sun came up, he’d have Pepper sew up the wound and give him a shot of antibiotics from the supply of medications they carried in their
first-aid pack. Infection in the jungle was the surest killer of all, and those antibiotics could be the only thing ensuring he finish this mission. And he was going to finish it.
Pepper allowed Jim to take the lead. They walked quietly but quickly toward the unseen volcano. The surrounding trees were mostly coconut palms. According to the LZ information, they’d landed in a coconut plantation. The soil was tilled, dry and easy to navigate beneath the arms of the flowing palm trees, which rattled in the gusting winds. Pepper’s heart settled down and her senses took over. Although she carried a submachine gun, she didn’t want any part of using it. In the distance, a dog barked once. They froze and waited. No more barking. Jim moved on, more shadow than human being.
Pepper’s throat felt like sandpaper by the end of the first hour’s hike. Jim had kept up a fast, steady pace, and where they could, they trotted. Her shoulders ached from lugging the gear, and she was glad when Jim gave the hand signal to stop and rest. They were out of the plantation now and into the jungle itself, which was more tangled and harder to navigate. Twisted roots kept tripping her up, and she’d fallen too many times to count. Her shins were bruised and sore.
Pepper eased to her knees and unsnapped the pack. It fell behind her, and she wanted to groan with the pure pleasure of getting rid of the thing, but didn’t dare. Worried about Jim, she turned and devoted her attention to him as he came and sat down next to her. The dawn light finally allowed her to get a good look at his injury for the first time.
“Well?” he demanded, watching her face closely for reaction. He knew it was bad.
“It’s deep,” she said in a choked voice. She laid his hand on her thigh and opened the first-aid kit. “The bleeding’s stopped. That’s good.”
“I got lucky on that, at least,” Jim agreed. Pepper’s face was glistening with sweat, and a few dark brown curls had escaped from beneath her knit cap. Though her long fingers barely grazed the skin around his wound, he felt their warmth, with a tingling sensation that momentarily eased some of the throbbing pain. He concentrated on her lips—that full, lower lip—remembering what it was like to kiss her. Remembering her passion and generosity…. The loss of blood was making him light-headed. For a moment Jim allowed himself the indulgence of really looking at Pepper. She was beautiful….
“Did anyone ever tell you that you have a beautiful mouth?” he asked almost dreamily.
Stunned, she gazed at him. His face was sweaty, his mouth grim from the pain she knew he was feeling. “What? Oh…no, they haven’t.” She felt heat sweep across her cheeks, and she avoided his burning, intense stare. Taking out some surgically clean gauze that had been soaked in disinfectant, she steeled herself to begin scrubbing out the wound. In the light, she could see it was free of splinters or debris, but it had to be as clean as possible before she taped him up.
Jim leaned back against a tree trunk, honing in on Pepper’s face. Anger sizzled through him. Well, what was wrong with the perfect Captain John Freedman that he’d never noticed Pepper’s lovely mouth?
She began to scrub. “I’m sorry….”
His mouth tightened and he stiffened against the pain. “Somehow, I think I have this coming. I was such a bastard to you earlier,” he groaned.
Pepper shook her head and bit down hard on her lip. She knew how much pain Jim was in as she continued to cleanse the wound. “It’s the mission.” And his love for Laura Trayhern.
Fire leapt up his arm, and Jim felt sweat pop out across his face and under his arms in reaction. He shut his eyes tightly, fighting off a dizzying faintness. “I was thinking about you,” he gasped. His lips lifted away from his gritted teeth. He fought swirling dizziness—and more pain. Finally, it was over.
Pepper watched Jim worriedly. He lay in a prone position now, sweating heavily and breathing raggedly. His eyes were tightly shut. She couldn’t blame him. Pulling the antibiotic syringe out of the pack, she gave him the shot in his upper right arm, above the injury. Much of what she did in firefighting situations was coming back to her, and she was grateful for her paramedic training.
Glancing around, she saw hundreds of trees, mostly rubber trees and palms of all sorts, silhouetted against the coming dawn. Odors of decay mingled with the salty smell of the ocean and some unidentifiable, exotic floral fragrances. Focusing on Jim’s wound, Pepper located the surgical strips that would pull the edges of the wound together. At least he wouldn’t have to be stitched up.
“This is going to hurt,” she warned in a low voice. She used one hand to pull the wound together, and instantly he became rigid, his entire body convulsing. Hating to hurt him, she quickly taped the adhesive across the wound, closing it. In a matter of a minute, she’d completed her task. Breathing shakily, she began to rewrap the wound in clean gauze to protect it.
Jim wiped sweat from his eyes. He felt awkward using his left hand, but he’d better get used to it—it was the only one in working order. Concentrating on Pepper, he absorbed her clean profile as she worked over him. Her touch was exquisitely gentle, and in his hazy, shorted-out state he wondered if she made love with that same kind of touch. It was a crazy thought in an even crazier situation, he told himself harshly.
“I wish,” he rasped unsteadily, throwing his arm across his eyes as she worked, “that we were anyplace but here right now.”
Pepper smiled grimly and glanced at his face. His mouth was a line of pain. “That makes two of us.” She completed the bandaging and stretched an Ace elastic around the gauze to further protect it.
“I keep seeing us talking over a candlelit dinner. I know some good restaurants in D.C. You’d like them, too. Quiet places. Intimate. Where good conversation can go on and on….”
Pepper felt mild shock over his rambling. Was Jim out of his head? Impossible. But his words were disjointed, ragged sounding, filled with fervency. Was he teasing her? Her heart said no, her head said yes. She remained kneeling beside him, more uncertain of herself than she’d ever been in her life.
Chapter Seven
“We’ve lost the time advantage,” Jim said when she sat back, the bandaging of his arm completed.
“What should we do?”
Jim looked up through the canopy of palm fronds and heavy rubber-tree leaves. Daylight was already upon them. In another half hour the sun would be up. He didn’t want Pepper to feel bad that her getting snagged in a tree had wrecked their initial timing. Being injured was something he hadn’t counted on, either.
He slowly sat up, his back against the tree for support, and rested his right arm across his belly. Pepper remained kneeling and alert, slowly perusing the area with her sharpened gaze. There was little to be wary of now. But as they neared Garcia’s fortress, her watchfulness would pay off.
“I worked out two plans with Jake,” he said quietly. “The first involved striking before dawn, but that opportunity’s gone. The second is to hit them tomorrow at 0300. Noah Trayhern is sitting off the coast of Nevis, on a Coast Guard cruiser with a helicopter platform. If we get to Laura and can spring her, we’re to meet at the beach south of Garcia’s fortress. I showed it to you on the map.”
Pepper nodded. “If I hadn’t blown it by getting hung up in the tree, we might be there now.”
Jim sat up, reached out with his left hand and gripped her arm. “Things happen, Pepper. Let it go.”
She shrugged. “At least our chutes opened this time.”
He breathed deeply. “Yes, there’s plenty to be grateful for.”
“Do you really think you can continue the mission with that arm, Jim?”
It was a fair question. He held her worried gaze. “We don’t have a choice. You can’t do this alone, and I’m not going to call in air support for further medical help. No, we’ll do it. We’re just going to have to be particularly careful—and quiet.” He scowled. “But if we get in a firefight, I’m going to be next to useless.”
Feeling bad for him, Pepper said, “I don’t want to kill anyone. I have real issues over that, Jim.”
“Fine time to tell me.”
She saw his mouth quirk. “Seven years ago, when I was young and wild and going through Ranger school, I thought I was capable of killing. At least I convinced myself I could do it.” Pepper shook her head. “I’m older now, and looking back, I’m glad they didn’t graduate me. I liked the army for its discipline and organization, but I found those same elements in smoke jumping.”
“The best of both worlds without lifting a weapon.” Jim removed his hand from her arm. The intimacy between them was strong and good. If Pepper minded his touch, it didn’t show this time. Instead, she had opened up, and was talking with gut-level honesty. “We have no backup if we get in trouble.” He tapped the walkie-talkie strapped to his waist. “But we can change channels and call for Noah to send the Coast Guard helicopter in.”
“They don’t carry weapons, either.”
“No, not on the chopper.” Jim was worried, but he didn’t voice the fact. It was one thing on a Recon mission planned to be exactly that. But this mission had too much chance of human contact, and weapons might well be used. He held her clear blue gaze.
“Would you use your weapon to defend?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Good.”
“I’m not a pacifist, Jim. I just don’t want to kill if I don’t have to.” She added more softly, “I know if I do, it will haunt me the rest of my life.”
He understood only too well. “It’s all right,” he said gently. “I still get nightmares from what I did in Desert Storm and Panama.”
Without thinking, Pepper reached out, her hand covering his injured one. “Somehow I knew you’d understand.”
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