"By the time help arrives—" Chuck Schneider's voice was also very squeaky, "—there'll be nothing left here to back up!"
Yeah? Not if she could help it.
There was a tree with low branches just beyond the terrorists' ambush point. If she could get there and somehow climb up it...
She was a city girl, an urban-street agent, and she'd never climbed a tree in her life. She absolutely hated heights, but she knew if she could fire from the vantage point of those branches, the tangos wouldn't know what hit them.
PJ. moved up and onto her feet in a crouching run and headed for the tree. She saw the tango rising out of the bushes at the last possible second and she fired twice, hitting him squarely in the chest He fell, and only then did she see the man behind him.
She was dead. She knew in that instant that she was dead. She fired anyway, but her aim was off.
His wasn't.
The force of the double impact pushed her back, and she tripped and went down. She felt her head crack against something, a rock, the trunk of a tree—she wasn't sure what, but it was granite hard. Pain exploded, stars sparking behind her tightly closed eyes.
"Code eighty-six! Eighty-six! Cease and desist!"
Just like that, the gunfire stopped. Just like that, this particular training exercise was over.
PJ. felt bright lights going on all over the area, and she struggled to open her eyes, to sit up. The movement made the world lurch unappealingly, and she desperately fought the urge to retch, curling instead into a tight little ball. She prayed she'd somehow find her missing sense of equilibrium before anyone noticed she was temporarily out for the count.
"We need a hospital corpsman," the voice over her headset continued. "We've got an agent down, possibly head in-jury."
PJ. felt hands touching her shoulder, her face, unfastening her goggles. So much for no one noticing.
"Richards, yo. You still with me, girl?" It was Harvard, and his voice got harsher, louder as he turned away from her. "Where the hell is that corpsman?" Softer again, and sweeter, like honey now. "Richards, can you open your eyes?"
She opened one eye and saw Harvard's camouflaged face gazing at her. His chin and cheeks were splattered with yellow from the paint ball that had hit him in the center of his chest.
"I'm fine," she whispered. She still hadn't quite regained her breath from the paint ball that had caught her directly in the midsection.
"Like hell you're fine," he countered. "And I should know. I saw you doing that George of the Jungle imitation. Right into that tree, headfirst..."
One Harvard became two—and Lord knows one was more than enough to deal with. PJ. had to close her eyes again. "Just give me another minute...."
"Corpsman's on the way, Senior Chief."
"How bad's she hurt, H.?" PJ. recognized that voice as belonging to Alpha Squad's commanding officer, Captain Joe Catalanotto—Joe Cat, as his men irreverently called him.
"I don't know, Cat. I don't want to move her, in case she's got a neck injury. Why the hell didn't one of us think about the danger of firing a paint ball at someone this girl's size? What is she? Ninety, ninety-five pounds at the most? How the hell did this get past us?"
The breathlessness and dizziness were finally fading, leaving a lingering nausea and a throbbing ache in her head. P.J. would have liked a few more minutes to gather her senses, but Harvard had just gone and called her a girl.
"This is no big deal," P.J. said, forcing her eyes open and struggling to sit up. "I was moving when the projectile hit me—the force caught me off balance and I tripped. There's no need to turn this into some kind of a national incident. Besides, I weigh a hundred pounds." On a good day. "I've played paint-ball games before with no problem."
Harvard was kneeling next to her. He reached out, caught her face between his hands and lightly touched the back of her head with the tips of his fingers. He skimmed an incredibly sore spot, and she couldn't help but wince.
He swore softly, as if it hurt him, as well. "Hurts, huh?"
"I'm—"
"Fine," he finished for her. "Yes, ma'am, you've made that clear. You've also got a bump the size of Mount Saint Helens on the back of your head. Odds are, you've got a concussion to go along with that bump."
PJ. could see Tim Farber standing in the background, all but taking notes for the report she knew he was going to file with Kevin Laughton. / recommend from now on that Agent Richards‘s role in this antiterrorist unit be limited to dealing with administrative issues.... Some men couldn't abide working in the field alongside a woman. She glanced at Harvard. No doubt he'd be first in line to put his initials right next to Farber's recommendation.
She silently composed her own note. Hey, Kev, I fell and I landed wrong—so sue me. And before you pull me off this teamt prove that no male FInCOM agent ever made a similar mistake and... Oh, wait, what's that I'm remembering? A certain high-level AIC who shall remain nameless but whose initials are K.L doing a rather ungraceful nosedive from a second-story window during a training op back about a year and a half ago?
P J. focused on the mental image of Laughton grinning ruefully as he rubbed the newly healed collarbone that still gave him twinges of pain whenever it rained. That picture made Farber's lofty smirk easier to bear.
No way was Kevin Laughton pulling her from this assignment. He had been her boss for two years, and he knew she deserved to be right here, right through to the end, come hell or high water or Tim Farber's male chauvinist whining.
The corpsman arrived, and after he flashed a light into PJ.'s eyes, he examined the bump on the back of her head a whole lot less gently than Harvard had.
"I want to take you over to the hospital," the corpsman told her. "I think you're probably fine, but I'd feel better if we got an X ray or two. You've got a lot of swelling back there. Any nausea?"
"I had the wind knocked out of me, so it's hard to tell," PJ. said, sidestepping the question. Harvard was shaking his head, watching her closely, and she carefully made a point not to meet his gaze.
"Can you walk or should we get a stretcher?"
PJ. was damned if she was going to be carried out of these woods, but truth was, her legs felt like rubber. "I can walk." Her voice rang with false confidence as she tried to convince herself as well as everyone else.
She could feel Harvard watching as she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. He moved closer, still looking to catch her if she fell. It was remarkable, really. Every other woman she knew would've been dying for a good-looking man like Senior Chief Daryl Becker to play hero for them.
But she wasn't every other woman.
She'd come this far on her own two feet and she wasn't about to let some silly bump on the head undermine her tough-as-nails reputation.
It was hard enough working at FInCOM, where the boys only grudgingly let the girls play, too. But for eight weeks, she was being allowed access to the absolutely-no-women-allowed world of the U.S. Navy SEALs.
For the next eight weeks, the members of SEAL Team Ten's invincible Alpha Squad were going to be watching her, waiting for her to screw up so they could say to each other, See, this is precisely why we don't let women in.
The SEALs were the U.S. Navy's special forces units. They were highly trained warriors with well-earned reputations for being the closest things to superheroes this side of a comic book.
The acronym came from sea, air and land, and SEALs were equally comfortable—and adept—at operating in all of those environments.
They were smart, they were brave and they were more than a little crazy—they had to be to make it through the grueling sessions known as BUD/s training, which included the legendary Hell Week. From what P.J. had heard, a man who was still in the SEAL program after completing Hell Week had every right to be cocky and arrogant.
And the men of Alpha Squad at times could be both.
As P.J. forced herself to walk slowly but steadily away, she could feel all of Alpha Squad's eyes on her bac
k.
Especially Senior Chief Harvard Becker's.
Chapter 2
Harvard didn't know what the hell he was doing here.
It was nearly 0100. He should have gone back to his apartment outside the base. He should be sitting on his couch in his boxers, chillin' and having a cold beer and skimming through the past five days' videotapes of "The Young and the Restless" instead of making a soap opera out of his own life.
Instead, he was here in this allegedly upscale hotel bar with the rest of the unmarried guys from Alpha Squad, making a sorry-assed attempt to bond with FInCOM's wunderkinder.
Steel guitars were wailing from the jukebox—some dreadful song about Papa going after Mama and doing her in because of her cheatin' heart. And the SEALs—Wes and Bobby were the only ones Harvard could see from his quick scan of the late-night crowd—were sitting on one side of the room, and the three male FInCOM agents were on the other. Not much bonding going down here tonight.
Harvard didn't blame Wes and Bob one bit. FInCOM's fab four didn't have much in common with the Alpha Squad.
It was amazing, really. There were something like seventy three hundred agents in the Federal Intelligence Commission. He'd have thought the Chosen Four would have come equipped with superhero capes and a giant S emblazoned on the fronts of their shirts at the very least.
Timothy Farber was FInCOM's alleged golden boy. He was a fresh-faced, college-boy type, several years shy of thirty, with a humorless earnestness that was annoying as hell. He was a solid subscriber to the FInCOM my-way-or-the-highway way of thinking. This no doubt worked when directing traffic to allow clear passage for the President's convoy, but it wouldn't do him quite as well when dealing with unpredictable, suicidal, religious zealots.
No, in Harvard's experience, a leader of a counterterrorist team needed constantly to adjust his plan of attack, altering and revising as unknown variables become known. A team leader needed to know how to listen to others' opinions and to know that sometimes the other guy's idea might be the best idea.
Joe Cat had consulted with Alan "Frisco" Francisco—one of the best BUD/s training instructors in Coronado—and had purposely put blustery Tim Farber in command of the very first training scenario in an attempt to knock him off his high horse. A former member of the Alpha Squad who was off the active duty list because of a permanent injury to his knee, Frisco had duties that kept him in California, but he was in constant contact with both Alpha Squad's captain and Harvard.
Still, judging from the way Farber was holding court at the bar, surrounded by his two fellow agents, it was obvious to Harvard that Frisco's ploy hadn't worked. Farber was totally unperturbed by his failure.
Maybe tomorrow, when Alpha Squad reviewed the exercise, the fact would finally sink in that Farber had personally created this snafu, this grand-scale Charlie Foxtrot.
But somehow Harvard doubted it.
As Harvard watched, Farber drew something on a napkin, and the two other FInCOM agents nodded seriously.
Greg Greene and Charles Schneider were around Harvard's age, thirty-five, thirty-six, maybe even older. They'd spent most of the preliminary classroom sessions looking bored, their body language broadcasting "been there, done that." But in the field, during the evening's exercise, they'd shown little imagination. They were standard issue FInCOM agents—finks, as the SEALs were fond of calling them. They didn't make waves, they followed the rule book to the last letter, they waited for someone else to take the lead and they looked good in dark suits and sunglasses.
They'd looked good smeared with yellow paint from the terrorists' weapons, too. They'd followed Tim Farber's command without question, and in the mock ambush that had resulted, they'd been rather messily mock killed.
Still, they hadn't seemed to learn that following Farber unquestioningly might've been a mistake, because here they were, following Farber still. No doubt because someone higher up in FInCOM had told them to follow him.
Only one of the four superfinks out there tonight had openly questioned Farber's command decisions.
P. J. Richards.
Harvard glanced around the bar again, but he didn't see her anywhere. She was probably in her room, having a soak in the tub, icing the bruise on the back of her head.
Damn, he could still see her, flung backward like some rag doll when that paint ball hit her. He hadn't gone to church in a long time, but he'd silently checked in with God as he'd called for the training session to halt, asking for divine intervention, praying that P.J. hadn't hit that tree with enough force to break her pretty neck.
Men died during training. The risk was part of being a SEAL. But P. J. Richards was neither man nor SEAL, and the thought of her out there with them, facing the dangers they so casually faced, made Harvard's skin crawl.
"Hey, Senior Chief. I didn't expect to see you here." Lucky O'Donlon was carrying a pitcher of beer from the bar.
"I didn't expect to see you here, either, O'Donlon. I was sure you'd be heading out to see that girlfriend of yours at warp speed."
Harvard followed Lucky to the table where Bobby and Wes were sitting. He nodded a greeting to them—the inseparable twins of Alpha Squad. Unidentical twins. Bobby Taylor came close to Harvard's six feet five, and he gave the impression of being nearly as wide around as he was tall. If he hadn't wanted to become a SEAL, he would have had a serious future as a professional football linebacker. And Wes Skelly was Alpha Squad's version of Popeye the sailor man, short and wiry and liberally tattooed. What he lacked in height and weight, he more than made up for with his extremely big mouth.
"Renee had a meeting tonight for the state pageant." Lucky sat down at the table and then kicked out a chair for Harvard to join them. He filled first Bobby's mug from the pitcher, then poured some beer for Wes. "You want me to get you a glass?" he asked Harvard.
"No, thanks." Harvard shook his head as he sat down. "What's that title Renee just won? Miss Virginia Beach?"
"Miss East Coast Virginia," Lucky told him.
"Pretty girl. Young girl."
Lucky flashed his movie-star-perfect grin as if the fact that his girlfriend probably hadn't yet celebrated her nineteenth birthday was something to be proud of. "Don't I know it."
Harvard had to smile. To each his own. Personally, he liked women with a little more life experience.
"Hey, Crash," Wes called in his megaphone voice. "Pull up a chair."
William Hawken, Alpha Squad's newest temporary member, sat across from Harvard, meeting his eyes and nodding briefly. Hawken was one spooky individual, dark and almost unnaturally quiet, seemingly capable of becoming invisible upon demand. At first glance, he was not particularly tall, not particularly well-built, not particularly handsome.
But Harvard knew better than to go by a first glance. The man had been nicknamed Crash for his ability to move soundlessly in any circumstance, under any condition. Crash was anything but average. On closer examination, his eyes were a steely shade of blue with a sharpness to them that seemed almost to cut. Crash didn't so much look around a room—he absorbed it, memorized it, recorded it, probably permanently. And beneath his purposely loose-fitting clothes, his body was that of a long-distance runner—lean and muscular, without an extra ounce of fat anywhere.
"Grab a glass and have a beer," Lucky told Crash.
He shook his head. "No, thanks," he said in his deceptively quiet voice. "Beer's not my drink. I'll wait for the waitress."
Harvard knew that Crash was part of this FInCOM project at Captain Catalanotto's special request. He was in charge of organizing all the "terrorist" activities the combined SEAL/ FInCOM team would be running into over the next eight weeks. He'd been the strategical force behind tonight's paint-ball slaughter. The score so far was Crash—one, CSF team— zero.
Harvard didn't know him very well, but Hawken's reputation was close to legendary. He'd been part of the SEALs mysterious Gray Group for years. And apparently he'd been involved in countless black operat
ions—highly covert, hush-hush missions that were as controversial as they were dangerous. SEALs were allegedly sent into other countries to perform tasks that even the U.S. Government claimed to know nothing about—neutralization of drug lords, permanent removal of political and military leaders preaching genocide and so on. The SEALs were forced to play God, or at least take on the roles of judge, jury and hangman combined. It was not a job Harvard would have relished doing.
If the SEALs on a black op succeeded at their mission, they'd get little or no recognition. And if they failed, they were on their own, possibly facing espionage charges, with no chance of the government stepping forward and accepting the responsibility.
No wonder Crash didn't drink beer. He probably had an ulcer the size of an aircraft carrier from the stress.
He'd no doubt come here tonight in an attempt to better get to know the SEALs who made up Alpha Squad—the men he'd be working with for the next eight weeks.
Which reminded Harvard of why he'd come here. He glanced at the three FInCOM agents sitting at the bar. Still no sign of P.J. "Has anyone tried to make friends with the finks tonight?"
"Besides you trying to get close to P. J. Richards, you mean? Trying to hold her hand out in the woods?" Wes Skelly laughed at his miserable joke. "Jeez, Senior Chief, only time in my memory that you were the first man down in a paint-ball fight."
"That was my paint ball that hit you, H.," Lucky drawled. "I hope it didn't hurt too badly."
"Hey, it's about time he found out what it feels like just being hit," Bobby countered in his sub-bass-woofer voice.
"I couldn't resist," Lucky continued. "You were such a great, big, perfect target, standing there like that."
"I think Harvard let you shoot him. I think he was just trying to score some sympathy from P.J.," Wes said. "Is she hot or is she hot?"
"She's a colleague," Harvard said. "Show a little respect."
"I am," Wes said. "In fact, there are few things I respect more than an incredibly hot woman. Look me in the eye, H., and tell me that you honestly don't think this lady is a total babe."
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