Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Jungle Buck (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Sealed With A Kiss Book 3)

by Margaret Madigan

  “Fine,” Buck said. “You’re right. I’ll try to lay off him.”

  “We could be onto something, here, if the reports I’ve received are accurate. I just want to focus on some real work for once. I was so close before Amaranthine happened. I need to get back on track,” she said.

  Now that they were here, Buck had a bad feeling about this trip. Mindy’s life’s work was to cure Alzheimer’s as a tribute to her father, who had died of it. She was smart and determined enough to do it, too. But the trip felt more like grasping at straws, than planned research. It felt like her trying to find her balance, again.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Mindy. What if it doesn’t pan out?”

  “I want to get my hopes up. I haven’t had enough hope lately. But I’m not going to convince myself this is it, either.”

  “Where’d you get the tip about this village?” Buck asked.

  “A field scientist colleague of mine. He knows my interest in neurocognitive disorders and when he stumbled into a conversation with a cab driver in La Paz talking about a tribe in the Amazon that’s never experienced any sort of dementia or other neurocognitive disorders, he passed the information on to me.”

  “So we’re here on the word of a cab driver?”

  She huffed and shook her head, but that didn’t hide the hint of blush in her cheeks. So the trip was a wild goose chase.

  Mindy’s drug, Amaranthine, had been an accident she created while researching cures for Alzheimer’s. When the Russians had stolen and weaponized Amaranthine, Buck suspected it had made Mindy more desperate rather than more determined to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and prove herself. It didn’t help that Amaranthine had killed one of his teammates, and Mindy had almost lost him, Wolf, and Ice, too. On top of the PTSD from the violence of the Russian missions, he suspected she shouldered a crap load of guilt for Dozer’s death.

  He didn’t want her to stake her entire career on this one trip, but he understood her need to get back to the roots of what she loved, and what she was good at. He just didn’t want to see her disappointed if it didn’t pan out.

  A rumbling noise interrupted the buzz of insects on the heavy, warm air and within moments a shabby-looking pickup truck chugged up the dirt road and out of the jungle. It parked nearby, and a wiry little man with dark skin, salt and pepper hair, and sharp, black eyes hopped out of the cab.

  “Hola, mis amigos,” he said. “You are Melinda Emerson?”

  He addressed all of them, waiting for one of them to admit to being Melinda.

  “I am,” Mindy said. She stood and went to shake his hand. “You’re Pedro Figueroa?”

  He stood at least three inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter than her, beaming his pride. “I am. I will give you a ride to the village and translate for you.”

  “You speak the native language?” Mindy asked.

  “Si, senorita. The Indians do not speak Español, but I speak their language. My wife’s mother’s family is from their tribe.”

  “Okay,” Buck said. He stood to grab the first of the equipment cases and loaded it into the back of the truck.

  “Dios mio,” Pedro said. “Who is el Pie Grande?”

  April burst out laughing.

  “What?” Buck understood some Spanish, but he wasn’t fluent.

  “He called you Bigfoot,” April said.

  Buck snorted. He’d been called worse, and he did dwarf Pedro in both height and weight.

  “He’s our security detail,” Mindy said. “April, would you go get Cody while we load the truck?”

  “You bet,” April said, sauntering to the building and disappearing around the corner to fetch Cody.

  Mindy’s eyes brightened and she smiled, her excitement obvious and infectious. If this trip did nothing more than bring back that confident sparkle, Buck would happily follow her all over the Amazon, and even put up with Cody while they did.

  CHAPTER 2

  Melinda slung her pack onto her back as she watched Buck do the heavy lifting of muscling their lab equipment into the truck. The last couple of months had been bad. She knew it, and she knew he knew it. She’d been distant—even in her tiny house it seemed like miles separated them.

  Last night had been even worse. She blushed with embarrassment even thinking about it.

  At first, after the mission to Siberia where Dozer had died and she’d almost lost Buck, Ice, and Wolf, she’d thrown herself back into work assuming everything would return to normal. But it hadn’t. She had nightmares, bad ones where Wolf died and Caroline blamed her; Ice suffered, writhing in pain as he bled out, his dark eyes pleading with her to save him; and Buck—the dreams about Buck were the worst. She woke from them drenched in sweat, her heart pounding, and tears streaming down her face. Sometimes he woke too and held her tight until she calmed down, but sometimes he slept through it and she just laid there and took him in, grateful for his big, strong, confident presence.

  No matter how many times she clung to him, though, she couldn’t forget that his size belied his human fragility. Even big, strong, confident Buck could die.

  Then Dr. Windsor had contacted her about this tribe in the Amazon. She’d met him at a conference years ago and shared long conversations over meals and drinks about the potential of undiscovered substances in far corners of the world to cure disease, and had stayed in touch since then.

  His email and then subsequent phone call had lit a spark in her—one she hoped would begin the healing process she could continue with counseling when she got back.

  She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, heavy with the scents of humidity and plant decay. The sweat of the people around her, the settling dust, the heat itself all filled her lungs and calmed her nerves. They were the scents of her work and a place she liked to be. Once they descended into the depths of the forest the cooler, wetter air would settle around them as would the noises of nature, and it would be just the balm she needed.

  Buck’s thighs and arms flexed in his tan t-shirt and green fatigues, and her libido stirred to life. It had been apathetic lately, going through the motions of sex but not really excited about it, culminating in The Fake, as she now thought of it. Now her body stood up and took notice, a heat unrelated to the Peruvian weather swirling in her low belly. Too bad it chose now to show up. They likely wouldn’t have any privacy, but then again as Buck lifted another case into the truck and his back and shoulders flexed under his tight t-shirt, her mouth went dry with need and she made a mental note to search very hard for some privacy.

  April rounded the corner of the building followed by a sullen Cody. She’d never let Buck know, but she agreed with him that Cody was kind of a spoiled brat. What had ever attracted him to botany, she had no idea. He seemed more like the corporate type. But he was a brilliant botanist despite his personality, so she put up with him.

  “Should we go now?” Pedro asked.

  April grabbed her backpack while Buck tied down the cases of lab equipment in the back, and Melinda picked up the substantial first aid bag.

  “Where are we all going to sit?” Cody asked. It didn’t escape Melinda’s attention he hadn’t helped with any of the loading.

  “You and I sit in the back with the equipment,” April said. “Buck and Dr. Emerson’ll squeeze into the cab.”

  “There’s no space back there,” Cody said.

  “You’re not that big,” Buck said. “You’ll fit fine. Just hold on tight so you don’t bounce out. I don’t want to have to rappel down some steep mountainside to rescue your sorry ass.”

  Cody’s jaw dropped open in surprise, and Melinda had to stifle a laugh. He looked both terrified and shocked at the prospect of tumbling out of the truck. She hadn’t warned them about the terrain they’d be traveling, mostly because she didn’t want them to worry. They’d have plenty of time in the truck to panic over the narrow, one-way roads and steep drop-offs.

  April climbed into the back of the truck and settled in like a trooper, using her pack as a back
rest, and securing a rope across her chest under her breasts as a kind of makeshift seatbelt. Cody scrambled in behind her and mirrored her actions of tying himself in.

  “This is crazy,” he said.

  “Welcome to the Amazon,” Melinda said as she slid into the center of the bench seat in the cab, squeezed between tiny, wiry Pedro and big, solid Buck.

  Pedro chattered in a mix of Spanish and English for the next several hours, cheerfully oblivious to the dense, overhanging jungle, rutted dirt track, creeks and streams crossing the roadway, and terrifying sheer drop-offs next to the narrow roads. Despite having made similar trips before, the terrain still made Melinda sweat. Pedro had probably driven this course hundreds of times, but that didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking.

  As they descended a precarious road, the back of the truck shimmied a bit, sending rocks and gravel over the edge into a canyon where they looked down onto the tips of tall trees. Cody’s fearful screech from the back echoed off the rock walls, causing Buck to chuckle.

  “It’s not funny,” Melinda said. “It’s his first time.”

  Buck grinned, flashing his straight white teeth. “That doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  “Ha ha. Give the poor kid a break and be nice to him. I need him,” she said.

  Pedro braked hard and yanked the steering wheel, skidding around a sharp corner. Melinda’s hand flew to her chest of its own accord—probably to make sure her heart was still beating—just before she squeezed her eyes shut. She waited as the truck danced into a sickening sideways tilt, holding her breath and saying a prayer they wouldn’t just keep going and plunge to their death.

  But Pedro muscled the vehicle back onto the narrow road and she popped her eyes open at his wheezy chuckle.

  “S’okay, miss. I drive this road many times. Never killed anyone yet.” He snorted at his own joke. Melinda didn’t find it funny.

  “Let’s make sure this isn’t the first time, okay?”

  He threw his head back and laughed even harder, taking his eyes off the road as he did. Buck’s thigh tensed against hers. Melinda grabbed his hand and squeezed, for moral support.

  “You’re a funny woman,” Pedro said, recovering from his laughing fit.

  “Gee thanks.”

  “Why are you coming so far into the jungle?”

  “For research. I’m a pharmaceutical chemist. I take a lot these trips, looking for botanicals I can use in my work,” she said.

  Pedro glanced at her, his brows squeezed together and his head cocked sideways, like she’d just sprouted a second head, but before she could clarify, his gaze slid past her to Buck looking for an explanation.

  “She’s a doctor looking for a cure for Alzheimer’s,” Buck said.

  Pedro’s eyes lit up and his face relaxed into comprehension. “Ah. Si. Demencia. It is rare in the Amazon.”

  “How about in the village where we’re going?” Melinda asked.

  Pedro shook his head. “No. Nunca. Never.”

  Excitement bubbled in Melinda’s belly. Maybe this was it. She’d find it this time. “So no memory loss, confusion, loss of language skills, change of personality, wandering off…”

  Pedro continued to shake his head. “No, Miss. Nothing like that. My wife has seen the Alz-himer patients at the nursing home where her sister works in Cusco. She tells me about them and how they never see such a thing in her abuela’s village.”

  Melinda closed her eyes and smiled. I’m getting closer, Dad. She didn’t want to get ahead of herself and assume anything, but what if this was it? What if something in this village’s habitat or diet or water held the key to cure the disease that stole her father? There were a lot of cruel diseases in the world, but Alzheimer’s was one of the worst. She’d watched her dad disappear bit by bit, day by day right in front of her eyes and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

  She’d spent years chasing down research dead ends, especially the dead-end that resulted in Amaranthine. That mistake had been a nightmare of international proportions. Literally.

  If nothing else, at least the Amazon was on the opposite side of the planet from Siberia. Knowing she was as far away from anything Russian as she could possibly get eased the anxiety that needled at her every moment of every day since that mission.

  “You okay?” Buck asked.

  She reached over and patted his thigh. The solid feel of it reassured her. “I’m fine,” she said, and for the first time since they’d returned from Russia she almost believed it.

  One good thing had come out of the detour of Amaranthine, and that was Buck. She never would have met him otherwise, and lately he was the one thing that brightened her dark moods, whether she showed it or not. Jayla’s advice came back to her about talking to Buck. It scared her to confide her weakness to him. But Jayla was right. If her relationship with Buck was going to survive, she needed to be vulnerable with him. She loved him desperately and even though she struggled to show it recently, she’d be lost without him.

  “You sure?”

  The tone of concern in his voice had become too familiar. She’d turned into some fragile thing he had to protect and care for—which pissed her off. She’d never been frail or weak, or in need of protection. She’d always been smart, strong, capable. But Siberia had broken something inside her and she’d begun leaning on Buck, depending on him for too much if she was being honest. If she wasn’t careful he’d start seeing her as a burden. He hadn’t fallen in love with this woman who struggled some days just to function.

  She glanced up into his summer-sky blue eyes. The intensity on his sweet face—if a big square-jawed, Roman-nosed, buzz-cut SEAL face could be sweet—broke her heart. He worried about her. On the one hand, it meant he loved her and she needed that. On the other hand, they’d only been together a short time, and what guy wanted to be stuck with a needy woman so early into a relationship?

  For now, though, she slouched a little and snuggled against him drawing strength from the sheer size of him.

  She smiled up at him. “I’m sure. How couldn’t I be? I’m here in my element, and I’ve got you beside me. Thank you for coming with me, by the way.”

  He grinned, his eyes lighting up and the worry relaxing from his face. “You said that a couple of times already.”

  “I mean it. Plus, I want to build up a reserve of gratitude before you realize what you got yourself into.”

  He snorted. “Mindy, darlin’, I’m a SEAL. I guarantee whatever you throw at me, I’ve been through worse.”

  “Uh huh. I can’t wait to say I told you so.”

  “It’s gonna be a long wait.”

  He wrapped an arm around her and nestled her closer to him. Even in the heat of the jungle, and despite Pedro’s harrowing driving, her mind calmed and her body followed.

  Next thing she knew, the truck jerked to a halt and her eyes popped open to nothing but dense jungle surrounding them.

  “Where are we?”

  “We are here,” Pedro said.

  “You fell asleep a couple hours ago,” Buck said. “My arm fell asleep not long after that.”

  She scrambled to sit up and out of his grasp, only to giggle as he flopped his arm into his lap like some dead thing attached to him.

  “You could have woke me up.”

  “You looked so peaceful. I didn’t have the heart.”

  “You’re too sweet,” she said, leaning in to kiss his cheek.

  “Don’t let that get around. Sweet isn’t a useful skill on the team.”

  “The rest of the guys might love that information, though.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure they would.”

  Pedro opened the door and climbed out of the truck, and Melinda took a good look around. There wasn’t much to see.

  “Where’s the village, Pedro?”

  He smiled and pointed into the woods. “That way. Now we walk. No roads from here.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, how long’s the hike?” she asked.

  “Half a day. If we start
now and keep at it, we will be there by night.”

  “I’m sorry, did you just say we have to walk the rest of the day?” Cody asked, limping up beside Pedro. He had to be sore after the bumpy ride in the back of the truck.

  “Si.”

  April slapped Cody on the back. “It’ll build character.”

  “I like my character the way it is,” he said, shooting her a sour-faced look.

  April’s cheerfulness evaporated like a morning fog. “You need to lighten up, Cody. Part of this work is in the field. If you don’t like it, go work in a CVS dispensing pills.”

  She marched out of Melinda’s sight toward the back of the truck to start unloading.

  Melinda rested a comforting hand on Cody’s shoulder and looked him straight in the eyes. “She’s right, Cody. If you don’t think you can handle the jungle, now’s the time to tell me so we can send you back with Pedro. I could really use you here, but if it’s going to be too much for you, I understand. You won’t be at your best if can’t handle your surroundings.”

  He struggled with the decision. It showed in his eyes as he looked around the jungle. He didn’t want to be there, but he knew she needed him. When he looked closer, though, taking in the tall trees and foliage underneath, a sparkle lit his eyes and Melinda sensed a shift in him. This was why he’d come. As a botanist, all these plants had to excite him, despite the dirt and bugs and discomfort.

  His gaze returned to meet hers. “No. I’m staying. You’re right, I don’t like it here. It’s dirty and uncomfortable, but look at all the plants and trees. There are probably some here I’ve never seen before. Maybe species nobody’s ever seen.”

  Melinda nodded, patting his shoulder. “Good. I’m glad you’re staying, Cody. But from here on out, you need to do your share. We’re a team. Can you handle that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Buck walked up beside Melinda, a large, intimidating presence. Cody glanced up at him, his eyes widening just a bit before something that looked suspiciously like defiance slid across his face. The last thing Melinda needed over the time they’d be in the jungle was a pissing contest between these two men. Buck would win every time, but Cody would keep trying if for no other reason than because of his pride.