by Zoe Dawson
And Matt. Her husband was so different from Pitbull. Her eyes found him across from her. Where Matt had the richest, warmest eyes she had ever seen, Errol Ballentine’s were watchful, gray as steel with a depth she wanted to fall into, had already gotten lost in, so help her God. Matt had been dark, handsome, compact, and of her tribe. Pitbull was blond, big, strong, athletic, his face no doubt taking the breath away from any woman with a heartbeat who set eyes on him. He belonged to a tribe who had banded together and, in their way, become blood brothers, a band of brothers, a tribe unto themselves.
The feelings filled her, ached in her bones, in her muscles. Such a terrible sense of loss, an emptiness as hard as steel inside her. She yearned for that balance and the peace Victor seemed to have found. Her heritage gave her roots, grounded her, and taught her that her past was part of her history, creating who she was in the present.
Their deaths had seemed so senseless, so sadistic, even her belief in her ancestors had been shaken, her faith in her tribe and everything she had held dear. Why such cruelty? In the depths of her soul, maybe she had finally come up with an answer. Men and women, the cycle of life and the foibles of being human. They were put here to live and die, make choices between right and wrong. Live as they saw fit.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done anything just for fun. Her work had consumed her life for the last two years, the struggle to keep herself from falling into a million tiny broken bits. Her focus had always been on doing constructive things.
She looked down. The jungle was a never-ending blot of green, a tangled wilderness of many dangers, both human and non. An unpredictable biosphere, and deceivingly delicate, fragility in the guise of unforgiving toughness. It was crushing to relate that directly to herself. If this man, after all that he had done and been through, could change in the face of insurmountable odds, with a depth of courage and faith, finding his moral center, his balance, it gave her hope that she would find her way out of that tangled wildness and find her own balance.
Somewhere below her there was a puff of white, then something dark and moving fast emerged from the canopy.
Suddenly an alarm sounded up front where the pilots’ instruments were blaring out a warning in a steady unsettling deep tone.
The co-pilot shouted, “SAM! SAM! Countermeasures! Flares!”
It was a surface-to-air missile that had flown out of the jungle directly aimed at them. Somewhere down there was a bunker and a faction of hostiles that didn’t like a military helicopter anywhere near its base.
The chopper banked so sharply to the left that Mak was thrown against the side of the helo, her heart pounding, adrenaline dropping into her system.
The explosion was deafening, the whistle of the wind and the whine of rotors under extraordinary stress all mixed together into a cacophony of sound. The helicopter veered hard to the left again, then it started spinning.
She was held in the spin by centrifugal force, whirling around and around as everything came full circle, all the noise receded, and it was just them all freefalling in slow motion.
Frantically she searched for Pitbull and collided with his gaze, hung onto him with her eyes as if they were her arms. She was in love with him. She had no idea when it had happened as panic snapped inside. The thing that held the most potential for pain…and joy.
Without knowing it, Pitbull had picked up so many of those broken bits, and with his warmth, tenderness, and understanding, he’d mended whole chunks of her.
She saw so much in his eyes, so much life and depth, melding and connecting like the chains of DNA, locking them into each molecule of the universe. The wealth of worlds that she glimpsed in his eyes could be hers if only she could let go.
“Brace!” The co-pilot yelled, pulling her out of slow motion, but she still clung to Pitbull. If she was going to die in the next few seconds, it was his face she wanted to see forever.
“Mayday, mayday!” The co-pilot yelled into the mic, then the coordinates. “SAM hit. We’re going down! Repeat! We’re going down!” She could see him wrestling with the controls as the chopper continued to spin, the smell of burning metal thick in the air.
The engine noise ceased and Mak knew from classes that the pilot had just cut the engines to put the helicopter in autorotation used in a forced landing, allowing the natural aerodynamic forces up flowing into the main rotors to permit the chopper to descend in a slow fall.
With the engines disengaged, the whop, whop, whop of the blades and the whistling wind was all the sound they could hear in the interior.
The ground rushed toward them as the helo’s nose suddenly rose, staying that way only briefly until the chopper leveled out. The pilot was very skilled.
“Impact! Brace! Impact! Brace!” was all she heard before the runners hit the jungle floor and everything went black.
The steady whop, whop, whop of the small blue rubber ball against the wall did nothing to interfere with Hemingway’s concentration. He monitored the cameras. They had been in Picador’s hideaway for two hours.
“This guy has a sweet, expensive video game setup upstairs,” Dodger said.
“Oh, yeah,” Hemingway responded, his eyes on the screen. The laptop had been encrypted, but he’d easily bypassed the key. He’d employed several password crackers to the computer to get access to his files, but so far, this guy’s password must have been very strong. He was striking out.
“Yeah. He has Call of Duty.”
“Does he?” Hemingway looked up at Dodger over the edge of the laptop. “He sucked at being a soldier. We were better.”
“Hoo-yah,” Dodger said, grinning. “So you embracing my actions now?”
“No, because I’m still working on this password.” Hemingway sipped his coffee. Cold. He must have drunk a whole pot. His body was buzzing. “Answer this for me, Ollie.”
Dodger’s face scrunched up, and he shook his head vigorously. “Nope, don’t answer to that nickname. Oliver if you please.”
“Okay, sorry. Oliver. You guys live Call of Duty almost every day in real life, then play a video game on off days. Why is that?”
The ball stopped hitting the wall, and Dodger’s scrunch turned into a frown. “Hmm. Interesting question.” The ball started up again, the rhythm seeming to match the twirling icon of the password cracker as it worked.
“I’d say that perspective is everything. No one should fall into a mundane life, and I think Call of Duty gives us scenarios and other ways of honing our skills when not on the battlefield.”
“Wow, deep.” Who knew the Brit had something so philosophical to say about video games?
“Yeah, I also like shooting Max in the ass. Can’t do that in real life.” Dodger grinned and Hemingway laughed, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “More coffee?”
“No, if I drink more, I’m going to vibrate myself to death.”
“You need to get some sleep.” His tone was chiding.
“I can’t… Paige needs me to figure this out.”
“Twenty minutes. I’ve already taken a combat nap. I can watch the computer for you. I’ll wake you up.”
The fatigue was pulling at him, even with the amount of caffeine he’d consumed. He wouldn’t be any good to Paige if he made stupid mistakes because he was so tired he couldn’t see. “All right. Twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes went fast as his eyes popped open, Dodger shaking him awake. “Mate, we’ve got company.”
Hemingway looked at the monitor and swore softly. Six guys had pulled up outside and were heading their way.
“Lock and load,” Dodger said, tossing him his handgun. “It’s Call of Duty for reals, mate.”
In his groggy state, all he could think about was he hoped like hell Dodger didn’t shoot him in the ass.
Everyone in the command center was frozen at the sound of the mayday from the helicopter. Everyone but Fast Lane and his team. He would have expected nothing less from them. He wasn’t going to let some goat fuck lock
him down.
“Get me another chopper,” he said to Kai. “Now.”
Her stricken eyes were dull with shock.
“Woman!” he said, low and mean to wake her up. “Their lives could depend on what you do in the next five minutes. Get me a chopper,” he roared.
She fumbled with her phone, then took a fortifying breath. Okay, the warrior babe was with him now.
He turned to an analyst. “Do you have the coordinates of that fucking bunker?”
“Yes, sir,” the guy said, his voice hoarse.
He turned to look at his men, and all of them were poised for battle. “We’re taking out that bunker, then we’re going to find our people…search and destroy and search and rescue. Let’s go.”
14
Fragmented pieces of awareness filtered through Pitbull’s consciousness, like a strobe-light that illuminated pictures in staccato flashes of devastation. Flash: the chopper down. Flash: crushed metal, detached rotors. The images started to happen faster. Flash: Co-pilot crushed beneath the crumpled cockpit. Flash: Mak, methodically working over the other pilot, her breathing rasping, and a calm, almost serene look on her face. Pumping his chest, breathing into his mouth as if she couldn’t stop. She had a gash on her cheek and temple, a wash of blood down her face into her neck, soaking into her flight suit.
He groaned and with slow movements pushed up from the ground, cataloging any pain that could indicate a severe injury, but nothing registered except the stinging pain to his temple and a slight ringing in his ears. He got to his hands and knees.
He took a step and stumbled, then regained his balance and jogged quickly over to Mak, looking down at the pilot. It was clear he was dead. His eyes were open and fixed. Pitbull had seen more than his share of people who had died to know immediately.
He knelt down and softly touched Mak’s shoulder. “Babe,” he whispered softly. “He’s gone.”
“No,” she gasped out. “No.” There was a crack in that blank face as if she was coming back to herself, her shoulders slumped. He could see the ragged gash and the makeshift tourniquet across the pilot’s upper thigh. Femoral artery. He’d bled out, probably in minutes.
“He said it was a bitch of a landing,” she said. “We both laughed. Then he started having problems breathing, said he was cold.” She turned stricken eyes to him. “He really was skilled. When we hit the ground, there was almost zero forward momentum, just enough for us to roll once.” She reached out and closed his eyes, her face so sad. “I didn’t even know him, and he risked everything for us.”
He nodded. “Just like us, Mak. It’s what we all do.”
She reached up and touched his face, sliding her fingers along his jaw. “He and the co-pilot are heroes. You are, too, just as much as they are.”
“I’m just a guy doing my job,” he said softly as her fingers reversed and brushed at his cheekbone.
She smiled. “How did I know you would say that?”
He smiled back. “Are you hurt?” he asked gruffly.
“No…I—no.” She sounded confused. “The blood on me isn’t mine.”
“The twins?”
“Unconscious over there,” She raised her hand and waved in the direction of the helicopter wreck. “Still cuffed. I checked. Thank God they’re alive or this would all be over.”
“Okay, get them conscious, administer first aid, then get them on their feet. There’s a first aid kit in the chopper. We can’t stay here, babe. Whoever shot off that SAM is going to show up sooner rather than later. We need to be gone.”
“What about the pilots? We can’t leave them here.”
“We’re not. I’ll conceal them, and we’ll come back for them later. Right now, we’re alive, and we have a mission to complete. We’ve got forty-eight hours to get the twins to the exchange location or Chris and Paige are going to die. Are you with me?”
“Yes, but Pitbull… What were their names? I need to know.”
He pulled her into his arms, against him, cradling her head close to his chest, and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Mak, we can’t do this right now.” It was an order, fiercely given, not a request. “I’ll find out for you everything about them once we get back to Foz do Iguaçu. We need to move fast now. Okay?”
She was in shock, but still in one piece, thank God. That was all that mattered. He could worry about everything else later. Cupping her face with his hand, he rested his cheek against her forehead, stealing a couple of seconds to assure himself she was all right. But she wasn’t. She was shaking like a leaf.
She nodded her head, taking a breath, composing herself on the spot. “All right.” She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him close for a moment. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispered. She let go and for a few moments, they stared into each other’s eyes. He remembered how she looked at him as the helo spun out of control. He would never forget how they seemed to mesh in that moment as if they had…become one.
Overcome by his emotions, he bent his head and kissed her soft mouth, tasting her tears for the pilots and something so sweet and delicious he wanted to linger, but he couldn’t. Not right now.
She rose and started off for the brothers and the first aid. Pitbull looked around the area. They’d crashed in a small clearing in the thick jungle. Mak was right. This guy had been skilled. He’d given them the best chance at survival. He had to silently thank him for that.
But he had no doubt there would be men converging on this crash site, looking for survivors. He intended to be long gone.
Pitbull headed for his pack and his semi-automatic. He found it in the back of the demolished helo. He opened it looking for the machete. Finding it, he left it inside and slung the pack across his back, along with his weapon, then walked back over to the pilot. With a heavy heart at losing any of the people who worked to keep the world safe, he bent down and picked up the pilot, settling his weight across his shoulders.
The clearing gave way to tall trees, ropy vines snaking down the trunks in suffocating loops, dense undergrowth sprouting across rich soil and rotting vegetation. He spied a secluded place and walked toward it. Surveying the area, he found a small depression with enough undergrowth to hide the bodies until they could be recovered. He slid down into it, laid the pilot down and hacked at the thick growth. Making enough room for him, he slid the body into and under the heavy ground cover. He scrambled out of the concave hole and saw Mak administering to the brothers. Victor looked okay, but Vincent was dazed.
He went to the chopper and after a few minutes extracted the co-pilot’s body from the wreckage. He was in worse shape than the pilot. Most likely killed on impact. He made his way back to the hiding spot and concealed the co-pilot alongside his flying buddy.
Then Pitbull heard voices and footsteps as eight men appeared from the east where the missile had come from. All of them were armed. He started to rise, grab his weapon, then realized there was no way he would make it to Mak in time. If he showed himself, then he could be taken, too. Starting a firefight with Mak and the twins in between would get them killed.
Unable to act, he had to stand by and watch the men surround Mak. Gritting his teeth, he could only watch as they shoved her to the ground, bound her hands, and pulled her up roughly. Victor and Vincent were questioned, but the men kept them bound.
After searching the chopper, they shouted at Mak, probably about the pilots, Mak shook her head. One of the men backhanded her. She stumbled and rounded on him, crouched to strike back.
Take it easy, babe. He should tell himself that too. His whole body was tensed to rush out there and kill the bastard who had hit her. He hoped she didn’t push back with this guy because he wasn’t long on patience and pointed the gun in her face. She put her bound hands up. He motioned her with the barrel, and she started to move. That’s it, Mak. Live to fight another day. She never looked back, never gave away his position. This woman was a freaking rock star. She was something else, his Mak. They started moving off toward the east, b
ack toward the bunker.
And, she was. His. From the top of her beautiful head to the toes of her delicate feet.
He’d fallen for her hard.
Love.
Not something he’d expected to find while on a mission, and he wasn’t sure it would last between them once it was over. Didn’t mean he could deny it, even if he wanted to. It was there in black and white. Mak was imprinted on his heart. He had stuff he still had to tell her, especially about Samantha. Something he wasn’t sure how she would take after losing her own child. Maybe she wouldn’t want to move forward at all. He wanted to hold her close, dampen the panic in his gut. But he could have confidence in her and her abilities. Mak was a fighter, courageous, resourceful. A survivor. He thought momentarily about the kiss they shared. Something inside his heart touching off when her lips had shaped his, and she’d whispered his name.
She’d already killed for him.
He would do no less. He would die for her.
He gave them ten minutes, enough time to feel confident, then he rose out of the depression, shouldered the pack, and started to follow.
He had no doubt his team was on their way, but he had to be realistic. He couldn’t wait for them. Their small window of opportunity was closing. He had to get Mak and the twins back, then get them to the exchange. They were on foot, in a mostly hostile environment, and that was a serious complication.
Nothing else mattered right now. All of them were alive, and he was going to do his best to keep them that way.
The jungle was dense and wet, the heat of the clearing left behind. They were woefully outnumbered, but she was with a Navy SEAL. The air grew thicker with each step. The asshat who had hit her had questioned her about the pilots, but she would rather die than give up their bodies or the hiding spot where Pitbull was watching all this play out. Her throat contracted, remembering the pilot and her short but heartfelt discussion with him before he died. She had put them in that danger, and she mourned their deaths as she walked.