by Cindy Dees
“And it sucked. No, thank you,” he echoed.
Gunner swept him up against all that tactical gear and the hard, powerful man beneath, and it was almost too sexy to stand. Then Gunner leaned down, kissing him hard at first and then gentling the kiss to a long, deep, intimate thing that communicated how much Gunner cared for him.
“Not to be cliché,” he murmured against Gunner’s warm, resilient lips, “but is that your pistol poking me in the belly?”
Gunner let out a silent gust of laughter against Chas’s mouth. “That’s a breaching tool. I’ll show you how it works sometime. My pistol’s around the side of my hip a little bit more.”
Chas stepped back, and in the faint glow from a streetlight outside, Gunner gave him a guided tour of a SEAL’s operational gear. It was impressive how much crap Gunner carried around with him. Chas commented, “You’re like a walking Boy Scout manual. You’ve got every eventuality covered.”
“If only. No matter how prepared we are, we can always count on the bad guys to come up with something that we haven’t anticipated. The name of the game in the field is being willing and able to improvise.”
“That’s why you’ll be a good lover. We just need to tap into your natural ability to freestyle.”
“If you say so,” Gunner muttered, sounding a little shy.
Chas chucked him under the chin. “Never fear. I’m creative. Our sex life will never be dull.”
“Can’t say as I was actually worried about that.”
Chas stared up at Gunner in the shadows, trying to make out the expression in his eyes. “Meaning you don’t plan to have a lengthy love life with me, or that you believe we’ll keep it fresh and hot for a long time?”
“The latter—” Gunner broke off, reaching for his ear with his right hand.
“What?”
“Hush.”
Chas fell silent and heard the faintest of sound coming from Gunner’s earpiece. Someone was speaking on the radio frequency Gunner was monitoring.
“Gotta go,” Gunner bit out.
“What’s happening?”
“Spence and Dray have company. They need me to help out.”
“Where are they?”
“In the woods above the motel. They’ve got five tangoes moving around behind the building, and there are only two of them. Spence and Dray can’t keep track of all of them alone.”
“The bad guys are already here?” Chas asked in dismay. Without having to be told, he stomped into his running shoes and quickly laced them up.
“You can stay here. The tangoes appear to be running reconnaissance right now.”
Chas squawked, “You want me to stay here by myself with bad guys closing in on me?”
“On you and Poppy,” Gunner said dryly.
“It’s a doll. I’ll be all alone. I waited for you under that desk for two hours that first night in Misty Falls, and it was a goddamned nightmare. I can’t do that again.”
“The only other option is to come out in the woods with me, and you don’t know anything about operating in stealth and darkness. I don’t even have a pair of NODs for you. You’d be blind out there.”
“I can hang on to your belt,” he said desperately. “Please don’t leave me in here. I’m a sitting duck.”
Gunner huffed. “I can take you out into the woods and find you a hidey-hole. You’d have to hunker down there and would still have to sit and wait it out. But you wouldn’t be in here.”
“I’ll take it,” Chas declared.
Gunner rummaged in one of his two big duffel bags. “Put this on.” He held out a black floppy hat with a wavy brim.
Chas jammed it on his head and then stood still while Gunner striped his face with a stick of camo grease that looked like a black version of children’s glue sticks.
“Put on a coat. You’ll get cold sitting still at night,” Gunner ordered.
Chas shrugged into a thick zip-up hoodie and threw his jacket over it as Gunner pulled down a microphone boom in front of his mouth and murmured into it.
“Okay. Spencer and Drago know the plan. They advise that we should go out the back way.”
“The back way?”
“The window. And bring the doll.”
Right. They had to pretend they had Poppy with them if this ruse was going to work. Chas tucked Poppy 2.0 into his coat and nodded gamely at Gunner that he was ready to roll.
It was exciting to be included in a SEAL operation, but it was also scary as hell. Breathing too fast, he followed Gunner into the bathroom and waited for him to climb out the window. Honestly, Chas was impressed at how easily Gunner maneuvered his big body and all his gear out that narrow opening. It was almost as if he’d practiced doing that a time or ten.
Gunner’s gloved hand came into view and waved for him to come out.
Chas climbed onto the toilet seat and then onto the nightstand. While he was pondering head first or feet first, Gunner whispered, “Head first. I’ll catch you.”
That solved that. Chas grabbed the edge of the windowsill and pushed his torso through the opening. Big, familiar hands grasped his shoulders from below, and Gunner whispered, “Kick your feet over your head. You’ll do a flip and land on your feet facing outward.”
Trusting Gunner to keep him from killing himself in the move, Chas threw his feet over his head. He landed in a crouch, startled at how easy it had been. The big shadow that was Gunner moved around in front of him and breathed into his ear on the way past, “Grab my belt. I’ll go slow. Try not to make much noise.”
They moved off into the bushes and brambles. How Gunner found his way through them, Chas had no idea. But for the most part, they moved unimpeded into the woods, always going steadily uphill. Gunner led them at an angle more fully behind the main structure of the motel. As Chas’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw that the undergrowth thinned out as they moved higher up the slope. Gunner was absolutely silent. Chas never heard him take a step, never even heard him breathing.
As for himself, Chas winced every time he shuffled through a patch of dry leaves or exhaled hard. The noises sounded twice as loud as normal in the utter silence. And to think, at least seven other men were creeping around out here too. And some of them meant to kill him.
The more he thought about it, the scarier it got. The sense of this being a giant game wore off and the cold, hard danger of being hunted like prey settled in his gut like a lump of lead. He hated violence in all forms. He’d spent too much of his life being a target of it and watching people he cared about be affected by it.
He hated that Gunner was out here at risk, and he hated that Gunner had to be prepared to do violence to protect him and Poppy.
Eventually, Gunner stopped beside a big, jagged boulder. He pointed to Chas and then to the indentation at the base of the massive rock. That space didn’t look very big, and the boulder looked in danger of tumbling forward and crushing anyone beneath it. Frowning, Chas crouched and crawled under the overhang.
“Get comfortable,” Gunner breathed as he spread some sort of cloth over him. “You’ll be here a while.”
Chas reached up to drag the edge of the cloth aside, leaving him a slit to peer through. Otherwise he would get claustrophobic for sure. Gunner scooped up handfuls of twigs and leaves that he sprinkled over the cloth. He stood back, made a few adjustments, and flashed Chas a quick thumbs-up.
And then he was gone, as silent as the night that settled around Chas.
GUNNER HATED leaving Chas, but he had no choice. His teammates needed him. Apparently Spencer and Drago had spotted five tangoes but thought there might be a sixth one out here somewhere.
The hostiles had parked down the road a couple hundred yards in two SUVs and had fanned out from there. Drago had visual on two guys sitting across the road from the motel, one using some sort of sniper rig. Two more had circled around behind the motel and were more or less together. Spencer was tracking them. The fifth one had headed for the top of the ridge Gunner was currently about two-
thirds of the way up. His job was to get eyes on number five and check out a possible sixth tango. Easy peasy.
Except the hillside in this area ended with a nearly vertical stone face about twenty feet tall, with the top of the ridgeline above that. He had to make a dicey free climb on loose, unstable rock without making any noise. He stowed his short-barreled urban assault weapon across his back and commenced the climb.
He was perhaps four feet from the flat summit when he heard movement above his head. He froze, clinging precariously to the cliff face by his fingertips and his left foot. His right knee was bent by his hip as he froze in the middle of reaching for another foothold.
Whoever was creeping around above him was doing so stealthily, moving with exaggerated care. But the guy wasn’t rolling from heel to toe, which was resulting in leaves crunching and the occasional scuffing noise. Not Special Forces trained, then.
Gunner’s left leg was trembling with fatigue before he felt safe enough to pull himself up the rest of the way onto the ridgeline, lying flat on his stomach. He gazed around cautiously. Off to his right, he saw faint movement. That would be the guy who’d walked past.
But then he heard a twig snap off to his left.
Crap. There was a sixth guy up here, and he’d come up between him and his apparent patrolling buddy. Freezing in place, he let only his gaze move. No decent cover within several yards in any direction. There was a shallow gully just by his right side, though. For lack of any better options, he eased inch by inch to the right until his body lay in the depression. Moving his hands slowly, he grabbed fistfuls of leaves and dirt and did his best to cover himself.
Footsteps scuffed to his left at a range of about thirty feet.
He went completely still, relying on the human eye’s tendency to focus on movement rather than on unmoving shapes.
The bastard walked past his head, no more than ten feet from him. Gunner didn’t even blink as the guy eased past, his boots at eye level. The hostile was lean in build, medium height. Dressed in black, but not heavily equipped. He was carrying a tricked-out Howa Type 89 Assault Rifle, however. It was the preferred weapon of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The one this guy was carrying had a video sighting system that would allow a user to hold it away from the body and aim the weapon around corners. Not super useful out here, but hey, if it made the guy feel badass, more power to him.
Spencer and Drago wanted to capture one of these guys tonight. Question him and find out who he worked for and what the hell they wanted with a little kid. This one was a good hundred yards behind his buddy. If Gunner could take him down silently, Hostile Number Five might not realize he’d lost his partner for long enough that Gunner could drag this one away.
To that end, he let the guy move about twenty-five feet past him. Then Gunner pushed up, rising to his feet specter-like behind his unsuspecting target. He moved slowly at first, then picked up speed as he closed the last few yards.
He got an arm around the hostile’s neck before the guy had any idea Gunner was even there. But dammit, the guy had excellent hand-to-hand combat training. He flipped Gunner over his shoulder, and only Gunner’s own training allowed him to twist midair and land on his feet, still clinging to the guy’s neck, which was now bent down in front of him. He made a fast move to one side to get behind the guy again, but the idiot jerked hard against the countermove. It was the kind of flashy move a movie martial artist would make but no sane fighter ever tried in actual combat. Not if he wanted to live. Sure enough, a sharp cracking sound split the night. It sounded like several stalks of celery being snapped in half all at once.
The hostile went limp in his arms, and Gunner swore silently. The guy had broken his own neck with that stupid move, for God’s sake. He lowered the hostile to the ground as the man’s paralyzed body gurgled its last few breaths. Life faded from the man’s dark, staring eyes, and Gunner closed the guy’s eyelids with his thumb and forefinger.
Dammit.
He turned, scanning the woods in the direction this guy’s partner had gone. At least he knew that Hostile Number Five didn’t have any backup now. Maybe he wouldn’t be as stupid as this guy had been and kill himself with some ill-advised hero move.
Gunner moved off quickly, covering a lot of ground for about three minutes before slowing and scanning the forest with the heat-painting feature of his NODs. Spencer and Drago would be wearing clothing that minimized their heat signatures, but the hostiles didn’t appear to be doing the same.
He crept forward, paralleling the cliff. He was close enough to look down on the motel and started when he spotted two men emerging from the woods across the road. Apparently the hostiles were beginning some sort of assault on his and Chas’s room. Jeez. Good thing Chas and the doll version of Poppy weren’t there.
In front of him, a figure rose silently out of a bush and surprised the living hell out of him. The hostile had almost no heat signature, just his hands and throat lit up on Gunner’s gear. Bastard had been well hidden in a thick stand of brush, sitting perfectly still.
Gunner froze midstep as the hostile moved over to the edge of the cliff and trained his weapon toward the motel. This must be the overwatch guy providing sniper support. Either that, or his job was to pick off Gunner and Chas if they tried to flee.
Gunner eased slowly off to his left, counting on the shooter’s concentration on the area below to keep the guy from noticing him. When he’d traveled a ninety-degree arc and was directly behind Number Five, Gunner started forward. This time he drew his Ka-Bar knife as he approached the target.
He jumped, wrapping his left arm around the shooter’s throat and pressing the flat edge of the knife against the guy’s chin in an obvious declaration of intent to kill if the guy gave him any hassles.
Fortunately, this guy went still, his body utterly relaxed. Not that Gunner took it for surrender. Not yet.
Flipping the knife blade to place the sharpened edge against the shooter’s throat, he used his free hand to key his microphone. He muttered low, “Number Five in custody. Number Six is down.”
Two sets of clicks in his ear were all the acknowledgment he got from Spencer and Drago. Which meant both of them were close behind their own targets. It also meant they were ready to move on to the second phase of this operation—chasing off the remaining targets so they’d have time to question his captive.
All of a sudden, gunfire exploded off to his left, where the ridge sloped down almost to the level of the motel, and from the trees across the street. The man in his arms jolted violently, and Gunner pressed the razor-sharp blade harder across the guy’s throat.
There were shouts and returned weapons fire, interspersed with the distinctive double taps of Spencer and Drago’s weapons. Pop-pop. Pop-pop. Their pace of fire was unhurried, undoubtedly precise, also undoubtedly herding the remaining hostiles toward their vehicles in a way meant to make them think they were vastly outnumbered and needed to retreat if they wanted to live.
Somebody cried out below. Spencer or Drago must have decided to nick one of them. That was a ballsy call, but maybe the hostiles needed a little more convincing to bug out.
It was incredibly difficult to hit a moving target at all, let alone control where on a body a bullet struck. Shooting for the leg or head were stunts that only worked in Hollywood. In the real world, snipers aimed at the center of mass and were happy with any shot that hit a vital area.
Without warning, the guy Gunner was holding let out a shout. It sounded like he said, “Run!”
He tightened his arm across the guy’s throat until the dude was gasping and started clawing at Gunner’s forearm. The man went limp, but Gunner held the choke hold a bit longer to make sure the guy was well and truly passed out.
Then he lowered the man to the ground and worked fast to secure his wrists behind his back with zip ties. He stuffed a bandana in the guy’s mouth as he started to revive and stepped back, pointing his pistol at him. The hostile regained consciousness and glared up at him, testin
g the zip ties once and then subsiding.
Yippee. This one might live long enough to answer a few questions.
Gunner heard running footsteps and took a quick glance at the road below. Four figures in black were running at full speed in the direction of the SUVs, puffs of dirt kicking up behind them every few seconds. Drago was continuing to shoot at their heels, no doubt to convince them not to stop and circle back for their two missing teammates.
Engines roared to life, and the man at Gunner’s feet struggled violently. Just figured out he’d been left behind, had he? Sucked to be him.
Two large black vehicles roared past, and Drago shot out the rear window of the last one for good measure. Gunner grinned and hoisted his guy to his feet, giving him a little shove along the ridge toward where it dipped down to street level.
“I’m coming up on your left, Gun,” Spencer transmitted over the radio.
“Roger.”
Spencer’s dark shape materialized beside him, and the shoulders of the bound hostile drooped. He’d been planning an escape attempt, had he? Too bad, so sad.
“Take this one down to the room?” Gunner asked Spencer.
“Good a place as any for a conversation.”
They marched the guy down the hill and met Drago coming across the road. Gunner unlocked the motel room door and ushered the prisoner inside. “You two have a chat with this guy. I have a little cleanup to do, and I need to retrieve Chas.”
“Why don’t you pack up the baby’s gear, and when you’ve collected them, go ahead and hit the road,” Spencer said quietly.
“Good idea. For the record, I put the sixth hostile in a throat lock, and he flipped me. I kept my grip and he tried to twist sideways out of it. Snapped his neck before I could let go. He died immediately. I swear I didn’t kill him intentionally.”
“I know you better than that, Gunner. You don’t lose control in a fight. Hell, I wouldn’t offer you a job unless you were a complete professional.”
“Thanks,” he replied gruffly.
