To the Xtreme (Xtreme Ops Book 2)

by Em Petrova

  As he stumped past the nurse’s station with Penn at his side, a group of nurses looked up and stared at them as if they were seeing a pair of yetis passing through.

  Penn shook his head. “You’d think they never saw two bad-ass motherfuckers before.”

  Lipton snorted. “You sure found it amusing back there when that doctor’s face got red.”

  “It’s because she only blushed when she glanced directly at you.”

  Lipton hated his irritatingly slow pace. “Because I was a grouchy dick.”

  Penn flashed a grin. “Whatever you say, man. Let’s get you back to base. Everyone else is in the national park searching for more explosives.”

  He groaned but held his questions for when they got outside and into the SUV. He tossed the crutches into the back and stared down at his right foot. He couldn’t even drive. Or wasn’t supposed to, if he’d heard the nurse’s instructions right.

  Once Penn climbed behind the wheel and they were rolling down the road, Lipton spoke. “What the hell am I supposed to do for weeks? Who’s going to be second in command?”

  “Broshears.”

  Their team member knew his weapons, that was for damn sure, but could he take charge the way Lipton did?

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Penn swung his head in Lipton’s direction. “And it won’t be the same without you for a few weeks, but there’s nothing else to do. Now let me ask you what the hell happened on that mountain.”

  Lipton related the events, leaving out the part where he might have blacked out for a minute or two while the fairy nymph park ranger with the big green eyes reached him. Real men didn’t pass out. Ever.

  “The question is how the hell someone strung explosives in that treetop. And why,” Penn told him.

  “Did you check the park’s records for injuries and deaths from falling limbs?” Lipton glared down at his cast.

  “We’re still collecting info.”

  “Don’t take me to the base. I’m going to the park.”

  Penn sighed. “We’ll keep you in the loop, Lip. You can run backup via computer and by feeding us intel.”

  “Exactly why it’s a good idea for me to be at the park.”

  “I have an idea, but nothing is finalized yet, since I’ve been in the hospital with you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We might have a cabin for you, on the edge of the park lands. It’s a place rangers use when they get snowed in and cut off from roads. But you might be able to stay there and we’ll hook you up with all the equipment you need to back us up. If you stay there, you’ll need your stuff, so we’re going to the base to get it.”

  “It’s not the same as being with the team, but I guess it’s better than nothing right now.” Lipton’s leg was already itching, the hairs flattened into shapes that would only irritate him more as time went on. Last time he had a broken bone, he’d been seven. And Christ, he didn’t want to think about how he’d sustained that injury. It had gotten him removed from his home and put into foster care.

  “First we need to search the forest for more explosives and find out who put it there. We need your twisted brain—you’re the bomb specialist.”

  “Yeah…” He didn’t sound very convinced that his role for the next six to eight weeks would keep him from climbing the walls, and after working together for half a year, Penn knew it too.

  “We’ll try to keep you occupied while you’re laid up, Lip.”

  He could already feel the walls closing in on him. This was going to be a long ass break from doing what he loved…from what he needed in order to keep his sanity.

  Explosives in the national park.

  Jenna Underwood turned the information over in her mind for the twentieth time since learning about it.

  She was trained to handle a lot of situations—recovering dead bodies and arresting people for drinking too much to name a couple. But she had never been taught to handle trees wired to explode. Who would even be crazy enough to climb to the top of a tree with a volatile compound?

  Well, it wasn’t her job to find out. She was tasked with protecting people who visited Denali National Park and conserving the environment and wildlife in the process.

  She’d already had a long day. Hours and hours of daylight in Alaska in June meant that it was easy to work too many hours, but she’d been on her way out of the park for the day when she heard the treetop crack and crash to the ground. When she went to investigate, she found the man.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw him again, sprawled on the ground. As soon as she approached, his eyes popped open, dark hazel and full of confusion that tugged at her insides. Some of the guys she worked with said she got attached to people she helped, and she couldn’t deny it.

  After helping to rescue people, she often checked up on them. Following up with them was a kindness that couldn’t be ignored. Not to mention it gave her closure. She didn’t like wondering what happened to a person who’d taken a fall and been air-lifted out of the park.

  She even checked up on a bald eagle that had been hit on the road and was relieved to hear it had been sent to a rehabilitation facility outside Anchorage and would be released into the wild as soon as its broken wing mended.

  When she received the call from the head of park management to assist a team in scoping out the forest for more explosives, she couldn’t help but experience a surge of pride that she’d been chosen. She could make a huge difference, and it would mean life or death to other hikers like the one she’d rescued today. But it was nerve-racking too. She’d never done anything like this.

  She drove up to the ranger station, a rally point for her to meet up with the team. As she parked her vehicle, she sucked in a breath at the sight of the…

  What did she call such a sight? A group of men that appeared to be a wall of muscle waiting for her. Working primarily with men meant she was comfortable with the opposite sex along with all their quirks, chauvinistic ways and habits. But these guys were another breed.

  Not one of them appeared to be under six feet tall. With muscled legs the size of tree trunks and shoulders capable of holding their own against a grizzly, she wondered what she was getting into.

  She’d been told they were a special unit investigating the discovery in the park. As she climbed out of her vehicle and crossed the ground to them, they all looked up. Eight men, each as formidable as the next.

  “Hi,” she called out as she approached. “I’m the park ranger working with you today.”

  One man stepped forward. They each sported packs and belts with gadgets hanging off them, as well as bulletproof vests.

  “Are you some kind of SWAT?” She moved her attention between them.

  “Xtreme Ops.”

  She stared at him.

  “Special forces for a division of Homeland Security called OFFAT,” he explained.

  She blinked slowly. “This is a matter of national security?”

  He gave a grave nod. “It’s a national park, and any threats to US soil is our business. I’m Captain Penn Sullivan. What’s your name?”

  “Jenna Underwood.”

  He gave her a once-over. “You assisted our teammate off that mountain with a broken ankle, and for that we extend our thanks.”

  Her gaze flew to his and then to the others, who were nodding. “He’s your teammate?” Now she could see it. Same bulky, muscled man with enough confidence to try to stand on a broken ankle not once but several times.

  “He is, and he’s grateful for your help as well.”

  “How is he doing?”

  “Ticked off to be laid up for six to eight weeks. But we’ve received permission to utilize a cabin set aside for park rangers.”

  She nodded. “I know of it.” Actually, she’d holed up there the previous winter after a freak storm caught her by surprise. Thank God she’d managed to reach the cabin and hunker there for several days until the roads opened again.

  “Special Operative Lipton will be staying there
while we search the park. He’ll be investigating behind the scenes and providing us with technical assistance.”

  “So what do you need from me?” She was eager to get going. The mere idea of more explosives out there, possibly ready to detonate and injure more park visitors, had her bouncing on her toes.

  “We need you to take us to the sites where hikers were injured by falling limbs in the past year.”

  She froze. “You believe those incidents could be from explosives? The injuries were recorded as accidents.”

  “It’s possible, but we can’t rule out anything yet.”

  “Tree limbs snap under high winds and heavy snow,” she told him. But something else had happened to the man with the broken ankle. She had to admit in her line of work, she wasn’t searching for hidden dangers such as explosives.

  “We’d prefer to make that determination ourselves. We’ll follow your lead.”

  “Some of the places can only be reached by trails. We’ll need ATVs.”

  “We have ours at the ready.” He waved toward a truck with a long trailer.

  Impressed by their preparedness, she nodded. “I’m ready when you are, Captain.”

  Watching the men unload the ATVs, she realized she was pretty far out of her element with these alpha men, and a bit intimidated too. She was more of a backpack through the wilderness and live out of a van type. Her colleagues had a passion for the outdoors equal to hers, and often they got together and took road trips to other state parks throughout Alaska.

  As they jumped into side-by-side recreational vehicles and onto four-wheelers, all bulked-out muscle and official business, she inwardly groaned. The captain waved to her to ride with him. Jenna drew in a deep breath and hurried to join him.

  They returned to the place where the treetop fell earlier that day. While the guys tracked all over the area, searching ground, treetops and everything in between, she explained what she’d seen and heard to Captain Sullivan.

  “I heard a crack and hurried to find out what happened.”

  “How far away were you?”

  “I was hiking what we rangers call the B trail. You see, there aren’t any marked trails in the park, but we make up our own to call out locations easier. That trail follows the road we use for accessing other parts of the park, but a lot of hikers take this trail, and we monitor it regularly.”

  “What do you check it for?”

  She turned her attention from the wooded area to the big, mean-looking man who wore the most serious expression she’d ever seen—no, check that. The most serious expression she’d ever seen had been on Lieutenant Lipton’s face after he realized he couldn’t bear weight on that ankle.

  “Hikers get lost easily. Or they get heatstroke and need hydration. Occasionally they come across a bear with cubs…” Those times didn’t always end well, but she didn’t convey this to Captain Sullivan.

  “You heard the crack and came across Lipton. Where was he lying?”

  She moved forward toward the fallen branches of a treetop that should have, in retrospect, killed the man. He’d obviously twisted and flattened himself to the ground at the moment he heard the branches cracking, which saved his life. After explaining all this to the team, Sullivan gestured for the guys to roll out again.

  She gave directions to the site of the last injured hiker. But on the way, the guys stopped their ATVs.

  “Stay here,” Sullivan ordered in a low tone.

  Goosebumps broke out on her forearms underneath her forest green thermal top she wore as a base layer before she put on her ranger uniform. She remained seated, watching as the guys carefully scouted a plot of heavily wooded land spanning an acre or so.

  She saw one point upward, and her heart stalled out.

  What she saw clinging to the branches of yet another big old tree made her blood ice over.

  At that moment, Sullivan returned, his jaw clenched into a more grim expression than she’d seen from him so far.

  “Is it an explosive?” She managed to keep her voice from wobbling. Give her a territorial grizzly any day. But this? Not in her wheelhouse, within her training or her paygrade.

  Sullivan nodded.

  “What are we going to do?” She searched around frantically, wondering who held the trigger.

  “Disarm it. Come with me where I know you’re safe.”

  When she climbed out of the side-by-side, she found her legs weren’t so eager to follow the special operative toward a dangerous bomb wired to the treetop. Somehow, she forced her legs to support her.

  One of the men only spared her a glance as Sullivan told her to sit by him. In seconds, the man had a phone on speaker. “Lip, this is Broshears.”

  “What the hell’s happening? I’m going crazy just sitting here.”

  Jenna drew a quick intake of air at the growly tone of Special Operative Lipton’s voice projecting through the speakers.

  “We got something you gotta see.” Broshears held up his phone, which zoomed in far closer than any normal civilian cell phone could. She stared at the screen, heart thundering at the up-close-and-personal view of wires and a metal canister rigged to the side of the tree trunk.

  “Is that—” she burst out, but stopped when Broshears leveled his stare on her. She snapped her mouth shut and listened to the exchange.

  A low whistle projected through the device from Lipton. “Exactly like the one that took me out of commission.”

  “We need to disarm it. Besides you, Hep’s our bomb expert.”

  “I can direct you over the phone. I just need you to get into position for me to get a good look.”

  Jenna felt in the way and so far removed from this incident taking place on her stomping ground. The biggest threat she encountered besides wildlife, was the occasional belligerent hiker or a fisherman being fined. Nothing at all like this.

  Broshears walked left and right and in a circle, shooting video of the explosive from the ground.

  “Hell.” Lipton’s curse snapped her back to attention.

  “Fuck. Yeah, I see it too.” With a flick of his fingers, Broshears motioned to two of the men. They rushed over to him, along with Sullivan. The four team members put their heads together over the screen and replayed a part of the video several times.

  She couldn’t see over their shoulders, being much shorter than they were, but she managed to peek through a crack between their thick, bulging biceps. When they drew apart, Lipton’s voice came out loud and clear and with all the confidence in the world.

  “Here’s what you’re gonna do.”

  Part of her breathed a sigh of relief that they knew what they were doing and appeared more than capable of handling it.

  “Hep, rig up the climbing gear to get into that other treetop,” Sullivan ordered one of the men.

  “On it, Captain,” he drawled out in a voice thickened with Southern roots.

  When he started to reach for some equipment, Jenna automatically threw out an arm to stop him. He paused and stared down at her. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t we find the person holding the remote to detonate the bomb? If you go into the tree, you could be killed.”

  He offered her a grin that lit up his eyes and caused small creases to form around each corner—the first smile she’d seen from any of them, and she immediately warmed to him.

  “Don’t worry—we know what we’re doing.”

  She stepped back out of their way. Within moments, she realized the man with the Southern drawl called Hepburn wasn’t the voice that calmed her fears and put all of her trust into these men.

  It was Lipton’s.

  Chapter Two

  The cabin where the guys had set Lipton up with enough equipment to run a smaller division of Homeland Security was cold as hell.

  Built in a copse of pines, the cabin faced the wind from the east, and here in the mountains—even in June—it was far from summer temperatures.

  Again, he wondered what made him choose to hike in the park ins
tead of head for the sun, sand and surf of California. He could be lying on the beach right now with a beautiful bikini-clad woman at his side and a margarita in hand.

  He could be doing more than directing his teammates to disarm a bomb. Damn, this entire situation grated on his nerves.

  Hours had passed since he talked the team through each and every step. Why someone didn’t come get him and take him to the site irritated him more than anything. It was as if they knew if he got within a half mile of anything with four wheels and a battery, he’d be driving to meet them, which was why they’d stranded him here.

  In this damn cold cabin.

  Earlier Lipton had a fire going in the fireplace, but when he threw a glance at the grate, he saw only cold ashes.

  Sighing, he pushed his chair back. His cast struck the leg of the desk, causing a vibration up through his leg bone. He ground his teeth. Damn this thing. Being stuck in a cast was bad enough, but he’d begun to feel like one of those dogs in videos that forgot how to walk when their owners put socks on them.

  He stood and forgot to grab his crutches. Hopping a bit on his good foot, he floundered for the set and pulled them under his arms. The hardwood floors at least provided enough grip for the rubber bottoms and nobody would find him flat on his back after wiping out a second time.

  That brought his brain around to the set of green eyes again. Useless to think about the woman who’d rescued him. He had no need of women besides occasionally getting funky in a hotel room with one, and he’d never touch a woman like the park ranger.

  She wore one braid twined at the bottom with gold thread, for hell’s sake. He never did have time for hippie granola-crunchin’ types, even if they had pretty green eyes.

  Eyes that were two pools into her soul.

  “Shit.” He crouched before the fireplace and stacked some logs, added kindling, and some smart person had left behind old newspaper to make for easier lighting. After crumpling a sheet and stuffing it in between logs, he lit a match. He started to sit back on his heels to watch the smoke curls and the first flicker of flames, but realized he didn’t have full range of motion with his right leg.