Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Bang for the Buck (Kindle Worlds Novella) (SWAK Series Book 1)

by Margaret Madigan

  “Good lord. Are you always like this when you get hurt?” she asked.

  She stood and straightened her clothes. She reached for the towel and sat on the edge of the bed again. She dabbed at his lip, and he stuck his tongue out to test the sore spot. Kissing had broken open a split there and it oozed some blood onto his chin.

  “Only when I fight.” He held up his hand to stop her from saying anything. “I know I didn’t technically fight. But the adrenaline gets me going.”

  “What about when you’re on a mission?” she asked.

  He didn’t want to talk about his sex life with her because suddenly it seemed wrong. No other woman compared, like not even in the same league. Mindy wasn’t just about sex, she was about caring, laughing, protecting, holding, making her his.

  “No. I mean, yeah, there’s adrenaline when bullets fly and we fight bad guys, but that’s a different kind of thing. It’s my job. It’s focused, precise, goal-oriented. It would be weird if I got a boner every time I went to work.”

  She raised a brow at him. “Because it’s not weird you get one when you get beat up?”

  The boner in question ached for her to wrap her fingers around it and stroke. Instead, he shrugged and grinned, peeking at her through his swollen eye. “You have my blood all over your mouth. It’s kinda sexy.”

  Kissing him had smeared his blood around her lips, like she was some kind of vampire feeding on a fresh kill. When she stuck her tongue out and flicked the tip of it over her top lip to test the truth of what he’d said, a frisson of some forbidden satisfaction tickled his insides. Watching her taste his blood, spilled in violence and shared with her in lust felt like some taboo ritual that bound them together.

  She shook her head. “You’re a sick man, you know that, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But you like me anyway.”

  “Hmph,” she said, standing to go rinse the cloth, and probably her face.

  “Is that a yes hmph or a no hmph?”

  “What do you think?” she called from the bathroom.

  He thought he liked her a lot, and if he was lucky she liked him, too. If they ever got off this goddamned ship he wanted to take her back to Virginia with him and make her part of his life.

  She came back into the room after washing her face just as Ivan the Asshole unlocked the door and made his way in. Buck rolled to his side, grabbing a wad of the blanket under him to cover his legs and boner. He made like a nearly-dead man with a weak groan, but kept a slit-open eye on the Russian.

  “This is the best I could do for food,” he said.

  He’d taken his time bringing it, that was for sure.

  Ivan didn’t even glance at Buck, but kept an all-too-interested eye on Mindy. Buck didn’t like that look. It was testing the waters, considering what he could get away with. It was predatory.

  Mindy rested a hand on Ivan’s forearm and Buck about came undone. Every muscle tensed to explode off the bed, but he held himself in check.

  “Thank you,” she said. Ivan turned to leave, but before he could, Mindy said. “Ivan, where are we?” When Ivan cocked his head and looked at her like she had an IQ of twelve, she said, “I mean, I know we’re on the Pacific somewhere, but I meant when will we get to Russia? That is where we’re going, right?”

  “I’ll let you know when we get there.”

  After he left, Buck said, “Well, that was helpful. Either way, we need to get off this ship soon.”

  She brought over the tray Ivan gave her and set it on the nightstand. It held one peanut butter sandwich, a sealed container of peach slices, and a bottle of water.

  “Looks like gourmet tonight,” she said.

  “Looks like he meant for you to eat, but not me.”

  “He probably thought you’d be unconscious. Speaking of which, we still need to assess your injuries.”

  She turned on the bed to look at him more closely. Her feather-light touches to his wounds didn’t help his slowly deflating erection.

  “What’s the prognosis, Doc?”

  She spoke as she poked and examined. “Lots of tissue damage to the face. The nose does look broken. You’re lucky you didn’t lose any teeth, but your lips are split in a couple of places.” She palpated down his chest and ribs, and he winced when she pressed hard. “Definitely bruised ribs, probably cracked, maybe broken.”

  “Meh. I’ve had broken ribs before. These are cracked at best. I know how to brace for body punches. They thought they hurt me a lot worse than they did. I’ll be fine. Our number one priority is ice or something cold to get the inflammation down around my eyes so I can see better.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re getting off this ship tonight.”

  After she and Buck shared the meager food supplies, Melinda spent some time alternating the cold bottle of water and cold washcloths on Buck’s face until the swelling went down some. They kept his head up on a couple of pillows, and then they finally slept. It was only a few hours, but she curled up to his side and rested her head on his chest as he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. Just being in his arms was enough to calm her racing mind and sputtering heart.

  She woke with a start from a dream, but the fuzzy images faded fast. All she remembered was blood and a vague impression of violence. Not surprising given the events of the day.

  Pulling the thin wool blanket up over them, she snuggled into Buck’s warm body. He produced enough heat to supply a small village, but it was cozy and comforting.

  A tiny worry niggled at her. As much as she wanted to be off the ship and escape Russian clutches, what would happen when they got back to reality? Would she ever see him again? Because she wanted to see him again. Her heart hurt thinking about the possibility they’d go their own ways.

  Despite great sex, and having bonded over his broken body and cathartic confessions about his misplaced youthful guilt, was that enough to build a relationship on? People had built more on less. She didn’t want to imagine life without him. What life with him would look like, she had no idea. But she wanted to find out.

  Buck woke from a deep, snoring sleep. One moment he was asleep, the next wide awake.

  “I’ll never get used to that,” she said, and realized she’d implied she’d be waking up with him into the future. It made her blush both from pleasure at the idea, and embarrassment that she’d said it out loud.

  “What?”

  “Waking up like that.”

  He kissed her forehead, then yawned and stretched, wincing when his ribs twinged. “I’ve trained my internal clock. A lot of the guys do it. It’s very useful if you’re in the middle of a long mission and need sleep to refresh, but don’t have a lot of time.”

  Melinda sat up and stretched, herself. “Your face looks a little better,” she said. The inflammation had gone down enough he could open both eyes most of the way. She’d realigned his nose, and that swelling had gone down minimally. “Still angry red and purple, though.”

  Buck sat on the edge of the bed, shrugging as he did so. “It will be for a while. Let’s worry about getting somewhere I can heal in peace. Did you find any clothes in here when you searched earlier?”

  “Search?”

  “You didn’t search?” He shook his head in disbelief. “The first thing you do when locked in anywhere is search for useful materials. You never know what will give you an advantage.”

  “Duly noted.”

  Buck spent a few minutes doing a thorough search of the room and piled an eclectic stack of items on the bed next to her, in addition to finding white undershirts in a narrow closet near the door, and slippers in a drawer.

  “This is the best I’m going to get for clothes and shoes, I guess,” he said, pulling one of the shirts over his head. It was too small and he had to stretch it to fit over his biceps and chest. She snort-laughed. He looked like the Hulk wearing a toddler’s shirt. “Wait. You haven’t seen the best part of the outfit yet,” he said. He grinned and stuck his feet in the cheap felt
slippers. They were also tight, but at least the rubber bottom would protect his feet.

  “So, what’s the plan, soldier?” she asked.

  His expression went from cheerful and teasing—probably his way of distracting her—to serious. “I’ve been thinking about that for a while. There’ll be a lifeboat somewhere on the ship. That’ll be our exit. First, though, I need to get down to the weapons room to inventory their explosives.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He grinned again, a big, cheesy, sexy-ass confident grin, despite the injury to his face. “I’m gonna sink this ship.”

  “With a bomb?”

  “Big boom, baby.”

  “Oh my God. You are crazy, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. Anyway, we’ll grab some explosives, sneak down below and set the charges, then head up top and find the radio room to call for help.”

  “And how will we do all this without being caught?”

  “Very carefully. As long as we make it to the weapons room and arm ourselves, we’ll be good,” he said.

  She wished she shared his confidence. The only thing his plan incited for her was a deep yawning pit of fear in her gut.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You don’t sound very sure,” he said.

  He’d collected some stuff from the desk—it looked like paperclips or something—and moved toward the door.

  “I’m just scared.”

  He turned and pulled her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around his back and nuzzled her face into his shoulder. He smelled like sweat and blood, but also that unique scent she already identified with Buck—a scent that to her meant confidence and kindness and trust. She breathed it deep and it quieted the pounding in her ears, at least a little.

  He pushed her away a few inches and rested his forehead on hers. “I know you’re afraid, but you can trust me. I will never let anything happen to you. I’ll always protect you when you need me to. Okay?”

  She glanced up into his pretty blue eyes and saw absolute certainty in the things he said. If he was afraid, he hid it well. She doubted he was afraid, though. It didn’t seem to be in his nature.

  “Okay.”

  He smiled and patted her shoulder. “Good girl.” He turned and knelt by the door and started working at picking the lock. “I’m going to unlock the door. You stay close behind me and do exactly as I say.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight and said a prayer to the universe that nobody stood outside guarding the door. The sky outside the porthole window had been pitch black when they’d awakened from their nap, but without a clock in the room they had no idea what time it was. Maybe, if they were lucky, everyone but a skeleton crew would be asleep.

  Buck made quick work of the door and inched it open to peek into the hall, before standing and motioning for her to follow.

  He led her on a nerve-wracking path through a maze of passages, doorways, and stairs, all the while her stomach lodged somewhere near her throat as she tried not to puke from the terror that a Russian with a gun would pop out of the next corner and shoot them dead.

  Buck, on the other hand, behaved like he was out on a jog in the park. A cautious jog, but not one where he expected bad guys at every turn.

  He finally stopped in front of another door and tried the door knob. “Damn,” he whispered.

  “You thought they’d leave the gun room unlocked?” she said, keeping her voice down.

  “I hoped.” He knelt down in front of the door and took out his makeshift lock pick tools. “Keep watch.”

  She snort-laughed. “Right. Like I could do anything if they showed up.”

  As he went to work, panic jittered in her belly. The longer it took him, the more her skin itched with it. All she could imagine was Mikhail and Nikolai and Ivan and all the goons crowding into both ends of the hall and pointing an arsenal of weapons at them.

  When the door clicked open behind her, she let out a whoosh of breath.

  They stepped inside and shut the door before Buck flicked on the light. “Bingo,” he said, wearing a giant smile.

  Melinda looked around the room, awed at the variety of weapons she couldn’t name. These Russians certainly knew how to arm themselves.

  Buck went to work fast. He selected a couple of what Melinda assumed were bulletproof vests, slipping one over his head and securing it before helping her into the other.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled.

  “Got your back,” he said, patting her shoulder again. Buck was certainly a complex man, given all the sides of him she’d seen. This giddy-for-battle, over-confident Buck had her teetering between nervous and secure.

  He loaded up on guns. Handguns and ammo and other bigger guns she couldn’t identify. He strapped a big, scary knife to his thigh.

  “You think you’ll need all those?” she asked.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he said. “You know how to shoot a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. No time to teach you now. When we get back home, though, you’re learning.”

  “Um. Okay.”

  He moved to another area and started digging through some other stuff. She liked that he was thinking in terms of them doing things together after they got back to the real world, even if it did involve guns. He made a happy “ah” sound and grabbed some supplies before she could mull the meaning of his words.

  “Let’s go.”

  He opened the door and checked the hall again, this time with a loaded weapon at the ready. He motioned for her to follow and they hurried to another stairwell and down into the depths of the ship.

  Buck took them into an enormous cargo hold. Half of it was full of expensive-looking cars, but the rest echoed with emptiness.

  He led her to a space a few cars back in the rows and between two Mercedes.

  “Duck down and stay out of sight, just in case anyone shows up. I doubt anybody will come check on their cargo in the middle of the night, but you never know what turns a guy on,” Buck said, waggling his brows.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Set some explosive devices.”

  “Oh, God. We’ll get off the ship before they explode, right?”

  “Probably.” He winked to reassure her. It only sort of worked.

  “I should probably mention that I don’t swim and I’m terrified of water,” she said.

  “We’ll have to fix that when we get back, too. But you’ll be nice and dry in the life boat. I promise.”

  She wanted to quip, ‘famous last words,’ but bit her tongue because she desperately wanted to believe him.

  He leaned in to kiss her, then left her to set his explosives. She squatted between the cars, her ears perked for the sound of Russian invasion of the cargo space, but all she heard was the intermittent hushed scuff of Buck’s rubber slippers as he moved from one bomb location to the next. How many was he setting? Did he plan to blow the entire bottom off the ship?

  After a while she realized she hadn’t heard him in too long. She stood up onto her tiptoes and scanned the hold, but couldn’t see all the corners. She was about to go out looking for him when he popped up at the far end of her row and hurried toward her.

  “Okay, we have a half hour to find the radio room, call for help, find the life boat, and get off the ship,” he said.

  “A half hour? That’s it?” The question came out in a whispered squeak of disbelief.

  “Yep. Let’s get going.”

  He grabbed her hand and dragged her to the door. They headed for the stairwell and made a beeline for the top. If they hadn’t met anyone down below, the chances increased exponentially as they headed upward.

  Back at the level of Mikhail’s office, Buck knelt inside the doorway between stairs and the passage beyond.

  “If the layout of this ship makes any sense, I should be able to find the radio room fairly easily, but there will probably be men along the way who try to stop us. I’m going to shoot to kill. Do you have a problem with that?”

&n
bsp; The Russians had killed her colleagues back at Triada and hurt Buck. Did she like the idea of killing people? No, but technically she wouldn’t be doing it, and also technically, it was self-defense. Mostly, if it meant getting off the ship and out of Russian clutches, she was okay with it. She’d deal with any moral fallout when they were safe.

  “No,” she said.

  “Okay. Stay close, keep down, and use me as a shield.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded.

  He stood up tall and walked out into the hall like some big movie badass, a gun in each hand and a confident strut. If real life had a slo-mo switch, now would be the time for it. The whole experience seemed that surreal.

  They rounded a couple of corners without any resistance, but it was too much to hope they wouldn’t encounter anyone, and they were halfway down the next hall when someone stepped out of a doorway.

  He said something in Russian that, to Melinda, sounded like the equivalent of ‘what the fuck?’ and reached for his weapon.

  But he didn’t have the chance to say anything else because Buck put a bullet in his head. Melinda cringed at the cold precision. It made her gorge rise. But it was him or them, and she chose them.

  “Be ready. Gunfire will bring out the bad guys,” Buck said. “Radio room’s right here.”

  “Thank God,” she said.

  They piled into the room, only to find the communications officer sitting with his feet up reading a comic book.

  “kto ty?” the guy said in Russian before switching to English. “Who are you?”

  “You speak English?” Buck asked the man, leveling his gun at the guy’s forehead.

  The guy’s eyes few open wide and he gawped like a fish before he found his voice and squeaked, “Yes.”

  “Good. What kind of communication do you have on board?”

  “Satellite, VHF, short wave, high frequency.”

  “I want to make a satellite call.”

  The man nodded, then pointed at the satellite phone. Buck said to Melinda, “Here, point this at him. If he looks like he’s going to do anything he shouldn’t, pull the trigger.”

  She took the handgun from him. The grip, still warm from his skin, felt strange and comforting despite the weight and power of the thing.