“You’re incorrigible.” Her lips spontaneously curved upward, but it felt more like a grimace than a smile. “Ordinarily I’d agree with you, but not this time. It’s final, there’s no going back.”
“I don’t believe it. I’m not going to ask the details Kathy, but it can’t be as bad as all that. You two are great together and you’ve been through so much. I’m sure you’ll work it out.”
Kathy shrugged out of his arms and shot to her feet. Glaring down at him, she snapped. “Believe it Wolf, it’s over, finished. There is no going back. Not now, not ever.”
Wolf’s face registered shock at her vehemence. He gave her a shrewd look and then stood. “Okay, I believe you. If it’s over, then I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you guys. But if you need anything, anything at all, a night on the town, a shoulder to cry on, skiing lessons, you can count on me. You only have to say the word.”
Kathy was touched, his kindness almost enough to start her howling again. “Thank you, you’re very sweet, I’m sorry I snarled. I was out of line, please forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive, I just hate seeing you like this.”
Wolf pulled Kathy against him, his arms creating a haven. When she circled his waist, he pulled her closer. They stayed locked together like that, time was an intrusion they ignored, each lost in their own thoughts.
He angled her chin upward, her brown eyes were red rimmed and puffy, her face blotchy, there was something about her vulnerability that had his chest tightening.
Without conscious thought, he lowered his head and pressed his lips against hers. The seam of her mouth parted on a breathy gasp, and his rogue tongue slipped inside.
Chapter 21
Almost before it had begun, Wolf finished it. “Forgive me Kathy, I shouldn’t have done that,” he apologized. The blood rushing to his face had him glowing from ear to ear.
Kathy wasn’t sure who was more embarrassed her or him. The kiss couldn’t have lasted more than two seconds. She stepped back and gave a gentle shake of her head, her foggy brain trying to assimilate what had just happened.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “It was a moment of madness best forgotten.”
Wolf looked sheepish. “It’ll work out with Ice, just give it some time Kathy. Let me talk some sense into him.”
“No Wolf.” She shook her head and brushed at her eyes as they started to fill. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”
“Yeah, and some things are, like you and Ice.”
“Please don’t tell him you saw me?”
“If he asks I won’t deny it, but otherwise my lips are sealed.” He made a lame gesture of locking his lips and throwing away the key. “How about I run you home, my car’s in the lot.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll take my self shopping or to the movies, less thinking time that way,” she explained.
“I’ll drop you at the mall then.”
“No, I want to walk, the exercise will do me good.”
Wolf had been reluctant to leave her. She must look a disheveled mess, but she managed to convince him. She needed the time alone to make her plans, to create order out of the chaos spinning in her mind, and if he’d hung around being so concerned and sensitive, she’d be in danger of blabbing the whole sorry story to him, and she couldn’t risk that. Not yet.
* * * *
Kathy aimlessly wandered the shopping mall. Trying to keep thoughts of Shane at bay was like trying to hold back a wave, or stop the sun from setting. Loving him felt right, and in her heart of hearts she believed he felt the same. But why couldn’t he admit it? She loved him to distraction and missed him already, but the baby changed everything. If he loved her, then he would have to be the one to make the first move.
Her contract at school was all but up, and there’d be no point renewing it for another term. She’d have to let the principal know soon, so she could find a replacement.
Unless Shane had a change of heart, she would go home to have her baby supported by people who cared about her and who would look out for her and her child.
Kathy rolled her palm protectively over her stomach. Yes, that’s what she’d do. At peace now that she’d settled on a course of action, she ordered lunch at a café. It was nearing one, and the emotional upheaval had sharpened her appetite. Tucking into her lunch, she grinned at the prospect of telling Liz. Once her friend got over the initial shock she’d be ecstatic. Kathy decided to tell her in person, the expression on her face would be priceless and well worth the wait.
* * * *
Kathy had done what he’d been meaning to do for weeks. Ice should have been elated she’d taken the decision out of his hands, but not an ounce of joy filled him.
He ran a heavy hand through his hair and managed to tousle it more in that one gesture than the scant few hours of troubled sleep did. He’d lain awake for most of the night trying to analyze his feelings and justify what he’d said and done. At about four in the morning, the thought struck him that his life had come full circle. He’d gone from being the rejected to being the rejecter and discovered he didn’t like that position any better. In fact, when he conjured her face, he liked it a whole lot less. When Kathy said those three monumental words he should have been flattered, thrilled. Instead he’d been a dumbass schmuck. He’d already knocked on her door three times this morning, but she either wasn’t at home or was ignoring him. Not that he could blame her.
It had just gone ten when the phone rang. It was the base, and they couldn’t have called at a more inopportune time. He had to deploy in less than three hours, which didn’t exactly leave him a whole lot of time. He cursed the job and he cursed himself as he packed his gear.
Time was slipping away. Ice knocked at Kathy’s door again but still no luck. He needed to talk to her before he left. He didn’t want to leave with their argument ringing in his head, but it was already past midday. He debated the merits of writing a note and pushing it under her door, but quashed that idea. How could he adequately put in writing what he needed to say?
He checked his watch again. He couldn’t stall any longer. The explanation would have to be put off for a week until he returned from duty. With the apartment locked, he set off for the base to hook up with the rest of his team for a briefing prior to flying out on their mission.
Chapter 22
The chopper set the five heavily camouflaged Navy SEALs down one hundred and ninety-three miles north east of Phnom Penh in the remote eastern highlands of Cambodia, not far from the Laos border on a black ops search and rescue.
It was early afternoon, not quite fourteen hundred hours. The temperature was stifling. The mercury had hit one hundred and three degrees Fahrenheit and still rising. The humidity registered ninety-eight percent, and the target area was still a two-day grueling hike through uncharted dense tropical jungle.
Theirs was a highly trained professional unit specializing in Southeast Asia. Much of Frosty and Ice’s early training had been conducted in South America replicating similar climatic and environmental conditions of Vietnam, Cambodia, and nearby regions, which was why they’d been given this assignment.
The aerial maps provided by Intelligence showed this spot as being the closest they could land with safety to the target area without alerting the enemy to their position. If all went according to plan, pickup would be three days hence on the enemy’s own landing strip, and by the end of the week, they’d be back in Coronado picking up their lives where they’d left off twenty-four hours ago.
The faint sounds of the retreating chopper’s engine and the whoosh whoosh of the rotor blades slicing the moist air receded into the background. Ice consulted the compass hanging from a cord around his neck, took his bearings, and set off in a northerly direction. The jungle was a living fortress, an impenetrable wall of thick vegetation, closing in around them.
“I’ll take point.” Ice withdrew the machete from his belt and commenced hacking a trail through the undergrowth, leaving the rest of the team to f
ollow in his wake.
They were making steady progress. Frosty was close behind as Ice slashed away, methodically carving a narrow path through the dense tropical plants. The heat was oppressive, perspiration rivered between shoulder blades, leaving damp patches where it pooled at the base of their spines, but doggedly they marched on.
Ice was in a foul mood, Frosty could tell. He’d hardly strung two civil words together since boarding the aircraft in Coronado yesterday, and that wasn’t normal. It was high time he grabbed hold of his balls and asked Ice what the hell was going on.
“What’s up your patoot?” He threw the words at his leader’s back, where they bounced back at him, sounding hollow in the edgy silence.
Ice glanced over his shoulder but kept making headway. “Leave off Frosty, it’s none of your damn business, and this is neither the time nor the place.”
“No shit Sherlock, but I’m about to walk into the lion’s den, and Daniel’s got his head up his ass over who the hell knows what, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the troops, and that makes it my goddamn business. So what gives?”
“It’s nothing I said, just leave it.”
“No can do.” With a thoughtful shake of his head, Frosty ignored the request and pushed on. He wasn’t about to be deterred. “Let me guess, you’ve finally realized you’re in love with Kathy, you’re way out of your comfort zone, and you don’t know how to handle it.”
“So now you’re a fucking mind reader?”
“I’m right aren’t I? You’ve got the look of a man obsessed written all over your face. I recognize it, ‘cause it’s the same dumbass look I get on my face every time I think about Sarah. But the bottom line here is Kathy makes you happy man.”
“I’m not interested in your theories, or that sort of life.”
“So, now my life is pathetic, is that it?” He goaded.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. You’re deliberately twisting my words. What you and Sarah have is great, but I’m not like you, and that’s the bottom line.”
“You’re more like me than you think. Kathy makes you happy, she loves you, and you love her, and that my friend, is the bottom line.”
“Who loves who?” Hawk butted in.
“Ice loves Kathy, and he’s got it bad.” Frosty supplied as he followed the trail Ice was blazing through the jungle.
“Hell, we all know that. She’s one hot babe, so what’s the problem?”
“She’s heartbroken, man.” Wolf sauntered up behind Ice and placed a hand on his shoulder, the squeeze he gave it was both an indication of support and comfort, but Ice wheeled on him.
*
“Trust you to get involved, did she call you?” Ice snarled, his mind a jumbled maelstrom of emotions, clawing at his brain like a rabid mountain lion.
“No, of course she didn’t call me. I was at the beach yesterday and spotted her in the dunes. She was crying her eyes out man, it really got to me. She asked me not to tell, but I figured you needed to know.”
“Shoot, don’t tell me you two broke up. Damn Ice, you sure have a knack of acting whacko where that little lady is concerned.” Havoc did little to hide his astonishment at what they all perceived to be his stupidity.
“Yeah Ice, when you went ape shit at Frosty’s the day we met Kathy, you acted like a jealous dog guarding his bitch.” Hawk blundered. “I’d never seen you like that before.”
“Not the best analogy kid, but yeah.” Frosty couldn’t help but agree.
“And mate, that snit you put on when I was on duty watching Kathy at your request—crikey man, I thought you were going to punch my lights out.”
“Hey guys, don’t hold back, feel free to stick your collective freaking noses into my business.”
“Just telling it like it is boss.”
The kid certainly had balls. No tact, but plenty of balls.
“Why don’t you just admit you love the girl and be done with it?” Wolf challenged. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Okay you lot, give us five. Havoc you take point.” Frosty took charge.
Ice did a slow turn and waited for Frosty to get whatever he had too off his chest.
“You deserve to be happy Ice, and so does Kathy. She’s not Janine or your mom, or your grandparents for that matter. Give yourself a shot at happiness, don’t throw it away.”
“Is that it?”
“No, it’s not. If you’re in any doubt ask yourself this—how would you feel if you never saw her again? And that, my friend, is the bottom line.”
* * * *
Dressed in full battle fatigues, the five men had been surveying the activity in and around the compound all afternoon. From their vantage point, they counted twelve heavily armed mercenaries guarding the prisoners. Ice didn’t like it, mercenaries were bad news. Tough, unpredictable, and ruthless, they’d do anything for a buck. The foreboding tentacles of fate reached out and prickled his skin, and he shivered in the heat. The odds were twelve to five. When you added into the mix the element of surprise they weren’t too bad, in any case it could have been worse.
Now came the hard part.
Ice always found waiting the toughest. The limbo time, as he called it. A false move here could jeopardize the whole operation. Some didn’t mind it, they could switch off, but he wasn’t one of them. He was tense and alert, like a finely tuned machine ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
He devoted a lot of time that day thinking about where his life was headed. What Frosty and the guys had said whizzed in his mind, but most of all he thought about Kathy, and what it would be like to no longer have her in his life, to never see her again. The sex was incredible, no argument there, best he’d ever had, but it was more than that.
Kat was special.
When they came together, it was a connection of minds and spirits as well as bodies. She gave of herself so freely, trusted him so completely, and what did he do when she told him she loved him? He rejected her. Could he have been a bigger fool?
Clearly, he could see his life without her now, a vast chasm stretching before him with himself slowly disappearing into the void. He loved her, everything about her. He wanted to keep her close, protect her, and spend eternity with her. He should have realized that after she was abducted, if not before. Hell, he loved her before that, and as soon as he got back stateside, he was going to tell her and make damn sure to do everything in his power to make her happy. He only hoped to God she could forgive him. He’d get down on his knees and beg until she did.
*
Hawk took his position in the dense undergrowth, feeling calm despite the intensity of the operation. It was oh-three-hundred, almost show time, and the atmosphere was surreal. A cacophony of insects and jungle noises intruded on the otherwise silent night. He donned his night vision goggles, bringing the sentry on each post immediately into focus.
Settling into a more comfortable position, Hawk put Jacinta, his AK-47, aside and picked up the AKM, complete with GP-25 40 mm under barrel grenade launcher. The extra ordinance was a tad cumbersome, and he probably wouldn’t need it, but hey, he’d been a boy scout, and he liked to be prepared.
He lifted the AKM and stared down the sight of his weapon. If anyone in the compound made a false move, he would take them out, no problem. Their orders had been explicit—secure the hostages and take no prisoners.
The hostages were a high-profile nuclear physicist, widely acclaimed to be a leader in his field, and his nineteen-year-old daughter. They’d been abducted by mercenaries while holidaying in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The intention was clear—the mercs would force him to make nuclear weapons to sell on the black market for seriously big bucks. The daughter was their insurance policy.
The former USSR had over one hundred tons of weapons-grade plutonium just sitting in a warehouse waiting for disarmament, and a shitload had just gone missing. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together and come up with nuclear weapons.
It was heavy-duty
stuff. A little more than two pounds of Pu-239 slowly being consumed in a conventional reactor over three years could produce enough heat to generate almost ten million kilowatt-hours of electricity. Enough to power up a small suburb. It would only take twenty-two pounds of the stuff to make a sizeable bomb, and they’d stolen more than enough to do some serious damage. To produce that amount alone would require thirty megawatt-years of reactor time. These guys had just waltzed in, taken what they’d wanted, and waltzed out again unopposed. What they were prepared to do with it didn’t bear thinking about.
Ice had read the intel files and reported as much to the team. The mercs were preparing to move the hostages to a new location. If that happened the chances for their recovery would be slim to zilch. As it was, they were damn lucky their whereabouts had been leaked to the government so quickly, but should the rescue attempt fail today the repercussions could prove catastrophic.
The prisoners were being held in a small wooden shack, not much bigger than a breadbox, fifty yards to the right of the main building. They’d been locked up for most of the day, only released for an hour in the morning and then another in the evening. In these temperatures, it would be a sweatbox hotter than the fires of Hades.
Despite the heat, the girl looked to be doing okay. Grubby and scared, but still holding it together and should be able to make it out under her own steam. Her old man was a different kettle of fish. Moving slow and limping, whether from fatigue or injury it was hard to say. But in all probability, he’d need assistance.
The plan was basic but not foolproof. Rescue the prisoners at all costs and then get the flock out of there. Wolf and Havoc would secure the captives and get them to the chopper. Frosty and Ice would cover them or cause a diversion, whatever the party called for. He would remain in the jungle, covering all their butts. Rendezvous was in fourteen minutes, if all went according to plan, tomorrow they’d be sipping cappuccinos in Coronado.
Hawk watched intently as his team adjusted their NVG’s and surrounded the perimeter of the complex. Ice indicated his orders with an elaborate set of hand signals. Wolf, Frosty, and Havoc were to circle behind, wait for his signal then take out their targets simultaneously.
Desire Unleashed Page 27
