by Paige Tyler
Carmichael opened his mouth to reply when a rifle grenade hit the ground a few feet from where they stood.
***
Declan shoved Kendra to the ground the second he heard the pop of the rifle grenade’s projecting cartridge go off. He didn’t have to look to know the rest of his team would be on the ground, too. He had no idea if the other men took cover, and there wasn’t much he could do to warn them. They weren’t going to believe they were in trouble until it’d been rammed up their asses sideways.
There was a sharp crack of an explosion, followed by small fragments smacking into the trees and dirt around him and Kendra. Men shouted, some cursed, then bullets started flying. Damn, he hated being right sometimes.
He’d woken up around 0200 last night with the feeling that someone was watching their camp. He’d gone to check it out, running out into the rain-soaked jungle in just his pants and boots with his M4, only to hear whoever it was slip away before he’d gotten close. That had really worried him. Whoever was out there was really frigging fast. They’d been playing with Declan the entire day, like they were testing him, just to see if he’d know they were there. But when Declan had heard approaching movement from three different sides a few minutes ago—including the direction they’d been heading—he knew playtime was over.
He heard feet crashing over the jungle floor before the rumble of the initial explosion died down. There were a lot of them, and they were coming fast.
Declan’s first thought was to run straight toward the force attacking from the north, which was most likely where he’d find their leader. Take him out and the rest of the men would be lost.
But Declan couldn’t do what his gut and his training shouted at him to do. He had to protect Kendra and get her the hell out of there.
He jumped up, scooped Kendra into his arms, and ran in the only direction that seemed to be clear to them—south. He hated being herded anywhere, but it was the best option available.
Behind him, he heard Tate, Brent, and Gavin trying to get their ragtag group to work together in an organized retreat. Declan had a pretty good sense of the numbers they were up against. If Tate couldn’t make that happen, there was a good possibility no one was going to make it out of this jungle alive.
“What happened?” Kendra asked.
Declan expected her to be freaking out or shouting for him to put her down. But instead she was holding on tightly while trying to see over his shoulder. Hell, she was probably calmer than most of the men around them.
“Whoever has been shadowing us all day finally decided it was time to start the ambush.”
He jumped a small stream. Carrying Kendra, his weapon, and his rucksack, he couldn’t move as fast as he normally would, but he still could have outrun the others if he wanted to. But running off into the jungle wouldn’t help keep her safe. Even now, he could hear the bad guys sprinting hard to get ahead of them, repositioning themselves to keep the jaws of the ambush clamped closed.
Tate must have succeeded in getting everyone going in the same direction because Brent, Gavin, and several of the marines and DEA agents moved in front of Declan, creating a wedge that’d hopefully break through the attackers’ line.
Declan finally got a visual on the enemy, and what he saw shocked the hell out of him. He assumed they’d stumbled across a drug cartel farming site or perhaps a small group of revolutionaries—FARC maybe—hiding out in the huge, uninhabited tracts of the La Amistad Park. But while he saw a few faces that looked local, most looked European. He’d bet some were even American. They all wore military-style uniforms and carried state-of-the-art military weaponry. This wasn’t some lightly armed guerilla camp they’d stumbled on. He didn’t know what the hell it was.
The marine right beside them got hit and went down hard. Declan grimaced as their effort to escape the ambush started to slow. He needed to be able to shoot back, and he couldn’t do that with Kendra in his arms. He set her down and pulled his weapon off his back.
But instead of cowering behind him like he expected her to do, Kendra surprised him by scrambling over to the body of the downed marine and pulling the man’s M4 out of his lifeless hands. As Declan watched, she dropped the magazine, checked to see how many rounds were left in it, then expertly reloaded the weapon and eyeballed the ejection port to make sure a round was chambered. Then she took it a step further and searched the man’s body for extra magazines and ammo.
Where the hell had she learned how to do all that?
“Don’t shoot unless you have a target right in front of you,” he told her. “The way our people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, you have a better chance of hitting one of ours than one of theirs.”
She nodded and kept herself positioned right on his shoulder as they started moving forward again.
Tate caught up to them, dragging less than a dozen stragglers with him. Damn. Their guys were going down fast.
“I was able to get a call to the base camp on the satellite phone,” Tate yelled. “They’re not too happy about it, but they’ve agreed to pull two Seahawks off interdiction duty to evac us out of here. They’re coming into that landing zone we cleared a few hours back. We just have to stay alive long enough to get there.”
Someone fired a weapon beside Declan and he jerked his head around to see Kendra aiming her M4 at a man just barely visible in the branches of a tree twenty feet away. Declan lifted his weapon in that direction, but the camouflaged sniper was already falling to the ground.
Well, shit.
With Tate leading the way, they started moving toward their goal, picking up stragglers and wounded as they went.
***
It had taken them the better part of the day to traverse the rough terrain between the site of the ambush and the landing zone. On the trip out, they’d covered at least two swampy areas, a practically vertical ridgeline, and about three miles of thick jungles in that time. It had been exhausting even when they’d been moving slowly. Now they had to do it again faster, all the while being hounded every step of the way by a group of men intent on killing them.
Kendra had saved her ammo as long as she could, but their attackers were relentless and wouldn’t let them have a foot of real estate without extracting a price in blood. She’d just killed men. This wasn’t like being out in Washington State, where she’d been facing monsters. These had been men. But she’d had no choice. It was what she had to do if they were going to get out of this alive.
As good as she was at protecting herself, she would have been dead three times over if it wasn’t for Declan, Tate, Gavin, and Brent. She’d known they were good—she’d evaluated their training and read their after-action reports for years. But she hadn’t known just how truly skilled they really were.
To say that they worked like a well-oiled machine was an understatement. It was more like their minds were linked as one. They never spoke, never even gestured. But they covered each other’s backs—and those of the people depending on them—like nothing she’d ever imagined. And yet even as good as they were, they couldn’t protect every single person with them. Not when their attackers seemed willing to die to get to them.
They were still about half a mile from the landing zone when the ambushers suddenly broke off the attack.
“What the hell are they doing?” one of the marines gasped out. He was half carrying, half dragging a lance corporal who was already bleeding through the pressure dressings wrapped around the wound in his right thigh. “They had us on the ropes. Why the hell would they stop now?”
“I don’t know, but we’re almost there,” Tate called. “Just hold this pace for ten more minutes and we’ll make it.”
“Tate, someone’s coming,” Declan said urgently from beside Kendra. He hadn’t moved from that position the entire time. And while she’d taken down a few of their attackers, he’d taken down a whole lot more.
“Are they coming back?” Tate asked. “Which direction?”
“Not them. Someon
e else, moving fast—too fast.”
Declan turned in a circle, while the marines and cops eyed him in confusion. Kendra was already getting a queasy sensation in her stomach when the bear shifter’s attention locked in one direction.
“There,” he said. “They’re coming at us like a shot.”
Tate and the others aimed their weapons in that direction. Seconds later, the underbrush exploded in movement. Three men came through, moving so fast they were almost a blur. Gunfire erupted, but even with all the shooting, they didn’t go down right away.
Crap.
“They’re hybrids!” Kendra shouted, aiming her M4 straight into a creature’s chest and emptying the entire magazine into it.
Declan and the other men took down another, but that still left one hybrid, and it was running straight at her. With her weapon empty and no time to reload, she knew she was done for. The thing’s glowing red eyes filled her vision.
Then a roar so loud that it literally shook the trees around her filled the air and Declan charged in front of her, wrapping the hybrid in a crushing bear hug. Declan had known bullets weren’t going to put this thing down in time to save her, she realized, so he’d shifted right there in front of everyone.
Kendra’s eyes widened as the normally gentle shifter squeezed the hybrid so hard she heard the creature’s ribs snap over its growls and snarls. Declan roared again and slammed the hybrid into the trunk of a tree so hard that everything else in the hybrid snapped.
Declan turned to face them, his elongated canine teeth visible to everyone. “More are coming.”
Tate, Brent, and Gavin took the scene in stride, but it proved too much for most of the others. They freaked out and lost it, babbling about not signing up for this crap. Kendra couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t every day that a person realized everything they thought they knew was a lie—that monsters really did exist.
Tate did his best to keep everyone moving again, but it was hard. The hybrids hit them three more times as they ran for the landing zone. And taking them out went through what little ammo they had left at an alarming rate. Kendra quickly reloaded her last magazine in her carbine. They were all short on ammo.
Worse, there were more injured men than healthy ones to carry them, and Gavin and Brent were forced to help keep everyone moving at the cost of defending the group. If it wasn’t for Declan and his shifter strength, they would have all been wiped out. Of course, now many of the men, especially the locals, were just as frightened of Declan as they were of the hybrids.
She wasn’t sure how, but they made it to the landing zone to find the two navy helicopters waiting, their rotors thumping at half speed, ready to take off. Kendra and Declan ended up on one of the Seahawks with a wounded DEA agent, two local cops, and two wounded marines. The marines were in bad shape—the hybrids had torn into them with claws and fangs, causing far more damage than any bullet would. Both were slipping in and out of unconsciousness. If they didn’t get them to a hospital soon, they weren’t going to make it.
“Get us the hell out here!” Declan shouted to the pilot. “They’re coming back!”
The crew chief of their evac bird didn’t have a clue who Declan was talking about, but he obviously recognized a serious situation when he saw it. He strapped the two local cops having trouble with their lap restraints into their seats, then ordered the pilot to lift off.
Bullets hit the helicopter the second it left the ground.
The navy pilot knew his stuff, though. He dipped the Seahawk in a sideways tilt, slipping them across the landing zone away from the direction of the incoming fire, all while flying no more than five feet off the ground. Once out of immediate danger, the pilot leveled off and started to climb. Kendra could already see the other helicopter clearing the treetops. She let out the breath she’d been holding. They hadn’t started to gain altitude themselves yet, but they would be any second. They were all going to make it.
“What the hell…?” the crew chief shouted from his position at the open side door.
Kendra didn’t have to wonder what he was talking about, not when the crew chief drew his pistol from a chest holster and started shooting out the open door. A moment later, a snarling hybrid jumped onto the helicopter. Crap! The pilot had kept them too low for too long.
Seeing a ravaging monster with red eyes, fangs, and claws was just too much to take for the pilot and copilot. Kendra was shocked the helicopter didn’t go down on the spot. Luckily, the pilot got himself back together and steadied the Seahawk. The crew chief hit the hybrid at least three times in the chest and abdomen, but as Kendra knew from experience, the damn things were slow to react to even life-ending injuries.
Declan launched himself at the hybrid, yanking the creature off the crew chief and slamming the thing against the side door frame, smashing its head repeatedly against the metal supports there.
Kendra tried to get out of her seat to help, but the helicopter was spinning around so wildly she couldn’t get her seat belt undone. Even if she could, there were so many flying arms, legs, and claws, she knew she’d be risking her life just getting near them.
But she couldn’t just sit there and watch Declan fight this thing on his own.
She finally got her lap restraint undone and clambered around the bench seats, almost slipping on the huge amount of blood spilling on the floor of the cabin from the dead crew chief. But she made it to Declan’s side, spreading her legs wide in an attempt to keep from being thrown out the open door of the almost out-of-control helicopter.
Declan must have seen her out of the corner of his eye because he let out a growl and shoved the hybrid against the interior wall of the bird, pinning its head and one arm at the same time. The move left Declan open to the hybrid’s claws, but Kendra jumped in before the creature had a chance to do any damage, pushing the barrel of her M4 into the thing’s chest right over his heart and unloading the five remaining rounds.
The bullets ripped right through the hybrid’s body and out the side of the helicopter. Thank God there wasn’t anything critical in that part of the airframe. But it had been worth the risk—even a hybrid needed a heart to pump its blood.
Declan flung the creature out the door with a growl. They were a good hundred feet above the ground now, and the crash the hybrid made as it slammed into the treetops was audible even over the thump of the rotors.
Kendra sagged against one of the seats. Holy crap, they’d done it. They were going to get out of here.
Then something slammed into the underside of the Seahawk like a bull had kicked it. Kendra would have fallen out the open door if Declan hadn’t grabbed her and pushed her toward the bench seats. As she scrambled to get a grip on something solid, the torn, lifeless body of the crew chief tumbled out of the helicopter, leaving a trail of blood on the floor in its wake.
Crap. She’d jinxed them. Whatever had just hit them was way bigger than small arms fire. The helicopter bucked and spun out of control, alarm buzzers screaming in warning as smoke filled the cargo compartment. Kendra was so disoriented, she could barely tell up from down.
The pilot and copilot shouted at each other, fighting the controls to keep the aircraft up in the air. But she knew their heroics were in vain. They were going down—right back into the middle of the pack of hybrids and soldiers who had been trying their damndest to kill every one of them for the last three hours.
***
Declan had known they were going to crash even before the rocket-propelled grenade had slammed into the belly of the copter. The damage they’d taken right after lifting off had done something to the controls. Worse, the pilot had been hit and was barely able to keep the aircraft flying straight and level. By the time the hybrid had jumped on board to tear anyone he could reach to shreds, Declan was wondering what the hell they’d done to deserve this. It was like some force was acting against them, doing everything in its power to make sure they never got out of this jungle.
He’d read all the reports that Landon and Ivy
had written about hybrids, but it was one thing reading about them and a completely different thing fighting them. He couldn’t believe the amount of damage it took to put down one of those things. It was as if they were too stupid to know when they’d been mortally wounded. Or maybe they simply didn’t care.
If he hadn’t been so worried about the helicopter spinning madly out of control and that they were probably going to be dead in a few seconds, he would have told Kendra how well she’d handled herself. She’d stayed calm throughout the long march to the landing zone, taking out soldiers and hybrids like she’d been born to do it. And her actions in the helicopter when she’d put down that hybrid to save his life? That had been impressive.
Of course, none of that mattered. Because in a fight with gravity, gravity won every time.
Nevertheless, that pragmatic outlook didn’t keep him from throwing his body over Kendra’s when the helicopter lurched and took a header toward the ground. He shifted just before they hit, tensing every muscle in his body in an attempt to create a protective barrier around her.
He told himself he was doing it because it’d been Tate’s last orders, but a voice in the back of his head told him that was bullshit.
The impact was horrendous, the sound of crushing metal, snapping rotor blades, and breaking trees overwhelming everything else—even the screams of pain and fear.
He was actually surprised after it was all over that he was still alive. Movement beneath him told him that Kendra was, too. Damn, she was one tough woman. Thank God.
Acrid smoke began to fill what was left of the helicopter, and his thoughts immediately turned to fear of a fire. It would be just their luck to survive the crash only to die in the flames.
There was another reason to get out of the helicopter—the smoke would draw the soldiers and hybrids to come finish the job they’d started. They’d been in the air for a few minutes after getting hit, but he had no idea how far they’d traveled from the landing zone. He knew they didn’t have long.
He pulled back to look down at Kendra. Some of her long hair had come free of her ponytail to hang down in her face, and he had to fight the urge to push it back. “You okay?”
