Gallagher just had to come up with a better plan faster and he and Carmen would win.
The garage door was a problem. As he took a few precious minutes to recover from reconning her escape route and his position at warp speed, he came up with options and discarded them just as quickly.
“There’s a helmet in here,” she said. “Can the machine just punch through the door?”
“Negative. You screw up your skis and you’re either stranded in the open or in a tree.”
“I could hit the button, then fire the machine. House this nice, the door runners will be smooth and quiet.”
“Two guys with direct view of both doors.”
“Shoot them first.”
Nice that she had that much faith in his aim. “Is the garage heated?”
“Yes. Feels like the same temp as the house.”
“Thank God for spoiled rich people. The sled’ll fire right up.”
“I’m sitting on it now, looking it over, getting a feel for it.”
Gallagher wiped the sweat from his forehead and took a few deep breaths. This wasn’t the worst situation he’d ever been in, but was possibly the first time he hadn’t been prepared for the possibility of this kind of screw-up. A sneak and peak. Nobody but a skeleton household crew.
What the hell had gone wrong?
Having familiarized himself with the surrounding community before the job, he knew enough time had passed so he’d hear sirens if they’d called the cops. The fact they hadn’t meant they were going to handle Carmen themselves.
Gallagher knew one thing for damn sure—if they got Carmen he was going to shoot as many of the motherfuckers as he had bullets for before they got him, too.
“I’m ready when you are,” Carmen said.
He took a deep breath. The men were starting to get antsy—they’d go on the offensive soon. But, god-damn-it, he wished there were some other way to do this. Some way that kept Carmen out of the line of fire.
But he hadn’t packed for this kind of cluster fuck and now she’d be out in the open on a machine she maybe couldn’t handle.
“Walk through it for me, babe.”
“Hit the button, run to the machine, turn the key, stay low, head to the right, punch it and go. Thirty yards to the tree line, sixty yards to the corner, twenty-five yards to the rendezvous.”
“That’s my girl.”
“And don’t call me babe.”
“If it doesn’t fire the first time, you go back inside and hide yourself.”
“Affirmative.”
“When you’re ready, give me a countdown to go on the button, then haul ass, babe.”
“Three…two…one…”
Deep breath.
“Go.”
The snowmobile fired, roaring to life in a cloud of oily smoke and Carmen launched, barely clearing the door crawling its way upward.
The chill seared her skin and made her eyes tear up, but she’d seen the break in the trees and kept the nose pointed in that direction.
She heard the gunfire—Gallagher’s shots louder in her earpiece—heard some thwaps against the machine. Doing damn near a hundred already, she didn’t dare to flinch.
A bullet would either knock her off the sled or it wouldn’t.
She made the tree line. Panicked at the trees making blurry boundaries down both sides. The snow was icier in the shade—the machine went squirrelly on her.
Carmen eased off the throttle, let the snowmobile right itself.
The corner came up fast. She took her thumb off the throttle, but it wasn’t enough. Grabbed the brakes and it locked up, sliding into the corner.
She swore and released the brakes, hit the throttle again, letting the weight carry it through.
Then she punched it again, screaming through a gap in the trees not much wider than the machine.
Finally the trail dropped into a low spot and she stopped. Blinking away the tears her eyes summoned to protect them from the wind, she left the machine running and climbed off. Her legs were a little rubbery, but she found Gallagher’s pack and slipped her arms through the straps. Then she went back to the machine, pushing herself back on the seat as far as she could.
With the engine at idle and the wind no longer rushing past, she could hear Gallagher’s ragged breath in her earpiece. He was running fast.
“I’m here,” she said, just so he knew he was running toward something.
Barely thirty seconds later she caught movement in the trees and reached for her gun.
It was Gallagher, his face nearly as red with exertion as the side of his lightweight coat was with blood. He’d been hit.
“You’re wounded,” she said as he slid onto the seat in front of her. “Place my hand so I’m not squeezing it.”
As she shoved forward so her body was plastered against his, he took her arms and wrapped them low on his abdomen, below the wound.
Then the machine roared and they were flying down the trail. Carmen forced herself to become boneless against his back, offering no resistance as he leaned in the corners.
His body was hot and every time she inhaled her senses were overwhelmed by the scent of sweat and fresh blood.
“Shit!”
Carmen jerked her head up and dared a look over his shoulder.
A pond. Not a very big one, but there was no trail around it. They had to go over it.
Too bad it wasn’t frozen anymore.
“Don’t panic, babe!” he shouted into her earpiece, and then he pegged the throttle. “Like glue now, and don’t lean!”
What the hell did it matter if she leaned since they were about to crash and—assuming they didn’t die on impact—drown, but she kept her arms low on his waist and did the boneless leech thing again.
She felt the jolt of the machine hitting the water, but the dumb son of a bitch driving never let off the throttle.
“Come on, baby, skim,” he said, but she realized he was talking to the snowmobile and closed her eyes.
She didn’t need to see anything. Frigid water rushing into her lungs would be warning enough he’d failed.
Incredibly, she felt the skis jolt and Gallagher let off the throttle, but she never got wet. He just kept going down the trail.
A few minutes later, when they came out into a back street in town, Gallagher didn’t slow down. The picks on the snowmobile’s track bit into the asphalt, but he navigated to the airport, across the field and straight to the helicopter.
“Let’s blow this joint,” he said, and she pulled her earpiece. She didn’t need him in stereo.
He was a little slow getting off the machine, and she felt a jolt of anxiety. “Can you fly?”
“It’s just a flesh wound. You can slap a bandage on it once we’re up.”
“Let’s go, then, before they catch up.”
“You got it, babe.”
“Don’t call me babe.”
When Alex Rossi stepped out of the house, he found his wife still trying to master the art of climbing into their new hammock without spinning out and landing on her face.
Grace hit the ground with a thump—again—but he didn’t laugh this time. He didn’t even crack a smile.
She noticed immediately. “Is it Danny?”
Their son was doing Disney with her parents. Alex shook his head. “Charlotte just called. Gallagher and Carmen…the chopper went down in the White Mountains.”
“Oh shit.” She pushed herself to her feet and started across the yard to him. “Do we know anything?”
“Just that it crashed.”
“We’ll take the Hummer. The gear bags are packed in the hall closet, but double-check for the sat phone and radios. Cell phone coverage up there sucks. Grab the cold-weather bags out of the basement—they’re blue. I’ll change and meet you out front in five.”
Alex shoved his hands through his hair. “You don’t have to go, Grace. You don’t do this stuff anymore.”
“It stopped being a Devlin Group mission when they went dow
n. Now your best friend and my best friend are out there, hopefully still alive and waiting for us to come and get them.”
God, he hoped they were alive. “Then you’re down to four minutes, sweetheart. Move your ass.”
It was pitch black, and Gallagher couldn’t tell if it was the lack of a moon or the blood in his eyes.
It was quiet—too damn quiet—and he wondered if he’d gone deaf, too. Did he have a concussion? Hell, was he dead?
The crash. They’d gone down. A loud popping sound. Smoke. Then everything totally went to shit. The helicopter out of control. Carmen trying to signal a Mayday and getting nobody. Scrambling to get her comm link to Charlotte back up.
Fighting for control of the bird. Managing to achieve autorotation so they didn’t drop like a rock. Adjusting the collective pitch. Telling Carmen… Shit. He hadn’t meant to tell her that.
He’d thought, for a second, he’d put her down in one piece, but the tail rotor caught on…something. A tree? They’d spun and then it all went black.
“Carmen?” he whispered, and though it came out little more than a croak, Gallagher was relieved he could hear it.
He tried to work some moisture into his mouth and licked his lips, only to taste blood there, as well. And a fresh cut that hurt like hell. He wasn’t dead. Shit.
And Carmen hadn’t answered him. Time to get his ass in gear. His arms and legs seemed to work, and if he squinted he could make out a sliver of light to his left. So he wasn’t blind, nor had he been unconscious into nightfall. Just buried in the rubble.
It seemed to take forever for him to unearth himself from the wreckage, his body moving like a ninety-year-old arthritic woman’s, but he kept at it. Carmen could be bleeding out while he was maneuvering through jagged metal and smashed seats. He didn’t allow himself to consider she might already be dead.
Gallagher blinked when the full afternoon sun pierced his throbbing head, and it was a few seconds before he saw anything but dancing spots.
They’d crashed in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a mountain range known for claiming and concealing its victims like some kind of sub-zero Bermuda freakin’ Triangle.
Well…shit.
The forest was still silent and, though Gallagher strained to listen, he couldn’t hear anybody moving around. Finally he heard a vicious blue streak of Spanish and damn near laughed out loud.
Until he saw her. Then he made his aching body run.
Carmen Olivera had never been so cold. Even during that February job in Moscow, she hadn’t lost gross motor control like this. She thought she was moving her feet the correct way, but she kept falling down. If she ever figured out what she was doing wrong, the guy who’d screwed with their helicopter was going to be one sorry bastard.
Speaking of sorry bastards, why the hell was Gallagher running and yelling at her? Maybe she should duck.
Instead, she fell. Again. Then he started dragging her, and Carmen wanted to protest, but even her mouth was starting to act up on her now.
He dumped her on the ground next to a flickering-out engine fire and she blinked slowly. When he started ripping up seats like a madman, she got concerned. Maybe he’d hit his head.
Ooh, he was making a fire. That was nice. Maybe they could roast marshmallows later and sing “Kumbaya”. If she could remember the words.
What a lot of trees there were. She should be able to find a nice marshmallow stick. When she woke up from her nap, maybe. Since her arms and legs didn’t work so well anymore, she closed her eyes.
But Gallagher was yelling at her again. He really was a pain in the ass sometimes.
Such a fine-looking pain in the ass, though. All tall and muscled. Shaggy gold hair she always wanted to run her fingers through. But she didn’t because…why didn’t she?
And those blue eyes and that naughty grin. They always made her want to take her clothes off, so she tried not to look at him.
When he started tearing her shirt off her body, Carmen thought about protesting again. So very caveman of him. But her head lolled back and she was looking at the trees again.
The fire was really big now, and Gallagher’s hands were warm.
Oooh, she was naked.
Had his grin finally made her clothes fall off? No. He had on his big, bad warrior look.
There was blood on his face.
Where were the marshmallows?
Operation Getting Carmen Naked had been in the planning stages for a long time, but the original mission parameters had called for her being a lot more awake and a little less frigid.
After Hell Week, SEAL service and eleven years with the Devlin Group, Gallagher would never have imagined the hardest thing he’d ever do was get a wet sports bra over the head of an uncooperative woman while trying not to look at her breasts.
Not that he didn’t want to see them, but ogling a half-frozen, unconscious woman would make him a sick bastard. Plus she kept muttering something about finding a sharp stick, and he wanted no part of that.
Once he was done doing battle with the spandex or whatever from hell, he laid her down on the emergency blanket from his pack he’d spread in a snow-free spot. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his coat.
Bottom half next.
Jesus.
Two minutes with his eyes closed, then he was able to cover her with a second emergency blanket scavenged from the on-board first aid kit.
“S’mores?”
At least, that’s what he thought she’d said. “No s’mores, babe.”
No food of any kind, unless somebody had snacks stowed away on the helo somewhere. Never again would he pack light. Simple sneak and peek, my ass.
He pulled off his coat and folded it up to put under her head, trying to figure out what to do with her hair. She wore it in a tight, thick braid when she worked, and it was up away from her face and neck. But it would probably take a lot longer to dry that way and a damp scalp wasn’t going to help her any.
As gently as he could, Gallagher pulled the elastic from her hair and started separating the strands. He loved her hair. It was dark and long and straight, like the liquid chocolate he’d seen pouring over some fancy fountain thing once.
Once he got the three strands separated, he used his fingertips to spread her hair up over his coat, away from her skin. She made a low, sexy as hell mmmmm sound deep in her throat, and he forced his body not to get too excited.
He tried, anyway.
She was starting to shiver, though, so he quit playing with her hair and quickly checked her for other injuries. By strategically shifting the blanket around, he gave her a semblance of privacy, and he was relieved to find she was in roughly the same shape he was, minus the gunshot wound.
Bruised all to hell, with numerous abrasions and minor lacerations, but nothing life threatening. No broken bones. No evidence of a head injury.
It was nothing short of a miracle, he thought as he tossed some more scavenged fuel onto the fire. Then he arranged some scrap metal from the helicopter around her to reflect the fire before covering the half-ass shelter with evergreen branches to hold the heat down.
As he slid between the two blankets and pulled Carmen into his embrace—just for body heat, of course—he considered their next move.
He’d been flying helicopters a long damn time, and he knew sabotage when he saw it. A fucking EMP, no less, because every electronic device they had was totally dead. Since they weren’t emitting a signal, it might be a very long time before anybody found them.
They might not have a very long time in these conditions. Spring came late to the mountains, and they weren’t prepared for an extended cold-weather camping trip.
When Carmen sighed and relaxed against his body, he tightened his arms around her. There was no way in hell he was going to let her be a statistic, no matter what the odds stacked against him.
The Devlin Group had never lost an agent on Gallagher’s watch, and the first for damn sure wouldn’t be Carmen.
>
Chapter Three
In the time it took them to tear up the highway to the Notch, Alex and Grace kept the phone lines humming.
Danny wasn’t due back for three days, but Alex listened to her fill her mother in on the situation. Then she called Charlotte again.
Charlotte Rhames was executive administrative assistant to Alex in title, but in reality she was the grease that made the Group’s wheels turn. She was a dynamo, brilliant, and had the remarkable ability to run herd on high-strung contract agents spread out all over the planet. She also paid more in taxes than the president each year and was worth every single penny Alex paid her.
She was in the process of relocating from NYC to Texas, where she was currently in Bridezilla mode for her upcoming marriage to Tony Casavetti. But there was no mention of gowns or flowers as her voice blasted through the Hummer’s speakers.
“I’ve sent the location of the Search and Rescue staging area to your GPS. Scott Denton is in charge and on site. No signal from the helicopter—it was either deactivated or destroyed. A Fish & Game officer heard the explosion so, while they can’t pinpoint, there’s a very vague general direction.
“I provided a Canadian contact with rushed press creds and she said a man with a bloody shirt and a woman came out of the woods on a snowmobile and were speeding down the streets. With multiple witnesses pieced together, it sounds like they were headed for the airport.”
“Something went wrong at Arceneau’s.” Rossi pounded the steering wheel. “Dammit, why didn’t we have audio on them?”
“It was a basic sneak and peek, Alex. A waste of tech man-hours is what we decided.”
He’d decided it, actually, but she was being nice to him. “We’re going to touch base with S&R and if nothing’s moving, I’m going to go have a look-see across the border. Find the closest airport to the staging area and have a helicopter on stand-by.”
“Will do.”
“And I don’t care what you have to monitor or how you do it, but that bastard Arceneau doesn’t leave the country.”
No Surrender: The Devlin Group, Book 3 Page 2
