Trisha Telep (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance (epub)

  Cigarette smoke drifted over on the breeze, beckoning him directly to the hut where a pair of clowns with AK-47s were talking loudly and sharing a smoke. These guys were strictly amateurs – Jack could tell from the way they held those Kalashnikovs. Their voices provided extra cover as he crept around the building and peered into the sole back window.

  A kerosene lamp glowed from the centre of the room, atop a table covered with papers. Beside the lantern – looking completely out of place – was a sleek silver laptop.

  Jack’s gaze skimmed over the chairs and overturned crates scattered across the floor. No hostages stashed in the corners. No inhabitants at all, in fact. What the hell were these guys guarding? But the instant the thought entered his head, he knew. He shifted his position so he could see the part of the wall directly beneath the window.

  A narrow bed. And on it a lump. A pale hand dangled off the edge of the mattress, attached to the bed frame by a handcuff.

  He’d located the hostage.

  But that wrist didn’t belong to a man.

  The lump shifted, and a sneaker peeked out from under the grungy blanket. It was definitely a woman’s shoe, with a lavender Nike swoosh.

  Jack gritted his teeth and went through a silent litany of curses.

  OK, change of plan. A female hostage was a no-brainer, but it sure as shit complicated things.

  The lump shifted again, and Jack settled on a plan. Good thing he’d skipped the face paint. If he’d bothered to cammy up, he’d no doubt scare the spit out of this girl. He tapped, as lightly as possible, on the windowpane.

  She bolted upright and turned to face the glass. She had a mane of tangled brown hair, grimy cheeks and green eyes that had gone wide with terror.

  Don’t scream.

  Jack flashed a peace sign, followed by the universal signal for shut the hell up.

  He pointed at the window lock. Fear flitted across her face. She cast a frantic look at the door, then turned back and used her free hand to unlock the window. The pane didn’t want to budge, but Jack used his knife to prise it up. Silently, he slipped into the hut and crouched beside the metal bed.

  He motioned again for her to keep it zipped. He didn’t know if she even spoke English, but her rumpled Northwestern University T-shirt and denim cut-offs told him she was most likely American. He made quick work of taking apart the metal bed frame, then slipped off her cuff.

  “Can you walk?” he whispered.

  She scrambled to her feet in response. He started to pull her to the window, but she jerked her hand away and pointed at the table. Jack followed her across the room and watched as she lifted the corner of a big map and pulled out a pair of passports. She stuffed them into her pocket and crept back towards the window as Jack frowned down at the map.

  He recognized the city. And his blood ran cold as he recognized the building circled in red. A metal squeak at the window snapped his attention back to the job at hand. She was getting the hell out of Dodge. Jack rushed over and poked his head outside to check for threats. He helped her through and quickly followed. Then he took her arm and led her into the woods, but she suddenly freaked out and tried to pull away. He kept a grip on her until he knew they were out of earshot.

  “We have to go back,” she whispered. “My boyfriend’s back there.”

  “Where?” Jack hissed.

  “The other hut. The wooden one.” She tugged his arm urgently. “They beat him to a pulp. I think he’s unconscious.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “David Whiteside.”

  Charlotte thought she knew what fear was when Jack had pulled on his scuba mask and left her alone in this dinghy. But that was nothing compared to the raw, stark terror she felt right now as she heard the roar of a boat motor closing in on her. She had no cover, nowhere to hide. She thought about starting the engine and taking off, but the very last thing she wanted to do was tip anyone off to her presence.

  She flattened herself against the bottom of the boat and prayed for the moon to stay hidden behind clouds. The noise drew nearer and nearer, and then finally – just when she thought she was about to get run down – the roar receded. The dinghy bobbed over a huge swell, and she knew they’d left her in their wake.

  But they were going towards the island.

  Charlotte peeked over the side. She groped for the binoculars and peered through them in time to see the motorboat pull up to the dock. The base camp hopped with activity now as newcomers piled off the boat. Six, seven, eight . . . when she reached twelve, she stopped counting and grabbed the radio.

  “Are you there?”

  Nothing. She waited. And waited. And her mouth went dry as she watched the men assembling near one of the Quonset huts. They carried big black guns and milled around like some sort of ragtag militia.

  “Hello? Bravo, you there?” Still nothing. What was she doing wrong?

  “Bravo here.”

  “Do not, I repeat, do not return to the beach.” She clutched the radio in her quivering hand as she surveyed the activity on shore. “There’s a boatload of new arrivals, and they’re heavily armed.”

  Silence on the other end.

  “Did you hear—”

  “Roger that.” He sounded out of breath, like he was running. With a heavy load. “Go to Plan B, over.”

  “Plan B.” Plan B was the other side of the island. “I’m there, over.”

  Did he have Davey? He must, or he wouldn’t be leaving. She clung to the thought as she scrambled into the seat and picked up the oars. She was too scared to start the engine, at least until she put some distance between herself and that crowd of armed men. She rowed for all she was worth until her shoulders screamed in pain and her arms felt like they were on fire. The current picked up as she neared the tip of the island. Finally, she stashed the oars and found the pull cord Jack had shown her when he’d demonstrated how to start the engine. Just one simple pull . . .

  After the third unsuccessful attempt, she was nearly in tears. She got up off her knees and stood in the middle of the boat. She gripped the handle and took a deep breath. She yanked fiercely, and the engine sputtered to life.

  She sat down and grabbed the rudder. As the dinghy skimmed across the choppy water and rounded the tip of the island, Charlotte prayed all the while that no one could see or hear her.

  At her feet, the radio crackled. She snatched it up.

  “Bravo . . . dock . . . south end.”

  “What?”

  “I said . . . dock . . . side.”

  “There’s a dock?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “How will I—”

  “Flashlight . . . you . . . close as you can . . . Roger that?”

  Pop!

  Charlotte dropped the radio at the sound of the gunshot. Someone was shooting at them! She groped for the radio and finally got her hands on it. “Jack? Jack, are you there? Jack?”

  Panicked, she headed for the island. She hadn’t caught every word of what he’d said, but she’d gotten the gist of it. She was looking for a flashlight signal. Assuming he was still alive to signal her. Heart racing now, she curved around the southern tip of the island. Her stomach clenched as she saw nothing but the hulking shadow of the island itself. No lights. No signals. She tried the binoculars, but didn’t see any warm bodies or even anything resembling a dock. She manoeuvred closer to the shore, hoping she wouldn’t get caught up on the reef she’d seen from Jack’s plane.

  Suddenly a flicker, there in the darkness. She peered through the binoculars. A large figure moved quickly towards the shore. Jack. And he had someone in a fireman’s carry.

  Please, please, please be OK. She didn’t know whether she was praying for Davey or Jack. Both, she decided.

  Another blink, close this time. Charlotte stowed the binoculars and steered the boat towards it. When she was almost there, she cut the engine and the dinghy drifted right into the dock. A shadow crouched to catch it.

  “Nice work.” Jack’s voice wr
apped around her like a warm blanket.

  “Are you OK? I heard a gunshot!”

  “Yeah, one of the guards wasn’t too happy when he noticed his hostage was gone. Good thing his aim isn’t worth shit.”

  Jack lowered something into the boat. Davey. She grabbed hold of the body and instantly recognized her brother as she helped ease him aboard.

  He groaned, and Charlotte’s heart skipped. She got to her knees beside him. “What happened?”

  “He took a beating.”

  She jumped at the words. “Who—”

  “I’m Jane.” A woman stepped aboard the boat. It was too dark to even see her in the shadows.

  “Yeah, you didn’t tell me your brother had a girlfriend.” Jack finally stepped aboard, and they were packed together like sardines. He didn’t waste any time jerking the cord and bringing the engine to life.

  Gunfire erupted from the beach. Jack shoved Charlotte’s head against the floor of the boat. “Everybody down.”

  The boat lurched forwards, and they were skipping over the waves. Charlotte clutched Davey’s hand as the rat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire shattered the night.

  “Hurry!” Charlotte pleaded. “They could hit the raft!”

  Jack tossed a glance over his shoulder as they rocketed across the water.

  “What if they follow us?” This from Jane.

  “By the time they figure out which way is up, we’ll be airborne,” Jack said. “Now everyone hang on. It’s time to haul ass.”

  Three

  Jack ended his cell-phone call and gazed across the treetops at the marina where he’d left his plane. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, he was in Charlotte Whiteside’s hotel room. She was down the hall with her brother and his girlfriend, who were being checked out by some Thai doctor the concierge had managed to scare up at 4 a.m.

  David Whiteside was safe. Mission accomplished. Jack had about sixteen things he needed to be doing right now and not one of them involved standing on Charlotte’s balcony, waiting for her to come back here and collapse on that giant bed.

  He needed to leave. Now. He’d fulfilled his obligation to Mark, and the honourable thing to do would be to disappear into the night like the elusive special operations warrior that he was.

  But Jack didn’t want to do the honourable thing. He wanted to do Charlotte.

  A lamp went on in the room behind him. The sliding glass door scraped open, and he turned around to face her.

  She nodded at his phone as she stepped outside. “Who’d you call at this hour?”

  She still wore the sea-soaked clothes she’d had on in the dinghy, and the wind had turned her hair into a riot of yellow curls. She looked drained and dishevelled and so goddamn pretty he wanted to pull her inside and throw her down on the bed.

  Instead, he shoved his hands in his pockets right along with his phone. “Just talked to a buddy of mine at the embassy. They’re sending someone down from Bangkok to talk to Davey and Jane.”

  “Why does the embassy need to talk to them?”

  He gazed down at her, knowing he couldn’t give her too many details, but wanting to, so maybe she’d understand better what he was about to do. Because she wasn’t going to like it. He didn’t know Charlotte very well, but he knew that much.

  “Did Davey tell you what he was doing on that island?” he asked.

  “He went down there for an interview. Jane’s his photographer, so she went too. He said they were invited.”

  Yeah, invited to be used as jihadists.

  “He give you a name?”

  She shook her head, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. It was the one smart move the kid had managed so far.

  She eased closer, watching his face carefully. “I’m guessing it’s not Chanarong.”

  Jack just looked at her.

  “I’m also guessing it’s someone affiliated with Al-Qaeda. Someone important.”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Jane told me. She said some of the people on the island were speaking Arabic. She thinks the place is some sort of training camp.”

  It was. It was also a staging ground for a major operation, but Jack didn’t say that. Jane had told him the name of the man they’d come to interview. He was a leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Al-Qaeda affiliate based in South-east Asia.

  “Looks like Chanarong’s got himself some new friends,” Jack said vaguely.

  The less Charlotte knew about all this the better. But he had a feeling she understood much more than she was letting on because her eyes were shadowed with wariness.

  “Your brother and Jane were very, very lucky to get out of there alive.”

  That hadn’t been the kidnappers’ plan. Jack didn’t know the plan – not exactly – but he felt pretty sure it involved the building he’d seen circled in red on that map of Manila. What better way to smuggle a bomb into the American embassy than to have two American tourists waltz it right through the door?

  Or maybe just one of them. Probably Jane. It was certainly no accident the militant leader on that island had selected an American couple to come interview him. He probably figured his men could threaten the stronger one with torture to get the weaker one to do his bidding.

  Charlotte eased closer, and Jack felt a sharp stab of protectiveness. He didn’t want her anywhere near this thing, and yet here she was, caught in the middle because of her idiot brother.

  Jack gritted his teeth. He couldn’t make it right, but he could do damage control. Which was what he needed to do. Right now. Jack was in possession of valuable, time-sensitive intelligence – the only kind worth having. And he knew a SEAL commander in the area who was more than eager to get his hands on it.

  Charlotte slid her arms around Jack’s waist and gazed up at him.

  “I need to go,” he said.

  She tipped her head to the side. “It’s four in the morning.”

  “I have to be somewhere in exactly three hours. And I have to fly.”

  Something flashed in her eyes. Confusion? Hurt? But then it was replaced by a cool determination. She tipped her chin up, exposing her neck to him in that thin white blouse. It was dry now, but it had been wet before, out on the dinghy, and he wondered if she had any idea how much he’d wanted to peel it off of her. How much he still wanted to.

  Her hips shifted, and he stared down at her. She knew. She knew exactly what she did to him.

  “Don’t go,” she whispered.

  He had to go. He needed to go.

  “Charlotte—”

  She went up on tiptoes and kissed him, just below his ear. It was a soft, timid kiss, and it sent a powerful jolt of lust straight through him.

  Then she pressed her mouth to his, and it was all over. What little will power he’d had vanished. He pulled her against him, sweeping his tongue inside her mouth and trying to devour her in one greedy bite. She tried to devour him right back. She was hot and ready and he could practically taste the energy humming through her system, because it was humming through his, too. And he knew what this was. This was about danger, and life-or-death situations, and all the things she’d felt tonight that she wasn’t used to feeling. Jack had trained himself to deal with his body’s response to danger, but Charlotte was utterly untrained. She just surrendered to it, gave into the urge, and no matter what logic his brain threw at him, Jack’s body was right in sync with hers – amazingly, perfectly in sync. He moulded her against him, and she moaned into his mouth, and he knew that there was no way he was putting the brakes on. He’d fly like a bat out of hell if he had to, but he wasn’t going anywhere this minute besides Charlotte’s bed.

  He slid a hand between them and tried to undo her buttons, but his fingers were too big for the little holes. She took over the job, and soon her shirt was on the floor of the balcony, followed by her bra. Jack didn’t even give himself time to look. He just scooped her off her feet and carried her through the doorway, then laid her down on the bed. She propped up on her elbows and watched
him as he got rid of his shoes and T-shirt. Then he kneeled beside her, and she rolled into him, laughing, as he filled his hand with one of those plump white breasts he’d been fantasizing about all day. He took her in his mouth, and her body arched.

  “Jack.”

  She said his name in that soft Southern accent that reminded him of home and heat and places he hadn’t been in a long, long time. He nuzzled her breasts. With his free hand, he went to work on her shorts. She went to work on his, too, and pretty soon they were skin to skin, and he felt her bare legs wrapping around him and pulling him closer.

  She said his name again and nipped his ear, and he nearly went off.

  “Wait.” He grabbed his shorts, fumbled for a condom, and barely managed to get it on before she pulled him again, and he sank into her sweet heat.

  She was heaven. She gazed up at him and moved with him, urging him on with her sighs and her hips as he supported his weight above her and battled for control. He didn’t have it. He didn’t have nearly the control he needed to take on this woman; this warm, lush woman who’d turned herself over to him completely.

  He kissed her again, loving her taste, her scent, the way she moved beneath him. She trusted him. He felt it in her clasping hands. He saw it in her smoky eyes as she let herself get lost in the pleasure he was giving her. She whispered in his ear, over and over, and time spun out as he tried to give her what she wanted, tried not to stop, tried not to let it end, even though it was a losing battle. She wrapped her arms around him and said his name. And finally he felt her coming apart, and his world became a blinding flash of pleasure.

  For an endless moment, he just lay there, too wasted to move. But he knew he must be crushing her, so he rolled over on his back and pulled her with him.

  She didn’t say anything. She just nestled her head against his chest and sighed deeply.

  Jack closed his eyes, and several minutes ticked by as their heart rates came down from the stratosphere. Her breathing slowed, and he wondered if she’d fallen asleep.

  “You’re still with them, aren’t you?”

  He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. “With who?”

  “The SEALs. You never really left.”