Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of the Jaguar

by Lindsay McKenna

  Choking on bile, hatred consuming him, Houston struggled to clear away his emotions and remain focused on Ann and her rapidly deteriorating condition. The plan he’d formulated swam in his head. He would leap out of the helicopter just above the ground when they located Ann. And then he’d deploy the two chopper loads of men above him—just in case Escovar was laying a trap for him. Once his men had secured the area, both choppers would land.

  Mike had his paramedic pack; he had his other skills…. If he could stabilize Ann and the baby, they could possibly fly them to Tarapoto, the nearest city with a hospital, a hundred miles west.

  So much could go wrong. Mike knew Ann had been injured at dusk yesterday. For six hours, she’d not received any stabilizing medical help. He wondered how, with the severity of her injuries, she’d held on this long. Alone, abandoned by him in her greatest hour of need…He felt her life ebbing away rapidly now. Mike felt her fighting, but she didn’t have the necessary strength to do it much longer. His eyes narrowed as the helicopter rose over the last jungle-clad hill to that road where Escovar had lost his family.

  The bloodred ribbon was turning a deep pink color as the sun’s rays neared the horizon. Houston ordered Captain Sanchez, the pilot, to bank away from the road they paralleled and head toward the jungle below. There was an abandoned car on the dirt road, the doors open and no sign of life around the vehicle. As the helicopter turned steeply the spinning of the thick blades sending out heavy, drumming sounds in the humid morning, Mike anxiously searched the slope below for Ann.

  In the meantime, the other helicopter, armed with a door machine gun, began to prowl the territorial limits of the area Houston had laid out for them earlier. They would be the guard dogs—in case Escovar was waiting…waiting to spring his trap. Mike’s mind raced with questions. Why was there a car abandoned up on the road?

  Houston would not endanger his men for his own personal needs any more than necessary. He would try to locate Ann, leap off the chopper and send them high enough, far enough away, to stay out of the range of rifles and rocket fire as he worked to save her life.

  “There!” Pablo cried from the rear of the aircraft. He made stabbing motions out the door of the helicopter. “Major Houston! ¡Commandante! ¡Commandante! See?”

  Mike got out of the copilot’s seat and made his way through the tightly packed squadron of heavily armed men. Kneeling down at the door, where the wind whipped into the cabin, he gripped Pablo’s shoulder. The young soldier was jabbing his finger repeatedly toward the edge of the jungle. Squinting, Mike could make out nothing at first as the helicopter bobbled and shook in the early morning air currents rising off the humid land.

  Yes! His heart slammed in his chest. Mike saw it—he saw—Wiping his mouth, he leaned farther out the door. In the grayish light, he could barely make out Ann’s still form. She was on her back, seemingly unconscious. And alone. So alone…

  No…wait! As the helicopter skidded closer, descending rapidly in altitude, Houston blinked away the sweat stinging his eyes. Heart pounding, he saw a soldier in green-and-black fatigues jogging down the road toward the abandoned car.

  Inca! It was Inca! But—how?

  Stunned, Houston froze momentarily, his eyes widening. Inca halted and lifted her face toward them, her expression one of rage mixed with terror.

  “Get closer!” Houston roared to Sanchez. “She’s one of us.” He leaned down and grabbed his paramedic pack. The helicopter dropped rapidly, within fifty feet of the grassy slope. His mind spun with questions. If Inca was here…how the hell had she gotten here? She didn’t have the ability to physically transport herself from one place to another. Or did she? No, impossible.

  The battering air slammed against Mike as he made a five-foot leap off the lip of the helicopter to the earth below him. Houston had thrown out his paramedic bag first. It landed and rolled twenty feet away from where Ann was located. The instant Mike leaped, he bent his knees to absorb the shock of contact. The slope was too steep and he’d have to roll. As he hit the wet, slippery grass, he heard the helicopter’s engine rev to full power and pull up high and fast.

  “Michael! Michael!”

  He threw his arms and legs out to halt his roll. The wet grass soaked his clothing. He sprang to his feet. Inca’s call was hoarse. Desperate. Turning, Houston grabbed his black paramedic bag and dug the toes of his boots into the soft, wet earth, heading for Ann. He whipped a look to his left as he ran. Inca had leaped off the road, rifle in hand, and was scrambling down the rocky slope toward him.

  With each running stride, he wondered if Escovar was nearby and waiting. But his gaze was riveted on Ann, who lay unconscious on her back, looking like a splayed-out, broken doll in the dreary gray light of dawn. He heard Inca approaching. Her green eyes shone with tears and utter desperation.

  “I got here just as fast as I could,” Inca sobbed. She dropped her rifle as she hurried toward Ann. “Get the baby! The baby’s coming…” she cried over the noise of the helicopter’s departure.

  Pushing for breath, Houston dropped to his knees beside Ann. He tore open the paramedic pack. Inca fell to her own knees, breathing heavily. She immediately placed her hands on the sides of Ann’s bloodied head.

  “How long have you been here?” he rasped, jerking out the labor supplies. His gaze shot to Ann’s pale, unmoving face. How pasty she looked! Her lips were parted. He saw dried blood from her nose, the bruise around her left eye. Inca was holding her with all her strength, all her energy, he realized.

  “A few minutes after Escovar threw her off that damn cliff. She must have hit the trees, which broke her fall. I’ve been trying to help her hang on. At one point, I think she regained consciousness.” Inca rasped. “I’m tired, Michael…I’m almost out of energy. The baby is being born…Ann’s bleeding to death from the inside….”

  “The placenta has been torn away from her uterus,” he whispered raggedly, quickly examining Ann. He saw the bloody mass on the right side of her head. He feared the worst: a deadly head injury.

  “Can you keep stabilizing her?” he asked anxiously. If she’d become conscious earlier, that meant that even though the head wound looked bad, it wasn’t a subdural hematoma, which could cause brain damage.

  Inca laughed hoarsely. “Even I run out of energy eventually. It took nearly everything I had to get her to this point.”

  Mike spread the silver-lined blanket beneath Ann’s hips. He moved her as gently as possible. He saw the baby’s head crowning. It was a matter of moments before his daughter would be born. He had to hurry. Snapping on latex gloves, he grabbed the scissors and clamps that would be necessary. Positioning himself between Ann’s legs, he placed his hand on his daughter’s head. Life and death. It was so horribly entwined. He knelt there, sobbing for breath.

  As his daughter entered the world, her tiny head resting in his large hands, joy filtered through Mike’s terror. Her tiny face was flushed pink with health. In the next contraction, he allowed his daughter to turn on her shoulder, and then the rest of her perfectly formed body appeared and slipped into his awaiting hands.

  “I’ve got her!”

  Inca nodded. She rested her brow against Ann’s hair and closed her eyes. “Thank the Great Goddess…” she whispered unsteadily. Tears choked her voice.

  Rapidly, Mike placed a small blanket around his daughter, keeping her cradled in his arm, against his body. The last of the blood pulsated through the cord. He placed the clamps on the umbilical cord. His gaze went to Ann. Tears blurred his vision.

  “She’s slipping,” Inca cried. “Oh, damn, I can’t hold her anymore…. Michael!” She collapsed beside Ann, her feature spale.

  There! Houston quickly cut the umbilical cord. Just as he did, the rest of the placenta delivered. That was good. Quickly tying off the cord, he wrapped his daughter tightly in the blanket. Rising up on unsteady legs, he moved forward. In one motion, he gripped Inca’s shoulder as she lay there, sending Ann the last of whatever energy she had left in
her.

  “Here,” he rasped, pulling Inca away. “Lie down on your side. Hold the baby next to you. Just hold her against your chest and keep her warm. That’s all you have to do….” He looked into Inca’s watering eyes. He saw the devastation, the hopelessness in them. She did as he instructed and rolled over. As he tucked the baby into her arms, against her bandoleer-laden chest, he gave her an unsteady smile of thanks.

  “Save her….” Inca sobbed. “Save Ann—you have more energy than I do….”

  Houston wasn’t sure Ann could be saved this time. As the light grew from the coming dawn, he saw the dark stain of blood around her lower body. How much blood had she lost? With the birth of the baby, the bleeding should stop. Gently, he gathered his wife, the woman he loved so fiercely, into his arms. He was careful, because he knew she had broken ribs, and any movement might puncture her left lung.

  He heard the helicopters droning above him. He sensed that Escovar was nowhere around. For whatever reason, the man was not going to engage him in a firefight on his family’s graves. As he moved his hand across Ann’s limp hair and closed his eyes to make contact with her spirit, Mike knew that Escovar wanted him to feel the same anguish that he had when he’d discovered his family dead at the bottom of this slope. No more than fifty feet away from where Ann clung to life in Mike’s arms were the four crosses ringed in fresh flowers, a poignant reminder of that terrible event of so many years ago….

  Tears stung his eyes as he worked to forge the fragile connection with Ann. There was so little life left in her. He heard a baby crying piteously and realized belatedly that it was their baby—their daughter—crying out for Ann, for her nourishing milk, her loving arms. A sob ripped through Houston, shuddering through his entire body. Ann couldn’t die! She just couldn’t! Yet compared to the time she’d nearly died from that hemorrhagic fever in Lima, she was much weaker.

  The baby’s cries became stronger. More insistent. Houston concentrated. He focused on holding on to Ann, on to her spirit, which stood at the threshold of death. Did he have the power to pull her back? He felt his composure shredding. He felt his anguish over the possibility of losing her. Ann couldn’t die! He needed her! He loved her! Their daughter had to have a mother, dammit! Ann had to come back! The sobs ripped out of his contorted mouth as he leaned over her, cradling her helplessly in his arms. She was so cold, her body limp, without life. No! He’d just found her! He didn’t care what laws of the code he had to break. He wanted her back! He loved her too much to let her go!

  The cry of a baby made Ann fight for consciousness. She struggled against the weighted feeling of her eyelids as the baby’s cries became more plaintive. It was her daughter—she knew it. As she barely lifted her lashes, Ann saw someone leaning over her, staring down at her. The effort to try and see who it was was almost too much for her. She felt a hand, strong and firm, on her arm. Mike…it had to be Mike! Her lips parted and she tried to smile. He’d come…he’d come for her….

  “Ann?”

  Yes, that was Mike’s voice. Off-key, ragged sounding, but his voice. Ann rallied and tried to open her eyes once again. This time, she was more aware of her surroundings. The white walls behind Mike as he stood leaning over her, anxiety written in every plane of his dirty, perspiration-streaked features, told her she was in a building of some kind.

  Again, she heard the cry of a baby. Her baby…their daughter.

  Her mind wasn’t functioning well. She saw Mike’s grim mouth part. He reached over, and with a trembling hand, kept stroking her head.

  “Mi querida? You’re safe. You’re in a hospital….”

  Safe. The word rang through her like a breath of life-giving air. Mike was here, with her. He was dirty. He was in uniform. His face was deeply lined with exhaustion. His eyes were red rimmed and she knew he’d been crying. Why? And then the entire series of events with Escovar came flowing back through her. It was too much. Ann tried to take a deep breath, but it hurt too much, the left side of her rib cage reminding her that she’d broken some of those bones in the fall after Escovar had pushed her over the cliff.

  Closing her eyes, Ann focused on Mike’s hand, which gripped hers so tightly. She remembered Inca. Opening her eyes, she looked up at him. Inca was not there with him. Had it been her imagination? Ann did not know where reality began or ended anymore. It didn’t matter. Not at all.

  The cry of her daughter made Ann rally. Her gaze moved left, toward the sound of her baby.

  “You hear her?” Mike asked hoarsely, praying that Ann could. She’d sustained a nasty concussion from the blow to her head, near her ear. The doctor had given her twenty stitches to close up the wound.

  Ann opened her chapped, dry lips.

  Mike smiled a little. “Hold on. I’ll get her,” he whispered unsteadily.

  Closing her eyes, Ann wished for more strength, and had none. Incredibly weak, she could feel the IVs in both her arms, sending life-giving fluids to sustain and stabilize her. She became aware of throbbing pain every now and again in her lower abdomen. Her baby, at some point, had been born. She watched through half-closed eyes as Mike moved away. He returned moments later with a tender look on his face. In his arms, in a soft, pink blanket held gently against him, was their daughter.

  Anxiously, Ann looked. She tried to lift her head.

  “Don’t struggle,” Mike whispered unsteadily. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing his wife. Very carefully, he laid their daughter across her abdomen.

  “You’ve got broken ribs on the left side,” he warned as he held their daughter so Ann could look at her for the first time. The joy in Ann’s eyes, the tears that sprang to them, made him smile tiredly. “She’s healthy and doing just fine, mi querida.” His voice broke. “And you’re going to be fine, too…” Houston allowed his tears to flow freely down his stubbled, dirty face. They had arrived here at the Tarapoto Hospital three hours earlier. With the help of the emergency room doctor, Ann had been stabilized and whole blood given to her by himself and Inca. He had been right; as soon as their daughter was born, Ann’s internal bleeding ceased. The birth had been the biggest threat to her life. She had been bleeding to death with each wave of contractions.

  Ann sobbed. It hurt to move, but she weakly lifted her hand and placed it on her tiny daughter’s dark-haired head. She saw Mike’s mouth curve tenderly upward. He gazed down at her.

  “I love you,” he rasped, and he leaned forward and placed a very gentle kiss upon her mouth, welcoming her back, welcoming her into his heart once again.

  Ann drowned in the splendor of his mouth. Mike was so strong and cherishing as he moved his lips against hers. His breath gave her life, and more energy. In her hands, on her belly, she held their baby daughter, who had stopped crying the moment she was with her mother. Ann was alive. Mike was here, with her. And most important, their baby was with them—alive and well. As he eased his mouth from hers, hot tears spilled from her eyes.

  “I…love you…” Ann whispered brokenly, clinging to his stormy gaze. In that moment before she’d been hurled off the cliff by Escovar, she had surrendered fully to his love, to him. Ann understood now, as never before, what Grandfather Adaire had talked about, and what Alaria had hinted at. The complete surrender of herself on all levels to the love she felt for Mike had occurred. She was stunned and warmed by the strength and nurturance of his love for her as she lay there. She felt Mike grip her shoulder momentarily as he looked down at their baby.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said hoarsely, his voice cracking, “just like her mother….”

  Outside the private room, Houston sank against the whitewashed wall of the small hospital. His knees were weak. He could barely think. The hospital personnel moved around him in a ceaseless flow of traffic up and down the hall. A bone-deep weariness struck him so hard that for a full minute he didn’t think he could move, much less walk. Down the hall, in another private room, Inca was sleeping. Right now, Ann was breast-feeding their daughter for the first time. The baby would s
leep, and then so would she. They would be together. And now he had to get some sleep or he was going to keel over right here.

  Shoving himself away from the wall, Houston blinked back the last of the tears burning in his eyes. As he headed toward the room where Inca slept, his heart felt bruised with all the emotional upheavals he’d experienced in the last twenty-four hours. Opening the door, he entered the room and saw Inca sitting up on the edge of the bed. She was still in uniform, like him. The bandoleers of ammunition she always carried across her shoulders were hung over a chair nearby, with her rifle. Her black hair was mussed, an ebony waterfall spilling over her slumped shoulders as she sat there, head bowed.

  Forcing himself over to her bedside, Mike drew up the chair with the bandoleers hanging across it. Searching Inca’s pale features as she lifted her head, he realized for the first time what it had cost her to try and save Ann and his baby. Being able to transport herself physically, from one country to another was known as bilocation. The power it took to do it was beyond his comprehension, but she had that ability and had used it to try to help Ann. He drew the chair under him and sat down, his arms resting across the top. “How are you doing?” he asked huskily. He was slurring his words.

  Inca shrugged weakly. “Like hell itself ran over me,” she joked tiredly.

  “Makes two of us,” Houston teased huskily, and shared a one-cornered smile with her. “I don’t know how you did it, but I owe you more than I can ever repay you, Inca.” And he meant that. Mike watched her shadowed, willow green eyes narrow briefly as she sat there, her hands gripping the edge of the bed.