by S. M. Butler
Dane lowered the binoculars, his body as tense as a cat getting ready to pounce. They’d found the intruder’s boat precisely where Mendez had said they would. Knight Rider powered in as close as he dared. They were running with lights out, but they weren’t blind. This is what SEALs did. What HOT did. Dane loved the thrill of it, even if he was far too invested in this particular aspect of the op to enjoy it as much as he usually did.
“Looks like six armed men in the stern. One at the helm. No sign of Ivy.”
“She could be stowed away down below,” Iceman said.
“Can you pinpoint where her phone is transmitting from?” Matt asked Billy.
Kid tapped on his laptop. “Hard to pin down with one hundred percent accuracy, but I’d say it’s coming from beneath the waterline.”
Dane’s insides churned. “So either she’s down there, or someone with her phone is.”
“Yep, that’s the way I see it,” Big Mac said. He turned to Brandy and Double Dee, the sniper and spotter. “Think you guys can pop those assholes quick and clean?”
Brandy snorted. “You’re fucking kidding, right?”
Big Mac grinned. “Just yanking your chain, dude.”
“Let’s get closer,” Matt said. “We have no idea how many are below, so we need to be able to storm the boat as quickly as we can.”
Chase throttled the boat into gear, and they glided softly through the water. The engines were quiet, a special prototype courtesy of DARPA. Dane would like to get his hands on something like that for his SEALs. It crossed his mind that if he stayed with HOT, that might just be a possibility.
They moved as close as they could without alerting the other craft—and then Brandy and Double Dee went to work. The bodies dropped before the report rang out on the night air. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
The men didn’t have a chance to realize what was happening before they fell. Chase knocked the throttle into high gear, and they made for the yacht. When they came alongside, he’d already powered down enough to allow Dane and the guys to jump from one boat to the other.
Dane landed on the deck amidst bodies and tore for the cabin. But when he ripped the door open, gun up and ready to fire, a man stood in the center of the floor, his arm around Ivy’s neck and a gun against her temple.
Relief didn’t even have a chance to make its way through his system before rage arrived. Ivy was clothed only in a turquoise bikini. The top was perilously close to revealing her breasts, the cups shifted sideways and slipping as she held on to the arm of the man holding her and tried not to choke.
There were red marks on her abdomen, an angry slash from her belly to the top of her bikini bottoms. Finger marks. Dane saw red.
“Drop the gun or I’ll kill her,” the man said.
“And then you’ll kill me. No.”
The dude blinked. “You want me to shoot her?”
“No, but neither do you. She’s your leverage. Drop her and I’m dropping you.”
Ivy’s green eyes were huge in her face, but he knew she understood what he was doing. He couldn’t afford to feel fear right now. Couldn’t afford tenderness or mercy. If he let those things out, if he let the very real fear he had for her safety show, it would mean the end of her life. And possibly his.
He gripped his MK45 tighter and kept it trained on the man’s head. He could take the shot. He could drop the guy here and now—but the boat rocked hard in the water from the wake of the assault boat. If he was off by even a hair, he risked hitting Ivy.
And there would be no coming back from that.
“I’m a rich man. I could make it worth your while—worth your team’s while—to let me leave here.”
Dane pretended to consider it. “How much we talking?”
“One million.”
“You said that so quickly I’m sure you can do better. Five million.”
He’d figured out by now that this man was a Ruiz. He didn’t know which one, but it didn’t much matter. He was a dead man regardless of which scumbag Ruiz brother he was.
“Five million then. Call your team off and let me leave in the boat. Once I’m safe in port, I’ll let her go and you’ll get your money.”
Dane didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know at least one of his HOT teammates was behind him, listening to everything this man said.
“What do you think? Sound fair?”
It was Ryan “Flash” Gordon’s voice that filtered down to him. “Naw, not quite. There are nine of us—ten if you count Ivy. I think we need a million each.”
“There you go,” Dane said, surprised at how cool he managed to sound. “Ten mil. You get to walk away. But Ivy stays here and one of us goes with you. To make sure you make that transfer, of course.”
Ruiz looked about as happy as an alligator in a purse factory. He was growing frustrated with the runaround, and his grip on Ivy had loosened. Not by much, but enough that she was no longer struggling to breathe.
The look in her eyes was pure fury as she stared at Dane over Ruiz’s arm. He didn’t know what that meant, but he was in the zone and unable to worry about it.
Please, God, just let him get her free. After that, he didn’t care what happened.
Suddenly, Ivy rocketed into motion. Dane hadn’t seen it coming, but she somehow managed to drop and spin, jerking herself loose from Ruiz’s grip as she did so. It happened so fast that her captor lost his grip on his pistol, which clattered to the floor. It went off with a boom, and Dane screamed at Ivy.
But Ivy wasn’t stopping. She sprang up off her feet, the heel of one hand aimed at Ruiz’s face, the other holding her wrist for leverage. She rammed her palm into his nose—and he fell over backward, blood spewing from his face as he hit the floor with a thud.
Dane was at Ivy’s side in one step, grabbing her and shoving her behind him as he aimed the pistol at Ruiz’s head. But Ruiz wasn’t moving.
“Did I kill him?”
Dane dropped and put his fingers against Ruiz’s pulse. It throbbed beneath his fingers, but the man was out cold.
“He’s alive.”
“Fuck.”
“Everything under control down there?” Flash peeked into the cabin.
Dane turned and nodded. “Yeah. Give us a sec.”
He patted Ruiz down until he found the key to the handcuffs Ivy wore. Dane stood and unlocked them, then took the metal bracelets and wrapped them around Ruiz’s wrists. Tight.
When he turned again, Ivy was standing there rubbing her wrists. She’d straightened her bikini top, but blood spattered the fabric and her smooth skin.
Ruiz’s blood. Dane sucked in a breath and felt the beginnings of a tremor roll through him. He could have lost her. Forever.
She looked up at him then, her eyes uncertain in her pretty face. He didn’t know what was going on behind those eyes, but he couldn’t stop himself from dragging her against his body and burying his face in her hair.
“Ivy… Shit, that was stupid.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
‡
Ivy stiffened in Dane’s arms. He was warm and big, and she felt safe tucked up against him—but then he had to go and say something like that. She pushed herself away from his big body and glared up at him.
He was dressed for combat, his face painted and his hair hidden beneath a black balaclava. He was also bristling with weaponry. His black assault suit had pockets and loops, and there was more equipment on him than she could count.
He was, in short, scary-looking.
But she wasn’t afraid of him. She was pissed.
“Damn you,” she growled. “I just took that asshole down, and you want to critique my decision-making skills? I got tired of waiting for you to shoot his ass.”
Dane’s blue eyes shone from his darkened face. “Shoot him? We’re on a rolling boat and he had a gun to your head. How the fuck was I supposed to shoot him when you were in danger?”
“It’s your job, mister. I expect it’s not the first time
you’ve shot a target while standing on a bobbing deck.”
She could see his Adam’s apple move. “No… but it’s the first time some piece of shit had a gun to the head of someone I care about.”
Care about. Her heart thumped. He cared… well, hell, she knew that, didn’t she? But did he still love her? Could he ever love her again? She wanted desperately to know, but now wasn’t the time to ask.
She reached up and put her hand to his cheek. Then she smiled. Adrenaline tumbled through her system, and she hadn’t quite gotten it under control yet. Hell, she might fall apart at any minute. But for the moment, this was what she wanted to do.
“It’s okay, Dane. I’m fine.” Her smile faded. “Did… did you find Ace?”
“He’s in the hospital. He’s going to make it.”
Ivy’s bottom lip quivered. Now that was just the news she needed to make her lose it. A tear rolled down her cheek, and then another. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
“Yeah.”
Two of the guys came down the stairs to collect Ruiz. They looked every bit as big and bad as Dane did, and she thanked God for them as well. They’d been here, and they’d come for her when they had a mission that was far more important than a single life.
“What about the sub? Did you find it?”
“That’s the next stop,” Dane said. “They’re surfacing somewhere near Pineapple Key in about twenty-five minutes. We’ll be waiting.”
“Then we should probably go and get them.”
He let his gaze drop over her body. “You’re cold.”
Goose bumps started to prickle on her skin like ants heading for a party. “A little.”
He slung his arm around her and guided her up the stairs. The bodies of Ruiz’s men slumped in the stern. She didn’t much care. She stepped past them all and went over to the side where the commando boat was moored. Dane handed her up, and then someone on the other side helped her over.
Dane was beside her quickly, and he grabbed a blanket from somewhere and wrapped it around her. She took it gratefully, not only because she was cold, but because she felt exposed in this stupid bikini. Not that the men were staring at her, because they weren’t. They very deliberately were not, she thought.
“Hey,” Chase, aka Fiddler, said, and she looked up. “You okay?”
“Perfectly fine.”
One of the others grinned. Iceman. “You did a number on that man’s face. Nice work.”
“You saw that?”
“Not exactly, but it couldn’t have been Viking. He was too busy trying not to shit his pants because the dude had you in a choke hold.”
A couple of the other guys snorted.
“Hey, let some asshole take your girl hostage and see how you feel,” Dane retorted.
Iceman’s expression sobered. “Already been there, man. I feel you, believe me.”
Ivy was still reeling about being called Dane’s girl when the boat started to slide through the water. She watched Ruiz’s yacht recede in the distance.
“The Coast Guard will retrieve it,” Dane said at her side, and she glanced up at him. His presence made her heart skip even when she didn’t want it to. There was so much she wanted to say to him—but not here on the deck of an assault boat filled with military commandos.
Of which he was one. She studied him for a moment, her heart filling with pride. Dane had always been meant for great things, though being a SEAL wasn’t quite what she’d envisioned. She’d thought he would join the Navy and learn to command a ship. She’d never pictured this.
It suited him. She reached for his hand. He didn’t shrink away. He twined his fingers in hers and squeezed.
“Don’t you do anything stupid tonight, Dane,” she said as they moved toward Pineapple Key. “I want to talk to you when this is all over.”
He pressed her fingers to his lips and a shiver ran down her spine. “I want to do more than talk… but we can start with that.”
When the boat slowed, Ivy didn’t think anything of it. But then another boat was there, coming alongside, and her chest squeezed tighter than a drum. She recognized the Coast Guard trawler. Instead of waiting for it, they’d gone to meet it.
She knew what it meant that the boat was here and they were slowing.
“You aren’t leaving me,” she said fiercely, squeezing hard on Dane’s hand.
He threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her in close. “Not my choice, Ivy—but you’ll be safer this way. You don’t need to be in the middle of this op. You were never meant to be anyway.”
“Dane, goddammit, if anything happens to you—”
He smiled, and she felt the power of it all the way to her toes. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll be back. We’ll talk. Promise.”
Then he kissed her hard, his tongue sliding against hers all too briefly before he pushed her away.
*
It was time to go to work. Dane deliberately walked away as the assault boat made contact with the trawler. Ivy called after him, but he couldn’t look back. He knew she was pissed that she was being offloaded along with Miguel Ruiz, but he couldn’t fix that.
Her job was taking Ruiz in. His job was stopping this submarine before it put a nuke in terrorist hands on US soil. As the trawler’s engines spooled up, Dane dared a look. Ivy was at the rail, clutching it with both hands, the light from the trawler shining on her face.
He had the craziest thought that he might not ever see her again. That this was the end and they’d said and done all they would ever do together.
He turned away again, determined not to look back. The assault boat sped into the night, and the Coast Guard trawler headed toward shore. Matt and Billy the Kid were looking at the computer console. Then Matt looked over at Dane.
“Your team’s in position, Viking. Lieutenant JG Marchand wants to speak to you.” Matt grinned then. “A fellow Cajun boy. I like this guy.”
Dane waited for Billy to patch the call into his headset. The comm link crackled and then Remy’s voice came over the air.
“Ghost One awaiting your orders, sir. And it’s damn good to hear from you. Thought you’d bugged out and went to join the Army.”
Dane snorted. “Goddamn, Remy Marchand, it’s good to hear from you too. If I didn’t already know you’d take it the wrong way, I’d kiss your pretty face the next time we meet.”
“Always knew you wanted me, sir.”
“Yeah, I want you all right. I want you and the guys to help HOT get these fuckers tonight. We can’t let this damn thing get by us.”
“Sir…” Remy sounded just a little hesitant, and Dane figured he knew what was coming next. “HOT exists? This isn’t some joke between admirals yanking our chain?”
Dane looked at the men standing on the boat with him. They were big, badass motherfuckers who didn’t do any of this for the glory of it. Hell, they didn’t even get any glory because no one knew they existed. SEAL Team Six were the ones typically in the news, the ones who got credit for taking down high-profile terrorists like Bin Laden. And yet HOT was there too, quietly working in the background, eliminating the kind of terrorists who wanted to leave an even bigger mark on the world than Bin Laden had.
He’d come into this with a chip on his shoulder for the Army and its brass. But Colonel Mendez, for all his autocratic ways—and yeah, that’s how a commander was supposed to be—cared about giving his people the best tools for the job. He also cared about everyone under his command, not just the mission. The fact he’d sent them after Ivy when there was so much at stake said a lot for the man.
Dane couldn’t help but respect that kind of dedication.
“Yeah, they exist,” he said. “Even better, you’re now a part of them.”
Had he just said “even better”? Yeah, he fucking had. And he meant it. Because HOT was exciting and different, and he realized he was looking forward to being a part of the organization. Leading the first SEAL team to be assigned to HOT. It was a helluva challenge—and he lov
ed challenges.
“Heard that too. Didn’t want to believe it until you gave the word.” Remy huffed a breath. “All right, we’re ready. Waiting for your command.”
Dane glanced at his dive watch. “ETA in ten.”
“We’ll be here.”
“I know you will, you ornery Cajun motherfucker. Can’t wait to see you.”
“Easy does it, sir. I’m spoken for.”
Dane laughed. Remy was spoken for all right—by every woman he met. “So am I, man. But we’ll make it work somehow.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
‡
In the end, the op was textbook. Or as textbook as it could be for a situation they’d never encountered before. The sub surfaced about a mile from shore. Bad Medicine was waiting, the men chattering excitedly with no idea there was a SEAL team beneath the waves.
HOT pulled into position and waited for the signal from Dane’s SEALs. Remy and his team were using submersibles to power through the water quietly. Their goal was to disable the rotors on Bad Medicine and the rudder on the sub. They would also sabotage the planes in order to prevent the sub from submerging once the fighting started. If the submarine went under, there was a chance the terrorists would blow the warhead where they were. It wouldn’t do the kind of damage that trucking the missile to Tampa—or any port—would do, but a nuclear bomb going off this close to shore would definitely cause damage to a very wide swath of Florida.
Dane listened intently on his comm link. He was calm because he was always calm during a mission, but the adrenaline flowed hot and fast. He wanted to be beneath the waves with his guys but he had to content himself with monitoring their progress from the assault boat.
He looked up at the faces trained on his. They were tense, waiting. Once they got the all clear from Remy, they were throttling this motherfucker up and taking the fight to the tangos. There was still a danger with the missile, but the nuclear launch sequence took time to perform—and HOT wasn’t giving these assholes the time to detonate their weapon, assuming they had the correct launch codes in the first place.
“Moby Dick is in the net,” Remy said, his voice quiet and sure in the night. “And he ain’t getting away.”
