Strategic Vulnerability
Page 1
Contents
Title
Copyright
Mandy M. Roth, Online
Blurb
Dedication and Note from the Author
Praise for Mandy M. Roth’s Immortal Ops World
Immortal Ops Series Helper
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tactical Magik (Immortal Ops Series)
Dear Reader
Strategic Vulnerability: New & Lengthened 2016 Anniversary Edition (Immortal Ops)
By
Mandy M. Roth
Strategic Vulnerability (Immortal Ops) © Copyright November 2009-2016, Mandy M. Roth
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Mandy M. Roth.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. Novel intended for adults only. Must be 18 years or older to read.
Published by Raven Happy Hour LLC
www.ravenhappyhour.com
Oxford, MS USA
Raven Happy Hour LLC and all affiliate sites and projects are © Copyrighted 2004-2016
Mandy M. Roth, Online
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Strategic Vulnerability
Paranormal Shifter Military Special Ops Romance
Held prisoner in a remote testing facility in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest, subjected to torture and abuse, shape-shifter and alpha male Wilson Rousseau has long since given up hope of being rescued. Days blend together until he can’t help but long for death. Saved from his isolated hell by a female’s distress call, he feels an instant connection to her.
Kimberly thought she was taking a trip to South America to study indigenous plant life. She had no idea she was playing into the hands of a madman whose goal is to create a genetically altered army of super-soldiers. When she finds herself locked in a cell with Wilson, a man who would give his life to save hers, there is an instant attraction. But the dark secrets surrounding their imprisonment may change their lives forever. Can they find a way to beat the odds and be together, or will the madman win?
Dedication and Note from the Author
To the fans of the Immortal Ops Series, thank you for your continued dedication and for your love of the I-Ops. I can’t believe it’s been well over a decade since Immortal Ops book one was first published (2004) and even longer since it was first written. I will forever be thankful to my father, for instilling in me a love of science fiction; to my grandfather, for giving me such a love of history that I found myself fascinated with what the world would have been like if events had ended differently—or maybe didn’t end at all (hint, hint)—to my mother, who has always told me to dream big; to my brother, who was the first victim (big grin) of listening to me tell tales; to my husband, for telling me to keep going, not to give up even when it seemed like the best choice; to my sons, who have brought me so much happiness (and a new appreciation for stain removal tips and tricks, not to mention making me quite the skilled cut and scrape fixer); and last but not least, to everyone who has fallen in love with my characters and encouraged me to keep writing. I can’t thank you all enough for your support. In addition, I’d like everyone to remember the men and women in the Armed Services who are, at this very moment, putting their lives on the line for our freedom.
A note from the author about the expanded editions and what inspired The Immortal Ops:
Many things combined to create the perfect storm, if you will, for how I came up with the series idea well over a decade ago. Having been heavy into marketing and advertising and then suddenly finding myself needing to stay home to care for my boys, one of whom had additional needs, I was left craving a creative outlet.
I first tried to get my “fix” by playing video games after the boys were asleep at night. I was online and playing the first day Xbox Live launched (November 2002). I found myself getting very into first-person-shooters and military games. The more I got into playing video games, the more I wanted to read about the actual history behind the games. I found myself talking with friends who had served our country. I would devour anything they wanted to offer, listening, completely swept up in it all. Each story shared a common theme—a strong sense of brotherhood.
This appealed to me and in a relatively short period of time, I decided to do something about it. That impulse, combined with my love of history, science fiction, paranormal, and technology, as well as my love of things that go bump in the night, really was a recipe for the Immortal Ops Series to be born from my imagination. From a very early age, I’ve been fascinated with the supernatural, myths and legends. I have always read books that revolve around the supernatural. I cut my teeth on Stephen King, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, and the classics. Two books that made a huge impression on me were The Island of Dr. Moreau and of course Dracula.
The more I found myself digging into the history of the military and of world wars, the more I kept getting this thought in the back of my brain, pushing me forward. Urging me to combine both loves—supernatural and history. I thought, what would happen if I took a team of men who were in the military, and they were a paramilitary group, a black ops type of thing, and I combined them with my love of the paranormal?
The scary part about the Ops series is that it was born from events that actually happened in history, just with a large fictional spin put on it. I asked myself, what if I took from history, from eugenics, which so many assume started in Nazi Germany, and threaded it into the very fabric of the military team? What if I were to take a page from history and the horrible cross-breeding attempts made by Ilya Ivanov and the Nazis to create super-soldiers, who were ape and human hybrids? And what if I were to weave in even more aspects, like cloning, additional genetic engineering, and so on? What if I went a step beyond and brought in other parts of history that revolve around attempts at making super-soldiers or controlling the minds of humans?
What would happen?
What would you be left with? How damaged would the men be? What kind of government would do this? What if I were to build off the history of it all, have it where America made super-soldiers behind the scenes, and then drew back and wanted to cut ties and stop everything when Nazi Germany rose and the backlash from that hit, but, in reality, they didn’t stop? And with scientific advances, how would that work? What would it look like? The answer seemed simple to me. Take all these questions to what I felt was their logical conclusion and to also blend
in what I love—werecreatures and vampires.
So the idea to have shape-shifting military men who were created by the government was born. And that was how I came up with The Immortal Ops Series. I started writing in early 2000, thoughts, ideas, very short stories and then full novels and novellas. The Ops were among the first things I put together and it wasn’t long after that I was published (early 2004). My then-publisher asked me if I could write something that was third-person point of view, instead of first-person, which I had first been published in. Since I had the Ops already started and the series all mapped out, it was just a matter of getting it to work as a third-person book, rather than first. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could. I’d mapped the series originally to be first-person. It took some elbow grease, but in the end it worked and the first four books were published. Reader support for them has been amazing.
Sadly, I found I had to cut a lot to make the book fit with word count restrictions then, but I’m happy to report that I have the rights back, and the first four books are being re-released with their original content.
Thank you,
Mandy M. Roth
Praise for Mandy M. Roth’s Immortal Ops World
Silver Star Award—I feel Immortal Ops deserves a Silver Star Award as this book was so flawlessly written with elements of intrigue, suspense and some scorching hot scenes—Aggie Tsirikas—Just Erotic Romance Reviews
5 Stars—Immortal Ops is a fascinating short story. The characters just seem to jump out at you. Ms. Roth wrote the main and secondary characters with such depth of emotions and heartfelt compassion I found myself really caring for them—Susan Holly—Just Erotic Romance Reviews
Immortal Ops packs the action of a Hollywood thriller with the smoldering heat that readers can expect from Ms. Roth. Put it on your hot list…and keep it there! —The Road to Romance
5 Stars—Her characters are so realistic, I find myself wondering about the fine line between fact and fiction...This was one captivating tale that I did not want to end. Just the right touch of humor endeared these characters to me even more—eCataRomance Reviews
5 Steamy Cups of Coffee—Combining the world of secret government operations with mythical creatures as if they were an everyday thing, she (Ms. Roth) then has the audacity to make you actually believe it and wonder if there could be some truth to it. I know I did. Nora Roberts once told me that there are some people who are good writers and some who are good storytellers, but the best is a combination of both and I believe Ms. Roth is just that. Mandy Roth never fails to surpass herself—coffeetimeromance
Mandy Roth kicks ass in this story—inthelibraryreview
Immortal Ops Series Helper
(This will be updated in each upcoming book as new characters are introduced.)
Immortal Ops (I-Ops) Team Members
Lukian Vlakhusha: Alpha-Dog-One. Team captain, werewolf, King of the Lycans. Book: Immortal Ops (Immortal Ops)
Geoffroi (Roi) Majors: Alpha-Dog-Two. Second in command, werewolf, blood-bound brother to Lukian. Book: Critical Intelligence (Immortal Ops)
Doctor Thaddeus Green: Bravo-Dog-One. Scientist, tech guru, werepanther. Book: Radar Deception (Immortal Ops)
Jonathon (Jon) Reynell: Bravo-Dog-Two. Sniper, weretiger. Book: Separation Zone (Immortal Ops)
Wilson Rousseau: Bravo-Dog-Three. Resident smart-ass, wererat. Book: Strategic Vulnerability (Immortal Ops)
Eadan Daly: Alpha-Dog-Three. PSI-Op and handler on loan to the I-Ops to round out the team, Fae. Book: Tactical Magik (Immortal Ops)
Colonel Asher Brooks: Chief of Operations and point person for the Immortal Ops Team. Book: Administrative Control (Immortal Ops)
Chapter One
Rain forest, South America
Kim Dunaid pushed through the dense jungle vines. They cut at her skin, digging deep in some places and breaking open cuts she’d sustained only the morning before—cuts she would have normally been able to heal over already if she were alone. She had to be away from the prying eyes of others. A branch shot back and caught her cheek. The sting told her it too had drawn blood.
The tour guide in front of her paused and glanced back at her, having the decency to appear apologetic, as he’d been the one to lose hold of the branch to begin with. She gave a tiny wave indicating she would be fine and wondered if the man was qualified to be leading the way. He’d told her the day before that the trails they’d be taking today were relatively clear.
Guess we have different views on clear paths, she thought as she glanced down at the shallow lacerations covering her hands and forearms. They would heal over relatively quickly, within a day or two without her drawing upon any of the gifts she’d been born with, but that wasn’t the point.
Face it. You just might not be cut out for a life of this.
She was just happy the other guide had stopped talking. He’d been spinning tall tales of lions and other assorted animals such as polar bears that, according to him, roamed the rain forests near their current area. Some of the group of tourists that were also being led deeper and deeper into the wilds had looked frightened by the news of lions in the area. Kim just rolled her eyes at the guide’s antics, knowing he was full of bologna.
She trudged along, wishing she’d brought more bug spray. So far she was averaging a bite a minute. At least it felt that way. A prickly vine dug into her lower leg, and she was thankful she was in long pants. Brad Durant, one of the other students on the trip, and someone she’d label a friend, had suggested she put the bottoms of her pant legs into the tops of her socks. He’d also advised her to avoid wearing shorts again. Wisely, she’d listened. He and his best friend Vic seemed like they’d been in a similar situation before and had come out of the other side experts.
When Professor Gisbert Krauss, had asked her, along with several other students, to go on a trip to South America for a few weeks, she’d thought it was the opportunity of a lifetime. She wasn’t so sure now. They were there to study plants native to the area. Kim had an interest in studies reporting amazing results with the fungi in soil and leaf litter samples. She also had a curiosity about the antibacterial qualities associated with several of the plant extracts she’d recently began studying. The news of the finds was making its way through the scientific community, not quite at the rate she’d like, but moving all the same. It wasn’t something that fascinated most people, but Kim enjoyed the work. She’d also enjoyed the chance to study in the Brazilian rain forest, or at least she had until recently.
The trip had started out fine but had become progressively odder from there on. Professor Krauss wasn’t acting like himself. Back at the university he seemed even-tempered and basically boring. All in all, a nice man. Now, in the wilds of the jungle, he was agitated, and virtually impossible to talk to. Brad and Vic had noticed the change in the professor’s demeanor as well. The three of them had spent the prior evening discussing the dramatic change in their professor’s demeanor, unsure what had prompted the sudden personality shift.
It was probably stress and the heat. As Kim swatted at another bug, she had to wonder if she wasn’t edgier than normal as well. Between the humidity and the insects, she found herself losing some of the joy she’d had about getting to study plants in the rain forest.
“Ten-minute break,” yelled the very guide Kim wished would stay silent.
Kim withdrew her water bottle and took a sip, the heat turning her stomach. She wasn’t hungry, and she hadn’t had much in the way of an appetite since she’d arrived. The humidity and oppressive heat were partly to blame. Being unable to let her gifts free and stop masking who and what she was also contributed to her loss of appetite. Had she given in to what was natural for her, she’d have felt better than she had in years—especially being surround by so much nature, far from cities and pollution. Her kind—Fae—liked nature and thrived in it.
Pretending to be an ordinary, everyday human often sucked.
Krauss walked past, grumbling about the slow progress the group was
making and how they’d never make it on time. She wasn’t sure what the rush was. The plants weren’t going anywhere and they had plenty of daylight left to burn.
Already today the professor had snapped at the guides and even turned his temper on the students—specifically Brad and Vic. Kim wasn’t extremely close to any of her classmates because of her condition, but she didn’t like seeing them berated. Vic and Brad were the two classmates she’d dare to label friends, but even that was weaker than she’d have liked. The trip to South America had them spending more time together than they had in the time she’d known them.
Brad had been the student Krauss had focused his foul mood on the most throughout the day. Brad took it in stride, but the act still bothered Kim. Krauss had been a mentor to her at the university, and it was disheartening to watch his metamorphosis.
Something was certainly off.
Kim swatted a bug on her neck and inwardly cursed about how edible she seemed to be to insects of late. She was an all-you-can-eat buffet, traipsing around, sweaty, and barely covered.
Standing near the roots of a kapok tree, Kim slapped away yet another bug before admiring the sheer size of the tree. A grown man could lie on the ground, stretching his arms and legs as far as he could, and still not come close to the width of the trunk. It didn’t matter how many kapoks they passed on their expedition, each one amazed her.