An Officer and a Gentleman

by Rachel Lee

  “Listen, and listen well. I’m going to go get some water and round up some food. Don’t show your face outside this hut, and for God’s sake don’t try anything stupid, like slipping into the jungle while I’m gone. This camp is ringed with more booby traps and explosive devices than a nuclear storage site.”

  He straightened, canteens dangling from one fist, and eyed her for a moment. “I don’t suppose you know how to use an AK-47—or, better yet, an APG?”

  She ran her tongue over dry lips. “What’s an APG?”

  “Never mind.”

  A ripple of comprehension crossed her pale, strained face. She glanced at the crates, then back at Jake. “It’s some kind of weapon, I gather. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You sell guns to these men.”

  “No. I sell myself, or rather my expertise. These goons don’t know how to operate half the weapons they’re supplied by the drug lords who keep them in business. I show them.”

  A look of scorn settled in her eyes, deepening them to a shimmering blue-green that reminded Jake of a lake he’d once fished in upstate New York. It held cold, crystal-clear water, with a deceptive, unplumbed depth. The kind that invited a man to strip off and plunge in. The kind that invigorated and enticed and—

  Jake pulled himself up short. Jaws tight, he whirled and slammed the door of the hut behind him. As he strode toward the sluggish stream, he couldn’t decide what irritated him more. The fact that she hadn’t made any effort to disguise her contempt, or the fact that such incredible, expressive and downright seductive eyes were wasted on a woman who’d taken a vow of celibacy.

  Pushing the sister’s image out of his head, Jake dropped to one knee beside the stream. He dragged the canteen in the slow, rippling water with one hand. The other he hooked in the web belt he wore low on his hips. His fingers drummed an impatient tatoo on the buckle.

  Only Jake knew that the metal gusset next to the belt buckle doubled as an encrypting device, and that the pattern he tapped out formed a digitized code. The transmitter sewn into his belt was too small for anything other than a short emergency signal. But that signal would be picked up by the U.S. Navy ships cruising offshore and relayed to the OMEGA control center within minutes.

  Chapter 3

  “Yes!”

  Joe Samuels’s shout brought Maggie running from the crew room, where she’d gone to splash cold water on her face.

  “It’s Jaguar,” he told her, his eyes snapping with excitement.

  Maggie expelled a whoosh of pent-up breath. Jake MacKenzie had survived the disaster of the night before. She headed for the command console. “Is he on the satellite receiver?”

  “No. All I got was an emergency signal, relayed by the navy. Here it is.”

  Maggie’s pulse leaped when she saw the three numbers Samuels had scrawled. Although she knew the emergency signals she and Jake had devised by heart, she went immediately to her black operations notebook and verified the individual digits.

  Agent in place.

  Stand by for further word.

  “Way to go, Jaguar,” Maggie murmured, grinning broadly. Her finger slid down to the clear-text explanation of the third digit.

  Neutral on board.

  Thoughtfully, Maggie tapped the notebook with her forefinger. Well, at least now she knew the location of the missing American woman. State had verified just moments ago the sketchy information the president had passed to Adam. There had been two American women in the village at the time of the raid—one a medical sister from the Order of Our Lady of Sorrows, the other a Peace Corps volunteer by the name of Sarah Chandler.

  But which one had been buried in the shallow grave, and which one was now smack in the middle of Jake’s operation? Until she gathered that rather vital bit of information, Maggie decided she’d better find out all she could about both of them.

  Twenty minutes and as many contacts with various agencies later, she sat back in her chair and frowned at her two pages of scribbled notes. Scanning the profiles she’d pieced together, Maggie decided she didn’t much like either one.

  Sister Maria Augustine, age thirty-four. Formerly Helen Peters. Born in Pattersonville, Ohio. Joined the Order of Our Lady of Sorrows a year after graduation from nursing school. A highly skilled nurse practitioner who’d spent nearly half her life in Central America. As well known for her clashes with the bureaucratic government officials who regulated her medical station as for her outspoken criticism of the rebels who preyed on the people she served.

  And Sarah Chandler, twenty-nine, daughter of Senator Orwin Chandler. Graduate of Sweet Briar College, with a degree in education she’d never put to use. A wealthy, pampered socialite whose affair with a married diplomat had caused a feeding frenzy among the Washington press corps when it was uncovered six months ago. And whose drunk-driving conviction a few weeks later had led to her disappearance from the Washington scene.

  According to Maggie’s sources, Senator Chandler had used his influence to convince the judge to give his daughter community service instead of a jail sentence. Again because of her father’s influence, Sarah Chandler had been allowed to perform that service as a volunteer with the Peace Corps.

  Maggie groaned and shoved a hand through her hair. Great, just great! Jake was stuck down there in the jungle with either a scandal-ridden socialite or a social activist of a nun on his hands. At this point, she wasn’t sure which one she hoped it was.

  Sarah Chandler sat on a fifty-pound sack of dried beans, an arm around Ricci’s small body. Teresa clutched at her other sleeve with both hands, while Eduard, his face solemn in the sweltering haze of the hut, stared at her with wide black eyes.

  Desperately Sarah tried to stifle the fear that had gripped her since the stutter of machine-gun fire had torn her from sleep so many hours ago and even now made her hair slick with sweat under the limp veil. Despite her best efforts, a series of tremors racked her.

  Oh, God, what was she doing here? How had her life turned upside down like this in such a short time?

  Humid, suffocating heat seared her lungs with each gulping breath. She glanced around the hut in mounting dismay. The panic she’d held at bay all through the long, terrifying night clogged her throat.

  Her father was right! She could have worked out her shattering guilt over the consequences of her actions at home just as well as in the Peace Corps. She could’ve done community service in D.C., or in their home state of North Carolina, for that matter, anywhere other than some remote little village in the middle of the jungle. Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, seeing Orwin Chandler’s big, hearty figure as he paced the paneled library of the Bethesda home they shared, puffing on the one cigar he allowed himself each day.

  If she’d listened to her father, if she hadn’t pitted herself against him for perhaps the first time in her life, she wouldn’t be here in an airless shack, pretending a medical knowledge she didn’t possess. She wouldn’t be bound by horrible chance and circumstance to a steel-eyed mercenary who—

  “Sarita?”

  Ricci’s wobbling voice pulled Sarah back from the brink of a hysteria engendered by delayed shock and total exhaustion.

  “Sarita, tengo que ir al baño.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending. Her formal Spanish, sketchy at best, seemed to have deserted her completely. Nor had she been in country long enough to gain any real understanding of the local dialect. The people she’d lived with these past weeks had hidden their smiles at her faltering attempts to communicate and replied politely in English. Even these children had a better command of her language than she did of theirs. Somehow, that made Sarah feel even worse.

  “I’m sorry, Ricci,” she said shakily. “Please, tell me again.”

  “I have to make the pee,” he announced in English.

  “Oh.”

  “Me, also,” Teresa chimed in.

  Their simple needs steadied Sarah as perhaps nothing else could have. After a dark night of terror and a morning that had brought them to the grim
reality of the rebel camp, they needed to make pee. Sarah reined in her incipient panic, reminding herself that she’d promised Maria she’d watch over these abandoned children until the church authorities came for them.

  Maria! A stab of regret lanced through Sarah for the woman she’d grown so close to in such a short space of time. Strong, competent, no-nonsense Sister Maria, with her skilled hands and sympathetic brown eyes. Maria, who’d died so needlessly, so tragically, just two days ago after the Jeep she’d been hauling medical supplies in hit a tree root and overturned, crushing her underneath.

  Ricci tugged impatiently on her sleeve. “Sarita!”

  “Okay, honey, okay.”

  The…the gringo had said not to go outside. Biting down on her lower lip, Sarah glanced around for a vessel the children could use. The hut was too small and too airless for them to just relieve themselves on the hard-packed dirt floor.

  Aside from the stacked wooden crates she’d been warned away from, the only contents of the hut were sacks of coffee, rice, and the black beans that formed the main dietary staple in this region. Some dirty, ragged bedrolls had been tossed in one corner, along with a wadded pile of mosquito netting. Her gaze fell on the gringo’s backpack, propped against the wall. Maybe there was something inside she could appropriate.

  Tugging her arm free of Teresa’s clutching hands, Sarah pushed herself off the cot and crossed to the bulging brown-and-green knapsack. Inside she found a cache of items necessary for survival in the tropics—quinine, a first aid kit, snakebite antidote, a plastic bottle of water-purifier capsules. There was also a shaving kit that held a few toiletries, as well as two small travel toothbrushes. Greedily grabbing one of the toothbrushes, Sarah set it and a squeezed-up tube of toothpaste aside, then dug deeper. She pulled out a poncho, vital in a country where torrential rains pounded out of the sky for at least an hour every day during rainy season, and a spare pair of the high, flexible rubber boots with thin soles necessary for walking any distance through the streams and soggy layers of vegetation in the rain forest.

  Frustrated, Sarah turned to the side pockets. Her rummaging fingers extracted a clean, if wrinkled, khaki shirt from one pocket, a thick wad of socks from another, and from the last a couple of pairs of white cotton men’s briefs.

  Sarah fingered the soft cotton. To her consternation, a flush added to the heat bathing her cheeks as she stared at the Jockey shorts. Size 34, she read on the label. Unadorned, utilitarian, and utterly masculine.

  For the first time, Sarah visualized the man she’d spent the past five desperate hours with as…as a man. A startling mental image of his lean, muscled body clothed only in these briefs gripped her. She remembered suddenly how his sweat-dampened shirt had clung to wide shoulders and delineated the taut muscles of his upper arms. How the web belt sporting a long, lethal-looking machete and a plain leather holster had hung low on his narrow hips. How…

  “Saritaaaa!”

  At the small, desperate wail, Sarah jumped. She crammed the briefs back into the side pocket and scrabbled in the dirt for the likeliest receptacle.

  “They used my boot?”

  The gringo’s voice rose incredulously. He stood just inside the hut, canteens dangling from one arm, a mounded plate of beans and rice in either hand.

  At the sound of his harsh exclamation, Teresa whimpered. Sarah wrapped an arm around the girl’s thin shoulders and pulled her into her side.

  “Well, they had to use something,” she pointed out.

  “They used my boot?”

  “Oh, for—” Sarah bit off the impatient exclamation. What was the big deal? “You can rinse it out in the stream. After you provide something more suitable for the children to use.”

  He slammed the tin plate down on one of the crates. “There’s a whole damn jungle right outside. They can use that!”

  “You said not to leave the hut,” she retorted, then belatedly remembered her role. “And I must ask you to refrain from taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

  Under the dark stubble that shadowed his face, his jaw worked. Narrowed gray eyes glittered with an anger he made no effort to disguise. “Look, lady—Sister—we’re going to lay a few ground rules here.”

  The unmistakable menace in his voice turned Teresa’s whimpers to outright sobs. She burrowed into the smothering folds of the black robe and sent sharp little elbows poking in Sarah’s side.

  The scowl on the man’s face deepened at the girl’s sobs. He looked so fierce and threatening that Sarah’s brief spurt of defiance evaporated. She gripped Teresa with a sudden feeling of panic.

  His effect on the boys was no less dramatic. Little Ricci whimpered that they would die and buried his face in the thick black skirt. Eduard rose from his cross-legged position on the floor, sidled next to Sarah, and put a hand on her shoulder.

  She wasn’t sure whether the eight-year old meant to draw comfort from her or reassure her. Eduard rarely spoke. Even the skilled, patient Sister Maria hadn’t been able to draw the boy from the silent shell he’d encased himself in since one of the villagers found him in the jungle several years ago, thin-ribbed, hollow-faced, and starving. His flat black eyes gave no hint of his thoughts or his emotions.

  The touch of Eduard’s small hand on her shoulder sent a wave of confused emotions through Sarah. She was ashamed of her sudden panic, yet too exhausted to summon the courage to combat it. And, worse, she was swamped by the enormity of the responsibility that had been thrust upon her.

  She didn’t know anything about children! She knew even less about jungle survival. How could she hope to escape and make it back to civilization dragging three kids? How could she defend herself, let alone them, from the furious man who confronted them? She wanted to burst into tears and bury her face in Teresa’s tangled hair.

  The gringo must have seen that he’d pushed her to the limit of her resources. The glittering anger in his eyes gave way to disgust. He rattled off something in Spanish that Sarah didn’t catch and turned to dump the canteens beside the plate he’d slammed down a few moments ago. Reining in his temper with a visible effort, he shrugged off the weapon slung over his shoulder and propped it against the wall next to his backpack. He settled himself on the wooden box, his long legs sprawled out and his back against the stack behind him.

  Whatever he’d said seemed to reassure the children. Or maybe it was his less threatening stance. In any case, Teresa’s cries dwindled to gulping hiccups. Ricci’s face appeared from the folds of Sarah’s skirt. He glanced at the gringo, then at the food. After a moment, he pulled himself up and waddled over to the plates. Digging a grubby hand into the combination of rice and cold black beans, he proceeded to stuff the mixture into his mouth.

  Wearily Sarah unwrapped her arm from the little girl’s body. “Go on, Teresa. You must eat. You too, Eduard.” She sent the older boy a glance she could only hope was calm and confident.

  “You, also, Sarita,” Teresa insisted, refusing to relinquish her tight grip on her sleeve. “You come, too.”

  Sarah nodded and started to push herself to her feet.

  “Sarita?”

  The deep voice rasped like rough sandpaper along Sarah’s frayed nerves. She froze, wondering wildly if she should tell this man her real name. Did she dare trust him with the knowledge that she wasn’t the medical sister he believed her to be? She straightened and brushed the straggling veil out of her face to look at him.

  No. No way. Not this hard-eyed mercenary. If he bartered his despicable skills for the drug dollars these rebels paid him, she shuddered to think of the price he’d demand for the daughter of a United States senator.

  “Sarita is what the children call me.” Pulling the first name she could think of out of the air, she met his gaze. “I’m Sister Sarah Josepha. From the convent of Our Lady of Sorrows.”

  She managed to roll the convent name off confidently enough. In the few weeks they’d worked side by side in the small clinic Maria ran, Sarah had learned a great deal about her com
panion’s religious background. Open, friendly, at times blunt and outspoken, Maria had held nothing back. Sarah had found herself envying the woman her dedication and sense of purpose.

  “Our Lady of Sorrows,” he murmured. “Appropriate.”

  Sarah stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He flicked a glance at the children, now crouched down in front of the food and busy filling their empty bellies. “Only that we’re both going to experience a lot more sorrow than we can handle if we don’t keep a real cool head for the next few days.”

  A sharp splinter of hope pierced Sarah’s heart. “The next few days? Do you mean we’ll only be here a few days? Then you’ll let us go?”

  “I don’t know how long you’ll be here,” he replied flatly.

  The hope in Sarah’s chest exploded into tiny shards of a disappointment so painful she choked.

  His brows drew into a dark slash. “Look, Sister Sarah, if it was up to me, I’d put you and the kids on a packhorse right now and get you the hell out of Dodge. I’m not exactly thrilled to have the four of you on my hands while I’m trying to conduct a…business operation.”

  The hesitation was so slight that Sarah almost missed it. Bitterness and frustration curled her lip. “A business operation? Is that what you call it? There’s a word for people like you, you know, and it’s not entrepreneur.”

  He rose to his feet and took a slow step toward her.

  Sarah swallowed, but refused to back away.

  “You’ve got a real mouth on you, for a nun,” he commented softly.

  He was so close Sarah could smell the tang of healthy male sweat emanating from his chest. She stared up at him, seeing the hard line of his jaw under the stubble that shadowed it. She realized suddenly that tall and lean translated into overpowering and rather dangerous at such close quarters. Rubbing damp palms down the sides of her skirts, Sarah took a deep breath and summoned up the last tattered remnants of her courage.