The Heart of a Mercenary

by White, Loreth Anne

  It was this mind-set, this philosophy, that McBride, Sauvage, Zayed and Ngomo took with them when they left the Legion to form the Force du Sable, an efficient, lean, private military company that over the last ten years had developed a reputation for having trained some of the most skilled and dangerous soldiers on earth—fearless warrior monks who now served as a model for future rapid-action units in a modern world of limited-intensity conflict and terrorism.

  Zayed’s eyes flashed back to the LCD screen and he gave a soft snort. “Tough way out? That terrain between the Shilongwe and the Cameroonian border is some of the most hostile known to man. Plus he’s got the nurse with him.”

  “McBride’s come out of worse,” Ngomo said simply, and turned back to his computer, his massive hands dwarfing the keyboard.

  08:03 Alpha. Shilongwe River.

  Monday, September 22

  As the river widened and the current slowed, the drop in velocity and Sarah’s limp weight began to drag Hunter down. Wet clothing didn’t help. At least the sealed biohazard container was buoyant, as was his waterproof pack. With the container in one hand and his other arm hooked across Sarah’s chest, he gave slow, powerful scissor kicks, swimming diagonally across the current, using it instead of fighting it.

  As he moved downriver, he scanned the wall of tangled vegetation that crowded the banks for any signs of movement, but saw none. The forest was dense along this stretch. There was likely no one about for miles.

  Hunter soon found what he was looking for—a break in the vegetation. He aimed for a gentle slope of white beach about a hundred yards downstream. At least they were moving in the direction of the Cameroonian border.

  He neared the bank, sought footing in the silt, dragged Sarah up out of the water and laid her down on the sand. He immediately checked the seal on the biohazard canister. To his relief, it was secure. His rifle and machete were also still strapped across his back. He shrugged off his pack, glanced around. The place was deserted. They’d be safe for a while.

  He turned his attention to Sarah, and his heart stalled. There was froth around her mouth and nose, and her skin was going blue. He dropped to his knees, felt for a pulse.

  There was none.

  Guilt rammed into his heart. He hadn’t realized she was this far gone. He’d been too worried about being shot at, too worried about losing the pathogen. He quickly opened her mouth, clearing away foam, checking for any foreign material. He placed one hand on her forehead, tilted her chin back with the other, opening her airway. He pinched her nostrils shut, sucked in a deep breath of air and put his mouth over hers.

  He blew a slow and steady stream of breath into her, his eyes fixed on her chest, watching for a sign that air was getting into her lungs.

  He waited two seconds, saw her chest rise and sink as the air expelled from her lungs. He sucked in another deep breath and once again positioned his lips over hers, keeping his eyes trained on her chest as he blew. He saw it rise again. He quickly located her breastbone and began chest compressions, alternating compressions with breaths, again and again.

  Hunter’s whole body ached. He was wet with river water and sweat, being steamed alive under the equatorial sun. His vision began to swim, and the guilt in his heart was nearly overwhelming. He’d thought of the biohazard container first. He’d thought of the mission, of the millions of people who would die if he didn’t get the pathogen out of the jungle. But perhaps, just maybe, if he’d tended to Sarah a second earlier… Hot anger swirled through the cold guilt in his chest. He’d be damned if he was going to let her die!

  He gritted his teeth. He’d gotten her this far. Now he was going to take her and the pathogen all the way.

  He sucked in another deep breath of air and forced it steadily it into her lungs, mechanically pumping her heart.

  And then suddenly, he felt the small flutter of a pulse. Hunter’s heart stumbled, kicked hard against his ribs. Her limbs spasmed and her stomach began to heave. He quickly flipped Sarah onto her side and she retched violently, expelling river water and lumps of foam.

  Relief, thick and sweet, surged through his veins. He held her as she heaved. Color was returning to her skin, oxygen getting into her blood.

  Hunter’s eyes burned hot with gratitude. His jaw went tight with the sense of triumph over death, and he lifted his face to the sky. And for an instant he almost found himself yelling thanks to a God he no longer believed in.

  When he looked at her face again, she was watching him, her eyes dark hollows in a pale void. He wiped her mouth with the edge of his wet shirt and tried to smile. “You made it.”

  She said nothing, just stared at him.

  He sniffed back the strange cocktail of emotions burning in him, and lifted a wet ribbon of hair from her brow. “I’m going to move you up the beach to some shade, okay?”

  She closed her eyes, nodded.

  She felt like a wet rag doll in his arms as he carried her up the small strip of sand. He laid her down in the shade of a palm, but as he tried to step away, she grabbed at the fabric of his shirt, balling it in white-knuckled fists, her eyes wide like an animal snared in headlights. She was terrified he was going to abandon her. She saw him as her lifeline.

  If only she knew.

  “Hey, it’s okay, I’m not going to leave you,” he said, lowering himself onto the sand beside her, knowing that if it really came down to it, he couldn’t keep his word. He lifted her head, rested it on his lap, tried to stroke some of the sand from her damp hair, and while he did, racked his brain for some comforting reassurances he could whisper to her.

  But nothing came to him. He felt totally useless. He could satisfy a woman physically, knew what places to touch, how to drive her to such dizzying sensual delirium that she would scream out for release. But emotionally? This was uncharted territory for Hunter McBride. He had no idea how to simply make a woman feel safe. Christ, he’d barely managed to keep her alive.

  The tang of remorse stung his tongue. He told himself he’d done the right thing, he’d kept his priorities straight. And if it truly came down to the wire, if he was literally forced to choose between Sarah Burdett or the pathogen, he’d have to go with the latter. There was no option. That was his job. Black-and-white. Pure and simple. Because if they didn’t get this lethal bug into a lab and find an antidote, millions would die three weeks from now—people just as innocent and unprepared as Sarah Burdett.

  One life to save millions. Law enforcement agencies the world over dealt with equations like that on a daily basis and made the same decisions.

  So why did he feel like crap?

  Sarah stirred on his lap, moaned softly, the soft weight of her breast rubbing against the inside of his forearm. Heat speared through his belly.

  Hunter angrily swallowed the sensation. Jesus, this was not the time. He looked away from the transparent fabric of her camisole, away from the dark outline of her nipple under the wet cloth, and forced himself to breathe. To plan. To think clear, hard, cold logistics.

  He wasn’t going to be able to move Sarah for a while. She was going to need rest. And then she’d need food, water. They’d be safe here for a few hours, but they would have to get going by nightfall at least. He needed to contact the FDS base.

  Hunter reached for the front-left compartment of his flak jacket. His fingers met fabric, and his heart skipped a beat.

  The flap had come undone.

  He thrust his hand into the pocket. Empty. He cursed under his breath. His satellite phone, their one and only secure link to the outside world, was gone. He must have lost it in the Shilongwe. How could the flap have come loose? Had he even secured it? He cursed aloud in French. If he’d been totally focused on the job this would never have happened.

  Now he was stuck with Sarah in the middle of bloody nowhere, with no contact with the outside world, just the two of them in a war-torn country set to blow. And over their heads hung the threat of a biological attack, and responsibility for the lives of millions of Ameri
cans who would die if he failed to make it out alive, and soon. It didn’t get much better than this.

  He swore again. Wasn’t much he could do about it now apart from waiting until she was up to moving again. They were going to have to make it out on foot. No question about that. He and Sarah were going to have to physically hack their way to the Cameroonian border, and because of her, the going would be slow. Real slow. Time he didn’t have. Time the president of the United States and his people didn’t have.

  Hunter squinted into the sky, checked the angle of the sun. He figured they couldn’t be more than thirty miles from Cameroon, if they went along the river. But that wasn’t an option. The route they’d have to take would work out a lot longer than thirty miles, and a lot tougher than following the course of the river.

  He looked down at Sarah. She was asleep now, breathing easily. He’d need to get her out of those cotton pants so they could dry. Things had a nasty way of rotting against your body out here. But there was no freaking way he was going to try undressing her again. She could do that herself when he woke her up again in a few minutes. In the meantime, he had his own gear to dry out.

  He rolled out from under her, stood up, then hesitated. Her wet sneakers would have to come off now. Drying her shoes and socks out before nightfall was a priority. Fungus, bacteria and rotting skin were some of the biggest hazards in the jungle, and she was going to need her feet if she wanted to live. He figured he could handle her shoes without coming undone.

  He crouched down, untied her wet laces and removed her sodden sneakers, along with the wet tennis socks she was wearing. He paused, looking at her feet. They were narrow, with beautiful arches. Her skin was pale, and her toenails were painted the white-pink of spring blossoms. Nail polish in the jungle? A smile sneaked across Hunter’s lips and tenderness blossomed softly through his chest.

  He wrung the water from her socks and spread them out on a rock in the sun to dry. He stared down at them and shook his head. They had a pale yellow trim and little yellow pompoms on the back. Pompoms in the jungle? Maybe they’d come in handy as fish lure when they got hungry.

  He shrugged out of his combat vest and shirt and draped them over the rock next to her socks. Then he squatted on the hot sand and began to toss stuff out of his pack, checking to see if anything was wet. He kept his rifle at his side and a constant eye on the river and jungle border.

  Sarah squinted into the harsh daylight, the movement pulling at the bandage on her cheek. She touched it, confused. Where was she? Images sifted into her mind—the helicopter, her lifeline disappearing into the shimmering sky…the shooting. Water. The container! She jerked upright. Where was Hunter?

  He was a few yards from her, sitting on a rock by the water, cleaning his gun. He was naked from the waist up, a darkly tanned and potent figure against the white glare of the sand. Sun glinted on his black hair, and his body gleamed with perspiration and humidity.

  He stilled, looked up suddenly and smiled. “Hello.”

  Sarah’s jaw dropped. The black face paint was gone, and what was left was magnificent. Not beautiful. Magnificent in a gut-slamming, powerful male kind of way. How he was looking at her, how the light caught his eyes, clean took her breath away.

  She closed her eyes. Maybe when she opened them again, life would seem more real. But he was still there when she flicked them open. She was still on the banks of some brown river in the heart of the Congo, with one of the most dangerous-looking males she’d ever seen in her life. Panic licked through her. She struggled to get up, but the world spun and she sank back.

  “Hey, take it easy,” he said, pushing himself to his feet in a fluid movement. Holding the barrel of his rifle in one hand, he stalked over the shimmering-hot sand. The dark hair that covered his pecs glistened with moisture and gathered into a sexy whorl that trailed down the center of his rock-hard belly and disappeared into the belt of his camouflage pants. Sarah just stared. Her brain wasn’t working right. Everything looked surreal.

  He crouched beside her, rummaged in his pack and handed her a foil pack of army-style rations and a canteen of water. She noted with relief that the biohazard canister sat alongside the pack, right next to her in the shade.

  “Get some fuel into your system,” he said. “And then we can get you out of those pants.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  A twinkle of amusement flickered through his eyes. “We need to make sure your clothes are dry, Sarah. We move at nightfall. As soon as the sun sets, we’re off.”

  “What?” Alarm flared in her. “At night? Why? Where are we going?” She sat up stiffly. “Where are we, Hunter?”

  “Still on the Shilongwe. We washed a couple of miles north. We need to try and make it to the Cameroonian border now.”

  “Cameroon! How?”

  “We walk.”

  “You have got to be kidding!” But even as she spoke, she could see by the look in his eyes that he was dead serious. Tongues of panic licked through her. She could not go through another night in the jungle. “Why…why can’t you just call your people and get them to fly another helicopter in like you did before?” She looked around frantically. “It could land here…couldn’t it?”

  Hunter cocked a brow. “My people? The ones who get paid to do this sort of thing?”

  “Yes, them.” Being rescued seemed a pretty good option right now, by mercenaries or not. But judging by the expression on his face, that was not going to happen anytime soon. A cold dread seeped into her chest. “You…you’re not going to call them, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Lost the phone in the river.”

  “Oh my God. So we’re…”

  “Yes, Sarah. We’re on our own.”

  She looked up at the sky. It would be dark in a few hours; the sudden cloak of pure blackness dropped at precisely 6:07 local time. Panic edged into her throat. She couldn’t do this again. It had taken everything just to survive the night before.

  He was watching her intently, appraising her on some fundamental level, deciding if she had the mettle to make it to Cameroon. The fact sobered her. It reminded her of why they were here, of what was in the biohazard container, of Dr. Regnaud. She swallowed, tried to find her voice. “How…how long will it take?”

  “Maybe three days, if we’re lucky.”

  Three days! And this morning she’d believed she’d be out of the Congo within the hour.

  “It would be quicker if we went down the Shilongwe, but we can’t risk that. There are settlements, people along the riverbanks. We can’t chance being seen. We can’t trust anyone right now, Sarah.”

  “Why not?” She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know the answer.

  “There was a coup in Brazzaville this morning. The entire country is in a state of civil war and we’re foreigners, Sarah. We’re sitting ducks. We’re anyone’s enemy.”

  She stared at him. “You mean the people shooting at us from across the river had nothing to do with the soldiers who attacked the clinic?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then where are the soldiers?”

  “Probably tracking us.”

  She shuddered, clutched her arms over her knees. “And you really think going through the forest will be safer than along the river?”

  “Tougher, and slower. But yeah, it’ll be safer, and the sooner we manage to reach the Blacklands, the better.”

  “Blacklands?”

  “The dense jungle swamp of the interior. Locals believe the area is cursed. No one ventures in there apart from Pygmy tribes and wild animals. It’s unlikely anyone will follow us in there.”

  “Cursed? You are toying with me…right?”

  He smiled. “It’s a local superstition born out of an Ebola outbreak several years ago. Villagers who’d been hunting in the swamp region brought the disease out with them. Anyone who came in contact with them got sick, started dying. As is the custom, the village elders consulted with their sorcerer, w
ho told them the area had been cursed by evil spirits and that anyone who ventured into the region should be banished from the tribe, or killed. This helped control the spread of Ebola, and the belief in the curse became entrenched in local culture. No one ever goes in there now. Superstition in this place is supremely powerful, and it’s not a force to be ignored. Out here, it’s the law of life, and there’s a reason for it. It preserves life.”

  “Well, I’m not going in there, either,” she said. “I’d rather take my chances along the river.”

  He snorted softly. “You have less chance of stumbling over the Ebola virus in the Blacklands, Sarah, than you have of running into hostile militia along the Shilongwe.”

  “It’s…it’s not just Ebola. It’s…” She glanced at the forest fringe. “There has got to be another way, Hunter. Please understand…I just can’t do it. I can’t spend another night stumbling blind through the jungle.”

  He studied her at length, his eyes growing cool. He looked suddenly distant, dangerous again. It made her nervous.

  “I…I mean it,” she said, her voice wobbling. “I just don’t have it left in me. I—I can’t.”

  The muscle at his jaw began to pulse softly. She could see he was thinking, trying to figure out what to do with her. And she didn’t like how it made her feel a liability.

  “Sarah,” he said finally, “I can’t force you to do it.” He rose to his feet. “Stay here on the Shilongwe if you want. I’ll take the pathogen, make better time without you. It’s your choice.” His eyes bored down into hers. “It has to be.” He turned, strode down the beach, seated himself on the rock and resumed cleaning his gun in silence.

  Her jaw dropped. He wouldn’t leave her alone, would he? Could he really be so coldhearted?

  She couldn’t be sure. She didn’t know Hunter McBride at all. She had no idea what he might be capable of. A mad terror began to nip at her brain, skewing her logic. Josh would do it. He’d leave her here. Sarah had learned the hard way just how cruel a man could be. She’d seen Josh walk out on six years of marriage without blinking an eye, and then send in his lawyer to pick the rest of her bones clean. Tears pricked at her eyes.