Behind Enemy Lines

by Cindy Dees

  “Fasten your seat belts! Former AF pilot Cindy Dees takes you on a wild ride packed with nonstop action, hair-raising adventure and blazing romance. The military has never looked so tough—or so sexy.”

  —USA TODAY bestselling author Merline Lovelace

  Annie stared at her unwilling patient. “What would it take to get you to stay in bed where you belong?”

  “There is one thing I might like enough to stay in bed for….” His grin took on a suggestive slant. “You. If I can have a taste of you, I might stay in bed a little longer.”

  She felt hot all of a sudden. “And just what constitutes a ‘taste’ of me?”

  “A kiss.”

  It was tempting. “You’ll stay in bed if I play along with this foolishness?”

  She did her best to sound resigned. It was better than letting on how her heart was racing like crazy and her breath was suddenly short.

  “This is blackmail,” she murmured. “But I’ll do it. For your own good….”

  Dear Reader,

  It’s always cause for celebration when Sharon Sala writes a new book, so prepare to cheer for The Way to Yesterday. How many times have you wished for a chance to go back in time and get a second chance at something? Heroine Mary O’Rourke gets that chance, and you’ll find yourself caught up in her story as she tries to make things right with the only man she’ll ever love.

  ROMANCING THE CROWN continues with Lyn Stone’s A Royal Murder. The suspense—and passion—never flag in this exciting continuity series. Catherine Mann has only just begun her Intimate Moments career, but already she’s created a page-turning military miniseries in WINGMEN WARRIORS. Grayson’s Surrender is the first of three “don’t miss” books. Look for the next, Taking Cover, in November.

  The rest of the month unites two talented veterans— Beverly Bird, with All the Way, and Shelley Cooper, with Laura and the Lawman—with exciting newcomer Cindy Dees, who debuts with Behind Enemy Lines. Enjoy them all—and join us again next month, when we once again bring you an irresistible mix of excitement and romance in six new titles by the best authors in the business.

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Executive Senior Editor

  Behind Enemy Lines

  CINDY DEES

  CINDY DEES

  started flying airplanes, sitting in her dad’s lap, when she was three, and she was the only kid in the neighborhood who got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. After college she fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a U.S. Air Force pilot. She flew everything from supersonic jets to C-5’s, the world’s largest cargo airplane. During her career, she got shot at, met her husband, flew in the Gulf War and amassed a lifetime supply of war stories. After she left flying to have a family, she was lucky enough to fulfill another lifelong dream—writing a book. Little did she imagine that it would win the RWA Golden Heart Contest and sell to Silhouette! She’s thrilled to be able to share her dream, Behind Enemy Lines, with readers, and she would love to hear what people think if it, at www.cindydees.com or P.O. Box 210, Azle, TX 76098.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 1

  A ir Force Captain Annie O’Donnell eased off the throttle and pulled back on the collective. She brought her helicopter smoothly to a hover over a featureless spot in the black ocean of jungle below them. The rendezvous point. Somewhere beneath her, a team of American soldiers was watching a rebel army prepare to go to war. And tonight that team was bugging out.

  “What’s the infrared scope showing, Rusty?”

  Her copilot shrugged. “I’ve got an image of a clearing directly beneath us, maybe fifty feet across. No heat signatures, yet.”

  Five long minutes ticked by while they waited for the distinctive glowing blobs of human heat to light up the dark scope.

  “Anything?” she asked yet again.

  “Still nothing. You know, we can’t sit here all night, boss. Somebody’s bound to hear us eventually.”

  “Let’s give it one more minute.”

  She was a sitting duck, hovering stationary like this. It didn’t take fancy detection equipment to hear the distinctive thwocking noise of a helicopter. The back of her neck itched ominously.

  She addressed the two crewmen manning the winch in the back. “Gentlemen, when we leave, I’m going to bank hard to the right and accelerate fast. Don’t get dumped out the door.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Retract the forest penetrator seat and prepare for departure,” she ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Annie’s palms went slick with sweat on the control column. It was a good bet that missing this pickup would make her passengers’ lives a heap more complicated for the next couple of days.

  “Seat’s retracted and stowed, Captain.”

  “And we’re out of here in five, four, three…”

  “Wait!” Rusty called out. “Got ’em. Two targets in the clearing, more moving in. They’re transmitting the proper codes.”

  The winch motor whirred behind her, already lowering the cable and its heavy, steel seat back into the clearing some hundred feet below the canopy of leaves. The men behind her traded terse commands while one manned the winch motor and the other hung out the door, guiding the cable and reporting on the progress of the evacuation.

  “Man in.”

  Annie heard the grunt of the first soldier as he landed unceremoniously on his belly on the Huey’s floor. He was left to crawl out of the way and right himself while her crew continued the evacuation.

  “Clear.”

  “Roger, winch away.”

  Metal hissed as the steel cable hurtled down into the belly of the beast once more.

  “Two’s on the seat.”

  “Hoisting him. Ten feet per second.”

  That was pretty fast. Whoever was hanging on that cable was getting a heck of a ride and probably getting the dickens scratched out of him as he tore up through the trees.

  Two more soldiers landed in the helicopter.

  “Winch away.”

  “Cap’n, I’ve got movement on the scope.”

  “Talk to me, Rusty,” she ordered.

  “I’ve got the last two men center screen. I paint four, maybe six more people just coming into range.”

  Annie frowned. They weren’t expecting company. “You copy that, back there?”

  “Yes ma’am. We’re hauling ’em up like bats outta hell back here.”

  “Range, Rusty?”

  “Five hundred feet. Ten hostile targets now.”

  “How are we doing, gentlemen?”

  “Number five on the cable, ma’am.”

  “Max out the winch. We need to go. Now.”

  “Already doin’ it. Fourteen feet per second.”

  “Cable’s at forty feet. Thirty. Twenty! Slow the winch!” Frank shouted.

  “Relax, Frank. I got it.” Arty groused.

  A thump as the fifth man hit the floor.

  “Clear.”

  “Winch away.”

  “One more to go, ma’am. Damn, Arty. You ’bout slammed the last one’s head into the skid!”

  Annie interrupted. “Cut the chatter, guys. Rusty, report.”

  “Hostiles at two hundred feet. Closing fast.”

  Annie glanced over at the radar screen, then back at her own controls. A sudden warning tone made her jump.

  “Trouble!” Rusty yelled. “They�
�ve got antiaircraft weapons! Looks like some sort of surface-to-air missile.”

  “Have they got lock on?”

  “Not yet, Cap’n.”

  “Where’s the last man, Frank?” she asked tersely.

  “Climbing on the seat now.”

  “Get him out of there. He’s about to have company.”

  “Cable’s winding, ma’am.”

  “How far to lift him, Frank?”

  “Eighty feet.”

  Rusty’s voice was clipped, desperate. “Weapon activation, Annie.” His voice rose. “They’re gonna shoot as soon as they get lock on.”

  “How far, Frank?” she called.

  “Fifty feet!”

  Ping. Ping, ping, ping. Annie flinched and ducked. There was no other sound quite like bullets tearing through metal.

  “Winch is hit! Motor’s jammed!” Arty yelled. The warning tone in the cockpit changed pitch, became louder, more insistent.

  Lock on. Her gut turned to water.

  “We gotta go, Annie!” Rusty shouted.

  Frank yelled from the back. “I got a man hangin’ on my cable. ’Bout forty feet down. He’s gonna die if we drag him through the trees.”

  They were all going to die if a missile hit them.

  The next moment suspended itself around Annie in a slow-motion eternity where life and death hung in delicate balance. She could stay and try to retrieve the man hanging below her, thereby jeopardizing the lives of the nine people on board, or she could go, probably kill the man on the cable, and save everybody else.

  “Hang on!” she shouted as she slammed the throttles forward.

  She felt, rather than heard, the first thud when the man beneath her crashed into a tree. The scream of the engines wasn’t loud enough to drown out the collective groan that issued from the five passengers in the back.

  Dear God. What had she done?

  Please don’t let that man suffer. Please make his death swift and painless.

  She climbed as high as she dared, right to the thirty-foot limit of the envelope over the jungle where radar couldn’t paint her. The man on the cable was still in the trees, but hopefully the smaller growth at the top of the jungle would be less destructive than the heavier trunks and branches lower down.

  The guy didn’t have a chance in the world of surviving, but on the off possibility that some higher power owed him a miracle, she planned to give him all the help she could.

  Every few seconds a shudder passed into her hands from the helicopter’s control column as the body of the soldier beneath her hit another tree. She nearly moaned aloud as grisly images of his mangled form swam in her mind’s eye, shredding her self-control. It took every ounce of her self-discipline to force her mind to the business at hand.

  “Status report, Rusty. What did that ground fire hit?”

  “Your VHF radio’s out, the oil system’s leaking.”

  “How bad?”

  “It’ll take an hour or more to run dry.”

  They could be back in St. George in forty minutes. Forty endless minutes for that man down there to bleed and suffer.

  “The door window got knocked out, and the winch got hit,” Rusty continued. “Beyond that, we’ve got bullet holes here and there. Nothing major.”

  Nothing major except a man dangling, dying, below her. A man who’d been counting on her to get him out alive.

  The interior of the helicopter went silent, except for the steady scream of the engines and the deep pounding of the rotor blades beating the air.

  Nine to one.

  Nine lives for one life.

  Nine devastated families or just one.

  She talked to distract herself. “Frank, Arty, any suggestions on how I ought to set this guy down?”

  “Yeah. Gently.”

  Frank cut in. “Shut up, Arty. You might want to radio the embassy, ma’am, and have one of the duty marines guide you down from the ground. We don’t want to drop this guy hard.”

  “While you’re at it, Captain, have them bring a cable cutter out to the pad.”

  “Why, Arty?”

  “That guy’s body is gonna be all tangled up in the cable. They’re gonna have to cut him out.”

  Annie squeezed her eyes shut against the image his words called to mind.

  “Right. Cable cutters. I’ll take care of it,” she choked out.

  She took a quick glance over her shoulder at her passengers. They wore black close-fitting clothing devoid of any military markings. Special Forces, then.

  “Arty, put one of our passengers up on headset, will you?”

  “Okay, just a sec.” There was a brief pause. “He’s up.”

  “What do you need, Captain?”

  The voice was tired, gruff.

  “Your buddy’s hanging under my helicopter and is no doubt, uhh, injured. I can proceed now to your planned drop-off point and leave him hanging. Or I can divert into St. George, which is about thirty minutes closer, and get medical treatment for him there. I don’t know anything about your team’s orders, so it’s your call.”

  “Stand by.” After a brief silence, the voice came back up on the headset. “St. George.”

  Man, he sure was talkative.

  “I’ll have the embassy doctor meet us when we land. If anything can be done to help your buddy, I’ll personally make it happen.”

  “He’s got a name, you know.”

  The man’s abrupt flash of anger startled her. But then why wouldn’t the guy be mad? She’d killed his friend, after all.

  She asked quietly, “What’s his name?”

  “Major Thomas P. Folly.”

  Tom’s whole existence could be summed up in one word. Pain.

  Grinding, unbearable pain ripping through his body. Just thinking about moving sent white starbursts of torture roaring through his brain. He’d have screamed if his throat muscles would cooperate, but they ignored his commands. He struggled against the sheer weight of the agony, fought for air, fought to open his eyes against the encroaching blackness.

  He did his best to hold it off, but inch by anguishing inch, he gave way. He was almost grateful when the darkness closed over his head, blanking out the light, blanking out thought, blanking out all feeling.

  He welcomed oblivion.

  Light. Shining brightly in his eyes. Someone tugged at his eyelids and shone that damn light at him again.

  Voices. Quiet, murmuring as if they stood beside a dead man.

  “…patient’s progressing extremely well, given the extent of his injuries…will maintain regimen of painkillers and sedation for a few more days…”

  Days?

  That was bad. But why?

  Think, you idiot. What’s so important about getting moving?

  His men. That was it. They needed him. He was their leader. He was responsible for them. He had to get up, get moving, take care of them. They had to go.

  Go where?

  The answer refused to come.

  A hand smoothed his brow with the infinite care of a mother’s touch. It soothed him deep down, in his soul. So long since he’d been touched like that. He fed on the caress, a starving man at a feast.

  And then the fingers slid into his hair. The touch was still light, but different somehow. It evolved into something sensual. Seductive. Female. A sudden, driving need tortured him. He wanted those hands all over him more than he wanted to draw another breath in this world.

  He opened his eyes to beg for his heart’s desire, and a fuzzy vision of a golden-haired woman swam before him. He couldn’t make out her face. Had he died? Was she an angel?

  Him in Heaven? No way. Not unless some celestial paper pusher up above had screwed up.

  His angel’s voice was throaty. Sexy. It flowed over him, hot and sweet. His body’s most primal reaction kicked in with a vengeance, a pulsing, throbbing need that made him rock hard.

  Surely people in Heaven weren’t allowed to lust after angels. He must not be dead, after all. He’d never been so grateful f
or the discomfort of an arousal in his life.

  Who was she?

  “I’ve given you another dose of morphine. The pain will go away soon. Don’t fight it.”

  His gut clenched at the sinful promise of her voice. He shook his head in the negative. Boy, was he weak. His head wobbled like a newborn baby’s. He tried to lift his hand, to get the tube out of his mouth so he could tell her about his men, about his need to leave. About his need to have her touch him. His arm was so blasted heavy.

  She subdued him easily, pushing his arm back down to the mattress. Her hands kneaded the unused muscles of his shoulder, sending a melting warmth coursing through him. He could lie here forever if she’d just keep doing that to him.

  Something niggled at the back of his consciousness. He pushed it aside, but it kept intruding on the bliss of his angelic massage. Finally, reluctantly, he let the thought surface in his consciousness. There was something he was supposed to do…somewhere he had to go…

  It came back to him vaguely. He was supposed to lead his men out of the country. To safety.

  Man, her hands felt good.

  He closed his eyes and let the pleasure break over him like warm waves lapping upon a sunny beach.

  He awoke with a start. Something was different. He lay quietly and took inventory of his body. The respirator tube. It wasn’t taped over his mouth.

  He swallowed. His throat grated like sandpaper.

  “Thirsty.” It came out a croak, but at least his vocal cords worked.

  The blond angel of his hallucinations appeared like magic at his side. He was learning to love the sight of her.

  “Hi, there, handsome. How are you feeling today?”

  Her smile lit up the room and sent warmth seeping through him. Not the demanding lust from before, but just as beguiling.

  “Thirsty,” he repeated.

  She disappeared from his field of vision and came back carrying a glass with a plastic, flexible straw sticking out of it. She put its end between his teeth.

  He sucked and cool water flooded his mouth. It slid down his throat. Soothing. Every time he saw this woman she brought him relief.

  “Where am I?”

  “In a hospital in St. George, Gavarone.”