Hell, he wasn’t going to get mobile in time to subdue the bastard before the Tango got that rifle up and the bullets started flying. Except Pachico unwittingly came to his aid. The ghost’s second swipe at the gun went right through it and into the Tango’s side. The man seized up like he’d been pierced with a red-hot poker. Luckily the guy had some top-notch training behind him—rather than squealing and giving his position away, he locked the agony behind tight lips and rode it out.
From experience Rawls knew he had five seconds tops to get out, up, and take the Tango down while he was still occupied.
Rawls was out of the sleeping bag before Pachico removed his hand and blinked back out again. On his way to his feet, he snatched up one of the drier branches beside him and snapped it at an angle so the break was jagged and sharp.
The guy simply teetered there on his feet, his breath coming fast and uneven, before shaking his head and turning toward the sharp crack of the branch breaking. Rawls was on him before he finished the motion. One hand jerked the helmet off and clamped around the compressed mouth, while the other hand drove the jagged end of the stick into the Tango’s neck, right above the carotid artery, and then jerked the stick back out again.
As the poor bastard struggled urgently against his grip, Rawls bore down harder on the hand across the guy’s mouth, ignoring the teeth that dug into his palm, and the blood raining down on the ground. Raw, animalistic sounds, muffled by his hand, grew fainter and fainter. He counted the seconds off in his head. The Tango would bleed out in under two minutes, but he’d fall into unconsciousness in half that time.
Once the guy stopped moving, Rawls lowered him to the ground and knelt to take a quick pulse. Slow and thready. The poor bastard wouldn’t be getting back up again. Locking down regret—God knows the bastard wouldn’t have hesitated to take his life—he stripped the rifle and the pistol along with its holster off the limp figure. Then he quickly unbuckled the knife holster, with its fixed-blade knife, from the guy’s thigh.
The blade would come in mighty handy.
Undoubtedly Pachico would make a play for the weapons upon his return—but it was just one more thing to guard against. He couldn’t afford to be weaponless in the coming battle. Although how he was going to warn his team about the danger of their weapons going momentarily berserk for no apparent reason . . . yeah.
Locking his frustration down, he backtracked to his sleeping bag, shoved his filthy socks into his boots, and laced them up in record time. Then he grabbed the radio. He couldn’t afford to use it yet to warn his team. At least not unless he ran out of options.
Too likely his voice would carry and alert the wrong people. Even if he concealed the message in some fashion, just the fact that he’d radioed from the woods would give the game away and send the rest of the Tangos, who were holding on the perimeter, swarming into camp. What they were waiting for was unclear. Maybe for the entire team to assume positions, or—his mind flashed back in time, to the helicopter hovering over the driveway while Wolf’s Sierra Nevada home exploded.
Alarm lifted the hair on his arms. If the Tango he’d taken out was part of the mop-up team, and a chopper was on the way . . .
Sweet Jesus . . .
He needed to alert his team pronto.
He kept the radio in hand, in case he ran out of time, as he eased back into the woods and silently made his way toward the closest cabin, which happened to be the one he shared with Mac. He could access the structure through his bedroom window. It struck him as ironic that the window he’d left unlatched to facilitate his return or departure from his bedroom in the hopes of avoiding his teammates might just end up saving all their lives.
Assuming he could get there without notice. He had no clue how many Tangos stood between his current position and the cabin.
As it turned out, that number was two. The team hunting them had taken up position along the tree line, which made sense for monitoring and targeting. But the tactic left them at a clear disadvantage from the rear. They had no one guarding their sixes. No doubt they considered that vulnerability negligible. They were attacking at dawn after all, while everyone lay sleeping. There shouldn’t have been anyone in the forest for them to worry about. Hell—there wouldn’t have been, if it hadn’t been for a bitchy ghost.
Taking advantage of their vulnerability, Rawls fell back, easing from tree to tree. The second Tango blended into the shrubbery, but Rawls’s experienced eyes picked up on him immediately.
With the element of surprise on his side, and his visitor’s blade in his hand, Rawls had the second guy limp and on the ground in seconds. The third Tango was posted several yards to the right of the cabin. Another few seconds and his path to the window was clear. He wiped the blade on a tuft of grass and holstered the knife.
So far the team members had been positioned every fifty feet, give or take. Which meant he should have easy access to the window. Should being the operative word. You couldn’t count on logic or patterns, and leaving cover for open ground was always a gamble.
Still, it had to be done. So he crouched and rushed the window. With each abbreviated stride, the muscles of his back twitched in anticipation of a bullet or a blade.
Behind him the forest remained silent. Tranquil.
Reaching the window, he crouched and carefully pushed it to the left. So far so good . . . one last quick scan behind him, and he hoisted himself up and swung his feet inside. Carefully he eased himself back down, simultaneously shifting the rifle to the front so it wouldn’t get hung up on the window seal.
“What the fucking hell, you stupid motherfucker,” a harsh raspy voice growled as Rawls’s boots touched down on the wood floor.
Rawls raised his head and found a fully clothed and booted Mac glaring at him from the open bedroom door.
“The fucking window? Are you shitting—” His tirade cut off at the finger Rawls held to his lips. Mac’s dark eyes dropped, completing a quick up-and-down scan that took in every smear of blood on Rawls’s clothes.
Pivoting, Rawls eased the window closed again, and when he turned back, Mac was inches away.
“How many?” Mac asked in a low rumble.
“Every fifty feet.” Rawls calculated the length of the compound and doubled it. “Twenty-five—give or take.”
“How the hell did they get past the sensors? Wolf has this place wired to the gills,” Mac growled.
Rawls shrugged, but he could guess—Pachico. The bastard must have done something to the security system. Damn it, he should have expected something like this, took steps to prevent it. Instead, he’d let his preoccupation with Faith and his current situation blind him.
Mac glanced at the bloodstains.
Rawls shook the frustrated guilt off. Wallowing in regret wouldn’t help them. “I dropped three. We’re clear from here to west of the helipad.”
With a curt nod, Mac snatched the radio from Rawls’s grasp. “Zane and Cos can get their women into the tunnels. We need to grab Amy and her kids. Faith is in their cabin too. We’ll grab all four of them and hustle them below.”
“Faith’s in the kitchen,” Rawls said. He glanced at the radio and raised a brow. “They’ll be monitorin’ the channels.”
“No shit.” Mac grimaced. “Let’s hope Winters and Cosky are as smart as they think they are.” Mac’s voice turned grim. He shot a glance at Rawls. “You’ll need to get the doc underground. Grab the sat phone while you’re there. We’ll rendezvous in the hub.” He stared down at the radio for a moment and grimaced. “Let’s hope like hell those bastards circling us are monitoring the channels. We don’t have time to take the tunnels to grab the gals.” He glanced toward the window and lifted the radio to his mouth.
“Alpha two, three, and four.” Mac keyed the radio. “Jude’s taken a turn for the worse. We can’t wait for the medevac, that appendix needs to come out now. Doc will do the surgery, but we’ll need all hands on deck. Rawls is on his way to the lodge to get the med kit. The rest of us will rendezv
ous with Amy in the hub.” He paused. “Copy?” A static crackle followed by two calm affirmatives. “Amy? You copy?”
At Amy’s quiet confirmation, Mac tossed Rawls the radio and waved him away.
The Tangos outside were holding off their attack for a reason. Mac’s ruse had been clever enough. It gave them a good reason to be crossing the compound like bats out of hell so early in the morning. Maybe it would convince their uninvited visitors to resist turning Mac and him into bloody sieves. Assuming the Tangos were monitoring the channel, assuming they bought Mac’s excuse, and assuming they didn’t open fire just for the sheer hell of it.
He burst through the cabin door and leapt down the front steps in one bound. As he sprinted for the kitchen and Faith, he heard Mac’s boots hit the earth behind him, and charging footsteps take off toward the right—in the direction of Amy’s cabin.
That earlier icy prickle as he had climbed through his bedroom window didn’t hold a candle to the glacier currently encasing his spine. With every step he expected the hot agony of metal to pierce his flesh and bones.
And unlike his annoying troll of a ghost’s attack, those rifles locked on him as he raced toward Faith wouldn’t vanish after five seconds. Nor would the pain and damage to his body be phantom and fleeting.
Mac glanced toward his bedroom as he followed Rawls down the hall. It would take a quick three seconds to pivot and retrieve his radio, but he opted to save the time. Those seconds might well be the difference between arriving at Amy’s cabin whole and mobile versus sluggish and bleeding out. Besides, Amy had a walkie-talkie, not that there was much sense in using it under the circumstances. They had to assume the channels were being monitored.
At least he had his weapon. He’d grabbed the pistol before heading out to investigate the subtle scrape of the window sliding back in Rawls’s room. The walkie-talkie hadn’t been a priority since he’d been certain the noise was indicating his corpsman had returned.
Without a backward glance, Rawls shoved open the screen door and took off in the direction of the command center and kitchen. Mac tensed, expecting gunfire to light up the compound. They had no clue whether the men scoping out the camp had overheard his transmission or, if they had, whether they bought into the ruse.
If the situation had been different—meaning if they’d been alone, unhampered by a camp full of defenseless women and children—he and Rawls would have slipped back into the woods and taken out as many of the bastards watching them as possible. But to do that in the current circumstances chanced some of the motherfuckers attacking before they could be neutralized.
Which left them with only one option. Get the women and children to safety before gearing up for the counterattack. With that in mind, he followed his corpsman down the steps and veered off toward Amy’s cabin.
Sixty feet stretched ahead of him . . .
Of all the women, Amy was fully capable of defending herself. But she was also responsible for her two children. One of whom appeared to be a handful. Contrary behavior in a battle situation was the quickest way to get a person—or a child—killed. Hence the race to her rescue.
Fifty feet stretched ahead of him . . .
With each thud of his boots, his scalp prickled and the flesh down his spine crawled. He could sense the scopes locked on his back, itchy fingers caressing the trigger as the bastards surrounding them watched him run.
Forty-five feet . . .
The compound remained quiet . . . still . . . the only sound disturbing the calm was the thunder of his and Rawls’s boots.
Thirty feet . . .
For whatever reason, the motherfuckers on the perimeter were holding their fire. If he were lucky—damn lucky—that decision would last until he and Rawls reached their targets and the cover provided by the cured whole logs that made up the compound structures.
Fifteen feet . . .
He strained to hear beyond his own pounding feet and deep breathing. Their current fucked-up situation just proved what he’d been saying all along—they had no Goddamn business cohabitating with a bunch of Goddamn civilians.
Five feet . . .
The three steps to Amy’s cabin loomed in front of him. He took them in one leap, while the muscles in his back twitched and the absolute certainty rose that those bastards were just playing with him, and planned to punch him full of lead as he reached the door.
And then the door was within reach.
He wrenched it open and shot through, letting it slam loudly behind him. Relief surged through him, and his legs went weak and shaky.
Son of a bitch!
He could barely believe he’d actually made it across the compound without losing half his blood supply.
What the fuck were those motherfuckers out there waiting for?
Could Rawls have hallucinated the forthcoming attack?
He immediately dismissed the question. There’d been too much blood staining his corpsman’s clothes—real blood—for the danger to be imaginary.
A bolt of adrenaline shot through him. The tunnels were reinforced concrete about twenty feet beneath the surface. Even so, if a missile penetrated the ground above a weak spot in the web of connecting catacombs, the tunnels could end up being their tomb rather than their salvation.
No help for it, though. Based on Rawls’s estimate, there were too many Tangos out there to neutralize when they had all these damn civilians to worry about. At least Rawls had given them a head start. Maybe his corpsman’s mind wasn’t as scrambled as they’d assumed.
Adrenaline spiking through his veins, he scanned what he could see of the cabin. All empty.
Where the fuck were Amy and her kids?
Toward the back of the cabin came a soft snick. Mac took off in that direction. At the far end of the hall, a previously locked door stood ajar, the keypad that provided access to the staircase beyond flashing red. Apparently the woman had decided to forgo an escort and descended into the tunnels on her own. Torn between irritation and admiration, he paused on the staircase landing long enough to drag the door shut behind him, and then took the long, narrow line of stairs two at a time.
Behind him a click sounded as the lock engaged again. As he neared the bottom of the staircase, a high-pitched childish voice drifted up to him. Amy’s youngest from the sound of it.
A few more steps and he could make out the kid’s words.
“A tunnel? Like in National Treasure? Is there a treasure, Mom? I bet there is! We’re gonna be rich!”
Mac reached the bottom of the staircase as the child squealed in excitement.
“Look at all the guns, Mom! Can I have one?”
The trio must have reached the staging room at the entrance to the tunnel. They’d stashed several pairs of NVDs as well as weapons and boxes of ammo on the steel shelves lining the room.
“Benji, you stand right here. Don’t move a muscle,” Amy said, her voice calm and commanding.
“I’ve got him,” the older boy said, his voice as calm and adult as his mother’s had been.
Mac turned the corner and entered the staging area to find the older boy dogging his younger brother while Amy shoved pistols and equipment into a duffle bag. She turned her head long enough to scan Mac as he crossed the threshold, and then turned back to the shelf.
“How many?” she asked, as she shoved boxes of ammo and bottles of water into the bag.
After a quick glance at the two boys, he shrugged. “Nothing that we can’t handle,” he said in an easy voice. No sense in alarming the youngsters.
Although any handling, and/or mop-up, would have to wait until after they stashed the civilians someplace safe. Too fucking bad the bastards hadn’t attacked later in the day, after they’d loaded the women and children onto the helicopter and removed them from harm’s way.
He punched the access code into a second keypad—the one that allowed access into the tunnel system itself. After a loud click, a hiss of escaping air sounded and the door eased open. He shoved it the rest of the way,
revealing the concrete tunnel.
“Here.” Amy handed him a flashlight. As she passed it to him, she leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “How many are out there?”
Chills shot from his scalp down to his ass when her warm, toothpaste-spiked breath brushed his ear. He jerked hard, forced down his instinctive urge to retreat, and stayed put.
“Unknown.” Something sweet and clean teased him. He drew in a deep breath before realizing the scent was drifting from the bright red strands of hair almost brushing his cheek. He locked down the impulse to lean in closer and fill his lungs with the fragrant scent again.
Her hair? He wanted to smell her hair? Jesus Christ, he was pathetic.
Grimacing, he accepted the NVD she handed him. “Rawls estimated twenty-five, but he took down three.”
Amy shot him a surprised look. “Rawls?”
“Yeah. He stumbled across them this morning.” He shrugged at her questioning look and took a casual step back. “He slept out there last night.”
And damned if that decision, which he’d been so disgusted about twelve hours earlier, hadn’t saved their collective asses.
“You ready?” He turned the flashlight on and aimed it into the gaping black maw of the tunnel before waving her boys over. “I’ll lead, you bring up our six.”
He waited for her to turn on her own flashlight and guide her youngest into the steady beam of silver before stepping inside the mouth of the tunnel and dragging the door shut behind him. It sealed with a heavy click and the hiss of escaping air as the lock engaged.
A thick, claustrophobic pressure cinched around them.
It didn’t occur to him, until he turned around, that he’d made one hell of a mistake.
The tunnel was six feet tall, which meant he had to hunch slightly to avoid scraping his scalp. No big deal there. But widthwise, there was only room for one adult at a time. He’d have to squeeze past Amy and her children to take the lead. The kids? Piece of cake. But the woman . . . hell . . . he’d be rubbing against places he had no business rubbing. Tantalizing places.
Forged in Smoke (A Red-Hot SEALs Novel Book 3) Page 15
