Match (Coronado Series Book 5)

by Hart, Lea

  Jaime spoke up. “These are not men with advanced skills. They’ve never come into contact with any Special Forces operators. They have a lot of firepower, though, and they like to use it. If we were dealing with the Cachiros, then I would say an over watch is necessary. But I haven’t seen any sophisticated skills in the group yet. They excel at trafficking the coke through the neighborhoods and intimidating the locals to pay extortion. But their skills come from the jails of California, not from any real training.”

  “Let’s not underestimate the luck of idiots,” David stated. “They have survived and flourished for a reason, so I want everyone to bring their A-game, regardless of what we’re facing.”

  All the men nodded in agreement. The Mara gangs had survived for a long time, and there had to be a reason for it. It wasn’t stupidity. Ken called from the front, “Twenty minutes out.”

  David stared out into the black night and sent a silent message to Jane that he was coming to get her. He hoped like hell that she had faith in him and knew he would do everything he could to save her. He would move heaven and hell to save her, and nothing would stop him. And that included some overambitious assholes that decide to kidnap her. Hell, this was kindergarten play for most of the men in this truck. But it didn’t mean that shit couldn’t go wrong, and kindergarten could quickly turn into a goat fuck. Sometimes, the simplest extractions were the most difficult.

  ********

  The moonless night was going to be in their favor as they traveled through the streets. This small town had only two working street lights. Was it because the local gangs wanted it that way or the government didn’t feel like people out here deserved more? Carlos and Jaime blended into the shadows of the town and kept watch for development. They knew the gang members and where they lived and how they moved around. They were going to feed them intel as they advanced toward Jane. David and Sean slunk along the shadows of the building, hugging the darkness as they progressed silently toward the building where Jane was being held. A dog barked in the distance, and David held his hand up, listening intently. He scanned the area through his NV goggles and heard a hum. Generator? Possibly.

  He put his hand up and signaled for Sean to move ahead. Alex gave them the clear signal through their mics and confirmed that Jane’s GPS tag was pinging from the building that they were advancing toward. Always good to know they were in the right place.

  Ken was in position. He’d run his thermal imager over the building, and informed the team that there were three heat signatures inside. One was in the back, and the other two were in the front. There was very little movement, which was a good news for the team. “Rigged a couple of explosives in case we need them on the exfil. I like to think of it as a going away present for the local trash,” Ken said quietly into his mic. He melted into the dark shadows and became invisible.

  “Activity coming in from the black bravo,” Ken said quietly into his mic.

  Sean signaled to David that he would investigate. Stopping in the shadows, the two of them remained silent as Sean scanned the street through NVG’s. Waiting two heartbeats, he heard two dogs fighting and hoped like hell that was the movement that Ken detected. Signaling David, they strode again silently through the street to where Jane was being held.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At the corner of the street, David and Sean waited momentarily to get updates from everyone on the team before entering the building. After receiving the clear, they shifted into position. Jane was being held in an abandoned market, and they were going to enter through the back door off the alley. As David ran quietly along the building, he was hit with the sickening smell of diesel fuel and garbage. He flashed back to the time he spent in Habbaniyah in the Anbar Province and remembered the same stench. It was funny how a scent never left your memory. The only thing missing tonight was the sound of mortar shells and squealing tires. But the night was young, so anything was possible.

  David quickly jimmied the lock and opened the back door quietly. They entered and heard the faint sound of a soccer game. The flickering light from the front of the building told him it was coming from a television. No one was standing guard, and if Ken was right, they had only three heat signatures in the building. Sean signaled that he was going to clear from the front, so David moved along the doors in the hall. He hoped like hell that Jane was going to be unharmed behind one of them. Opening the first door he came to, he quickly cleared it and didn’t find Jane. The sound of a scuffle interrupted his next step as he listened. Two muffled shots echoed down the hall and then were followed by two loud thuds.

  “Hostiles down,” Sean spoke quietly into his mic.

  David walked quickly to the next room, found it empty, then opened the third door and saw Jane, tied up and unconscious on a filthy cot. Moving at lightning speed, he was at her side in an instant. He checked her pulse and found that she had one, though it was faint. “I need the chopper,” he hissed into his mic, as he slit the ropes on her hands and feet and checked her quickly for gunshot wounds. Hearing Sean’s boots pounding down the hall, he heard him curse when he saw the condition Jane was in. “She wasn’t shot, but someone beat the shit out of her. She has bruises all over her body.” Stuffing down the rage, he lifted her gently and jogged toward the door. “Tell the Team we’re going to the exfil site.”

  “The MEDEVAC will be here in five minutes,” Alex confirmed.

  “Those fucks better be dead,” he murmured.

  “Dead as can be,” Sean responded. “Unfortunately, I think they were just the guards.”

  Moving quickly out of the building, David ran down the alley with Jane in his arms. “Jane, I’m taking you home, and you’re going to be okay. Don’t you worry. I got you now.”

  “Fucking party out front,” Alex hissed into his mic. “Going to light up the street a little for cover.”

  Stepping out into the street, Alex threw a frag at the oncoming group of men. He could tell it wasn’t what they expected. It hit a car that was parked on the street, and several men flew in the air as the grenade exploded and the car rocketed into the sky. Ken came up behind him, and he jumped on the back of his bike as they ran toward the other end of town. The sound on his mic went out for a second as he missed the intel coming in from Carlos and Jaime. It finally cleared, and he heard that both the eighteens and thirteens were out and trying to figure out what was happening. They were having a shootout near the entrance to the Barrio. Let them kill each other, Alex said to himself, as they raced through the streets.

  David and Sean ran through the streets with Jane. They found a small side street that led them toward the field where Nelson was going to land in the Black Hawk. “I’ll lay cover for you and then exfil with the Team,” Sean said into his mic.

  David was operating on pure adrenaline. When the welcome echo of the thump of the rotor blades filled the air, he took a much needed breath. How many times in his life had that sound signaled that he was going to make it out? The fact that Jane was injured made it even sweeter. The air became heavy as the chopper made its descent and whipped everything around. Sean covered his six as he ran through the open field toward the open doors. The distant sound of gunfire was the last thing he heard as he lifted Jane onto the waiting helicopter and climbed in behind her.

  Sean shifted back and signaled that they were clear. “See you at the base, brother. We’re going to make sure things are cleaned up down here, and then we’ll head your way.”

  “Thanks, man.” David waved as the bird lifted into the sky. His mic pinged, and he heard the pilot speak into his ear.

  “We are fifteen minutes out from the base. We have a doctor on standby waiting for our arrival. Anything that he needs to know before we get there?”

  “She has a low thready pulse. She has been beat to shit by someone and I’m guessing drugged. No knife or gunshot wounds, but it’s…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He choked on his own rage and fear. He had a feeling that she had been sexually brutalized, and he couldn’t s
ay the words. Because if he did, then he was going to have to go back there and kill every person who he thought had anything to do with it. Swallowing hard, he tried to get himself under control.

  “Got it. I will let them know. We have a couple of great docs on base, and she’s going to be in good hands. Sit tight and we’ll be there shortly,” Nelson responded.

  Smoothing the hair off her face, he bent down and gently kissed her cheek. “I’m here, Jane, and I love you. We are going to get through whatever happened. Then we can get married and fill our house with a big family. We are going to find our way to happiness, you and I. Don’t you worry about that.”

  The chopper landed, and a doctor and nurse waited on the tarmac with a gurney. Striding quickly under the rotors, they waited for David to get off with Jane in his arms. He had never let her go from the moment he picked her up in the Barrio. Gently, he laid her down on the gurney and held her hand as they secured her. Trotting alongside the doctor and nurse, he relayed what information he had. The doors to the small hospital opened, and they moved into an examining room. A woman came up and held him back as the nurse closed the curtain. “Let them work,” she told David.

  “I need to be with her.” He was about to push the woman out of his way, but stopped.

  “Let them give her the best care they can.” She pointed to a chair. “You can sit there. They will update you as soon as they can.”

  Nodding in defeat, he slumped into the chair. “Okay. Thanks.” Adrenaline pumped through his body as his legs bounced. He had been in hundreds of life-and-death situations over the many years that he’d been on the Teams, and none of them felt like this. This felt like the worst torture possible.

  Almost three hours later, he received an update. The doctor came down the brightly lit corridor and sat down next to him. “We’ve examined her, and she is resting comfortably. She has a broken arm, a concussion, and bruised ribs. We think she was drugged, but we haven’t gotten back the tox screens yet, so we’re not sure what she was given. We should have those in a couple of hours. We also did a rape kit, and she wasn’t raped. That does not, however, rule out the possibility that she was sexually assaulted.”

  David let out a huge breath and scraped a shaking hand down his face. “Thanks, Doc. Can I go in and see her?”

  “You can. Let me take you back.” They walked down the hall, and David’s boots squeaked loudly on the floor, interrupting the quiet. He concentrated on the sound, so that he wouldn’t lose his shit in front of the doctor. He was holding it together by a very thin thread and didn’t want to fall apart before he saw Jane. “How long do you think it will be before she wakes up?”

  “It’s hard to say. We’ll know more after we get the toxicology screen back. Please remember that she may not remember a lot of what happened, depending on when she received the drug. So wait for her to bring things up. Let her memory come back naturally.” He put his hand on David’s back and waited until he looked at him. “You got to her in time, and these are all things she is going to recover from. Eventually, she will heal, just be patient.”

  “I appreciate everything you’ve done.” He opened the door to her room and saw her sleeping. The bruises on her face appeared worse under the fluorescent lighting of the room. Moving to her side, he took her hand and bent and kissed her cheek. “I’m here, Jane. And from now on, you and I are stuck together like glue. I go where you go; no more traveling without me.”

  He pulled the chair over and sat down and laid his head against her hand. “Did I mention that we will only be traveling to places that have no crime rate? I think we’re going to stick to the good old US of A. Maybe Hawaii, if we’re feeling crazy. No more damn third-world countries for either one of us.”

  ********

  David had fallen asleep in the chair holding Jane’s hand. The sunlight pouring in through the windows had woken him up when it pierced his eyelids. Lifting his head slowly, he felt his stiff neck protest as he straightened up. As soon as his eyes focused, he studied Jane and felt a small measure of relief. She had a little color in her cheeks that was mixing with the dark bruises that covered her cheek and eye.

  Swallowing the rage that filled him, he tried to concentrate on the fact that she was going to recover and heal from what had happened. He heard the door open and turned to see who was entering. Alex popped his head in and waved. Standing slowly, he dropped a kiss on her head before walking out of the room. “Hey, man. How did it go last night?”

  “Oh, you know. The usual. We blew some shit up, got rid of some bad guys, then got the hell out of there and let the local police clean up the mess. When we left, the two factions of the Maras were shooting at each other in the streets. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will have any long term effect. It seems that they have plenty of people willing to fill the ranks.” He handed over a cup of steaming coffee to David and grinned. “Same shit, different country. Poverty and a lack of education mixed with unemployment makes for a population looking for a way out.”

  “I need to thank Ken and his men, along with Carlos and Jaime. We couldn’t have done this without them.”

  “No need.” He took a sip of coffee and cracked his neck. “I extended our appreciation and told them to call us when we could help them out. Also, Carlos and Jaime were happy to see the two factions go at one another. It will leave fewer men on the streets for a while and may give the local population a break. It’s not going to last, of course, but hell, any reprieve will probably be welcome.”

  He put out his hand and waited for Alex. “Thanks. I wouldn’t have been able to save her without you and everything you did. I owe you a big one, brother.”

  “You don’t owe me a thing. Except a beer. Buy me a cold one after work one day, and we’ll be square.” Draining his coffee cup, he lifted himself off the wall. “I’m heading over to grab a shower and some sleep. Garret has us scheduled to leave at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. He’s bringing the plane over later on today, and we’re bunking here for the night.”

  “Okay. I’ll be here until she wakes up. I guess I need to find her some scrubs to wear home. I should call the director and have him pack her stuff up and send it to my house.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you that we went to the school to make sure that they didn’t get any blowback from our visit. The director had Jane’s stuff packed, and I have it. She had two big duffels. I have her ID and passport as well. I’ll bring it over later on. I’m about dead on my feet, and since I have only one, I’m gonna fall over.”

  “Okay. I’ll come find you in a while.” He finished his coffee and squared his shoulders before reentering Jane’s room. Gazing down at her, he felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude that she was alive. There were a dozen people who made her rescue possible, and he was a lucky son of a bitch to have so many men and women that he could count on. Most people who were kidnapped in a foreign country did not survive. He and Jane were fortunate to be a part of a community that could make it possible for her to come home.

  The door opened again, and the doctor walked in with a nurse. The doctor signaled for David to follow him as the nurse began to check Jane’s vitals. They stepped outside of the room, and the doctor began to fill him in on Jane’s condition. “We received the toxicology report, and Jane is very lucky. They gave her a drug called ketamine. It’s a fast-acting dissociative anesthetic drug. It looks like she was given a dose just under the levels of an overdose. We need to keep an eye on her respiration for at least twenty-four hours. Based on the level in her system, I’m going to keep her for thirty-six. I need to make sure that she is free of all side effects before she flies home. She will most likely sleep for the rest of the day.”

  “Okay. I’ll let the pilot know that we won’t be able to leave until the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t you go and grab something to eat and get cleaned up? She’s not going to wake up for several hours.”

  “I can’t leave her,” David replied.

  “Understood. I wi
ll check back in later on this afternoon. We are optimistic and have no reason to believe that there are going to be any complications.”

  David thanked him and returned to her room just as the nurse was finishing up. “Everything looks good. Her vitals are just where we want them to be.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Sitting in the chair next to Jane’s bed, he took her hand and kissed it. “Remember when I said we were lucky earlier? Well, I just found out that we have a guardian angel. I love you, Jane. Thank God we have some people keeping an eye on you.”

  ********

  Jane slowly pried her eyes open and tried to figure out where she was. The shapes and shadows that surrounded her didn’t make any sense. Blinking once, she tried to focus and found it nearly impossible. Her head was pounding mercilessly, her bodied ached, and there was a strange hum in her ears. Closing her eyes again, she tried to remember something…anything. It was like staring at a blank piece of paper. There was no information available.

  Trying again, she opened her eyes and turned her head slowly. Someone was sitting next to her in a chair, snoring loudly. Her brain finally clicked with recognition. The only person who snored that way was David. Why was David here? Where was here? Finally, she realized that he was holding her hand, so she jiggled her arm to wake him up. “David, wake up,” she croaked. Why was her mouth so dry? She could barely recognize her own voice. “David!” She tried squeezing his hand to see if she could get him to respond. It worked. He jackknifed up as his eyes flew open and met hers. “You were snoring again.”

  He came out of his chair in a shot and was wrapping his arms gently around her as tears slipped down his tired face. “Jane, you’re going to be okay.” He kissed her eyes, cheeks, and nose over and over. “I love you. Thank God we found you in time.”