Once it was obvious that the guerrillas were all in the clearing and cautiously searching the far tree line for “the pilot’s escape route,” he risked a whisper.
“The ghosts are definitely on our side tonight.”
“Ghosts?” She didn’t take her attention off the guerrillas. There was now a full platoon-strength force of thirty bad-asses in the clearing. About a quarter of them were some of the bad-assedest—most bad-assed? baddest-assed?—women he’d ever seen, if he didn’t count the Tennessean Delta operator standing in for Reese Witherspoon at his side. Even with the sarcastic boots on their side, taking on the NERC would definitely be a no-win scenario.
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“For what?”
“For the sounds that kept distracting their attention sideways every time they came close.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“They weren’t loud, but I heard them just fine.” Jesse puzzled at that. Delta operators weren’t known for missing details. He still felt disoriented by the events of the last fifteen minutes, but he wasn’t concussed. No headache. No blurred vision. The sounds that had distracted the guerrillas’ attention to either side of their not-so-much-a-hiding-place position had definitely been real.
“There are a lot of strange sounds in the jungle,” she dismissed his concerns with a whispered shrug. The noises from the burning helicopter were diminishing and he could start making out more of the Spanish being bandied about the field. They kept yelling to find the shooter, but their attention was still on the far side of the clearing. Mostly.
Because the fire was dying back from bomb to bonfire, he pulled his NVGs back down and spotted two nasty-looking NERC easing around the clearing perimeter, circumnavigating it just inside the tree line. On their present course, they were going to walk right over his and the Delta’s butts, which was going to be uncomfortable on several levels.
He pointed them out to her and she pulled down her goggles as well.
This time he was listening for it and heard the “ghost” distinctly—it sounded like a cross between a voice and a cracking tree branch. It was farther into the jungle and drew the search team deeper into the trees, circling behind their own position before continuing out the other side.
“Surely you heard that,” he whispered when they were well clear. “Cracking branch, definitely. Maybe even a voice.”
“Not a thing. You trying to freak me out?”
“Hey, I’m not the one being protected by ghosts.” Except he was, because he was lying in the dirt next to her. He tried to figure out how to unwind and repair that last sentence but finally decided that keeping his mouth shut was the best bolster to his argument.
She turned to him. Maybe light brown eyes rather than blue hid behind the NVGs…though they still didn’t feel any less sarcastic than the boots.
“I’m not imagining things. Seriously, there are a lot of very convenient sounds in this jungle tonight.”
She turned back to watching the others. “I’ve always had good luck hiding on patrol. I was just hoping that you didn’t jinx that.”
“Bet you were top of your SERE class.”
Her silence didn’t deny the charge. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training was a brutal course designed to humble Special Operations soldiers about how poor their survival skills actually were if stuck behind enemy lines. The thing he’d hated most was the Resistance phase—not giving away critical information under interrogation. The instructors weren’t paid to be kind, but he’d bet that the guerrillas would be much worse.
“How do you do it?”
“What?” She kept her attention on the NERC who were fanning out to move off into the jungle on the far, eastern side of the clearing.
“Create your ghosts?” Their whispered conversation was definitely getting surreal. Do you believe in ghosts? was a question for starry-night campfire storytelling, not life-and-death jungle encounters. And the rest of his night wasn’t shaping up much better. The patrol that wanted to kill or capture him—thankfully headed in the wrong direction. The sounds. The female Delta operator who still hadn’t said her name—which might be because he hadn’t asked—thinking he was insane.
The first of the guerrillas shifted into the far trees. Damn those things were big. Unlike anything he’d ever seen before, though Texas wasn’t known for its thick jungle.
Of course she hadn’t asked his name either. “I’m Jesse Johnson. Most folks call me Outlaw. And you’re?”
“Pissed.”
“Hi, Pissed. Pleased to meet you. I’m guessing that your parents either had it in for you at the start or that they were drunken Brits—that’s what they call getting drunk over there, you know.”
She snarled as quietly as one of her ghosts. Apparently she already knew that.
Jesse kept an eye on the departing guerrillas. The clearing was slowly emptying as they fanned out to the far side of the clearing. Exactly as “Pissed” had said they would.
One circled the helicopter as the flames died down. He squatted down to peer into the cabin before shouting to his comrades, “Sin piloto!”—No pilot. Even Jesse could translate that. Then he picked up something from the ground. Nothing valuable should have survived.
“Mirame!”—look at me! He shouted it out.
The guerrillas not quite into the trees turned to do so as he lifted Jesse’s cowboy hat out of the grass and tucked it onto his head.
Nobody, but nobody put on another cowboy’s hat.
Jesse shot him.
The guerrilla screamed before he collapsed and died beside Jesse’s equally dead helicopter.
“What the hell!” Now the female Delta operator lying beside him wasn’t pissed anymore; she was livid. The guerrillas poured back into the clearing. “What were you thinking? You idiot. We were almost in the clear.”
“Dang!” He hadn’t been thinking. They’d already wrecked his helicopter, one that had been the best ride a cowboy could wish for. They’d killed his “horse.”
His hat—that Daddy had given him and his Momma had made the hatband for while she was pregnant with him—had been one violation too many.
“Any other bright ideas?” She sounded bitter and he couldn’t blame her. Any sweet teasing while she’d been hanging from her boots clinging to a dirt-y sky was gone.
“Well, we could use a really, really loud ghost right about now. Over there,” he pointed toward the north side of the jungle.
“Shit!”
Chapter 2
Hannah wondered if her first shot should be in “Outlaw” Jesse’s head. No point in introducing herself now—they were going to die in short order. Their position was too exposed to rise from. It might be the middle of the night, but the entire NERC platoon of thirty men and women was streaming back into the clearing. There was no way that the two of them—no, the one of her; because she wasn’t going to count on Jesse for shit even if his single shot had been dead clean—could take on that many and survive.
He was right. They absolutely needed a big noise in the trees off to one side.
“Do it! Do it now!”
She turned to him. His face was now inches away. His face was as close as a lover’s—which was the dumbest thought she’d ever had before an imminent firefight.
“Now!”
“How?” In her peripheral vision she could see that the guerrillas were already halfway back across the clearing, but she was having trouble looking away from him. A man didn’t get to his position without being exceptional. Maybe he had merely screwed up. Too bad his one goof was going to get them killed.
“I dunno how you do it,” he squinted hard for a long moment. “Imagine them…suddenly being distracted.”
She tried…and Jesse glanced away for an instant in exactly the right direction. She hadn’t heard a thing.
“No! A big sound,” he gripped her shoulder. His grip was powerful. How did a goddamn air jockey get so strong?
Hanna
h could feel the strength of him. There was an intensity to his strength. A focus.
“Better!” He didn’t glance aside this time.
She could see a number of the NERC hesitate and aim their weapons to the north side of the clearing, but they weren’t moving.
“What?” Jesse could apparently see the worry on her face.
“I don’t know how to make it any bigger.”
“Maybe the trick is you’ve really got to feel it.”
“Any suggestions, Mr. Know-it-all?”
Jesse glanced at the NERC, many of whom were still coming their direction. Though almost a third were paying attention to the north woods.
“Running out of time here, Outlaw.”
“Okay,” he turned to face her. “This is probably going to make you even angrier at me than you already are, ma’am, but it’s the only idea I’ve got so don’t be pitchin’ a hissy. Take whatever you’re feeling and, for now at least, don’t aim it at me. Focus it and pump it to the north.”
“What are you—”
He shoved aside both their NVGs.
Snagging a hand around her neck, he dragged her in like a macho asshole and kissed her—hard. Not like a first-time peck. Nor a soft, sensual test. It was a kiss between lovers who had been surviving too long apart on a starvation diet of phone sex. The shock of it jolted into her as hard as the round that had punched a hole in her hip in the Bolivian coca fields.
Anger at him tore one way, but it had been a long time since she’d felt a real lover’s kiss and it ripped her body in another direction as well. As one of the few Delta Force women, her best course of action had been to behave like one of the guys. Just fit in and do her job. Which left out relationships for any number of reasons. Even dating a civilian would signal that she was open to such things. Equality in the military? Not even close. Guys got to smile and brag about their conquests. Women had to hide it completely or abstain.
Jesse’s kiss smashed through all that like a hammer blow. The heat that flooded into her awakened a deep, primal need that she’d long since forgotten. Or perhaps never knew.
She—who didn’t need anyone—could lean on a strength like that. Could feel it in her. It built inside until it was so big she couldn’t contain it anymore. It spilled out like—
Jesse jolted, then broke off the kiss as if he hadn’t been doing anything more than slapping a breaching charge into her hand.
“Hey!” Hannah kept her voice low. It was a damn poor way to end a kiss of that caliber—even under threat of imminent death.
“Look,” Jesse nodded toward the clearing. The entire platoon spun aside to stare off into the north side of the jungle. They stampeded through the trunks and vines—racing deep into the jungle. In moments, she and Jesse were alone, lying along the clearing’s west side and looking at the seven bodies and the last flickers from the burning helicopter.
“What did they hear?”
“You really didn’t hear the gunshots and shouts?”
Hannah could only shake her head. She hadn’t had a girly moment since her step-pa had celebrated her sweet sixteen in the most horrific of ways. All of her Prince Charming dreams had flown away that night to never return. After that she’d always slept with her hand around the handle of a butcher’s knife—something dear old Step-pa learned to respect right fast.
But the only thing she could hear now was the racing of her heart and the after-hum of Jesse delivering perhaps the best kiss ever. No perhaps about it actually.
“Well, that was one powerful ghost. Let’s get out of here. We can figure this out later.”
She nodded but was having trouble pulling herself back to the task at hand. She felt oddly drained. Not tired, but more as if her wits had just departed into the night leaving her to wander about lost and alone.
This time it was Jesse who took Hannah’s arm to steady her. They yanked on their NVGs—the helicopter’s fire, now fading into red embers, no longer enough to floodlight the area. He raced them into the clearing.
“You said their camp is behind us to the west,” he explained. “They’ll return from the north—perhaps through this clearing, perhaps not—and head west. River to the south. I’m right particular about not swimming with crocs. So, we go east. The direction they’ve already gone and decided was a false lead.”
She nodded as she ran beside him but didn’t try to shake off his grip. Jesse had a steadying influence. At least her knees weren’t being all wobbly—that would be too girly for her.
“I’m Hannah Tucker, by the way.” First time she’d ever been kissed without someone at least knowing her name. “And if you call me Hannah Montana, you’re a dead man.”
“Noted. Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am,” he held out his other hand and they managed an awkward handshake while they sprinted.
It was hard not to laugh. Even if his deep accent hadn’t given him away as being from the heart of Texas, his politeness most certainly did.
She focused on their escape. Straight across the clearing wasn’t a bad tactic. Sometimes the best evasive course was the unexpected straight line.
At least that’s what she assumed Jesse’s reasoning was until they reached the midpoint and he slowed for just a step, almost unbalancing her when he bent down to snatch something from the ground.
Then he tugged on a black cowboy hat as they continued their sprint side by side.
“You must really love that hat.”
“Daddy gave me this hat when I turned sixteen. It’s a damn fine hat and we’ve been through a lot of miles together. Momma made the hatband.”
Unable to reconcile the differences between their sixteenth birthdays—his family all happy together and gathered around a cake with candles versus her step-pa proving how awful a man could be and her own ma doing nothing to stop him—Hannah sprinted for the far side of the clearing.
They were five meters from the safety of the jungle wall when a lone guerrilla stepped out of the trees smack in front of them, looking to see where his teammates had gone. He’d been the lone survivor of the first group to enter the clearing and must not have heard all the uproar back and forth across the clearing.
Jesse’s rifle was over his shoulder so that he could hang onto Hannah’s arm with one hand and grab his hat with the other. Being emptyhanded at this moment was a bad mistake.
The NERC didn’t hesitate.
The round slammed into Jesse’s shoulder—the hard impact enough to slam him to the ground.
His grip on Hannah’s arm pulled her down on top of him.
In his NVGs, he could see the heat trail of the second shot that passed through where her head had been moments before.
Thankfully Hannah generated a “ghost call,” which had the NERC twisting left. While he was distracted, she placed three rounds in him at point blank range with her handgun.
Jesse lay on his back with his ears ringing from the loud rounds from the guerrilla’s AK-47—and the inevitable secondary explosion of screaming monkeys. Hannah’s Glock 23 had been silenced, making little more than a click as it ejected each spent round and chambered the next.
She lay full on him and he could feel both her strength and her slender waist that his arm had somehow snaked around.
“You feel good.” Even when he ran his hand up her back and ran into her rifle, she felt good—female curves, warrior strong, and armed to the teeth. And her kiss. He’d expected a fist to his jaw for that trick, instead it was a smooch that even Veronica’s best efforts after the senior prom couldn’t match. They’d ridden out to the swimming hole on his family’s ranch and she’d made sure that he had the best sendoff to the Army a Texas cowgirl could provide. Sorry, Veronica, not a patch on a Delta warrior from Tennessee.
“You feel good too. Are you okay?”
“Sure,” he buried his face in her hair and enjoyed the smell of her. Beneath the rust and jungle, she was rich and warm like a Texas sunrise on a fall day, and sweet like the scent of honey from a nearby hiv
e.
“Weren’t you shot? It looked as if you’d been shot.”
“I think I was,” he seemed to remember that too. But it was hard to care with that soft cascade of blonde hair brushing down over his face below his NVGs.
Then he shrugged.
“Yikes!” His shoulder seared with the pain as if punched with a massive fist.
In moments she was kneeling over him, drawn in a hundred shades of magnified green and heat-outlined infrared. The NVGs were so sensitive that he could still see the remnant traces of his kiss on her lips and his nuzzle on her neck.
Her fingers found the wound and it was all he could do to not yelp again. Hannah yanked on something, none too gently, and a few seconds later she held up his radio. Or at least the remains of it. Thankfully, he’d attached the oversized battery pack, so the bullet had severely deformed but not tried to punch through the Kevlar vest.
“You took a shot straight to the comm gear.”
“That isn’t usually fatal, is it? What about the rest of me?”
She poked a finger around his shoulder, a little gentler this time—though it still stung like crazy—then held it up for both of them to inspect. No bright wash of hot blood in the NVGs. “You’re going to live this time, cowboy. Next time? Maybe not so much.”
He lay his head back against the soil in relief. “Guess I won’t be phoning home anytime soon. How about you?”
“Both my radios are trashed. I snuck into the guerrillas’ camp and used one of theirs to call for an extraction, which you were nice enough to totally bungle.”
“You, a Tennessee blonde, snuck into a camp filled with mean and nasty Latino guerrillas to call for an extraction? And I thought E.T. had a hard time phoning home. He just had to ride through the sky in a bicycle basket.”
“You don’t happen to have one on you? I’d take even that as a ride out at the moment. Otherwise we’re back to Plan B of walking out of here.”
At the Slightest Sound Page 2
