“You had something else to tell me?”
“Yeah.” He pushed off the wall and cupped the back of her neck, bringing her up on her toes as he captured her mouth with his. His camo-paint-flavored kiss went from rowdy to deep to tender in seven long, long seconds. She swallowed a girly sigh as he sealed his lips sideways over hers, in slow motion. An electric buzz brushed up her spine. The familiar heat burned through her anxiety, leaving her with his same happy-go-lucky attitude. It also turned her brain to mush, because somehow he made her consider holing up here and spending the morning kissing.
Radio static crackled in Jack’s earpiece, and she heard at least three men complain. Apparently they could hear what went on through his throat mic. “Get in the game, Doolittle,” came Memphis’ deathly quiet whisper.
Jack, don’t be bait today. Please, no turkey shoot, or whatever stupid stunt you and Memphis run. Please, Jack, for me?
His radio buzzed, and Jack’s thoughts were already absorbed in tracking the conversation. Back to soldier mode. No promises, lass.
One more kiss, then he was gone. She rejected the thought that it might have been their last.
Chief signaled for her to advance in formation and cover his six but keep her weapon locked. She let him think she understood combat hand signals, which were even more ridiculous than baseball coaching signs. She hiked the eight kilometers from the mountain top to the ranger station without earning a single mental complaint from the others — a relief to elevate her status from burden to tag-along.
Cassie had yet to prove she could do anything other than work some medical magic and run like a machine, and more than half of the men expected her to either freak out or freeze in combat. If they felt even an inkling of that foul-smelling dread wafting from the ranger station, they would look a little green around the gills too. It was much worse than Boris at Lake Powell. Even without eavesdropping on their radio chatter she knew this was where the enemy had holed up. She could feel it, prickling her spine, charging her blood, creating a sinking feeling in her gut.
She heard unanimous relief that smoke from the fires made visibility bad, but the squad was spooked about doing an operation without the cover of nightfall. Pops called a halt, cursing as he saw the bodies of two park rangers on the ground. No way could they pass for mudslide victims, since they’d been stabbed repeatedly, hopefully after taking gunshots to the temple.
Chief tried to keep her calm while the team waited in formation, listening to Jack’s radio feedback as he scouted the perimeter. Cassie sat with her back to a massive tree trunk, and Chief squatted in front of her. He mouthed silently, “Hey Thundercat, I was wondering. Can you do the same things as MacGunn?”
Cassie scowled, pretending she didn’t understand. Chief flexed his arms and made a face like a WWF wrestler. “Are you strong? Like MacGunn?”
Gutsy of him to be so direct, and strange that he accepted what would seem supernatural to him. Cassie cocked her head and held her fingers a few inches apart and mouthed back, “A little bit.”
Chief unsheathed a KA-BAR and handed it to her, pantomiming that he wanted her to bend it. She shrugged and snapped the blade near the hilt using her thumb and two fingers, covering it with her other hand to damper the noise. His eyes bugged out, and she heard him wish he had something more impressive for her to break, like a crowbar.
“Bench-press?” He pantomimed lifting a weight bar then held his palms up in question.
Cassie shot him a flat look then glanced at the shooting pair behind them in the formation. Chief waited, too curious to drop it, so she turned and made the numbers with her fingers, nine, eight, five. 985 pounds, on a good day. Pee-wee compared to Jack, whose idea of a workout was tossing freight cars in a scrap yard.
Chief raised his brows and sat back. A minute later he closed his fists and mouthed, “You could crush an attacker.” He grasped his head and palmed his jaw, showing her the twisting motion to snap a neck. He mimed a bear hug and thrust inward with his fists. “You get in a fight, do that.”
She nodded, betraying neither her pleasure at being taken seriously nor her horror at the idea of deliberately crushing a man’s chest into mush.
He thumbed over his shoulder, “And if I go down, throw me over your shoulder and run like hell.”
“Hooyah, Chief. I got your six.”
He flashed a Harrison-Ford-style crooked smile with scruffy dimples, and Cassie realized she finally had a friend of sorts, bringing the grand tally to … one. Jack and Lyssa didn’t count, since both were practically family. She sat with Chief and waited, amused with the way men are content to say nothing to fill silences.
Ten minutes later Jack’s voice whispered through Chief’s headset. Eighteen enemy guards with Uzis ringed the ranger station. Jack reported five people inside the shack, at least one hostage, and no one questioned how he knew that when the two windows were covered. This news aggravated the team, and she observed their frantic restrategizing, hating the situation more as it developed.
They agreed Jack would ambush the five north-facing guards and draw their fire while Memphis picked them off from behind the cover of the forest. As soon as Jack and Memphis punched a hole through the enemy line, Pops and the next shooting pair would bust through the door of the ranger station, clear the room and secure the hostage. Cassie tasted blood as she bit down on her tongue, her best effort against shrieking in outrage. Exactly as she had begged Jack not to do.
Simultaneously, smoke grenades would blind the remaining thirteen guards to the east, west and south, to prevent them from reinforcing the guards at the door. Thermal sensitive goggles would allow the other half of the SEAL squad to locate and “neutralize” the thirteen guards. Cassie was to stay under cover with Chief at the north end of the tree line, so he could direct the attack. Cassie was charged with the very important task of sitting on her rump and keeping out of the way. Pops promised she could take potshots at any guard who broke though the lines. She heard Chet and Subway scoff, something about blue on blue, unconvinced she wouldn’t shoot them in the back by mistake.
“Why can’t you call in an air strike?” Cassie mouthed to Chief.
“Hostage.”
“Who cares?” How could one mystery person matter more than Jack, more than the entire squad? The mission plan was solid but something was off, and everyone sensed it on some level.
“I do. And so do my boys.” He reached across to squeeze her shoulder. “We’ll come out on top. Don’t worry.”
She nodded; she had to. She heard doubts nagging the back of the soldiers’ minds, but none of them wished themselves elsewhere or hoped for an easy way out. If they could be brave, so could she. It required every ounce of restraint, but she didn’t call to Jack, Be careful, I love you … distractions he didn’t need. Mushy stuff not allowed in the Navy.
The operation had taken four hours to accomplish the infiltration and positioning, then it went down fast, in a blur. Chief gave a countdown then a GO, and Cassie watched, confounded, as Jack exploded from the tree line, his gun spraying bullets on full auto as he charged the guards. His sinewy tenor voice roaring in a battle cry razed the nerves along her spine and made her heart sink — the single most frightening sound she’d ever heard. He covered the distance in two seconds, long enough to empty his clip and startle the guards into action. Popping sounds announced the smoke grenades launching in the rear. Chief’s eyes scoured the scene, and he muttered orders into the radio. He seemed calm.
Cassie watched Jack move at inhuman speeds, but it played in slow motion to her brain. Suddenly she understood his game and why it worked. He was simply too fast for the guards to track. Jack taunted the guards as he feinted left and right, disappearing behind cover only to emerge elsewhere an instant later. She could see the guards reacting, seemingly sluggish, and it really was a turkey shoot as Memphis dropped them one at a time from the farthest to the one i
n front. They never saw it coming.
Timed as perfectly as ballet, the front two shooting pairs rammed down the door just as Memphis cleared the north side. Bursts of gunfire sounded from the other sides then waned. Chief confirmed the all-clear — the other thirteen guards all down. Then he focused his attention on the four soldiers inside the shack. It seemed Chief would call mission accomplished only thirty-eight seconds after the go, a fast success. Cassie wondered where Jack had gone just as she heard his frantic shouting through the radio.
Shots fired inside the shack.
The woods echoed with more gunfire, the sound disorienting as it seemed to come from all directions. They’d been ambushed. How had neither Jack nor Cassie heard any thoughts from the enemy force?
A chorus of staccato curses came through the radio. Chief shouted SITREP! and took a quick inventory in a desperate attempt to regain control. The squad dove for the tree line and took cover, returning fire in sporadic bursts. Cassie heard noise in the foliage at her five o’clock. She shot through an entire magazine before she realized she’d just dropped three soldiers in all black stalking her and Chief. She’d killed three men, had felt the threat and reacted instinctively.
Chief nodded with a grim smile and turned back to the radio. He ordered the pairs to lay cover fire and leapfrog to the extraction point —
Cassie was nearly struck unconscious by a sickening wave of dread. The oppressing deluge blackened her vision and made her stomach lurch. She blinked until her eyes cleared, focusing on her shaking hands. Her fingers strained into claws, her skin crawled with the torment of a million insects swarming her.
Movement caught her eye — something in black blurred through the doorway and darted for the tree line. A strange silhouette, bulky on top with an odd rhythm to its gait. Cassie leaped to her feet and dove over the hedges to follow before consciously deciding to do so. Instinct drove her at full speed on a course to intercept.
She ran a straight line across the clearing, with only one second and forty-two feet until impact — then lurched sideways and hit the ground with a rude force that ground her face into the grass. She rolled over her shoulder and landed on her hands and knees, sucking gasps of air. Her lungs screamed under a sharp pressure as her brain processed that she’d been hit on her side with three bullets. The Kevlar. It didn’t keep the rounds from breaking her ribs, but it kept her in the game.
She yanked the tattered vest off and scrambled to her feet. She caught sight of her target, now clearly a dark-haired Jack-sized man running with a bundle hoisted over his shoulder. She couldn’t say why, but she was desperate to catch him, seized by a crazy impulse she couldn’t deny. The compulsion thrummed in her pulse, and her feet obeyed. Her pace dragged while she mended her cracked ribs. Lucky her damage report was only grass stains.
She gained on the dark-haired man as he darted through the forest, and in her periphery, Cassie perceived another blurred form approaching from her left, also on course to intercept the giant. Jack, barreling full speed with shredded foliage blasting behind him. He was faster, but she was closer. She couldn’t understand his shouting even if he’d used English, but they seemed to have the same idea to corner the man against the steep hillside rising to her right. Cassie growled and yanked hard on the giant’s upturned foot the same moment Jack tackled him from the side. They all went down in a jarring crash. Cassie skidded several yards then tucked into a roll. Her frenzied mind burned over any report of pain.
“James,” the man grunted, recognizing Jack, then cursed in Russian.
“Krav,” Jack growled back, his voice deepened in the throes of his berserker rage.
Cassie landed on her feet, crouched and ready for action. Jack beat her to it, already engaged in an unearthly knife fight that looked like a cloud of blurred limbs and flashes of black and silver. The giant appeared to match him blow for blow. She would have watched the lethal battle for an opening to help Jack, but her attention locked onto a heap lying motionless on the ground except for the miniscule up-and-down motion. It drew her eye the same moment she caught its scent, and her brain went supernova.
The sound of her breath lowered into bass thunder in her ears. Her heart rolled in mighty peals, like war drums. Electric static crawled up her spine and traveled slowly through her limbs to tingle in her fingers and toes. The energy snapped as it filled her, and Cassie spread her feet to ground the energy in a satisfying harmony with earth and sky.
She stared, her vision narrowed, and bloodlust sang fierce and ravenous through her veins. She flexed her shoulders, drunken with the ecstatic sensation of the volatile energy crackling through her muscles, hardening her bones, sharpening her senses. Power.
She cared about only two matters. One, the heap on the ground was an injured child. An extra-sentient child, whom she vowed would not suffer a moment longer. Two, the man fighting Jack was the source of the nauseating evil, and she was going to turn his skin inside out, using his own bones like an ice pick.
Humorless mirth bubbled in her throat and she opened her mouth to laugh. A dark, macabre sound escaped, resonating with unnatural volume — crashing thunder interrupted. The sky deepened in shadow. Everywhere raw electricity hummed, it vibrated in her skull. Steam wafted from the pine needle beds covering the ground, emitting a delicious roasted nut scent. Jack and the soon-to-be-dead man broke apart. Jack heaved, staring with glowing green eyes, and Cassie met the black gaze of the dark-haired man as her mouth twisted in a cruel smile.
Her world narrowed to the space her enemy occupied. Her palms itched, her shoulders tensed in anticipation, but otherwise she stood still. Focused on her prey. Her instincts chanted her obsession, swallowing her mind with one desire: to protect one and decimate the other.
Chapter 13
Valkyrie,
Shield maiden,
Her spear a lightning bolt,
Her form as a raven, her spirit as the falcon.
Goddess of battle,
Lover to the worthiest warrior in Valhalla.
Servant of Odin, beautiful and terrible as the Northern Lights,
Omen of death should you sight her on the eve of battle,
Harbinger of victory should she fight at your side.
Valkyrie.
Every second ticking past confirmed it as the static charge in the air heated his blood and prickled the back of his neck. Jack had suspected but still couldn’t believe it even as Cassie’s body thrummed with electrostatic energy. Seeing the child had set her off. She had withdrawn completely into her instincts, in the throes of a rage he understood the power of. He had no way to pull her back, and he wasn’t certain he should try.
The charge gathering in the air singed the hair on his arms, made his lungs squeeze for breath. It affected Krav more severely — he hunched over, wheezing for air through a swollen throat.
Cassie’s helmet had been knocked off when she fell. Twin sheets of jet-black hair hung over her shoulders with strands floating in the static. Energy crackled in her eyes, the lightest ice-blue like faceted gems against her painted face. She shifted her weight back and forth on her feet, slowly, like a cobra dance. Krav watched, hypnotized. Cassie crouched and stepped one foot over the other, a prowling motion to place her in position to defend the child.
The kid stirred as he woke and registered the pain from his broken legs. Snapped clean through at the shin, by Krav. The shock had knocked the boy unconscious. Disgusted, Jack listened to the kid replay the memory of the abuse, and the air heated with ash-smelling steam as Cassie fumed with anger. Her fingers curled into claws. Her pistol was missing from its holster, and she didn’t seem to think about drawing a knife, even though Krav faced her grasping a nasty Blackhawk Tatang. Clearly she meant to rip him to shreds with her bare hands.
Krav muttered low in Russian. His nostrils flared and he sniffed the air in her direction. He grimaced in distast
e then crouched. The black void of his gaze shifted from the child and centered on Cassie, his strained breath blowing like a heart-shot ox. Jack shifted to keep himself between Krav and Cassie, but neither paid him any attention.
Cassie, he tried to push through to her. Careful, love. Krav is a force shifter. Her mind sounded like a thunderstorm, none of her thoughts could be translated into words. These are his landslides. Let’s take him together, okay? I don’t want you —
Still focused on Krav, Cassie raised her hand and crooked two fingers in invitation. Thunder rumbled then cracked, apparently sympathetic to her anger. Krav lunged, and Cassie met him halfway. The collision rocked him back; Krav flailed and dropped his knife. Jack smelled the stench of burning flesh. Krav cursed as he flapped his hand, his skin steaming. That was the last reprieve Cassie granted Krav.
She let loose, slicing across his face with her nails, crushing his jaw with a palm jab. She struck his ear and burst the membranes, ruining his balance. That was only in the first few seconds. Krav darted a punch at her head, but she caught his fist and locked her grip on it, and Jack heard splintering as she crushed Krav’s hand. Cassie yanked his arm the same moment she chambered her knee and kicked hard at his side. Krav roared, the sound mingled with the sickening wet crunch of snapping tendons. Jack had taught her that move, although he’d never imagined this application.
Krav’s head spasmed, a reaction to the electric current passing through him from the contact of her skin. Small needles of lightning shot down from the sky while the blue streaks radiating from Cassie danced around her. She was electrocuting him. The metal rivets and buckles on his clothing burned into his flesh, his hair slowly melted. His growling turned into an animalistic cry, keening until Cassie released him. Even Jack felt his stomach churn, and he had seen a lot on the battlefield.
In a blur Krav darted for the child, who had managed to sit up. The kid watched the fight with wide eyes. Jack tackled Krav in time, and Cassie collided with them both. Her hand scalded Jack’s neck and he ducked away from the eerie white-hot fire, pulling Krav down with him. They grappled, and Jack landed a blow to Krav’s ribs that stunned his breath. Cassie was ready with a sharp kick to the temple that dropped him to the ground. It would have killed a mortal.
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