The Phoenix Agency_The Sum Is Greater

by M. L. Buchman

  Hannah led the way.

  Jesse didn’t complain about her leading. In addition to her Delta skills guiding them to safety, even in full military gear and through his NVGs, Hannah Tucker provided an exceptional view.

  2

  They’d moved along the river bank in silence.

  Hannah typically traveled deeper in the jungle, where the tall trees shadowed the undergrowth out of existence. But they needed a boat. A canoe. At this point she’d take a log raft. That meant sticking close by the water to watch for one and fighting their way through the snarled mass of undergrowth that survived on the sunlight reaching deep into the river valley. Along this stretch of the Rio Naya, “a town” might be two huts and three canoes. Shifting farther into the jungle, it would be too easy to miss.

  A helicopter, maybe a couple of them, buzzed by, well to the north.

  “The Night Stalkers are looking for us,” Jesse noted. “About time. Two Black Hawks and a pair of Little Birds. Too bad we’re not still at the clearing.”

  “A bit of a trade-off,” Hannah dodged a leaf bigger than she was only to slam into a vine that was bigger around than her thigh.

  “How’s that, ma’am?” Three hours of brutal trekking and he was still as polite as could be.

  “If we were still there, they’d have to take us home in body bags.” As if to prove her point, sporadic gunfire sounded far away. Moments later there was the harsh dragon’s roar buzz of a helo’s M134 Minigun delivering a couple thousand rounds in return.

  “True. True.”

  “Any ideas how to get their attention without a radio?” They were fading away, but maybe they’d swing farther south on their return or as part of some search pattern.

  “Could always fire a round at them. Our threat sensors can tell direction and angle of any incoming rounds.”

  “But?” Hannah could hear the joke in his voice.

  “Getting that kind of attention from a DAP Hawk gunship is often answered with a spread of Minigun fire and 70mm Hydra rockets. With me gone missing and someone firing at them, I expect they’d fire first and ask questions later.”

  “You’re not being very helpful, Jesse. Got anything else?”

  There was a long silence as she found a way through a tangle of tree roots taller than they were, at least taller than she was. Jesse had eight or ten inches on her and maybe could see over the top of the roots rising from the jungle floor like great vertical slabs of wood.

  “Well?”

  “You could…” he cleared his throat hesitantly, “…try making some sound to get their attention.”

  “But since I don’t know how to do that…”

  “It would be a problem.”

  She finally escaped the tree-root labyrinth and broke through into the clear along the river. They were at the center of a sharp bend that nearly doubled back on itself. They were going to practically be backtracking to continue along the river bank. A low beach stretched out into the river in front of them.

  “Almost midnight. Take ten minutes,” she stepped out onto the beach and let herself collapse down onto it.

  Jesse hadn’t complained once. Not about the pace, not about the hard traveling. Special Operations soldiers really were a cut above, no matter what branch they were in. Even a Marine or Green Beret would probably be whining by now. Hell, if she was alone rather than traveling with a Night Stalker, she’d be whining by now. The mosquitos were lethal, the footing treacherous, and the likelihood of actually finding a way out, practically nonexistent.

  They found a small sandbar beach along a bend in the river and dropped down to rest and rehydrate.

  “How’s the shoulder?” Hannah tossed an energy bar to him.

  “Sore, but no worse than my feet. How are you?” He tossed a Tootsie Pop in her direction. She could really get to like him. Three weeks in the Colombian jungle, she was desperate for any Americana—but Tootsie Pops were the national food of Tennessee. She skipped her own energy bar, unwrapped the Pop fast with a practiced twist, and took her first long taste.

  “Grape!” She couldn’t stop the happy sigh. “How did you know?”

  “Can’t say as I did. They just transport in the heat better than a real treat like a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup.”

  She took out the pop long enough to make a raspberry noise at him and popped it back in. “Reese’s,” Hannah mumbled it in disgust around her mouthful.

  “Must admit I’m finding myself to be a little jealous of all the happy noises you’re making.”

  Hannah was rather tickled by that. She made some deeply yummy sounds and Jesse sighed most satisfactorily as he chewed on his energy bar.

  Hannah actually considered the question of how she was doing. Normally she’d just brush it off, with a “fine” or an eye roll for his even asking. She was used to working alone; deep recon had always been her specialty ever since her real father had taught her how to hunt. That was before he’d run off with Larry’s wife. So Larry had moved in on Ma, and her own life had gone down the shitter.

  But walking the jungle with a tall blond cowboy left her less to complain about than she’d expected.

  “I’m tired. Good, but tired. Maybe making those ‘ghosts’ took it out of me.” Or maybe it was that electrifying kiss that had so occupied her thoughts as they’d tramped along the river.

  She could feel him studying her by the starlight. They’d both switched off the NVGs to save their batteries. The night was quiet. Fast flap of wings pinpointed a passing bat. The cry of some distant animal as it fell prey to some night hunter. The occasional far-off sound of the helicopters as they quartered the wrong section of the jungle looking for their missing pilot, and hopefully her as well. Otherwise there was only the soft lap of the river as it ran over roots and rock, and mumbled along the edge of their “beach.”

  “You really heard…things?” She didn’t know what else to call them.

  “Sure did, ma’am. Clear as you and me talking.”

  A shiver slid up her spine. “How is that even possible?”

  “You’re asking me? I grew up on a horse ranch outside San Antonio. Most mystical thing we’ve got there is a starlit night like this one that seems to go on forever. We got plenty of bats emerging at sunset. They’re kinda mysterious, but I wouldn’t call them mystical exactly.” His vague silhouette waved an arm upward. She tipped her head back to look up. She’d served so many deployments in South America that she’d grown used to seeing the Zodiac constellations directly overhead rather than along the southern horizon as they’d be from US soil.

  “It sounds nice,” she’d never been on a horse ranch, or to San Antonio. She was certainly never going back to her ma’s place in the Chattahoochee wilderness of Georgia. The day she left, she’d declared her home as the neighboring Tennessee since that’s what her accent said anyway. Then she’d done her best to eradicate the accent. She’d managed to avoid Georgia for all except two training missions in the last ten years.

  “San Antonio is God’s country. There was never a thing so pretty as a sunrise over the bluebonnets from horseback or a fall sunset over fields grown thick with coneflower. Country like San Antonio is why the good Lord made horses to ride out into it.”

  “I rode a burro once. On a mission in Oaxaca. Does that count?”

  “No, ma’am. Not even close. How can a Delta Force soldier be such a sad case that she’s never ridden a horse? You’d be a total failure in ‘Outlaw’ school.” His tone was light, even teasing. She wasn’t used to that either. No one teased her, ever. Not unless they had a death wish.

  But his question cut anyway. She could feel it right down to her bones. She was a sad case when the best kiss of her life had been to help her make a noise as if she was passing gas at a distance.

  “I’m not sure that I like the idea that I can make sounds outside of my body.”

  “Can see how it might be a tad unnerving, but it proved downright useful. You gotta admit that.”

  She did, but
still felt cold despite the night’s muggy heat.

  It didn’t seem possible. But…

  She thought about making a small noise across the river. What would that sound be like? A bird? A wild pig’s grunt? A restless parrot?

  By the shift of his cowboy hat’s outline against the stars, Jesse turned to face across the river.

  This couldn’t be happening! Wasn’t she enough of a freak as it was? A woman in Delta Force? A loner? And now some sort of a ventriloquist?

  “Try to make a louder one.” Jesse didn’t sound the least put off by her.

  How had she done it before? She concentrated on projecting the explosive concussion of Jesse’s helicopter’s destruction to the middle of the river.

  “I heard a pop. ’Bout the size of a Rice Krispie.”

  This time she went for monkey screams and hand grenades.

  “Don’t worry none, Hannah. It saved our behinds when it counted.”

  “Shit!” She had no idea what she’d done differently that time before. This time she closed her eyes, bore down, and threw herself into it.

  Then she heard it herself, a distant rumble upriver barely big enough to sound over the lapping of the river against the banks.

  Except when she stopped and opened her eyes, the sound was still continuing.

  Jesse heard the sound keep building, unlike anything else Hannah had ever made. Too dark to see anything, so he flicked on his NVGs.

  A sizeable wooden motorboat was idling downstream. It was a battered old Chris Craft complete with a pointed bow and a windshield, though what it was doing on the Rio Naya he couldn’t imagine. It had rounded a bend and come into view less than fifty meters away. The middle of the night didn’t seem to be a likely time for fishermen. However, a load of severely ticked NERC guerillas would make perfect sense.

  The boat seated a dozen men tightly, and presently scanning the banks with flashlights—several had their weapons at the ready.

  He and Hannah were again completely exposed on their tiny beach, except this time a diversionary sound wasn’t going to make any difference at all.

  Then he heard a loud crunch!

  What had Hannah come up with to—

  Another crunch!

  Then he could see her jaw working and the little white Tootsie Pop stick shifting between her lips. With a final trio of crackle, the Tootsie Pop was mangled and gone—a metaphor he’d rather not contemplate at the moment.

  Turning back, he could see that the boat was still coming.

  “In the water!” Hannah whispered.

  “Crocodiles,” he reminded her. Really bad Tootsie Pop metaphor was imminent.

  “Many angry guerillas with guns,” she replied. And they were sweeping their flashlights along the bank, already cutting off the retreat from their little beach.

  He slung his rifle over his shoulder and followed her into the river. There was no way to repress the shiver that had nothing to do with the warm, muddy water.

  They were up to their necks, drifting downstream with their feet dancing along the bottom by the time the boat reached them. The bow looked much higher with nothing but his NVGs and his black cowboy hat above the water.

  With a quick kick, Hannah lunged upward and silently snagged a hand over the bow trim.

  Not wanting to be left behind, he did the same—barely managing to suppress his curse when he ended up hanging from his bruised shoulder. It felt as if it was being ripped out of the socket.

  Now what? They were hanging from opposite sides of the bow in the darkness, being slowly trawled downstream. Like crocodile bait.

  Impossibly, Hannah began hauling herself out of the water one-handed. He tried, he really did, but one-armed pull-ups weren’t a standard training challenge for helicopter pilots. Apparently it was for Delta Force operators.

  In her other hand, she had out her silenced Glock 23.

  Once she had her head up to the height of the rail, she aimed a quick nod in his direction.

  What?

  Then she kicked him underwater, below the line of the sloping bow.

  Ow! Oh! They needed a sound so they wouldn’t see her when she cleared the rail. But if he thumped on the side of the boat to distract the guerillas, they’d just look over the side and then shoot him.

  Hannah wasn’t nodding at him!

  She was motioning him toward her. Between hanging on the boat and her weapon, her hands were full.

  He reached out his free hand until it landed on her waist. Wrapping his hand in her belt, his fingers ended up inside her waistband, inside her underwear. Soft skin of her hip pressed against the back of his hand.

  The hard crack of sound so startled him that he almost lost his grip on her and the bow rail. It was over in the trees, behind the motorboat, but clear enough that it sounded like an attacking cavalry.

  The guerillas began firing into the trees, back toward the beach they’d left behind.

  Jesse lost his grip on Hannah’s waistband as she yanked herself aloft.

  By some impossible effort—maybe he should audition for a superhero movie—he managed to get his own head up high enough to see what was happening.

  All of the guerillas, even the boat’s driver, were firing aft. Hannah shot them, starting with the closest first. They were all down before any of them understood they were under fire.

  She hauled herself up onto the bow. He suddenly felt horribly drained and alone. It was all that he could do to hang on. It would be so much easier to let go than to haul himself up. Then he could just drift along and—

  With the gunfire stopped, he could hear a deep, throaty growl that sounded very close to hand.

  The sounds that Hannah had generated were nebulous and hard to define, even when they were loud enough to startle.

  That roar clicked some checkbox in his head that said, “pissed-off crocodile.”

  Jesse practically levitated onto the boat’s bow.

  For a second, he lay beside Hannah as they both gasped with the effort to board.

  She loaded a fresh clip.

  He yanked his own weapon.

  They shared a look that he’d call “happily evil,” then they vaulted over the low windshield together.

  All of the guerillas were hit, but a few weren’t down. Not right off anyway.

  Not a one of them had a radio.

  Jesse did his best not to notice how quickly the bodies they left in their wake disappeared from view—not left behind, but each yanked abruptly below the surface.

  “We need to open a clinic for heartburn medicine here.”

  “Why’s that?” Hannah slid behind the controls, because of course she could drive a boat. Nothing the woman couldn’t do.

  “Those crocs are going to be getting a serious case of indigestion from all the ammo the NERC were wearing.”

  It earned him a half laugh, more than he’d gotten so far from her. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

  She finally found the throttle and aimed them downriver. They had at least forty kilometers of river to navigate and she’d like to be offshore before sunrise. It was just 0300 hours so the chances were low, but she had to try.

  Jesse dropped into the seat beside her. He held out a Tootsie Pop.

  “How many of those do you take on a mission?”

  “Two.”

  “So that one’s yours.”

  He unwrapped it, then poked her in the ribs. When she opened her mouth to protest, he stuck it in her mouth. “More fun watching you eat them than having one myself.”

  “Sho-sholate,” she managed around the Pop. Chocolate was even better than grape. Sheer heaven!

  “You’re welcome.”

  She risked taking her hand off the throttle long enough to squeeze his hand for a moment, and there it was. There was a deep connection that rippled the length of her arm. Jesse Johnson felt solid like no man in her life ever had. Hannah wanted…what? To curl up inside that strength; bury herself in it and wallow as if in a pure male bubble bath.
Hannah pulled her hand back and told her libido to behave itself—it was thinking about far more than a bubble bath.

  “How’d you do it?”

  First she’d make sure they were somewhere quiet and not likely to be shot at. Then she’d… “How did I do what?”

  “Make such a big sound.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Trust me, pretty lady, it was a Texas-sized shitkicker. Pardon my language.”

  “It wasn’t me,” and still she hadn’t heard a thing. “Okay, it wasn’t just me.”

  “What in the wide, wide prairie are you talkin’ ’bout? Who else was there?”

  “I had this idea as we were hanging from the bow. By myself I can only make small sounds, personal-evasion sized.”

  “I don’t think I like where this is going.”

  “My guess was that whenever we’re touching, you’re an amplifier for whatever it is I’m doing.”

  “An amplifier?”

  “Yep!”

  “An APU?” Jesse’s voice rose sharply. “That’s what I am? An auxiliary power unit? I’m the same as what a Black Hawk uses to start its engines?”

  “An APU. That’s the perfect analogy. You’re my personal, private, executive, outlaw APU,” she couldn’t resist teasing him if he was going to make such a fuss over it. From her point of view it was far better than being the one making the sounds in the first place. She slewed the boat to avoid something that might have been a log or might have been a crocodile. She wasn’t going to wait to find out.

  Jesse growled.

  “A power boost when I need one.” Maybe that was the secret to his kiss. It had sure had one serious power boost behind it. They’d have to do a little more sparking to see what happened—preferably when they weren’t racing for their very lives.

  Jesse was quiet for a long time. “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Heard enough campfire ghost stories to last me a lifetime. But real world? Can’t say as I have. You?”

  “Not even close.”

  They held their silence through several “villages” not even big enough to have a dock. At idle, the low rumble of their inboard engine might let them slip through unnoticed. Then she realized that none of these places were likely to have electricity or radios. She opened up the throttle as far as she dared, but it was so loud in the eerily silent jungle that even medium low felt thunderous.