Renegade: Special Tactical Units Devision (STUD) Book 3

by Sandra Marton

  Annie rolled her eyes. He took that as a yes.

  “So what I want you to do is lean into me. Not just on me. Into me. Let me take most of your weight. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And one last thing.” Dec cleared his throat. “If I go down—”

  “No!”

  He put his index finger across her lips.

  “Believe me,” he said, “I’m not planning on it. But if something happens, you’re to keep going. Head for that big pine. The one where that fat SOB held court a few hours ago. There’s a narrow trail just beyond it. It’s steep, but you won’t have to go far until one of the guys from the unit steps out and gets hold of you.”

  She lifted her face to his. Her eyes were wide; her mouth trembled.

  “Declan. I couldn’t stand it if you—if something happened to—”

  He kissed her.

  What the fuck. It had worked before. Kissing established him as being in charge. Or maybe it just reminded her of who he was. Of what they’d once had. What he’d thought they’d once had.

  The point was, kissing her shut her up.

  There was no other reason to kiss her.

  Absolutely none.

  * * *

  The moon wore a frothy veil of high white clouds. One second, pale ivory light illuminated the meadow. The next, the world was almost completely dark.

  Walking without stumbling over something—a burned-out cook fire, a sleeping outlaw, a dead one—his guys had done their job well—would have been tough if Dec hadn’t had the goggles on again.

  And they damn well made the difference when a figure clutching a long, wicked-looking blade loomed up ahead of them.

  In one quick motion, Dec shoved Annie behind him, pulled his SOG-TAC knife from its scabbard, slipped it between his would-be assailant’s ribs and angled the blade straight up into the prick’s heart.

  The bandit went down like a stone.

  Dec heard the shocked intake of Annie’s breath. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to him. She was trembling.

  “Breathe,” he whispered. “Breathe, dammit!” A second passed before he heard air shudder in and out of her lungs. “We have to keep moving. Okay?”

  She gave a jerky nod. “Okay.”

  Yeah. Right. She was okay. That was why her teeth were banging together.

  Unfortunately, there was no time for niceties. He needed her to keep going. Who knew how long these pigs would take to sleep off the booze he’d watched them swill?

  The good news was that he and the rest of STUD One had taken out some of them.

  The bad news was that there were still lots of them left.

  And getting clear of the encampment was only Part One of what it would take to get them to the extraction site. They had a lot of territory to cover and it was anybody’s guess if their escape route would be picked up or not.

  But Annie was strong, just as she’d said. She followed his order to lean into him, matching his steps as best she could, and she didn’t make a sound the couple of times he simply wrapped his arm even more tightly around her and lifted her off her feet so they could go faster.

  Somebody coughed just a few feet away.

  Dec froze.

  Annie—dammit, Anoushka! He had to get that straight in his head. Anoushka froze too. She burrowed into him. He could feel the race of her heart, hear the soft rush of her breath. He knew that she was terrified.

  He wanted to gather her in, stroke her hair, put his mouth to hers. He wanted to tell her that he would never let anything happen to her no matter what it took…

  She shuddered and buried her face against his shoulder.

  It was crazy, but standing with her like this, holding her, the dangers around them seemed to slip away. For a handful of seconds, Dec was in another place. He was back in California, watching the sun set over the ocean with Annie in his arms.

  He had never been happier.

  And she—she had been playing games.

  He’d seen a documentary one time about the Amish. Some of the Amish teenagers left their real lives for a year to try a modern kind of existence. Same with kids headed for college who took what they called a gap year and did the same thing. Have fun, forget what was ahead, just get out there and do something totally different.

  He had been Annie’s something totally different. Her walk on the wild side.

  But not wild enough to include sex.

  He’d attributed it to a sweet, old-fashioned modesty, but he knew better now.

  Where she came from, a woman hung onto her virginity because sex had nothing to do with her pleasure and everything to do with her value as a bride. And now here he was, the guy who’d helped her keep her virginity, about to deliver her to the guy who’d bought it.

  Somewhere, he thought bitterly, the gods had to be laughing.

  The coughing that had stopped their forward progress had turned into snoring.

  It was safe to start walking again.

  They reached the outer perimeter of the encampment and passed the big pine tree. The land began to rise. They were on a narrow, tree-lined trail that grew steeper and steeper. Walking two abreast became impossible. Annie fell in behind Dec; he hung onto her hand and helped her scramble uphill.

  The trail widened again when they reached a tangle of brush. Dec stopped so abruptly that she walked into him.

  He put a finger to his lips.

  A minute went by. Two minutes. They were surrounded by silence. Then it was broken by the faint whistle of a night bird.

  Except it wasn’t a bird.

  It was Chay Olivieri, armed to the teeth, stepping into their path.

  “Good to see you, dude. We were starting to think you’d decided you liked the company down there so much you were gonna hang around for a while.”

  The moon had finally broken free of the clouds, meaning there was no more need for night goggles. Dec pulled off his helmet and grinned.

  “You know how it is, man. Nobody wants to be the first to leave a party.” His grin faded. “The ambassador? His wife?”

  “Got ’em both.”

  “Chay,” Annie whispered. “I’m so glad to see—”

  “Keep moving,” Dec said brusquely.

  They climbed another quarter mile until they reached a small clearing. The ambassador and his wife stepped forward. The wife was pale and silent, but the ambassador was smiling.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Sanchez. Our thanks to all of you.”

  Dec nodded and turned to Chay. “Everybody got back okay?”

  The men of STUD One stepped forward. Annie laughed and opened her arms.

  “Nick! Alex! Danny! Aidan! I’m so happy to see you guys!”

  “Hey, Annie.” Aidan reached out to hug her.

  Dec stopped him.

  “Save the celebration for the extraction site. Right now, we’re wasting time. We left lots of calling cards down there. First light’ll be in a couple of hours and somebody’s sure to wake up and notice. Plus we have a long hike ahead of us.” He eyeballed each man individually. “And let’s remember who we have here. The lady’s name isn’t Annie. She’s Princess Anoushka.”

  “No,” Annie said quickly. “Really, I’m just—I’m just me.”

  Dec bent down and scooped up his pack from where he’d left it.

  “You’re just you. The Princess of Qaram. Isn’t that what I said?” He dug in the pack, took out a stack of camo stuff: sweater, pants, jacket, heavy socks, plus a pair of combat boots. “The smallest sizes I could come up with,” he said, tossing the stuff to her. “Get it on, fast.”

  Nick cleared his throat. “Dec,” he said softly, “maybe she needs a minute…”

  “We don’t have a minute.” He knew how he sounded. Gruff. Cold. Well, this wasn’t a Sunday stroll in the country. And she wasn’t going to get any special treatment, not from him. “Go on,” he snapped. “Get that stuff on.”

  Annie didn’t argue. She simply stepped behind a shrub and eme
rged a couple of minutes later dressed in what he’d given her, carrying his jacket and what remained of her gown. He took them from her, put on the jacket, dumped the gown in his pack and came up with an energy bar and a water bag.

  “Not fit for royalty,” he said, “but it’s the best we’ve got.”

  His men were all staring at him. Too bad. If they thought he sounded like he had a ramrod up his ass, fuck ’em.

  He had a job to do and he was doing it.

  “Okay,” he said briskly. “Olivieri, you take point. Maguire, you’re second. Mr. Ambassador, you’re next and after you, your wife.”

  “My wife can walk with me,” the ambassador said. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

  Dec decided not to argue. He’d prefer them all in single file—it would be a little harder to take them out that way—but the woman looked as if she’d never make it on her own.

  “Fine. Sullivan, you’re behind the ambassador and his wife. Princess, you’re in back of Sullivan. Spanos, you’re next. Then Romano. I’ll take up the rear. Clear?”

  They all nodded, shrugged on their packs and shouldered their weapons.

  “I’m figuring an hour to reach the ridgeline, then a five minute break. No stopping for anything after that. We have to make the extraction point by oh six hundred. So let’s go.”

  The break would be for the civilians. The Unit could keep going for hours, even on this terrain, a narrow, rocky game trail through increasingly dense forest.

  There was an easier route and Dec hoped the bandits would assume that was the one they’d chosen. Add in that the camp probably wouldn’t stir for another hour or even two, top that off with Maguire and Romano having disabled as many of the bandits’ vehicles as they could, and STUD One and its rescued hostages had a good head start.

  The big question was how quickly the bandits would communicate with the others who’d want to find them—Annie’s uncle, the Tharsalonians, Altair Amjad. Almost anybody could be coming after them, but Dec could only operate on what he knew.

  So, yeah, this climb was safer.

  It was also a hell of a lot rougher.

  Ten minutes in, the ambassador’s wife dropped to her knees. Her husband got her on her feet and put his arm around her. Alex Spanos stepped up on her other side and draped her arm around his neck.

  “Easy, Mrs. Carson,” he said gently. “We’ve got you.”

  Dec’s job as last man was to check what might be happening behind them. So far, so good. There was no sign of anybody, no sounds carrying to them on the still air.

  They were making decent time.

  Annie was still going strong.

  He watched her as she struggled up a particularly steep stretch of ground. Sullivan looked back and offered her his hand, but she waved it away.

  Dec wasn’t really surprised. He knew she was strong. And courageous. One day in California, she’d asked him if he knew how to surf and when he’d said yeah, he did, her eyes had lit.

  “Will you teach me?” she’d asked.

  He’d been hesitant. She was small. Delicate. And the waves on the beach he surfed were sometimes towering. But she’d been persistent and finally he’d taken her out with him, showed her the basics on a board he’d borrowed for her—and damn if she hadn’t gotten the hang of it quickly enough to ride a couple of good-size waves, laughing with joy as she did, not complaining or even showing fear the times she got dumped.

  Afterwards, back at his place, she’d gone into the bathroom to shower. She’d emerged wearing his terrycloth robe. He’d laughed when he saw her. He was six feet two to her, what, five feet four. The robe had been like a tent on her, hanging to her feet, the sleeves rolled up, the sheer size of it swallowing up her sweet curves.

  “What?” she’d said, with mock indignation, and he’d grabbed the lapels of the robe and tugged her into his arms, and she’d laughed with him until their eyes met and, slowly, God, slowly he’d reached out, opened the robe and for the first time saw her, all of her, naked and rosy and so beautiful it had almost killed him not to touch her…

  Dec shuddered.

  They were at the ridgeline.

  “Take five,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  The men, trained to making the most of every second of downtime, shrugged off their packs and sat wherever they could find a reasonably comfortable spot.

  Dec dumped his pack as well and headed for the ambassador and his wife.

  “You doing okay, sir?”

  The ambassador was breathing hard, but he gave Dec a thumb’s up.

  “Been doing some running the last couple of years,” he panted. “It’s paying off.”

  It didn’t take much to see that the guy’s wife wasn’t doing so well. She was wearing camos, same as Annie, but they only emphasized the woman’s removal from reality. She sat with her hands folded in her lap and a faraway expression on her face.

  “You’re doing fine, ma’am,” Dec said gently.

  She flinched when he touched her shoulder. Dec drew his hand back and walked over to Maguire.

  “Help Spanos with the ambassador’s wife when we move out,” he said softly.

  Aidan nodded. “Yeah. I figured on it.”

  Dec headed for the princess.

  She was sitting on a flat rock, long legs stretched out in front of her. He handed her a water bag.

  “Thanks,” she said, and tilted her head back to drink.

  Water trickled down her chin, down her throat.

  He imagined bending to her, following that drop with his tongue, tasting the coolness of the water, the heat of her skin…

  Jesus Christ.

  He swung on his heel, strode past everybody to where he’d left his pack and dug through it until he found another water bag.

  What he really needed to find was his composure.

  A hard-on? Here? Really? With death behind them and a two, three hour scramble up the mountain ahead of them?

  Dec took a long drink of water. Then he got his stuff together and rose to his feet.

  “Move it out,” he barked.

  The line formed up and they started forward again.

  * * *

  Two hours and twenty minutes later, the land began to level off and the trees began to thin.

  Dec called a halt and checked first his GPS and then his map—the old tried-and-true methods could be comforting.

  They were three clicks from the extraction point. The sky had lightened to the color of pewter. There was still no sound or sign that they were being followed. All good stuff, although the absence of anybody coming after them made Dec uneasy.

  He knew the other guys were uneasy too. It was hard to believe this could continue to go so smoothly.

  “How much further?”

  Dec swung towards the ambassador. He wasn’t looking so good anymore. His face was bright red and his hands trembled as he unwrapped an energy bar.

  His wife looked even worse. Her skin was chalky. She still hadn’t spoken. A thin line of saliva was visible at the corner of her mouth.

  “Not far,” Dec said.

  The ambassador nodded. “I don’t think my wife can hold out much longer.”

  “Just a little bit more, sir, I promise.”

  “Declan?”

  Dec turned around. The princess had come up behind him. She hadn’t spoken to him since their last break.

  “Declan.” She ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. “You said a helicopter will pick us up.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “Where will it take us?”

  Dec frowned. “I don’t know.”

  “To your base in California?”

  “A Black Hawk couldn’t do that kind of distance.”

  “I know that. What I meant was, is that our final destination? The States?”

  It was a good question, but he didn’t have the answer. “It’ll be someplace safe.”

  “Someplace safe,” she whispered.

  Something in her voice worried
him. The look of her worried him too. She was pale. Damp with sweat. A lock of hair hung over her eye. Without thinking, he pushed it back.

  “Why are you asking? Is there a place that wouldn’t feel safe to you?”

  “I just—I just—” She took a deep breath. “I’m just wondering where we’ll be going, that’s all.”

  Of course she was wondering. Any bride whose wedding had been delayed would want assurance that she was going straight into the arms of her groom.

  Dec’s mouth twisted.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Princess,” he said with a cold smile. “I’m sure the United States government has no interest in depositing you anyplace but in your bridegroom’s lap.”

  He swung away from her and shouldered his gear. He could feel her staring after him. His guys were watching him too. So what? Was he supposed to treat her as if she were special?

  His job was to get her out.

  If she didn’t like the way he was dealing with her, fuck it.

  Something cold and wet splatted against his forehead. He looked up and saw a sky that had filled with rainclouds. Shit. The forecast hadn’t included rain, but weather was always unpredictable when you were up this high.

  “Let’s move,” he said sharply.

  The only good news was that they were on the last few miles of a journey he already wanted to forget.

  * * *

  The rain turned into a steady downpour.

  They stopped just long enough to put on ponchos. There weren’t enough to go around so Alex and Nick gave theirs to the ambassador and his wife.

  Aidan tried to give his to the princess, but she refused it.

  “Thank you,” she said, “but I’m fine,” even though any idiot could see she was soaked and shivering

  Dec watched for a few seconds. Then he cursed, strode over and pulled his own poncho over her head.

  “Do us all a favor,” he said. “Stop trying for the Mother Teresa award and just do as you’re told.”

  She looked at him the way he figured she’d look at somebody who’d just kicked a puppy.

  “I don’t know why I ever thought I missed you,” she said in a shaky whisper, and then she brushed past him and started along the trail, her pace so rapid that Maguire, who was the new point man, had to scramble to get out ahead of her.

  The others trudged past Dec.