Cover
Books by Rita Henuber
Under Fire
Under Fire: The Admiral
Title Page
Under Fire: The Admiral
Rita Henuber
Copyright
Under Fire: The Admiral
Rita Henuber
Copyright © 2012 by Rita Henuber
Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
Published by Beyond the Page Publishing at Smashwords
Beyond the Page Books
are published by
Beyond the Page Publishing
www.beyondthepagepub.com
ISBN: 978-1-937349-47-9
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Dedication
For Ed
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter 1
Ecuador
Gemma Hendrickson sank to her knees in the powdery white sand watching Pacific waves crash over a brand-fucking-new million-dollar plane. All her years in the Coast Guard and she’d never had a plane shot from under her. Three days into helping out as a medical mission pilot in Ecuador and she’d been rat-a-tat-tatted out of the sky . . . “Oh, hell.”
It had happened so fast. She’d seen the trawler in the cove, seen the flashes coming from the 50 cal on the bow, and instinctively attempted an evasive maneuver. It was futile. The Beechcraft was crippled. The best she could do was use air currents coming off the surf to glide as far away from the trawler as possible.
“Don’t worry about the plane,” Ben Walsh, the doctor she’d been flying to remote villages, said. He used a hand to shield his eyes from the equatorial afternoon sun as he watched the plane sink.
She wasn’t worried about the plane, she was worried about the men on the trawler coming to finish what they started.
Walsh put a hand on her shoulder. “I know Sam Carver. He isn’t going to give you grief about crashing.”
“I didn’t crash. We were hit by gunfire and I had to ditch.” Fine line, but her ego was involved. She shrugged from his touch and damn her shoulder hurt.
“Yeah,” Walsh said sarcastically.
She squinted up at him. In the two and a half days they’d spent together she’d learned he was opinionated and a perfectionist used to getting his way. And from what she’d seen, a good doctor who cared about the people he was helping.
He swiveled his head, looking up and down the pristine coastline. She did the same. No cabanas on the brilliant white sand. No condos jutting from the lush green jungle. Walsh let out a long sigh.
Gemma pushed to her feet. “I know Sam also. He won’t give a damn about the plane, only that we’re safe.”
“Sure,” he said dismissively.
Gemma had made her career dealing with high-stress scenarios and instructing others in the techniques. She’d often found heavy on testosterone men like Walsh tended to try and take charge in stressful situations whether they knew what they were doing or not.
She began to quantify. Sharing her identity with Walsh could make it easier for him to accept her direction and the next couple of days easier for her. That is, if he believed her. She had no proof. All he knew was she was a pilot volunteering her time. Convincing him she was a United States Coast Guard admiral on leave and the company owners’ mother could be a hard sell. Her passport, her wallet, any and all papers that could identify her to the bad guys were jammed under the pilot’s seat, fifty yards off the beach and thirty feet deep. Besides, Walsh knowing who she was created a different set of issues. The men who shot them out of the sky were not duck hunting. She had every reason to believe that boat belonged to a cartel and would very soon appear on the horizon. Chaos theory—what can go wrong will—prevailed. The go wrong being the men on that boat finding them, at worst killing them, at best taking them hostage to garner a huge ransom. Kidnapping for profit was a cottage industry in this part of the world. One slip on Walsh’s part about who she was would endanger him. If the cartel had a U.S. admiral to bargain with they might not care about keeping him alive. Nope. She wouldn’t tell him unless it was necessary, and she couldn’t conceive of a situation where it would become necessary. Walsh was an unknown factor. All she could do was let it play out and deal as it came. There was always the chance he’d play nice and follow her lead.
“This makes me rethink my plan to move here permanently,” Walsh said.
“Yeah, I can see how getting shot at might put a damper on things.” She turned her attention to scanning the blue-green water for any sign of the boat.
“We should make an SOS in the sand for the rescuers,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s—” she started.
“Maybe I can get a signal on my phone now,” Walsh interrupted, bringing his cell out of a soggy pocket.
Gemma scanned his face. They were in the middle of freaking nowhere and the phone had been swimming. What was he thinking? She tensed. Geesus. They’d been knocked around while the plane bounced and skidded over the water. She had seen a trickle of blood coming from his head as they scrambled out of the plane. Was that bang on the head making him wonky? “You okay, Doc?”
He looked at the phone and made an exasperated sound. “Yeah, I’m okay.” He shook the BlackBerry, flinging water droplets that caught the sun, creating a mini rainbow. “You get so used to having them whenever you want.” He cocked his arm to pitch it into the ocean.
“Don’t.” Gemma reached out and held his arm. “Never know what we can use.” She also didn’t want anything left behind for the wrong people to use.
He frowned. She watched him return the instrument to a pocket. She blinked when she saw the way his wet shirt and pants were plastered to his body. Then quickly glanced away when she saw he was a commando kinda guy. She fixed her expression in neutral and busied herself pulling her own wet shirt away from her body and slapping sand off her pants, anything to keep her eyes off him.
She stopped the exercise in futility and moved so he wouldn’t be in her line of sight, once again scanning the horizon for the boat. “Damn. The glare off the sand and water is wicked.” She folded her arms over her hea
d to shade her eyes, regretting the loss of her Oakley sunglasses to the surf. “We need to get off the beach.” Two vertical objects, them, on the white sand would be easily visible to that boat.
Walsh looked toward the jungle. “Go into that?”
“Doc, it’s one”—she pointed her index finger to the sky—“stay in the open and take a chance the men on that trawler appear and finish the job they started, two”—the second finger went up—“go into the water and swim with the sharks, or three”—her thumb joined the party—“in there.” She tipped her head in the direction of the tree line. “I choose . . .” she said and leaned to pick up her pack, “the jungle and out of this blazing sun.”
Walsh laid a hand on her arm and she jerked away. “I’m getting out of the sun.”
“You’re cut.”
She followed his gaze to her shoulder and found a pinkish bloom spreading from a rip in the wet sleeve. “It’s nothing.” But as soon as her adrenaline high vanished she’d feel it and every other bump and bang she’d gotten.
“Let me see it.” He reached for her and she moved away.
“In there.” She tipped her head toward the trees. “Out of the sun.” Gemma trudged across the beach, her wet boots and pants glazing with sand like powdered sugar on her favorite French pastry. At the edge of the jungle, she stomped and kicked at fallen fronds. Satisfied land crabs, brown bugs that looked like roaches on roids and other unidentifiable critters had vacated, she dropped to her knees and pulled the Blowout medical bag from her backpack, handed it to Walsh and offered up her cut arm.
“I have one of these in my pack?” he said, dropping to his knees across from her.
“Yes. Specific to your medical needs. I’m allergic to a lot of antibiotics. What I can take is in mine.”
“How would meds I need be in here?” Walsh narrowed his eyes at her.
“You filled out forms for the company.” Forms that listed his age as fourteen years her junior. “Each person who flies with us has an emergency pack made specifically for them. You know, in case of emergencies.”
“Oooh. Yeah, I remember,” he said, examining the contents. “Never had any reason to examine these packages before.”
“Uh, Doc?” His knees were spread and she could see his package quite clearly through the light fabric of his pants.
“Yeah?”
“Ya might want to pull your shirt down so I . . .” She flipped her hand in the general direction of his crotch but kept her eyes high. “To cover . . .”
He looked down. Then back. He raised and lowered a shoulder and gave her a smile that had doubtless charmed every female he’d ever met. “Sorry.” He slowly pulled his shirt around to cover his crotch. “Better?”
She rolled her eyes and presented her shoulder. “You going to fix me or not? We need to get moving.”
“Sure. Let me get an idea of what’s in here.”
Walsh bent his head and went back to the bag, examining morphine ampoules, meds, a transfusion kit, and a basic surgical instrument kit, emblazoned with sterile in white block letters across the green pouches.
“Good stuff,” he said, using the antiseptic hand wash. “Let’s see that.” He clasped her arm and pushed up the sleeve of her polo, exposing the now stinging cut.
“There are latex gloves in there.”
“Don’t need them unless you want me to put them on.” He looked at her, waiting patiently for the answer.
“No,” she said, and he went to work gently probing the area. She was glad he didn’t want to dig out the gloves. The faster they did this the better.
“Any sharp pain when I do this?” He pressed over the length of the slash.
“Nope.”
“Good. Nothing stuck in there, and it’s not deep enough for stitches. Needs to be cleaned. The Pacific did a pretty good job but I want to be sure.”
She nodded and looked. It was more scrape than cut and looked worse than it felt. Walsh freed an adhesive bandage patch from its sterile wrap, gave it to her and twisted the cap off a plastic bottle marked antiseptic.
“Can’t you use the hand wash stuff?” She didn’t want them using supplies unnecessarily.
“I went to medical school to learn about stuff.” He removed the cap. “I even have a piece of paper that says doctor of medicine,” he said, heavy on the doctor of medicine. “I know what I’m doing.”
Okay, smart-ass.
“This is going to sting like a son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
There was an interesting bedside manner. “You say that to all your patients?” He ignored her. She took a deep breath and let it go as the cool liquid hit her skin.
“That’s it?” she said, looking at her arm. “What happened to the hurt part?”
“Yep, tough lady, that’s it.” He sat back on his heels, palms resting on his thighs, hitting her with the same lopsided grin he had when she first saw him in Esmeralda three days ago. Had it only been three days? She’d stepped out of the plane and seen him casually leaning against the medical mission truck, wearing an incredibly old, faded and holey Judas Priest T-shirt and ratty jeans with almost as much ventilation as the shirt. She thought he was an expat hired to unload the plane. As she walked to him, he removed his mirrored sunglasses and checked her out as seriously as she was checking him out. He thrust out a large hand in greeting and stuck a rusty nail in her fantasy balloon by saying, “I’m Dr. Ben Walsh.”
Having a relationship with a client was out of the question on a professional level and was a personal thumbs-down. The cougar thing didn’t bother her. She was perceived as years younger. She’d lucked out and gotten the best, hell, the only thing, her parents had to offer. Their good genes and looks. HHHer personal bar was set firmly at seven years younger.
She eyed the antiseptic container. “You were messing with me. That stuff doesn’t really hurt.”
“Oh, it does,” he said, putting the cap back on the container. “If you’d been the one pouring it on my cut I’d still be whining like a little sissy. Gimme the patch.”
She handed it over and watched as he covered the area, gently smoothing the square, molding it to her skin. His fingers slid under the sleeve to her shoulder.
“Sore?”
“Hmm.” She nodded.
“Rotate the shoulder.”
She did. His fingers probed. His eyes stayed on her faceis eyes wereH
.HHHissssasa . This was a bedside manner she could get used to. She kept up the movement. He kept up the probing. Having a relationship with a client and a much younger man was out of the question, but she had nothing against enjoying this. And the scenery. He really was a good-looking man.
“Oh.”
Walsh stopped. “I hurt you?”
“No.” She remembered he’d been bleeding and touched a finger to a red welt inside his hairline. He winced. The doc was a whiner. “In the plane, it was bleeding.” He shoved her hand aside and gingerly explored the knot.
“Look.” He dipped his head. “Tell me what’s there.”
“Are you sure you want to trust the person without a medical diploma?” She couldn’t resist. He squinted up at her, frowning. Gemma carefully separated his thick hair. “A lump the size of a quarter, half a centimeter high, with a tiny cut, like a puncture, next to that scar. No blood now. Want me to put the stingy stuff on it?”
“Yeah. Can we use your stingy stuff or do I need to get mine out?”
“Use mine. There’s a signal mirror in here if you want to see it yourself,” she said, going for her pack.
“I believe you.”
His dark eyes watched as she dripped antiseptic on a two-by-two gauze.
“Okay?” She waited for a nod of approval then covered the lump, pressing.
“Ow.” He moved her hand away. “Thanks.” The word didn’t carry a heartfelt tone. “I can do it now.”
He dabbed it, wincing. “We both need to take some pain meds.” He dropped the gauze and held up a plastic pill container, a long generic name o
n the plain label. “It’s ibuprofen, can you take these?” She nodded. He handed her two and shook out two more for himself. “When we come down off the adrenaline rush we’re going to feel every bump and our muscles will be screaming. There’s stronger stuff in here. No need to take them unless these”—he shook the container, rattling the pills—“don’t work.”
Gemma nodded and dry-swallowed the oblong pills. She stood and left Walsh to gather the litter from the jungle emergency room. She kicked and examined downed palm fronds, picking two that were free of critters. “Doc, don’t go digging through everything. Look, but don’t take things out and put them on the ground. Don’t want to pick up any travelers.”
“Geesus. Do you always order people around like this?”
She paused and considered the question. “Yes. I do.” She headed for the beach.
“Where are you going?” he called.
“Don’t worry.” She turned and walked backward. “I’m not going to leave you. I’m covering our tracks.” She waived the fronds. “Stay put.”
Gemma swept over their footprints until they were nothing more than unidentifiable lumps in the sand. She stood at the edge of the jungle surveying her work. Even if the men from the trawler came ashore to search, it would be okay.
She returned to find Walsh slathering himself with bug repellant, items from his pack spread out on the ground. He held the green repellant container at arm’s length. “Hope this crap works. The mosquitoes here are big enough to fuck a duck.”
Gemma snorted and dropped to her knees, snatching articles up and examining each for things that moved. “I told you not to put anything on the ground.”
“There aren’t any bugs on them.”
“No bugs?” Gemma flicked the centipede-like thing off a food packet.
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