by Dana Marton
* * *
THE FINAL BATTLE CAME at dawn. Everyone could see at last and that lifted their confidence. Both sides wanted to end the chase. Rapid fire was interspersed with short breaks while weapons were reloaded and men searched for better cover.
Some larger rocks, or any kind of cover, would have been nice to protect them as they made their last stand, Mitch thought as he shot back and moved forward to look for a sustainable position. He burst out of the woods one step behind Megan, but slowed as he took in the cliff in front of them. The drop to the bottom measured at least a hundred yards, and the other side of the gorge was about thirty yards away.
Not a distance they could tackle in one leap.
A kapok tree had fallen across the canyon, or perhaps it had been cut that way on purpose to serve as a bridge. But that must have been a long time ago. Weather had rotted the wood. When Mitch kicked it, the spongy consistency didn’t fill him with optimism.
The underside of the trunk that rested against the cliff had been hollowed by jungle critters or the elements, further weakening the structure, he realized as he looked more carefully.
He turned to the others. “We can’t cross here.”
“Now what?” Zak mumbled through his broken jaw, his eyes wide with fear. “We’re gonna die in this stupid jungle, aren’t we?”
“We’ll have to make our last stand here.” Cover or no cover. Their luck had run out.
Megan scanned the area, a grim expression on her face. She’d barely spoken since they’d left the compound. Her heart was broken, a dangerous condition for a soldier in battle. Her pain ripped through Mitch’s gut. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to console her. But that would have to wait a little longer. Right now, they couldn’t afford to take a single second to think about anything else but the fight. Cristobal’s men had fallen back, but they weren’t far behind.
Mitch examined the terrain. If they couldn’t find cover, some high ground would do, but there wasn’t any of that, either. Except...
“Can you climb?” he asked the kid.
Zak shook his head, looking ready to drop from exhaustion. He was out of bullets, too. The kid wouldn’t be much help. Mitch had to get him out of harm’s way.
“Get into the hollow of this tree.” Mitch bent and checked it for dangerous critters. They didn’t need another snakebite.
Zak glanced at the space—large enough for him to hide in if he curled into the fetal position, which he did. “Can you see me?”
“You’ll be fine as long as you keep quiet.”
“Where do you want me?” Megan asked, leading the charge.
He hated to see her this dispirited. “We’ll be up in the trees.”
She immediately scanned the tallest ones and picked one for herself. He wished they could go up together so he could help her climb, but they’d be better off dividing the enemy. So he headed toward a tree several yards away. If all went well, the enemy would enter the clearing right between them.
Lianas helped his climb; a couple of nasty snakes slowed it. He dropped them onto the trail below. With luck, they’d bite one of Cristobal’s lackeys. He picked his position carefully, in the fork of a branch that provided protection from two sides. He hoped Megan had done the same. He could no longer see her. She’d done a good job of hiding in the foliage.
Megan was falling apart on the inside, but on the outside she was still a top-notch operator, taking care of business. Even seasoned soldiers couldn’t always pull that off. His respect wasn’t easily earned, but Megan had earned that, and more. She had his loyalty. He would see her out of here in one piece or die trying.
He’d do the same for Zak. He’d done it for all the other men he’d rescued out of hot spots before, men whose lives had been put into his hands. Yet his devotion to Megan went deeper, to a level he wasn’t altogether comfortable with.
If they survived the day, they were going to have to talk about where they stood. He wasn’t sure if he should be pleased or scared. All he knew was that his insides were tied up in knots every time he thought about any harm coming to her.
Endless minutes ticked by. Then the noises of the jungle changed suddenly. Birdcalls turned shrill and warned of new danger. People were coming.
For a second, Megan pulled from cover, making her face visible to him, but not to anyone below. They didn’t say anything. Her beautiful face looked tough yet vulnerable.
He was falling in love with her.
And then one of Cristobal’s men came into view. Mitch aimed, fired and took him out. Judging from the way the bushes moved and the force of the returning fire, there were at least twenty others behind him.
How in the hell? Cristobal must have sent fresh men in the night who’d followed the sound of gunfire and had caught up.
Twenty against two.
Those weren’t the best odds, but Mitch was who he was, and Megan was who she was, and they made a hell of a team.
He neutralized two more men before a bullet nicked his heel. Good thing he wasn’t Achilles. Aside from the burning pain, the injury didn’t much interfere with the business of taking these goons out.
Megan got her men, one by one, with enviable precision. Each shot was a kill. Her brother was not forgotten, nor would he ever be. She was fueled in equal parts by stone-cold professionalism and red-hot revenge, a deadly combination.
The enemy saw the danger, too, and blanketed her position with fire.
If she was hit, she didn’t cry out.
He tried to see how many men were left down below. They’d gotten a bunch of them, but there were still a dozen men shooting from behind cover. They had limitless ammunition and plenty of practice at shooting monkeys out of trees. The branches around Mitch were riddled with bullets. He figured Megan’s hiding spot had to look the same.
One of the men below them was going to get lucky sooner or later. The only way to survive a battle against these odds was to finish it quickly.
A bullet grazed his knee. It got just close enough to rip his pants and take off some skin. Mitch took out the shooter, and the man next to him. That one had a radio clipped to his belt. Good, now the bastard wasn’t going anywhere with it. They were going to need that later.
He kept on shooting at every leaf that moved. Megan didn’t take a break, either. Then more bullets flew at them, and the next thing he knew, she was falling out of the tree.
His heart stopped. The ground was too far away, the fall unsurvivable.
“Megan!”
Somehow she caught herself on a branch, her boot wedged between two tree limbs. She hung upside down, gun still in hand, blood covering the side of her neck and face.
He went a little crazy then, sliding down on a liana, not caring that he was falling too fast or that the bark of the plant took the skin off his palm. He squeezed off one bullet after another all the way down, a war cry tearing from his lips.
When his boots touched the ground, he barely felt his busted heel. He plowed forward like a robot, men falling before him. Blood ran on the jungle floor. He, too, was covered in it. This small patch of jungle looked like a slaughterhouse when he was finished.
And all that time, all he could think of was Megan.
The gun had fallen from her hand. She hung listlessly from the branches, held only by her boot. If her small foot slipped from it...
He climbed the tree faster than he’d ever thought possible. “Megan! Megan, honey?”
She shook her head. Focused her eyes. They narrowed immediately as she squeezed off a shot, and when he twisted, he saw a man he’d missed earlier. The last of Cristobal’s foot soldiers fell with weapon in hand and a disappointed look on his face.
Then Mitch was there, pulling Megan up and cradling her in his arms. The bullet that had knocked her out of the tree had cracked her collarbone. Mitch found two more bullet holes in her chest. He yanked up her tank top and gave thanks to God. Don Pedro’s game book had acted as a bulletproof vest, saving her.
A last gift fr
om Billy, who’d told them about the book in the first place.
“Hang in there.” He made a pressure bandage, took both of their belts off and tied her to his back with them, then carried her down the tree.
“Is it over?” Zak stumbled their way to investigate the silence. “I’m hungry.” He finally spotted Megan, who’d passed out from blood loss on the way down. “She doesn’t look good.”
“Shut up and go find the man who had a radio. We need it,” Mitch snarled at him. “And get me a boot. Right foot. About this size.” He showed the busted boot on his foot. Blood seeped through the hole.
He ignored that and checked Megan’s wound first. The bullet was still lodged inside her, in a way that actually prevented more serious bleeding, so he decided to leave it in. When he got her to a hospital, the doctors could deal with it. And he would get her to help.
He grabbed his canteen and washed the blood from her face.
Her eyes fluttered open after a moment. “What happened?”
“You got shot. Stay still.” He offered her water, and she drank.
“Is it bad?” Her eyes were glazed with pain.
“Nope. You’ll live to boss me around another day. Try to move as little as you can.”
He limped off into the undergrowth and didn’t come back until he found what he was looking for. Corsh weed for her swollen arm, and some small brown berries that had disinfectant qualities for her brand-new bullet wound.
He treated her injuries, then ripped two strips off the bottom of his T-shirt and bandaged her. Man, he hated to see her in this shape. “I wish we could rest.”
She looked offended. “Have you ever seen me take a nap in the middle of the day?”
He smiled at her. He loved her; there was no way around it.
Fat lot of good it did for either of them. The situation was impossible. With the kind of jobs they had, they’d never see each other. But nobody ever said love was convenient. From all accounts, it was a major pain. He felt it.
He looked over at Zak, who was checking the dead. Beyond the jaw that couldn’t be helped until they got to a doctor, the kid had no other visible injuries. So Mitch took a few minutes to deal with his own cuts and abrasions, and his heel.
“Need any help?” she offered.
She could be half dead, and she’d still be the one who wanted to take care of everybody.
He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll live to annoy you another day.”
She reached out and took his hand, her amber gaze locking with his. “I’m getting used to it. You’re not always that annoying.”
He squeezed her fingers. Never wanted to let her go. “I have my good days, huh?”
“Good minutes.” A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “Let’s not get carried away.”
“Why not? I think you should get carried away.” He bent over and picked her up. Took a few steps to see if he could walk without putting too much weight on his heel. He set her back down again when Zak returned with an armload of loot.
“You’re not carrying me.” Her eyes narrowed as she laid down the law.
“You’ve lost too much blood.”
“Are you calling me a wimp?”
Zak dumped his bounty at Mitch’s feet: a couple of pieces of beef jerky that the kid looked at mournfully since he couldn’t chew, ammunition, a boot that looked like it would fit, a shortwave radio. “The rest of the stuff is covered in blood. I’m not touching it.”
“This is more than enough. You did good. Let’s get ready to move.”
“We have a radio. Call in the cavalry,” the kid argued with him, forming the words painfully.
“We have to get to a spot where a chopper can land,” Megan educated him.
Mitch turned on the radio, dialed a channel he knew U.S. military in the region monitored then sent a coded message that gave their rough location. He added a special code so the Colonel would be alerted. Then he turned the thing off. No sense in running down the battery.
“I’ll be carrying her.” He shot Megan a look. “She’s got a broken collarbone, and she’s lost too much blood.”
“I’m hurt, too,” the kid protested.
“I’m not carrying you, so you’ll just have to live with it. Grab that bag and let’s get going.”
“My jaw is broken.”
“I never said you had to carry the bag with your teeth.” Zak was a poster child for tough love. He needed some, and Mitch wasn’t about to coddle him. He started out heading northeast along the gorge, looking for a way across.
In the end, they didn’t need to cross. They found a flat rock ten miles down the way big enough for a chopper to land. He made another call on the radio and kept transmitting so the rescue team could track the signal to their exact location. Then they had nothing to do but wait.
Dusk was gathering by the time the extraction team arrived. The sound of the helicopter’s rotors reached them from the distance. Mitch tossed some wet leaves on the fire he’d started and sent the thick smoke upward, fanning it with a palm leaf. Soon the chopper came into view above the trees, and he kicked the fire apart so the smoke wouldn’t be an impediment to landing.
He didn’t know the men who jumped out to help them aboard. They weren’t from his team. The colonel must have requested assistance from whatever military unit was close and available.
“Thanks. I appreciate your help.” It felt odd to be on the other end of a rescue. He wasn’t used to it.
The rescue team knew better than to ask any questions that didn’t have to do with their physical well-being.
A medic had ridden along with the chopper. Zak demanded drugs until he was knocked out completely. Megan refused them.
“You need to go to a hospital, ma’am,” the medic told her as he left her side to talk to the pilot.
They’d strapped her to a stretcher to keep her broken collarbone from moving. Mitch sat next to her and took her hand.
She closed her eyes. Her face was drawn. He had no trouble guessing the path of her thoughts. She was thinking about Billy. She had sworn not to leave the jungle without him, had planned on him being with her when she headed out of here.
He squeezed her fingers. “Your brother would be proud of you.”
“I failed.” Even her voice sounded broken.
“Don Pedro’s game book has enough intel to clean up half the jungle. Because of Billy, and because you came for him, you’ll set back the drug and gun business at least a decade. This will save thousands of lives. Tens of thousands. This is why Billy took on the job.”
She nodded. Then she opened her amber eyes and looked at him. “I love you.”
He stared at her as she closed her eyes again. He loved her, too, but he was not the man she needed. He could be lost on any mission, just like her brother. No way would he risk putting her through that pain. He couldn’t stand the thought of her suffering like this because of him.
Minutes passed while he looked at her, bewildered. His feelings switched back and forth between elation and despair. By the time he gathered himself, she’d fallen asleep from the combination of blood loss and exhaustion.
She slept the whole three-hour chopper ride to a small rural hospital. Medical personnel were waiting to examine her and Zak. Mitch, too, but since the Colonel was also there waiting for him, he decided he could do the debriefing before they started poking at his heel.
“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he told Megan before marching off with the Colonel.
But an hour later, he couldn’t find her. The CIA took care of their own, it seemed. They’d sent someone for her, and she’d already been taken away, back to the States.
Chapter Fourteen
Hopeville, Pennsylvania, three months later
Mitch sat in the small apartment he’d rented as a home base in between missions and looked at the printouts of a spacious condo the Realtor had done her best to talk him into buying. He’d gotten the reward money for getting Zak out of the jungle in one piece.
The little twerp was fine. And now he was thinking about starting up a business that taught jungle survival.
A nerve jumped in Mitch’s eyes every time he thought of the kid.
At first, he’d refused the reward money. Then the Colonel had stepped in and told him he was going to accept it because he had worked for every penny of it, and that was an order.
He didn’t want the money. He didn’t much want the condo, either. He wanted Megan.
Not searching her out was a daily battle. But in the end, he loved her enough to do what was best for her. He wasn’t it.
Hell of a thing. He was pretty sure she was the best thing that could ever happen to him.
Funny how fate could mess up so badly.
Since he’d last seen her, he’d been on another mission and back. His heel was as good as new. His heart was in tatters.
He’d almost messed up this last job. He was losing his focus.
He needed to talk to her, he decided. So he couldn’t talk himself out of it again, he grabbed his cell phone and called the Colonel.
“I need a leave of absence, sir. For personal reasons.”
“Everything all right?”
“Fine, sir. It’s time to visit some old friends. You wouldn’t know where Jamie Cassidy hangs out these days?”
“I wasn’t aware you two were close friends. You never did an op together.”
“No, sir.” He wasn’t about to elaborate.
A moment of silence passed. “Why don’t you come into my office to sign the paperwork for that leave? I’ll dig out his file.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Now he would have to do it. Now he was committed. When he got back from his leave, the Colonel would expect a full report on Jamie and how he was recovering.
Mitch ran his fingers through his hair. If he happened to see Megan while he visited Jamie...
