SEAL Firsts Page 14

  Christy heard the bullhorn blurt out something toward the waiting boat crews on the water, and she watched as one crew cheered and began paddling in. Reaching the rocks, they dismounted, held their boat above their heads, and inched up, painfully slow, as one crab-like animal. They brought the precious boat up and over the rocks without damaging it. They cheered, as they must have been rewarded with something the instructor said. They ran the rest of the way to take their positions next to another crew, who was sitting on the edge of their boat, sunning themselves. Waiting.

  So this is what he did.

  She’d seen the TV programs. She was touched that this little routine of triumph and defeat was so openly visible for everyone to see. If someone failed today, some of the people they were supposed to defend were going to witness it.

  Have I ever faced that kind of reality?

  She had to say yes. She’d come during her mother’s last days, taken a few days off from the lingerie shop in San Francisco. When her mother died, she felt totally alone.

  The first few days after her mother’s death, she didn’t even cry. It wasn’t until her mother’s pastor stopped by to visit, as she was boxing up some of her mother’s things she was taking to her brother or to donate that she’d collapsed against his chest and let loose. Was that all it took? Someone’s big strong arms to hold her so she could free herself of the pent up grief and loneliness? Someone to help her feel what it was like to be truly alone?

  After that, she’d taken a breather from packing, and for the next two days she’d walked down to the water’s edge, watching the boats. She had watched the sun setting both nights. On the second evening, as the pink and orange sky turned purple, she’d decided she’d stay in San Diego. Something in the water called her.

  She dialed Madame M and told her she wasn’t coming back to the shop after all.

  “Ah, ma chère, I feel a great adventure awaiting you. Is there a man, perhaps?”

  “Hardly. Unless he’s the doorman, or a driver for Goodwill.”

  “No romantic dinners by the water’s edge?”

  “No.”

  “Galleries. They have wonderful galleries. Not as great as here, of course.”

  Nothing was ever as good as it was in San Francisco. Madame squealed about every new yogurt shop or cupcake bakery that opened. It was their secret mission to visit all the new ones within the first week of their opening.

  “And then there are the boys on the beach. The ones that run bare-chested.”

  “I’ve not even seen them.”

  “Then you must. In fact, I will never forgive you unless you do.”

  Christy knew Madame would be stressed and shorthanded with her absence. But while the women knew her customers, she knew her staff even better. There’d be nothing she could say to change Christy’s mind.

  Christy had intended to transition to work for a wealthy San Francisco developer and customer of the shop. He’d been delighted when she told him she’d passed her test.

  She called Tom Bergeron’s office and told his secretary she was going to hang her new license somewhere else, and would be permanently relocating to San Diego. The secretary feigned disappointment, but Christy knew the older woman was secretly jealous of the attention the handsome owner paid to her. At least he did before his recent public spectacle of a wedding to the famous international supermodel. Married on the bay, on a full moonlit night. She’d watched the couple and hoped someday her wedding would be just as beautiful.

  If she could only meet the right guy.

  Mr. Simms was going to be the Realtor she had selected to sell her mother’s condo, but when he offered her the job instead, she took it. And that was how she got here, on the beach. Watching some poor mother’s son get wet and sandy.

  Finding out where his limits were.

  And where hers were, as well.

  Christy left the beach and returned home. In her dusky-lit condo, Christy made some client calls and then checked her emails. She checked her cell. Nothing from Kyle, of course. She fixed herself a salad and ate alone on the balcony, watching the sunset over the channel.

  She wondered what he was doing. If he was safe. If he’d found Armando.

  Stop this. Not good for you.

  The orange sunset reminded her of that first night they’d shared together. His dark hair had a red streak to it in the sunlight. Even the hair on his thighs and calves had orange tips, like they were on fire. She’d looked down and touched him there at their joining, then had drawn her hands up over his flat abdomen, drifting over the smooth muscles that moved under his warm skin as he made love to her. His body had undulated close and then apart as he’d thrust slowly and completely in and then out, ministering to her, giving her something she’d never had.

  She’d wanted to see it all. Wanted to watch what they looked like making love. Then she’d felt his gaze on her as she looked up to his face. He’d stopped. And as they’d shared the gaze between them in the quiet afternoon, he’d entered her deep and stayed there, and filled her.

  Something had happened. She knew it did. Did he feel the same?

  Her face was warmed as she stared out at the glistening water. If she thought very hard, she could still feel his lips on hers. Her body responded. She remembered what it felt like to touch his chest with her nipples and arch up to his warmth and see his pleasure in those blue eyes.

  It was going to be another restless night. Maybe her workout would sweat it out of her.

  Maybe not.

  Chapter 14

  Kyle and the team took off, running toward the cabin to do a snatch and grab on Armando, but a rain of automatic gunfire from that direction stopped them. Caught between the cabin and their safe house on wheels, they elected to go off toward the road and lead their pursuers away from the van. Then they slipped back and waited.

  “They’ve got some decent equipment,” Fredo whispered.

  “Ex-military?” Cooper asked.

  Kyle nodded. Whoever was hunting them had night vision too, so their advantage of surprise and their equipment had been equalized. He decided the best method was to retreat and sneak back later. He wasn’t sure who was lying in wait for them. Perhaps it had been a trap—one they’d walked right into.

  Every few yards they stopped to listen. Nothing was moving. No animals, no sounds from anything. Just rustling wind. It chilled Kyle to the bone and worried him.

  “You don’t worry about the animal sounds around you in the jungle. It’s when there’s no sound it’s the most dangerous,” Gunny had told him.

  Cooper tapped him on the shoulder and pointed west. Kyle turned and saw two heavily armed men, wearing all black, running between rocks and trees, using them as cover. He motioned for Fredo and Cooper to split up. The three of them would come at the men from behind.

  Fredo set off a small timed IED under a tent of charred branches, and then the three dispersed. In thirty seconds, the explosion echoed throughout the forest and up into the foothills above them. While the men were focused on the blast, Kyle and Cooper came up behind them and with quick jerks to their neck, rendered them unconscious. The team tied the pair up back-to-back and added strips of heavy military duct tape across their eyes and mouth, and then secured their wrists and ankles with zip ties.

  The team waited for evidence of more gunmen, but all was silent. Coop injected something in the men to make sure they remained passed out.

  “That buys us an hour,” Coop told Kyle.

  They returned to the clearing with the cabin. This time the brown sedan had just pulled up alongside one black Suburban, and two occupants jumped out. Armando’s Land Rover was parked off in the bushes to the side.

  Dust from the off-road trail was settling all around them. Another vehicle approached—a Jeep. Its engine whined, then sputtered to silence behind the Suburban. A single male occupant in police uniform, armed with an automatic strapped to his chest, got out of the Jeep and headed for the front door of the cabin. Kyle realized they were ou
t-gunned, maybe three to one.

  Not bad odds, if there were no wounded.

  Heated voices came from within.

  What Kyle and his team heard next froze them to the ground. A hail of bullets came from inside the house, along with a woman’s scream.

  Mia’s emotional pleas were difficult to understand, but Kyle could hear the occasional “No.” That meant the men were doing something horrible to her or to Armando. After the expended rounds, her sobs pierced the otherwise silent and dark night.

  Kyle’s eyes filled with water as he drew on one horrifying thought: Armando might be dead.

  Fredo and Cooper checked Kyle’s expression before he quickly sent them off. Practiced at reading each other without words, the team made their way to cover the house, Kyle in the rear, Cooper up front, near the porch overhang, hidden behind a water tank, and Fredo on the side of the house, where he hopefully took up a vantage point by the living room window.

  Kyle looked into the first bedroom and saw the two men kicking someone he thought was Armando at first. But he soon realized his buddy was handcuffed to the doorframe, looking more out of it than before. The man on the floor had been the one who had injected Armando with the junk. From the blood pooling around him, Kyle figured he’d been shot. The smoke from recent gunfire wafted through the room like incense. The man on the floor put up no resistance to the barrage of kicking and fists pummeling his body. Kyle knew the man was probably dead.

  The policeman was at the doorway and swore when he saw the corpse.

  “What the hell were you thinking, Caesar? You’re gonna fuck us all,” he shouted.

  “He pumped Armando so full of junk he didn’t even know Mia’s name. And just now I caught him going down on Mia, the sick fuck. She’s my woman. And Armando has told us nothing,” Caesar answered. “I caught this guy yesterday with his hands all over her ass.”

  “The girl means nothing except for him,” the dirty cop said, nodding to Armando who remained motionless, eyes closed. If he was awake, Kyle couldn’t tell. Bloody drool was dripping down his chin and onto his stained white T-shirt. Maybe a bicep flinched in response to information about the man’s attempts with Mia. Maybe. Kyle couldn’t be sure.

  Caesar was glaring at the policeman, keeping one hand on the knife strapped to his thigh.

  “You gonna use that? You fucking dickhead. We’re gonna have to torch this place. The squad will be here any minute with all that fucking gunfire. Can’t leave evidence.”

  The cop gave instructions in English to two huge guys. The pair dashed off to the Suburban.

  Caesar swore and left the room.

  Kyle couldn’t get Armando’s attention, so he moved on. Mia was whimpering in the next room, sobbing uncontrollably. Her body jolted in rhythm with her sobs as she writhed on the dirty mattress, trying to dislodge herself from the restraints. She seemed beyond hope, naked and beside herself.

  Caesar was wrapping her dirty flesh with an old quilt, trying to calm her sobs. She raised herself up as far as she could and spat at him, earning her a slap across the face that sent her back onto the dirty mattress, where she lay still. Kyle gripped the handle on his sidearm. If it weren’t too dangerous, he’d put a bullet through the guy’s skull, but it was too risky.

  Caesar checked Mia’s pulse and swore.

  “We gotta go, Caesar. Cops are on their way,” the other man said.

  Kyle had every reason to avoid the cops as Caesar did.

  “Give me a hand, Zario. I gotta get her unhooked.”

  “He says to leave her,” Zario answered.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Leave her,” Zario repeated.

  Kyle could smell gasoline.

  “No, man. She’s carrying my kid. I can’t leave her.”

  “So Caesar, you gonna think with your dick or with your brains? She’s baggage, man.” The cop had appeared at the doorway and shoved the other man away. He leveled his gun at Caesar. “You wanna die for her, hum? That what you’re saying? ’Cause I’m not.”

  Kyle thought Caesar would make a run for the cop’s throat. Caesar seemed to be seething with hatred, barely able to control the blind anger inside. There was no way both of them would be alive by morning.

  “Give her a chance,” Caesar said.

  “No. We go. Now.” The cop was smart enough to wait for Caesar to leave the room first. “Zario, go get the stuff.”

  Kyle joined Fredo on the side and watched as the men loaded Armando into the brown sedan’s ample trunk. He saw Fredo write down the license plate number for both the vans.

  Kyle briefly considered launching an attack against the bad guys, but he couldn’t risk further injury to Armando and Mia.

  Zario disappeared into house for a minute, and then brought something out. Kyle saw a homemade IED that Zario set on the porch by the open front door. In a matter of seconds the place was going to blow, depending on the timer. Kyle motioned to Fredo to take cover behind a boulder. Fredo stood in his tracks and shook his head.

  The jeep and brown sedan turned and took off down the dirt road, in the direction of Gunny and the van.

  “I’m going in to get her.”

  “No. You stay put…” But Kyle doubted Fredo even heard him.

  The explosion rocked the house, sending sparks into the forest, igniting trees like matchsticks.

  Water from the tank adjacent to the building spilled all over the yard, partially putting out the resulting fire. Kyle hoped Coop had been safe behind the ruptured tank. Through the burning timbers he and Fredo found Mia, who was badly burned and bruised, and thankfully unconscious. She’d been covered with the thick quilt and curtains as well as other debris, which had probably saved her life.

  They couldn’t remove her shackles, but the bed frame was so rickety they could detach her, and so they brought her outside, slung in the bed sheets. She was breathing. Fredo poured water on a strip of cotton and wiped her face as Coop checked for further injuries. Fredo offered her a drink from his pack. She moaned and spit up blood.

  “She’s got something internal going on,” Coop said. “We gotta get her to the hospital.”

  Sirens were getting closer.

  Kyle nodded.

  “We could leave her with them. They’d take her,” Coop offered.

  “Nah, can’t risk it. Remember, she might be able to ID the cop.”

  Kyle pulled a folded tarp from his pack, and they placed it under the sheet to make a sturdy sling to carry her. They took off toward the van. It was slow going through the brush, and they alternated two at a time so one could concentrate on lookout and cover, but they ran as fast as they could. Thank God Mia was a little thing. It would have been faster to drape her over a shoulder, but Kyle couldn’t risk exacerbating her internal injuries in doing so.

  In the direction of the roadway came the sounds of other engines. Two RTVs were snarling and echoing off the rocks in the night air. They reminded Kyle of the sounds of chainsaws he’d wielded working the logging camp one summer between his last two years of high school. The sounds were getting closer.

  The three men set Mia down under a small madrone and some brush. Kyle rigged a catch with lightweight razor wire from his pack. They wrapped it around two outcroppings of rocks. Someone was going to have to be bait, Kyle thought as he looked at his team. No one said a word, but Cooper ran up through the brush and conspicuously stepped on a fallen tree branch and fell, expelling a scream on purpose. Kyle and Fredo moved to either side of the rocks, the razor wire wound several times around the boulders between them. They hoped the person on the RTV would be attracted to their buddy like a fly to shit. Cooper would light up like a Christmas tree, but Kyle was hoping whoever was after them would miss seeing the wire.

  Both RTVs came at Cooper’s direction. He lay centered about thirty feet from the trap, holding his leg like he had twisted it. Just as he saw the headlights of the vehicles reflected on Coop’s face, Kyle saw him check to make sure his flak vest was secured. Kyle check
ed the taut wire. Cooper flashed light in the two driver’s direction, distracting them enough to miss the trap.

  It worked.

  The first RTV ran right into the razor thin wire, knocking the rider off. His limp body lay motionless where it fell. Kyle and Fredo kept the wire taught. The second rider tried to stop, and as he slowed, Fredo lurched at him, tackling him off the whining machine. Cooper went to switch off the first engine, but Kyle stopped him.

  Fredo wrestled the other driver, who was considerably larger than the SEAL, and seemed well-trained.

  Probably ex-military.

  The man crashed against a boulder, and Kyle heard the familiar snap of a bone breaking. Fredo bounced up and immobilized the unconscious man with zip ties on his wrists and ankles. Kyle hogtied the other one, who still hadn’t regained consciousness.

  “He’s got a busted shoulder. Bad break,” Fredo said. “He’ll be screaming his lungs out when he wakes up.”

  “Someone will find them. Let’s get out of here.”

  They quietly covered up their footsteps and picked up Mia.

  “Whoever is out there will be listening. They’re gonna know if the drivers don’t come back,” said Coop.

  Kyle answered him by sending off a few rounds of fire from the weapon he’d ripped from the bad guy’s fingers. He tossed the other automatic to Coop. He signaled, and farm boy took one RTV, mounting it with glee.

  “Always wanted one of these.”

  Kyle shook his head. “You and your toys.” He turned to Fredo. “Can you handle Mia for a bit? I guess you’ve got five hundred yards or so to go.”

  “No problem, boss.” Fredo held Mia’s dead weight against his chest and took off. Kyle hopped onto the other coughing RTV. He and Coop zigzagged through the forest to distract any other snipers out there, giving time for Fredo to get the girl to the hauler.

  A few minutes later they stopped and fired off a few more rounds. They headed back toward the hauler.

  When they found Fredo hiding behind a large rock outcropping, they shut the motors off.