Deadly Rescue

San Miguel is the kind of country that operatives either love or hate. Dirty. War torn. Streets teeming with people and narrow alleys full of dark shadows.

It’s nothing to see speeding cars and guns in the hardscrabble capital city of Selva Oscura, so we fit right in. Tearing through traffic, in body armor, loaded to the teeth with weapons in a battered, rented SUV.

Jamming on the brakes, Andre barely misses a scooter with a muttered curse, then guns the gas again. We all know the clock is ticking. Our window for rescuing our target is tight.

Lurching into a pothole, our vehicle sways and I come dangerously close to bumping into the operator to the left of me. Which might be a shootable offense in her book.

Simona.

One name. One expression.

A look that screams ‘don’t fuck with me’. Which I find both mildly amusing and very interesting.

And did I mention she’s hot?

Exotic and beautiful. With her Czech accented English, her pale, almost white blonde hair, and her lush, kissable lips, she makes a hard to miss package.

From the very first time she stepped into the clinic with a deep knife cut on her hand, she had my body on high alert. And knowing she was in my small town put my head on a swivel. Even though her hotness is something I probably should forget. Permanently.

As much as I’d like a romp in the proverbial hay with Simona, she’s obviously not interested. Unless it involves lighting me on fire or feeding me to hungry wolves. And me, I’m not even sure what the hell I’m up to since getting out of the Navy.

But my reproductive drive says otherwise. Yes. Yes. Yes, thrums in my veins when anything Simona comes up on radar.

When I glance her way, those incredible eyes of hers are locked on me. Two sighted weapons. Pale blue. Deadly.

Guess I set my fate when I wouldn’t let her leave the clinic that night without stitches.

I wish that look didn’t make my blood hum and my cock jump.

Now is not the time to get distracted by thoughts of stripping all of her clothes off and kissing that snarl right off her mouth.

We’ve got a job to do.

But I can’t hold back the low laugh in my chest as I watch her look me over with disdain. “Sugar, you’d burn me to charcoal with that look if you could.”

Pressing her peach-pink lips flat with considerable effort, she glares. Planning my demise, I suspect. It would probably make her day, hell, maybe even her year, if I combusted on the spot.

“Try not to shoot me in there,” I say with a dark grin.

Good thing I’m wearing a bulletproof vest or she might just make that silent threat a not so silent bullet to my chest.

“Stay out of my way, then,” she snaps as she checks her clip for ammo and slams it back into her pistol one more time.

“You always so angry, Sprite? It’s really not healthy to carry that kind of energy around, you know?” I purposefully use the nickname I know she hates, just for the fun of teasing her.

Her eyes go wide, then turn into furious slits. “I said, DO NOT call me Sprite.”

Damn if she isn't hot as hell when she’s like that. All bristly like a wildcat. I bet she’d claw the hell out of me if I got her off.

I’m grinning, with a barrage of dirty thoughts in my head, as I grab the oh shit handle over the SUV’s window. We take a tight curve like we’re in an Indy car race.

She glares and mutters something in her native tongue as she barely escapes getting thrown into my lap.

I laugh some more. Even though I wouldn’t be laughing if she did land on me. I’d probably be growling.

She straightens herself in the seat and snarls.

I shrug a shoulder. “I didn’t do it. Mario Andretti up there is the one with the gas pedal.”

Andre’s behind the wheel. Marshall, the boss man, shifts in the passenger seat, causing the leather to creak as he adjusts his shoulders. The man’s a tank. And as serious as one too. He flicks his wrist and checks his watch again. “Four minutes out.”

As the minutes tick down, the air around us begins to crackle with tension. The teasing mood vanishing. Shit’s about to get real.

The road noise is the only sound in the SUV. Until the Sat phone rings.

“Talk,” Marshall says.

As we listen to his side of the call, I twist my neck, cracking the tension out of it. Since I was a teen, that’s how I get my game face wired.

Simona drops her voice, and with a satisfied sound, says, “I knew you’d be scared. You can back out now and make my day.”

Yeah. Right.

I lean down slowly and put my mouth right by her ear. “When I crack my neck, it’s because I’m ready. And you better be over your shit in about two minutes because we need to be a team when we go in there to rescue that girl. Remember how this works?”

She turns her head away from me. “I hate doctors. You’re all assholes.”

I unholster my pistol and check the clip. “Handy assholes. But yeah, a lot of us are assholes. I like to think I’m only 50ft.”

She’s not impressed. Which I expected. Simona’s had it out for me ever since the clinic. Then she heard I was joining the team for some special operations and she went full on attack mode. All, supposedly, because I have M.D. on my diploma.

What she doesn’t know is that I’ve always liked a challenge.

That’s where I thrive.

Making her like me is going to be fun.

Making her want me would be even more rewarding.

When our driver slams to a stop in the littered alley that’s no wider than the SUV, Marshall holds up his hand. We watch and wait for the go signal as the air in the car goes full on electric.

I will give Simona credit, though. She’s calm.

Focused.

Her breathing is steady and deep. It’s very clear that she’s seen some action in her days too. Another thing that attracts the hell out of me.

But that’s for another time. If we don’t die. Which can happen any time you extract a high value target from an abductor.

Marshall gives us the signal and we slide silently from the car, falling into formation behind him.

The alley grows narrower. The sides climb high above, crisscrossed with rusty fire escapes and tiny dilapidated balconies.

Carefully, we navigate the trash and discarded car parts. I nearly run smack into a chicken when it flutters up from behind a box, screeching.

This is our way in, but thank fuck it’s not our way out. The other alley is shorter. Wider and clear enough for the van that’s waiting for us to approach the warehouse door we’ll be exiting.

Marshall’s voice comes over the comm system in my ear. “Extraction vehicles in place?”

Roark, Mako, and Andre check in from their posts. One above us on a balcony. One in the van. One in the SUV we just left.

The boss man stops, presses his big frame against the wall just outside of a door. Simona, crouching low, takes her spot on the other side of the door.

“We go on one.”

“Copy.”

Simona quietly echoes her reply.

Marshall counts down, “Three, two, one.”

The heel of his boot crushes the lock. With a deafening slam, the door flings inward.

We surge into the dimly lit space. An instant later, we’re in a firefight.

Bullets explode around me as the acrid odor of gunpowder fills the air. Everything slows. The movements. The sound of my own breathing in my ears.

A pallet of boxes gives me cover. Marshall rises up and fires a volley of rounds.

And… fuck!

Simona takes off at a run toward the room where we know the target is being held. The girl’s got balls. I’ll give her that.

But Jesus. What the hell is she thinking?

While Marshall fires again, I sprint after her. My throat tight, my gut cold, and my gun raised.

But a man in all black tactical gear steps out of the room where the girl was supposedly being held. He cuts off our path with a gun pointed right at Simona’s face.

The small, unconscious body of a young girl is draped over his broad shoulder. Her bare, pale feet dangle at his waist, hanging below a drab gray sheet. She’s breathing. Slowly and steadily. Probably drugged.

Simona skids to a stop, but lifts her gun. She points it right back at the man’s head.

His eyes cut to me before swinging quickly to her. “Move and I’ll shoot her in the face.”

I hold perfectly still, calculating how I’m going to disarm the bastard. He’s thin and wiry. His hold on the pistol is confident. The blackness of the man’s eyes would be striking if you liked pit vipers.

I happen to hate snakes.

A vile laugh peels out of the fucker’s sneered lips. “Well, well. I never would have thought you would be here. It’s been a long time, ghost.”

Then he fires.

One shot.

A nine-millimeter round.

And Simona falls.

Blood sprays across my face.

The coppery tang fills my nose as I draw a shocked breath.

He steps backward, holding his gun on me now. “Follow me and I’ll do the same to the girl.”

Simona groans, but I don’t look.

Through the comm gear in my ear, Marshall’s voice sounds distant. “Get Sprite the fuck out of there. I’ve got the bastard.”

Without lowering my gun, or taking my eyes off the man that I’m going to hunt and kill, slowly, with a scalpel, I grab Simona by the strap of her bulletproof vest.

She weighs nothing as I jerk her up, and loop her in the bend of my arm. Slippery blood, warm and ominous, runs down my wrist as I retreat. And a thousand memories of wounded soldiers stir to life in the back of my mind.

They’re always there, just below the surface. Waiting to remind me of the vulnerability and cruelty of humankind.

As I run, I’m yelling in my mic, “Extract us, nowff”

“SUV on standby location 2,” says Andre.

The warehouse fills with gunshots and stampeding feet, shouting voices in Spanish, but my only focus is on the woman I’m carrying.

Using the planned escape route, I burst into the alley.

Everything is a blur for the next ten seconds.

I shove Simona’s shaking body into the back floorboard of the car on her back. I push her knees up which will help her blood pressure and make room so I can fit in the space with her.

The driver screams, “We’ve got troubleff”

As I slam the door, I’m praying we can get away. The last thing we need is more destruction. “Goff Goff Goff”

Andre hits the gas. We bolt away from the curb as I press my body over Simona’s. Shots splinter the rear window.