A Man Alone
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Lindsay McKenna
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Chapter One
Two minutes until contact! The thought raced through Captain Thane Hamilton’s mind, spurring him to run faster. Gasps tore from him. He was damn well going to make it, or else.
“Keep going!” he shouted hoarsely.
Ahead of him, a fourteen-year-old girl stumbled and ran brokenly. The hard desert terrain, the precipitous walls of the canyon surrounding them, were clearly taking their toll on her. And him.
With his desert fatigues, flak jacket and weapons, Thane’s identity as a U.S. Marine was clear. Rifle in hand, he jerked a look over his shoulder. He knew the drug runners weren’t far behind them.
There! Helicopters! Help was coming! Gripping the radio in his other hand, he growled at the floundering teenager. “Move it, Valerie!”
The red-haired girl sobbed and flailed her arms like an off-balance windmill in order to keep from slipping and falling on the unstable surface, strewn with gray and cream rocks.
Thane felt sorry for the senator’s daughter. But it was necessary to keep her going. She was slowing, winded by the mile-long run. The sun was high, making him squint as he watched her in front of him. The canyon they ran in was just inside Bolivia’s borders, and his lungs burned from the brutally high altitude. Sweat rolled down his face. The rest of his Recon team was dead. They’d risked five lives to rescue one girl. Thane was the last of his team. And he might not survive, either.
The sky was blindingly blue. He could hear the approaching “spook”—CIA-owned—helicopters, coming their way. Their rotors punctuated the air like a boxer punching him in the ears, the flat, chopping sounds reverberating through the area. At a prearranged checkpoint, he and Valerie were to be picked up. Up ahead, a desert plain appeared just beyond the mouth of the steep-walled, snakelike canyon. The helos would land only if he signaled them. The crew on the helicopters were expecting to rescue five people—and now there were only two. Thane wanted to cry. His team—his men—were dead, killed in that violent confrontation at a drug lord’s estate.
“Move it!” he snarled.
Valerie sobbed. “I can’t! I’m tired! I want to stop and rest!” She gave him a pouty look and started to slow down.
Cursing softly, Thane jammed the radio into his web belt. Surging forward, he gripped the girl’s thin, flabby arm. She was a soft norte americana used to living the good life. She had a rich and powerful daddy in Washington, D.C. And even at such a young age, she was already a snob. Well, she was in over her head on this one. Oh, it wasn’t Valerie Winston’s fault that she’d walked ignorantly into a drug lord’s carefully planned trap. She’d been with a church group, touring Machu Picchu in Peru, when she’d been kidnapped. Thane couldn’t be angry at her.
“Ouch!” she shrieked, trying to yank away. “You’re hurting me!”
Towering over her at six foot four inches compared to her five foot two, he nailed her widening hazel eyes with his own sharp gaze. “Tough it out, little girl. You and I are making that checkpoint. Now stretch those legs of yours. If you don’t, we’re dead meat. Is that what you want? A bullet in your back? Your brains splattered all over the rocks here?”
Defiant tears shimmered in her eyes. Her hair, long and naturally curly, hung about her shoulders, wild and uncombed. “No!”
Hamilton practically lifted her off her feet, steadied her on the rocky surface, then pushed her ahead of him at a faster clip. “Then move!”
It was June in Bolivia. Winter. And at fourteen thousand feet, colder than hell. His breath exploded out of his mouth in white clouds even though the noonday sun burned overhead. Lake Titicaca was only thirty miles away, the largest lake in the world despite the ungodly altitude. Thane heard the helos laboring mightily, the rotors grasping for oxygen that wasn’t there. That alone made flying up here to rescue them decidedly dangerous.
Thane had no idea who was going to pick them up. He’d been told that a Boeing Apache attack helicopter and an old, antiquated Cobra from the Vietnam era were on this mission. Right now, he thought as he jerked another furtive look across his shoulder, he hoped it was the Apache that he heard in the distance. He needed that kind of firepower to protect them from the oncoming drug runners.
With the echoing shouts of their assailants surrounding them, Thane and Valerie rounded the final bend in the canyon. Above them were naked, barren walls of yellow ocher and gray granite, weathered by the fierce winds that scoured the Andes.
Gasping, his heart feeling like it was going to explode in his chest, Thane kept up the hard, pounding pace. He heard Valerie sobbing. He knew she wasn’t used to this kind of demanding exercise. No one was at this damnable altitude!
Thane saw the end of the canyon bleeding out into a flatter area, a stark moonscape free of rocks, scrub and trees. That must be the landing zone! The punctuating rotors of the rescue helos lifted his hope. Behind, he heard shouts in Spanish. They were coming closer.
Damn!
Turning, Thane saw ten drug runners hightailing it in their direction, less than half a mile away. The drug runners began firing. Turning on his heel, Thane sped toward Valerie. Arms flailing weakly, she continued to run, all the while slipping and stumbling on the rocky ground. He saw the helicopters approaching. Both were black. And both were coming in fast from high above, zeroing in like two attacking hawks on the landing zone below.
Jerking a canister from his web belt, he positioned himself directly behind Valerie. Bullets were whining all around them now, and ricocheting off the rock walls. Ducking as one screamed by his head, Thane kept himself between the girl and the drug runners. Under no circumstances could Valerie be hurt! They’d have to go through him and his Kevlar, bulletproof vest first.
Reaching the end of the canyon, he pulled Valerie against the rock wall.
“Stop,” he rasped. Flipping off the handle to the smoke grenade, he lobbed it expertly toward the landing area two hundred feet in front of them.
The canister sailed through the air and plunked on the flat, yellow earth, which had hardened into a drumlike surface from lack of rainfall over the years. A puff of dust rose briefly as the canister bounced and came to a standstill. And then bright red smoke began to belch from it, forming thin, pinkish colored clouds. That was the signal for the choppers to land.
Turning, his nostrils flared, he brought the rifle up to his shoulder and sighted on the drug runners.
“Valerie, move to the right, but stay along the wall,” he ordered.
The girl nodded jerkily, her eyes huge. She quickly moved away from him and crouched down, her back to the wall for protection.
The drug runners were going to catch up with them just as the helos landed, Thane realized. He squeezed off several shots to slow them, and it worked. Gripping the radio, he jammed the button down.
“Black Jaguar One. Black Jaguar One. This is Checkerboard One. Over.” His breath came in gasps. His chest burned from overexertion. Sweat trickled into his narrowed eyes. He waited impatiently for a response from the big, black Apache that was thundering in toward the landing area.
“Come on!” he snarled. “Answer me!”
“This is Black Jaguar One, Checkerboard One,” came a woman’s low, steady voice. “What’s your status? Over.”
“A hot LZ,” he warned. “I’ve got the package. And I’ve got ten bad guys, less than half a mile from us, comin’ out of that canyon in front of you. I need some firepower. You got it? Over.”
“Roger, we have them in our sights. Suggest you move back.”
Stunned momentarily, Thane realized he’d been talking to a woman. A woman! Not a man, as he’d expected. And then, feeling stupid, he remembered that there were women Apache helo pilots in the U.S. Army. But behind the lines on spook-initiated missions? CIA? That, he’d never heard of. But now was not the time to ask questions or ponder the subject. “Read you loud and clear, Black Jaguar One. Thanks. You’re a sight for sore eyes. Out.”
Relief shuddered through Thane. He gave a tight, vengeful grin. Once that Apache released a deadly Hellfire missile into that bloodthirsty pack of cutthroats who wanted him and the girl dead, it would be all over. He silently thanked Boeing for making the battle-ready Apache. This aircraft, above all others, often made the difference between his team living or dying in behind-the-lines missions like this.
He saw the unmarked Apache “A” model helicopter suddenly lift upward and hover, preparing to take a shot at the drug runners. The second one, the old Cobra gunship, was coming in low and fast. Within thirty seconds, it would land. Glancing to his right, Thane saw Valerie crouched down into a ball of fright, her back to the wall, her arms tight around her drawn-up knees. Good, she was out of the way and protected.
His concern was the drug runners, who were moving at full speed toward him. Again, Thane snapped off five or six well-aimed shots. Two of the drug runners fell.
Then he spotted something that made his heart stop. NO!
Thane’s green eyes widened enormously. Ahead of him, he saw that one of the drug runners had a LAW—a hand-held rocket launcher! And the bastard was aiming it directly at the hovering Apache, which was poised to fire.
Damn!
Thane leaped out from behind the wall, the thunder of the Apache deafening him as he exposed himself to his assailants’ direct fire. He had to bring the drug runner down before he could launch that deadly rocket at the Apache! Kneeling down, Thane steadied his rifle. Bullets careened around him. He wore a protective bulletproof jacket, but that wouldn’t stop a projectile from hitting him in the head. Counting on the drug runners’ lack of marksmanship, Thane coolly aimed his rifle at the man who knelt with the rocket launcher pointed upward. No way was that bastard going to take down that helo! Squeezing the trigger, Thane felt the rifle buck solidly against his shoulder.
Before he could take a breath, he saw the bullet hit home, striking the man just as he launched the rocket. The man tumbled forward as the rocket launcher fired—directly at Thane!
Seconds slowed to a painful crawl. Thane gasped and thrust upward to his full height. Escape! He had to—No! No! I’m going to die! His last thought as he twisted to the left and dove for the safety of the rock wall was that he was a dead man.
Everything blacked out. The last thing he felt was a hot, burning pain in his right leg. The last thing he heard was Valerie’s hysterical scream. And that was all.
“Oh, hell!” Captain Maya Stevenson yelled into the microphone against her lips. She instantly gripped the controls of the Cobra helicopter. “Dove, Angel, brace yourselves!” she warned her crew. Her emerald eyes narrowed as she saw the man in the canyon fire the rocket toward them.
And that Marine Recon was right in the way! Maya sucked in a breath, jammed her booted feet on the yaw-control pedals. She held the cyclic and collective in a choking grip. The wildly shot rocket exploded violently against the wall of the canyon. They were less than a quarter of a mile from it. In the danger zone.
The Marine Recon had to be dead!
The Cobra shook violently as the blast from the explosion hit them. They were barely fifty feet above the ground with nowhere to go. Maya tensed. Dove, her copilot, sucked air between her clenched teeth. Angel, their gunner, whooped as the rocket exploded. Off to the left, Maya spotted their pickup, the senator’s daughter. She appeared safe from the explosion. The Cobra skidded sideways from the concussion. Automatically, Maya worked to halt the awkward movement of the helicopter.
Above them, she heard the roar of two Hellfire missiles being released from the Apache’s arsenal. In seconds, the entire canyon was filled with fire, dust and rocks flying in all directions.
“The bad guys are down, Major,” Angel sang out with gleeful satisfaction.
“Yeah, but what about that marine?” Maya muttered. She landed the Cobra on the hard-packed desert floor. Dust whipped up in all directions around them. She shouted to Angel Paredes, “Go get the girl, Sergeant! We shouldn’t receive any more resistance from the druggies. Stay alert!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Paredes leaped out of the helicopter. Short and stocky, she hustled around the nose of the Cobra and headed for the girl.
“Take over, Dove,” Maya told her copilot. “And keep your eyes peeled.”
“Where are you going?” Dove demanded, wrapping her long fingers around the controls.
Jerking at the snaps of her harness, Maya growled, “To look for that poor Recon bastard. He just saved Dallas and Cam from getting blown out of the sky. The least we can do is find his body and bring him home with us.” She yanked out the cord that connected her with the communications system within the aircraft. Twisting around, Maya quickly made her way between the seats to the small cargo bay, past the fifty-caliber machine gun, and leaped off the lip of the shuddering helicopter. Dust was blowing in all directions, a small sandstorm around the aircraft. Maya drew her pistol, just in case she ran into one of the druggies in all the chaos. She made a sharp gesture with her hand toward her sergeant, who now had the girl beneath her arm.
“Get her on board!” Maya shouted above the noise.
Paredes raised her black-gloved hand to acknowledge the order before she hurried the girl toward the aircraft.
Turning, the captain ran toward the rock and rubble that had been left by the rocket’s explosion. Although she had on her black helmet, with its protective black shield across the upper half of her face, the dust kicked up by the helo’s blades whipped into her eyes. Rubbing them as she ran, holding her pistol high with her other hand, Maya tried to locate the marine among the piles of stone and dirt.
There! She saw the man lying on his back, his arms thrown outward from his unmoving body. Slowing, Maya looked ahead. Where the druggies had once been, rubble now covered half the width of the canyon. The bad guys were down and out. Good. Instant burial. No formality.
Kneeling down, Maya saw that the Marine’s right leg, from below the knee, looked like ground, bleeding hamburger. She winced and clenched her teeth. Jerking off her black glove, she placed two fingers against the sweat-covered column of his throat. He was young and strong, but there was no way he could have survived this.
“I’ll be damned,” she breathed. She felt a faint pulse beneath her fingertips. It wasn’t much of one—but it was there! Hurriedly, she assessed him for more wounds. The only place he seemed to be injured was his right leg. Holstering her pistol, she jerked off all his heavy gear and tossed it aside. She’d have to carry him to the helicopter. Judging from the amount of blood spurting from a cut artery in his calf, he was going to bleed to death—and soon.
Grunting, Maya turned him over and then rolled the weight of his body against her shoulder.
“You would have to be tall,” she growled. Well, she was, too. Maya was thankful for her large-boned, six-foot frame because she’d never be able to hoist the marine into a fireman’s carry position across her shoulders otherwise.
Just as she labored to get her feet under her, she saw Sergeant Paredes running full tilt toward her.
“Angel!” Maya yelled. “Get back to the helo! He’s bleeding to death! Get an IV set up! I’m gonna need your help! Pronto!”
The sergeant skidded to a halt, nodded and sprinted back to the Cobra.
Groaning, Maya cursed softly as she placed each booted foot carefully in front of the other. He was heavy! Well, Recons had to be tough and hardy to do the work they did. Gripping him tightly by one arm and one leg, Maya swayed, fighting to keep her balance. Only a few more yards to go!
After setting up a temporary stretcher across the steel-plated deck, Angel reached out from the lip of the helo. Maya groaned as she sat down with her load. When the sergeant angled the unconscious marine off her shoulders, Maya turned and helped to place the man on the awaiting stretcher. She saw the senator’s daughter looking on, terror in her eyes as she sat huddled in one corner.
Leaping on board, Maya quickly slid the door shut. Turning, she moved between the seats and made an upward, jerking motion with her thumb. That told her copilot to get the hell out of here. To get some air between them, the ground and the bad guys. Though the druggies looked like they’d been buried under that rubble, she wasn’t taking any chances.
Plugging the phone jack from her helmet into a wall outlet, she turned to help the paramedic-trained sergeant.
“I need help!” Angel gasped. “He’s bleeding out! Captain…put your hand there! Now!”
Just then, the Cobra powered up, breaking gravity with the earth. Maya wasn’t prepared and lurched downward onto her knees. Cursing in Spanish, she threw out her hands, palms slamming into the cabin wall just above where the marine lay. Despite the jostling and jerking, Angel was expertly pulling an IV from the black paramedic bag she kept on board.
Maya looked at the soldier’s right leg. “Man, this is a mess, Angel,” she said, addressing the sergeant by her nickname. Her real name was Angeline, but they called her the Angel of Death for many reasons, most of all because she was very good at pulling Maya’s wounded crews back from the jaws of death with her paramedic skills.
“I don’t care what he looks like. Just get your hand on that bleeder,” Angel rasped in Spanish. “Do it! Pronto!”
The captain had no trouble finding the artery that was spurting blood like a fountain. Jerking off her black glove, Maya grabbed a protective latex one from Angel’s medical bag and quickly put it on. She hated to touch the marine’s mangled right leg. She could see bone fragments mixed with the torn muscles, and the whiteness of a tendon that had been shredded by the blast.
“Geez, this is bad,” Maya murmured sympathetically as she laid her hand over the exposed and cut artery.
“Yeah, well, if you’d just taken a direct hit from a rocket to your leg, you’d look like this, too.”
Maya grinned darkly as Angel quickly hung the IV and inserted the needle into the marine’s arm. “Don’t get testy with me, Sergeant,” she said, knowing Angel always got this way during a crisis. But Maya also knew Angel was an extraordinary woman, a Que’ro Indian, the last of the Inca bloodlines in Peru. Maya had wanted no one but this young woman, who had joined her top secret mission three years ago, to be on her aircraft with her. The Angel of Death had saved a lot of lives. She fought with her heart and soul to keep them alive.
Growling under her breath, Angel quickly jerked some thick, sterile dressings out of her pack. Paper flew in all directions as she ripped open the containers and got the sterile gauze out for use.
“Put these under your hand,” she ordered Maya briskly. “And press down hard. A lot harder than you’re doing right now. You want this guy to bleed to death on me? No way. He’s mine. I’m not letting him go over yet….”
Blood from the marine’s leg was pooling all over the deck. Maya felt the Cobra leveling out. They were gaining altitude.
“Get us out of Bolivia’s airspace as soon as you can, Dove,” she told her copilot. “And stay low, below their radar. If they find us over here, we’re gonna hear about it at the U.N.” By mutual accord, the U.S. had agreed not to invade Bolivia’s airspace in their quest to stop drug smugglers flying across Peru’s border. Well, too bad. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Besides, Maya thought with her usual sick humor, their job at the Black Jaguar Express was to keep cocaine shipments from leaving Peru. If the effort spilled into Bolivia’s sacred airspace from time to time, too bad.
Besides, they’d have to catch them at it to prove it, and Bolivia didn’t exactly have a modern air force or state-of-the-art radar to prove their precious border had been encroached upon from time to time. Maya glanced down at the marine. Her heart squeezed in sympathy. “Can you save him?”
“Humph. I’m not a doc.” Angel added more thick dressings to the bleeder.
“Stop hedging with me. You know about these things.”
“He’ll loose his leg, but he’ll live. Okay?”
Maya nodded. “Too bad about that leg. He’s a nice looking guy—for a marine.”
They both laughed. Both of them were in the army, and there was always good-natured rivalry between the army and the other military services.
“Yeah,” Angel rasped as she pulled a hypodermic needle from her pack and eyed it closely, “I wouldn’t throw him out of bed for eating crackers.”
Maya heard Dove laughing along with them. Their jobs were highly dangerous. On any given day, they could die. Dark humor was always their foil against their feelings, against the adrenaline rush pounding through them. It kept the terror they felt at bay so it didn’t overwhelm them or their ability to think clearheadedly in such a crisis. Relief was threading through their fear now, beginning to ease the tension that had inhabited the aircraft moments earlier.
“Somehow, I can’t see you hookin’ up with a jarhead,” Maya drawled.
Everyone laughed—a laugh of relief. Jarhead was a term army folk used to describe a marine—they just never said it to a marine’s face if they didn’t want a punch thrown their way.
“As good-lookin’ as he is,” Dove said, laughing over the intercom, “he’s probably got a wife and a bunch of kids.”
Maya grinned and nodded. They were going home to safety. Soon enough, they would be heading to their mountain base complex hidden deep in the Peruvian mountains. But first they’d have to fly to Cusco, the nearest large city, and have an emergency medical team take this marine into surgery to try to save his life. Maya and her crew had done this so many times before that the hospital staff in Cusco no longer asked who or what they were. Flying around in black, unmarked helicopters, wearing black, body-fitting uniforms, helmets and highly polished leather military boots, these women were an enigma to those who saw them. The hospital officials no longer asked about them, they simply allowed them to offload their wounded, give their names and a contact number of someone in a high government office in Lima, the capital, before they left for parts unknown.
As Maya knelt there, holding the thick, blood-soaked dressings over the marine’s leg, she saw color starting to ease back into his pale, sweaty face. “I think he’s coming to,” she warned Angel.
“That’s okay…I’ve got him on morphine. He ain’t gonna feel a thing. Don’t worry, he won’t put up a fight.”
“Good,” Maya rasped as she watched the man’s dark, short lashes move. Angel didn’t always get painkillers into her patients soon enough, and they came back to consciousness swinging and fighting. And in a small helo like this, there wasn’t much space to dodge flying fists. Maya positioned herself so she could face him. He’d be groggy, in deep shock, and probably not very coherent around his surroundings. Reaching out, she gripped his bloodied, scraped left hand and held it firmly in her own. Angel quickly traded places with her in order to work on his leg, trying to sterilize it as best she could. Maya leaned closer to the marine.
The noise in the cabin of the Cobra was ferocious. Dove had redlined the engine to full throttle. The aircraft was old and shook like an old dog on trembling legs as it flew powerfully toward Cusco. Below them, the green velvet cape of the jungle spread outward. They were down below ten thousand feet and were beginning to wind among the loaf-shaped mountains clothed in green raiment. Wispy white clouds that always clung to the mountains blew like smoke across the windshield of the speeding aircraft.
“You’re alive,” Maya shouted near his ear. “Just take it easy. We’ve got the senator’s daughter on board. You’re both safe.” She squeezed his hand to drive home her words.
His eyes opened slightly, to reveal murky-looking green depths.
Maya held his vacant stare. His mouth opened, then closed. His pupils were huge and black—from the hit of morphine Angel had just shot him up with. Good. He didn’t need to know what had happened to his right leg. The marine blinked twice. She saw more awareness coming back to him. He had a strong mouth, and was used to being obeyed when he spoke, she was sure. There was nothing on his uniform to indicate his rank, but she knew instinctually that he was an officer.
“You’re safe. You’re on board my helicopter. We have your girl with us. She’s safe, too. Hang on. We’re flying you to Cusco, to a hospital there. You’re in stable condition.” That was a lie, but Maya didn’t want the marine freaking out if he learned the truth of his fragile medical state.
There was so much noise in his head that Thane could barely make out what the woman leaning close to him in the black, tight-fitting uniform was saying. Where was he? His mind was spongy and refused to work properly. He felt like he was half out of his body. Floating. She was wearing a helmet. She must be a pilot? Not a soldier, no…His mind searched. What? Yes. That was it. Helicopter. He was in a helo. He could feel a familiar shaking and shuddering going on around him. He could feel the constant sensation all though his back and limbs…except for his leg. His right leg. Why couldn’t he feel anything there? He could feel the shivering everywhere else.
Looking up into her face, Hamilton saw the grim set of her full mouth, the narrowed look in her eyes. She was a warrior, no doubt. There was a dangerous glint in her emerald eyes, too. The look of a hunter. Yet, for a moment, Thane saw something else in those slitted, feral eyes. What? He opened his mouth to speak.
“Captain Hamilton…” he croaked. The taste of mud was in his mouth.
She nodded. “Okay…good…we know who you are now.” On missions like this, the Recons wore no identification of any kind, not even their dog tags. “We’ll contact the proper authorities, Captain. I’m Captain Maya Stevenson, army spook pilot. You just hang on. We might look like a ragtag bunch, but believe me, you’re in the best of hands.” She grinned a little.
He tried to smile. He felt the strength of her hand around his. She was surprisingly strong—a big-boned woman, at least six feet tall, who was strong and confident. Right now, he needed that kind of reassurance. Thane became aware of another person. His eyes widened a bit. There was another woman, dressed in a similar black uniform, bent over his legs. She was putting white bandages on him. Funny, he couldn’t feel anything down there. What was going on? When he tried to lift his head, the captain gently pressed her hand on his shoulder and kept him lying down.
“Whoa, Captain. You’re in no shape to go anywhere. We want you to lie still, hear me? That’s my paramedic down there, Sergeant Angelina Paredes.”
His mouth was so dry it felt as if it would crack. He was thirsty. Barely moving his head to the left, he saw the red-haired girl. It took long moments to place her. His mind wasn’t working worth a damn. Closing his eyes, Thane let out a trembling breath of air from between his bloody, bruised lips.
“Thank God, she’s safe….”
Maya smiled and nodded. “You did good, Captain. You’re a real hero. None of us thought you’d survived that direct rocket hit. You’re one tough son of a bitch, for a marine.” Maya saw one corner of his mouth rise at her teasing comment. She felt heartened. Maybe this guy was going to make it, after all. Still, his blood loss was horrific. And her sergeant was working like a wild woman over his mangled, continually bleeding leg. Right now, the last thing Maya wanted this heroic officer to know was that his leg looked like hell and there was every reason to believe that, once they reached Cusco, the surgeons would remove it.
That was heartbreaking to her. A man like this, who had incredible courage, would now became an amputee. He didn’t deserve such a reward, Maya thought. Looking up at the girl who huddled in the corner, her eyes huge with tears, Maya felt for her, too. Life was nasty sometimes. Valerie Winston would never forget this. And Maya hoped she would never forget the men who had given their lives to rescue her. People like Captain Hamilton made the world a little better place to live in. A safer place for people like Valerie.
Leaning down, her lips close to his ear, Maya said, “Just try to rest, Captain. We’re going to be landing in Cusco in less than thirty minutes. I’ve got the best paramedic in the world taking care of you.”
Thane forced out the words. “Thank you…for everything.”
Angel looked up momentarily, her lean, angular, dark brown face tense, the corners of her full mouth pulled flat. Her hands were bloody as she wrapped his injured leg.
Maya looked down at the marine once more. He had lost consciousness again. That was good. “It’s sad, Angel. This guy deserves medals and it looks like he’s going to lose this leg instead as a reward for what he just did.”
“I dunno,” Angel rasped as she reached around Maya and dragged her paramedic pack toward her. “If Dr. Del Prado is the bone surgeon on duty there at the Cusco hospital, he might try and save this dude’s leg. He’s got the ability to do it, but he’s the only one in Peru who could pull it off.”
“Better hope our best bone doctor is on duty, then,” Maya said grimly.
“Captain?”
It was her copilot, Dove Rivera.
Maya lifted her head and looked toward the cockpit. “Yeah?”
“I’m receiving a top secret message for you, Captain. It’s from Rolling Thunder. You expecting something from them?”
“Yeah…” The mission they were currently on was run by Perseus, a covert agency that often collaborated with the government. “That has to be the head of the organization, Morgan Trayhern. This mission was his ops—operation.” She had never met Trayhern, but had worked with other officials within Perseus because it, too, operated in conjunction with the CIA, as did her base and operation in Peru.
“Oh, okay. Want me to patch it through to you over the private intercom?”
“Yeah, do it, Dove.” Maya didn’t care if her sergeant heard the message or not. They all had top secret clearances. Releasing the marine’s limp hand, Maya pressed her fingers to the ear of her helmet to listen closely to the incoming message. Sometimes, such satellite transmissions were broken up, particularly in the mountainous regions of Peru where they were presently flying like a bat out of hell to save the marine.
“This is Kingbird to Rolling Thunder. Over,” Maya said. Kingbird was their call designation indicator when satcom messages of this type had to be broadcast. In the event that anyone was able to capture the encrypted message, that person would have no idea of the caller’s true identification or position at the time of the transmission.
“Rolling Thunder. Kingbird, have you got the goods? Over.”
The “goods” meant the girl, and Maya knew the code language. “Roger, we have the goods. Alive and well.”
“Roger. And Checkerboard? What is their status?”
Grimly, Maya knew that Checkerboard was the marine Recon team sent in to rescue Valerie. “Rolling Thunder, we have one survivor of Checkerboard. Right now, we are heading for the nearest hospital, where we have an emergency team on standby. Over.”
“Roger. I will contact you when you arrive at your destination. Be on standby. Over.”
“Roger that, Rolling Thunder. I’ll await your call. Over and out.”
“Rolling Thunder, out.”
Maya watched as Angel placed a very tight tourniquet bandage around the bleeder, which seemed to have stopped leaking for the most part.
“That means we have to hang around for a call,” Dove lamented.
Maya didn’t like being on the ground wherever there were people and prying eyes. Especially in the second largest city in Peru. Because their mission was one of utmost stealth, top secret to everyone except two Peruvian government officials, she didn’t like to draw attention to herself or her crews. “Yeah, I know. But Rolling Thunder wants the ID on this marine. He’s going to have to contact his family and get him some medical help stateside. It’s gotta be done.”
“We’ll stay with the Cobra,” Dove said unhappily. “You gonna take the call inside the hospital?”
“Thanks,” Maya said dryly, with a smile. She saw Dove’s own smile as she turned her head briefly and met her eyes. Her copilot was also Que’ro Indian, from the highlands of Peru. She was only the second woman pilot in the Peruvian Air Force. Dove had turned into a fine helicopter pilot, thanks to training she’d received at Fort Rucker, Alabama, many years earlier. Now she was back in her own country to help the Peruvian people eradicate the drug trade. Nearly all her family had been murdered by drug lords, and she’d barely escaped with her young life. Dove Rivera had an ongoing vendetta against them, and with good reason. She lived to fly. She lived to kill every last one of them she could set her gun sights on. Maya didn’t blame her.
“This guy’s pressure is slowly dropping,” Angel reported unhappily as she studied the reading on the blood pressure cuff. “Man…this isn’t good. I was hoping he’d stabilize…. Del Prado isn’t going to like this. The question is can we get him there in time or not?”
Maya slowly eased into a crouched position, because no one could straighten up fully within the tight confines of the helicopter. “Do the best you can,” she soothed, and patted Angel’s slumped shoulder. Picking up a nearby blanket, Maya made her way over to Valerie. The teenager was white-faced and scared looking. She needed to be held. The paleness of her freckled face, the darkness in her eyes, told Maya that much. Maya would play nursemaid until they landed, and then Valerie would be turned over to awaiting U.S. government agents, who would whisk her into a private jet back to the U.S. and into her anxious father’s waiting arms, no worse for wear—at least on the outside.
Smiling gently as she approached, Maya slowly opened the blanket and slipped it around the girl’s huddled form. She knew that she looked dangerous and threatening to the teen in her black uniform with the pistol at her side. A smile helped to ease the panic she saw in the girl’s eyes. Valerie wasn’t hooked up to the communications system, so she was unaware of what was being said or what was going down. The teenager was like a stranger in a strange place—a place where she had almost died.
As she knelt down in front of the girl and wrapped the blanket around her, Maya introduced herself and said, “Valerie, you’re going home. You’re safe now. We’ll be landing in less than half an hour in Cusco.”
Sniffing, Valerie wiped her eyes with trembling fingers. “Th-thanks. But what about Captain Hamilton? H-he saved my life. Will he live?”
Maya nodded and gave her a gentle smile. “I hope so.”
“And his leg…oh, God…will he lose it?”
“Probably,” Maya said, “but I don’t know for sure.”
Breaking into sobs, Valerie buried her face in her arms, her knees drawn up tightly against her thin, trembling body. All Maya could do was slide her arm around the girl’s shoulders, pat her gently and let her cry.
Maya’s thoughts drifted back to Hamilton. Maybe Rolling Thunder could do something to save this heroic marine’s leg. She hoped so.
