Chapter 8
8
Hazard’s brothers and remaining CNP came out of the warehouse at a run, shooting and advancing into the fire, taking out cartel members on his right flank, reducing Breakneck’s vigilance on that side. It was the nature of the trapped beast to fight with extreme violence to the very end because they had nothing to lose but their lives. Nothing was more dangerous when that beast was trained, armed, and a precision fighting force that had a bond stronger than even blooded family. Size and strength didn’t matter, only duty, honor, mission, and the brotherhood.
SEALs never gave up.
SEALs were never out of the fight.
SEALs didn’t understand or accept the threat of physical violence or pain being used against them. It only strengthened their resolve.
The team had a state of mind that neither accepted defeat, nor ran in the face of overwhelming odds. Not during any war they participated in and certainly not in this filthy war on drugs. They weren’t here for the cartel because they distributed drugs, that was the DEA’s mission. The team was here because these men had murdered fellow Americans in cold blood on American soil.
They were here to let these men and the world know that wasn’t going to go unpunished.
It wasn’t arrogance or ego, nothing but an unwavering belief in themselves, and part of the internal drive that got them through training and times when the odds were stacked against them. Unfortunately, it was also what haunted them when teammates fell.
As he continued to shoot, he wasn’t afraid—no, the only fear he had wasn’t of dying, it was of letting his brothers down, of letting down those people at TOC who were most likely fighting for their own lives, and his defenseless, mouthy beauty. That wasn’t supposed to happen. They were never supposed to be in that kind of danger. While he breathed, he would never, ever be incapacitated enough to do that. If he was breathing, he was going to fight.
A ricochet caught him on the upper arm, the sting registering. He shook off the pain and didn’t hesitate in firing. They were in dire shape. Rounds were incoming from everywhere, and the enemy had caught them by surprise, but the thought of giving up never crossed his mind. He stayed on point until they were out of this goatfuck.
When everything went to hell, they normally called in QRF, their quick reaction force, which consisted of troops standing by at one of the major bases. In this case it was Cartagena Naval Base hundreds of miles away with ready and willing Marine Rangers. But with no way to reach them, they were high and dry, and completely on their own.
Hazard stopped firing as it registered that nothing in his field of fire was moving. He immediately whipped his weapon up and jumped off the bed of the truck, concerned only about his teammates. But they were mopping up, shooting controlled bursts from their weapons on the move, crushing the enemy shooters who had ambushed them and pinned them down.
“Ice,” Hazard said, his ears still ringing from the heavy machine gun’s retorts, seeing some squirters slip from the foliage he had used for cover. “Squirters at twelve o’clock.” They were retreating, running. Hazard immediately circled around to flank them as the team focused in that direction, taking out all of them down to the last man.
The ambush ended as quickly as it had started.
“Form up,” Iceman ordered, and they met on the field of battle among the dead cartel, with Breakneck bringing up the rear.
All the guys fell on him, slapping his back, his helmet, and shoving him between them as they fist-bumped and gave him his due.
“Focus up,” Iceman said before breaking direct and intense eye contact with Breakneck, nothing but pride in his gaze. “Good work out there, junior.” Their youngest teammate grinned even wider.
“How’s those gray hairs now, boss?” He just gave them all that icy stare.
Everyone chuckled, then they sobered. They had been lucky. They’d escaped with only varying degrees of fragmentation and no serious trauma.
No word from TOC made them all on edge. The only thing worse than old intel was no new intel. Their last update had been hours old, which meant they were lying low, or there was no longer anyone left to respond.
“We’re going to be moving fast,” Iceman said. “We’ll be approaching an unknown situation with no comms and no backup. Once we get there, we’ll reassess the situation.”
“About halfway there, we’re going to run into daylight,” Preacher said. His uncanny ability to mirror Iceman’s thoughts was downright Zen, but he always had Ice’s six. “We’ll be exposed, and we have no way of knowing where the enemy is or if they’re coming after us. Vigilance is the watchword.”
Then it was a sweaty forty minutes before they got back to TOC, Iceman leading the way. He never lost that leader mentality and always set their pace. Hazard’s heart sank when he slowed down and saw how the enemy had fucked them over twice.
The horror of reaching the mangled and demolished TOC registered on every one of their faces. Most of the team broke into a run with Hazard following, his heart aching like hell. Even with the realization that they were way too late, the urgency, the shred of hope was still there.
But Hazard stopped when he spied something in the dust. He bent to pick it up, and his heart stalled. It was a picture of Leigh.
“Ice,” Hazard rasped out, his voice catching, and their leader stopped and turned. Hazard extended the picture toward him, his voice all but backed up in a throat that was filled with so much ache, he was afraid he was going to lose it.
“Fuck!” Iceman said, pointing at the picture, his expression taut and controlled. “She was the target! All this to get at Leigh.” Hazard stared at him while fear and anger churned in his gut. “They knew they couldn’t get at her in the city. Too many problems, and our position is too fortified.” He stared at Hazard, his voice flat. “They used that bastard to lure us out here to?—”
“Ice,” Skull’s voice crackled through their earpieces. “Anna and Leigh are missing. Jack is dead, and Patch… You better come,” he continued professionally, his voice breaking slightly from the pain that was surging through all of them.
As they entered the TOC through the gaping hole in the wall, Hazard met Skull’s eyes, filled with the intensity of his pain. It mirrored exactly what every one of them was feeling. They all stood there absorbing the shock. Jack had been with them for years, making sure their equipment was loaded, unloaded, and nothing was ever left out or left behind. He was especially sensitive to Bones’s needs—such a dog lover—and assisted Skull with vigor in making sure the dog’s equipment and food were top-notch. He was vigilant, tough, smart as hell, and their veritable lifeline to command.
It was difficult to see the man who had saved their lives countless times taken down while their team had been just miles away. Boomer turned away, a choking sound behind his broad-shouldered back that shook. Jack had ridden Boomer the hardest because he was such a pain in the ass. But they had a solid friendship and working relationship. Preacher sidled up to him and squeezed his shoulder, showing his support from not only their second in command, but for the whole team.
There was no darker feeling than to have failed the people who deserved their protection. That was only one layer of their pain.
Patch lay on his back, his breathing labored, his lips tinged blue. Kodiak had cut away his clothes, started an IV, and was desperately trying to save him, but Hazard’s hopes sank. His chest was full of bullet holes and covered in blood. He could barely draw breath.
Iceman went down to his knees, and Patch reached out and caught his vest. “You get them,” he ordered, clenching his teeth, and staring into Iceman’s eyes with more steel than expected from a man who was mortally wounded and dying. “You don’t stop. You don’t fail, Chris. Hoo-yah ,” he said, as he let go, his grip releasing, his eyes rolling back, a leader and warrior until the end.
Kodiak was still moving, still doing his job, but his efforts were now futile. Iceman grabbed Kodiak’s shoulder, and his face said it all when he looked at Iceman. The helplessness there was something Kodiak could normally handle. He wanted to find something in his bag of medical tricks to save their new leader, but there was nothing he or anyone could do.
They stood there for a minute in the carnage of the attack on their TOC, numb, angry, and anguished.
“Goddammit,” Ice cursed, his body as taut as a bowstring. The muscles in his jaw were twitching, his anger making his eyes blaze blue. Then he rose and looked at Hazard. “See if you can get us a line to either command or QRF.” He turned to GQ. “Handle the bodies and make sure they’re covered.” The bonds that formed in battle were made of steel, and the fact that they were all breathing was because of a twenty-five-year-old badass sniper and warrior who had battled on his own to come back and cover their sixes. That’s what these people had done. Stood up for what was right and given the ultimate sacrifice.
Suddenly, feeling shaky inside, Hazard turned away from the dead bodies and slipped out of the broken building, following the line of disturbed dirt. His gut froze when he saw the tracks, the place where there had been a struggle—that girl wouldn’t have gone down without a fight—and apparently, she had fought like a wildcat.
He couldn’t help but smile through the agony. He brought up the picture of her in the courtroom, arguing her case, his hand holding the photo trembling. Leigh would never give in. The fear for her curled around him with an airtight certainty, especially after she discovered that all this mess was solely to get to her. He dropped his head into his hand, his chest filling up with more emotions than he could define.
Oh, geezus, Anna…Leigh.
A hand dropped onto his shoulder, and he turned to find Skull. “We’re going to find them, Arch, and when we do, whoever took them will be sorry they ever heard our names.”
He looked into the distance, right at the massive green beast that mocked him. His gut clenched even tighter. “I think they’ve taken them into the gap, Skull.”
“Hazard!” Iceman called, his stance was as no-nonsense as it got. “Did I tell you to play tracker!”
Hazard stiffened. “No, Master Chief.” Hazard wasn’t immune to Iceman’s outburst and his boss was dealing with his own feelings of guilt. The fact was that no one thought some wayward Italian underworld money man would steer them out here where Leigh would be vulnerable for the purpose of devastating their leadership and kidnapping her. But they couldn’t think this way in the future. Alzate was not just ruthless, but cold-bloodedly manipulative. They wanted to protect their cocaine business, and he had to wonder if there was something else driving this whole train wreck. Something they weren’t seeing. Working like hell to keep his tone neutral, he looked at Skull who gave him a sympathetic squeeze.
“Don’t patronize me. Get your ass in here and get me a comm.”
Hazard tucked the picture of Leigh inside his vest and double-timed it back to the ruined TOC. Iceman grabbed his vest and jerked him close. “I know what you’re going through. You know that I know. When I lost Rose…” His voice trailed off. “But we have to stay on point now. If we're going to catch up to them, I need to contact command. Get it done.”
“But—”
“No buts, Hazard. We don’t have time for that. Move your ass.”
He gave him a not-so-gentle shove toward the building, and Hazard went inside, tamping down his suspicions. Leigh might be the catalyst, but they could have gotten to her anytime in the US. While he searched in the wrecked mess of the equipment, his mind twisted with the possibilities. Why wait until she was fortified behind concrete walls? It was because the cartel wanted to make an even bigger statement…like ambushing a whole team of SEALs and taking out their leadership in a coordinated effort. That would give the US government a black eye, especially for the team who had taken down NSH. That would have been an embarrassment of monumental proportions.
“Any luck?” Ice asked.
“No, it’s fried.” No matter how he jerry-rigged the transceiver, he couldn’t get it to work. He angrily swiped at the equipment, trying not to look at the bodies placed in a row under the awning of the building, realizing the last person to touch this equipment had been Jack. He was consumed with getting to Leigh and Anna and every minute they stayed here was ink on their death warrants. “We’re wasting time,” Hazard growled. “They’ve taken them into the gap, Iceman. I know it. It’s a straight shot from here, and they think they can get lost in that deathly maze. We have to go now. You know they’ll kill them—execute them publicly. They have no qualms about killing a federal prosecutor and a CIA operative.”
He went to rise, and Kodiak pushed him back into the chair. “Take off your shirt.”
“We don’t have?—”
“We have time. Ice is still formulating his plan. Now take off your shirt, or I’ll do it for you.”
“I think he means it, Goldilocks,” Boomer said, his expression telling him to stay calm and dial it down. Boomer had tempered his reactions to things, and in a TOC full of their dead, he was being a huge team player.
Seriously, could Hazard do any less? And on top of it, he trusted Iceman with his life. Hazard would follow him anywhere. Sending their medic a sour look, Hazard stripped off his vest and unbuttoned and pulled off his shirt with jerky movements. He could see butterflies, bandages, and smell antiseptic. The big man was making his rounds, and now it was Hazard’s turn.
His boss set his hands on his hips. “Ice, if they took them into Panama, we can’t make a decision to go into another country to retrieve Anna and Leigh without an okay.”
He looked at Preacher, and Hazard was already getting ready to protest.
“Sit still, Hazard,” Kodiak ordered.
Hazard gritted his teeth and complied as the big man cleaned his shoulder. With his gaze focused, he stitched inside his wound, then outside with just topical anesthesia, but the repair of his bullet graze didn’t hurt as much as his heart.
“Ice, we should have seen this coming,” Preacher said.
“Goddammit, Preach. I fucking realize that. What a major clusterfuck.” His chest expanded, and he released a hard breath, his features tightening, smothering his emotions. “Finish, Kodiak. We need to move,” he said quietly. “I’m making an executive decision. We’re going after them wherever they took them…into the gap, into a dragon’s maw, into hell.”
The team exchanged glances. “Now we’re talking,” Skull said.
“Hoo-yah!” Boomer yelled.
Hazard looked over to the six CNP members who were left from the eight who had been assigned to them. The man wouldn’t meet his eyes and shifted uneasily.
“What’s up, Manuel?” Iceman said, nothing escaping the man’s attention.
He looked toward the gap and shook his head, swallowing hard, fear clear in his eyes. They were going to lose six guns. “We will not go in there.” The whole team stopped what they were doing and turned toward Manuel. He shifted again, clearly uncomfortable, taking a step back. “We’re not authorized to go into that place.”
“Our people were taken into that place,” Boomer mocked, his shoulders tightening as he set his hands on his hips, a hard, cold expression on his face, his jaw set.
“I am sorry for them, but we cannot go.”
“That’s bullshit, Manuel. You’re just afraid of the gap,” Skull said, staring at him, his eyes flat and hostile.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, then turned, motioning to the others as they filed out of the razed TOC and walked away.
“Cowards,” Skull snarled.
“Bulk up,” Iceman said through gritted teeth, his gaze glacial. “We’ll need the energy.” Everyone ate rations cold and fast, Skull taking care of Bones’s needs as he always did. While they were dealing with the fallout of the demolished TOC, Bones had gone to sleep. Smart dog.
Then there was nothing but movement and activity as they prepared for a long, hard, hot run into the most inhospitable place on earth with no communication, no authority, and infested with criminals.
Weapons were checked, mags traded around, vests and packs tightened. Then they were running full out, across the patterned tropical ground toward that green darkness that yawned like an open mouth, waiting for unsuspecting prey.
But they weren’t unsuspecting, and they weren’t prey. They were relentless hunters, wounded warriors, direct-action assaulters, grieving men. “Move,” Iceman shouted, and they picked up their pace. The pack was released, the wolves of war snapping at their enemies’ heels, razor-sharp teeth, a killer instinct, and they were out for blood.
Leigh sloughed on, her brain going fuzzy as they pushed them harder. Not exactly into a run, but the quick pace was fast enough to make the enclosed gap feel like a sauna. She was also running on fumes. She’d worked so hard the past two weeks, then that awful trip to DC had sapped her strength. She’d needed rest on top of needing rest, and she wished she had gone to bed when Hazard had suggested it…several times.
Hazard . She latched onto the memory of him, and to her shock, she felt safer amid these monsters. Then it dawned on her. They had picked up the pace. That was significant. People only did that if they were being pursued.
Hope grew from a flicker to a full-blown flame.
What had happened to their plans? Had her team done the impossible? Of course, they had. Iceman, Preacher, GQ, Kodiak, Hazard, Skull, Bones, Boomer, and Breakneck were the elite of the elite. They strategized, planned, executed on the run. She had total and unwavering faith in them that they were going to save her and Anna’s lives, and eventually the tables would be turned, and she and Anna would be interrogating this scum.
That’s all she had to latch onto avoiding the morass of her recessed thoughts. She hadn’t orchestrated this whole mess, but she was the linchpin. And that admission, even quietly to herself, evoked a wave of guilt that nearly smothered her. She gritted her teeth, knowing she couldn’t dwell on her part in this terrible attack. Later, there would be plenty of time for recriminations. She hoped.
They were pushed over fallen trees, through underbrush, sometimes hacking through thickets. By this time the sun had come up, and it was hard not to admire the beauty of this wild and untamed place. Pink blushed the sky with dawn where the sounds persisted, warning calls of howler monkeys, squawks of birds, the sound of dripping water.
The sun peeking in and out of the heavy canopy of giant kapok and rubber trees filling the area, green shadowing the Andean valley all the way to the mountains’ smudged purple backdrop. As they walked, they stirred the gray-white mist that wrapped the enormous palms and curled toward the sky, hovering like an army of ghosts.
When she stopped abruptly, pressing back away from a jaguar that padded like yellow gold and undulating black spots through the stippled foliage, she wasn’t thinking about anything but the feline predator.
The animal stopped for a brief, breath-stealing moment, those primal, gilded eyes, glowing with a feral light, riveted on her. For a moment he studied her, then moved on. She cried out from the suddenness of the man behind her shoving her so hard, she fell to her hands and knees on the jungle floor that was so thick with vines, her knees protesting, pain spiking.
She turned her head, pinning Conde with what must have been a fierce look. He drew back and she said, “If you want to cripple me and have that slow us down even more, good job asshole.”
Anna groaned as the man dragged Leigh to her feet. “You easily give your opinions as if you were free to do so. You’re not,” he snapped. “Now shut your fucking mouth and move.”
As the morning grew lighter and the heat intensified, the walking was nothing but putting one foot in front of the other, her body moving on autopilot. She stopped and leaned against a tree. “Water,” she croaked.
“You’ll get water when we get to where we’re going,” Conde, that sadist snapped.
She wasn’t kidding this time. She felt faint. “That’s not going to help me, is it? I need water now or you’ll be carrying me.”
He turned to Marco, clearly the leader. “Can we just kill her now and leave her to rot?”
The man’s chin came up, and he pinned her with dark eyes that held no life. She was running out of stamina to fight back. Time meant nothing except a string of minutes stretched with pain and terror.
“No. Angel said to extract information about their plans. We need them alive to do that.” But he looked like he agreed with his subordinate. “Give them some water and five minutes of rest. Then we move on.”
She wasn’t stupid. The minute they got what they wanted, they would kill her. She swallowed hard. She had used her bravado mostly to keep the fear and panic from getting a hold of her, to keep herself from losing it. Now she realized that all of it, her illusionary control was nothing but smoke and mirrors. The significance of that thought penetrated, and a kind of shock jolted her system. All this time, she’d been living like she had all the control in the world.
She accepted the canteen, the water brackish, but felt good against her parched tongue and dry mouth. She drank several swallows and passed it to Anna, still reeling, feeling like an impostor. Unable to even bend enough to be vulnerable in this situation when it would be completely expected, Leigh shored up her crumbling foundations.
Their captors moved away to murmur among themselves. Anna took a long drink, then passed it back to her. “Leigh, I know you’re pissed, and you’re scared, but you have to tone it down. We need to buy time for the team to get to us. The one you’re belittling, Conde, is losing his shit. If he lashes out and kills you in a rage…please just, try to be more?—”
“Accommodating? Submissive?”
Her features stretched tight with disgust. “Yes, to be blunt. It might seem like we’re giving in, but we’re not. We are biding our time, surviving.”
Leigh was struggling right now to find her bearings. Letting go of her desire to defend herself and stand up to these men warred with the thought of being compliant. Compliance felt too much like how she’d had to compromise herself and her needs, desires, and principles when she’d been a child. Watching her own back for much of her life made her skepticism rise to the fore, even when she harbored the feeling that Hazard…his team wouldn’t let them down, but it was so hard to let go of doubts, and maybe that was more a fear of disappointment than anything else. “How can you be sure they’re coming for us?” The thought of being truly alone and at the mercy of the cartel who had kidnapped her to make an example of her to her government made her shake inside.
“Are you kidding?” Anna smirked knowingly. “We’re one of them now and after they see what happened to TOC—” Anna’s voice broke and she took a hard breath, working through her own grief. Leigh didn’t know the people who had been killed like Anna did, but she remembered all too well, and quite viscerally what it was like to lose people she worked with and were close to. Her throat constricted, and her eyes stung. “They don’t leave their people behind, and they’ll want retribution. I can assure you of that. I’m not just their CIA liaison, I’m married to a SEAL. This…our situation…is what they live for, and the way Hazard looks at you. Oh, yeah, they’re coming for us.”
Leigh let that comment about Hazard wash over her, not in any position to talk about the man in any way that was personal. She was still sorting through so much crap inside her overstuffed head, so many years of thinking she was doing something for one reason, but now wondering if she had been blinded by the truth, a truth that played at the fringe of her consciousness. She changed the subject, dropping into a whisper. “Something happened to spook these bastards.”
Anna nodded, her eyes shrewd, leaning in close and lowering her own voice. “Yeah, they aren’t happy about it, but the boys do their thing, and they do it well, messing up a lot of plans for the people they’re hunting.” She studied Leigh’s face. “Sorry about the shiner. I didn’t mean to hit you that hard.” She looked away, then down at her hands. “What you said really hit home, and I kind of lost it a bit. I was in charge, and I did blow it.”
“Oh, Anna. You’re not alone in this. We all fell for the intel. We’re all to blame, especially me. They targeted me.”
“What?”
“They had a picture of me. All this was to get to me. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? This isn’t your fault either.”
“Maybe. Tell that to my overwhelming guilt.”
Anna squeezed her arm.
“I’m sorry about your eye, too,” Leigh said with a wry smile.
Anna winced, then smiled softly. “You can fight as well as your mouth works, but I think you could benefit from some pointers.”
Leigh chuckled softly, starting to really like Anna. “We were trying to stay alive, so we don’t have to talk about our black eyes.”
“What happens in the jungle, stays in the jungle?”
“Something like that.”
“Break’s over,” Conde said, and it was more slogging through air so still, the humidity and heat increasing as it slipped into late morning. She heard voices, smelled and saw the remnants of occupation before they reached a makeshift camp. Four tents in a neat rectangle with a small cookfire in the middle. The smell of hot eggs and bacon made her mouth water and her stomach rumble painfully.
They were led inside the tent and deposited. Shortly afterward, a man she didn’t recognize brought in two plates. Anna and Leigh dug in.
With her stomach full, she dozed lightly until Marco entered with two guards. They marched in and grabbed Anna, dragging her out. Rising, Leigh started to protest, her bound hands clenched. He swung too fast for her to block. His fist connected with her jaw, and she saw stars, falling to the tent floor where she simply lay dazed. She heard a bloodcurdling scream, and she tried to rise, tried to do something, but she collapsed, helplessness and bleakness chilling her. The pain, the shock, the blast, and the fatigue caught up to her. She passed out.