Chapter One
It took her a moment to pick him out of the stream of
passengers
exiting customs at the airport in Iquitos, the Peruvian city
hacked
out of the jungle of the Upper Amazon. Even with his shaggy
blond
hair and three- or four-days’ worth of scruffy gold
whiskers, he could
have passed for a local. Thousands of Europeans had flooded
into
Iquitos during the Rubber Boom of the 1880s. The rubber
barons of that
period acquired immense wealth, built fantastic mansions and
give the
city its unique cultural identity. Generations later,
Iquitos still
boasted the largest gringo enclave in Peru.
In boots, jeans, and a canvas bush shirt, this gringo might
have been
one of the tough, macho guides who escorted would-be
adventurers into
the vast Amazon rainforest. The clothes and the battered
duffle bag
slung over his shoulder suited his tall, muscular build.
They also,
she knew, served a vital military necessity. To conceal
their
identities, operators assigned to the U.S. Army’s super-
secret Delta
Force usually wore civilian clothes. For the same reason
they were
allowed-correction, encouraged-to adopt civilian hair styles
and
beards or mustaches to blend in with the locals. The
practice also
allowed for plausible deniability, that useful shield the
U.S.
government could hide behind if one of Delta Force’s
dangerous and
usually politically sensitive ops went bad.
Aviator sunglasses shielded his eyes as he did a quick sweep
of the
terminal before zeroing in on her. He could hardly miss her.
The
waiting area wasn’t much bigger than your average living
room and she
was the only female present wearing jungle BDUs. He detached
himself
from the stream of arrivals and crossed the terminal.
Removing his
sunglasses, he hooked them in the open neck of his shirt.
His eyes
were a deep, electric blue and more than a tad disconcerting
as they
drilled into her.
“Chief Dawson.”
It was a statement, not question, but she answered it
anyway.
“That’s me.” She thrust out her hand. “Charlene Dawson,
Charley to my
friends and fellow river rats. Welcome to Iquitos.”
She went into a mental brace as he folded his big hand
around hers.
After eleven years in the U.S. Navy, four of them as a
member of a
Riverine Patrol crew, Charley was used to having her
metacarpals
crunched by the Special Ops types she and her crew inserted
into and
extracted from various hot spots around the world.
Apparently Sergeant First Class Jack Halliday felt no need
to prove
his manhood by crunching anything. His grip was firm but not
bruising.
The hard callous on the web between his thumb and forefinger
was a
dead giveaway, though. As Charley knew from her work with
Special Ops
teams, that telltale callous was the mark of shooters who’ve
fired
thousands upon thousands of training rounds and God knew how
many in
actual, life-and-death situations.
She kept her welcoming smile in place as Halliday’s
penetrating blue
eyes made a quick trip from her pinned-up-and-out-of-the-way
auburn
hair to her un-glossed mouth to the neckline of her
regulation issue
brown T-shirt.
“My crew get in okay?” he asked, the inspection completed.
“Two arrived last night, one this morning.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
Obviously a man of few words. That was fine with Charley.
She tugged
on her floppy brimmed boonie hat and led him to the exit.
“It’s
quicker to get to the base by boat. We’ll take a taxi to the
dock and
cruise up river.”
“Taxi” being an extremely loose euphemism for the putt-putts
that
comprised the main means of public transportation in this
remote
jungle city. Called motokars by the locals, they consisted
of
rickshaw-type seats perched precariously on the back of
motorcycles.
Dozens of them were lined up outside the terminal, puffing
exhaust
fumes into the sweltering afternoon heat. Charley signaled
for one and
waited for the inevitable mad scramble to produce a clear
victor. The
winner roared up and screeched to a stop that set the
mildewed tassels
on his gaudy yellow canopy to dancing.
“Where you go?” he said in cheerful, broken English.
“To the Navy dock,” she replied in the idiomatic Spanish
she’d
polished during her two months in Iquitos. Prior to that,
she’d
operated out of a navy base in Brazil. Spanish, thankfully,
came a
whole lot easier to her than Portuguese.
She climbed aboard and scooted over to make room for
Halliday. Not
enough room, as it turned out. Dropping his gear bag on the
deck, he
wedged in. They were knee to knee, hip to hip, and the
contact sent a
completely unexpected thrill chasing up Charley’s thigh.
Her stomach tightened as a sudden tension stirred deep in
her belly.
It was the kind of tension she hadn’t felt, hadn’t allowed
herself to
feel, for longer than she could remember. With a silent
curse, she
inched her leg away from his. She was hours away from
launching a
dangerous op. She’d be ten kinds of an idiot to go all
twittery at the
brush of Jack Halliday’s hard thigh. Which brought her back
to the
curiosity that had dogged her since HQ SOUTHCOM notified her
they were
flying him and his Delta Force team in to conduct this op.
The U.S. and Peru had signed a bilateral Riverine Plan more
than a
decade ago to increase joint military-police patrols against
the narco
trafficers who used the Amazon waterways to move their
product. In
support of that effort, the U.S. had shipped in patrol
boats, set up
radar surveillance at Iquitos and several other sites along
the river,
and assigned a contingent of thirty-three Green Berets to
“advise” on
interdiction efforts. The Green Berets rotated out every
ninety days,
but they were tough. Bite-through-steel tough. Charley
should know.
She and her crew had skimmed them and their Peruvian
counterparts up
and down the brown waters of the Amazon often enough to see
them in
action.
So why the heck were Halliday and his team here?
She waited until their putt-putt had barreled into the
stream of other
motokars and motorcycles heading into Iquitos center to ask.
The whine
of engines and deafening roar as a maverick accelerated out
of the
pack covered her quiet comment.
“I was surprised when HQ SOUTHCOM advised they were sending
in a Delta
Force team. So were the Green Berets on base. What’s up with
that?”
His glance sliced into her, as sharp and lethal as the
serrated K-bar
she suspected was strapped to his forearm or calf. Like the
American
Express Card for ordinary citizens, these super macho
warriors never
left home without one.
Silence strung out between them, and his obvious reluctance
to answer
her question generated a spurt of irritation. She was one of
the good
guys, for Pete’s sake! Controlling that irritation, Charley
laid her
cards on the line.
“Look, Halliday, my crew and I know this is going to be a
hairy op. We
don’t have a problem with that. Each of us has pulled at
least one
combat tour in Iraq, patrolling the Tigris and Euphrates.
Several of
us more than one. Since being shipped across the pond to the
Amazon,
we’ve bumped up against some nasty bad guys. My crew is good
at
Riverine Ops, damned good, but if you know something about
this
mission that could impact their lives, I want to hear it
now.”
His jaw went tight, which was a pretty impressive
considering it
already did an excellent imitation of the Rock of Gibraltar.
She
couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses but
could
certainly feel their heat. The intensity of it blocked her
peripheral
perception of Iquitos’ rough-and-tumble outskirts. The
small,
ramshackle brick and wooden houses. The giant palms and
profusion of
flowers. The dirt roads jammed with putt-putts, motorcycles
and wooden
buses. As the only major city in the world inaccessible by
road,
Iquitos still managed to rack up the traffic.
It was now early April, the end of summer and beginning of
fall south
of equator. Temperatures hovered at a balmy eighty-nine
degrees.
Unfortunately, this was also the peak of the rainy season.
Even when
the skies weren’t dumping torrents of rain, soul-sucking
humidity
wrapped everyone and everything in a wet blanket.
Perspiration dewed
Charley’s face and sweat coursed between her breasts as she
waited for
Jack Halliday to crack his stony silence.
“I trained Sean McMasters,” he said at last.
“Whoa! Our target is a Delta Force operative?”
“Was,” Halliday corrected, “until he went rogue.”
She almost wished she hadn’t asked. Halliday’s terse
revelation had
just shot up the pucker factor of her mission by exponential
degrees.
Going after the narcos who traversed this stretch of the
Amazon was
dangerous enough. For the most part, though, they were
poorly educated
and relied on cunning and brute force to move their cargo.
In recent
months Charley and her Peruvian counterparts had been given
a new
target-the illegal gold mines dumping tons of toxic mercury
into the
river that provided life to so many animals and humans in
the region.
Not only were these mines raping the earth and polluting the
environment, they sprouted rough-and-ready camp towns where
drugs,
alcohol, and prostitution flourished like blights.
Charley and her crew had helped take down a number of these
illegal
mining operations over the past few months. Small operations
for the
most part, but they’d recently got a tip about a major site.
They’d
probed dozens of inlets and minor tributaries, trying to
find it.
Then, just when they nailed their first real lead--a rumor
that an
American ex-patriot by the name of Sean McMasters had
supposedly taken
command of a camp on a narrow tributary about a hundred
miles down
river--US Southern Command advised they were sending in
Sergeant First
Class Jack Halliday to lead the take-down. Now Charley knew
why!
“This is not good,” she murmured as their motokar chugged
its way into
the heart of Iquitos.
With its unique Amazonian/European architecture, the city
contained a
lively mix of theaters, shops, dance halls and palatial
mansions built
during the rubber boom. The boom lasted only thirty years,
but Iquitos
still reflected some of the enormous wealth amassed by a
handful of
entrepreneurs. The Plaza de Armas formed the city’s central
hub, and
many of the buildings ringing it were adorned with colorful
ceramic
tiles imported from Portugal and Italy. On one corner of the
square
stood the famous Iron House designed by Gustave Eiffel and
forged in
the workshops of Belgium. One of Iquitos’ mega-rich rubber
barons had
purchased the two-story structure at the Paris Exposition of
1889, had
it dismantled, and shipped it back to Iquitos.
The mansion was Iquitos’ best known landmark but Charley
didn’t bother
to point it out to Sergeant Halliday. Her one thought, her
only
thought, was for her crew. They were battle hardened and
Amazon savvy.
Still, knowing their target had once been a member of the
U.S.’s elite
Delta Force changed the whole complexion of the op.
Unlike most Special Ops units, you wouldn’t find Delta Force
listed on
any Army TOA-Table of Allowance. On paper, every Delta Force
operator
was assigned on paper to other Army units. Trained
specifically for
hostage rescue and counter-terrorism operations, they
deployed in
small, lethal teams. The fact that SOUTHCOM had sent
Halliday and his
team in for this particular mission told Charley there was
more to it
than a simple search and destroy.
“Josh Patterson said to say hello.”
The brusque comment jerked her from a grim contemplation of
the
challenge ahead. “You know Josh?”
“We played football together in high school.”
A smile spread across Charley’s face. She’d met USMC Staff
Sergeant
Josh Patterson some months back. She and her crew had been
participating in joint river training exercises in Brazil at
the time.
Patterson had air dropped into the jungle to rescue a
kidnapped
Healing Hands worker-who just happened to be the daughter of
a Marine
Corps general. Charley and her crew had done a hot
extraction and even
then she could see Patterson had met his match in Allison
Landon.
“Aly sent me an invitation to the wedding,” she related. “I
hated to
miss it.”
Halliday regarded her steadily for several moments. “We have
another
acquaintance in common,” he said coolly.
“Who’s that?”
“Your husband. I ran into him during my pre-brief at
SOUTHCOM. In a
bar just outside the base.”
Charley’s lip curled. “That sounds like Alex. And just to
keep the
record straight, he’s not my husband. Hasn’t been for more
than three
years.”
She was tempted to ask Halliday what he and Alex talked
about but
deep-sixed the impulse. She had a good idea. Besides, she
didn’t want
to give her ex the satisfaction of knowing she’d asked about
him in
the unlikely event the two men ever hooked up again.
Instead, she
channeled the conversation to the mission ahead.
“We’ll be taking a Riverine Command Boat down-river.”
The RCB was a fast, lethal, shallow-water vessel. Originally
designed
and built for the Swedish Navy, the U.S. had ordered their
own version
of the craft for its brown water navy. Charley was the first
female to
command one and she didn’t take her responsibilities
lightly.
“The RCB has a three-foot draft, twin diesel engines, and
carries more
firepower per square inch than any other military vehicle
except maybe
an…”
“An Abrams tank. I’m aware of your craft’s capabilities.”
“Right. We’ll be manned by a combined U.S. and Peruvian crew
and carry
an assault team of…”
“Four Peruvian Special Ops troops in addition to my team.”
Not even the buzz of motorcycle engines could drown the
brusque edge
in his voice. Instinctively Charley bristled. Just as
instinctively,
she told herself to cool it. She’d worked with too many of
men like
Halliday to let him get to her.
Except…There was something different about this one.
Something that
belied the stereotype. Not his hard, muscled body. That was
most
definitely primo. Every rattle of the motokar telegraphed an
unmistakable signal from the steely muscles pressed against
her
shoulder and hip. But she didn’t get the same chauvinistic
vibes from
him she’d encountered all too often from others of his ilk.
Whatever
had Sergeant Halliday wound so tight didn’t hinge on her
sex.
Too bad.
Just as quickly as the thought slipped into her mind, she
booted it
out. There was nothing like working in a male dominated
environment-
and jumping into a brief, disastrous marriage!-to make a gal
wary of
instinctive physical responses. Halliday and his men had
been
dispatched to the Amazon for a specific mission. Charley and
her men
would assist in that mission. Then she and Jack Halliday
would part
ways, never to cross paths again.
Too bad.
Dammit! What was with her this morning? It had to be his
closeness.
The sharp, clean tang of his sweat. The rub of his thigh
against hers.
Not to mention the fact that Charley could give an entire
cloister of
nuns lessons in celibacy since she’d landed in the Amazon
eight months
ago.
For any woman reach the upper ranks in the Navy they had to
develop a
rhino-tough hide along with a magic blend of leadership,
skill,
empathy, guts, determination, and dedication. Not much room
in there
for fooling around. Or for girly-girly stuff, although
Charley made an
effort with her hair. Twisting the dark red mass into a rope
and
pinning it up every morning was a pain but vital to her
sense of self.
It was her one vanity, her one concession to being a woman
in a what
was still pretty much a man’s world. Without thinking, she
reached up
to tuck a sweat-damp strand behind her ear.
Jack caught the movement from the corner of his eye and
smothered a
curse. This op had been gnawing at his insides since the
moment he
learned he’d be going after one of his own. A man Jack
himself had
trained. A bastard who’d not only betrayed his country, he’d
made a
mockery of everything Delta Force stood for. Bad enough
McMasters was
knee-deep in the illegal gold trade. Latest word was he’d
used some of
that gold to buy and subsequently sell arms to terrorists
high on the
U.S. most wanted list.
Jack had been sent in to take the bastard down. To
accomplish that, he
would have to depend on Chief Dawson and her crew. He had
nothing
against women in the military. Had served with some damned
fine ones.
But this particular woman’s ex had bent his ear for a good
half hour.
According to Alex Dawson, his wife had slept her way into
several
juicy assignments before dumping him.
Jack knew better than to accept at face value the ravings of
a half-
drunk and obviously bitter ex. Particularly since those
ravings didn’t
square with Dawson’s glowing fitness reports and her steady
rise
within the ranks of the riverine community. Although not as
tight as
Delta Force, the river rats wouldn’t tolerate a phony for
long. The
woman had to know her stuff, had to be as good as she
claimed.
Still, she’d made a vow. Walked down the aisle. Went the
“for better
or worse” route. Then bailed when the going got rocky. That
didn’t
square with Jack’s rigid sense of right and wrong, of
hanging tough
against all odds. Loyalty was a trait that went bone deep in
him.
With good reason. The son of an oil rigger, he’d grown up in
the
gritty, dust-whipped West Texas town of Rush Springs. His
mother
decamped when Jack was four or five, and his father took out
his anger
at her desertion by beating the crap out of their son until
Jack was
big enough and strong enough to fight back. His one
salvation, his
only outlet, during those dark years was the fact that he
was good at
sports. All kinds of sports, but he’d come into his own on
the
football field.
Over four injury-wracked, teeth-rattling years his high
school team
had battled from last place in division standings to state
champs.
Along the way Jack and five of his teammates got tagged as
the
Sidewinders for their ability to strike without warning and
get the
ball down the field. They also became so tight, so mentally
attuned to
each, that no one in Rush Springs was surprised when all six
enlisted
in the military right after graduation. Or that every one of
them went
into Special Ops. They served in different branches of the
military
but the Special Ops community was small enough that their
paths
crossed often.
And fellow Sidewinder Josh Patterson had nothing but praise
for
Charley Dawson’s skills. Jack trusted Josh, so he would
trust Dawson’s
skills. He’d put that crap about her sleeping her way up the
ranks out
of his head.
Although…
He could see how it might happen. Not even her baggy jungle
BDUs and
boonie hat could disguise this woman’s femininity. Add a
pair of doe-
brown eyes and those damp red tendrils framing a heart-
shaped face,
and you got an enticing package. Then the putt-putt swerved
around a
corner, throwing Dawson against him, and Jack swallowed
another curse.
The press of a high, firm breast confirmed just how feminine
Chief
Dawson was.
“Sorry,” she muttered, righting herself.
As their driver zoomed past a block of warehouses and aimed
for the
docks dead ahead, Jack breathed in a familiar stench. He’d
made enough
river assaults to appreciate the combined stink of rotting
vegetation,
muddy water and diesel fumes.
He appreciated even more the craft tied up at a wharf
guarded by
heavily armed Peruvian troops. Jack raked an approving
glance from
stem to stern as he hefted his gear bag and Dawson passed
the putt-
putt driver some Peruvian soles.
“This way.”
She approached the guards at the checkpoint with a sure
stride and an
easy smile. Jack’s Spanish was passable, but nowhere good
enough to
catch more than a phrase or two of what sounded like good-
natured
insults before the guards waved them through.
“They don’t need to see an ID?”
She flashed him an amused glance. “How many female American
boat
skippers do you think there are in the Amazon?”
“Point taken. They don’t know me, however.”
“You’re with me,” she said with a shrug.
He followed her down the long wharf to the patrol boat. It
was painted
in jungle camouflage colors of gray, green and muddy brown.
Despite
the drab paint scheme, though, the Riverine Command Boat was
a thing
of beauty. Unlike the Special Ops insertion boats Jack had
jumped out
of more times that he wanted to remember, the RCB was big
and roomy
and fast. Its three-foot draft made for easy access to
shallow rivers,
and its reinforced bow allowed it to run onto shore at full
speed
without damage.
The boat also bristled with armament. Jack gave the Browning
.50
caliber machine guns mounted midship his wholehearted
approval. The
12.7mm guns on the prow and aft were Lemur-sited and could
be remotely
controlled from inside the interior compartment-which was
armor-plated
and air-conditioned and boasted seating for twenty fully
armed troops
and room all their equipment. Helluva way to fight a war!
Jack fully intended to take Sean McMasters down with minimal
collateral damage. If things went south, though, it never
hurt to have
this kind of firepower as backup.
In full operational mode, the RCB carried a crew of four.
There was
only one sailor aboard at the moment. Sprouting a haystack
of sun-
bleached yellow hair and a gap-toothed grin, he looked like
a sixteen-
year-old who’d run away from a red dirt Georgia farm and
lied about
his age to join the navy.
Jack soon found out that assessment wasn’t far off the mark.
Charley
Dawson introduced Gunner’s Mate Third Class Michael “Bubba”
Burke and
stressed that the kid had racked up an impressive record
during his
scant years of service.
“Bubba served on my crew in Iraq,” she said as the two men
shook
hands. “He took a hit during a particularly nasty firefight
but stayed
at his gun.” She gave the kid a look that was two parts
pride and one
part affection. “The idiot was up for a nice, cushy shore
job after
that tour but volunteered for Amazon duty. Beats the hell
out of me
why.”
“C’mon, Chief. You know why.” Burke turned to Jack and
treated him to
a shy smile. “Me ‘n the rest of the crew, we’d swallow half
of this
here river if the Chief told us to.”
“Good to know,” Jack said easily.
He wasn’t overly impressed by Burke’s obvious devotion to
his boat
captain. As young as the kid was, he’d most likely only
served under
one or two superiors. A few more years under his belt, and
he would
have better grounds for comparison.
Still, it said something for Charlie Dawson that she could
inspire
such loyalty.
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