Kitabı oku: «Navy Seal To Die For»

Chapter One

“Ahh, this is the way to travel.” US Navy SEAL Quentin Lovett yawned and stretched, burrowing into the contoured seat of the Stealth Operations Specialists corporate jet. “I’ve never felt more rested. This beats commercial flights, hands down.” He chuckled. “I don’t even want to compare it to the back of a C-130.”

“Don’t get used to it, Loverboy.” Dutton Calloway, Duff to his friends, sat with his eyes closed, his head tipped back across the aisle from Quentin.

“Maybe you should switch branches of service.” Becca Smith blinked her eyes open and cocked her eyebrows at Quentin in the seat beside her.

“What? And give up the glamorous life of a navy SEAL?” Quentin lifted Becca’s hand and brushed her knuckles with a light kiss. “Although, if I got to work with a pretty little thing like you, I might consider giving up the swamps and the honor of getting mud beneath my fingernails.”

She frowned and pulled her hand from his. “Forget it, frogman. You’re not getting into my pants. My mamma told me about guys like you.”

He chuckled. “That you would be lucky to have a man as handsome and talented as I am?”

“No, that navy guys have a woman in every port and shove off when things get a little too permanent for them.”

Duff, his six-foot-three-inch SEAL teammate, laughed. “She’s got your number, Loverboy.”

Quentin grinned. “We’re just getting warmed up.”

Becca gave Quentin a glance that should have chilled him to the bone, but he didn’t give up easily.

“Before she knows it, she’ll be madly in love with me.” Quentin winked at Becca.

She rolled her eyes, leaned forward and asked Duff, “Is he really that full of himself, or is he pulling my leg?”

Duff cracked open an eyelid. “I suspect he’s a bit of both.”

Natalie Layne rested a hand on Duff’s. “I’m so glad you’re not a ladies’ man.”

Duff’s other eyelid rose, exposing his green eyes. “Who said I wasn’t?”

Quentin snorted. “Please. Leave the art of seduction to the pro.”

Sawyer Houston laughed out loud behind Quentin. “Says the man striking out with the beautiful lady.”

Becca raised her hand above the chair. “Thanks for the compliment.”

“Not that I think she’s more beautiful than you,” Sawyer added for the benefit of Jenna Broyles, the woman riding in the plane beside him.

“I’m not opposed to my man looking, as long as he’s not sampling,” Jenna said.

Duff closed his fingers around Natalie’s hand. “Sawyer has a point, Quentin. I’ve got a gorgeous babe. What have you got?”

Quentin loved the banter between him and his teammates. He loved a challenge even more, and Becca Smith was a challenge. The way he saw it, he had until the plane landed in Mississippi to win her over and secure a date with the incredibly beautiful and extremely uptight lady, who intrigued him to the point of obsession.

She was wound up so tight, Quentin considered it his duty and responsibility to help her loosen up. He’d dedicated the flight from Cancun to Mississippi to winning over the pretty secret agent’s interest. In the past few hours, he’d failed to get more than a “drop dead” glare out of her. His time was quickly running out. He had yet to succeed in his mission.

“Sawyer, I’m surprised your father agreed to go along with the faked death scenario,” Becca commented.

“You’re surprised?” Sawyer huffed out a breath. “I was floored. The man never had time for anything other than politics. I swear he didn’t know my name half the time. My father had a cot set up in his office. He spent so many late nights working, it made more sense for him to sleep there.”

“Must have been hard for you and your mother,” Jenna commented.

“Nah. We were used to it. You don’t miss what you never had.”

Quentin could relate. His father had left him and his mother when Quentin was five. His mother, destitute and with a young mouth to feed, was forced to move in with her parents on their Iowa farm. His grandfather had been his male role model, for which he was forever grateful. He’d raised him to appreciate the fruits of a hard day’s labor. Nothing in this world was worth anything if it was easy to attain.

Thus his interest in Becca. The woman who’d shown up in Cancun, Mexico, on what should have been Quentin’s relaxing vacation, and helped them keep Sawyer alive when an assassin was hell-bent on ending his life.

“Speaking of assassins,” Quentin said aloud.

“No one was speaking of assassins until you just brought it up,” Benjamin “Montana” Raines said and yawned. “Could ya shut up for the next thirty minutes until we land? I haven’t gotten my full three-hours’ sleep in on the flight.”

“You wouldn’t have needed it, if you hadn’t stayed up until four in the morning,” Sawyer grumbled. “And then dragged yourself in, waking everyone up.”

“Can I help that the last night of vacation they had to have Country Western Night at the resort?”

Quentin shook his head. “I didn’t know one man could two-step for six hours straight.”

“I’ve got stamina, unlike some of you boneheads.” Montana pushed his cowboy hat down over his eyes. “Seriously, could you hold it down?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

His buddies all groaned.

“No, really.” Quentin frowned. “Just because we took care of the assassin-for-hire who’d been gunning for our buddy Sawyer, it doesn’t mean that dirty dog is dead.”

“What are you talking about?” Duff asked.

“Someone wanted Rand Houston, aka Sawyer’s father, out of the way and was willing to use Sawyer as bait to get him to Cancun in order to get a clear shot at him. We got his hired gun, but the man who hired him is still on the loose.”

“Your point?” Duff prompted.

“Who’s going after him?” Quentin persisted.

“I don’t know,” Sawyer said. “But we have to report back to Stennis as soon as we get back. Which won’t be much longer. We should see land soon.”

Quentin leaned over Becca to stare out the window. Just as Sawyer said, land was within sight.

“Do you mind?” Becca said, her brows hiked. “If you’re that interested in the scenery below, I’d be happy to swap seats with you.”

Slowly leaning back in his seat, Quentin gave her one of his best smiles. His mother always said he could charm the chickens out of the trees with that smile. “Instead of agreeing to swap seats, why don’t you agree to have dinner with me when we land?”

“I told you, I’m not interested.” She turned her shoulders toward the window, effectively cutting him off.

“Okay, I get it. You don’t want to go out with me for dinner. How about lunch?”

She drew in a slow, steadying breath and let it out. “No.”

“Coffee?”

“No.”

Undaunted, Quentin grinned. “You’re making it really hard for me to get to know you.”

“Not my problem. That one’s all on you.”

“Tell you what,” Quentin said. “Before you reject me, give me one kiss. If the chemistry isn’t there, I won’t pursue you anymore.”

“You’ll leave me completely alone?” she asked.

Quentin nodded and held up his hand. “I promise.”

“Fine. One kiss.” She leaned toward him.

He faced her, puckering.

Becca reached out and turned his cheek. “On the cheek.”

“How are you supposed to gauge the chemistry with a kiss on the cheek?” he protested.

“Not my problem.” When she swooped in to land her kiss, Quentin turned at the last minute and caught her lips with his.

Her eyes widened, her breath hitched, but she didn’t back away.

Quentin cupped the back of her neck and deepened the kiss, pressing her closer.

She gasped, her lips parting for a second. Long enough for Quentin to slip his tongue past her teeth for a taste of her. Mmm. Rum and coconuts from the drink she’d had earlier. So sweet and amazing, he almost groaned. When he lifted his head, he smiled down at her. “Was that so bad?” he asked.

Her drooping eyelids popped wide and she slapped him hard on the cheek she had intended on kissing.

Quentin could swear the plane shook with the force of the blow.

“What the hell?” Duff shouted, sitting up.

The plane shook and shuttered.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve lost power to the engine and will be making an emergency landing,” the captain said over the loud speaker. “Please check your seatbelts and hold on.”

It took Quentin a full second to realize the slap he’d deservedly received had not impacted the plane. “What happened?” he asked, tightening his belt.

“Felt like we were hit,” Sawyer said.

Quentin pressed a hand to his stinging cheek. Oh, he’d been hit all right. But the plane? “By what?”

“I don’t know,” Duff said. “But you better hunker down. It’s gonna be a rough landing.”

With the plane shaking like an old truck on a gravel road, Quentin doubted the landing would be an easy one.

A feminine hand slipped into his and he held on to it.

“Just for the record,” Becca said. “You deserved that slap.”

If he’d thought the dire situation would encourage her to apologize, he was sorely disappointed. “It was worth it. You taste so good. If I die in this crash, I will have died a happy man.”

“Jerk,” she whispered, but didn’t let go of his hand as the plane pitched, dipped and plunged toward the ground at a terrifying speed. “For the record, if I make it out of this alive, I’m still going after the man who killed my father.”

“I believe you,” Quentin said. “If I can get more time off from my unit, I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t need an amateur getting in my way.”

“I’m not an amateur, I’m a SEAL.”

“Yeah and you’re used to kicking ass and shooting anything that moves. My kind of work takes finesse, something you are clearly lacking.”

“Ouch,” Quentin said.

“Loverboy, I believe you’ve been put in your place.” Duff chuckled. “Give it up. She’s not into you.”

Quentin snorted. “This frogman won’t give up without a fight.”

“Yeah?” Montana said from the back. “Seems we’re going down with a fight, now.”

And he was right. It seemed as if the ground outside the window rushed up to meet them. Make that the water rushed up to meet them.

The pilot brought the plane in on a marsh, the only gap between tall cypress trees. The belly of the aircraft slid across the smooth surface like a hovercraft until it hit a berm of land, barely jutting a foot into the air.

The plane jolted hard on impact; the tail lifted and then crashed down with a big splash.

Throwing aside her seatbelt, the flight attendant ran for the emergency exit and struggled to open the exterior door.

Quentin released his seatbelt and hurried to help. Together they managed to open the door, the steps falling into the water.

“There are flotation devices beneath each seat,” the attendant called out.

Quentin glanced out the door and shook his head. “I suggest we all get into the life boat or do our best to stay with the plane until help arrives. You do not want to get in that water.”

“Why?” Duff staggered up the aisle to join him at the door.

“I believe we’ve landed in the middle of an alligator farm.”

* * *

BECCA ROSE FROM her seat aboard the downed aircraft, shaken but refusing to show how much the crash-landing had scared her. She’d been shot at, held hostage and beaten by one of the meanest sons of a bitch known to the drug-dealing mafia, but never had she been in an airplane crash.

If Quentin hadn’t been next to her, teasing her and holding her hand, she might have dissolved into a very embarrassing case of feminine hysterics.

On the ground...or in the water...they had survived. A few alligators were nothing compared to the instant death of a plane hitting the ground and completely disintegrating like she’d seen happen at the Baltimore International Airport one snowy evening a long time ago.

Her father had brought her to the airport to greet her mother after she’d been on a work trip to California. Becca had missed her mother, and looked forward to being held and cuddled in her arms. They’d watched as her mother’s plane approached the airport on schedule. It appeared to be a perfect landing until a wing dipped and the entire plane performed something like a cartwheel on the runway.

Her father cursed and pulled the young Becca into his arms to hide her view of the burning wreckage. No one survived. Her beautiful mother would never come home, never hold her close or sing her to sleep at night.

Her heart hammered against her ribs and her belly soured at the memory. Where her mother had not escaped, Becca had cheated death in the SOS corporate jet. All her life, she’d flown in airplanes, pushing back the fear of crashing. Today she imagined what her mother might have felt when she realized the plane was going to crash. She could only hope it had happened so fast that none of the passengers had time to be afraid.

“Hey.”

A gentle hand on her arm brought her out of her memories and back to the problem at hand.

“Are you okay?” Quentin asked.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” she lied, barely able to stand on wobbly knees. Bile churned in her gut again, threatening to find a rapid path out if she didn’t reach open air immediately.

She shoved Quentin to the side and staggered toward the doorway, where the flight attendant and Duff struggled with a life raft, blocking the exit.

“I need to get out,” Becca said, her voice strained.

“You’ll have to wait until we get this raft the right side up,” the attendant said.

“You don’t understand. I. Need. Out. Now.” She shoved them aside, pushed the raft out of her way and jumped out of the plane into the water.

She hit at an angle and sank below the surface, sucking fetid swamp water up her nose. Panicking, and fighting to get her feet under her, Becca couldn’t tell which way was up. She flapped and kicked, but couldn’t get turned the right direction.

Something splashed next to her and an arm wrapped around her waist and yanked her out of the dark, dank water and into the bright sunshine.

Becca coughed and sputtered, gagging on the nasty water. All the while those strong arms held her, letting her get her feet beneath her on the silt bottom of the marsh.

The life raft plopped into the water beside them.

“Better?” Quentin’s voice sounded in her ear, his breath warm on her cheek.

She nodded, still unable to form coherent sentences.

“Good, because a couple of alligators spotted us. They’re on their way and we’re getting out of the water now.” He hauled her up and over the edge of the life raft, tossing her like a rag doll. Then he planted his hands on the sides and dragged himself up and in, along with enough water to threaten the small craft.

Her heart beating so fast she thought it might explode out of her chest, Becca peered over the side of the inflatable raft. The dark surface of the water appeared smooth, but there was tall grass all around. “I don’t see any alligators,” she said.

Quentin didn’t answer. He’d turned back to the aircraft, smoke billowing up from the engine in the tail. “Everyone out!” he shouted. He reached up as Natalie Layne appeared in the doorway. “Lose the shoes.”

She kicked off her high heels and leaned out into Quentin’s arms. The raft rocked with the added weight. One by one, the SEAL team and Lance climbed into the raft, followed by the flight attendant, pilot and copilot.

Once everyone was on board the rubber raft, Quentin said, “Now let’s get away from the fuselage before the aviation fuel ignites.” The SEALs dug their arms into the water and paddled, doing the best they could to move the unwieldy craft through the marsh waters and away from the plane.

They hadn’t gone more than the length of a football field when an explosion rocked the air.

Quentin shoved Becca into the bottom of the raft and threw himself over her body. Debris dropped into the water around them.

Quentin jerked and cursed. Then he sat up and looked back.

Without his weight on her, Becca sat up and followed his gaze. A mushrooming cloud of flame and smoke rose into the air.

Becca clutched the side of the raft, her body shaking. “Damn, that was close.”

“Yeah.” Quentin ripped his shirt open and dragged it off his shoulders, wincing as he did so.

“Hey, Loverboy,” Montana said. “You took a hit.”

Quentin nodded, his jaw tight.

“Let me see.” Becca scooted around to get a look at his back.

A jagged piece of metal about two inches long stuck out of the man’s shoulder. “Pull it out,” he said through gritted teeth.

Becca bit her lip. She’d been trained to leave embedded objects for a surgeon to extract. But with no surgeon around, and no telling how long it would be until someone found them, she couldn’t let him suffer. Picking up Quentin’s discarded shirt, she wrapped it around the sharp edges of the metal and paused. “This might hurt a little.”

“Just do it.” Quentin’s jaw tightened and he clenched his fists.

Before he finished his command, she gripped and pulled. The shard was only an inch deep, but once removed, the blood flowed.

“Here.” Duff pulled his T-shirt over his head and handed it to Becca, along with a knife. She cut the shirt into long strips, wadded one into a pad and pressed it to the wound. “Hold this there,” she said to Duff.

Duff held the pad in place while Becca tied the other strips of fabric together and then wound them around Quentin’s shoulder. She created a big knot over the wound to add continued pressure to stop the blood flow.

All the while she worked on Quentin, she couldn’t help but notice the breadth of the SEAL’s shoulders and how solid his muscles felt beneath her fingertips. If she didn’t have a mission to complete, and if Quentin wasn’t a navy SEAL, she might consider going out with him. Maybe. The truth was, she couldn’t stop in her pursuit of finding her father’s killer.

Once done, she sat back and assessed the damage. “Barring a swamp-water bacterial infection, you’ll live.” She turned toward the smoldering plane. “On the other hand, the SOS plane is a complete wash. What happened?”

“Something hit the plane,” Duff said.

Quentin nodded. “And since it didn’t impact the nose or the fuselage but knocked out the engine, we either sucked a pelican into the engine, or were hit by a heat-seeking missile.”

“What?” Becca looked around the swamp. “We’re in Louisiana, not the Middle East.”

Sawyer pulled out his cell phone and held it up. “If I can get cell service, I’ll contact our unit. We aren’t too far from Stennis.” He tapped the screen and waited.

Becca plucked at her damp blouse, realizing a little late that the wet white fabric did nothing to hide what was beneath. Thank goodness she had on a bra. She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling a little silly for the panic attack that made her leap out of the airplane into an alligator-infested bayou. “Where are we, anyway?”

Quentin pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and shook it. “I’d tell you if I could get my GPS up. I think my phone is toast. These things don’t do well submerged.”

Becca twisted her lips. “Sorry.”

He shrugged and tucked the phone back in his pocket. “What happened back there?”

She glanced away. “Nothing. Just a little claustrophobia.”

Natalie snorted. “A little? You were getting out of that plane if you had to tear a hole in the fuselage to get there.”

“I’m glad we all got out before it blew,” Duff muttered staring down at the screen of his dry mobile phone. “We’re in a marsh near the Pearl River. If Sawyer can contact the team, they can come get us.”

Sawyer had his cell phone pressed to his ear. “This is Chief Petty Officer Houston, let me speak to the LT... I don’t care if he’s on lunch break. This is an emergency. Get him.”

All faces turned to Sawyer.

Becca held her breath and strained to hear.

“LT, we have a problem. The plane we were flying in crashed in a marsh close to the base... Yes, sir. We all got out alive. Thanks to the pilot.” Sawyer nodded toward the pilot, who’d landed the plane under the worst circumstances. “I’ve got the app to find my cell phone. You can track us with it.” He gave the LT the login and password to track his phone. “How soon can someone be here? Twenty minutes? Make it less. We’re sitting ducks in this life raft and we don’t know whether the guy who shot us down is still out there.”

Becca glanced around the marsh. So far the only other living creatures were those that belonged in the swamp. Theirs was the only boat afloat.

Quentin also stared around the bayou. “If someone shot us down out, they might come back to finish off any survivors. And that smoke signal will make it all too easy to find us. Perhaps we should find some cover and concealment.”

“Right.” Montana nodded toward a stand of cypress trees a couple hundred yards away. “Let’s make for the trees.”

Without a paddle to propel the raft, they made slow progress toward the stand of trees. Everyone who could leaned over the side and paddled with their hands.

Already wet, Becca did her best tucked against Quentin, who sat behind her. All the while she watched the water for alligators, praying none of the crash survivors lost an arm to the gaping maw of one of the swamp reptiles.

Halfway to the trees, Becca paused and tipped her head, the thick humidity of southern Mississippi causing sweat to drip into her eyes. A sound reached her over the splashing of the water.

“Shh!” she said. “Listen.”

All hands stilled.

There it was again. The thumping sound of rotors beating the air.

“Helicopter.” Quentin twisted left and right.

Sawyer straightened, looking to the sky. “Where’s it coming from?”

“Did you ask the LT to send a chopper?” Duff’s voice was low and intense.

Sawyer shook his head. “The LT said he’d send out a boat.”

“Damn.” Quentin leaned over the side and paddled faster. “Let’s get to those trees!”

Becca studied the horizon, turning for a three-hundred-sixty-degree view. “It could be a coast guard rescue helicopter.”

“I’m not willing to bank on it.” Quentin continued paddling, along with the other SEALs.

Becca bent over the side and contributed to the effort, glancing up, searching the horizon.

The dark silhouette of a helicopter detached from the horizon, rose into the air and headed straight for the burning hull of the SOS jet.

As the chopper neared the downed craft, it let loose a stream of bullets.

“Holy hell,” Becca said, ducking automatically. She resumed paddling, praying the bright yellow life raft wasn’t as easy to spot as the color intended. They only had moments to make the trees, still another fifty yards away.