Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) (6 page)

So what?

She was free.

If that meant running until she dropped in her tracks, so be it.

Not hat the man with her seemed likely to let that happen.

The pace he set was brutal, but no matter how often she slipped or stumbled, he kept moving and he saw to it she kept moving along with him.

When she stumbled over a tree root, he caught her and righted her before she could fall. When her shirt snagged on a thorn bush, he didn’t waste time undoing the snag; he simply tore it free.

He was Superman.

Only one problem.

She was gasping for air.

She could hear herself panting. Surely the men they were running from would hear her, too. And even if they didn’t, wouldn’t she be able to breathe better without this hideous rag clamped between her jaws?

Alessandra poked her rescuer in the ribs.

“Mmpff!”

He barely glanced at her. “Yeah,” he said, “I know. You need a break.”

Was that what he thought she wanted?

“Mmpff,” she said again.

“Here’s your choice, lady. Keep up with me, or sit down, take a rest and wait for the bozos behind us to wake up and figure out what happened.”

Dammit! She wasn’t asking him to stop or slow down, she was asking him to get the gag out of her mouth, but why would that occur to Superman? He wasn’t even breathing hard.

“The gag,” she said, except what came out was something like “tuh gah.”

“Listen to me, woman…”

Enough.

Alessandra pulled her hand free of his and slapped it against her mouth.

“Tuh gah,” she said fiercely. “Tuh gah!”

He glared at her, and then he cursed, swung her towards him and took his knife from its sheath.

Her eyes widened.

She jerked back, but he spun her around. She felt his big hands push aside her hair. Felt the whisper of the blade as he slid it between the knot at the nape of her neck and her skin. One quick slice and the rag fell to the ground.

He scooped it up and jammed it in his pocket.

“Better?”

She licked her lips. They felt dry and cracked. Her mouth and throat were raw and she wasn’t sure she could speak.

“Much better.”

The words came out a croak, but her rescuer nodded, grabbed her hand again and they took off again.

She, Superman, and ten trillion aches and pains.

Think about something else.

She’d overcome pain before.

Diving from the cliffs near where she’d grown up in Sicily. She’d probably done that a thousand times, despite Mama’s warnings against it, and then, one morning, she’d gone into the sea wrong and ended up dislocating her shoulder.

She’d survived that, hadn’t she?

Or the barbecue at El Sueño when she’d bitten into a toasted marshmallow before it had cooled enough, and burned the tender inside of her mouth. And what about the first time she and Bianca, both of them new to America, had gone ice-skating at Rockefeller Center?

Bianca had been a natural. Alessandra, not so much.

She’d taken a couple of falls. Her ankles had wobbled.

“I’m going to be black and blue tomorrow,” she’d said, laughing, because, aches and bumps or not, learning to skate had been fun…

Merda!

Was she crazy? Cliff diving. Barbecuing. Ice-skating. Fun things, all of them, even if you got hurt.

But this—running through the jungle, or maybe at this point it was more accurate to describe it as being hauled through the jungle by a man you didn’t know anything about, wondering if the men who’d captured you were hot on your heels, knowing they damn well would be, soon enough…

This had nothing to do with fun.

This was life and death. Her life. Her death. And Superman’s.

Alessandra wheezed.

How long until her captors woke from their drunken stupor and realized she was gone?

It would be full dawn soon. Yesterday, Skinny and Stubby had awakened once the sun was above the tangled jungle foliage. If they did the same thing today, there were only precious minutes remaining until they discovered she was gone.

She felt as if they were running at marathon speed, but she suspected the man with her would have been able to move twice as fast without her.

What would happen if her abductors caught up to them? Her rescuer had said he was here to take her home, but she wasn’t stupid enough to think he was willing to sacrifice his life to accomplish that.

She knew nothing about him except that he was tall and hard-muscled and gruff. What she needed to know was who had sent him. How he’d found her. What was his plan? How would he get them out of this alive?

“Stop.”

The word was quietly spoken, but it was a command. Alessandra lurched to a halt. Superman let go of her hand and she bent double, her hands on her knees, gasping for air like a carp on dry land.

When she could breathe again, she straightened up and looked around.

She recognized this place.

A huge downed tree blocked the path just ahead.

She remembered it from hours before, when she’d come through here with her kidnappers. She’d had difficulty climbing over the tree, especially without the use of her hands, and the two men had found her efforts hilarious. Eventually, she’d managed, but the rough tree bark had left welts and cuts on the tender flesh of her thighs.

“Can you get over that tree?” her rescuer asked.

She nodded, because surely it would be simpler this time with both hands free.

Wrong.

She tried, but she was too exhausted.

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down on the already swollen flesh. A sob of complete despair rose in her throat.

Her rescuer scooped her up and carried her over the tree as if she were weightless.

Her head fell against his shoulder. Being held felt so good. And she was so tired…

He dumped her on her feet. She swayed a little and he reached out and clasped her shoulders. His hands felt hard on her; his touch was impersonal.

“We’re not safe yet. Understand?”

She nodded. Saying yes would have taken too much effort.

“We have farther to go. A couple of hours at least. You go soft on me now, we’re both dead. Understand that too?”

Another nod. Her hair was in her face. She scraped it back with a trembling hand.

“See that those bushes and trees to my right?”

What she saw was what you saw everywhere in the jungle. A jumble of leaves. A riot of flowers. Tree branches. Shrubs. Vines. An indecipherable mess, no different than anything she’d seen before.

“It’s a game trail.”

This time, she managed a sentence, even if she panted the words.

“I…don’t…see…a…trail.”

He let go of her, stepped a few feet away and shoved aside some of the vegetation. “Look again.”

Alessandra looked. She blinked. She squinted. Okay. She saw…something. A dark space within the dense growth.

“It’s an old game trail,” her rescuer said. “Probably hasn’t been used by anything but pigs for years.”

“New…World…pigs.”

“Right. White-lipped—”

“White-lipped peccaries,” she said. Breathing was a little easier although she was still panting. “But they’re rare.”

He looked surprises for a second, as if he hadn’t expected her to know the name of those animals. Then he let the vines and leaves fall back into place.

“Tell that to the pigs,” he said briskly. “Coming in, I saw plenty of signs of them. The point is, the trail we’re on gets all the human traffic. That’s why we’re going to take the other one. With luck, your bozos will go right past it.”

Her
bozos? Alessandra narrowed her eyes. “They’re not my
anything
.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. Right now, I want to leave some sign to mislead them.”

His tone was downright unpleasant. What in hell did he mean by calling Stubby and Skinny hers? And what was with this
sign
business? Who did he think he was? Daniel Day-Lewis in
The Last of the Mohicans
?

“And what if they don’t?”

“Don’t what?”

She damn near rolled her eyes. “Don’t go right past that trail?”

“They will.”

He flashed a quick smile, except it wasn’t really a smile at all. As exhausted as she was, Alessandra could recognize a look that said
little lady, are you actually questioning me?
You didn’t grow up in a Sicilian household without being able to recognize the signs that invisibly read
Arrogant Male in Residence.

“I don’t even know your name.”

He didn’t answer.

“I said, Who are you? Who sent you? Who…Hey! Hey, that hurts! Stop! Why are you yanking on my hair? Are you crazy?”

Despite the danger of their situation, Tanner damn near laughed.

Alessandra Wilde spoke with a barely there Italian accent, but it didn’t disguise the fact that she was burning with indignation. She was covered in dirt. She had a black eye. Her skin was dotted with bug bites, her clothes were muddy and torn, and her hair was a wild mass of pale gold curls shot through with bits of leaf and twigs and God only knew what else, but he could easily imagine her standing in a fancy restaurant, facing down a maître d’ who’d made the unforgivable mistake of thinking he could seat her at a bad table.

That a woman of her type had survived the last few days was remarkable, but if life had taught him anything, it was that sometimes you were lucky.

And the general’s daughter had been lucky.

Very.

From this point on, however, her survival was dependent on his skills. And he damn well wasn’t going to have to stop and answer to her for every decision he made.

“You want to play Twenty Questions, save them until later. For now, stay put.”

“Stay put?” She heard the note of hysteria in her voice as he moved past her. “Hey. Where are you…”

He strode to the downed tree, took a couple of the strands he’d yanked from her head and wedged them into the scaly bark, then trotted past her and stuck another on a thorny branch overhanging the trail. Last of all, he drew the gag from his pocket and simply let it fall to the ground.

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh, indeed,” he said as he came back to her. His tone was cold; his eyes were hard. “You thought I was going to leave you here.”

It was a flat statement. She didn’t try to deny it.

“I won’t leave you until we’re back in the States. You got that?”

Her gaze met his. He was big and tough looking; his face was striped with charcoal or maybe some sort of paint. There was a grim set to his jaw. She still didn’t know his name. She didn’t know anything about him except that he didn’t seem to like her very much.

But she believed him.

“Yes,” she said.

He nodded, shoved against the green tangle that obstructed the old game trail. Then he held out his hand. She took it, and he drew her through the vegetation and onto the trail. When he let go of the vines and leaves and branches, the opening to the trail disappeared. No more downed tree, no more well-used trail.

It was all gone.

“The path is narrow,” he said. “We’re going single file, me ahead of you to lead the way. It’ll be rough. I’ll expect you to keep up with me. Is that clear?”

“I understand.”

“I hope to hell you do, Wilde.”

“Why would you call me that? My name is Bellini.”

“Wilde, Bellini, frankly, I don’t give a damn what you call yourself. What I want, what I expect, is that you follow my orders. You don’t stop unless I stop. Not for anything. You don’t talk unless I tell you to talk. And keep your eyes open. The last thing I need is you stepping on a snake or a tarantula. Got it?”

What she understood was that he’d pretty much designated her his own personal pain in the ass.

“Yessir,” she said, as sweetly as saccharine.

He narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means exactly what it sounds like. I am yours to command.”

Oh, the look on his face! She knew he wanted to say something about her being…what was that American phrase? About her being a smart-ass.

But he didn’t. Instead, he swung away from her and started walking.

Alessandra took a long breath, immediately regretted it because it involved swallowing a gnat or some other kind of horrible flying creature, and fell in behind him.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was slow
going.

Once Tanner figured they were deep enough into the jungle for him to wield the machete without the sound of it carrying to what he hoped were the still-sleeping pricks who’d taken her, he took it from his belt and began swinging it.

The vegetation gave way relatively easily and they picked up speed, but not enough.

The woman was slowing them down. She was doing the best she could—he had to give her that—but she was having a tough time. He could hear her behind him, breathing hard, tripping over roots and vines, swatting at the bugs.

If there was one kind of wildlife that definitely used this trail, it was the kind that flew, crept and crawled.

“This is a jungle, dude,” one of Tanner’s instructors at STUDs training had said when they’d been dropped into a jungle in Belize and one jerk had bitched about the seemingly endless insects. “Did you think somebody would come through and spray it with Raid?”

They’d all laughed, but the truth was that the little shits made things tougher than they already were. They got in your eyes. Your nose. Your mouth. They got into places nobody but you or the lady currently in your bed ever touched. They made you itch, so you scratched—and the more you scratched, the more you itched. Then the places you’d scratched swelled up and sometimes they became infected.

Infection was not something to treat lightly in an environment like this.

Christ only knew what bacterial life forms made the jungle their happy home.

Besides, the last thing he needed was the woman coming down with an infection. Still, no matter what happened, he wouldn’t have to deal with her for very long.

With luck, they’d reach the river by late afternoon.

He’d had a couple of hours between the Super Hornet depositing him at Boca Chica and the chopper picking him up, and he’d spent the time going over satellite photos of the area where Alessandra Wilde had been snatched, where he’d been likely to find her—and had.

As luck would have it, he knew the area. He’d been in this part of San Escobal before, back in the days when a cocaine drug lord had pretty much owned it, but the so-called civil war had changed everything, including who held what territory.

One thing had not changed.

The geography.

The river, especially.

There was one out there, all right, ten, maybe eleven klicks to the west where it cut through the thick foliage like a sluggish brown worm. A couple of villages sat on its overgrown banks. Villages meant fishermen, and fishermen meant canoes.

Tanner was counting on finding one of those canoes. He’d buy it, steal it; he didn’t care which. The main thing was to get to the river, acquire a boat, take it to a place where they could make a relatively easy crossing into Guatemala. The he’d call in a chopper and get himself and the woman out.

It sounded easy, but life had taught him that what sounded easy rarely was.

In this case, success depended on a lot of things, starting with the woman’s kidnappers not finding this trail.

Talking to her, he’d made it sound like that was nothing to worry about, but of course he’d lied. Not about all of it. The part about the trail being well hidden and seemingly unused was true. So was the part about the benefit of leaving clues to convince her captors to go in the wrong direction.

What he’d lied about, or maybe it was better to say what he’d simply not bothered mentioning, was the possibility her captors knew the area as well as he did. Then they’d be aware of the old trail, and if they weren’t complete idiots, they’d figure out that maybe that was the route she’d taken.

Something long, slender and green lay along the length of a branch just ahead. It was a green tree snake, a nonaggressive creature that would as soon slither away as bite.

Should he call the woman’s attention to it?

Which was the wiser move? Point it out? Not point it out? Either way, she’d freak. There was something about snakes that terrified women. Well, men, too. He could still remember the ungodly shriek of one guy on a BUD/S training mission years before when a harmless snail-eater had slithered over his bare toes.

“Snake.”

The whisper came from behind him. Surprised, Tanner looked back. The woman pointed to the tree.

“Snake,” she repeated softly. “Harmless.”

No panic. She was out of breath, sure, but she was calm. And she was giving him advice.

Hell.

She
was giving
him
advice? On
snakes
?

“I said…”

“I heard you. And I already saw the snake.”

Jesus. He almost winced. He sounded like a petulant kid whose big surprise had been ruined. Yeah, well, he didn’t like her. Why would he? She was in a mess of her own making. She had no business in San Escobal. No righteous business, anyway. So, no, he didn’t like her, but that wasn’t a factor in this mission. He’d rescued people before. That was part of what STUD did. Diplomats, journalists, tourists caught up in somebody’s civil war, and he sure as hell hadn’t liked all of them, maybe not even any of them, because liking somebody had nothing to do with getting them out of harm’s way.

He was here to save her ass.

It was a rather good-looking ass.

Hell. He didn’t like her, but he wasn’t dead. You didn’t have to like a woman to appreciate the way she was put together.

“I just wanted to be sure,” she said.

“Sure about what?”

“The snake. Some people just kill any snake they see.”

Sweet Jesus. Advice not only on snakes, but also on the immorality of killing them.

Apparently, she had no such problem with jaguars.

“No…need…to-…really. Snakes…aren’t…always—”

He stopped. Turned around. Grabbed her shoulders and held her still before she could walk right into him

“Try concentrating on breathing instead of talking,” he said sharply.

Damn. She was panting. Sweating. Their trek along the game trail had turned her into even more of a mess than before. Dirt. Sweat. Scratches on her face from the branches that reached for them like eager hands. On top of that, she was clearly exhausted. They weren’t moving, but she was shaking.

Shit.

She was probably dehydrated.

Tanner slung off his pack, dug into it for a canteen. He unscrewed the top and handed it to her.

“Drink.”

“No time.”

“Right. No time. So instead of wasting it arguing, drink the water.”

She shot him a look, but it was so quick that he couldn’t read it. Was she annoyed? Irritated? Frankly, who cared? He was just getting the job done. After all, he’d agreed to this mission. He’d all but jumped on it. Being out of the safe confines first of a hospital and then Camp Condor and now doing what he’d been trained to do, was the stuff of life.

He watched her tilt back her head, bring the canteen to her lips. She drank, eyes closed, dark lashes a crescent against her high cheekbones.

Dirty or not, she was something for a man’s eyes to feast on.

It didn’t change the fact that she was in a place she didn’t belong, doing shit to make herself think she led a useful life, but she certainly was easy on the eyes.

A drop of water spilled as she drank.

He watched it run down her chin, traverse the long curve of her throat, fall again and be absorbed by her cotton T-shirt.

The shirt was torn just above her breasts.

His gaze fell to her breasts.

Was she braless? Was that the delicate press of nipples under the shirt? Her breasts were small. No. Not small. They were just the right size for a man’s hands and mouth…

“Finished.”

His head jerked up. “What?”

“I said, I’m finished with…”

He snatched the canteen from her outstretched hand. Did she know he’d been looking at her tits? Her expression gave nothing away and besides, what if she did? Back in the real world, catching a man’s eye would have been what she wanted. All that blonde hair streaming down her back, her face covered with artfully applied makeup instead of dirt, her slender body draped in designer clothes that would probably cost what he made in a year…

“Time to get moving,” he said brusquely.

He turned his back on her and started walking. He was going faster now that he’d let her drink some water and take a few minutes rest.

Maybe pretending to know something about snakes was part of who she pretended to be. Anything was possible. Big cats became coats, scary snakes became shoes. It was none of his concern. His concern was getting her back to the States in one piece, and they had miles to go before he even got them off this fucking trail.

* * *

The good news was that near as he could tell, nobody was coming after them.

They took a short break every forty or fifty minutes. They drank some water. She ate a power bar. He waved off her offer to share a bar with him, and he listened for pursuers.

Nothing.

Howler monkeys screamed from the treetops. Birds sang. Insects buzzed. Once, he heard the huffing and tooth-clacking of wild pigs.

“Peccaries,” he said softly, and motioned her to remain still.

But he heard nothing human. No voices, no bodies pushing through brush.

Good news, all of it.

But there was bad news too.

They definitely weren’t making the time he’d hoped for.

Yes, people hadn’t used this trail for a very long time.

Tanner saw lots of animal sign—pigs, coatimundi, ocelot and jaguar had all come this way—but animals used a trail differently than people. If there were obstacles of any kind— downed trees or branches, thorny bushes, mud, piles of dead leaves and rotted vegetation that made for excellent tarantula and fer-de-lance habitat, animals simply went over, through, around, even under them.

People lacked some of those options.

They tended to edge past obstacles by skirting the trail.

Not a good plan out here.

He’d already spotted a tarantula the size of his hand squatting on a rotting log. Contrary to popular lore, tarantula bites didn’t often kill—but they were painful as hell.

He’d also seen a fer-de-lance, the snake’s dark-diamond-patterned skin making it close to invisible as it lay in a pile of dead leaves. The snake had been far enough into the undergrowth for them to avoid it, so he’d paused, reached back for Alessandra Wilde’s wrist and said, very softly, “Snake. Venomous. Stay in my footsteps.”

“I know. Fer-de-lance.”

Okay. Maybe she did know snakes. She certainly wasn’t stupid, this rescued hostage. And she was doing her best to keep up.

He had to give her credit.

She hadn’t complained, hadn’t even asked for longer or more frequent breaks, but each time he looked at her, he could tell that she was close to dropping from exhaustion. Her breathing was labored, she’d sweated through her tattered clothes, and she was limping.

Tanner’s mouth thinned.

Limping seemed to be a trait they shared.

He hadn’t been particularly worried about his leg. At the last minute he’d added a small vial of prescription pain pills to his pack, not so much for himself but because he’d had no idea what condition the woman would be in.

He’d be fine.

The terrain would be rough, but it would be flat.

His leg would stand up to the job.

Wrong.

The wound in his calf was starting to throb. If it went from throbbing to outright pain, they’d be in trouble.

Bottom line was that they needed to stop, and soon. Not for a break. For the night. He’d figured on reaching the river by midafternoon, but it was past that now and he knew they were still miles away. He had to find a place to make camp, but it sure as hell couldn’t be here. The only idea worse than trying to travel through this dense vegetation in the dark was spending the night in it.

A tall palm tree loomed ahead. He eyed the trunk, the lowest and then the highest branches. It would do as a lookout site, he decided, and he swung around.

“Hey,” he said, but the woman was walking with her head down and she kept coming, straight into him. No swaying this time. No tremors. If he hadn’t caught her in his arms, she’d have gone down.

She mumbled something. It sounded like “Sorry.”

Tanner’s jaw tightened.

She had nothing to be sorry about. If she was on the verge of collapse, it was because he’d pushed her harder than he should have the last few miles. He’d told himself it was necessary, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he’d been venting his personal feelings about women like her. Maybe he’d been judging her.

Maybe?

Well, hell.

His job was to get her out of San Escobal and back to the States. Nothing more.

There was a tree stump off to the side. He kept his arm around her, drew her with him as he checked the stump for bugs and snakes. Then he eased her onto it and crouched before her. Her face was pale and sweaty. Her eyes had a glassy shine.

Shit. Was she running a fever?

He pushed a hank of hair off her forehead, then pressed his palm to it. No fever. It wasn’t the most scientific method, but it worked. Still, once they stopped for the night, he’d get a couple of antibiotic capsules into her.

For now, all he could do was keep her moving.

“Just a little farther,” he said. “Then we’ll take a real break.”

She gave a weak laugh. “You’d be lying on a beach in Guatemala by now without me holding you back.”

He smiled, despite himself. “The beaches in Guatemala are overrated.” He paused. “We need to find a place to spend the night.”

She squinted up at the sky, or what was visible of it through the canopy of trees. “Sunset won’t be for another couple of hours.”

“Right. But we don’t want to be on this trail then. It’s liable to get kind of busy.”

“The peccaries?”

“And other stuff.”

“Jaguars,” she said.

Jaguars. Her wanting to turn them into coats because she had nothing better to do with her life. That was what had started all of this.

Tanner got to his feet.

“Yeah. Jaguars. Though no self-respecting cat is going to show itself to us if it can help it. Even if it did, you seem to have left your rifle back at the place where Mutt and Jeff captured you.”