SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (28 page)

Of which he was one. She studied him for a moment, her heart filling with pride. Dane had always been meant for great things, though being a SEAL wasn’t quite what she’d envisioned. She’d thought he would join the Navy and learn to command a ship. She’d never pictured this.

It suited him. She reached for his hand. He didn’t shrink away. He twined his fingers in hers and squeezed.

“Don’t you do anything stupid tonight, Dane,” she said as they moved toward Pineapple Key. “I want to talk to you when this is all over.”

He pressed her fingers to his lips and a shiver ran down her spine. “I want to do more than talk… but we can start with that.”

When the boat slowed, Ivy didn’t think anything of it. But then another boat was there, coming alongside, and her chest squeezed tighter than a drum. She recognized the Coast Guard trawler. Instead of waiting for it, they’d gone to meet it.

She knew what it meant that the boat was here and they were slowing.

“You aren’t leaving me,” she said fiercely, squeezing hard on Dane’s hand.

He threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her in close. “Not my choice, Ivy—but you’ll be safer this way. You don’t need to be in the middle of this op. You were never meant to be anyway.”

“Dane, goddammit, if anything happens to you—”

He smiled, and she felt the power of it all the way to her toes. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll be back. We’ll talk. Promise.”

Then he kissed her hard, his tongue sliding against hers all too briefly before he pushed her away.

*

It was time
to go to work. Dane deliberately walked away as the assault boat made contact with the trawler. Ivy called after him, but he couldn’t look back. He knew she was pissed that she was being offloaded along with Miguel Ruiz, but he couldn’t fix that.

Her job was taking Ruiz in. His job was stopping this submarine before it put a nuke in terrorist hands on US soil. As the trawler’s engines spooled up, Dane dared a look. Ivy was at the rail, clutching it with both hands, the light from the trawler shining on her face.

He had the craziest thought that he might not ever see her again. That this was the end and they’d said and done all they would ever do together.

He turned away again, determined not to look back. The assault boat sped into the night, and the Coast Guard trawler headed toward shore. Matt and Billy the Kid were looking at the computer console. Then Matt looked over at Dane.

“Your team’s in position, Viking. Lieutenant JG Marchand wants to speak to you.” Matt grinned then. “A fellow Cajun boy. I like this guy.”

Dane waited for Billy to patch the call into his headset. The comm link crackled and then Remy’s voice came over the air.

“Ghost One awaiting your orders, sir. And it’s damn good to hear from you. Thought you’d bugged out and went to join the Army.”

Dane snorted. “Goddamn, Remy Marchand, it’s good to hear from you too. If I didn’t already know you’d take it the wrong way, I’d kiss your pretty face the next time we meet.”

“Always knew you wanted me, sir.”

“Yeah, I want you all right. I want you and the guys to help HOT get these fuckers tonight. We can’t let this damn thing get by us.”

“Sir…” Remy sounded just a little hesitant, and Dane figured he knew what was coming next. “HOT exists? This isn’t some joke between admirals yanking our chain?”

Dane looked at the men standing on the boat with him. They were big, badass motherfuckers who didn’t do any of this for the glory of it. Hell, they didn’t even get any glory because no one knew they existed. SEAL Team Six were the ones typically in the news, the ones who got credit for taking down high-profile terrorists like Bin Laden. And yet HOT was there too, quietly working in the background, eliminating the kind of terrorists who wanted to leave an even bigger mark on the world than Bin Laden had.

He’d come into this with a chip on his shoulder for the Army and its brass. But Colonel Mendez, for all his autocratic ways—and yeah, that’s how a commander was supposed to be—cared about giving his people the best tools for the job. He also cared about everyone under his command, not just the mission. The fact he’d sent them after Ivy when there was so much at stake said a lot for the man.

Dane couldn’t help but respect that kind of dedication.

“Yeah, they exist,” he said. “Even better, you’re now a part of them.”

Had he just said “even better”? Yeah, he fucking had. And he meant it. Because HOT was exciting and different, and he realized he was looking forward to being a part of the organization. Leading the first SEAL team to be assigned to HOT. It was a helluva challenge—and he loved challenges.

“Heard that too. Didn’t want to believe it until you gave the word.” Remy huffed a breath. “All right, we’re ready. Waiting for your command.”

Dane glanced at his dive watch. “ETA in ten.”

“We’ll be here.”

“I know you will, you ornery Cajun motherfucker. Can’t wait to see you.”

“Easy does it, sir. I’m spoken for.”

Dane laughed. Remy was spoken for all right—by every woman he met. “So am I, man. But we’ll make it work somehow.”

‡

I
n the end,
the op was textbook. Or as textbook as it could be for a situation they’d never encountered before. The sub surfaced about a mile from shore.
Bad Medicine
was waiting, the men chattering excitedly with no idea there was a SEAL team beneath the waves.

HOT pulled into position and waited for the signal from Dane’s SEALs. Remy and his team were using submersibles to power through the water quietly. Their goal was to disable the rotors on
Bad Medicine
and the rudder on the sub. They would also sabotage the planes in order to prevent the sub from submerging once the fighting started. If the submarine went under, there was a chance the terrorists would blow the warhead where they were. It wouldn’t do the kind of damage that trucking the missile to Tampa—or any port—would do, but a nuclear bomb going off this close to shore would definitely cause damage to a very wide swath of Florida.

Dane listened intently on his comm link. He was calm because he was always calm during a mission, but the adrenaline flowed hot and fast. He wanted to be beneath the waves with his guys but he had to content himself with monitoring their progress from the assault boat.

He looked up at the faces trained on his. They were tense, waiting. Once they got the all clear from Remy, they were throttling this motherfucker up and taking the fight to the tangos. There was still a danger with the missile, but the nuclear launch sequence took time to perform—and HOT wasn’t giving these assholes the time to detonate their weapon, assuming they had the correct launch codes in the first place.

“Moby Dick is in the net,” Remy said, his voice quiet and sure in the night. “And he ain’t getting away.”

“Copy that,” Dane said. “Captain Ahab coming in for the kill.”

Chase took them so close to the two enemy craft without alerting the tangos that Dane could see the expressions on the men’s faces without needing binoculars.

“We’re a go,” Matt said. “Let’s put this bitch to bed.”

The lights on the assault boat suddenly switched on, flooding the area—and the enemies—with enough candlepower to light up the Superdome. The men scrambled for their weapons, but they were too blind to hit anything. Two men shimmied down the hatch of the sub, but before they could shut it, a wetsuit-clad SEAL was there, shouting orders and taking prisoners.

Dane stormed
Bad Medicine
with three of the guys. They gathered up the men—Omar Baz and the others who’d been prepared to betray their adopted country—and hustled them over to the assault boat where they were blindfolded and cuffed before being stowed in the hold.

The men who’d been piloting the submarine were captured and trussed as well. Dane and Matt transferred over to the submarine and went down the hatch. The sub wasn’t big, but it was roomier than was typical for a drug-running sub. It had compartments for drugs, and it was lined with over two hundred batteries for power. It also stank like ten-day-old jock straps.

“And there it is,” Matt said. “The source of all the trouble.”

A fat, camouflage-painted missile took up a good portion of the sub, looking like anything but a weapon capable of destroying thousands of lives.

“How’d they get this sonofabitch on board?” Dane said, looking at the missile and then up at the hatch. “That was a feat.”

Before Matt could answer, there was a scraping noise from one of the compartments—and then the door flung upward and an armed man took aim at the nearest target he could find.

The gunshot cracked like a sonic boom in the small space.

*

Ivy slouched in
a chair next to Ace’s bed. The hospital hadn’t wanted to let her in at first, but she’d called Leslie Webb, who’d had a nice little chat with the administrator about who was family. So now she was here, holding Ace’s hand and waiting for him to wake up. Tears pricked her eyes as she watched him breathe with the help of a ventilator.

“He was lucky,” the nurse said as she checked his vitals. “The bullet didn’t hit anything major, but he lost a lot of blood. If he hadn’t been in as good shape as he is, he might not have made it.”

Ivy gave the woman a watery smile. “Ace loves to work out. Never saw a man more obsessed with keeping fit.”

“Well, honey, it shows. He’s kinda gorgeous, you know?”

“He is.”

The nurse left her then, and Ivy laid her cheek against Ace’s hand. “You need to wake up, buddy. We’ve got work to do.”

But Ace didn’t stir, and Ivy swallowed a load of frustration and fear. She still hadn’t heard from Dane, and it had been hours since she’d been hustled off the HOT assault boat and onto a Coast Guard vessel.

Miguel Ruiz was in custody, charged with kidnapping a federal officer and attempted murder of another. No matter how many high-powered lawyers he brought in, he wasn’t getting out of the US. Ivy wanted to be in on his interrogation, but that wasn’t going to happen. She’d told Leslie about the family connection, though she would have preferred to go to her grave with that information.

But she had to share it before Miguel did even though it effectively meant she was off the case. No more Ruiz takedowns for her. Though she’d gotten the big boss and he wasn’t going anywhere, so maybe she’d gotten a little justice for her mother after all. She’d wanted to kill him, but maybe this was better. This way he could detail his networks and give the DEA the information they needed to put an end to the Ruiz branch of the drug trade.

She had no doubt he would bargain. He would have to if he didn’t want to end up in a maximum-security facility. No, he’d want the country-club experience—and they’d give it to him if he helped them take down his family.

Her phone—a new one that had been waiting for her when she reached Miami—buzzed in her pocket. She snatched it up and answered with a clipped “McGill.”

She could hear the wind. And then a voice spoke.

“We got them. Wanted you to know.”

A boat motor churned in the background, and Ivy’s insides turned to mush. “Dane? You’re okay?”