Under Fire: The Admiral
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Authors: Beyond the Page Publishing
Tags: #thriller, #suspense, #navy seals, #contemporary romance, #actionadventure, #coast guard, #military romance
Cover
Under Fire
Under Fire: The Admiral
Title Page
Copyright
Under Fire: The
Admiral
Rita Henuber
Copyright © 2012 by Rita
Henuber
Cover design and
illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
Published by Beyond the
Page Publishing at Smashwords
Beyond the Page
Books
are published
by
Beyond the Page
Publishing
ISBN:
978-1-937349-47-9
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Dedication
For Ed
Chapter 1
Ecuador
Gemma Hendrickson sank to her knees in the
powdery white sand watching Pacific waves crash over a
brand-fucking-new million-dollar plane. All her years in the Coast
Guard and she’d never had a plane shot from under her. Three days
into helping out as a medical mission pilot in Ecuador and she’d
been rat-a-tat-tatted out of the sky . . . “Oh, hell.”
It had happened so fast. She’d seen the
trawler in the cove, seen the flashes coming from the 50 cal on the
bow, and instinctively attempted an evasive maneuver. It was
futile. The Beechcraft was crippled. The best she could do was use
air currents coming off the surf to glide as far away from the
trawler as possible.
“Don’t worry about the plane,” Ben Walsh, the
doctor she’d been flying to remote villages, said. He used a hand
to shield his eyes from the equatorial afternoon sun as he watched
the plane sink.
She wasn’t worried about the plane, she was
worried about the men on the trawler coming to finish what they
started.
Walsh put a hand on her shoulder. “I know Sam
Carver. He isn’t going to give you grief about crashing.”
“I didn’t crash. We were
hit by gunfire and I had to ditch.” Fine line, but her ego was
involved. She shrugged from his touch and
damn
her shoulder hurt.
“Yeah,” Walsh said sarcastically.
She squinted up at him. In the two and a
half days they’d spent together she’d learned he was opinionated
and a perfectionist used to getting his way. And from what she’d
seen, a good doctor who cared about the people he was helping.
He swiveled his head, looking up and down the
pristine coastline. She did the same. No cabanas on the brilliant
white sand. No condos jutting from the lush green jungle. Walsh let
out a long sigh.
Gemma pushed to her feet. “I know Sam also.
He won’t give a damn about the plane, only that we’re safe.”
“Sure,” he said dismissively.
Gemma had made her career dealing with
high-stress scenarios and instructing others in the techniques.
She’d often found heavy on testosterone men like Walsh tended to
try and take charge in stressful situations whether they knew what
they were doing or not.
She began to quantify.
Sharing her identity with Walsh could make it easier for him to
accept her direction and the next couple of days easier for her.
That is, if he believed her. She had no proof. All he knew was she
was a pilot volunteering her time. Convincing him she was a United
States Coast Guard admiral on leave and the company owners’ mother
could be a hard sell. Her passport, her wallet, any and all papers
that could identify her to the bad guys were jammed under the
pilot’s seat, fifty yards off the beach and thirty feet deep.
Besides, Walsh knowing who she was created a different set of
issues. The men who shot them out of the sky were not duck hunting.
She had every reason to believe that boat belonged to a cartel and
would very soon appear on the horizon. Chaos theory—what can go
wrong will—prevailed. The
go wrong
being the men on that boat finding them, at worst
killing them, at best taking them hostage to garner a huge ransom.
Kidnapping for profit was a cottage industry in this part of the
world. One slip on Walsh’s part about who she was would endanger
him. If the cartel had a U.S. admiral to bargain with they might
not care about keeping him alive. Nope. She wouldn’t tell him
unless it was necessary, and she couldn’t conceive of a situation
where it would become necessary.
Walsh was an unknown
factor. All she could do was let it play out and deal as it came.
There was always the chance he’d play nice and
follow her lead.
“This makes me rethink my plan to move here
permanently,” Walsh said.
“Yeah, I can see how getting shot at might
put a damper on things.” She turned her attention to scanning the
blue-green water for any sign of the boat.
“We should make an SOS in the sand for the
rescuers,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s—” she started.
“Maybe I can get a signal on my phone now,”
Walsh interrupted, bringing his cell out of a soggy pocket.
Gemma scanned his face.
They were in the middle of freaking nowhere and the phone had been
swimming. What was he thinking? She tensed.
Geesus
. They’d been knocked around
while the plane bounced and skidded over the water. She had seen a
trickle of blood coming from his head as they scrambled out of the
plane. Was that bang on the head making him wonky? “You okay,
Doc?”
He looked at the phone and
made an exasperated sound. “Yeah, I’m okay.” He shook the
BlackBerry, flinging water droplets that caught the sun, creating a
mini rainbow. “You
get so used to having
them whenever you want.” He cocked his arm to pitch it into the
ocean.
“Don’t.” Gemma reached out and held his arm.
“Never know what we can use.” She also didn’t want anything left
behind for the wrong people to use.
He frowned. She watched him return the
instrument to a pocket. She blinked when she saw the way his wet
shirt and pants were plastered to his body. Then quickly glanced
away when she saw he was a commando kinda guy. She fixed her
expression in neutral and busied herself pulling her own wet shirt
away from her body and slapping sand off her pants, anything to
keep her eyes off him.
She stopped the exercise in
futility and moved so he wouldn’t be in her line of sight, once
again scanning the horizon for the boat. “
Damn
. The glare off the sand and
water is wicked.” She folded her arms over her head to shade her
eyes, regretting the loss of her Oakley sunglasses to the surf. “We
need to get off the beach.” Two vertical objects,
them
, on the white sand
would be easily visible to that boat.
Walsh looked toward the jungle. “Go into
that?”
“Doc, it’s one”—she pointed her index finger
to the sky—“stay in the open and take a chance the men on that
trawler appear and finish the job they started, two”—the second
finger went up—“go into the water and swim with the sharks, or
three”—her thumb joined the party—“in there.” She tipped her head
in the direction of the tree line. “I choose . . .” she said and
leaned to pick up her pack, “the jungle and out of this blazing
sun.”
Walsh laid a hand on her arm and she jerked
away. “I’m getting out of the sun.”
“You’re cut.”
She followed his gaze to
her shoulder and found a pinkish bloom spreading from a rip in the
wet sleeve. “It’s nothing.” But as soon as her adrenaline high
vanished she’d feel it
and
every other bump and bang she’d
gotten.
“Let me see it.” He reached for her and she
moved away.
“In there.” She tipped her head toward the
trees. “Out of the sun.” Gemma trudged across the beach, her wet
boots and pants glazing with sand like powdered sugar on her
favorite French pastry. At the edge of the jungle, she stomped and
kicked at fallen fronds. Satisfied land crabs, brown bugs that
looked like roaches on roids and other unidentifiable critters had
vacated, she dropped to her knees and pulled the Blowout medical
bag from her backpack, handed it to Walsh and offered up her cut
arm.
“I have one of these in my pack?” he said,
dropping to his knees across from her.
“Yes. Specific to
your
medical needs. I’m
allergic to a lot of antibiotics. What I can take is in
mine.”
“How would meds
I
need be in here?”
Walsh narrowed his eyes at her.