Under Fire: The Admiral (8 page)

“
Great Cesar’s ghost
. Admiral, take it
easy.”

She delivered a hard blow to his ear,
accompanied with another kick.
He knew she was an admiral. Damn
it.
She got a grip on his ear.

The giant shook her like a Rottweiler with a
chew toy. “We’re SEALs.”

SEALs? They sent SEALs to rescue us? How
the bloody hell did they find us?
No way.
These men were
from the cartel
.

“I’m going to take my hand away, and if you
let go of my ear I’ll put you down,” he growled.

She twisted the man’s ear and he gave her
another shake.

The men on top of Ben were looking up, the
whites of their eyes the only part of them not camouflaged.

“It’s Hunter. I was in charge of the SEAL
team that rescued your daughter, Commander Carver.”

Hunter?
A year ago her daughter
Olivia, a Coast Guard helicopter pilot, was on a personal mission
to get the drug lord who ordered the execution of her twin, Daniel.
She’d gotten inside the cartel, been discovered and taken out to
sea aboard the man’s yacht. The SEALs, led by Hunter, were the
spearhead of a multi-agency force that rescued Olivia. A mission
she herself had been in charge of. Gemma released his ear and
nodded. He grunted and took his hand away. She gasped in fresh air,
at the same time swiveling her head to get a look at who the voice
belonged to. The man turned her in his arms as easily as if she
were a child. A grin split a face smeared with green and black camo
paint. “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said in the softest whisper.

“Hunter? How did . . .” The gloved hand
clamped back over her mouth with lightning speed.

He tightened his grip and whispered into her
ear, “I would appreciate you keeping it down, Admiral.
Ma’am.
”

Chapter 6

Gemma’s eyes went big as coconuts and Ben
knew he’d completely blown it. He’d let the bulge pressing against
the zipper of his pants think. His apology was smothered by
boulders the size of hospital beds slamming him to the damp ground.
Boulders with arms and legs. A monster held Gemma, lifting her off
her feet. She solidly planted a boot against his knee. The thing
shook her like he was fluffing a pillow. He couldn’t do a damn
thing. The way these assholes had him pinned he could barely
breathe, much less help her. One man wedged a forearm under his
chin and leaned down.

“Take it easy. We’re Navy SEALs. The admiral
is okay.”

Ben nodded. The hand smothering him moved
off. “Admiral?” he blurted and was rewarded with an elbow to the
chest and the bedpan-sized hand clamped over his face again. The
fingers over his eyes spread and a camouflage face came close to
his.

“Keep . . . it . . . down,” the face
said.

Ben nodded. The hand lifted and he sucked in
fresh air. The hand wasn’t only the size of a bedpan, it smelled
like one. The man, who called Gemma
Admiral
, carried her to
where he was being squashed. The SEAL, if that’s who they really
were, took a knee, sitting her on his leg like she was a kid.

“If either one of you speak that loud again
I’ll have Hunter duct-tape your mouth. Understand?” one of the
faces said.

Ben and Gemma nodded again. The men moved off
him. One offered a hand to help him to a sitting position. He
didn’t take it. He wasn’t feeling too kindly toward the men who’d
roughed up Gemma
. The admiral.

He didn’t know her well enough to read her
expression but he was pretty damn sure she wasn’t happy. The full
lips he’d been ready to kiss a minute ago were now pressed in a
thin line. Dirt and sweat smeared the cheeks and throat that
moments ago were flushed red with what he’d hoped was the same lust
he’d been experiencing. But the fucking
SEALs
, if that’s who
they were, had ruined all that.

“Are you team leader?” Gemma said to the man
whose knee she was perched on, keeping her voice low. He gave a
deferential tip of his head in the direction of the man crouched on
the other side of Ben.

“He’s in charge of this one, ma’am.”

The other SEAL nodded. She leaned his
direction. “What’s your name and how did you know where to find us?
I didn’t set off the locator beacons.”

“Lieutenant Mercer, ma’am. Team name Vegas.
We weren’t looking for you. Mind telling me what a Coast Guard
admiral is doing out here?” The man looked from Gemma to Ben. “Let
me rephrase that. How you
happen
to be here?” He looked at
Ben. “And who the hell are you?”

Asshole.
They’d been watching.
Wait.
Admiral? Commander Carver? Olivia’s mother? Holy shit!
He pushed to his feet and took Gemma’s arm, pulling her up to
him.

“Forget them. Tell
me
what the hell is
going on.” His tone conveyed his frustration.

“Oh boy. Looks like Lucy has some ’splaining
to do.” Ben threw a vicious look over his shoulder at the man who’d
spoken in a ridiculous accent.

He turned back. “Gemma?” It came out as a low
growl.

The big man, Hunter, rose up behind Gemma and
shot him a menacing look.

Ben returned the favor. “Back off, asshole.”
He was in no mood for intimidation games.

“Ben.” Gemma put a hand on his chest. “I am a
Coast Guard admiral. I am Sam and Olivia’s mother.” Her voice was
different, it held an edge he hadn’t heard before.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What difference does it make?”

The two SEALs stood on either side of him.
One between him and Gemma.

“Whatever you two have going here, settle it
later. I need my questions answered
now
,” Vegas said.

Gemma shrugged from his grip and faced the
SEAL.

“Medical mission. This is Dr. Walsh.” She
touched his arm. “I’m on my own time to fly doctors and supplies to
villages. We were returning from a village on the Mira. Instead of
flying directly back, I flew along the coast.”

At his insistence
. He elbowed past the
man to stand next to Gemma.

“A trawler tucked in a small inlet fired on
us.” She moved enough for her body to touch his but didn’t take her
eyes off the SEAL. “I was flying low had no time to evade.”

He recalled the muscle-cramping sound of
bullets tearing into the Beechcraft’s fuselage and his body
produced an involuntary shiver.

“This close to Colombia, I think they were
transporting drugs. They thought we were after them and bang, bang.
Radio was useless. Both engines were hit. The tail.”

The tail was more than hit, it was half
gone.

“Controls were toast. I held it together as
long as I could. But with no stabilization.” Gemma shrugged. “I got
us as far away from the trawler as possible. Ditched.”

The memory of waves crashing over that plane
produced another twitch.

“We have no intel about a search and rescue,”
Hunter said. They were standing in a tight circle now.

unter said.

“There are Ecuadorian and Colombian navy
ships along with a Coast Guard cutter sitting a few miles offshore,
they should have picked up your transponder,” Vegas said.

Gemma shook her head. “No SAR. I turned off
the transponder and haven’t used our locator beacons. That trawler
was loaded with satellite electronics. Didn’t want them tracking
us.”

“Any SAR for you is blind,” Vegas said.

Gemma nodded.

There was silence for a long moment, then
Hunter let loose with a long list of cusswords in several
languages.

“How did you find
us
?” Gemma said,
ignoring the cussword litany.

“The noise you two were making could be heard
in Panama. You were about to blow our op,” the third SEAL drawled.
His voice was now a rich baritone with a Southern accent.

Gemma looked back to Vegas. “Op? I left D.C.
four days ago and there was no activity in this region. Is that why
the ships and cutter are offshore?”

“Yes. It came up hot.” Vegas gave her a
what-can-I-say shrug. “We came in last night.”

“In that storm?” Ben was incredulous.

“Yes.” Vegas shot him a look and returned his
gaze to Gemma. “Like Bambi said.”

And what was it with these nicknames?

“We started hearing you a couple of hours
ago,” Vegas went on. “You were freaking loud. Finding you two was
not what we expected. Hunter identifying you was, well, f’ing
surprising.”

Been knew how they felt. Learning about Gemma
was abso-fucking-lutely surprising. At least one part of the
mystery from the accident was explained. She wasn’t running from
the law or doing anything illegal, she’d probably been visiting
family.

“Okay.” Vegas sighed and checked his watch,
one of those that did everything but make coffee. “We’ll make a
connection in a few. Get you out of here and to a pickup location.”
He removed his hat and scratched his head, then looked at Hunter.
“We’re done. I’ll request extraction. You contact M&M and the
Suit.”

Hunter made to break away from the group.
“Wait.” Gemma grabbed his wrist and Ben noted her fingers didn’t
come near to circling it.

“Who are M&M and the Suit? More SEALs?
What do you mean, done?” Gemma demanded, using what Ben thought was
her commanding officer voice.

“Not SEALs,” Vegas said. “Agency guys.
M&M, Money Man, is Secret Service. The Suit is CIA. With all
due respect to your rank, ma’am,” Vegas continued, throwing some
commanding officer tone at her, “and taking your rank into
consideration, we need to get you out of here.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ben said, slapping
debris from his pants.

“You do that and this op is blown,” Gemma
said.

The SEAL pressed his lips together and
nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that it is.”

Gemma let go of Hunter and stepped closed to
Vegas. “It’s more than drugs.”

“Ma’am, that’s . . .”

Gemma pulled herself to her full height and
put her face inches from the taller man’s face. “Don’t . . . you .
. . dare . . . say . . . classified, or need-to-know, or any other
bullshit. You may think because you’re SEALs you can yank me
around. I can guarantee, you fuck with me and you’ll learn what
being yanked around really is.
Tell me
.” Her voice was
dead-on harsh and loaded with authority.

Ben stepped back and the SEALs exchanged
glances. The lieutenant’s gaze settled on Hunter. The whites of his
eyes were in sharp contrast with the green and black paint smeared
on his face. Hunter sighed. “Tell her. Everything is blown
anyway.”

Vegas turned to the third man. “Bambi?”

“Sure. I don’t want to find out what it feels
like to get yanked around by an admiral,” he said.

Vegas looked at Ben. “What about him?”

“Oh, for crap’s sake,” Gemma said. “You and I
both know when this is done the men in black will swoop in,
threaten us with torture and IRS audits till we die if we say
anything other than the story line they feed us. He’s good.” Gemma
turned and gave him a wicked look. “Isn’t that right, Dr.
Walsh?”

Ben nodded. “It is.”

Vegas eyed him and grinned. “You open your
mouth about any of this
we will know
. We will find you and
you won’t have to worry about men in black or the IRS. Got it?”

“Got it.” He was being threatened with death
by a man in camouflage and carrying a half dozen weapons. What else
was he going to say?

Vegas turned to Gemma. “You know about the
cocaine subs?”

Gemma nodded.

“The trawler. It’s guarding a sub.”

“Here in Ecuador.” Gemma’s voice bubbled with
excitement.

“Yes, hidden off a branch of a river not far
north of us.”

Ben and Gemma exchanged looks. Was it the
river she’d planned to follow?

“How big is it? How much drugs?” She put her
hands on top of her head.

“The biggest we’ve seen and none yet. Our
intel is another boat will bring the drugs in today or tomorrow.
The Secret Service is working on a counterfeit lead. Bales going on
the sub could also hold millions of funny-money dollars.”

Ben rocked back on his heels. In forty-eight
hours he’d been shot at, in a plane crash, stumbling through the
jungle, found a woman he’d been searching twenty years for, and now
listened to Navy SEALs talking about busting a counterfeit ring and
drug traffickers like normal people talk about the weather.
Un-fucking-believable
.

“Getting you two to safety is now our
priority. They’ll have to catch these guys at sea.”

“No,” Gemma said politely.

“Excuse me?” There was no politeness in
Vegas’s voice. He turned an ear to her like he hadn’t heard
correctly.

Yeah, excuse me?
Ben gave her the same
look Vegas did.

“I’m asking that you don’t report we’re
here.”

“Ma’am, I . . .”

“Lieutenant, I am more than aware of how
operations like this are set up. There are combined forces from
three countries out there. Think about it. This was not set up as a
personnel extraction. You tell them I’m here”—she glanced sideways
at Ben—“
we’re
here, it will complicate an already
complicated situation. Those subs are built to be damn near
impervious to radar. They slip out into the ocean and they’re gone.
Putting tons of drugs and millions in funny money on the street. I
don’t want this to be blown because of us. Let it play out as
planned.”

Ben nodded agreement.

Hunter spoke up. “Ya know, LT, she’s right on
both counts. Command won’t like an admiral sitting in the middle of
all of this. They’ll want her out of here for sure. An extraction
this far into the game,” he rubbed his chin, “risks blowing
everything. The sub gets out into the Pacific and the chance of
getting it is none to fucking none.”

Gemma bent and lifted the corner of the tarp
that a few minutes ago he’d been imagining them having sex on, her
hot body shuddering under him. Fuck. He’d turned into a horny
teenager. Gemma was tugging on the cloth, backing them off. She
shook the square, and when it settled dropped onto it like she was
at a picnic in a perfectly civilized park.