Fixed Asset (Downrange), page 7
“Slap a Band-Aid on the scratch and let’s roll,” Mason said from the doorway of the bathroom.
Fallon looked over Jack’s shoulder to check the incision. My jeans were around my ankles, a towel draped over my behind. I was turned in such a way Fallon couldn’t see anything he shouldn’t, and besides, I didn’t think he was the kind of man who would look even if I was exposed.
“It’s fine to glue,” Fallon told Jack. “Sorry, Kitty, but the glue’s gonna burn like a bitch. You might want the belt back.”
Oh, I wanted the belt back. I wanted to keep it so when I found Tom, I could beat him with it.
“Just do it.”
“Cat—”
“Do it, Jack.”
There was a string of expletives, followed by a few grunts, but finally Jack got to work gluing.
Burn didn’t cover the blistering pain.
“Goddamn motherfucking liar. My skin is melting,” I groaned and closed my eyes. “Holy God. Fucking hell. Someone blow on it.”
Jack leaned away from me.
“If you blow on that, you’ll need to start over,” Fallon warned.
“Oh my God, just blow, would you? I don’t care about germs.”
“Kinky,” Mason muttered.
I blew out a breath trying to quell the pain.
“Breathe through it.”
“I am breathing, Fallon,” I spat. “I’m breathing fire.”
“Baby,” Jack cooed next to my face. “It’s done. Just take a few deep breaths. It’ll stop in a few seconds.”
I did as Jack instructed. Slowly—so very slowly—the burn faded.
“The glue was worse than the cut,” I said on an exhale.
“Sorry, baby.” Jack pressed a kiss to my temple and pulled away from me. “Everyone out so she can get dressed.”
“You’ve got a scary foul mouth when you’re in pain, woman,” Mason jibed.
“Fuck off.”
“Yeah, you’re gonna fit right in, Kitty Cat Keys.”
“I’m gonna fit your balls in your throat if you ever call me that again.”
“Spicy and kinky, you lucky son of a bitch.”
I assumed Mason’s parting shot was for Jack.
And for some reason, that made me smile.
Chapter Eight
We were running seriously late.
But still Pete delayed our departure.
“How’s the hip?” he asked Cat.
“Better now that the tracker has been flushed.”
He nodded. “Right, so that brings us to what happens now. The CIA knows it’s offline. They’ll either take that as someone found it and removed it or you’ve defected.”
“They can think whatever they want and shove it up their asses.”
Mason chuckled. Fallon smiled. But Pete wore the same serious expression I did. Catarina was playing fast and loose with an agency you wanted to tread cautious with. She was smarter than this, which meant she was hiding her real feelings behind bluster.
“Respect, Catarina, but you need to take this seriously. We gave Berta our word we’d help her. We have a plan in place and two of our teammates waiting for us in Belize. There are the lives of fifteen women and ten children who need this to go smoothly. Twenty-five souls who are counting on us to keep them alive. Before we walk out the door, I need to trust you’ve got your shit straight and you’re on board. If you want out now, Shep’s on standby for an extraction.”
Catarina looked like she was preparing to give Pete a world-class tongue lashing. I braced for the fallout that never came when she relaxed her shoulders, blew out an exasperated breath, and calmed her temper.
“I have my shit straight and I’m on board.”
Pete turned to me, pinned me with a look I knew was going to piss me off. Now I was bracing for a new reason.
“You know I don’t pull rank. We’re all equals on this team. But you know this is different, and I’ve gotta know where you are with this. If Cat’s coming, I need to know you’re not gonna go maverick.”
Pete studied me. He might claim we’re all equals, and we were to some extent. Pete ran the team like a collaboration. He valued our individual skills. He had a deep understanding of teamwork and knew when to step back when someone else’s experience would better serve the mission. All things I appreciated about the man.
However, at one time, there was another woman on this team. It was his sister, not his woman, but he would’ve blown a mission to save her. Hell, he’d dissolved the company she was a part of just to get her to quit and settle down with my old teammate, Cole, who was now her husband. Pete would probably lose his mind if he knew the kind of ops Mia was currently working with Takeback. Or he knew and trusted that Cole would go rogue to save his wife.
Meaning, he’d pull rank when the situation suited him.
In other words, he didn’t need to ask his question; he knew what my answer would be. Yet, I still answered.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do to ensure Catarina’s safety.”
Pete looked harassed but not surprised.
“Jack—”
Fallon made a strangled sound and grunted. Cat turned her narrowed eyes in his direction. She stopped speaking to me to address him.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak caveman. Was that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Cat.” Fallon wisely lifted his hands in surrender. “Let your man handle this.”
Her mouth clamped shut, fury blazing in her eyes. She made a frustrated gurgling noise I was a hundred percent positive Fallon would pay for later. However, she waved a hand at Pete to continue.
Pete dropped his head forward, contemplated his boots, then motioned for the door.
“I’ll let the two of you work it out,” he declared. “But I leave you with this—you’re a dumbass if you stand in her way of doing her job. If she’s as good as you say she is, then she doesn’t need you standing behind her with a pillow to cushion her fall. We all know the risks we take when we gear up.” Pete pounded his tactical vest to make his point. “You take that risk, the same as the rest of us. And something tells me you’d be none too pleased if your woman didn’t think you had the skills to take care of yourself.”
Well, fuck.
With that successful dressing-down, I didn’t say a word. Pete was correct on all fronts. I’d be pissed if she didn’t think I was capable of doing my job.
And that’s exactly what I’d done to her in the name of protection.
I’d belittled her—not her skill, her intelligence. I’d never stopped to consider what I’d seen as reckless endangerment of her life was actually Cat being smart enough to calculate the risks before she put herself in harm’s way—something I myself did every day I strapped on a vest and holstered a weapon.
I wasn’t overprotective; I was being an overbearing dick.
The issue was, I didn’t know how to separate my feelings for her from those of just a teammate doing her job. The thought of her getting hurt set my chest on fire.
Mase’s phone pinged. He glanced down, swiped the screen, and smiled.
“It’s go time, boys . . . and girl,” he announced.
Before I could stop myself, my eyes swept over Catarina’s vest, making sure she had an extra magazine. I noticed my knife clipped into the webbing at her upper left chest.
“Thief.”
“It’s not stealing if I told you I was taking it.”
Mason clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “I can already smell it in the air.”
“Smell what?” Fallon asked.
“Those two.” Mase jerked his head in my direction. “The sweet scent of their love is perfuming the air.”
Catarina’s nose crinkled, and she beat me to the comeback.
“Oh, I thought that was your ass gas. After all that chocolate, I thought it perfumed your flatulates.”
I covered my laugh with a cough. The others did not. They let it rip through the room.
Catarina looked at me with a smile and winked.
How was it possible the woman was so damn hot even talking about ass gas?
I looked around the thick natural landscape through my thermal fusion night vision. Gone were the days of the green hue. The lush green countryside was lit up in yellows, oranges, blues, pinks, and purples. Berta’s men patrolling the grounds glowed in yellow while the cooler environment blended out to purple. There was something to be said about the new technology, however, I still preferred the old-school white-phosphorous PVS-15s even with a shitty 40 percent field of view. What could I say? I didn’t like change.
“I haven’t pulled watch like this since I was five, playing Army commando in the backyard,” Mason mumbled next to me.
“You had an M4 strapped to your chest at five? Who raised you, the Mafia?”
“I meant boring.”
He wasn’t wrong. The last three hours were mind-numbingly boring. But boring meant no one was shooting at us and Cat was safely tucked away inside Berta’s compound guarding the women.
“Swear to God if you just jinxed—”
Automatic gunfire rang out.
“Bastard,” I grumbled and pulled my M4 up to the ready.
“It’s showtime.”
“There’s something wrong with you,” I returned.
More gunfire pierced the night.
“There’s a lot of somethings wrong with me. Probably stems from mommy issues. I wasn’t loved enough as a child.”
Under the teasing tone there was an underlying truth to that. In the months I’d been with the team, Mason had never opened up about anything personal. Out of all the men I worked with, Mason was the most closed off. He was also the first to crack a joke and lend a hand.
“Movement at eleven,” he called out. “Engaging.”
Mason’s double-tap was thankfully muffled by my ear pro.
I continued to scan my sector. Other than two of Berta’s men in the prone position, all was clear.
Mason popped off another round.
“You’re having all the fun,” I grumbled.
“Now who’s got something wrong with them?” Mase chuckled.
My radio crackled to life with Pete’s angry voice asking me, “Three, how are you looking over there?”
“Four has engaged,” I radioed back. “I’m still clear.”
“Four, your count?” Pete inquired.
“Two down,” Mason answered. “Six incoming.”
“Copy that. Two’s moving to overwatch.”
Fallon was Two, and he was on the move to the rooftop of a rickety old outbuilding. He’d held off due to the condition of the structure. It was a last resort and might not hold his weight for long. If Fallon was on the move, the north side of the compound was being flooded.
“Need help?” I asked.
“Not yet. Hold your position.”
For a moment, I let my mind wander to Catarina. I had to remind myself she was trained, she knew what she was doing. We both had jobs to do, and mine was to make sure no one breached the house.
With that in mind, I stepped to the side, shifted to my eleven o’clock, and switched over from fusion mode to white hot. The world around me turned black and white, the jungle dotted with white heat signatures as the enemy combatants advanced.
There were more than six now—more like twenty. I popped off a round, a white figure dropped, and I moved to the next.
Sweat rolled down my neck.
The humidity was oppressive.
The mosquitoes were swarming en masse.
The quiet peacefulness of Berta’s mountaintop hideaway was now spoiled by the devastating sounds of battle.
It was going to be a long fucking night.
Chapter Nine
I was listening over comms, but that was all I was doing.
Hiding away in the house, listening to the battle rage on outside.
My trigger finger itched to join the fight. To go out and help Jack and his team. But the whimpering of a little girl in her teenage sister’s arms reminded me that I needed to stay with Berta and guard the women and children.
On the way to the compound, I’d learned the president’s wife and children were to be picked up tomorrow morning after a scheduled visit to a hospital in Puerto Cortés. The timeline would be tight; the other women and children would already be aboard the boat that would take them across the Gulf of Honduras to Belize.
The other two members of the team, Aiden and Ryan, had already made contact with Berta’s people in Hopeville, and the arrangements for new identities and safe passage were in place.
We just had to get through the night.
“Catarina, you should sit,” Berta told me in her thickly accented English.
There was something melodic to her voice. It was soothing and calm, despite the sounds of rapid gunfire. I understood why these women responded to her so well, beyond the fact she was their savior—the Angel of Death. The woman who was not afraid of the gangs and had dedicated her life to avenging the women who had been brutalized or lost their lives to the senseless violence.
I glanced from the only entry point—a flight of stairs leading to the upper level of the house. We weren’t in a traditional basement. The bunker had been built into the side of a hill with two exposed sides. Three layers of concrete-reinforced cinderblocks were the only things stopping the bullets from penetrating.
That meant we were trapped, with Berta’s trusted soldiers patrolling the grounds and guarding the house. There were three men stationed on the level above—and me.
The last line of defense.
“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
Berta patted my shoulder and smiled.
The strands of gray in the woman’s dark hair, the wrinkles lining her forehead, and wary brown eyes told a thousand tales of death and vengeance. Yet, she was smiling. Standing as a pillar of righteousness and hope for the hopeless. I’d been to a lot of war-torn cities, I’d seen the devastation of corruption, the depravity, and the exploitation of people who just wanted to live in peace. I’d seen courage and optimism in the aftermath of war—the liberation that follows ruthless warlords being taken out.
But never had I seen strength like Berta’s.
She was fighting a losing war, yet she refused to give up. In her lifetime, she’d never see the end of the corruption in her country, yet instead of fleeing and freeing herself of the nightmare, she stayed and freed her people.
That wasn’t honor, bravery, or strength. There were no words to properly describe what that was.
“All will be well,” she murmured. “The cowards always retreat at dawn. They attack under the cover of darkness. Without the shadows they are not brave enough to face me.”
We had hours to go until dawn.
“Come, Catarina,” she continued. “The little ones like it when you speak to them. They think you sound . . . funny.”
I glanced back at the stairs, not wanting to give up my tactical position.
“You’re making them nervous,” she went on.
Damn it all to hell.
“Okay,” I conceded, not wanting to make it more difficult on a roomful of already traumatized children.
I followed Berta across the small space and sat on the dirt floor next to a young mother with a baby in her arms and a toddler holding on to her back.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
The woman nodded.
“How old are your children?”
It took her a moment to answer.
“Two. Three.”
I took that to mean the baby was two months, the toddler girl was three years old.
The woman looked and sounded exhausted. I wondered, when was the last time she’d slept? When was the last time she’d had a decent meal, or spent even a few minutes not worrying about her babies? I didn’t have food. I couldn’t take away her fear. But maybe I could give her something.
“Do you want me to hold the baby while you get some rest?”
The woman stared at me with a blank expression. Berta quickly translated. The two of them had a rapid-fire conversation in Spanish I couldn’t keep up with beyond the words baby, sleep, good.
Suddenly, she held the infant out to me. I took the baby, cuddled her to my chest, and hoped I gave the mother what she needed so she could get some rest and relax her arms.
Berta patted my head. “Gracias, querida.”
“My pleasure.”
I’d quickly found not even snuggling a cute little baby could calm my racing thoughts of Jack being in the middle of a firefight. Jack and the team. The only thing that eased my mind was when one of them called in over the radio. Of course, as luck would have it, Jack was the quietest, though I did catch snatches of his voice here and there.
I also found that cradling a baby made your arms tired, and I’d only been holding the tiny tot for a little more than an hour.
The gunfire outside had slowed to bursts with long lulls between. Some of the women had fallen asleep, including the baby mama and her toddler next to me. If what Berta had said was true and sunrise would send the men attacking the compound back into the trees, the guys only had to hold the bad guys off for a few more hours.
By some miracle, none of Berta’s men had been injured—though I figured it was more because this was just their way of life. Every night was probably a battle. As experience went, Berta’s men probably had more than anyone on Jack’s team, and that was saying something, seeing as they were all former SEALs.
The baby started to squirm. Little baby lips puckered right before her lids opened and deep brown eyes appeared.
She was so darn cute, I wanted to blow raspberries on her chubby cheeks.
“Hey there, cutie,” I cooed.
I didn’t want to wake her mother, but I was pretty sure she needed a new diaper. I’d never in my life changed one, though I was fairly confident I could figure it out. I mean, I could drive an M1A2 Abrams—not that I’d been authorized to take the controls of the tank, but when you’re in the sandbox, you find fun where you can.
“Five, post up, you have incoming.”
It took my brain a moment to engage and remember I was Five.
I scrambled to my feet, doing my best not to jostle the baby or wake the mother. Berta’s gaze came straight to me, going from relaxed to high alert in the space of a second.
