Danger Close (The Echo Platoon Series, Book 1) (12 page)

"What do you need that for?" Her voice came out an octave higher.

He sent her one of his mocking looks. "Don't worry," he said. "You saw them leave. I just want to know what they were up to."

That's not your job
, she longed to point out, but her throat was too dry. She watched Ricardo step out of the Jeep and wend his way cautiously through the spiny shrubs that carpeted the sandy soil. A hush seemed to have fallen over the area. Not a single bird arced across the sky. No more 18-wheelers roared by to deliver water to the Poseidon ponds.

Maddy lost sight of Ricardo's dark head as the land dipped then spied him again as he neared the well, peering up at it, shielding his eyes from the sun with a raised hand.

Suddenly, a ring of light flickered at the base of the tower. In the next instant, the light flared like an exploding star, blasting Ricardo off his feet.

A deafening repercussion shook the ground and a scream filled Maddy's ears—her own, she realized. With her hand clapped to her mouth, she watched the tower list, tipping toward the spot where Ricardo had fallen and emitting a terrible groan as it crashed to the ground. A cloud of dust billowed upward.

"No!" Maddy found herself out of the vehicle and sprinting toward Ricardo. Grains of sand floated in the air, obscuring her vision and irritating her eyes as she dodged brush and cactuses to get to him. The fear of finding him crushed beneath the tower turned her limbs to lead.

"Ricardo!" she cried, coughing up the fine powder and searching around the fallen monstrosity that lay in her path.

Through the tangle of red and white bars, she caught sight of him at last—not under the tower as she'd feared but just off to one side, his face speckled with blood.

"Oh, God!" As she rounded the mound of mangled metal, an image of Enrique's shattered skull flashed before her eyes. She hit her knees beside her colleague. "Ricardo!"

His long eyelashes fluttered. The blood, she could see, was a result of myriad bits of shrapnel imbedded in one side of his face. She searched his body for further injuries. Finding none, she gave him a gentle shake. "Ricardo, wake up. Please!"

To her great relief, his dark eyes opened. "Maddy," he said, sounding disoriented. "What happened?"

"It exploded. The tower blew up and then it almost landed on you! Can you move? Are you hurt?"

He raised a hand to his battered cheek and hissed in a breath of pain. "I think I'm okay. What about you?"

"I'm fine. Let me help you back to the Jeep."

"I just need a moment," he begged adjusting his legs with a grimace.

She ran another worried gaze over him. "What's wrong?"

He didn't immediately answer. "I think I broke something," he finally said. "My back."

She eyed him helplessly then racked her brain for a solution. A glance over at their four-wheel-drive Jeep made up her mind. "Stay right here," she said. "I'll come and get you."

Ricardo mumbled a feeble protest, but Maddy was already sprinting back to their vehicle. The shrubs were thorny, yes, but not prohibitive. She could drive right over them if she had to.

Minutes later, she parked the Jeep alongside Ricardo's prone figure. At his instruction, she hefted him beneath his armpits and dragged him toward the passenger seat. He seemed incapable of using his legs for anything more than holding up his weight. By the time she'd stowed him in the Jeep with his seat tipped way back—the only position he found tolerable—he'd turned a sickly shade of gray. Sweat glistened on his brow and upper lip.

"I'll get you to the hospital," Maddy promised.

"I'd rather you went slowly and avoided bumps." His tortured expression plucked at her heartstrings.

She slipped into the driver's seat, eased the car into drive, and drove as gingerly as possible back to the main road, where she accelerated until the land on either side turned into a streaming blur in her peripheral vision. She focused all her attention on the rutted track in front of her, doing her best to avoid the potholes. Flicking her attention now and then to the GPS mounted to the dashboard, she confirmed that she was headed in the right direction. Her thoughts went back to the terrorists. The same men who'd shot Enrique had nearly killed Ricardo.

"They made that well explode didn't they?" she finally asked, curiosity getting the better of her. My God, had they used the nitric acid she'd given them to make the bomb?

Ricardo had closed his eyes. "Yes," he admitted.

"Why would they do that?" she raged, but the answer was obvious. The men were terrorists. They hated Americans so, of course, it suited their agenda to destroy a well owned by Scott Oil. Did that mean all of the wells were in danger of being targeted, even the ones manned by oil workers? Sam and his SEALs wouldn't let that happen, she assured herself. Nonetheless, guilt over having aided the terrorists burned in her belly like the acid itself.

It seemed like hours but was probably more like twenty minutes before Maddy swerved onto the paved
Ruta Transcheco
. Ricardo gave a groan as the Jeep bounced onto the pavement and accelerated toward the small hospital in the heart of town. When the red tiled roofs of civilization came into view, she allowed the tension in her shoulders to ease.

At last, she pulled up before the doors of the modest facility, laying a hand on the horn until the orderly taking a break outside tossed aside his cigarette and called for a stretcher. Within minutes, Ricardo was being wheeled into the building.

"Maddy." He groped for her hand and caught it. "I need you to tell Sam what happened."

He'd only just met Sam last night, supposedly. "Okay," she agreed, confused but in total agreement.

"Tell him to come and see me."

"I will." She trailed the stretcher into the hospital only to be banned from the examination room. Ricardo would have to be X-rayed, the shrapnel removed from his skin. Shaken by the close call—he could so easily have ended up dead—Maddy whirled and walked out.

When she got back in the Jeep, she took a moment to compose herself before traveling the four blocks to the military facility. She had no idea how best to find Sam to convey the awful news. The terrorists who'd sworn her into secrecy had just made an unforgivable move.

* * *

"Come on, sir, just one more. Don't let him win."

Bullfrog stood on one side of the chin up bar cheering Sam on, while Bronco stood on the other, determined to undermine Sam's confidence.

"He ain't gonna win," drawled the native Montanan in his big-sky-country dialect. Bright blue eyes mocked Sam's trembling arms as he continued his uncertain ascent. Just one more complete chin up, and Sam would beat Bronco's record of forty in one minute.

"You've got all the time in the world," Bullfrog countered, glancing at his wrist watch, "and plenty of power left."

Sam wasn't so sure of that. His biceps were about to explode. His knuckles ached from grasping the bar too hard, and a callus on the palm of his right hand had broken open and was stinging like a sonofabitch. Plus the sweat that dampened his hairline was starting to slide into his eyes.

"You're all washed up, Sam," Bronco predicted, addressing his platoon leader by his first name, not just because they were friends first, but to rub his nose in the fact that he was about to lose. Sam longed to point out that he had three inches and twenty pounds more bulk than Bronco to heave around, so he could quit his gloating, only he couldn't talk with his teeth clenched.

"You got this, sir," Bullfrog insisted. Taller than Bronco with dark hair and an intelligent face, Jeremiah Winters had endured his share of harassment over the years for being empathic. He felt other people's pain. The hard ass instructors at BUDs and SEAL Qualification Training had done their best to harden him, but Jeremiah's empathy was what Sam liked best about him, especially in times like this, when he needed all the positive input he could get.

"Shit!" he raged through his molars. The bar hovered six inches over his head, and it wasn't getting any closer.

Suddenly, the door to the workout facility burst open, admitting the youngest SEAL in Sam's platoon and breaking his concentration. He gave up, letting his arms go slack, then dropping to the floor in defeat, ignoring Bronco's evil chuckle though it grated on him like fingernails over a chalkboard.

"Anyone seen Lieutenant Sasseville?" huffed the newcomer. Raking his eyes over the fifteen bare-chested men, he spotted Sam and hurried over. "Sir!"

Dubbed Bamm-Bamm for his blond hair and willingness to club anyone he thought deserved it, Petty Officer Third Class Austin Collins had developed a case of hero worship for his platoon leader. As the lowest ranking SEAL, he'd been given the job of developing rapport with the Paraguayan Special Forces whom they were supposedly here to train.

"What's up?" Sam asked, wiping the sweat from his brow.

Bamm-Bamm's gray eyes were as big as quarters. "Sir, there's a woman at the gate asking for you. She's covered in blood and talking about an explosion!"

The announcement hit Sam squarely in the solar plexus as the weight room went suddenly quiet.
Maddy?
Jesus, what had happened to her now?

Snatching his T-shirt off the weight rack, he burrowed into it. "Chief and First Class, you come with me," he said to Bronco and Bullfrog. "Everyone else stays here," he ordered, engendering looks of disappointment as all of his platoon members prepared to pour out of the door at once.

As the three men chased Bamm-Bamm down a maze of hallways, anxiety twisted Sam's intestines. "You said she was covered in blood. Is she hurt?" he asked the young SEAL.

"Uh, I don't think it's her blood, sir."

Thank God
. Finally, they exited the building from a door that put them near the vehicle entry. Sam spied Maddy on the other side of a closed gate. She wore practical cargo pants, a stained yellow blouse, and sturdy shoes, and she still looked sexy. The Paraguayan soldiers had lined up on the other side of the gate, professing concern as they visibly drooled over her.

"Maddy," Sam called. Relief registered on her blood-flecked face as she turned her head to catch sight of him.

"Sam!" she cried.

"Let her in," Sam requested of the Paraguayan soldiers.

They took one look at his stern expression and unlocked the gate.

Sam drew Maddy inside, squelching the urge to throw an arm around her. Gripping her elbow, he could feel a slight tremor in her frame. "What happened?" he demanded, with Bronco, Bullfrog, and Bamm-Bamm all standing close enough to overhear.

"It's my colleague," she said. With words flooding out of her mouth, she told him a story involving the terrorists, an oil well, and an explosion. "The whole thing collapsed practically on top of him," she relayed in a shaken voice. "I managed to get him in the Jeep and drive him to the hospital."

"Who's she talking about?" Bullfrog asked, looking confused.

"Someone she works with," Sam said, sharing a knowing look with Bronco, who'd attended the meeting with Ricardo just the other night. "How badly hurt is he?"

Maddy wrung her hands together. "He has cuts to his face and maybe a broken back. He can't walk," she added, biting her lower lip to keep from breaking down.

He squeezed her shoulders, proud of the way she was holding herself together. "You did the right thing coming to me." But the realization of how close Maddy had come to a personal encounter with the terrorists made him shudder.

He glanced at his colleagues. "Bullfrog, go get Master Chief. Bronco, you fetch the CO. Ask them to meet me in the TOC, stat. Bamm-Bamm, give us some privacy."

All three men disappeared with a "Yes, sir," and Sam looked back at Maddy, unable to mask his concern for her. "Are you sure you're okay?" Raising a hand to wipe a speck of blood off her cheek, he was glad to discover it wasn't her own. "Do I need to call your father?"

She knocked his hand away, her eyes flashing fire. "I'm fine," she insisted.

"Okay." He had to respect her determination. "I'm just concerned about you. Did you see any of the terrorists up close? Could you identify them?"

She blinked as if caught off guard by the request. "Well, they wore olive uniforms with pistols on their belts and rifles across their chests. They did appear to be Lebanese," she confirmed. "And their leader has blue-green eyes," she blurted then bit her lip.

The unexpected detail rocked him back on his heels. "You were close enough to see his eyes?" he demanded, horrified.

"No. Yes." She looked abruptly away from him. "I have good vision."

Her flustered response confused him, but he didn't have time to analyze it. At the moment, there were bigger fish to fry. If Hezbollah had targeted one well already, chances were they would go after others. They'd probably used some of the stolen nitric acid to make the accelerant that fueled the bomb.

"Who else have you told about this?" he wanted to know.

She shook her head. "No one."

"What about the people at the hospital?"

"I don't know what Ricardo's telling them. He just asked me to tell you. His wife doesn't even know yet."

"The fewer people who know, the better," Sam agreed. "You can go tell his wife now. I've got to go talk to my superiors, but I'll get back to you later," he promised, guiding her back to the gate. "Will you be all right?"