pdf - Eye of the Storm.PDF

Eye of the Storm

A Security Specialists International Book

Monette Michaels

Published 2010

ISBN 978-1-59578-694-4

Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509

Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © 2010, Monette Michaels. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Liquid Silver Books

http://LSbooks.com

Email:

[email protected]

Editor

Terri Schaefer

Cover Artist

April Martinez

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Blurb

Keely Walsh has three doctorates, five older brothers and has never met a situation she couldn't handle. While consulting with the NSA, she discovers sensitive government information indicating her brother, a private security operative, is in danger. Keely travels to the dangerous Triple Frontier in South America to warn him and his colleagues and finds the last thing she expects—a man who sends icy shivers down her spine even as he lights every one of her fires.

Ren Maddox, co-owner of Security Specialists International, a security firm that works for large corporations and governments, is on an intelligence-gathering mission for the US government when a petite strawberry blonde armed with a Bren Ten and an attitude ten feet tall pops out of the Argentine jungle with a warning of imminent danger.

The fact she is one hundred percent correct shocks him to his socks. The fact she is Tweeter Walsh's baby sister and can fight like the fiercest Marine is beside the point. No one who looks like Keely should ever be in danger. And once he gets her out of the current situation, he’ll make it his life's work to protect the feisty, sexy, little woman from any and all danger.

One alpha male. One determined and independent female. One hot, tumultuous relationship.

To Sherry, the best crit partner a girl could have.

To Terri, my editor. What can I say? You rock.

And, last, but not least, to April, your cover art is the best.

Iguazu River, Argentina, the Triple Frontier

Keely Walsh stopped to rest. Even with the shade from the rain forest canopy, the heat was oppressive. Tipping back her broad-brimmed hat, she wiped the sweat out of her eyes, then took a deep drink of water from the canteen she carried. So far, according to her portable GPS, she'd traveled two klicks from her landing site. If her coordinates were correct, and they always were, she should see the village in less than another kilometer.

Right now all she could see were trees, low-growing foliage, and more trees.

After she'd landed the chopper in a small, elevated clearing, she’d followed a faint path leading down and away from the landing site. She surmised the path had been cleared a day or so ago, then just as quickly overgrown. It led in the general direction of the village. She'd seen marijuana growing in the clearing, so it made sense the locals would need a path to get to their cash crop.

Shrugging her backpack off, she let it slip to the ground. She knelt and pulled out the white cotton shirt she'd worn on the plane, then put it on over her tank top. It was way too hot and humid for any covering, but she couldn't have her brother go nuts if he saw the bruises on her shoulders and upper chest. Time enough for explanations later, after they were safe in the hotel suite she'd booked in the Iguazu National Park before securing transportation and her weapons. She sighed, imagining how good the air conditioning would feel after this steam-bath hike. The hotel had a pool and a pool bar. She could almost taste a large Pepsi with ice as she dangled her legs in the cool water.

God, she hated heat, humidity, insects and snakes, all of which jungles had in abundance. Only for her favorite brother, Stuart "Tweeter" Walsh, would she do this—

plus there had been no one else. Her father, Marine Corps Colonel Kennard Walsh, was on a training mission. The call to her other four brothers had not produced the instant response needed. The twins, Loren and Paul, were on a SEAL mission and the other two, Devin and Andy, were Marines searching Afghanistan’s caves for terrorists. By the time their emergency leave was approved, Tweeter would be dead. And she couldn't trust anyone else but her mother Molly—and her Dad would kill her if she involved her mama in this mess.

She was it—the only person who could warn her brother about the trap. She couldn't stay safely in Massachusetts while Tweeter was in danger. He'd protected her over the years, and she could do no less for him.

She let the shirt tails hang over her baggy khakis. She slid the knife she'd bought from a wizened little man named Bazon in Puerto Iguazu into its sheath, then clipped it and the holster holding the Bren Ten she'd purchased onto the belt at the small of her back. Nothing like a Bren to make your point. She’d taken the finding of the rare gun as a sign that her mission would be a success. There'd only been fifteen hundred made and the odds were astronomical against her finding the gun she was most comfortable handling.

Her dad had taught her to shoot with a Bren. It was highly accurate and had hitting power. She checked the magazine and found it fully loaded with all ten .45 caliber rounds. She locked the hammer back to the “condition one” setting; a flick of the safety and she would be good to go for single shot or automatic fire.

Satisfied she was as ready as she could be, she headed once more in the direction of the village where Tweeter, along with his Security Specialist International team, were allegedly meeting an informant.

SSI was a security firm specializing in international troubleshooting for private corporations and governments who would rather not use their own intelligence personnel.

Ren and Trey Maddox, both ex-special forces, had established their headquarters and training facility in Sanctuary, Idaho, a SSI-owned town at the edge of the Nez Perce National Forest. SSI's current mission had been arranged through the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Clandestine Service or NCS; the classified report she’d come across while working on a project for the government had outlined the mission as an information-gathering on a reputed al Qaeda organization operating out of the Argentinian section of the Triple Frontier.

What it really was? A specially designed trap for Ren Maddox and anyone who accompanied him.

If the trap hadn't been sprung by the time she made it to the meeting place, they'd hoof it out and head for the helicopter she'd also rented from Bazon. In the Triple Frontier, it was easy to find weapons and drugs—and to rent military-equipped helicopters. She hadn't asked the old man where he'd gotten the Kamov KA-60, kitted out with belly guns and air-to-ground missiles. She never looked gift battle-ready helicopters in the mouth.

Bazon even had ordnance for the belly guns. For double the rental price, she'd had him load the ordnance, checking his work as he did it. She might not be able to lift the ammunition, but she knew how it should be loaded.

She'd been surprised when the man hadn't tried to gyp her. When she'd asked him about it, he'd given her a mostly toothless smile and said, "For you,
pequena muchacha
de oro
, it is a pleasure." Then Bazon had winked at her, and his flirtatious manner had her choking back laughter. The Argentinian had to be old enough to be her grandfather.

It probably hadn't hurt that she'd paid him five thousand USD in traveler's checks.

Say what you want about the economy and international relations, the almighty dollar was still the currency of choice in the world’s hellholes.

Now, if the trap had been sprung—well, she'd cross that bridge when she got to it.

To this point, her trek had been merely hot and sweaty, but not dangerous. She'd seen no one other than monkeys, toucans, butterflies and other inhabitants of this particular subtropical rainforest. Nothing, not even the local four-legged predators, had bothered her. She was more worried about chancing across the two-legged variety before she reached the village. As her father had drilled into her and the boys, “always expect perimeter guards when approaching a danger zone”. Since her father had survived some of the hairiest conflicts on the planet and taught thousands of other Marines to pull through in some of the worst places in the world, he knew of what he spoke.

Keely's gaze now moved continuously, watching for anything out of place. She attempted to differentiate the background noises, hoping she'd sense a change when peril approached. The jungle fauna were nature's version of an early-warning system.

When danger did appear, it was on the path. Or, more explicitly, lying across it. She stopped, her steel-toed hiking boots just inches away from a trip wire strung across the path. Was the trap for those stupid enough to steal the villagers' marijuana crop? Or, had it been placed there more recently by the mercs hired to take out the SSI team?

She knelt and examined the wire. She snorted. It went nowhere and was attached to nothing. A red herring. Somewhere around here was the real trap.

She lifted her head and swept the area around the path and a few feet ahead. Ahh, there it was. A disturbed area, no new vegetation had grown, so the digging was recent.

After the wary traveler stepped over the more obvious wire, the poor unsuspecting sap would then step onto a pressure plate and die before he or she even finished congratulating themselves on a narrow escape.

Keely couldn't leave the trap for some hapless villager or for her and the guys to stumble over on the return trip to the chopper. Looking around, she spied a pile of rocks.

Stepping off the path, she carefully picked her way toward the outcropping, which looked to be the remnants of a small building. She edged around the rubble, picked up a rock, then lobbed it with an underhanded toss. It hit the plate just as she ducked for cover. The explosion was loud, startling birds and other animals into heading for shelter higher in the rain forest canopy. The sound of detritus hitting the broken-down hovel told her it had been a fragmentation mine.

Crouching back under the cover of some low-growing palms, she waited. After the explosion, the sound of silence was pregnant with tension. It was as if the animals of the forest remained silent just as she did, waiting to see who would respond to the mine's destruction.

She just hoped whoever investigated would look, see no body parts, and leave. She wasn't up for killing anyone else this trip just to get to the village. She could kill if she had to—and had recently done so in self-defense—but it had cost her a piece of her soul.

Her stomach clenched, acid roiling at the memory. Taking deep breaths, she conquered her nausea, then shoved the images of two men with broken necks, lying in a dirty warehouse in Boston, to a dark corner of her mind.

At the start of this hastily thrown-together trip to South America, she'd thought she could get to the SSI team and let them handle any dirty work. Arming herself was one thing, using her weapons was entirely another. She shook her head in disgust at her naïveté. Obviously, she hadn't thought far enough in advance. The sound of pounding feet on the hard, red dirt prevented her from replaying the past. It was the present that counted, the mission to save her brother and his friends.

She peeked through the palm fronds and noted that the two approaching men didn't use the marked path at all. She'd follow their example when she headed out once again, not wanting to hit any other mines or hidden traps.

Breathing shallowly and slowly, she calmed her rapid heart rate enough so the sound of it pounding in her ears would subside. She needed to hear what the men said.

The two walked around the small crater created by the explosion. One even scratched his head in a "what the fuck happened" gesture. She choked back a laugh. They might look confused, but she wouldn't count on it. Even clueless people could shoot to kill.

Her Spanish was more than good enough to follow their conversation and what they said was revealing. They were some of the mercs hired by Reyo Trujo to kill the SSI team. And from what they said, the trap had
not
been sprung—they were waiting on someone. Possibly Trujo?

If her intel proved accurate, there was a team of at least twenty mercs in this jungle version of Purgatory. If she eliminated these two, then there would only be eighteen or so.

Should she take these two out? And if she did, how soon would they be missed? Did they check in face-to-face? Over communication devices like the military used? She looked between the palm fronds and saw nothing in their ears or on their vests. Maybe they used walkie-talkies? She didn't see anything like those, either. Face-to-face, then.