Red-Hot Santa (8 page)

JACKSON WASN’T SURPRISED when he and Max were two of the four chosen to walk the perimeter when night fell. After the fast-paced hike, most of the team had collapsed where they stood, trying to catch their breath. Hours later, they’d barely moved.

So here he was, facing four hours of perimeter duty in the dark in unfamiliar territory. Which is exactly the way he liked it.

There were few things that got the blood pumping like being on the front line. His senses seemed more aware, more alert. He’d come to understand that you never felt more alive than when you were in the path of possible death.

He’d walked his stretch of the perimeter three times, taking notice of particular landmarks and most likely approach paths, more comfortable with his surroundings. He heard a quiet voice on his radio.

Max.

He picked it up.

“Fallujah,” she said.

“Roger, that.”

He switched to channel 69, the one they’d designated back when they’d served in Iraq to talking privately. He hesitated before speaking, the number just now registering to him. He smiled and lifted the radio to his mouth.

“What took you so long?” she asked, her voice quiet.

“Was just noticing the number…”

There was a pause then, “Yeah. Made me stop for a minute, too. Funny, huh? We used it so long without really thinking about it…”

He leaned against a tree, his gaze alert as he kept an eye out. They’d had a good laugh about it in the beginning, choosing the number because of its ease in remembering.

Now…

Jackson’s mouth watered as he recalled the way she tasted, hardened as he practically felt her tongue against his erection…

Damn. The last thing he should be thinking about right now was oral sex…

“You still there?” he asked.

“Yeah. All quiet.”

“Here, too.” He put the radio to his chest then lifted it again. “You remember the first time we did this?”

She indicated she did.

He smiled.

“We were in separate transports on the Highway of Death. Fifty miles of a whole lot of nothing except for people wanting to kill us…”

“And everyone else was asleep.”

He watched a moth-sized mosquito land on his forearm. He let it, then flexed his muscles, watching it get stuck and pop.

“That’s the first time you told me about your dad,” he said.

Silence. He knew she was remembering the conversation just as he was.

Claude McGuire had been an asshole of a man. A wife beater and deadbeat who couldn’t keep a job to save his life. How her mother had handled it for all those years was beyond either of them. Thankfully, the first time he raised his hand to six-year-old Max, Cindy was out of there.

He couldn’t imagine what might have happened otherwise.

Throughout their childhood, she hadn’t said much about her dad. Mostly, she went quiet whenever he inquired, giving a shrug and a quiet, “You know…” But he hadn’t known. He couldn’t have begun to imagine. He’d assumed the man had taken up with another woman or some other such thing.

But that quiet night on the radio in Iraq, Max had finally shared the truth with him.

“I remember. At the time, he’d just written to me,” she said. “Surprised the hell out of me. Hadn’t heard from him in nearly fifteen years.”

Jackson grimaced, remembering the son-of-a-bitch had actually asked her for money.

“Did you ever write back to him?” he asked.

“No.”

He couldn’t blame her.

“I still wonder if I made the right decision.”

“Whatever decision you make is always the right one.”

He could envision her mulling that one over. “I still remember what you said.”

He grimaced, checked his M-16 and scanned the area again.

“You know, about your willingness to give anything to see your dad again…”

He was afraid she’d remember that. “That was before you told me everything.”

“Yeah, but people change. And there was that picture…”

He hadn’t seen it then, the photo in question. But she had shown him back at the base that morning. It was a standard grade elementary school shot of a ten-year-old girl with a grin that showed teeth too big for her tiny face. Max’s half-sister.

“Did you ever tell your mother?” he asked quietly. “You know, that he contacted you?”

“No.”

He nodded.

“Hey,” she said. “Whatever happened to that girl you were dating back then? You know, the one with the fake knockers?”

His responding chuckle caught him off guard. Not good. He told her he was going to go silent for a few minutes then switched back to the main channel. All was good and twenty yards later, all was still clear.

He switched the radio back on. “They weren’t fake.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Trust me, I know the difference.”

He pictured her giving one of her infamous eye rolls. “Right.”

“Anyway, she wasn’t my girlfriend. She was just a girl I was dating before I left.”

“Ditzy Diane,” she said. “I remember now.”

He grinned at the nickname everyone had given her after she’d knitted a sweater for him two sizes too big and sent it to him…in the middle of summer with temps soaring to 110 in the shade.

“Yeah, not exactly the brightest bulb on the string,” he admitted.

“Good thing you weren’t dating her for her brains, huh?”

“They were real.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway,” he said quietly, “yours beat out hers any day.”

Silence.

“Max?”

“What?”

“You still there?”

“Obviously.”

“Trying to come up with a smart-ass response?”

He heard the smile in her “Yeah.”

“Not getting anything?”

“No.”

“Good.”

She laughed. “I think it’s about time for check-in. Talk later?”

He could spend the rest of his life talking to her.

The thought caught him up short and he stopped in his tracks.

“Out,” she said.

He lifted the radio to his mouth but she’d already switched channels…

9

HOURS LATER, Jackson met Max and the crew at base camp. It was time to go. They had an easy five-klick hike to their destination to free the two civilian hostages and the three Navy Seals who had been taken captive on a previous failed rescue attempt. Once this was over with, they’d meet their transport out at 0500 hours.

He glanced over at Max in her camo gear and felt ridiculously turned on. The girl was hot. And he liked knowing he was the only one who knew exactly how hot.

Okay, maybe he had thought of her in that way from time to time over the years, had unconsciously indulged in a wet dream or twenty. Woken up drenched in sweat, his cock throbbing, his thoughts full of her. But seeing as they were friends, and Max would have just as soon sucker punched him as kiss him, there’d been no danger of anything happening before.

Now…

Well, now he found it curious the word
danger
entered the equation anywhere. And not just in their current physical situation in the middle of an African rain forest. Jackson had always known Max wasn’t the kind of girl a guy could love and leave. Not that he’d any interest in that before.

But now?

“Same formation as before,” Lenny said, interrupting his thoughts in a not altogether unwelcome way. Best he not think about Max as forever material now. “Go! Go! Go!”

Max took off at an easy jog and the others lined up after her. For an unreasonable moment, he felt the urge to object: he wanted to trade places with Max.

He grimaced as he brought up the rear. Where did those thoughts keep coming from? In some profound way he was incapable of working out just then, everything had changed. She wasn’t just Max anymore, she was something else. And the undeniable desire he had to protect her grew with every breath he took. If something happened to her…

Ten minutes into the hike, he heard a crack to his right.

He automatically pushed the guy in front of him forward, then dropped to a crouch, his M-16 instantly in front of him as he scanned the surrounding trees.

“Nine o’clock!” he shouted.

Everyone scrambled, taking cover.

He switched on the night scope and honed in on the subject. It was an African national half hidden behind a tree, his own weapon aimed at someone other than Jackson. The guy wore what looked like old fatigues from which the arms had been raggedly cut, along with the legs. He focused on the face: hell, he was a kid. No more than fifteen or sixteen at most.

Jackson knew this area was filled with kid-populated militias run by warlords who didn’t give two cents worth of thought to protecting their men. There were plenty of poverty-stricken boys just like this one hungry for a square meal and attention.

Jackson also knew not to underestimate the boy. The kid would kill him just as soon as look at him.

Damn.

Was the shooter alone? He couldn’t tell. Now that the targets had scattered and no clear shot was to be had, Jackson scanned one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, then shifted on his feet to scan the area to his right. It looked like the kid was alone, which might explain why he hadn’t squeezed off a shot yet. He was probably doing what Jackson was: namely, taking stock of the situation, counting the number in their team, gauging risk and success.

Had he called in their location? He couldn’t see a radio, but although it was best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

How far away might reinforcements be?

Gauging his own risks, he took aim…and shot, the crack reverberating through the forest and startling slumbering wild life.

He watched in his scope as the target fell. He’d aimed for a flesh wound to the shoulder, something that would take the kid down and hurt like hell, but wasn’t fatal.

He dashed the twenty yards to the target. In the light from the half moon filtering through the trees, he saw that the boy’s face was contorted in pain and he desperately gripped his right shoulder…but it didn’t stop him from reaching for his weapon.

Jackson grabbed the gun, looking at the old rifle that could probably produce a good shot at close range, but would likely have been worthless for anything else.

He emptied it of ammo and threw the gun one way, the rounds the other, then checked the boy for a communication device. Nothing. Good.

“He’s still alive.”

Jackson considered where John, one of Lenny’s men, had come up beside him, his M-16 pointed directly at the kid’s head.

Jackson reached out and moved John’s weapon away. “I missed. He’ll probably die of the wound anyway. Why don’t you get back to the line and radio in the all clear?”

John stared at him, then at the kid. “We should finish him off.”

“He’ll suffer more this way.”

John squinted at him. “You sure?”

His response was an unwavering stare.

“Fine. Let me know if you change your mind.”

He made so much noise getting back to the path, Jackson wanted to shout at him to be quiet.

He glanced back at the kid’s face: he was more hurt than scared.

He bent over, ripped a length of material from the hem of his shirt, then tucked it under where the boy’s hand was gripping the wound. A glance at the front and back showed the bullet had gone right through, as intended.

“Here,” he said, pushing the kid’s hand down on the fabric. “Hold tight.”

He muttered something in his native tongue Jackson didn’t understand. Jackson patted him on the other shoulder then rose to his feet.

“Clear!” he shouted.

He heard Lenny over the radio shout for double time, apparently having come to the same conclusion he had—even though the kid hadn’t called in their location, there was no telling where the rest of his group was. And there was always the chance someone had heard the gunshot and were even now on their way.

As he jogged to catch up with the line, Jackson tried to catch sight of Max, but she was too far ahead. Damn…

MAX LEANED IN with the rest of the team to take in the map Lenny had stretched out on the ground. He quietly outlined the target compound located some two hundred and fifty meters away on the other side of a crumbling and recently reinforced wall. Once the home of the ousted president of the third-world, conflict-ridden country, it had long since been taken over by one of the most powerful warlords in the region, serving as but one of his command centers. Thankfully, intelligence showed he wasn’t currently staying there. Instead it was being used by one of his commanders and was the place where the recovery targets were being held captive.

“Are we to rendezvous with Corps troops already in place?”