Armed And Dangerous (The McKinnon Legends - The McKinnon American Men Book 2) (22 page)

In Spanish, she hastily ordered the woman to follow her. The two women dodged the fire and police gunfire as they quickly make their way out the back of the villa just before it collapsed under the weight of the burning rafters. Guiding the woman around to the front, Barbara crouched in a place she had scoped out the night before as a possible hiding spot. Chance favors the prepared, her father had always said. Fate also rewards the preemptive strike. That was what her mother had taught her. It had kept her alive.

The woman shivered with her eyes enormously wide in fear. Barbara forced her to look at her.

“You did not see me and I was never here. Understand?” The woman nodded. “If anyone asked how you escaped you tell them you are not really sure, but perhaps an angel from heaven and you will remember me only as such. To do otherwise is to sign my death warrant.”

The woman hugged her, nodding in understanding as Barbara shoved her into the bushes and commanded her to lie low until the police had opportunity to finish sweeping the grounds. “Gracias, Angelica!” The woman cried after her as Barbara disappeared into the night.

Barbara vanished into the darkness making her way back to the kayak. One last explosion rocked the remaining few hours of darkness, and intermittent gunfire could still be heard as shouts filled the night air. Redondo and his men were invading what was left of a drug lord’s once mighty empire.

Their work here, as a team, was done. Yet, the night was far from over. Barbara’s ordeal might just be starting. She was on foreign soil and alone. Not something that she was totally unfamiliar with, but not a place she really wanted to be either. Her training would get her through, and if not, she shrugged mentally, then she could die knowing she helped save the girl.

Paddling back, she shook her head at what the headlines would say. They would surely be interesting, if there were headlines at all. If the events were not covered up, then the National Police would have to take credit. However, unofficially if Redondo got his hands on any of them, none of them would ever see anything north of the Panamanian border for the rest of their natural lives. What they did tonight was illegal in most countries, including this one. Although, she could not muster any remorse over it. The men who lost their lives tonight, with the exception of Agent Vega, were human, but without humanity.

Barbara was exhausted. Almost beyond going, she pulled the kayak back up onto the river bank just a short distance from the place that only hours ago held the base camp.

She wandered slowly into the clearing only to see there was not a single trace of the team ever being there. There was not one single footprint in the sand, not a shred of paper, no ash from the fire, or plant out of order. Robert and she did not hire the best in the business for nothing. There was a reason she called them her ghosts. She also understood that there would be no help from that quarter. They had to live to fight another day. It was what they were taught and how they trained and lived their professional lives. She was Mason’s responsibility and all would have assumed, as such, he would not leave her behind. She was not counting on him returning, given that he had the girl and they had all agreed Jesse was the most important thing. Jesse was the total focus of this mission. Barbara was not what was important. Neither were Mason, Robert, or any of the others. The child was what they had all sworn to sacrifice their lives to retrieve.

Barbara was on her own, fully understanding the risks she was taking. It was a given even before going into this mission. The girl was back in the arms of her father, so it was worth any sacrifice she made. It was a decision she made gladly and with full knowledge of the potential cost.

She had paid her debt and maybe, just possibly, she could put old specters to rest. The balance sheet was even, finally after years of owing that self-imposed debt. She felt free. It was like a weight was off her shoulders for the first time in years.

She pondered her situation thinking realistically. She was still alive which was saying something. Now, she just had to get out of the country. That task was not going to be easy considering she was separated from Mason and the others. They all knew where the safehouse was located in Costa Rica. She did not have the first clue and had no idea where to start looking.

“I missed that memo,” she said to the frogs as she stripped off her outer jacket leaving her in just a tank top. It was a relief. The night was muggy after the rain, and she was still soggy from her midnight swim. Her skin was covered in sweat and blood from the effort to paddle against a strong current to the site. Her leg was really throbbing, and she saw several newly open places.

No big surprise, she thought. That wound on her leg had some new friends too. Her arm was deeply gashed from the coral. It was quite ragged and already warm to the touch. She had a deep laceration and a burn on her upper back where she covered the woman to protect her from hot roof tile that fell from the ceiling as they dodged the burning debris and gunfire. She was feeling that new wound, too.

“Um, sexy,” she said as she examined her arm. “This one’s going to leave a scar,” she said with a sigh.

At the rate she was going, there was not going to be any of her skin exposed without some battle scar gracing it. Using her teeth to hold the end of the cloth for tension, her tying off the dressing was more difficult than she anticipated. She dressed her wound as best as she could. All it did was momentarily absorb the bleeding.

"What now," she asked herself as she dropped the jacket on the ground to sit on it. She needed food and fresh water soon. That was a priority. However, she was exhausted and too tired to muster the strength to forage. Besides, she reasoned it was still dark in the predawn hour. Once the sun was up, she would go looking.

She had very little money, so bribes were out of the question. She could have Robert send her money, she supposed. Just as quickly as she formed the thought, she pushed it aside, not wanting to implicate him if this escalated any further.

She had her passport, for all the good that document would do her. If Redondo was half a lawman, Interpol was already alerted. She would never make it past a legitimate border crossing point, at least not without some serious questioning, and in her current condition and physical state there was no plausible explanation to give that would be believable.

Barbara sat on the ground leaning back against the trunk of a palm tree, digging her toes into the powder-soft sand. This was paradise by any normal person’s standard and definition. She was surrounded by tropical waters, lush vegetation, and beautiful soft sand. The rain had stopped, and the trade winds clearing the night sky had left it bright and full of stars. It was paradise. It was certainly hell. It was her paradox.

At that moment, she reasoned she was too tired to care about tomorrow and too hurt to try to make it back to their camp tonight which was probably crawling with police by now anyway. Bleeding again and feeling nauseous from blood loss, she wasn’t sure her feeling was not fully due to the blood on her hands.

She had killed tonight, not a first and probably not the last time either. It was what they did when the need arose to protect and to serve the innocent. Any prudent person would feel remorse. She felt nothing, allowing her conditioning to take hold. All she could think of was Mason.

“Please, be safe and alive.”

She closed her eyes praying he was alive and would be safely across the Costa Rican border by the time the sun was up.

Waking, Barbara looked at a moon well past its zenith and sinking leisurely to the western horizon. The morning sun’s light was streaking lavender in the eastern sky as the night creatures sought their bed. She slowly opened her eyes taking in her surrounding. She felt so alone and reaching out she tried to connect to the one person that she could not seem to shake and could not let go.

“I need you safe, Mason, please be all right, wherever you are,” she spoke softly to the coming dawn.

Mason was closer than she realized.

Barbara pushed into Mason's brain clawing past his defenses. He quickly discovered any hope of closing her out was totally beyond useless. He resigned himself to this fact. He also resigned himself to the fact, that as an operative, she was good. Better than he ever gave her credit for, and he was wrong to doubt her.

“I’m right here.” He had been watching her sleep. Relief so deep flooded him when he first saw her safe and sleeping so soundly against the tree. Now, he was feeling something quite different.

He reached his hand down to lift her up.

“Thank God, you’re alive!” She threw her arms around his neck and noticed that he did not touch her. Stepping away, she had no issue respecting the space that he obviously wanted between them. He was not cold, mean or indifferent to her; he was simply withdrawn, and it was all right. Even she had done the same thing from time to time after a particularly difficult case was wrapped up. It was a way for the body and mind to catch up to each other and for the mind to assimilate the data. She did not take it personally. This was not directed at her. She was just caught in the jet wash of the mission. The night had been hard on all of them.

“What about the others?” she asked leaning down to pick up her jacket and eliminating the evidence that she had slept there against the tree.

“Agent Vega is dead. Our team is safe without a single causality. They are in Costa Rica by now.”

“I’m glad to hear it. You should be with them.”

Barbara figured that she could get help from the American Embassy as a C.I.A. field operative. It was a last resort, but still an option for her. He couldn’t. Sometimes these situations can be very touchy diplomatically speaking.

“I’ve never left a man behind and I wasn’t going to start with you. Come on.” He pulled her by the hand over to the boat tied off just beyond her eye-shot. “Enrique left us dive gear. We have got to get back to the camp and pray this ruse works. Do you dive?” he asked pulling some of the gear from the boat.

She nodded. “Yes, very well in fact.”

Good, he thought. At least he did not have to give her a crash course on the terminology in case they were questioned. If they were lucky the police would not show up. If their luck did not continue to hold, then at least she would be able to carry this off.

She was hoping that she did not have to strap on the gear and do any diving tonight for several reasons. First, she was dead tired and it was not safe to dive in the condition she was in at the moment. Second, she was injured and the wound was still bleeding freely. She would be chum in the water and sharks feed at dusk and dawn. They were long past one and very close to the other.

“The gear should give us an excuse of night-diving for the manta rays. Here,” he tossed her a wet suit. “Strip off the fatigues. I’ll get rid of them.” He watched out of the corner of his eye as she stripped and began slipping on the bathing suit and wet suit.

“Oh, God that hurts,” she hissed as the suit constricted, and snagged what stitches remained as she pulled the tightly fitting suit up her legs and over her arms and back. “What about sharks, Mason. I’m bleeding.”

“So, I see,” Mason said cursing inwardly. She tried to hide the new wounds, but wasn’t quick enough. At the rate she was bleeding she was going to need a transfusion before long. “Don’t worry. We aren’t getting in the water other than to wash the smell of fire off you and get the suits and gear wet.”

He pulled off his own clothes and wrestled with the wetsuit custom made for his tall frame. Then tying the clothes up in a bundle, Mason secured a weight belt to them before dropping them over the side of the boat in the deepest part of the estuary.

Before they reached the camp, he would bleed off the compressed air except for around 500 psi in all six tanks. The dive computers would show three dives of varying depths and durations with an hour surface interval in between. He tossed her the dive log instructing her precisely what to write.

He was hoping she was capable of lying when necessary because the next few hours could very well be one long play with impromptu scripts.

“I hope it won’t come down to it, but if it does the technical equipment should back up our story, accounting for our whereabouts.”

“What about the fact that we left separately?” She pointed that out and was seeing their fight had definitely hurt their relationship, given his distance to her. Just as importantly, that separation hurt their chances of a believable story.

He shrugged. “You reconsidered, followed me, forgave me, and we kissed and made up, enjoying a stimulating night dive in the Pacific.” He did not look at her as he arranged the tanks on the boat to give her a place to sit.

Yet, she could sense his indifference to her. Was she just a responsibility to get out of the country, a burden to bear, one more he never wanted to leave behind? He promised to watch her back, and he was just keeping his promise, just as he said in the airport. She supposed now that he had managed to get her naked, he was no longer interested in her as a woman. This new indifference was her fault, and she would own it. She had made it plain that she was not the woman to enjoy the benefits and pleasures of being Mason’s woman.

She was now simply a responsibility. She got that and understood it. As a grown up, she could take it. She made the decision to sleep with him knowing it was nothing more than a game to both of them. And when that game turned emotional, she was the one to push him away. He had walked away, and she had turned from a challenge to a responsibility.

Still, responsibility or not, she offered her thanks as they made steady progress back up the estuary in the small boat.

“Thank you for coming back for me,” she said as she placed her hand on his arm.

He moved to a different spot, out of her reach on the guise of adjusting the gear.

“You’re my boss. I need you to cosign my pay checks,” he said it with a smile and a wink.