Her Perfect Mate (10 page)

flowcharts. But everyone knew his real job was to be a mole for the Committee. As far as she and every

other operative knew, the Committee was a subpanel of the House and Senate Intelligence Oversight

Committees. Like everything in Washington, it was full of politicians with their own agendas, and Dick

made sure they got what they wanted. Ivy didn’t know why John put up with his crap.

Right now, she didn’t have time to worry about the man or his machinations. She was more concerned

about being out in the field with Landon so soon. If things went wrong on the op and she got

compromised, would he try to help her or just carry out orders and kill her? Heading out on a mission with

that big unknown hanging over your head wasn’t a comforting thought.

Their mission was simple enough—retrieve evidence linking several high-ranking officials in the

Venezuelan government to the Colombian drug trade. The DCO wasn’t exactly sure what form the evidence

would take—though they suspected it was most likely on a laptop. But they knew for certain that said

laptop was in the home of Julien Calballero, a man famous in the drug trade. He had a well-established

system in place for moving drugs from Colombia through Venezuela to the Caribbean and to the United

States. He’d accumulated a lot of money and power over the years, and killed a lot of people to keep it. And

he had a small army of men guarding his compound.

Ivy’s stomach lurched as the helicopter suddenly tipped and she had the pleasure of watching trees pass

by below her. This was one of those rare times she really didn’t appreciate her perfect night vision. She

gripped the side of the open door more tightly. She could barely stay on the flimsy nylon seat with the way

the pilot was flying, even with her seat belt on. Either the Colombian pilot was trying to show off for the

hot American chica—his words, not hers—by cavalierly flying a hairsbreadth above the top of the tree

canopy, or he was trying to make her puke.

Then she saw the tracer rounds zipping past the Black Hawk, and the crazy flying technique suddenly

made a lot more sense. Landon had told her this part of Colombia was completely overrun with FARC

fighters. Apparently, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia enjoyed shooting at helicopters in the

middle of the night. Even if they didn’t know who was on them.

Landon’s head was lolling from side to side as he slept through the combined roller-coaster ride and

fireworks display. He’d come in late last night and looked like shit during the mission briefing. If she had to

guess, she’d say he’d been out with a woman all night, though she never smelled anything on him.

She cringed as a bullet hit the Black Hawk.

The shooting only got worse, or maybe just more accurate. The pilot went into overdrive, zigging and

zagging to keep the chopper from getting hit again.

Beside her, Landon was awake now. Or maybe he’d never been asleep. He tightened a few straps that

had come loose on his backpack.

“We might be getting off early,” he shouted over the deafening noise in the cabin.

The original plan was to get as close to the Venezuelan border as they could, but that didn’t look like it

was going to be happening now. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the pilot yelled

something in Spanish over his headset to the crew chief, who gestured alternately at the jungle below and

the fast-rope bag sitting on the floor near him.

Landon leaned close. “You good?”

She nodded. Unbuckling her seat belt, she scooted closer toward the open door and fast-rope line.

The Black Hawk stopped jerking and dropped to hover a few feet above the top of the trees. The crew

chief tossed the fast-rope bag out and she watched it disappear into the jungle, laying out their descending

line as it went.

Fast roping out of a helicopter wasn’t so bad—definitely not as bad as jumping out of a plane. All she

had to do was slide down the line and let go once she reached the ground. But in this jungle? The idea of

getting dragged through the trees while she was halfway down because the helicopter started taking fire

didn’t thrill her. Worse, she’d have no way of knowing if the line was all the way down to the ground. It

could be too short or it could get hung up in the tree branches on the way down.

She reached for the line, but Landon caught it first. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us down there.

Let me go first.”

Ivy opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t need protecting, but he was already gone, sliding down the

fast-rope line into the trees below. That pissed her off. Typical military grunt—didn’t think a woman could

handle herself.

Tracers zipped past the Black Hawk from a nearby ridgeline, and the helicopter bucked as the pilot tried

to avoid them. Ivy tightened her hold on the doorframe. If Landon were still on the line, he could get

seriously hurt thanks to this jerk.

Ivy shot the pilot a venomous look. “Hold it steady!”

She had no idea if the man could understand English, but the Black Hawk steadied. The crew chief

smacked her on the shoulder, yelling something in Spanish. Taking that as her cue to get off, she grabbed

the thick rope in her gloved hands, then clenched her booted feet around it and slid down the line.

Bullets whistled over her head as she dropped, and she swore under her breath, instinctively ducking.

She hoped the rope went all the way down to the ground and wasn’t wrapped around a tree branch.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t see anything in the branches, even with her shifter night vision.

The rope suddenly swung wildly through the air, flinging her sideways through the trees. The pilot was

freaking out. Any second now, he’d pull up—dragging her back up through the trees—or just say the hell

with it and release the entire fast-rope assembly.

She wasn’t going to wait for either.

Taking a deep breath, she let go of the rope and immediately felt dizzy from falling.

She caught sight of the ground a split second before she hit. Not tensing was hard, but she forced

herself to roll through her points of contact—calves, thighs, butt, back—just like she would if she was

doing a parachute drop. The big backpack she’d complained about earlier sucked up a lot of the impact,

making her fall a lot less painful than it might have been.

Landon was at her side before she came to a stop. “You okay?”

She did a quick self-check. Everything felt like it was in working order. “I’m good.”

She ignored the hand he offered and got to her feet. The muscle in his jaw flexed, but he said nothing.

Instead he focused his attention on the helicopter above them.

“Damn jackasses,” he muttered. The helicopter disappeared in the distance, but the sounds of gunfire

remained. “We better get out of here. They’re going to come looking for whoever the helicopter was

dropping, and we don’t want to be here when they do.”

He had that right. She could already hear the faint sound of soldiers moving through the brush. They

were still at least a mile away, but they were getting closer.

“Avoiding these assholes might be good for our health. Are your kitty cat talents any help in this

situation?”

Ivy blinked. Her first partner hadn’t been as guilty of it as Dave, but even Jeff hadn’t liked to rely on

her shifter abilities, especially in a potentially dangerous situation. And they definitely hadn’t called her

shifter skills by such an endearing name.

“I can pick up scents if I’m downwind of people, and I can hear them moving from a pretty good

distance no matter where they are. Sometimes I get a…”

He frowned in the darkness. “You get what?”

She chewed on her lower lip, not sure if she wanted to mention this part. It was sort of supernatural.

The bullets whizzing through the trees decided it for her. “Sometimes I get a…hunch, I suppose you’d say. I

just know when things are going to go bad.”

Landon regarded her in silence, as if debating whether he wanted to put his faith in something as flimsy

as a hunch.

“Okay,” he said as he strapped on his NVGs. “Sounds like you’re on point then. Get us out of here

without a firefight and I pay for the first beer when we get back.”

Landon was actually going to let her take the lead. That was an absolute first for her. Not waiting for

him to change his mind, she took off into the jungle, heading due east.

Landon followed twenty feet behind as she navigated the dense jungle. It would have been hard enough

moving quickly through the thick foliage during the day. At night—with a heavy pack—it was even more

difficult. But Ivy ignored the weight and concentrated on hiking as fast as she could. She glanced over her

shoulder frequently, checking to make sure Landon was keeping up. He never wavered from his position

behind her.

An hour later, Landon let out a soft whistle. Ivy immediately stopped and turned around.

“You hear anyone behind us?” he asked when he caught up.

“Not in the last thirty minutes.”

He handed his canteen to her, then got out the map and GPS so he could figure out where they were. He

swore under his breath.

“How bad?”

“Bad.” He put his finger on the map. “We’re here, more than thirty miles from the Venezuelan border. In

this thick crap, it’s going to take probably more than twenty hours to get to the border, then another two or

three hours to get to the compound. That puts us at the target early in the morning day after tomorrow. Too

late to hit Calballero’s place, so we’ll lose more time waiting for dark so we can go in.”

Ivy groaned. They’d be worn out before they even got to their target. Worse, they’d miss their

rendezvous with the tourist group that was supposed to be their cover for getting out of the country. If she

and Landon didn’t make that pickup, they were going to have to hike through the jungle all the way back to

Bogotá.

Landon folded the map and put it away. “If we want to stick to the plan and get to Calballero’s place by

midnight tomorrow, we’re going to have to lighten our load and haul ass.”

Landon pulled out extra gear and put it in a pile. Ivy didn’t complain about the extra energy rations he

unloaded. They tasted like crap and wouldn’t be needed if they didn’t have to hike back to Bogotá. They

could find something in the jungle to eat. The sleeping net was another matter.

“We’re going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes while we sleep if we don’t have that,” she said.

“I doubt we’re going to sleep much, plus I know of some local plants we can smear on us to repel the

bugs.” He looked at her questioningly.

At least he’d asked. “Toss it,” she said with a sigh.

The blocks of plastic explosives were a little more difficult for Landon to part with. Ivy almost laughed

at the forlorn look on his face as he set most of them aside. He’d wanted to have plenty in case they had to

take down the wall around the compound. They’d just have to make do with less.

She had to sacrifice most of the concussion grenades, leaving all but two behind. The plan was for her

to go into the house on her own while Landon provided cover with his silenced sniper rifle. If anything

went wrong, she could have tossed half a dozen of those high-blast babies in her wake and dived out a

window in the confusion. Guess they’d have to make sure nothing went wrong.

Landon wrapped the abandoned gear in the sleeping net and buried it, then locked in the location on the

GPS.

“If everything goes to hell in a handbag and we have to come back this way, we can stop and grab it,”

he told her.

Good thinking. But she really hoped they didn’t have to do that.

***

midmorning of the next day, he knew they’d made the right decision. It was only 0900 and it already felt

like a sauna under the stifling canopy of trees. By midafternoon, it’d be like they were in a convection oven.

He swore as he hacked his way through the dense jungle behind Ivy. After spending the majority of the

last ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq, he’d forgotten how tough it was to claw through undergrowth so

thick it felt like the damn stuff was physically wrapping its arms around you.

Ivy had saved their asses more than once already with her kitty cat senses and those little “hunches” that

told her trouble was just around the next bend in the trail. This part of the border region was crawling with

FARC soldiers and guerilla forces. If he’d been with his Special Forces Team, they probably would have

been involved in a half dozen firefights already.

In his book, a partner with skills like hers was worth more than a backpack full of C-4 and a thousand

extra rounds of ammo.

It got to the point where he trusted those skills so much that his mind wandered and stopped at the

mission briefing they’d received yesterday. More precisely, the conversation he had with Kendra before he