Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (26 page)

The man fired again. The bullet
slamming into him broke Mac’s hold and he felt himself falling. He
blacked out when he hit the water below him.

* * * *

Sylvie’s stomach was
cramping with nerves and she had to focus to keep from
hyperventilating. She’d told herself that she could play it cool.
She thought she’d done well considering she’d never done anything
illegal in her life and certainly nothing of this
magnitude—which
might
be construed as treason. Although why the government might
view it that way was beyond her! So
they
had a longstanding grudge
against Cuba! She didn’t see why that had to apply to everybody,
especially when the Cuban government had offered medical treatment
to the people her friends had brought down.

She completely agreed with the views
of the group she’d joined. It had actually sounded like a very
noble cause, potentially exciting and daring, especially to someone
like her who’d never taken any kind of risks before in her life.
Talk was cheap. It was the people who took a stand and took action
that made a difference and she’d wanted to be one of those
people.

She’d been flattered when they’d
approached her about borrowing her stepfather’s boat and making the
pickup—gung ho to do her part. It wasn’t as if she had to take any
real risks like the others were doing. All she had to do was anchor
the boat outside Cuban waters and wait.

She’d waited all day. She’d slathered
enough suntan lotion on her skin to float the boat to keep from
turning into crispy critters Sylvie while she pretended to sunbathe
… and waited, and waited some more until the sun had dipped toward
the horizon and she’d realized she was going to be moon bathing
before much longer.

She could still play it cool. She was
just going to have to think of another reason for her prolonged
stay at anchor so close to Cuba. She’d almost convinced herself she
was going to carry this off … until she heard the blare of the
klaxons.

Cold terror swept over her like a
rogue wave the moment the damned thing cut loose and she nearly
jumped out of her skin.

She settled back on the towel she’d
spread on the forward deck of her stepfather’s tiny yacht,
squeezing her eyes closed and willing herself to relax. “Keep your
head, Sylvie! And keep your cool! You aren’t doing anything wrong.
You’re just down in the Caribbean with some friends who are down
below scuba diving!

“
And why the
fuck
they aren’t back
yet when the damned sun is already setting is a mystery to
me!”

The music she’d been playing, partly
as a ‘prop’ and partly in the hope that it would help her focus on
anything except what she was actually doing anchored less than a
mile beyond Cuban waters wasn’t loud enough to completely drown out
the sounds of mad activity that accompanied the alarm,
unfortunately. After lying for several moments with her ears
pricked to pick up the escalating sounds around her, she finally
decided to try for a casual roll onto her belly.

She nearly swallowed her tongue when
she saw what was coming toward her.

Military boats, bristling with guns
and soldiers from Guantanamo!

“
Oh shit! Oh fuck!
Ohmigod! Breathe, Sylvie! Deep breath in, slowly
release.”

She was so paralyzed with sheer terror
that her brain was sluggish but eventually it occurred to her that
there was nothing ‘natural’ about continuing to sunbathe when it
looked like half the base was coming straight toward her. She sat
up then and glanced around her at the sea, hoping against hope that
she’d see another ship or ships that was the focus of the military
vessels steaming toward her.

She didn’t see a ship but
as she completed the circuit of her search, she saw what looked
like dozens of men plowing through the water—
swimming
and trying to outrun the
boats!

She leapt to her feet in a blind panic
when her shocked brain finally connected three little words—Klaxons
—Escapees—Military. She forgot all about trying to play the cool,
unconcerned vacationer minding her own business. Leaping from the
deck, she charged toward the pilot deck, slammed her hand down on
the anchor retractor button, and started the engine.

The wet smack of bodies tumbling onto
the deck made her hair stand on end. She threw a panicked glance
behind her and saw that she hadn’t imagined it, men, mostly naked
and with the setting sun gleaming on their water slickened skin,
were pouring over her bows. She slapped a hand over her mouth to
muffle the scream that rose in her throat. Despite her efforts,
though, the men who’d bounded onto her deck swiveled their heads in
her direction instantly like pointers.

Throwing her hands out,
she screamed in earnest, looking wildly around for a weapon or some
place to run. There
was
no place and the urge to hide, she realized
dimly, was probably useless. Just as it finally dawned on her that
her only option was to bail out of the boat and let them have it,
the men, who’d seemed almost as frozen with indecision as she was,
charged toward her.

There was only one way on or off the
pilot deck. She had to charge straight toward the men coming at
her. The hope that she could outrun them, reach the side of the
boat, and leap off was dashed when the man in the lead, a wild-eyed
black haired devil built like a tank, slammed into her, manacling
his hands around her arms like titanium cuffs. Gunfire exploded
around them in almost the same instant. Splinters of wood flew from
the deck in every direction. The man who’d grabbed her hit the deck
in response, on top of her.

Shock prevented her from feeling any
pain at all for several seconds but nothing shielded her from the
collapse of her lungs beneath his weight. A grunt was forced from
her.

“
Get us the fuck out of
here, Hawk!” the man on top of her bellowed, deafening
her.

They rolled over as the boat shot
forward in a wide arc. The man who’d tackled her leapt to his feet
anyway, scanned the deck in an all encompassing glance, and scooped
her up, running at a half crouch across the deck and leaping
through the open hatch.

Dangling from one of his arms like a
ragdoll, Sylvie grunted again when they landed, still too stunned
to focus on anything but trying to catch her breath. After quickly
scanning the tiny main cabin, he released her. She promptly landed
with a thump on the floor. “You hurt?”

Sylvie looked up at his face
owl-eyed.

“
Are you hurt?” he
demanded impatiently.

She was beginning to feel like every
bone in her body had been crushed or mangled. Before she could
summon speech, though, he ran his hands over her. Apparently
satisfied when he didn’t see any blood or find any holes, he surged
upright. “Stay put if you don’t want your head blown
off.”

Sylvie managed a shaky nod, but he
didn’t even wait to see it. He threw the warning at her as turned
away and bounded up the ladder to the deck. Sylvie managed a squeak
of terror as another barrage of bullets cut through the side of the
boat. A shiver skated through her. Within a few moments, she was
shaking so badly her teeth were chattering. She drew up into a
tight ball, trying to conserve what little warmth she had, but it
wasn’t nearly enough when she wasn’t wearing anything but a bikini
that wasn’t much more than a couple of postage stamps joined
together with strings.

She’d figured it might be a good
distraction if anyone happened to get nosey enough to investigate
what she was doing.

There were at least two dozen hard
faced, mostly naked men on the boat with her at the moment, though,
and drawing their attention was the last thing she wanted. Easing
up cautiously, she glanced around to get her bearings in the
darkening cabin. The bedding was stored beneath the benches that
formed a dining booth during the day and made up into a queen sized
bed at night. She slithered across the floor on her belly, her ears
pricked for any sound that might indicate they could hear her. When
she reached the bench, she eased the seat up and levered herself up
high enough to peer inside. It was too dark by now to really see
anything, but she remembered that the bedding only took up a little
over half the space.

After darting a quick glance toward
the stairs, she climbed in, burrowed as deeply under the folded
covers and linens as she could and slowly lowered the seat again.
It was a snug fit with her body mass added to the contents, but it
wouldn’t make much of a hiding place if she dumped the covers on
the floor. In any case, she was freezing.

Thankfully, she began to warm up by
degrees until the shivering finally stopped. Her mind seemed
completely detached from everything, however. Disconnected thoughts
drifted through her mind between a mental inventory that catalogued
everything on her that hurt. All things considered, the pain was
minimal. She felt bruised all over, ached from being body slammed
on the deck, but nothing hurt enough to suggest she was actually
injured.

The gunfire continued sporadically for
a while and finally died altogether. Since the boat was still
moving through the water at its top speed, bucking like a wild
bronco, she decided that didn’t mean everybody up top was dead. In
any case, she could hear them moving around, could hear snatches of
conversation.

They were speaking English—with
American accents.

That didn’t make any sense to her at
all, but she couldn’t decide whether it really didn’t or if the
terror she’d experienced had totally screwed her mind up. It didn’t
seem to matter much. As frightened as she still was, as unreliable
as her thought processes were, there were facts about her situation
that were unavoidable and indisputable.

The men
had
to be escaped
prisoners from Guantanamo.

The alarm had sounded and not only had
boats been dispatched to recapture them, but they’d wanted the men
back dead or alive and hadn’t cared which.

* * * *

Hawk settled heavily on the deck
beside Mac, trying to ignore the burn of the wound in his left arm.
“We’ve managed to put some distance between us and them, Sarg, but
we’re pretty much out of ammo. What’s the plan?”

Mac snorted with disgust. “Aside from
trying to stay alive? No clue.”

Hawk nodded. He hadn’t really expected
Mac to have a plan, but he’d hoped he did.

“
Guess it’ll be a short
ride.”

“
How’s the fuel holding
up?”

Hawk shrugged. “This thing’s built for
speed. The good news is that it was fast enough to outrun ‘em—what
they had to throw at us so far, anyway. The bad news is, fast
equals fuel guzzler at this speed. It’s anybody’s guess how far we
can get in it.”

Mac frowned. Coming to a decision, he
got to his feet wearily. “I think I’ll go have a chat with our
‘guest’ and see what she knows.”

Hawk looked at him surprise. “You
think she’d know anything about the fuel consumption?”

“
She’ll know where she
came from. I’m guessing whoever the boat belongs to, they were
expecting to get back.”

“
Duh,” Hawk muttered,
irritated with himself. “You think, whatever this thing is we’ve
got, it’s gonna turn us into mindless beasts
permanently?”

Mac flicked a sharp look at him. He
swallowed a little sickly. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it,
Hawk. You lost a lot of blood.”

A flicker of relief went through Hawk.
“Hadn’t thought about that.”

Mac glanced around at the men on the
deck. “Get some rest while you can. Everybody needs to be sharp. No
telling what we’ve got ahead of us.”

“
It’s a fuckin’ shame it
didn’t occur to those bastards that we might need to be fresh when
we escaped their fuckin’ torture chambers,” Hawk said dryly. “I
ain’t slept in … shit! I can’t remember. Not since ‘it’ happened, I
don’t think.”

Mac sent him an irritated look when he
followed him down into the main cabin. He didn’t say anything,
though, and Hawk decided it was a warning to cut the chitchat
rather than irritation that he’d followed him.

It was dark as shit down in the main
cabin, but that was one of the few benefits they’d discovered about
the parasites they’d picked up in the jungle. Their vision was a
hell of a lot better than it had been before, better than the
‘perfect’ required just to get into special forces—because it was
better than human—which they weren’t anymore.

Not that any of them wanted to admit
it, but they all knew it.

Mac glanced around and finally moved
to a light switch. It controlled a wall sconce by the couch. After
studying it a moment, he decided not to worry about it. No doubt
they were still on radar anyway and the bastards from Guantanamo
knew exactly where they were.

It was no surprise to see that their
guest wasn’t where he’d left her. He scanned the room, sniffing the
air. Whatever it was she had all over her—suntan lotion if he
didn’t miss his guess—was strong enough to seem omnipresent,
though, making it pretty well impossible to pinpoint her exact
location.