The Colonel's Man
Authors: J. William Mitchell Mina Carter
Tags: #Romance, #Science Fiction, #Futuristic, #Fantasy
Section Three: Book I
The Colonel’s Man
Mina Carter & J. William Mitchell
September 2012
Published by Summerhouse Publishing. Copyright, Mina Carter & J. William Mitchell. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.
Summerhouse Publishing
http://summerhousepublishing.com
Mina Carter
Editor
Chris Stout
Cover Artist
Mina Carter
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.
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“Goddamned intel got it wrong again.” Gunnery Sergeant Jason Scott swore under his breath as he slid into cover behind the wreck of a truck and scanned the area for hostiles.
The twin moons above cast an eerie glow over what had once been a proud metropolis. Cestan Four. He remembered the holo-vids offering vacations here. These days it was a broken reminder of past glory and a warning against corporate greed, the formerly pristine streets left to rack and ruin as squatters and the dregs of society occupied what had been luxury apartments. A myriad of stars shone above, like a scattering of diamonds against the velvet of the clear cloudless night.
It was a beautiful evening but the two soldiers squatting behind the burnt out vehicle paid it no mind. Scott grumbled under his breath again, cursing whatever no-brainer intelligence agent had put the mission packet together, and adjusted the strap on his night optics. Bright moonlit nights were for romantic evenings with a hot woman, not for sensitive operations with limited support and bad intelligence.
The spooks had reported a hazy evening, even light to moderate rains; perfect conditions for a retrieval operation. But that bastard Murphy wasn’t playing ball. Moonlight bathed the street around them. One step out of cover, out of the shadows and it would pick them out like fleas on a sheet. Even without goggles, a guerrilla would be able to spot them. They might have well have kitted themselves out in damn neon.
They didn’t have a choice. There was no going back and telling the higher ups that they had to wait for better conditions. Not unless they both wanted to be taken out into a back alley and introduced to the business end of a bullet. This was a priority mission; an emergency extraction from hostile territory with only two hours notice and limited support. He knew that the powers-that-be thought well of him and his partner, but just two of them? It was beyond ridiculous.A woman’s life was at stake. Regardless of how the mission was conceived, that was a very real fact that Jason and his partner had to keep in mind, and time was running out.
A faint movement caught his attention from across the street, slight but noticeable. His partner Drew, holding cover from the alley opposite, gave Jason the all clear. He gave the area one more sweep before running swiftly and silently over to the other side.
The entry point came up on his right, which elicited a small sigh of relief. At least intel had gotten that right. He’d half expected them to have picked up the wrong building schematic and leave him and Drew taking a wild stab in the dark to get to the woman.
Taking position by the door, he waited until Drew was in place, their movements as smooth and polished as a well oiled machine. They breached the door, the entry swift and silent. The inside of the building was as rough and derelict as the outside. Rusty walkways rose over them into the darkness above and the scattered remains of pallets and cargo crates littered what they could see of the floor.
Jason paused, Drew a silent shadow to his left as he oriented himself. Their target was in here somewhere but intel hadn’t been able to give them more than the location of the building. From here on in, they were on their own.
A soft cry reached their ears, followed by the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting flesh. His blood boiled at the sound and what it meant. Somewhere nearby, a woman was being hurt and that didn’t fly. Men did not hit women. Period. Turning his head, he motioned to Drew and they set off towards the source of the sounds, moving as one.
Aware of the close confines, Jason switched from rifle to his sidearm. Drew had packed smart; his suppressed carbine was perfect for this sort of close in thing as opposed to Jason’s lengthy but longer ranged marksman’s rifle. More maneuverable now, Jason screened forward as they made their sweep. The empty corridors of the abandoned warehouse scattered sound all over the place, which made finding the source of the cries difficult.
Difficult but not impossible.
Quartering down the accessible space, they isolated the direction the cries were coming from. A long corridor stretched out ahead of them, the expanse funneling the smacks and whimpers. Jason ground his teeth. When they got down there, he was giving the bastard a lesson he wouldn’t forget. For all three point four seconds of the rest of his life.
Drew started to slide the thermal viewer out of its case when they heard another cry, this one louder and sharper, with a tone of panic. Dread slithered down Jason’s spine. That was terror, pure and simple. Something bad was happening. Right now. His gaze flickered over the door as they ran down the corridor. It was double bolted and reinforced. Whoever had put it in was really serious about keeping people out.
“Shit,” he swore as he slapped plastic explosive against the rough surface and flanked the door. “Breach and clear, now!”
Seconds later the door exploded, nearly ripped off the hinges as it was blown inward. Blinking against the dust, they surged through the opening, bellowing war-cries as they scanned for hostiles.
The room beyond was small, square and mostly empty. A cheap plastic chair, the kind produced in their billions for governmental offices the galaxy over, sat in one corner. A woman’s boot lay on its side on the seat, its partner on the floor beneath. Jason swept his sidearm in an arc, his view of the world reduced to the area in front of the muzzle.
A body lay on the floor. Male, dressed in tattered fatigues and a t-shirt that said ‘It’s not a beer belly, it’s a fuel tank for a sex machine’. His eyes were wide and unseeing, and his neck was twisted at a grotesque angle. Above him, wrists crudely lashed to an overhead pipe, was the woman he’d obviously been brutalizing just moments before.
Tied and hung up like that she seemed so small and vulnerable. Fury raged and fed the need to kick the crap out of the corpse even though he was dead and beyond any pain Jason could inflict.
Dragging a deep breath in, he pushed the rage aside and slammed his pistol into its holster. A second later he wrapped his arms around the woman’s slender frame. She moaned as he lifted her, taking her weight off her wrists as Drew flicked a lock knife open to cut her free. Jason winced. Even from here he could see the dark bruises and cuts on the soft, pale skin. As Drew cut the cord, she slid down Jason’s body, his hands getting a quick tour of her thighs and backside as his chest became acquainted with the lush pressure of her breasts.
“Are you able to move?” he asked as he offered her his canteen. That breaching charge would have attracted unwanted attention and it was safe to assume that the dead man’s friends would now be coming to cause trouble. They had better be out of the warehouse before that happened or they were all dead.
“Yeah. Thanks,” she croaked, still leaning on him as she took the canteen. Her hand shook as she lifted it, the tremble so bad that water spilled down the sides of her lips onto the tattered t shirt. He tried not to notice how the wet fabric outlined what looked like an amazing rack.
“Here, I got it.”
His voice gentle, he supported the canteen as she drank, then handed it off to Drew. Still keeping his movements slow and unthreatening, he pushed the mass of dark hair out of her face. “Look up at me, doll. I need to check something.”
Intel didn't have much to give on the asset they were supposed to extract except for the usual vital stats and a distinctive scar on her cheek just under her left eye. Human female, brunette, medium build at five foot four, the woman in his arms fit the description but he needed to make sure.
He was awestruck as he gazed upon her face for the first time. She was breathtakingly beautiful and the bruise on her cheek only served to trigger his protective instincts again. A small straight nose, a sensual mouth with a plump bottom lip and deep blue-green eyes the colour of a tropical ocean. He could get lost in their depths and never find his way out.
Command hadn’t specified what she had been doing here or why she needed extraction, but Jason came to the only conclusion he could form in his head: she was a spy. He could imagine her using her beauty and charm to lower the guard of an unsuspecting target and wield that sexy little body like a weapon to render a man into an obedient slave.
Shoving the bedroom out of his head, he focused on the task at hand. On her cheek was the scar he was looking for and if her pupils were any indication, she didn’t appear to be under the influence of any drugs or have a concussion.
She looked back at him steadily, her hands curled around his upper arms. Normally recovering hostages or assets was a job he loathed and detested. Very often they were hysterical and they were always a liability when it came to getting out of a hot situation. But this he liked. He liked the way she rested against him trustingly and the way she clung a little, as though she knew instinctively that he would, could, protect her.
“I’m okay,” she said after a long moment and he realised he was lost, staring into her beautiful eyes. His gaze dropped to her lips as she spoke, and the need to find out what she tasted like grew. “No concussion, no major injuries. You got a spare weapon?”
The question jolted him back to reality. The dead guy on the floor told him she could take care of herself but he wasn’t about to give her a weapon given her injuries and her state of mind. He didn’t need any extra holes for ventilation. “Yeah, sorry…fresh out.”
She flicked a glance over him. There was no way she could miss the rifle slung over his shoulder, nor the holstered pistol. Her lips pursed in a fascinating little display and she pushed at his arms for him to release her. He refused for a second, loathe to let her go, but finally relented, watching carefully as she stepped away and ready to catch her at a moment’s notice.
She didn’t need the help; her movements were sure and confident. Instead of heading toward the clothes dumped near the chair and covering the softly toned stomach and bared shoulders revealed by her damaged top, she crouched next to the body and started to search it.
On lookout by the door Drew lifted an eyebrow, shooting a glance at Jason. They were used to shell-shock, they were used to hysterical, but never once had they recovered a target whose first thought was to frisk the enemy for weaponry.
“Thought he had.”
Triumph rang in her voice as she pulled a short, nasty looking knife from the guy’s pocket and flicked it open to inspect the blade. Grunting in satisfaction she closed it and shoved it into a pocket before checking the rest of the body. Finding nothing else of use, she stood and picked her way over to the chair, sitting down to pull her boots on.