The Complete Mackenzie Collection (53 page)

Ten minutes later he stopped in the shadow of a dilapidated warehouse. Perhaps he clicked his radio; in the dark, she couldn’t tell. But suddenly five black shapes materialized out of the darkness, and they were surrounded before she could blink.

“Gentlemen, this is Miss Lovejoy,” Zane said. “Now let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

“With pleasure, boss.” One of the men bowed to Barrie and held out his hand. “This way, Miss Lovejoy.”

There was a certain rough élan about them that she found charming, though they didn’t let it interfere with the business at hand. The six men immediately began moving out in choreographed order, and Barrie smiled at the man who’d spoken as she took the place he had indicated in line. She was behind Zane, who was second inline behind a man who moved so silently, and blended so well into the shadows, that even knowing he was there, sometimes she couldn’t see him. The other four men ranged behind her at varying distances, and she realized that she couldn’t hear them, either. In fact, she was the only one of the group who was making any noise, and she tried to place her slippered feet more carefully.

They wound their way through the alleys and finally stopped beside a battered minibus. Even in the darkness Barrie could see the huge dents and dark patches of rust that decorated the vehicle. They stopped beside it, and Zane opened the sliding side door for her. “Your chariot,” he murmured.

Barrie almost laughed as he handed her into the little bus: if she hadn’t had experience navigating long evening gowns, she would have found the ankle-length robe awkward, but she managed it as if she was a nineteenth-century lady being handed into a carriage. The men climbed in around her. There were only two bench seats; if there had ever been a third one in the back, it had long since been removed, perhaps to make room for cargo. A wiry young black man got behind the steering wheel, and Zane took the other seat in front. The eerily silent man who had been on point squeezed in on her left side, and another SEAL sat on her right, carefully placing her in a human security box. The other two SEALs knelt on the floorboard behind them, their muscular bodies and their gear filling the limited space.

“Let’s go, Bunny Rabbit,” Zane said, and the young black man grinned as he started the engine. The minibus looked as though it was on its last wheels, but the motor purred.

“You should a been there last night,” the black guy said. “It was tight for a minute, real tight.” He sounded as enthusiastic as if he was describing the best party he’d ever attended.

“What happened?” Zane asked.

“Just one of those things, boss,” the man on Barrie’s right said with a shrug evident in his voice. “A bad guy stepped on Spook, and the situation went straight into fubar.”

Barrie had been around enough military men to know what fubar meant. She sat very still and didn’t comment.

“Stepped right
on
me,” the SEAL on her left said in an aggrieved tone. “He started squalling like a scalded cat, shooting at everything that moved and most things that didn’t. Aggravated me some.” He paused. “I’m not staying for the funeral.”

“When we got your signal we pulled back and ran like hell,” the man on her right continued. “You must’ve already had her out, because they came after us like hound dogs. We laid low, but a couple of times I thought we were going to have to fight our way out. Man, they were walking all over us, and they kept hunting all night long.”

“No, we were still inside,” Zane said calmly. “We just stepped into the next room. They never thought to check it.”

The men snorted with mirth; even the eerie guy on her left managed a chuckle, though it didn’t sound as if he did it often enough to be good at it.

Zane turned around in the seat and gave Barrie that brief twitch of a smile. “Would you like some introductions, or would you rather not know these raunchy-smelling bums?”

The atmosphere in the bus
did
smell like a locker room, only worse. “The introductions, please,” she said, and her smile was plain in her voice.

He indicated the driver. “Antonio Withrock, Seaman Second Class. He’s driving because he grew up wrecking cars on dirt tracks down South, so we figure he can handle any situation.”

“Ma’am,” said Seaman Withrock politely.

“On your right is Ensign Rocky Greenberg, second in command.”

“Ma’am,” said Ensign Greenberg.

“On your left is Seaman Second Class Winstead Jones.”

Seaman Winstead Jones growled something unintelligible. “Call him Spooky or Spook, not Winstead,” Zane added.

“Ma’am,” said Seaman Jones.

“Behind you are Seamen First Class Eddie Santos, our medic, and Paul Drexler, the team sniper.”

“Ma’am,” said two voices behind her.

“I’m glad to meet you all,” Barrie said, her sincerity plain. She had trained her memory at countless official functions, so she had their names down cold. She hadn’t yet put a face to Santos or Drexler, but from his name she figured Santos would be Hispanic, so that would be an easy distinction to make.

Greenberg began to tell Zane the details of everything that had happened. Barrie listened and didn’t intrude. The fact was, this midnight drive through Benghazi felt a little surreal. She was surrounded by men armed to their eye-teeth, but they were traveling through an area that was still fairly active for so late at night. There were other vehicles in the streets, pedestrians on the sidewalks. They even stopped at a traffic light, with other vehicles around them. The driver, Withrock, hummed under his breath. No one else seemed concerned. The traffic light changed, the battered little minibus moved forward, and no one paid them any attention at all.

Several minutes later they left the city. Occasionally she could see the gleam of the Mediterranean on their right, which meant they were traveling west, toward the center of Libya’s coast. As the lights faded behind them, she began to feel lightheaded with fatigue. The sleep she had gotten during the day, between bouts of lovemaking, hadn’t been enough to offset the toll stress had taken on her. She couldn’t see herself leaning on either of the men beside her, however, so she forced herself to sit upright and keep her eyes open.

She suspected that she was more than a little punch-drunk.

After a while Zane said, “Red goggles.”

She was tired enough that she wondered if that was some kind of code, or if she’d misunderstood him. Neither, evidently. Each man took a pair of goggles from his pack and donned them. Zane glanced at her and said in explanation, “Red protects your night vision. We’re going to let our vision adjust now, before Bunny kills the headlights.”

She nodded, and closed her eyes to help her own vision adjust. She realized at once that, if she wanted to stay awake, closing her eyes for whatever reason wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but her eyelids were so heavy that she couldn’t manage to open them again. The next thing she knew, the minibus was lurching heavily from side to side, throwing her against first Greenberg, then Spooky. Dazed with sleep, she tried to hold herself erect, but she couldn’t seem to find her balance or anything to hold on to. She was about to slide to the floorboard when Spooky’s forearm shot out in front of her like an iron bar, anchoring her in the seat.

“Thank you,” she said groggily.

“Anytime, ma’am.”

Sometime while she had been asleep, Bunny had indeed killed the headlights, and they were plunging down an embankment in the dark. She blinked at something shiny looming in front of them; she had a split second of panic and confusion before she recognized the sea, gleaming in the starlight.

The minibus lurched to a halt. “End of the line,” Bunny cheerfully announced. “We have now reached the hidey-hole for one IBS. That’s military talk for inflatable boat, small,” he said over his shoulder to Barrie. “These things are too fancy to be called plain old rafts.”

Zane snorted. Barrie remembered that he’d described it as exactly that, a raft.

Watching them exit the minibus was like watching quicksilver slip through cracks. If there had been a working overhead light when the SEALs had commandeered the vehicle, they had taken care of that detail, because no light came on when the doors were cracked open. Spooky slipped past her, no mean feat given the equipment he was carrying, and when Greenberg slid the side door open a few inches, Spooky wiggled on his stomach through the small opening. One second he was there, the next he was gone. Barrie stared at the door with widened eyes in full appreciation of how he’d acquired his nickname. He was definitely spooky.

The others exited the minibus in the same manner; it was as if they were made of water, and when the doors opened they simply leaked out. They were that fluid, that silent. Only Bunny, the driver, remained behind with Barrie. He sat in absolute silence, pistol in hand, as he methodically surveyed the night-shrouded coast. Because he was silent, she was too. The best way not to be any trouble to them, she thought, was to follow their example.

There was one quick little tap on the window, and Bunny whispered, “It’s clear. Let’s go, Miss Lovejoy.”

She scooted over the seat to the door while Bunny eeled out on the driver’s side. Zane was there, opening the door wider, reaching in to steady her as she slid out onto the ground. “Are you holding up okay?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, because she was so tired her speech was bound to be slurred.

As usual, he seemed to understand without being told. “Just hold on for another hour or so, and we’ll have you safe on board the carrier. You can sleep then.”

Without him, though; that fact didn’t need stating. Even if he intended to continue their relationship, and he hadn’t given any indication of it, he wouldn’t do so on board the ship. She would put off sleeping forever if it would postpone the moment when she had to admit, once and for all, that their relationship had been a temporary thing for him, prompted by both the hothouse of intimacy in which they’d spent the day, and her own demands.

She wouldn’t cry; she wouldn’t even protest, she told herself. She’d had him for a day, for one incredibly sensual day.

He led her down to the small, rocky strip of beach, where the dark bulk of the IBS had been positioned. The other five men were gathered around it in specific positions, each standing with his back to the raft while he held his weapon at the ready, edgily surveying the surroundings.

Zane lifted her into the IBS and showed her where to sit. The IBS bobbed in the water as the men eased it away from the shore. When the water was chest deep on Santos, the shortest one, they all swung aboard in a maneuver they had practiced so many times it looked effortless. Spooky started the almost soundless motor and aimed the IBS for the open sea.

Then a roar erupted behind them, and all hell broke loose.

She recognized the sharp
rat-tat-tat
of automatic weapons and half turned to look behind them. Zane put his hand on her head and shoved her down to the bottom of the boat, whirling, already bringing his automatic rifle around as he did so. The IBS shot forward as Spooky gave it full throttle. The SEALs returned fire, lightning flashing from the weapons, spent cartridges splattering down on her as she curled into a ball and drew the chador over her face to keep the hot brass from burning her.

“Drexler!” Zane roared. “Hit those bastards with explosives!”

“Got it, boss!”

Barrie heard a grunt, and something heavy and human fell across her. One of the men had been hit. Desperately she tried to wriggle out from under the crushing weight so she could help him, but she was effectively pinned, and he groaned every time she moved.

She knew that groan.

Terror such as she had never felt before raced through her veins. With a hoarse cry she heaved at the heavy weight, managing to roll him to the side. She fought her way free of the enveloping chador and didn’t even notice the hot cartridge shell that immediately skimmed her right cheek.

An explosion shattered the night, lighting up the sea like fireworks, the percussion knocking her to the bottom of the boat again. She scrambled to her knees, reaching for Zane. “No,” she said hoarsely. “No!”

The light from the explosion had sharply delineated every detail in stark white. Zane lay sprawled half on his side, writhing in pain as he pressed his hands to his abdomen. His face was a colorless blur, his eyes closed, his teeth exposed in a grimace. A huge wet patch glistened on the left side of his black shirt, and more blood was pooling beneath him.

Barrie grabbed the chador and wadded it up, pressing it hard to the wound. A low animal howl rattled in his throat, and he arched in pain. “Santos!” she screamed, trying to hold him down while still holding the chador in place.
“Santos!”

With a muttered curse the stocky medic shouldered her aside. He lifted the chador for a second, then quickly pressed it into place and grabbed her hand, guiding it into position. “Hold it,” he rapped out. “Press down—hard.”

There was no more gunfire, only the hum of the motor. Salt spray lashed her face as the boat shot through the waves. The team maintained their discipline, holding their assigned positions. “How bad is it?” Greenberg yelled.

Santos was working feverishly. “I need light!”

Almost instantly Greenberg had a flashlight shining down on them. Barrie bit her lip as she saw how much blood had puddled around them. Zane’s face was pasty white, his eyes half-shut as he gasped for breath.