Mackenzie's Pleasure (3 page)

she called out, "All right, boys, let's get this wrapped up. Supper will be on the table in ten

minutes." Then she calmly walked back to the house, fully confident that she had brought

detente to the corral.

She had, too. She had reduced the fight to the level of a chore or a project, given them a

time limit and a reason for ending it.

Both boys' eyes had flickered to that slight retreating figure with the ramrod spine. Then

Zane had turned to

Sooner, the coolness of his blue gaze somewhat marred by the swelling of his eyes. "One

more," he said grimly, and slammed his fist into Sooner's face.

Sooner picked himself up off the dirt, squared up again and returned the favor.

Zane got up, slapped the dirt from his clothes and held out his hand. Sooner gripped it,

though they had both winced at the pain in their knuckles. They shook hands, eyed each other

as equals, then returned to the house to clean up. After all, supper was almost on the table.

At supper, Mary told Sooner that the adoption had been given the green light. His pale

hazel eyes had glittered in his battered face, but he hadn't said anything.

"You're a Mackenzie now," Maris had pronounced with great satisfaction. "You'll have

to have a real name, so choose one."

It hadn't occurred to her that choosing a name might require some thought, but as it

happened, Sooner had looked around the table at the family that pure blind luck had sent

him, and a wry little smile twisted up one side of his bruised, swollen mouth. "Chance," he said,

and the unknown, unnamed boy became Chance Mackenzie.

Zane and Chance hadn't become immediate best friends after the fight. What they had

found, instead, was mutual respect, but friendship grew out of it. Over the years, they became

so close that they could well have been born twins. There were other fights between them, but

it was well known around Ruth, Wyoming, that if anyone decided to take on either of the

boys, he would find himself facing both of them. They could batter each other into the ground,

but by God, no one else was going to.

They had entered the Navy together, Zane becoming a SEAL, while Chance had gone

into Naval Intelligence.

Chance had since left the Navy, though, and gone out on his own, while Zane was a

SEAL team leader.

And that brought Wolf to the reason for his restlessness. Zane.

There had been a lot of times in Zane's career when he had been out of touch, when they

hadn't known where he was or what he was doing. Wolf hadn't slept well then, either. He

knew too much about the SEALs, having seen them in action in Vietnam during his tours

of duty. They were the most highly trained and skilled of the special forces, their stamina

and teamwork proven by grueling tests that broke lesser men. Zane was particularly wellsuited for the work, but in the final analysis, the SEALs were still human. They could be killed.

And because of the nature of their work, they were often in dangerous situations.

The SEAL training had merely accentuated the already existing facets of Zane's nature.

He had been honed to a perfect fighting machine, a warrior who was in top condition, but who

used his brain more than his brawn. He was even more lethal and intense now, but he had

learned to temper that deadliness with an easier manner, so that most people were unaware

they were dealing with a man who could kill them in a dozen different ways with his bare hands.

With that kind of knowledge and skill at his disposal, Zane had learned a calm control that kept

him in command of himself. Of all Wolf's offspring, Zane was the most capable of taking care of

himself, but he was also the one in the most danger. Where in hell
was
he?

There was a whisper of movement from the bed, and Wolf looked around as Mary

slipped from between the sheets and joined him at the window, looping her arms around

his hard, trim waist and nestling her head on his bare chest.

"Zane?" she asked quietly, in the darkness.

"Yeah." No more explanation was needed.

"He's all right," she said with a mother's confidence. "I'd know if he wasn't."

Wolf tipped her head up and kissed her, lightly at first, then with growing intensity.

He turned her slight body more fully into his embrace and felt her quiver as she pressed to

him, pushing her hips against his, cradling the rise of his male flesh against her softness. There

had been passion between them from their first meeting, all those years ago, and time hadn't

taken it from them.

He lifted her in his arms and carried her back to bed, losing himself in the welcome

and warmth of her soft body. Afterward, though, lying in the drowsy aftermath, he turned his

face toward the window. Before sleep claimed him, the thought came again. Where was

Zane?

Zane
Mackenzie wasn't happy.

No one aboard the aircraft carrier USS
Montgomery
was happy; well, maybe the cooks

were, but even that was iffy, because the men they were serving were sullen and defensive. The

seamen weren't happy, the radar men weren't happy, the gunners weren't happy, the Marines

weren't happy, the wing commander wasn't happy, the pilots weren't happy, the air boss wasn't

happy, the executive officer wasn't happy, and Captain Udaka sure as hell wasn't happy.

The combined unhappiness of the five thousand sailors on board the carrier didn't begin

to approach Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie's level of unhappiness.

The captain outranked him. The executive officer outranked him. LieutenantCommander Mackenzie addressed them with all the respect due their rank, but both men

were uncomfortably aware that their asses were in a < sling and their careers on the line.

Actually, their careers were probably in the toilet. There wouldn't be any court-martials,

but neither would be there any more promotions, and they would be given the unpopular

commands from now until they either retired or resigned, their choice depending on how clearly

they could read the writing on the wall.

Captain Udaka's broad, pleasant face was one that wore responsibility easily, but now

his expression was set in lines of unhappy acceptance as he met the icy gaze of the lieutenantcommander. SEALs in general made the captain nervous; he didn't quite trust them or the way

they operated outside normal regulations. This one in particular made him seriously want to

be somewhere—anywhere—else.

He had met Mackenzie before, when both he and Boyd, the XO, had been briefed on the

security exercise. The SEAL team under Mackenzie's command would try to breach the

carrier's security, probing for weaknesses that could be exploited by any of the myriad

terrorist groups so common these days. It was a version of the exercises once conducted by the

SEAL Team Six Red Cell, which had been so notorious and so far outside the regulations that it

had been disbanded after seven years of operation. The concept, however, had lived on, in a

more controlled manner. SEAL Team Six was a covert, counterterrorism unit, and one of the

best ways to counter terrorism was to prevent it from happening in the first place, rather than

reacting to it after people were dead. To this end, the security of naval installations and carrier

battle groups was tested by the SEALs, who then recommended changes to correct the

weaknesses they had discovered. There were always weaknesses, soft spots—the SEALs had

never yet been completely thwarted, even though the base commanders and ships' captains

were always notified in advance.

At the briefing, Mackenzie had been remote but pleasant. Controlled. Most SEALs

had a wild, hard edge to them, but Mackenzie had seemed more regular Navy, recruitingposter perfect in his crisp whites and with his coolly courteous manner. Captain Udaka had felt

comfortable with him, certain that Lieutenant-Commander Mackenzie was the

administrational type rather than a true part of those wild-ass SEALs.

He'd been wrong.

The courtesy remained, and the control. The white uniform looked as perfect as it had

before. But there was nothing at all pleasant in the deep voice, or in the cold fury that lit the

pale blue gray eyes so they glittered like moonlight on a knife blade. The aura of danger surrounding him was so strong it was almost palpable, and Captain Udaka knew that he had been

drastically wrong in his assessment of Mackenzie. This was no desk jockey; this was a man

around whom others should walk very lightly indeed. The captain felt as if his skin was being

flayed from his body, strip by strip, by that icy gaze. He had also never felt closer to death

than he had the moment Mackenzie had entered his quarters after learning what had happened.

"Captain, you were briefed on the exercise," Zane said coldly. "Everyone on this ship

was advised, as well as notified that my men wouldn't be carrying weapons of any sort. Explain,

then,
why in hell two of my men were shot!"

The XO, Mr. Boyd, looked at his hands. Captain Udaka's collar felt too tight, except

that it was already unbuttoned, and the only thing choking him was the look in Mackenzie's eyes.

"There's no excuse," he said rawly. "Maybe the guards were startled and fired without

thinking. Maybe it was a stupid, macho turf thing, wanting to show the big bad SEALs that

they couldn't penetrate our security, after all. It doesn't matter. There's no excuse."

Everything that happened on board his ship was, ultimately, his responsibility. The triggerhappy guards would pay for their mistake—and so would he.

"My men had
already
penetrated your security," Zane said softly, his tone making the

hairs stand up on the back of the captain's neck.

"I'm aware of that." The breach of his ship's security was salt in the captain's wounds,

but nothing at all compared to the enormous mistake that had been made when men under his

command had opened fire on the unarmed SEALs. His men, his responsibility. Nor did it help

his feelings that, when two of their team had gone down, the remainder of the SEAL team,

unarmed,
had swiftly taken control and secured the area. Translated, that meant the guards who

had done the shooting had been roughly handled and were now in sick bay with the two

men they had shot. In reality, the phrase "roughly handled" was a euphemism for the fact

that the SEALS had beaten the hell out of his men.

The most seriously wounded SEAL was Lieutenant Higgins, who had taken a bullet in

the chest and would be evacuated by air to Germany as soon as he was stabilized. The

other SEAL, Warrant Officer Odessa, had been shot in the thigh; the bullet had broken his

femur. He, too, would be taken to Germany, but his condition was stable, even if his temper

was not. The ship's doctor had been forced to sedate him to keep him from wreaking

vengeance on the battered guards, two of whom were still unconscious.

The five remaining members of the SEAL team were in Mission Planning, prowling

around like angry tigers looking for someone to maul just to make themselves feel better.

They were restricted to the area by Mackenzie's order, and the ship's crew was giving them a

wide berth. Captain Udaka wished he could do the same with Mackenzie. He had the

impression of cold savagery lurking just beneath the surface of the man's control. There would be

hell to pay for this night's fiasco.

The phone on his desk emitted a harsh
brr.
Though he was relieved by the interruption,

Captain Udaka snatched up the receiver and barked, "I gave orders I wasn't to be—" He

stopped, listening, and his expression changed. His gaze shifted to Mackenzie. "We'll be right

there," he said, and hung up.

"There's a scrambled transmission coming in for you," he said to Mackenzie, rising to his

feet. "Urgent." Whatever message the transmission contained, Captain Udaka looked on it

as a much-welcomed reprieve.

Zane listened intently to the secure satellite transmission, his mind racing as he began

planning the logistics of the mission. "My team is two men short, sir," he said. "Higgins and

Odessa were injured in the security exercise." He didn't say
how
they'd been injured; that

would be handled through other channels.

"Damn it," Admiral Lindley muttered. He was in an office in the US. Embassy in

Athens. He looked up at the others in the office: Ambassador Lovejoy, tall and spare, with

the smoothness bequeathed by a lifetime of privilege and wealth, though now there was a

stark, panicked expression in his hazel eyes; the CIA station chief, Art Sandefer, a nondescript

man with short gray hair and tired, intelligent eyes; and, finally, Mack Prewett, second only to

Sandefer in the local CIA hierarchy. Mack was known in some circles as Mack the Knife;

Admiral Lindley knew Mack was generally considered a man who got things done, a man

whom it was dangerous to cross. For all his decisiveness, though, he wasn't a cowboy who

was likely to endanger people by going off half-cocked. He was as thorough as he was decisive,

and it was through his contacts that they had obtained such good, prompt information in this

case.

The admiral had put Zane on the speakerphone, so the other three in the room had heard