Read On Thin Ice (Special Ops) Online

Authors: Capri Montgomery

On Thin Ice (Special Ops) (2 page)

BOOK: On Thin Ice (Special Ops)
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“I’m tired,” Nathan bemoaned.

 

“Tired or dead,” Jet snapped as he took aim at another guy closing in on them. “It’s up to you.” He kept moving and was glad to know Nathan had kept moving with him. He reached the vehicle he had stashed to take them the rest of the way to the plane. They were ten klicks away and he knew, or at least he hoped, that they could make it.

 

He took off like the proverbial bat out of hell, taking the curves of the mountain roads fast.

 

“Slow down,” Nathan told him.

 

“Those guys aren’t far behind us. Once they get to their own vehicle they’ll be on us. We don’t have the luxury of slowing down.” He took another curve doing nearly eighty when the posted signs listed the speed at thirty-five. “Now stop distracting me.” He was doing fine with his attention to driving so far; he just didn’t want to hear Nathan continue to complain.

 

Reaching the plane had been easy enough; getting Nathan on board had taken a miracle to restrain his fist from connecting with the man’s face and knocking him out.
 
Nathan obviously felt that he could stop and take a breather. Jet shook his head wondering what the man needed a breather for when he had been sitting in the car through the entire drive.

 

Fortunately Julian had seen them driving up so he knew they were coming in hot and he had started the plane. Once Nathan was up the steps and Jet cleared the door as well, he shut it, locked it and gave the order to hit it hard. “We have to go,” he told Julian because he knew the man would understand the brevity of the situation. Unlike Nathan, Julian hadn’t spent precious time harping on the smell he brought onto the plane with him.

 

Jet sat a little easier knowing they were in the air, but not entirely easy because he didn’t know if these guys had access to a jet to come after them and cripple their escape. It wasn’t until they cleared U.S. airspace that he breathed easily. Breathing deeply wasn’t advisable because he stunk—badly. The guys were never going to let him off the hook for tracking horse crap onto the plane, but at least he had gotten the package out safely. Once he handled the handoff he was going home, strip out of those clothes and shower. Heck, he was going to have to strip before he went inside his house. He was going to have to strip in the front yard because there was no way he was going to have hardened horse dung all over his hardwood floors. Maybe he would just burn the clothing. It wasn’t as if he would be able to get that smell out of them—at least not real easily. Burning the clothes seemed like the best idea to him. He could start a bonfire right there in the patio fire pit, but that would probably stink up the area. Maybe he would just bag them and let the garbage men take care of it. His main concern was washing the crap off his body, and trying, to get the smell out of his nose.

 

“Thank you,” Nathan’s voice pulled Jet out of his inner ramblings. “You risked your life for mine and I do appreciate that. I thought they would do something more diplomatic though.”

 

Jet growled. The man had just thanked him and insulted his means of operation all at the same time.

 

“I mean, using one’s brain is better than force.”

 

Jet gripped the armrest on his chair. The only way a brain would be used in a situation like that would be if it were stopping a bullet. This guy didn’t realize the government had already tried the diplomatic approach and had gotten nowhere. They didn’t just call on his team because they were too lazy to try other avenues. They called on them because they were their last resort and his last chance at getting out of there alive. They could have risked their own SEAL team or even their own special ops extraction team, but they hadn’t. They had called in a favor from Preston and Jet was the man who got the assignment. At least they were getting paid well for this one. In fact, Preston had gotten a little better lately with demanding full payment upfront and the money was already in the account. They wouldn’t have to worry about the wheels on the government money mobile turning as slow as they usually did when they owed them money.

 

They all loved the job, and they did it with honor, but at the end of the day they all had bills to pay. They all had responsibilities to live up to, and they all had the basic needs of life. They were for hire, and demanding their pay up front from everybody just made sense. They had all concluded that the government assignments shouldn’t get special treatment—not on the financial side of things anyway. There was no doubt that a few of those government assignments had gotten special treatment simply because the request came from somebody they held great respect for and had been connected to while in the military. If it weren’t for that there were probably a few government assignments they would have turned down.

 

By the time he handled the handoff to a few not so enthused about his smell handlers, he was ready to find a place that was devoid of other humans. Preston had met him on the airstrip. “New cologne?” He had teased and Jet grumbled out something, he couldn’t even remember what at this point but he was sure it wasn’t anything nice. Preston had obviously taken the hint because he left him alone until all the paperwork of the handoff was signed and finalized.

 

“Get your report to me as fast as you can, Jet. But um…shower first okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “Send me after a sniveling idiot who alerts the hostage takers to our exit because of his stupid lab coat.”

 

“Bad rescue huh?”

 

“I wanted to shoot him myself,” he grumbled. “Oh and since I went through hell you can take care of getting the stench out the plane.”

 

Preston laughed. “I know it’s not funny, Jet, but this is the crankiest I’ve ever seen you after a mission. I think you need to ask Charlie to give you a rubdown or something.”

 

“We broke up before I left,” he said.

 

“What happened?”

 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” And on those words he was out the door, ready to haul tail to get home, get naked and get showered. The report would simply have to wait.

 
 

Chapter Two

 

J
et sat looking at the big screen monitor in the break room. He and Alex were holding down the fort while Preston went off on one of his own missions and Natalia and Micah finally got their honeymoon. He watched the woman on screen with keen interest. He could see the soft glow of her deep brown, almost ash eyes. Her eyes had a subtle slant that came from her mother’s side, the Japanese and Pilipino mix, and her skin had a slightly bronzed look that she definitely acquired through her father’s DNA. Aaron Bowman was a black man with light golden skin and hazel eyes. Akira had taken a hint of his color, but her skin color was different, like a mix of both her mother and her father’s DNA shaken up to create a look that was exotic and unique.

 

She took a lot of her strengths from her parents. Her mother, Sakura, was a homemaker. She was the woman who was in charge of making sure Akira had the best homeschooling education, was always on time for her training, and never went lacking in the basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter and love. She was really the glue that held the family together. Her hard work, support and determination to make sure Akira was able to reach her best potential had really helped the family keep functioning.

 

Aaron’s role in the family wasn’t small by any means. He was tall and moderately skinny and while people may have underestimated his strength, they never underestimated his intelligence. The man hadn’t worked his way up to being a multibillionaire by being lazy or stupid. He had worked hard. He had instilled that same work ethic in his daughter. He had even installed an ice rink on their property so she could practice without needing to schedule private ice time. He had hired the best trainers for her from the skating trainer to her ballet instructor, Aaron made sure Akira had what she needed to reach her skating goals. She had one Olympic gold medal, but had also won several World Figure Skating Championships and U.S. Figure Skating Championships. She had sometimes, in her early career, placed second, taking home the silver twice, but once she started placing first she held on to that ranking.

 

Her passion is what kept her going, not the medals, the awards or the stardom.
 
“She has silvers and gold,” her father had said in a television interview; “but she’s more priceless than all of them combined.” She was always pushing the limits, he had said. That was true. She had precision on her triple Axel jumps, the triple loops she loved to do, and the double salchow, along with other moves, but she was always trying to create beautiful, individually artistic routines. She was always pushing the envelope on her jumps, trying to increase them, make them higher with more rotation. She had been the first to pull off a quadruple Axel in competition; she hadn’t hit it in practice. She had sustained several bruises and almost one serious injury, but even though her coach pulled it from her program Akira wouldn’t be stopped. She put the jump back in while she was on the ice. She didn’t tell anybody she was doing it, she just did it and she nailed it. That jump, along with her artistic program had won her the Olympic gold. Her father had been sure to tell Jet of how unhappy, and happy, her coach, Keiko Takahashi had been. She was happy they won, but not so happy that Akira had taken the risk. She was still proud of her and from the pictures Jet had seen Keiko was all smiles in every photo opportunity, with her arm wrapped around Akira in a protective and proud manner. “She hates the media attention,” her father had said. “She was always so nervous about it so Keiko was always the mother when we weren’t allowed to be behind the scenes or in the interviews. Akira felt safe with her.”

 

He wasn’t sure why Aaron had given him so much information, but he had and Jet had filed it away in his mental database while trying to tell himself not to make his admiration anything more than professional respect. How could he not respect her? Despite risk of injury she never held back. She was a lot like her father in that regards. He never gave up or allowed other people to dictate what he was and was not capable of doing and neither did she.
 
Between Aaron and Sakura Jet couldn’t imagine Akira turning out any differently than the determined young woman she was.

 

Akira was smart, talented, hard working and ambitious, which Jet found admirable. She didn’t give up; she wouldn’t give up. She pushed herself harder than most kids ever pushed themselves. Akira was one of the best ice skaters in the world. Even though she wasn’t competing as much now, she wasn’t going for the gold, she was still skating, touring, and helping other young skaters perfect their skill when she could. She liked getting involved and helping people. She had a heart of gold and diamonds and that was all genuine Akira. She was also soft and smooth and beautiful and he liked her, but she was just too young for him. Despite her profession of love for him he knew she couldn’t feel that and he shouldn’t feel it for her, but he couldn’t turn off the television.

 

It was crazy that he had even met her. It was crazy that he even had to remind himself not to start to like this girl, because that’s what she was in his opinion, too much or in the wrong way. He had met her father two years earlier. He had once upon a time been one of their packages. He had gone over to South Korea; at the time the Squadron had been told Aaron had gone to North Korea when he shouldn’t have. Aaron told the story differently. He said he had gone over to South Korea and ended up being abducted, taken to North Korea and held captive. Jet believed that summary of events over the lies the government had told him. Either way it went Jet had to go over to North Korea to get him when legally he shouldn’t have. This rescue mission was sanctioned, although not legally so, via a close confident of the President of the United States. Basically that was their way of telling Preston that whatever man went over there was on his own if he got caught because they would deny all involvement and would never own up to being the ones to ask an American to go over there.

 

Aaron had friends in high places and they wanted the man brought home. That job had been Jet’s assignment and because of getting him home, even with all the hush-hush secrecy over where Aaron was being held, there was still one of those fancy parties Preston hated attending so much. Fortunately for Preston he wasn’t on the invite list, but Jet was. He didn’t want to go. He wanted to get back out there and go retrieve the next package, but he didn’t have a choice. At that party is where he first met Akira. When he first saw her it was because he had arrived early. Sakura had told him to arrive at four, but apparently the party didn’t actually start until six. Aaron had taken him around his property, stopping at the ice rink. “She’s still practicing. She’ll be late if I don’t tell her to get out of there and get ready.” He had asked Jet to come in with him. They were just getting a visual on the ice when Keiko approached from the other side door. She had gone to take a call she had said. When they reached the ice Akira was gearing up for something, a jump he assumed but ice skating wasn’t in his database back then. What he did realize was that Keiko, the woman Aaron had introduced to him as his “daughter’s” trainer, had the look of fear on her face.

BOOK: On Thin Ice (Special Ops)
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