Spy Hard (20 page)

His hour had been up ten minutes ago. Cristobal’s men were probably at the gate, waiting for the handover.

Jase watched from the window he picked for his first station, ready for them if they started rolling down the path that led to the hacienda. Had he more time, he could have rigged some explosives and booby traps. But no one ever had enough time to do everything on an op. You did the best you could and made sure it was enough.

Rifle fire sounded from the direction of the gate. Then more guns from the back. The battle was back on.

The men would soon figure out that nobody was returning fire. But they would still move slowly, careful in case they faced some kind of a trap.

Long minutes passed before Jase saw the first of them, keeping low, keeping in cover. Then others came, clearing one building after the other, kicking the bodies on the ground to make sure they were really dead. When they were close enough to the hacienda so that Jase knew every one of his bullets would find its target, he opened fire.

He stood in one of the front corner rooms that had one window looking to the front, the other one to the side, so he could single-handedly keep two sides of the building protected. He laid down some serious fire, then ran to the Don’s office, the corner room in the back, and did the same there.

Cristobal’s men pulled back. They had no idea how many enemies were holed up in the house, but they could see it was a well-defensible position. Jase had the higher ground and solid cover, while they would have to come out in the open to reach the place.

He alternated among the dozen windows, exchanging fire with the enemy as they continued searching the camp. Half an hour passed as more and more men arrived and took up positions around the hacienda. If they decided to rush the place all at once, he was finished. The key was to make them think the Don had overwhelming force inside the building, dozens of men who could hold their positions indefinitely.

The fighters outside tested him, varying the direction and the intensity of the attacks. He stood up to the test, guessing their every move before they made it.

“Hand over the Don,” came the demand from behind a stack of logs, at last.

Jase answered it with a hail of bullets. He needed a good show of strength. His ribs hurt, blood seeped from the bullet hole in his side. He drank to replenish fluids, but couldn’t do much beyond that.

Time seemed to crawl. Exhaustion slowed him, and the evac team was still at least an hour away.

So when Cristobal himself called out, “All I want is the Don,” Jase responded.

“Okay, okay. Give us some time to talk about this.”

He used this new ceasefire to drink some more water and check on Melanie.

She looked pale and uncomfortable.

“Are you in pain?”

She looked away from him. “No.”

His muscles tensed. “Where does it hurt?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I need to know what’s going on with you. It’s the only way I can plan for all contingencies.”

She looked at her feet. “I think that spotting in the forest might have been the mucus plug.”

He cringed. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed for the answer. Sounded like one of those feminine mystery things a man was better off not knowing about. But because it concerned
her,
he asked anyway. “The what?”

“It usually indicates the beginning of labor.”

He stopped breathing there for a second. “Have you had any contractions?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Melanie?”

“Yes.”

Cold fear cut through him. He would rather have faced a force twice as large as Cristobal’s, with tanks, than have to be within ten miles of a woman in labor. “Are you sure?”

She had the presence and energy to laugh at him.

Good to know that one of them still had their sense of humor.

A million questions flew threw his head. Somehow he managed to articulate one. “How soon will the baby come?”

“I don’t think these things can be predicted.”

“Can you hold it in?”

“Yeah.” She laughed again. “How about I cross my legs?”

He glared at her for making fun of him. “Call me if you need me,” he said, then fled to check on the Don, his mind a beehive of unsettling thoughts and images.

The drug boss growled at him from behind the gag as Jase stepped into the room. Blind, dark fury clouded his eyes. He would have killed Jase if he could. And yet, at the moment, Jase felt more comfortable in this room than in the other one. Violence he understood. He had skills to deal with that. He had no idea what to do with a laboring woman.

“Relax, amigo.” He passed by the man. “Right now, I’m the only thing standing between you and Cristobal, who wants to tear you limb from limb.”

He checked outside from each window, scanned the camp in every direction. Cristobal’s men kept in cover, but were relaxed. Some were even smoking. They didn’t think they needed to keep their locations concealed. While the exchange of gunfire had shown them that the hacienda was well-defended, from the number of bodies around the camp they had pretty much figured out that the Don wouldn’t have a large enough force left to risk a breakout and try to match the invading force man for man.

Jase checked his guns, made sure they were all loaded, then checked in on Melanie again. Again, she insisted that she was fine, not that he bought it. The tight lines of tension around her eyes told another story.

The grace period of this latest ceasefire lasted about half an hour before Cristobal lost his patience and ordered another attack.

It started out badly. A bullet grazed Jase’s left eyebrow almost immediately. Other than ripping off half the eyebrow, it wasn’t a big deal, but then blood began trickling into his eye. And the men were shooting like crazy. He didn’t have time to stop and stanch the wound with a makeshift bandage. He kept wiping it with the back of his hand and blinking, but the dripping blood interfered with his vision and his aim. Which slowed his return fire.

The bastards outside thought that the inside force was weakening and launched an all-around attack—just what he didn’t need.

Pretty soon, the enemy figured out that there weren’t as many people inside the hacienda as they had thought, and pushed forward all at once, from every direction. The fight reached a critical point. The battle could be lost in minutes if he couldn’t hold the attackers back.

Then Melanie appeared in the doorway. “I want to help.”

“Go back to bed. You need to stay off your feet.” He kept shooting.

“If they break into the house, none of that is going to matter.”

He gritted his teeth. “Can you handle a gun?”

“You could teach me.”

“No time for that.”

“I have a good arm.”

“What?”

“Baseball. I played on the women’s team at the university.”

He glanced back. Maybe she was delirious from pain.

But she shuffled closer, grabbed a grenade from the floor next to him—he’d been saving those for later—pulled the pin, popped up from behind him and let the grenade fly.

She’d aimed at a group of men who’d been shooting the house from behind a pile of wood. The grenade cleared the stack of logs and went down right behind it. The force of the explosion sent three men into the air.

“It doesn’t hurt all the time,” she said behind him. “Just the contractions. I feel fine in-between.” She lobbed another grenade.

He stared at her, frankly filled with admiration. “Look at you now.”

She put her chin up. “I’m done hiding behind other people’s backs.”

He squeezed off a couple of rounds before he responded. “Go to the back of the house. Take as many grenades as you can. And sit down, for heaven’s sake.” He couldn’t really afford to take his eyes off the enemy, but he glanced back anyway and caught her gaze one more time. “Be careful.”

“I’m fighting for my baby,” she said, as she gathered up two dozen grenades in her shirt.

Which gave him an idea. He squeezed off a few more rounds, then ran off to grab the Don and drag him back to the front room with him. He pulled the rag from the man’s mouth.

“This is how it’s going to go. I shoot, you throw the grenades.”

“Who the hell are you?” The man’s eyes blazed with heat.

They had no time for that. “These are your choices: if Cristobal gets his hands on you, you’re dead. You help me fight him off, and you’ll get a comfortable cell in a U.S. prison, three square meals, cable TV, you can go to college and get a law degree or whatever.”

The Don looked like he was ready to strangle him. But he nodded. He probably figured he’d get away from Jase later. “Give me a gun.”

“I don’t think so.” A gun could be too easily turned against him. But if the Don dropped a grenade in the room, they’d both be killed. He untied the man’s hands, ready for an attack, but the Don seemed smart enough to have gotten his point. Good. “Aim and throw. Get busy.”

The attackers were getting too damned close to the building.

Melanie was holding off the men in the back, though. Explosions shook the air regularly, coming from that direction.

The three of them working together pushed back the next wave of attack successfully.

But as much as having the Don helped, he also slowed Jase down, since he had to keep an eye on the man and he could no longer run from room to room to check all around the building without dragging the guy behind him.

And that was a giant drawback, he acknowledged silently, as a loud crash came from below.

Jase swore. That had to be one of the boarded-up windows. Somebody had just made his way in.

Their defenses had been breached.

And the evac team was still nowhere in sight.

Defending the top of the stairs was the name of the game at this stage, so Jase rushed to take that strategic position, taking the Don with him. The man had stuffed his pockets full of grenades, so he was supplied for a while.

Melanie limped down the hall for more hand grenades, then went to cover the area outside the breached window so no additional attackers could come in. Jase couldn’t believe she could still think at this stage, let alone put up a fight.

He couldn’t watch her for long. He had to turn his attention back to the melee. Then a shout from the Don distracted him for a second from the man who’d broken through and had now taken up position downstairs.

One of his bullets hit the Don in the shoulder and he went down. Right shoulder. He wouldn’t be much help after this. Which was fine. Too many hand grenades going off inside the house wouldn’t be a good thing anyway. The explosions could weaken the structure enough so the whole building would collapse.

At least the army had never materialized, Jase thought, trying to think of some silver lining. Maybe they were on the take from both sides. He needed something good to hang on to.

Then he finally got a clean shot of the man below and took him out. The enemy fighter went down, leaving red splash marks behind him on the wall.

Not wanting to waste the momentary break, Jase ran to Melanie.

“Still okay?”

“First babies don’t come so fast. Quit worrying.”

He ran to the other side of the house to look out that way. Men were right up by the wall, trying to breach another boarded-up window. There were probably more up front, doing the same. He pointed his gun out and down and shot randomly, scattering them. When they returned fire, he pulled back in and ran to the front to do some damage control there, but was stopped halfway by a keening sound.

Melanie.

He changed course immediately. “Are you hit?”

No answer came.

*

T
HE SUDDEN CONTRACTION
took her breath away. This was different than the others. This one meant it.

She dropped the grenade, just barely outside the window. It blew up right at the foot of the wall and shook the building. Okay, she was now officially doing more damage than good. Time to quit.

Even from her sitting position she could see Cristobal’s men rush in from every direction. They knew the defense team was weakening, and they were moving in for the kill.

There were too many of them. She could hear them breaking through the boarded-up windows and coming in downstairs.

“I’m coming,” Jase shouted to her, but from the sound of his gun, she figured he’d been stopped at the top of the stairs, trying to hold them back from coming up.

She could no longer help. She glanced at the Don’s bed in the far corner and stood from the chair to waddle over there. Her water broke halfway to her destination.

She braced her back against the wall as another contraction gripped her. The baby was definitely coming.

She desperately wanted to live long enough to see her son born. When the contraction passed, she moved forward. A short burst of gunfire sounded just outside her door. Then silence.

Was Jase hit? She detoured that way with what little strength she had left.

“Get back!” he yelled as soon as he spotted her. “I got this.”

His tone and expression were grim. He was bleeding from several wounds, his face was messed up.

Her heart turned over in her chest. He was protecting her to his dying breath, like he’d promised. She’d never met anyone like him. In another life…if things had been different…

But no amount of valor could stand against the overwhelming force they faced. Tears burned her eyes as she realized they weren’t going to make it.

She could see out the front window from where she stood. More of Cristobal’s thugs were rushing toward the hacienda. Trying to get to the bed no longer mattered, so she simply leaned against the wall and looked at Jase. At best, they had minutes left to live.

But then she saw something strange happen outside. One of the attacking men in the back of the group fell and didn’t get up. Definitely not Jase’s doing. He had his gun trained on the stairs inside.

Then she saw another of Cristobal’s men fall outside, then another, taken out by a phantom enemy from the forest. Yet she heard no gunfire coming from the jungle.

Maybe she was hallucinating out of sheer desperation, seeing what she wanted to see.