The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (122 page)

Rebecca scowled, but at least she didn’t look ready to hurl.

Maneuvering around her lines, Davidson brought them nearly nose to nose.

“I’m just going to tether us, then cut your shoot. Okay?”

Gulping, Rebecca nodded, seeming more than willing to hand over the landing to him.

“On the count of—”

A shot split the difference between them. More bullets came as men ran through the forest, tracking them. Guess the tribal lord wasn’t just satisfied with the plane wreckage.

“Why are they shooting?”

The better question was why hadn’t they hit them yet. They were sitting ducks up here. Then Davidson realized their strategy. They weren’t trying to hit them. They were trying to hit their parachutes. They were forcing them down onto the tribal lands.

“They want us for ransom,” Davidson said quietly, trying to keep to the task at hand. Getting Rebecca and him tethered.

“Ransom?” she repeated, clearly trying to wrap her head around the idea.

He didn’t have time to explain that a major part of rural African economy was ransom. And people falling out of an expensive Learjet? Even better. Given the fact that Rebecca was in a wedding dress and all the men were in tuxes. The best.

Little did the tribesmen know they’d downed a Special Forces team. Davidson would let them figure it out once they were on the ground and could marshal some defenses.

His fingers fumbled as he tried to latch on the carabiner. Then another shot, one that sliced through Rebecca’s canopy, ripped her out of his grip. He tried to hold on to her as Rebecca’s fingers dug into the flesh of his palm, but his scars spasmed and she was gone.

The tear in the skirt spread like wildfire as she flailed to get control of the damaged parachute. She didn’t have the experience to do it, though, evidenced by her rapid, haphazard descent.

There was only one thing left to do.

* * *

Rebecca’s body was jerked to the left as the wind caught the intact portion of her parachute. She picked up speed as the gust carried her past a peak. Davidson, however, was drifting down like a good skydiver would. Then he pulled out his gun.

Too late, she realized what he was planning on doing.

“No!” she screamed.

Davidson pulled the trigger anyway, shooting at his own parachute. Dear God, she loved military men, but they were freaking crazy. The newly damaged parachute bucked and fought him. However, Davidson had far more control than she did. As a matter of fact, he rapidly gained speed and accuracy, coming right for her.

Unfortunately, the tear in his chute angled to the left, ripping a huge hole in the fabric, dragging the chute away from her. Davidson had to follow. With a desperate cry of “Rebecca,” the private disappeared behind the peak.

She would cry too, except that green jungle was coming up fast. Unable to guide the chute, Rebecca let go of the handles and covered her face. Her body slammed sideways into the thick vegetation. Through her arms, she could see leaves flapping and branches snapping. Her leg hit a tree trunk and bounced off of it.

The parachute got caught in the foliage, threatening to nearly tear her in half. Then she was falling again as the fabric tore away. Birds burst all around her, startled by her falling form. Monkeys hooted in the distance, and still, she fell. Something snagged her cheek. Her dress ripped. A bone-white shoe dropped off, and still, she fell.

Then her harness caught on a branch, jerking her to a sudden stop. The slightly stretchy material sprang her up, then down, bouncing her like a baby in a swing.

The sole problem? She was a good twenty meters from the forest floor.

But you know what? She’d take it.

* * *

Davidson ran through the dense underbrush, heading toward the sound of the shots. It was about ten degrees off the path he’d calculated for Rebecca, but if he could gather a few more men, all the better.

Raising his weapon, he jumped a moss-covered log and burst into a small clearing. Four guns turned toward him. Luckily, they were his team. Half a dozen bodies littered the ground. Guess the tribesmen had gotten in a little over their heads.

“Where’s Rebecca?” Lopez asked.

Gulping air, shame burnt Davidson’s face. “Her chute…she got…I lost her.”

“They were shooting at all of us,” Levont said.

Davidson glared at the new point man. Having someone defend him made his failure sting all the worse.

“Whatever,” Lopez said, gathering ammunition and weapons from the dead men. “We’ll catch up with her.”

“Are you sure?” Talli asked.

Both Davidson and Lopez glared at the supposed sniper.

“Whoa,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’m not saying someone shouldn’t go after her, but we have a narrow window of opportunity to get in ahead of Brandt. I’m just saying we put the majority of our manpower to laying the ambush.”

The man was correct, which bugged the crap out of Davidson. His shame had prevented him from seeing the whole picture.

“Talli’s right,” Davidson admitted. “I’ll head out and catch up with you at the rally point.”

Levont stepped in front of him, though. “You are kidding, right?”

Davidson looked to Lopez.

The corporal nodded. “Davidson did just fine last week.”

“That was with an entire team. With vehicles, sticking to the roads,” Levont pressed. “But out here? In the jungle? How much forest tracking experience do you have?”

Still bristling from the prickle of shame, Davidson was not in the mood to be questioned. “Enough.”

“Do you speak Lingala?” Levont asked bluntly. “Dude, you are a white guy in a tux who doesn’t even speak the official language of the country. How far exactly do you think you are getting?”

“He’s got a point,” Lopez stated.

“No.” Davidson had lost her. He had to get Rebecca back.

Lopez dug his shoe into the dirt. “We’ve got GPS coordinates to guide us back to the village. Finding Rebecca out here in this”—the corporal indicated to the dripping leaves that formed a green sky above their heads—”is going to take some mad skills.”

They shouldn’t even been having this discussion. If Brandt were here, they wouldn’t be. Brandt would already have struck out after Rebecca.

“We’ve got to give Rebecca
and
Brandt the best chance at survival,” Lopez concluded.

“I’ll find her,” Levont added. “Or die trying, I swear.”

“We’re not soldiers,” Talli chimed in. “We are a team. We’ve got to work as one.”

Great. Talli being more logical than him. It didn’t get much worse than that.

Lopez must have read Davidson’s capitulation before Davidson even knew that he capitulated.

“Levont,” Lopez said, handing him several extra weapons, “go.”

“My last spotting marked her about eleven degrees north by northwest.”

With a nod, the tall black man took the guns and ammo, tucking them into his tux’s pocket as he turned and headed into the forest. Davidson watched Levont’s back until it disappeared amongst the foliage.

Talli struck out in the opposite direction. Still, Davidson stood rooted in place. Not sure which direction to head.

Lopez patted him on the back. “I am going to leave it up to you,” the corporal said, then turned, walking backward. He looked over his shoulder, apparently making sure Talli was out of earshot before whispering harshly. “But
damn
, I could use a
real
sniper on this rescue mission.”

Davidson sighed. Brandt’s chances did go down sharply if he didn’t join them. Whereas, Rebecca’s chances were best with Levont.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Davidson said as he followed Lopez.

“That and taking the plane elevator,” Lopez frowned. “I need to get a better name for it, but you get what I mean.”

Unfortunately, Davidson did.

* * *

Brandt braced himself as the open-aired Jeep slid in the thick mud. If the driver didn’t correct, they were about to go off the side of a very steep cliff. Thankfully, the driver was probably born and raised amongst these treacherous, slick mountain “roads,” as he turned into the spin, hitting the gas, bumping them up and over the mudslide.

However, the Jeep in front of them did not fare so well. It couldn’t fight the force of gravity as the rear wheels went over the edge. The men tried to scramble from the vehicle as it hung from its front tires, but again, those laws of physics didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass. Which apparently neither did the men’s team. No one so much as reached a hand out as the Jeep slipped from its perch and plummeted down the side of the cliff, the men’s screams filling the misty mountain air.

Then quiet returned to the jungle.

“See what the problem is,” the lead mercanary barked at the driver.

Using his legs, Brandt lifted himself off the seat and looked ahead, finding the problem that had brought this little convey to a screeching halt. Ahead of the lead Jeep was a huge gouge in the road. More than likely the Congonese government’s countermeasure to rebel activities. It was a common ploy. Cutting gouges in the road stopped motorized vehicles from disappearing back into the jungle, which made it much harder for the rebels to make blinding strikes in the lowlands. It could take hours to build any kind of stopgap measure to get across.

Brandt had never been so glad for a ruthless, oppressive government in his life.

Until now, the Disciples had been well organized and executed a Special Forces–style snatch. Too bad their luck seemed to have run out. As everyone’s did eventually. Had the Disciples prepared for this contingency? They were now six men down. Which meant that Brandt was still facing twelve-to-one odds. Odds that were now doable.

“Frellan, we will have to go by foot,” the merc leader stated as he grabbed his pack from the Jeep. The Disciple didn’t seem any too happy by the fact. Guess the guy didn’t do as much research on the African side of this mission as he should have.

Brandt and his team had met with a similar problem last week, approaching from the eastern slope. However, they had brought sturdy planking along. Lopez had gotten them underway within ten minutes. Clearly, Frellan didn’t have anyone of Lopez’s caliber, which meant if they wanted to get the Jeeps across, they would have to stop, cut down trees, craft planks out of them, and hope they held the Jeep’s weight.

And every hour they delayed here trying to build their bridge on a sliding slope of mud was an hour the army could spot them and send in troops.

Guess the Disciples were learning the hard way that Africa was a fickle mistress.

Worse, the group had only made it halfway up the mountain, and even the Jeep’s engines had strained at the grade. There was no way Brandt was going to make it in his current condition. And Frellan knew it.

The tattooed man drew in a deep breath. “Administer the antidote.”

Brandt kept his face placid, neutral, accepting.

But on the inside? Oh. On the inside, he was grinning ear to ear.

CHAPTER 5

══════════════════

Pentagon, Washington, DC

10:59 a.m. (EST)

Bunny sat in a room not all that unlike the one back in South Carolina. Painted gray, with no windows and a stark metal table. Guess the Pentagon wasn’t big on spending their budget on interior decor. She shifted in her chair, trying to get comfortable. Even in a borrowed pair of slacks and a blouse from Emily, Bunny still felt woefully underdressed. The few people they had met coming in through the south parking entrance were in full dress uniform.

She sipped on her can of Fresca. Emily remembered her well, even the exceedingly rare flavor of grapefruit mint. Setting the can down carefully so as not to spill anything on the dozens of files scattered on the table, Bunny reached for the report on Brandt’s last mission.

These after-action reports read about as easily as a freshman’s term paper. For all of Brandt’s virtues, engaging prose was not one of them.

The door swung open as Emily and Prenner rushed in. Neither could hide the look on their faces. Bunny popped up from her chair.

“What happened? Is it Brandt?”

Bunny knew that he had activated his tracker and the Disciples had taken him back to Africa, but had his usefulness run its course?

Emily gulped, nodding to the chair. Bunny didn’t sit down. The woman sighed. “No. Brandt is still en route to the African village. No…” Emily gulped again. “The plane we believe was carrying Corporal Lopez’s team and Dr. Monroe was shot down deep within the Congo basin.”

Bunny sat down. Hard. “Are you sure it was them?”

“Just before it was downed, it looked like someone was trying to break the sound barrier with a Learjet,” Prenner answered.

Okay, the lieutenant was right. That had to be Lopez, then. But if Lopez was at the helm, how the hell did they get shot down?

“The Disciples?” she asked.

Her CIA handler shook her head. “The last satellite images we had showed a tribe on the move. I think this was simply a matter of opportunity for them.”

“Okay, then,” Bunny stated, shifting her mind out of freak-out mode and into figure-it-the-hell-out mode. “You guys have obviously scrambled some kind of rescue effort.”

By the shared pained expression on Emily and Prenner’s face, that was a big fat
no
.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, though. The men’s mission last week had been uber secret. A last ditch effort, as a matter of fact. The African country was on the brink of civil war at all times. Trying to negotiate even the most basic humanitarian aid was fraught with danger. Add in a major American military move? That spelled disaster.

“So they are on their own?” Bunny asked despite already knowing the answer.

“Which is why we need to figure out the Disciples’ angle. I have assets in the region, but I can’t engage them until we know the end game,” Emily said as she sat down across from Bunny. The CIA operative pushed the after-action reports toward Bunny. “There has got to be something in here that gives us a clue.”

Bunny shoved the papers back. “I’ve been over them a thousand times. There is
nothing
in there.”

“What about what
isn’t
in there?” Prenner suggested.