WAR: Disruption (27 page)

The pleasure continued to ratchet up until once again the pressure became too much and she exploded. Only this time, Max was with her. She heard his satisfied roar mingle with her own exultant cry. She stroked her hand down the back of his head to his neck and along his spine. Realized that he still wore his shirt.

She heard an odd sound from the jungle and froze. “Did you hear that?” She glanced toward the trees.

“What?” He pushed away from her and withdrew.

“I don’t know.”

Max removed the used condom, tied it off, and set it beside her on the hood. Then his hands settled gently on her hips. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said quietly.

Her mouth quirked up on one side. “Yeah, I kinda gathered that.”

“Smartass.” He tapped her on the tip of her nose and she grinned at him. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt this lighthearted.

The sound came again. “There. Hear it? It sounds like someone’s cutting wood.”

“Yeah, I hear it.” He stepped away from her and yanked up his pants. “Get inside the Jeep.”

Obeying the urgency in his command, she slid off the hood, pulled up her panties and pants, and refastened her bra and her top. “Why? What is it?”

“That sound is called a grunt. It’s a male leopard’s way of warning us this is his territory.”

“Oh.” The leopard called out again, and this time it sounded even closer. Emily snatched up the night vision goggles from where she’d dropped them and darted toward the driver’s seat. Remembering her backpack and camera, she started to turn back, but saw that Max had already tossed them into the passenger seat.

They’d just closed the doors when a shadow detached itself from the trees. Emily wanted to turn on the headlights so she could see better, but was afraid that she’d scare the big cat away. Instead, she watched the leopard through the lens on her camera.

“Wow,” she breathed. The leopard strolled toward the Jeep with the aggressiveness and arrogance of a predator defending his territory. She fired off a series of shots, hoping that the windshield wasn’t distorting the images too much.

The spotted cat stalked without hesitation to the side of the Jeep where she and Max had just made love. For one panicked moment Emily feared that Max had left the condom sitting there, but then she saw that the hood was empty. Wanting a better view, she crawled over to the passenger seat and put one knee between Max’s legs and the other on the floor.

The leopard sniffed the side of the Jeep and the ground beneath it, then glanced up at her. Max’s hand tipped her head forward. “Don’t meet its eyes,” he whispered.

With her head bent, she peered up at the cat through her lashes. The leopard grunted so loudly, chills slithered down her spine. After a couple more grunts, the leopard peed on the Jeep’s front wheel, looked around, then leapt onto the hood. He turned his head toward Emily, staring at her through the windshield.

She cowered back and dropped her eyes. “Easy, Em. He can’t get through the glass.” Max touched her back between her shoulder blades. The reminder that she wasn’t alone, that she was safe, pulled her back from the primitive fear she felt at the leopard’s challenge.

The leopard swiped at her with his paw. His claws scraped down the windshield. Shaking his head, he backed up. Swiped at her again. When he still failed to connect with Emily, he grunted, then paced across the hood several times, his tail switching. Finally, he grunted another challenge, then peed on the hood before leaping off and stalking back into the jungle.

Emily let out a shaky laugh and clambered back to her own seat. “Oh. My. God. That was amazing. Scary, but so damn cool.”

“Yeah.” Max leaned over and brushed a kiss across her cheek. “I know you must be exhausted, but we need to find somewhere else to camp tonight. Just in case he comes back. I can drive.”

Emily shook her head. “It’s okay, I’ll drive. We won’t go far, right?”

“Just until we’ve put a little space between us. Leopards have a huge territory, but hopefully he won’t bother us again if he thinks he’s run us off.”

“All right.” As she drove, Emily told Max what the villagers had found and how she’d spotted the piece in the gully. “I think the rest of the plane is down at the bottom.”

“Good work.”

Max’s voice sounded strained, so Emily glanced over at him. “Max? Are you okay?”

He didn’t respond, just put his hand on her thigh and squeezed lightly. She thought back over what she’d said. “Max, it all worked out. The villagers didn’t spot me.”

His grip tightened. “That…” He shook his head. “That was too close. What if they’d been hostile? If they’d been actively searching for you?”

She didn’t want to remember the fear she’d felt when she’d heard the voices. Didn’t want to risk triggering a panic attack, so she tried to make light of it. “Yes, well, you’ve trained me well. I’m much better at sneaking through the jungle than before.”

Max just shook his head.

By the time they reached the road, the energy boost Emily had experienced during their bout of lovemaking had evaporated. “Where to? I have to warn you, if you want to cover a lot of distance, then you’ll have to drive. I’m on the verge of collapse.”

“Pull over to the other side and find the first level place that’s out of sight. We could both use a good night’s sleep.”

Hallelujah! For once, the man wasn’t going to ask her to push her limits.

No, that was unfair. He hadn’t pushed her out of spite, but necessity.

Regardless, when she finally found a place for them to spend the night, she barely had the energy to force down the food Max insisted she eat before she stretched out in the cargo compartment and fell into a deep sleep.

Day Ten

AFTER SLEEPING LATE the next morning, Max watched as Emily quickly and efficiently cleaned and bandaged her bloody, blistered feet. He hated seeing the proof of the pain she was in. She’d already been hurt enough.

But like him, she had the fierce will of a warrior who kept going despite the pain. Only, Emily was very clear about how far she could push herself without negatively affecting her performance. Something he wasn’t so good at. He had a tendency to work until he dropped, particularly now that he was working alone. Kris had always been good about stopping him before he hit that point.

He rolled his shoulders. Yet another reason to consider joining Kris’s team when it was safe.

As Emily finished doctoring her feet, he had to admit that maybe, if he’d been paying more attention to his body’s signals of exhaustion and gotten some rest, he would have noticed the guys following him that night in Ouaga. Then he wouldn’t have ended up as Ziegler’s prisoner.

He couldn’t afford to make such a mistake with Emily’s life.

Once she’d put away the medical supplies, Emily drove the Jeep as close to the ravine as possible, only stopping when the closely grown trees prevented them from moving forward. After camouflaging the Jeep, Emily led him into the jungle.

Max watched her carefully, but she moved without a limp. Unlike him. Thanks to the aid of his tree branch crutch, he was able to walk at a slow, but steady pace today, but he definitely had a hitch in his step. Yeah, between the two of them, they weren’t exactly in prime shape to be playing jungle explorer.

Fifteen minutes later, Emily stopped and gestured in front of her. “There’s the gully.”

Max moved forward and looked down.
He couldn’t tell what part of the plane the white square belonged to. Roughly the size of a microwave oven and charred around the edges, it could have belonged to any manmade item.

“Not much help, is it?” Emily said.

“No. Pass me the binoculars.” He searched the vegetation at the bottom of the ravine, but due to the thick canopy, didn’t spot any more pieces. So he moved to his left several yards and searched again. Saw another glimpse of white in a thinner section of vegetation. “Okay, it looks like the plane headed across the ravine as it broke up.”

“What would have caused the plane to break apart like that?” Emily asked.

“I can hazard a few guesses. First, weather. Turbulence from a bad storm could have put too much stress on the plane, resulting in structural failure.” He shrugged. “But I don’t think there have been any violent storms recently.”

“None while I was at my homestay.”

“Okay. A more likely scenario is a section of the plane—such as the tail or the tip of a wing—was hit by a surface-to-air missile. Maybe fired by the government, although we haven’t seen any signs that they have ground troops in this area. So it’s more likely that the plane was shot down by either a competitor of Dietrich’s or local smugglers.” He glanced over at her. “That would explain why the group from your homestay village was so well armed.”

Emily flinched, but didn’t jump in to defend the villagers. Progress.

“So… What?” she asked. “Someone leaked the plane’s route to a group they knew would destroy the plane? Wouldn’t that run the risk of the prototype activating?”

Max nodded. “You’re right. We don’t know exactly what the weapon does, but from the fact that the jungle hasn’t been obliterated, the briefcase must have prevented the weapon from discharging.” But if it had detonated—

He grasped her hand and held on tightly.

“Max?”

“If the weapon had detonated while you were at your homestay village, you might have been killed.”

“Okay, that’s a pretty scary thought. But it didn’t happen.”

Yet it was the type of outcome that Max faced all too often. Proof that his world was just too violent for her safety. And yet, he didn’t want to let her go.

Not now. Not ever.

A few heartbeats later, Max forced himself to release her hand. Shit happened. He knew better than to get distracted by what-ifs. The prototype hadn’t detonated. Emily was alive. All he could do was deal with whatever today threw at him.

This overwhelming fear for her safety was a direct result of working alone so long. Without the support of a team, and with him operating at less than full strength, the likelihood of failure was high. Plus, having events out of his control always set him on edge.

Yet it was more complicated than that. Caring for Emily, wanting to protect and shelter her, had brought parts of him back to life that he hadn’t even noticed had been dormant. He suspected he was a better man because of it, but didn’t know if he was a better soldier.

“Who would leak the plane’s route if there was such a potential for disaster?” Emily asked.

“Dietrich’s men both fear and respect him, so I doubt there’s a traitor among his ranks. Maybe an employee at the manufacturer discovered the threat and thought this was the best way to stop it from falling into the wrong hands. Or it’s possible that the buyer has a traitor among his men.” He shrugged. “Of course, the plane might simply have suffered from a mechanical failure. Something that caused a small internal explosion that breached the plane’s hull and caused the wind to tear the plane to pieces.”

Emily glanced skeptically at the piece of debris barely visible at the bottom of the gully. “Shouldn’t there be more stuff?”

Max shrugged. “We don’t know how high or how fast the plane was flying. This might only be the edge of the debris field. I’m not an expert on plane crash dynamics, so I have no clue what the trail should look like. But I think debris can stretch for several miles. Plus—” he nodded toward the debris “—I bet more pieces of the plane are down there, just hidden by the thick vegetation.”

Emily shot a look at him. “Max, I’m going to have to go down into the gully to investigate.”

Every instinct immediately rejected that idea as too dangerous. He glanced at the nearly solid tangle of brush that started a few feet down from the rim.

“I—” she began.

He held up his hand, thinking he heard the sound of rotors. Yes. There. Faint, but growing louder. “Helicopter’s coming. Quick, get deeper under cover.”

Ignoring his command, Emily put her arm around his waist and hustled him farther into the jungle until they stood under the protective foliage of several trees. Max leaned his back against the trunk of the widest tree and pulled Emily flush against him.

They waited tensely while the helicopter made several passes over the area. Shit. Unlike the previous flyovers, this time it sounded as if the helicopter was moving methodically back and forth in a search pattern. Either they knew Max and Emily were here and were searching for them, or more likely, they had tracked the missing plane here.

Had Dietrich managed to get his hands on infrared technology? Were he and Em in imminent danger? Tightening his arms around Emily, he waited for the helicopter to fly away.

He kept them in position for ten minutes more, until he was certain the chopper wasn’t going to make a surprise reappearance. “Okay. Let’s move.”

“Mmm,” Emily murmured drowsily.

“Em! Are you falling asleep on me?”

She blinked up at him. “Yep. Sorry. Can’t help it.”

“Damn it, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have woken you so often.” He’d made love to her in the Jeep twice more during the night.

She put her hand over his mouth. “Shh. It’s not your fault. I could have said no.” The smile she gave him was that of a well-satisfied woman. “But I didn’t want to. Besides, we slept in.” She pressed a kiss to his mouth. “I think I’m sluggish
because
we slept late. My body just got out of rhythm. Don’t worry, once we start moving again, I’ll sharpen up.”

“I know you will. You’re resilient like that.”

Emily rewarded him with a deeper kiss. Mmm… He loved the way their mouths fit together so well. Loved that kissing her now felt like coming home. “All right,” he said. “The helicopter changes things. We need to get into the gully and locate the briefcase as soon as possible.” If this helicopter was equipped with thermal imaging cameras, then he and Emily were racing against the clock.

“We?” She did that eyebrow raising thing that he was coming to love.

He sighed and pressed his forehead against hers. “Okay, I give up.
We
have to find a path into the gully so that
you
can retrieve the briefcase.”