Czytaj książkę: «Down Range»

Chapter One

What the hell? He had to be seeing things. SEAL Lieutenant Jake Ramsey froze as he climbed out of his rented red Jeep Wrangler. He’d just parked at the Pentagon, ordered here for an appointment with U.S. Army General Stevenson. He had no idea what this meeting entailed. It was top secret.

His heart thudded in his chest as he stared one row of cars up. A Marine Captain emerged from her black SUV. Jake removed his wraparound sunglasses, remaining motionless, watching her pull her black leather purse over the left shoulder. The gesture was all too familiar to him.

She wore her khaki summer uniform short-sleeved blouse along with dark green gabardine trousers that emphasized her long legs. In short-heeled, polished black pumps, she was all spit and polish. Morgan Boland had an hourglass figure, and though her clothes fitted her comfortably, Jake knew how beautiful she was without any clothes at all.

His mouth tightened. What the hell was Morgan Boland doing here?

Stunned, Jake wrestled with a lot of old feelings leaping to life within him. Oh, he remembered tunneling his fingers through that mass of silky red hair now softly framing her oval face and stubborn chin. The strands curled slightly across her proud shoulders.

She hadn’t seen him—yet.

Two years ago they’d met in the Hindu Kush mountains near the border between Afghanistan and Paki­stan. They’d collided like two comets, renewing their relationship that had started at the Naval Academy, Annapolis. His lower body tightened in memory of those three incredible days with her in his arms in that Afghan village. Three of the most incredible nights of his life since… He ruthlessly tried to crush the grief-stricken memories from when he was twenty-four years old. Jake had lost his wife, Amanda, and two-week-old baby, Joshua, in a car accident. They’d only been married a year.

At twenty-seven, Jake had unexpectedly met Morgan once again. And whether she ever realized it or not, she’d salvaged his bleeding, wounded soul. Those few days had transformed him, pulled him out of a three-year depression. She’d breathed new life into him.

His mouth pursed, the corners pulling in as he watched her shut the door on the SUV. The May morning’s breeze was inconstant, lifting a few gold-and-copper strands of hair across her face. He stared with a mixture of grief and longing as she lifted her long, expressive fingers and pulled the strands away from her cheek.

Morgan was still hauntingly beautiful to him. His mind spun with a hundred questions as to why she was here at the same time he was. Jake worked to suppress those unrequited feelings about their shared history. He’d had that impulse, of never allowing her to escape his arms again. But she had. And it had been his damned fault. For the second time in his life, he’d driven Morgan away from him.

There was a file beneath her left arm. She pointed the clicker at the SUV to lock it. Jake swallowed hard, trying to ignore his desire. It had been a lethal attraction from the first moment, in Annapolis, while going through the Naval Academy. They were a powerful match in bed, but dammit, she was bullheaded and wildly independent. She refused to be what he wanted her to be. When they came together in bed, it was like the Fourth of July every time. Yet, afterward, it always descended into a heated argument, hurtful words flying between them like bullets being fired from an M-4 rifle.

His breath jammed in his throat as he saw her lift her head, her green-eyed gaze meeting his. For a moment, Jake felt like a proverbial deer paralyzed in a set of car headlights. Her eyes narrowed. Of course, she recognized him. Her oval face with high cheekbones and a sprinkle of pale freckles tightened. Her mouth…oh, God, her mouth…Jake remembered hotly covering those full lips, feeling her hungry response, her sleek, athletic body pressed demandingly against his, wanting him as much as he wanted her. Now that soft, full mouth thinned with displeasure. He forced himself to hold her gaze. Even from this distance, he could see the spark of surprise and then anger flare in her green eyes.

What the hell were the chances of meeting Morgan two years later, here in a damned Pentagon parking lot? Jake decided he had to be a gentleman and walk over and say hello. He shut the door on his Jeep, locked it and shoved the key into a pocket of his tan Navy summer trousers. Pulling the garrison cap from beneath his left arm, he settled it on his head.

Jake felt as if he was going downrange into a direct action combat mission. Born of a Navy SEAL, he walked with an easy, natural confidence toward the only other woman in his life who had held his heart—and he’d screwed it up both times. Now, as he closed the distance between them, tension was evident in her, but she was a warrior like him. Jake tried to prepare himself. Morgan was definitely not happy to see him. And he knew why.

“You’re the last person I expected to see here in this parking lot,” he said, trying to soften his normally hard expression. He came to a halt a few feet away from her, but he could still see her emerald eyes flash with what he interpreted as disgust. Or maybe, distrust. Probably both.

“Makes two of us, Ramsey.”

“What business do you have here, Morgan?”

She quirked her lips. “It’s top secret. How about you?”

He managed a sliver of a smile, appreciating the way the uniform hid her breasts. He knew those breasts well, and even now, his body hotly remembered their firm curves, too. “Same. Where you headed?”

“The E-ring. You?”

His brows rose. “Same ring.” What the hell kind of cosmic joke was being played upon him? Jake saw confusion for a moment in her eyes, too.

The breeze blew enough to lift strands of her red hair across her flushed cheeks. He had the urge to lift his hand, catch those errant strands with his fingers and gently tuck them behind her delicate ear as he’d done on so many other occasions. Why the hell couldn’t he erase Morgan from his body and memory forever?

He’d been in the military since he was eighteen. He’d gone to Annapolis and went into the Marine Corps. Later, he moved to the U.S. Navy to become a SEAL. At twenty-nine, Jake felt snared by a joke being pulled on him by Marine Corps god Odin himself. The last person he ever wanted to meet again was Morgan. And here she was: all six feet of woman warrior who proved him wrong about her being the weaker sex.

She glanced down at the watch on her right wrist. “I’ve gotta go, Ramsey.” Morgan drilled him with a hard look. “And I can’t say it’s been nice seeing you again.”

Jake watched her turn on her heel and walk toward the main doors of the Pentagon. It almost felt as if she’d physically slapped him. He stood for a moment, letting her quiet rage pass through him. It wasn’t her fault, he sourly admitted. He’d been the one to hurl the indictment that women were weak. That they shouldn’t be allowed into combat. He and Morgan had gotten into that very argument after making love on Christmas morning as a blizzard hit the Afghan village.

He and his SEAL team had holed up at the American-friendly Shinwari village to wait out the coming storm. To his everlasting surprise, Morgan had been there, too, with another SEAL team. The SEALs operated in small four- and eight-person fire teams throughout the Hindu Kush, rooting out the bad guys and taking them down. He hadn’t been able to swallow his surprise or disguise his pleasure at discovering she was there. Morgan had been assigned as a linguist with another team on a separate black-ops mission.

Rubbing his recently shaved jaw, Jake saw her disappear inside the building. He had just enough time to make his appointment with General Stevenson of the U.S. Army. His emotions, no matter how he tried, burned bright and intense over meeting Morgan once again. She had stood out at Annapolis from the moment he’d seen her in their plebe year. They were in the same class, and for two years, Jake had fought to ignore the tall, assertive redhead. Morgan was as physically strong as most of the men going through the four-year military program. Jake had watched her begin to shine and bloom in her third year. She’d been at the top of the academic list, a champion fencer on the fencing team, and her keen intelligence had been recognized.

He quickly walked across the asphalt parking lot, in deep thought over her. When had he fallen under her charismatic spell at the Academy? How had it happened? Jake had accidentally met Morgan as a third-year student at a local civilian pizza parlor everyone frequented on Saturday evenings. There were plenty of guys who wanted her. She’d always been surrounded by them, but she didn’t seem to care or notice any of them. Yet, when they’d met up at the bar to order pitchers of beer, something had happened.

“Damn,” he rasped, scowling. They’d accidentally grazed one another’s elbows. Jake remembered Morgan’s gaze meeting his. Those deep green eyes that made his heart melt, made his body go hot and hard with longing. Her nickname at the Academy had been Amazon because she was tall, physically strong and she had a bruising, in-your-face independence.

Jake remembered taking Morgan’s hand and leading her into the hall of the bar to be alone with her. He’d done something he’d wanted to do for years: kiss the hell out of her. Morgan, he’d discovered, had been watching him for a long time, too. He’d asked if she was protected, and she’d said yes, she was on the pill. They’d never made it back to the Academy until very early on Sunday morning. And their hearts and fates had been sealed, for better or worse.

He needed to stop remembering. Morgan wasn’t in his life anymore. Jake scowled and climbed the stone steps of the Pentagon. Up ahead were soldiers with M-16 rifles. Since the bombing of the Pentagon on 9/11, security had markedly changed. He would go through an X-ray machine before ever being allowed into the military bastion.

Jake aimed himself toward the outer ring, the E-ring. It was the only level that had windows looking out into the civilian world. Only senior military officers got those posh office assignments. This was where many top secret and black-ops missions originated. Curious as to why he was called off PRODEV, sixty days of leave granted to him after coming back from Afghanistan with his SEAL platoon, he arrived at the E-ring. Looking at the file he held, he saw the number of the office and turned to the right.

Captain Morgan Boland was sitting in a chair opposite the secretary’s desk when the door opened. Her eyes widened. Jake Ramsey, again? Her lips parted for a moment. What was he doing here? He stopped when he realized she was sitting there staring up at him. He had a stunned look across his normally unreadable expression. Shock bolted through her.

Morgan lowered her gaze, and her heart sped up. Why couldn’t she just ignore Ramsey’s darkly tanned face? His rugged good looks and those stormy-looking gray eyes of his? Her fingers tightened imperceptibly around the file in her lap. The only other empty chair in the small, cramped office was two feet away from where she sat. She listened as Jake went to the fortysomething-year-old blonde administrative assistant and gave his name to her.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Ramsey. General Stevenson will see you in just a bit. Would you like some coffee or tea while you wait?”

Jake took off his cap. “No, thank you, ma’am.” He hated having to sit next to Morgan, who was staring at him as if he were going to bite her. His traitorous body and heart clamored over being so close to this fiery woman. Jake wanted to be close. Wanted, somehow, to undo the wrong he’d done to her two years earlier.

Sitting down, he glanced over at her. Morgan was staring straight ahead, her hands tense over the file in her lap. He relished viewing her profile and then realized her once-perfect nose now had a bump on it. Had she broken it? He almost asked but thought better of it. There was an assistant sitting six feet away from them, and Jake didn’t want her to know how much Morgan hated him.

What to say to Jake Ramsey? Morgan felt heat radiating off his hard male body. The uniform showed how athletic and fit he really was. SEALs took exercise to a whole new level, plus six months climbing mountains in Afghanistan had honed his body into a dangerous weapon. She saw the SEAL gold trident on his well-sprung chest, rows of colorful ribbons beneath it. Jake was part of the best of the best black-ops teams the military had. She remembered those pale eyes of his going dove-gray as he’d made love with her. God, they were good in bed together. Too good. And above all, Morgan knew she had to keep a secret she would always carry from that last meeting they had. Jake would never know. Pursing her lips, she refused to say anything to him. Her mind churned with questions on why both of them were here, in the same office of the Pentagon. It made no sense to her.

A buzzer sounded on the assistant’s desk. She looked over at Morgan. “Go right through this door, Captain Boland. General Houston will see you. Room two, please.”

Rising, Morgan nodded, ignored Ramsey and opened the door. Inside, she saw two offices, one on either side of the hall. Turning to the left, she saw a frosted glass window with “2” painted in gold upon it and knocked firmly.

“Enter,” a male voice ordered.

Morgan’s heart picked up a beat as she opened it. Inside was a man in his late-fifties, fit, in a dark green U.S. Army uniform. The salad, or ribbons, across his powerful chest attested to his time and experience in the Army. There was silver on the sidewalls of his closely cropped hair. His eyes were sharp and intelligent-looking. Morgan came to attention in front of his desk.

“Captain Morgan Boland reporting as ordered, sir.”

“At ease, Captain. Have a seat. We need to chat.”

Indeed, Morgan thought as she took the only chair in front of the General’s desk. The man smiled a little as he clasped his hands and rested them on the dark cherrywood desk.

“What I’m about to tell you is top secret, Captain. But I already think you know what this mission is all about.”

“I’m hoping it’s an op to go after Sangar Khogani, sir. I’ve been pushing for it to find and kill him for the last couple of years.”

A grin leaked through the hardened line of his mouth. He handed her a file folder. “We’ve been listening, Captain. Read along with me?”

Opening the folder, Morgan felt her spirits lift. Her emotions shimmered as she quickly read the one-paragraph synopsis on the mission. Looking up, she saw the General giving her a penetrating look. Morgan waited for him to speak, even though she wanted to tear through the rest of the assignment and read the details. She hoped like hell she had been assigned to it.

“You’re a part of Operation Shadow Warriors,” he began, opening the file. “Forty women volunteers from all the military branches were trained either in Ranger or Special Forces schools and are now in ground combat to prove women have what it takes to do the job in the field. We’re in the third year of a seven-year top secret experiment. I’m pleased to tell you, it’s going very well in showing women can handle combat.”

“Yes, sir.” Hope rose in her breast. Morgan had never wanted an assignment more than this one. Was General Houston letting her have it or not? She couldn’t read the man’s deeply tanned face.

“You’ve been very active and vocal about mounting a mission to take out Khogani. He’s an opium drug lord with the Hill tribe near the border area with Pakistan.”

“Yes, sir, I have.” She’d spoken to General Maya Stevenson, who had spearheaded women in combat, starting with the Black Jaguar Squadron down in Peru years earlier. Maya had put together a plan of an all-woman Apache combat squadron to halt cocaine shipments out of that country. It had been approved and had been a spectacular success. Then Stevenson had organized Operation Shadow Warriors three years ago. It was a program putting women’s boots on the ground in various combat theaters.

Morgan wasted no time in pleading her case directly to the General to mount a mission. She wanted to even the terrible score over in Afghanistan. Morgan had been caught up in the battle along with a group of Green Berets, wounded and one of the few survivors of Khogani’s attack on a Shinwari tribe village.

Houston nodded. “You’re going to get your wish, Captain. You’ve been a SEAL trained sniper for three years now, and you’ve exemplified yourself in that department. You’ve been downrange with SEAL and Special Forces units for the past three years.”

“I have the background it takes to successfully complete this mission, sir.”

“There’s no question about that, Captain.”

“I’ve lobbied hard to get this op on the board, sir.”

Houston smiled a little at the brash woman officer. “If you could suffer a little more with me, Captain, let’s talk about the mission details?”

Chastised, Morgan relaxed against the chair. She saw humor in his eyes, as if he were putting up with a petulant, pushy child. “Yes, sir, sorry, sir. I’ve got a few guns in this fight.”

Houston nodded and sobered. He was familiar with SEAL slang. “A gun in the fight” meant the person had a personal, vested interest in the undertaking. Morgan had never gone through SEAL training. Instead, she’d been working off and on with them for years over in Afghanistan. Their slang and lingo were bound to rub off on her.

“I understand. General Stevenson and I are responsible for the inception of Operation Shadow Warriors. We took your request seriously when you submitted this mission to General Stevenson. We’ve worked with SOCOM, Special Operation Command, up and down the chain of command to ensure this mission, which is now called Operation Peregrine, is successful.”

“Thank you, sir. You don’t know how much this means to me.” Morgan held her breath as he slowly leafed through several pages of the mission. Would they let her be on the op? Just because they approved it didn’t mean she was assigned. They had to allow her to be a part of it! Never had Morgan ever wanted anything more in life right now than to go after Sangar Khogani. She had two scores to settle with him.

At the same time, she knew Houston was well aware she was a sniper and a damned good one. She’d proved her skill out in the field many times over. Snipers weren’t supposed to be emotionally involved in the hunting of their quarry. They couldn’t do their job if revenge was uppermost on their minds. Emotions clouded a sniper’s mind-set; something no one wanted in the field during an op. Morgan realized she’d revealed her personal and emotional need to have a stake in this op. A stupid move on her part.

And now General Houston knew how badly she wanted Khogani. Would he overlook her passion? Or not? Unsure, Morgan forced herself to sit quietly and wait. After all, that was what snipers did best. Patience was a virtue among the sniper cadre, and ordinarily, Morgan had the patience of Job. But Khogani stirred up violent, angry emotions in her, and there was no way around it. She wanted that bastard dead. His head on a platter. And she wanted to be the one who put it there.

“Go to page four, Captain. This entails the guts of the op.”

Morgan’s gaze went to page four. There were two names chosen for the op. One was her, which sent a giddy emotion of joy through her. When her eyes dropped to the second name, her heart plunged with disbelief. Gulping, she snapped a look up across the desk at Houston. Struggling to speak, she rasped, “But—sir, I’m assigned to this op with Lieutenant Jake Ramsey?” For a moment, she felt as if someone had hit her with an armor-piercing round to her Kevlar vest, sucking the breath out of her.

“That’s right,” Mike Houston said. “General Stevenson and I want this to be a SEAL mission. You’ve worked well with them in the past. We needed a SEAL sniper who could be sniper leader on the op.”

Morgan swallowed her disappointment. “Yes, sir,” she barely mouthed. There would be no way in hell she could voice protest over Ramsey being assigned. On top of that, he had been designated as lead sniper. In the sniping business, they were both equally qualified, but one sniper would be the leader, the final decision maker. And it would be him! Dammit! The ramifications of the assignment whirled like a nightmare around her. Obviously, these generals did not know their long personal history. Maybe that was a blessing in disguise. Morgan was sure she’d never have been assigned to the op if General Houston realized what she and Jake had once been to each other.

Lifting her head, she said, “Sir? What led you to choose Lieutenant Ramsey?”

Mike sat back in his leather chair and said, “His name was spit out by the computer, Captain. Any problems with that?”

“None, sir,” she lied, her voice husky as she carefully closeted her roiling feelings. That was why she’d met Jake in the parking lot.

“General Stevenson is interviewing First Lieutenant Ramsey as we speak. If she feels he’s the right man for the job, we’ll be setting up the briefing tomorrow at 0900 here in this office. We’ll all go over the details of this op at that time.” He picked up a voucher and handed it to her. “You’ll both be staying at this hotel located near the Pentagon. I know you just came out of Afghanistan, flying for almost twenty-four hours to make this meeting, Captain. Get a hot meal under your belt tonight and get a good night’s sleep. I need you a hundred percent tomorrow morning. Understand?”

Quickly coming to her feet at attention, Morgan said, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Morgan forced herself to turn and walk to the door. Emotions clashed within her. She felt a little dizzy. As she left the office, she was grateful not to see Jake Ramsey. She kept walking toward the front doors, trying to deal with this new development. Closing her eyes for a moment, she dragged in an uneven breath, forcing all those feelings down into her once more. It didn’t work.

Morgan fought the deep jet lag. She’d only been able to grab some sleep aboard the C-5 that had flown her from Bagram air base in Afghanistan to Rota, Spain, and then on to Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington, D.C.

Pushing herself, Morgan left the Pentagon, glad to be out in the warm May sunlight once more. The breeze reminded her she was home, if but for a little while, not in the harsh desert mountains of Afghanistan with a hunter-killer SEAL team. Aiming herself at the rented SUV, Morgan looked at the voucher. She was so damned tired, she was weaving. Houston was right: she needed a hot shower and then bed. If she woke up sometime this evening, she’d get dinner to fortify herself. Because the turnaround on this op was immediate. The schedule had them leaving within twenty-four hours, headed back into Afghanistan.

As she opened the door to the SUV, Morgan wanted to check in to the hotel and make a call to her parents in Gunnison, Colorado. And even more, she wanted to talk to her two-year-old daughter, Emma. Just thinking about her family buoyed Morgan. She tried to force her thoughts away from Jake Ramsey. What did he think of the sniper pairing on this op? He had to be feeling like an IED had exploded beneath him. Morgan knew, without any doubt, the last woman Jake would ever want on a mission with him would be her. Correction, he’d never want any woman on a mission with him, believing they were incapable of operating in combat.

All hell was about to break loose….