Armed And Dangerous (The McKinnon Legends - The McKinnon American Men Book 2) (16 page)

First and foremost Barbara asked her to destroy the message so there would not be any risk of exposure. She had asked Jesse to be brave and strong and know they were coming for her the following night. She had instructed Jesse to feign illness after she ate her supper so no one would think anything of her being silent in her rooms after dark. She asked Jesse to create a diversion so Barbara could get into the roof and to the third floor to see the security measures in place.

Barbara saw the girl lean slightly out the window and put her cap on and take it off again.

“Good girl.” Barbara sent her a wave of calming thoughts. She never knew if it actually worked, but it could never hurt was her motto.

Barbara waited patiently for the right moment to react and knew the time was right when she began to hear the alarm being sounded.

Jesse had started a fire by tossing a flaming bundle into the suite of rooms below her. The compound erupted in a flurry of pandemonium, of which Barbara quickly took advantage.

Dropping from the limb onto the roof, she peered over the edge into the surveillance room window with the fiber optic camera. Eight monitors with one camera view each. There was only one observer, and he was sound asleep. Peering down from the roof, Barbara saw Jesse look up.

“Please take me with you!” Jesse whispered.

Seeing the girl’s look of fear and longing, Barbara silently shook her head at the soulful request she saw there in her face. Barbara dropped the final package Jesse would need to help them. Jesse’s look tore at her making her feel helpless, frustrated, and she silently cried out for guidance.

She could snatch Jesse now and none would be the wiser. She could at least get the girl out safely. It was doubtful she could get both of them out safely.

“No! Don’t you dare do it!” Mason’s voice pierced her brain. She shook her head to dispel the figment of her imagination. Real or not, he was right. They had to stick to the plan.

“We will be back, I promise. Be strong,” she whispered just before she shimmied back up the limb and removed the looping devise on her way past, crawling back down the tree. She took a different route back around the property doing a swift survey along the way.

She was quickly running out of time as she made her way back to the rendezvous point. Barbara had the layout of the warehouses. She now knew how many guards and where they were posted. She made note of the weapons, the cars, and cameras that they were up against. It was risky but knowing would make the job easier.

The guards could be easily disposed of as long as the surveillance monitor was asleep at the wheel when they came back later that night. Jesse was going to ensure that happened and hoped to take out a few guards along the way. The packet of powder Barbara lowered to her before leaving would ensure their security buddy was fast asleep come night fall. She was banking on the little girl to get to the powder to Agent Vega, someway and somehow. If not, then they would wing it.

Mason held his finger to the side of the trigger as he kept sweeping the property behind her from his perch. Through the scope, he watched her advance across the property keeping a close eye for danger as she continued towards her goal to reach the rope. He also saw the guard coming to investigate.

It was going to be close.

He could see her moving froward using the lush vegetation for cover. He was not about to breathe a sigh of relief. Not just yet. They had only minutes before daybreak, and he could already see the activity increasing around the compound. They were running out of darkness for cover, and she still had to scale the wall.

Fortunately, the guard was called back to help battle the blaze that Jesse had started and was yet to be brought under control. Otherwise, he felt sure their presence would have been discovered leaving him no other choice than to kill the man. That in turn would force them to make a choice to either leave the body hidden in the compound or risk being caught after sunup after hiding the body elsewhere. He was not sure they had time for either scenario. He shimmied down the tree to meet her at the base of the wall.

They were cutting it close, too close for Mason’s comfort.

Her face appeared over the top just before she tossed her gear down. He caught her as she dropped down, bringing the evidence of their night's work with her.

“Come on. We have got to get the hell out of here.” He slung the gear onto his back and grabbed her hand. They took off crouching in the cover and making for the denser part of the jungle.

Mason did not slow their pace until he could no longer hear the sea and the sun was fully past the horizon. He finally stopped feeling it was safe enough, at least from Del Torres.

He turned on her grabbing her fiercely to him. He kissed her deeply, passionately born of fear and a deeper emotion, but one just as primal. Crushing her to him, he could feel the adrenaline flow from the dread he felt for her safety. He knew she came close to reaching out to save Jesse and just as quickly he felt her retreat.

“Don’t you ever do anything like this again, you hear me? I cannot take it.” He kissed her again as she jerked at his camouflaged t-shirt trying to push him away.

“Get your paws off me! This is what I do, Mason. If you want safe go back to your pole dancers.”

She pulled out her compass and left him to catch up with her.

“Don’t walk away from me.” He tried to turn her around only earning him a dagger in the literal sense. She had pulled her knife again.

Then he saw what she was doing as she cut a strip off of her t-shirt to use as a tourniquet.

“This is not about you, Mason. I’m getting back to camp before I bleed to death,” she said as she tied off the leg just above her wound which was open again and bleeding profusely. She prayed she had not left a trail of blood for the guards to track. She had been extremely careful where she could, but circumstances being what they were, she feared she had not been completely successful.

“What the hell happened?” Then he softened. “Did I do this to you?” It was the only thing he could think of as to how she could have come away with a wound this profound. She had not gotten it last night, he felt sure. There was no gash in the material of her fatigues. Then he remembered seeing the blood on her jeans from the day before.

“No, this isn’t your doing.” She shook her head. “It was the combination of the pothole and that rattletrap you call a jeep,” she said tying off the scrap. “Ouch, ahh, God that hurts,” she grimaced in the process.

He knew exactly what she was referring to as he also had a cut on his forehead where he hit the rear-view mirror, knocking it off the windshield before the jeep flipped over. He believed her comment at the time was that his head was obviously harder than the jeep. It looked to him as if she was a bit hardheaded as well, maybe more than he.

He quickly set her down asking her to shed her pants so he could get a closer look. The look she gave him was telling.

He snapped. “Barbara, for God’s sake just do it and don’t buck me! I’m not trying to get into your pants!” Then he softened. “Look, I just need to see if I need to field dress it or not.”

He saw her hesitation and indecision, and then her acquiescence as she slowly undid her pants. He turned to give her some privacy. If she weren’t so tired from thirty-six hours without sleep and in pain, she might have found the gesture to be sweet, pointless, but still sweet. The gash was very high up on her thigh, extending over past her hip and onto her right butt cheek. There was no way to avoid him seeing a lot of skin.

What Mason saw when he turned around nearly choked him. Tender creamy skin was red with fever and torn jagged edges were bleeding leaving a trail of crimson. The line of damage disappeared under her panty line. He had no way of knowing just how far the damage extended. He did know she needed medical attention.

She has to be in pain, he thought. The gash was deep and ragged. There was no way she wasn’t in some degree of pain and discomfort as the muscle was torn as well. This was no superficial cut and was in dire need of attention, yet she had said nothing. Not one single word.

Furthermore, she had lied to him the day before when he saw the blood on her jeans and asked her point-blank if it was hers. She said it wasn’t and he had no reason not to believe her when she answered. He had not questioned it any further. Now, he was wishing he had pressed her for more details as he dropped the pack off his shoulders and began to pull out the necessary medicines and tools that he would need to give her a proper field dressing. He was not a rookie to field wounds, but this time it was Barbara who was hurt and what he needed to do to her would not be painless. He hoped that she didn’t faint on him.Tossing her over his shoulder and trudging back to camp held absolutely no appeal.

“Jesus, Barbara. What were you hoping to accomplish by not telling me that you were this badly hurt?” He pulled off a length of thread, snapping it with his surgical scissors.

“And give you ammunition to protest my ability to complete this mission? I was not about to give you the very excuse you’ve been looking for since the minute you found out it was me in Robert’s office. Don’t think that I didn’t hear you and Robert talking last night.” She had heard and just chose to ignore him.

As she lay on her side on the jungle floor other than a few sharply inhaled breaths she was silent. He too was silent, clinching his teeth not only from the pain he was causing her, but from the anger he felt at her outright lying to him. Tight lipped and without a single word, he dressed her wound.

He freely admitted both to himself and Robert that it might have started out with him looking for any reason to leave her behind. Maybe, at first, he was looking for an excuse because he did not want to deal with her. Let’s face it -- their relationship until a week ago was nothing other than pure and simple hell. Now, he was looking for an excuse for her to be left off the roster because he cared. How was he supposed to tell her that?

Josh and Robert were waiting impatiently for them to return. It had been an extremely long night for all of them. The tension in the camp was so thick it could be cut with a knife. As a result, sleep was hard to come by for the team.

Barbara limped in under her own power after repeatedly refusing to be carried in like some abandoned bag of field gear. A disgruntled Mason was not far behind.

They still had to get back to their own campsite, get some rest, then break their camp, and make preparations for the evening. It was going to be a full day, and in his current state of mind, the further he was from her the better. There had been too much togetherness.

It was beginning to feel just like old times, and he was amazed at their self-restraint. By the Graces of the Jungle Gods or maybe just from years of self-indoctrinated control, neither one pulled out a gun to shoot the other on the way back. The hike back to base camp was a combination of heated, bitter arguing, or freezing silence.

Mason hated both.

After Barbara assured Josh that Jesse was alive, all waited as patiently as possible for Barbara to finish her drawings of the interior of the compound and placement of the cameras and guard posts. They all understood the importance of accuracy and full comprehension of the area they were going to invade under the cover of darkness.

Mason was sure he had seen Agent Vega. “And unless he chills out, he’s going to be picked off like low hanging fruit once the shit starts flying. He was acting like a man with something to hide.”

Robert’s fear was confirmed. “Vega could very well be a hindrance more than an asset.”

Mason and Barbara both nodded.

“What were you able to see?” Josh asked eagerly.

“There are only eight cameras total if what I saw is accurate. There are three on this wall.” She pointed marking an X approximately on the drawing. “Mason can take care of these and get the looped feed into them.”

Mason nodded in agreement.

She noted the one at the main gate. “This one is the trickiest and best if we avoid it if possible. The only good thing about its placement is there is a palm just beside it. With a little creative movement, we might be able to dance a leaf in front of the lens a time or two and then sneak past. Chancy and a last resort.”

They all agreed. Going in through the front gate was not exactly the smartest move if they had other alternatives.

“There are two in the trees just to the west and north of the main house. Reese, you and Dark Man need to take these two. Here is the loop footage for you to use.” She handed Reese the state of the art equipment. “By the way, good to see you back on your feet. We are going to need you two.”

Reese nodded his understanding. This placed them in the trees for the best sniper locations. It also meant that they were going to have a harder time getting away.

“There is one more camera back past the pool area and one facing what I assume are the warehouses for his exportable goods. I counted twelve guards in all outside. Six were back by the warehouses, two per.” She drew two single lines in the sand to represent the placement. “None posted at the rear of any of the buildings. Jesse signaled that there were four more in the house excluding Carlos and Emilio.”

“That makes twenty that we know for sure. What about weapons?” Robert asked, mentally calculating the odds of success.

“No shortage of funds here, Robert. They were all very well armed. Considering the dirt bag is an arms dealer, I’m not at all surprised. All were sporting at least an AK-47, sometimes multiple side arms, and each had a knife strapped to the thigh. I also got close enough to see that most all the vehicles have reinforced undercarriages and bullet-proof glass installed.”

Mason groaned inwardly. He saw where the cars were parked. They were next to the villa, in the driveway, right beside the guard shack which had been manned with two men. If she got that close to the cars then she was close enough to smell the guy’s arm pits. Gutsy move, crazy, but gutsy, he thought.