Danger Close (The Echo Platoon Series, Book 1) (17 page)

"Any news?" he asked, changing the subject before she could take him to task.

She thought about her run-in with the terrorists, but couldn't tell him about that without arousing his immediate concern. Her thoughts skipped to another subject, like Sam. "You'll never guess who I ran into down here," she began, hating the way her blood heated and her pulse raced at the mere thought of him.

"Who could that be?" her father asked.

His smug tone aroused Maddy's suspicions.
Wait just a darn minute
. It sounded like he already knew what she was going to say. In running for the Senate, her father had become privy to all sorts of top secret military information. Lyle Scott might not be the catalyst behind the SEALs' presence, but he might certainly have known that they'd be down here, addressing the growing terror threat.

"Lt. Sasseville," she said, her ears pricked to the slightest nuance that her father already knew.

"No kidding." He sounded more pleased than surprised, cementing Maddy's suspicions.

"You knew I'd run into him again," she accused.

A nervous chuckle sounded in her ear. "Now, why would you think that?"

"I don't know, Daddy. I just have this feeling that you're throwing us together. Is that true?" she demanded.

"Well, even if I were, I couldn't think of a better man to look out for you."

That confirmed it. Her father was trying to play matchmaker. The realization made her more determined than ever to remain her own woman, free to carve her own path. "I have to go check on a friend right now," she said, too annoyed to continue speaking with him.

"Sam?" her father asked.

"No, my colleague, Ricardo. He was injured in an explosion."

The sudden quiet on the other end made her realize that she'd said too much.

"Not the explosion at the future well site," Lyle Scott guessed.

"Yes, actually," she replied, not at all surprised that her father had heard about it. He might not be running Scott Oil, but he would always keep his finger on the pulse of the enterprise he had built from the ground up.

"What the hell was he doing snooping around the well?"

She'd asked herself that very question. "I have no idea."

"Honey, you be careful down there. I don't like those rumors of terrorists in the region."

They're not rumors.

"It's bad enough that they're targeting Scott Oil Corporation. I don't want them going after you."

A vision of the man with the blue-green eyes assailed her. "I'll be fine, Daddy." Sam had promised he would protect her—though how he intended to do so while chasing after terrorists remained a mystery. "I've got to go," she repeated.

"I love you, sweetheart. Be careful."

"I will. Love you, too." She put her phone away and flopped onto the bed with her mother's journal, a little bound booklet into which Melinda Scott had scribbled her philosophies about global and societal issues, opinions that Maddy had embraced as her own. The final entries in the journal discussed her mother's objections to her father's prospecting in El Chaco. Melinda made it clear she didn't want her husband sucking oil out of one of the last pristine wildernesses in the world.

It'll ruin the delicate ecosystem
, she'd penned in her elegant scrawl.
Toxic waste will spill into the waterways and leach into the flora. The livestock of the local ranchers will die off first.
Eventually, the people living off their meat will develop various cancers and perish painfully.

Maddy thought of the dead cow and the symptoms the older natives were experiencing—God forbid that their illnesses would become long-term. She had hoped her work with GEF would corroborate her mother's assertions, but so far the tests she and Ricardo had run hadn't indicated at all that the environment was being adversely influenced.

It's just a matter of time,
she assured herself. And when she finally substantiated her belief that the oil wells had to go, she would appeal to her father to dismantle them, just as her mother would have wanted. Out of love for her mother, Lyle Scott would reluctantly agree. Except, if he didn't run the corporation, he'd have to convince Uncle Paul to pull the plug.

An hour later, Maddy set the book aside. It was time to drive Lucía and the baby to the hospital. Leaving her condo locked, she crossed to the Jeep to start it as she waited for her neighbor to join her. The sun beat down on the Jeep's roof, encouraging her to lower all the windows. She turned the key in the ignition and a
click, click, click
greeted her ears. Puzzled, Maddy tried again to no avail. Either the starter had given out or the battery was dead.

Seeing Lucía step out of the adjacent condo, Maddy pushed out of the driver's seat to explain the situation. "We'll have to walk," she apologized with a grimace. "I'll help carry the baby."

Lucía peered off into the direction of the hospital. "It's not too far," she answered, patting the little bundle in the front pack. "I'm fine with her."

"You just had a baby," Maddy protested.

"Ricardo's waiting," Lucía replied and started walking.

Admiring the woman's spirit, Maddy hurried ahead to lead the way.

As they skirted storefronts and simple dwellings, the sun burned ever brighter, heating the top of her head and making her long for the straw cowboy hat she had thoughtlessly left in the Jeep. Her blond hair tended to drew unwanted attention from the male population. Giving them a show wasn't her intention.

Still, with her head exposed, she felt nearly as vulnerable as she had last night. She could feel several sets of eyes tracking her progress as she picked her way along the uneven sidewalk. Were they friendly and brown? Or were they hostile, blue-green eyes that calculated her every move to decide whether she should live or die?

Chapter 9

Six hours of sleep was plenty to keep Sam's platoon alert during the briefing called by the CO. At fifteen hundred hours, he ordered Haiku to roust the men out of their bunks. They'd been sleeping ever since Charlie Platoon relieved them from their reconnaissance that morning.

No sooner had his platoon members thumped into their seats in the briefing room than Mad Max, Kuzinsky, and Lt. Lindstrom swept in, shutting the door behind them.

"At ease," Mad Max called out, keeping them from having to jump to their feet to salute. "Master Chief, give these men the latest sit rep," he ordered, folding his arms over his broad chest and letting Kuzinsky take over.

"Charlie Platoon has nothing to report," the master chief relayed. "The camp still appears deserted. Luckily, we just received JSOTF's blessing, which means we're cleared to insert tonight."

A wave of excitement rippled over the captive audience.

Lt. Lindstrom, whose six and a half feet of pure muscle made Kuzinsky look even shorter by comparison, toggled the laptop and brought up an aerial view of the terrorist training camp onto the flat screen TV.

"You'll join Charlie Platoon on site tonight at twenty hundred hours," he explained. "They'll provide backup while you men do the insertion." He briefly met Sam's gaze. "You've had more rest than they have," he said, defending that decision, "plus you've got the best breacher in this task unit." His gaze slid toward Petty Officer Carl Wolfe, a rangy SEAL with reddish brown hair and sunburnt skin. "And odds are high that this camp is laden with IEDs."

Humble to the point of being a martyr, Carl Wolfe's cool head around explosives had secured Sam's respect back in Afghanistan. His father, a New York City fireman, had perished in the World Trade Center on 9/11, a tragedy that had inspired Carl's desire to join in the fight against terror. He hadn't spoken more than a dozen sentences in Sam's presence the entire year that he'd been in Sam's platoon. All Sam knew about Carl was that he loved cats, he was quiet, and didn't make waves. The men trusted their very lives to him.

Lindstrom proceeded to illustrate their entry in timed segments. Like choreographed dancers, Echo Platoon would breach the outer perimeter while Charlie broke away from the camp in an expanding circle looking for squirters—enemy combatants fleeing the scene either above ground or via unidentified tunnels. At the same time, Echo Platoon, with Carl in the lead, would penetrate the camp. On the lookout for trip wires or pressure plates that could trigger ordinances to explode, they would home in on the large shelter into which the terrorists had disappeared.

With a trickle of foreboding, Sam acknowledged the possibility that he or one of his men might be maimed or even killed tonight, depending on how effectively the tangoes had built their bombs. Would Maddy even look at him twice if he lost a foot like T-Rex? Reassuringly, the answer wasn't an immediate
No
. Maddy was nothing if not compassionate. Her calling to help wherever she was needed was proof of that. Hell, she might even like him
better
if he couldn't walk.

With that only slightly reassuring thought, he focused on the details coming out of the Ops officer's mouth. Even though Lindstrom would remain a radio call away, platoon leaders were the highest ranking officers on site. The responsibility of ensuring that everything happened the way it was supposed to rested solely on his and Lt. Cooper's shoulders, while the leading petty officers, Bronco and Bullfrog included, ensured that everything went according to plan. They'd done this kind of thing a zillion times in training and a dozen times in real life. They could do it again.

Except that nothing ever went down the same way twice.

"We're looking for a backdoor," Lindstrom continued. "Old photographs and letters from the 19th century indicate that there were gold mines in the area, later used in the Chaco War to hide supplies and men. Our targets may have used a tunnel to escape the area unseen."

He bent way over to tap a key on his laptop, and the photograph of a wild-eyed, scar-faced terrorist superimposed itself on the screen. "One of the guys we're looking to capture is this Hezbollah extremist, Ashraf Al-Sadr." Sam recognized the man as one of the two Maddy had identified.

"This son of a bitch," Lindstrom said, using language he reserved exclusively for the most sadistic assholes on the planet, "is believed responsible for the rash of car bombings in Beirut earlier this year. He fled Lebanon sometime in March, before he could be arrested, and he apparently wound up out here. If you come across him, debilitate him if you must, but we want him alive. Any questions? Yes?"

As Haiku asked a question about radio frequencies, Sam looked past him and caught Bamm-Bamm eyeing him hopefully. The kid so obviously wanted to be included in the action tonight. No SEAL worth his salt would want to be left out, but it wasn't to be. With a subtle shake of his head, Sam let Austin Collins know that—no, he was needed right here at camp, keeping watch on Maddy's condo.

The kid actually had the audacity to roll his eyes in frustration. Sam's temper flared, but then he acknowledged that he'd reacted similarly when he'd been forced out of that op in Malaysia in order to snatch Maddy out of Matamoros. Now it was Bamm-Bamm's turn. Hopefully, they'd catch the terrorists tonight, and then he wouldn't be saddled with a job he felt was beneath his skills and training.

* * *

In the shadow of the military installation's outer wall, Bamm-Bamm smeared his face with dark-green camouflage paint. The stuff went on like mud. It was even harder to take off than it was to put on. He hadn't been told he
had
to use it, but he'd been spotted last night by Chief Adams who'd been looking for Lt. Sasseville, which meant he needed to step up his game tonight.

Feeling cheated for having been left out of a highlight event in Operation Anaconda, Bamm-Bamm reminded himself what an honor it was to protect the daughter of a future senator. And if the reason had something to do with that scar-faced terrorist Lt. Lindstrom had showed them during the briefing, then his protection detail might actually put him into confrontation with some nasty terrorists—not that he wanted them to target Miss Scott. But if they did, he'd be ready.

Pushing the tin of camo paint into his breast pocket, he checked that the clip on his MP-5 was fully loaded, pushed his helmet more securely onto his head, and nimbly swung his compact frame up into the
quebracho
tree behind him. The tree, one of dozens that had been planted inside the military installation, grew up close to the wall and well above it, affording him a bird's-eye view of Miss Scott's condo while keeping him within the perimeter of the camp.