Rogue Soldier

“You always thought quick on your feet.”

The small compliment, the acknowledgment of her abilities, felt ridiculously good. Especially since she’d been beating herself into the ground over what she had and hadn’t done, for not being able to save Roger.

Mike was moving around, but she couldn’t see what he was doing. Probably just settling in.

“Did they hurt you?” His fingers brushed against her bruised cheek, but withdrew almost immediately.

“I tried to get away and fell down the steps, banged my head against the side of the trailer. My feet were bound,” she told him, hating to admit her failure.

He said nothing for a while, until she thought he might have fallen asleep.

“They were coming from the direction of the pipeline instead of going toward it,” he spoke up suddenly. “But they still had the explosives. Doesn’t make any sense.”

“Pipeline? We weren’t anywhere near the pipeline.”

“Exactly.” He paused. “I came across some classified information. Supposedly, those men are in some radical environmentalist group. A few miles of the pipeline are shut down for repair. They were looking to blow it up.”

“Nothing was said about that. They were definitely heading home. They sounded pretty happy about their mission. The only glitch was, the plane that was supposed to pick them up went down in the mountains in that storm five days ago.”

“Odd. Lift up a corner of this cover for a second, would you?”

She slid over and did so on the opposite side from where the wind was blowing, letting in some light. Mike already had his knife in hand, going at the crate. She propped the opening with a rifle and went to help him. “TNT?”

“That’s my best guess.”

The wood protested loudly, but after a few seconds the lid popped off. Mike picked through layers of padding before the smooth sheen of metal became visible. His hands stilled.

She didn’t have to have the symbol of yellow triangles explained to her.

Far more disturbing than a pile of explosives, the crate they cradled between them housed a small nuclear warhead.

Chapter Two

“Something tells me those guys are not ticked-off environmentalists.” Mike swore as he put the crate’s lid back on. This changed everything.

Snow swirled into the tent, but he barely saw it. Did the CIA know about this? A number of things made perfect sense suddenly. Did the Colonel know?

“Weapons dealers?” Tessa went to check on Sasha.

Apparently satisfied with the dog’s condition, she removed the propped rifle and let the cover drop, shrouding them in darkness once again, closing off the cold that had been pouring in.

“It’s ours.” He stared in the direction of the warhead, although he could no longer see the crate. “I’m guessing the American half of the group was selling it to the Russians, then the plane crashed and they got stuck here. How did they get to you?”

“Snowmobiles. They were just about out of gas.”

“What I want to know is, where the hell did they get the warheads?”

The wind whistled down the plain, shaking their flimsy shelter, but enough snow had fallen to have buried the edges and keep them frozen in place. He bounced the furs on top to shake off accumulation, to avoid the “roof” collapsing on them. A few tears here and there in the stitching allowed for air. They wouldn’t suffocate as long as they didn’t let the snow completely bury them.

“Where did you get this old thing?” He ran his fingers over the coarse fur.

“From the Inupiat.”

“Close by?”

“About fifty miles west. But they’ve already gone to their winter camp.”

“What were you two still doing here?”

“We had a plane pick up scheduled for…” She thought for a moment. “Yesterday. Since we were planning on flying out, we didn’t have to worry about an early snowfall closing Black Horse Pass.”

“As best as I can remember the map, the nearest town should be about a hundred miles south?”

“On the other side of the foothills. We couldn’t take the sled.”

“How are your dogs at hunting?”

“That’s not what they were trained for, but I suppose once they get hungry enough their instincts will kick in.”

“I can carry Sasha, maybe make her a travois.” The dog should be able to walk some, the wound wasn’t that bad, but there was no way she could keep up with the others over long distances.

“There’s a permanent Inupiat village about sixty miles northwest. We can make it there on the sled and wait for the rescue team. They’ll have an easier time finding that than spotting us among the snowdrifts or in the woods.”

Sixty miles. A hell of a lot closer than the town to the south. Still. “I hate the thought of going farther north. Any polar bears around here?”

“They’d be closer to the coast. If we come across any surprises, we have good guns.”

She sounded calm and confident, reminding him of the jams they had fought themselves out of together. And that, of course, reminded him of the steamy nights they’d spent in each other’s arms.

“So what are the chances of us picking up where we left off?”

He heard her swallow.

“We left off with you drunk and a half-naked woman in your hotel room.”

“Before that?”

“You mean when you got me kicked out of Special Forces training and destroyed my dreams?”

“I’m not going to apologize for saving your life.”

She was too stubborn to admit that she would not have made it through the obstacle course in the Florida Everglades, but he remembered the day in crystal-clear detail. He could be stubborn, too. Was he not a Scotsman by blood? She had scared ten years off his life.

She’d been sick with fever and weak from bleeding, hanging on to life by a thread after she’d fought off an alligator. She’d lain half under the beast without moving when he’d found her, and he had thought for a moment that she was dead. Turned out she’d just been collecting her strength to push off the gator. She’d had a badly broken collarbone, her body covered in bruises and cuts, some of which looked infected.

The sight of her had made him forget the test, the only thought in his mind to get her to medical help, to get her to safety. At the end, he’d gotten a special commendation for saving a teammate, while she’d gotten the boot. She had failed the course and lost her chance with Special Forces. When she’d been released from the hospital four days later, still steamed at him, he had made things worse by being drunk.

She had left, and obviously she had moved on.