The Heart of a Mercenary Read online

  She took a step toward him. “Hunter…”

  He held his ground, said nothing.

  “Hunter, I—I’m sorry, I… My buttons…” She held her hands out apologetically. “I can’t seem to make my fingers work. I…I can’t stop the shaking. Could you please help me with my blouse?”

  He blinked sharply. She wanted him to undress her? His mouth went bone-dry.

  “Could you help me?”

  “Ah…sure.” They were just buttons, right? How many times in his life had he undone a woman’s blouse? Too many to count. So why in hell was he actually afraid to touch her again? This was beyond ridiculous.

  She stepped closer and his heart began to thud. He adjusted the sling of his rifle, swallowed hard and lifted his hand, moving it up to the valley between her breasts. He gripped one teeny, round button with his fingers before he realized he’d need his other hand, too. He swore softly to himself—you’d think he’d be able to undo the buttons of a blouse without thinking this hard. He slipped the pearly button out of the fabric, moved his hands down to the next one, purposefully avoiding her eyes, trying to keep a laser focus on this simple task.

  Then the back of his hand brushed against the soft, warm swell of her breast, and his control was shot. Heat speared his belly and began to stab with each beat of his heart. Hunter moistened his lips, forced himself to concentrate. He moved his hands to the next button, barely able to breathe. “There.” He blew out the breath he’d been holding, and looked into her eyes.

  Was he imagining what he saw there? A flare of need? A yearning? A connection that went beyond the physical…words that needed to be spoken, but couldn’t be? His heart beat even faster. But she averted her eyes and turned away abruptly.

  He used the momentary privacy to swipe the back of his hand hard across his mouth. Sweet heavens this woman had a crazy effect on him, not just mentally, but physically. He hadn’t seen that one coming.

  With her back to him, Sarah hesitated, then slowly slipped her long-sleeved blouse off her shoulders, exposing a thin white cotton camisole with a hint of lace around the edges. Hunter was transfixed. He couldn’t have looked away if he’d tried.

  He noted the ragged slash in the fabric, the fresh blood. A vengeful fire began to smolder deep within him. The wound wasn’t that bad, but it looked rudely invasive against the virginal white of her cotton top. He fingered the hard lines of his weapon, seeking mental clarity in the familiar shape. Cool. Stay cool.

  She lifted the camisole up over her head, the movement lengthening the long muscles that cradled her spine. She wasn’t wearing a bra. He swore softly to himself as perspiration pricked under the paint on his face and dampened his back. It was getting damn hot out here. Watching Sarah undress wasn’t making things any cooler. But he’d be damned if he could look away. He swiped his wrist over his forehead and moistened his lips, forcing himself to concentrate clinically on the gash across her left shoulder blade.

  It wasn’t deep, but needed to be cleaned and sterilized. And it required several surgical strips to pull the edges together. He tried to clear his throat. “Here, sit on this rock so I can work on you from behind.”

  She acquiesced in silence. Hunter crouched down behind her, shifted his gun to his side and took a tube of disinfectant gel from his kit. He rubbed it over his hands before moistening a gauze pad with a ten percent solution of Povidone iodine. He touched the disinfectant-soaked pad to her skin.

  Her body jerked in reflex.

  He hesitated. He knew it stung like all hell. He wanted to tell her to take it easy, to relax. He wanted to talk her through it. But he couldn’t. He needed to think of her as a job. Anything else was dangerous. Besides, she was a nurse; she knew what was coming. He touched the pad to her skin again and wiped the wound clean. He could see no debris in it, but to be safe, he irrigated the cut thoroughly with a strong stream of the same antiseptic solution from a syringe. Sarah gasped, but still he said nothing. In silence he applied antibiotic ointment, then forced the edges of the now-clean gash together, holding them down tightly with three suture strips. He made sure her skin was dry and then covered the whole thing with a transparent, waterproof bandage, sealing the wound completely. This was necessary in wilderness environments, especially tropical ones. In places like this, even a small nick could end up killing a person.

  “Done,” he said.

  She reached for her torn camisole, and as she stretched out her arm, Hunter caught sight of the smooth, full roundness of her breast, the profile of a dusky pink nipple. An involuntary spasm rippled through him.

  He looked sharply away. But it was too late. Desire was already swelling and surging inside him. He bit it back, clenched his jaw. He checked his watch, the riverbank, the dense wall of foliage, the sky…anything not to look at that sweet ridge of spine down the center of her back as she slipped the camisole over her head. He had to keep his cool. He still had to clean the cut on her cheek. He had to touch her again.

  She turned to face him. Hunter avoided her eyes, motioned for her to sit back down on the rock. He knelt in front of her, poured antiseptic solution onto a dressing and began to wipe the dirt from the cut on her cheekbone. She shivered and closed her eyes as the burn of the solution met her skin. His body responded instantly to her movement. Again, he fought off the unwelcome sexual longing.

  He carefully picked a few embedded bits of dirt out of the cut with forceps, conscious of her breath on the back of his hand as he worked. Then he used the syringe to flush the cut. She winced, but still he said nothing. He applied the antibiotic and then sealed the edges with two suture strips.

  “There you go. Wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

  Her eyes fluttered open and Hunter’s heart tripped. Up this close he could see tiny flecks of gold in the chocolate-brown, and he could see that her lashes were honey-brown on the tips. She truly was beautiful, in a very natural and pure way. A golden angel.

  Jesus, he was losing it.

  He ran his wrist over his forehead again, then silently cursed. The movement had transferred greasepaint onto his hands. He’d have to disinfect them again because he still had to tend to her knees and her arms.

  He clubbed his errant thoughts aside, rubbed more sterilizing solution over his hands and began to work on cleaning and disinfecting the smaller scrapes and cuts on her knees and arms. She sat motionless, watching his every move.

  He finally rocked back on his heels and looked up into her face. “There, that’ll keep you going for a while.”

  She gave him a brave smile. “Thank you, Hunter.”

  He couldn’t help but smile back. Without thinking, he reached up with both hands and removed the ripped blue-and-white cotton cloth from her hair. Tangled mahogany curls tumbled down around her face and fell to her shoulders, the sunlight bringing out burnished auburn highlights. For an instant, he could do nothing but stare. Sarah Burdett might look as soft and gentle as a broken angel, but inside this woman was a surprising core of iron-willed strength. He’d seen it.

  She’d lived through a brutal massacre, escaped her attackers. She’d taken hold of that biohazard container and fled into the dark jungle with every intention of somehow getting her lethal cargo all the way to Atlanta. It was an impossible task. How in hell had she planned on doing that?

  And to top it all, in spite of her fatigue, after all she’d been through, after he had saved her life, she still had the moral fortitude to question his profession and subtly show her disapproval. It made Hunter want to know more about what drove this woman, what really fired her from the inside, what had really brought her to Africa.

  But he wasn’t about to ask.

  The less he knew about Sarah Burdett, the better. Because in a couple of hours they’d be on São Diogo Island and she’d be out of his hands. He turned abruptly away from her and began to pack up his first aid kit.

  “You’d make a good doctor, you know?”

  He didn’t look up.

  “You have a healing to
uch. I’ve worked with enough medical professionals to know.”

  He clenched his jaw, flipped the kit closed and reached for his gun. He shoved himself to his feet and stared up into the haze of viscous heat that hung over the river. The chopper would be here any second, and not a moment too soon.

  Sarah frowned. Something was eating this man big time, something that had wired him with low flash points. She studied his rough profile as he scanned the sky, and a small ping of regret bounced through her heart at the thought that she’d never find out what it was. It was in her nature to want to help, to make people feel better…. But as fleetingly as it had come, the notion was gone. What she really wanted more than anything was to get out of this place and to get Dr. Regnaud’s container to safety. It was the one thing that had kept her going through the night. And it was holding her together now. Barely.

  She watched Hunter scanning the sky, then the wide ribbon of brown water, then the grassy clearing behind them, his eyes moving gradually toward the thick wall of vegetation at the far end. He tensed. Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. She peered into the haze above the trees, trying to see what had alerted him, but couldn’t make out a thing. Nerves skittered through her stomach. She stood, came to his side. “What is it?” she whispered.

  He lifted the muzzle of his gun, pointed to a spot just above the canopy. “Smoke. Over there.”

  Sarah shielded her brow and squinted into the distance. “Where?”

  Then all of a sudden she could see it. A faint wisp of white separated from the haze and curled up out of the trees. It grew dark and acrid as she watched. Then it began to billow and boil into the sky, black and furious—just like the smoke at the clinic compound had.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  “It’s a village along the Oyambo.” Hunter studied the smoke with narrowed eyes, not a hint of emotion on his face. “They’re looking for you.”

  Her heart dropped like a cold stone. “But…but why are they burning the village? If they didn’t find me, why would they do such a thing?”

  He said nothing.

  She clenched her fists in frustration and glared at Hunter. “Why?” she demanded. She needed an answer, needed to understand.

  His features remained implacable. “They’ll backtrack now. They’ll pick up our trail before long.”

  Horror swamped her. This could not be happening. She couldn’t take any more. No more. Not another second in this awful place.

  Hunter turned his back on the smoke and scanned the trees along the opposite bank of the Shilongwe. “Sarah?”

  She couldn’t answer, couldn’t talk. Couldn’t think. All she could do was stare at the billowing black smoke and think about what had happened at Ishonga.

  “Sarah—” he grabbed her arm “—listen to me! Focus. The helo will come from there, see? From the north. Look.”

  She moved her head woodenly. He was pointing his gun upriver.

  “When it does, we have to move fast. And I mean fast. Do everything I say. No questions. Got it?”

  She stared at his blackened face. It was totally expressionless, showing no glimpse of compassion for what was happening in that village along the Oyambo. The man was inhuman.

  Resentment pooled in her stomach. She wanted to get away from him, from this place. Far away.

  “Do you understand me, Sarah?”

  She forced herself to nod numbly.

  “Good. Now see that sandbank, just beyond the shallows?” He pointed into the river. “That’s where our guys will land. As soon as the chopper approaches, we wade out there. You hang on to me. Got it?”

  Before she could answer, Sarah heard the distinct and distant chop of helicopter blades, the sound expanding and contracting through levels of humidity along the river. Her heart began to jackhammer. The machine materialized, silver in the shimmering, white-hot sky. It banked and flew in low along the course of the brown river. The sound grew louder. Deafening. Water rippled and flattened out in concentric circles as it closed in. Trees bowed. Leaves flew and birds scattered.

  She felt Hunter’s hand grip hers. Her heart tripped in a panicky lurch of fear and relief. In a couple of hours she’d be out of this hellish place, away from this man and everything he represented.

  The helicopter hovered over the sandbank, and she could see the pilot inside giving a thumbs-up. Hunter yanked her forward. “Head down,” he yelled over the roar of the lethal rotor blades as he pulled her into the river.

  Warm water filled her shoes instantly and thick silt sucked at her feet. He drew her in deeper. Faster. The brown water was now above her waist. It was deeper than she’d thought. She could feel the current dragging at her clothes. The downdraft from the chopper plastered her hair onto her head and whipped the ends sharply against her cheeks. Tears streamed from her eyes as she squinted into the force of the wind. Hunter dragged her in even deeper. She hung to him for dear life. They were almost there. Then she heard a crack.

  Hunter froze. So did she.

  Then another sharp crack split the air.

  Gunshots.

  Terror sliced through her heart. “Someone’s shooting at us!” she screamed, the vortex of wind and sound sucking up her words and flinging them out over the water.

  A bullet pinged against the chopper, then another. Everything blurred into slow motion. Sarah registered the pilot making signals to Hunter. He gestured back. The chopper lifted, veered sharply up to the left and climbed high over the treetops.

  Sarah stared in dismay as the metal beast, her only hope of rescue, her lifeline, disappeared, becoming a silver speck in the shimmering heat of the Congo sky.

  A bullet slammed into the river right next to her, shooting a jet of water into her face. She opened her mouth to scream, but before any sound came out, Hunter’s hand hit her hard on the back of her head, knocking her facedown into river. She spluttered, choking in a mouthful of water that tasted like sand. She tried to wriggle free, to gasp for air, but Hunter yanked her under. She held her breath. She couldn’t see. He drew her down deeper, and suddenly she could no longer touch the bottom. Water swirled around her, tangling her skirt up around her hips, her hair over her face. She was running out of breath. She tried desperately to fight Hunter’s death grip, to reach the surface. But she couldn’t. He held on, keeping her under. Her lungs were going to burst. He was drowning her! She was going to drown! She felt herself being pulled sideways as the current merged with another and doubled in strength. Then it tripled, sucking her into a cold deep channel, dragging her to the bottom.

  And everything went black.

  Chapter 5

  07:42 Alpha. São Diogo Island.

  Monday, September 22

  “We lost McBride’s signal there, ’bout thirty klicks south of the Cameroon border.” December Ngomo pointed at one of the LCD screens mounted along the wall, his heavily-accented voice reverberating through the FDS situation room.

  Jacques Sauvage moved closer to the screen. He narrowed his eyes, studied the terrain in silence, his concentration pulling at the scar that sliced down the left side of his face. “That where the pilot saw them go under?”

  “Yebo,” Ngomo said in his native Zulu.

  Rafiq Zayed looked up from the report in his hands. “Any chance he lost coverage when he went back into dense bush?”

  “Negative,” said Ngomo. “The signal was lost right there, in the Shilongwe River.”

  Sauvage cursed under his breath. The satellite phone that emitted McBride’s GPS signal may have been damaged.

  Or worse.

  They all knew Hunter had a backup radio, but breaking radio silence now would be suicide. It would broadcast their location to anyone who had the equipment to tune in. They had no way of knowing now whether their man had taken a bullet and gone down.

  Sauvage turned to Zayed. “You have the chopper on standby in Cameroon?”

  Zayed nodded, his liquid eyes intense under hooked brows. “But sending it in now would be a death mission. Ai
rspace has completely shut down in the north. Whole place is set to blow, and anyone with half a brain is getting the hell out.”

  Sauvage checked his watch. “Then we wait.” Time was not a luxury they could afford, but they had little alternative now. “If McBride is okay, he’ll head north, to the border.” He turned his back on the screen and engaged the eyes of first Zayed, and then Ngomo. The corner of his mouth curled slowly into his characteristically crooked smile. “It was looking too smooth, non? Trust Irish to take the tough way out.” Sauvage used their affectionate tag for McBride. But apart from his Irish accent, the men knew nothing about Hunter’s past. McBride, Sauvage, Zayed and Ngomo never talked about the past. Not in a way that mattered. It was an unspoken pact among these men. It went to the heart of the bond between them.

  All they knew was that Hunter had arrived at the gates of the Légion Étrangère—the French Foreign Legion—fifteen years ago with a thick Irish brogue and a look of murder in his strangely colored eyes. That look had eventually left him. Mostly. But the brogue had stayed, only softening, becoming veiled after years of his speaking only French.

  These disparate men had understood each other back then, as they did now. For hidden reasons of their own, each had been driven to the gates of Fort de Nogent in Paris, desperate to seek asylum with the notorious “Legion of the Damned,” where a man could bury his past in order to fight for France. If he survived his contract, he could come out with a new identity and a French passport. A shot at a new life.

  They’d all earned their second chance by coming close to death in the name of a country that was not their own, fighting with a crack army of foreigners, the biggest and most legitimate mercenary force in the world. They’d served in places like Bosnia, Rwanda, Zaire, Chad, central Africa, Lebanon, Somalia, the Gulf. They’d developed the Legion mind-set, where soldiers of many nations and many pasts had to set aside differences and stand by each other and die for a foreign nation. The resulting bond that had formed between the men was formidable, sealed with discipline, trust, solidarity and respect for tradition.