Page 61 of Peace Under Fire

Mandy crossed her arms over her stained and rumpled purple coat and scowled, which was so wrong. Mandy was too sweet and friendly and just plain too nice for scowling.

That was his and Grumpy’s territory.

“If he won’t tell you, I will. Jacob wasn’t lying when he said I’ve been sharing his dreams. But sometimes, I see more than what he’s dreaming. Sometimes I see into his future. I see what’s going to happen to him.”

Grumpy rolled his eyes. “Sure, you do.” He started to turn around.

“She left me a voicemail on my squad cell two full days before our boots hit Amazon soil. Two full days before that last mission went south. She warned me I was going to be injured and Lucky was going to be taken. She detailed everything about that fucking mission days before it happened. If I’d gotten that message before we inserted into the compound, I could have prevented my accident and Lucky would still be with us.” Squish’s voice sharpened toward the end as frustration spiked.

If he’d listened to that damn voicemail when it first hit his phone, Lucky would be sitting beside him now. Instead, it was a toss-up whether he’d ever see his brother again. At least alive.

Suspicion hardened across Grumpy’s face. “If that’s true, then she’s working with our spy.”

“Our spy,” Squish growled, “didn’t know how we were going to take that fucking pedophile out. Nor did he know exactly where I would be when the ceiling came down.”

Grumpy grunted thoughtfully, but he still didn’t look convinced. “There has to be a better explanation than fortune telling.”

Before Squish had a chance to challenge that conclusion, Crusher interrupted them.

“As intriguing as this conversation is, it’s time to button it. We’re coming up on the compound’s entrance.”

Mandy leaned across Squish’s lap to look out the window. “He’s right. Our driveway is right around the corner.”

Squish sucked in his breath as her elbow grazed his dick, which took the fleeting touch as a sexual invitation. His cock swelled. His balls tightened. Son of a bitch. He grimaced. No way was he inserting into possibly hostile territory with a raging erection. Time to calm the beast.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much chance of that with Mandy’s soft, warm weight practically straddling his lap. He unobtrusively nudged her off.

The Land Rover slowed as it went into the turn, then slowed more as it took a left and eased through a crumpled iron gate. The road they’d been traveling had been plowed. But the driveway they turned onto stretched before them in thick, fluffy white. Luckily the Land Rover was built for these conditions and churned its way through the virgin snow with relative ease.

Crusher drove forward a hundred yards or so and pulled the vehicle alongside the thick, snow draped swath of Douglas Firs that bordered the driveway. By the time they’d all piled out of the vehicle and into the snow, the second SUV had arrived.

While Tex’s crew dispersed their equipment and checked their weapons, Mandy pulled on the new boots the boys had picked up for her. Then Squish ran through an abbreviated gun safety course. He showed her where the safety was on the Sig, how to hold the gun so her finger was outside the guard and off the trigger until she was ready to fire, and how to sight down the barrel. Once the basics were covered, he reinforced key safety factors like never pointing the gun at someone unless you intended to fire. She watched his presentation with fierce concentration, like she was trying to memorize everything exactly the way he described it.

Why he found that absurdly cute, he couldn’t say. Maybe because she was so focused on his words and actions, she’d caught the tip of her tongue with her teeth—like a little kid studying for a test.

Once the session was over, he shrugged into a ballistics vest and his shoulder holster before putting on his sheepskin jacket. By the time he was finished with his prep work, Grumpy was handing him a much smaller ballistics vest and helmet—Mandy-sized equipment.

“Thought I’d have to adapt when it came to rigging her out,” Squish mentioned, taking the vest and helmet with its attached pair of NVGs.

Grumpy turned away with a grunt.

Squish helped Mandy into her vest while trying to ignore how she felt beneath his hands—soft and warm, and way too tempting. He wanted to cup her breast and the curve of her hip to see how they fit his hand. He scanned her face, disappointed to find that sweet little tongue of hers had disappeared back inside her mouth.

What would it taste like, that tongue of hers? When the crotch of his pants began to feel restricted, he hastily moved his hands to safer territory and wrestled his mind back to the mission at hand.

Once the straps to her vest were buckled and tightened until the thick black garment hugged her curves, he stepped back, dragged her coat down from the hood of the Land Rover, and handed it to her.

“Remember what I told you on the plane. Stay by my side at all times.” He forced a stern tone as she stuffed her arms into her coat and zipped it up.

“I remember.”

“How you doing on extra ammo?” Grumpy asked as he shrugged into his coat, leaving the jacket unzipped and his weapon easily accessible.

“Full,” Squish answered as he picked up the Mandy-sized helmet from the Land Rover’s hood. He had a couple of spare mags in his pocket for both weapons, plus clips for reloading the mags. Unless they got in a hell of a firestorm, he was good; which reminded him. He scanned the assembled men and their weapons. “Where the hell are the assault rifles?”

Grumpy shrugged. “Tex nixed them. Said they’d be too hard to explain if we got stopped and searched by the locals.”

Squish grunted, silently shaking his head. Sure, Tex had a point. However, they were still armed to the teeth, including some RPGs. Those rocket propelled grenades alone would be hard to explain. Nothing they could do about their weapons choice now, though. They’d just have to hope that if they did run into a hotspot, the guns they’d brought would pull them through.

---