Page 28 of Hazard

“Cowards,” Skull snarled.

“Bulk up,” Iceman said through gritted teeth, his gaze glacial. “We’ll need the energy.” Everyone ate rations cold and fast, Skull taking care of Bones’s needs as he always did. While they were dealing with the fallout of the demolished TOC, Bones had gone to sleep. Smart dog.

Then there was nothing but movement and activity as they prepared for a long, hard, hot run into the most inhospitable place on earth with no communication, no authority, and infested with criminals.

Weapons were checked, mags traded around, vests and packs tightened. Then they were running full out, across the patterned tropical ground toward that green darkness that yawned like an open mouth, waiting for unsuspecting prey.

But they weren’t unsuspecting, and they weren’t prey. They were relentless hunters, wounded warriors, direct-action assaulters, grieving men. “Move,” Iceman shouted, and they picked up their pace. The pack was released, the wolves of war snapping at their enemies’ heels, razor-sharp teeth, a killer instinct, and they were out for blood.

Leigh sloughed on, her brain going fuzzy as they pushed them harder. Not exactly into a run, but the quick pace was fast enough to make the enclosed gap feel like a sauna. She was also running on fumes. She’d worked so hard the past two weeks, then that awful trip to DC had sapped her strength. She’d needed rest on top of needing rest, and she wished she had gone to bed when Hazard had suggested it…several times.

Hazard. She latched onto the memory of him, and to her shock, she felt safer amid these monsters. Then it dawned on her. They had picked up the pace. That was significant. People only did that if they were being pursued.

Hope grew from a flicker to a full-blown flame.

What had happened to their plans? Had her team done the impossible? Of course, they had. Iceman, Preacher, GQ, Kodiak, Hazard, Skull, Bones, Boomer, and Breakneck were the elite of the elite. They strategized, planned, executed on the run. She had total and unwavering faith in them that they were going to save her and Anna’s lives, and eventually the tables would be turned, and she and Anna would be interrogating this scum.

That’s all she had to latch onto avoiding the morass of her recessed thoughts. She hadn’t orchestrated this whole mess, but she was the linchpin. And that admission, even quietly to herself, evoked a wave of guilt that nearly smothered her. She gritted her teeth, knowing she couldn’t dwell on her part in this terrible attack. Later, there would be plenty of time for recriminations. She hoped.

They were pushed over fallen trees, through underbrush, sometimes hacking through thickets. By this time the sun had come up, and it was hard not to admire the beauty of this wild and untamed place. Pink blushed the sky with dawn where the sounds persisted, warning calls of howler monkeys, squawks of birds, the sound of dripping water.

The sun peeking in and out of the heavy canopy of giant kapok and rubber trees filling the area, green shadowing the Andean valley all the way to the mountains’ smudged purple backdrop. As they walked, they stirred the gray-white mist that wrapped the enormous palms and curled toward the sky, hovering like an army of ghosts.

When she stopped abruptly, pressing back away from a jaguar that padded like yellow gold and undulating black spots through the stippled foliage, she wasn’t thinking about anything but the feline predator.

The animal stopped for a brief, breath-stealing moment, those primal, gilded eyes, glowing with a feral light, riveted on her. For a moment he studied her, then moved on. She cried out from the suddenness of the man behind her shoving her so hard, she fell to her hands and knees on the jungle floor that was so thick with vines, her knees protesting, pain spiking.

She turned her head, pinning Conde with what must have been a fierce look. He drew back and she said, “If you want to cripple me and have that slow us down even more, good job asshole.”

Anna groaned as the man dragged Leigh to her feet. “You easily give your opinions as if you were free to do so. You’re not,” he snapped. “Now shut your fucking mouth and move.”

As the morning grew lighter and the heat intensified, the walking was nothing but putting one foot in front of the other, her body moving on autopilot. She stopped and leaned against a tree. “Water,” she croaked.

“You’ll get water when we get to where we’re going,” Conde, that sadist snapped.

She wasn’t kidding this time. She felt faint. “That’s not going to help me, is it? I need water now or you’ll be carrying me.”

He turned to Marco, clearly the leader. “Can we just kill her now and leave her to rot?”

The man’s chin came up, and he pinned her with dark eyes that held no life. She was running out of stamina to fight back. Time meant nothing except a string of minutes stretched with pain and terror.

“No. Angel said to extract information about their plans. We need them alive to do that.” But he looked like he agreed with his subordinate. “Give them some water and five minutes of rest. Then we move on.”

She wasn’t stupid. The minute they got what they wanted, they would kill her. She swallowed hard. She had used her bravado mostly to keep the fear and panic from getting a hold of her, to keep herself from losing it. Now she realized that all of it, her illusionary control was nothing but smoke and mirrors. The significance of that thought penetrated, and a kind of shock jolted her system. All this time, she’d been living like she had all the control in the world.

She accepted the canteen, the water brackish, but felt good against her parched tongue and dry mouth. She drank several swallows and passed it to Anna, still reeling, feeling like an impostor. Unable to even bend enough to be vulnerable in this situation when it would be completely expected, Leigh shored up her crumbling foundations.

Their captors moved away to murmur among themselves. Anna took a long drink, then passed it back to her. “Leigh, I know you’re pissed, and you’re scared, but you have to tone it down. We need to buy time for the team to get to us. The one you’re belittling, Conde, is losing his shit. If he lashes out and kills you in a rage…please just, try to be more?—”

“Accommodating? Submissive?”

Her features stretched tight with disgust. “Yes, to be blunt. It might seem like we’re giving in, but we’re not. We are biding our time, surviving.”

Leigh was struggling right now to find her bearings. Letting go of her desire to defend herself and stand up to these men warred with the thought of being compliant. Compliance felt too much like how she’d had to compromise herself and her needs, desires, and principles when she’d been a child. Watching her own back for much of her life made her skepticism rise to the fore, even when she harbored the feeling that Hazard…his team wouldn’t let them down, but it was so hard to let go of doubts, and maybe that was more a fear of disappointment than anything else. “How can you be sure they’re coming for us?” The thought of being truly alone and at the mercy of the cartel who had kidnapped her to make an example of her to her government made her shake inside.

“Are you kidding?” Anna smirked knowingly. “We’re one of them now and after they see what happened to TOC—” Anna’s voice broke and she took a hard breath, working through her own grief. Leigh didn’t know the people who had been killed like Anna did, but she remembered all too well, and quite viscerally what it was like to lose people she worked with and were close to. Her throat constricted, and her eyes stung. “They don’t leave their people behind, and they’ll want retribution. I can assure you of that. I’m not just their CIA liaison, I’m married to a SEAL. This…our situation…is what they live for, and the way Hazard looks at you. Oh, yeah, they’re coming for us.”

Leigh let that comment about Hazard wash over her, not in any position to talk about the man in any way that was personal. She was still sorting through so much crap inside her overstuffed head, so many years of thinking she was doing something for one reason, but now wondering if she had been blinded by the truth, a truth that played at the fringe of her consciousness. She changed the subject, dropping into a whisper. “Something happened to spook these bastards.”

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