Merline Lovelace - The Right Stuff

“I’m a friend. Amigo.”

The kid twisted frantically. He wasn’t buying the friend bit. Considering the violence now ripping his country apart, Mac couldn’t exactly blame him. He gave the boy a quick little shake.

“Where’s your village? ¿Dónde está su, uh, casa?”

Still the youngster wouldn’t answer. His lower lip jutted out and his black eyes shot daggers at the marine, but he refused to speak so much as a word. Instead, he made some motion with his hand that Mac strongly suspected was the Caribe version of buzz off, pal.

“Stubborn little devil, aren’t you?”

Well, no matter. He had to be from the village where the Americans had set up their mission. It was the only settlement in this vicinity.

Bunching his fist, Mac kept a firm grip on the boy’s shirt with one hand while he slung his weapon over his shoulder and probed the cut above his eye with the other. The skin was tender and already rising to a good-sized lump, but the blood had slowed to a trickle. He’d clean the cut when he got to the village. Unless the navigational finder in his radio was sending faulty signals, it couldn’t be much farther.

It wasn’t.

Another ten minutes brought Mac and his sullen, squirming captive to the edge of a clearing. Although the boy hadn’t as yet uttered a single sound, Mac clamped a hand over his mouth. Eyes narrowed, he surveyed the scene.

It didn’t take him long to determine the village was deserted. No dogs yapped. No pigs snuffled in the dirt. No goats were tethered to stakes beside the huts. Nor could Mac discern any sign of human habitation…until an unmistakably female figure in a sleeveless white blouse and baggy tan slacks emerged from the clapboard building at the far end of the dirt track that served as the village’s main thoroughfare. Obviously agitated, the woman thrust a hand through her cropped blond hair.

“Paulo! Where are you?”

The woman repeated the shout in Spanish, then Caribe. Mac was congratulating himself on having located at least one of the missionaries when his attacker gave a strangled grunt and renewed his frenzied attempts to escape.

This time, Mac let him go. The little squirt shot off, his skinny legs pumping.

“Paulo! There you are!”

Her shoulders sagging in relief, the woman dropped to her knees and opened her arms. The boy charged straight into them. The woman hugged him fiercely, rocking back and forth.

Mac decided he’d better make his presence known before the kid painted him as an enemy. But when he stepped out from behind the tree, the woman’s horrified glance whipped from his black-painted, blood-streaked face to his assault rifle. Before Mac could identify himself and assure her he meant no harm, she let loose with a piercing yell.

“¡Los soldados!”

“Lady, it’s okay. I’m…”

He started toward her, then stopped dead as the shutters covering the windows of one of the huts banged open. In the ominous silence that followed, he heard the snick of a weapon being cocked.

Impatiently, Cari swatted at a persistent mosquito and searched the towering ferns lining the river.

Where the heck was Mac?

Why hadn’t he contacted her in… She drew another bead on the functional black watch strapped to her wrist. In fifty-two minutes?

After he’d missed his last signal, she’d waited ten endless minutes before trying to raise him on his radio. When another ten had crawled by, she’d tried again. Each time she’d received nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Now she was eight minutes away from the point where he’d insisted she get out of Dodge.

Could she abandon him?

She was no closer to an answer now than she’d been for the past fifty-three minutes. She glowered at the leafy ferns, willing them to part.

Dammit, where was he?

And what the heck had that kiss been all about?

She didn’t have an answer for either question.

Grinding her back teeth in frustration, Cari pulled out her sidearm and released the magazine. A quick check verified the clip was full. She snapped it back in, holstered the Beretta, and swiped her damp, sweaty palms down the side of her BDU shirt.

She could still taste him on her lips. Still feel the scrape of his bristly chin on hers. With all her years in uniform, she would never have imagined she’d be feeling this kind of prickly, itchy, physical awareness smack in the middle of a mission!

Or at all, for that matter.

She was no nun. She’d dated her share of smart, sexy men. Had drifted in and out of several heavy relationships before meeting Jerry. And he was certainly no slouch when it came to stirring her senses. Yet Cari was darned if she could remember ever experiencing such a severe reaction to a single kiss.

She’d be a fool to attach too much significance to it, though. It could only have sprung from tension, that peculiar combination of nerves and adrenaline that came at times like this. Mac had no interest in her outside the professional. None he’d demonstrated during their months in the New Mexico desert, anyway. And she found him almost as irritating as she did attractive.

So why the heck couldn’t she lick his taste from her lips? Scowling, she slapped a palm against the side of the hatch.

Where was he!

“Pegasus One, this is Two.”

The sharp, clear communication almost had Cari jumping out of her skin. Gulping down her relief, she keyed her radio.

“Go ahead, Two.”

“Be advised that I’m en route back to your position, approximately fifty meters out. Prepare to cast off as soon as we get our passengers on board.”

“Roger.”

He’d done it! He’d located the missionaries and brought them out. Cari would have a word with him later about the grief his missed signal had put her through. Right now, she had to power up her craft.

The engines were humming and she was back at the open hatch when the ferns began to shake. Seconds later, Mac popped through the leafy wall. He was carrying something on his back. Not something, Cari saw in surprise when he turned to hold aside the ferns. Someone. A child.

A woman pushed through the greenery after Mac. She was followed by a boy in sneakers and scruffy, white cotton pants. Another child poked through a second later, this one a scrawny girl in pigtails and tattered, pink sneakers.

Her jaw dropping, Cari watched as several more children emerged. A tall, lanky man with a wide-eyed little girl on his shoulders brought up the rear of the column. Mac hustled them all toward the waiting craft.

The woman reached the vehicle first. Cari stretched down a hand, grasped her wrist, and helped her up the steps.

“Thanks.” She raked a hand through short, sweat-spiked blond bangs. “I’m Dr. White. Janice White.”

“Glad you made it, Doc.”

Nodding, the missionary stood back as Cari reached for the child Mac lifted up. He was a tousled-haired boy of three or four. He was also blind, Cari realized when his groping hands failed to connect with hers. Gulping, she took a better stance and stretched out her arms. His chubby fingers found her sleeves and dug in.

“Okay, I’ve got him.”

To her consternation, she soon discovered each of the children possessed some form of physical disability. One dragged his right leg. Another had a cleft palate that left his young face tragically disfigured. The merry gap-toothed girl had a spine so twisted she couldn’t stand upright. Dismayed, Cari waited for Mac to climb aboard.

“I had to bring them,” he said in response to her silent query. “The Whites wouldn’t leave them.”

Dragging off his boonie hat, he swiped an arm across his sweat-drenched face. Only then did Cari see the vicious-looking cut on his forehead. Someone—Dr. White, she guessed—had added a few neat stitches. Before Cari could ask Mac what he’d run into, the tall, lanky missionary grabbed her hand and pumped it.