Rogue Soldier (4 page)

Whatever it took, he would win it back again.

“I don't like the way you're looking at me,” she said.

She was a suspicious one, but she would come around. He was sure of that.

“I was thinking about how to get out of here. I'll look for snowshoes, make some if we can't find any.” He glanced at the open shelves in the kitchen, the row of canned meat. “There's enough food to take with us. We'll grab some extra furs, too.”

She hesitated before she spoke. “What if snow already closed off the pass?”

“We'll come back here and winter over.” If Brady's men from the CIA found them, they would deal with that when the time came. His escape and evasion skills had been honed by years of nearly impossible missions. And the Colonel would be asking questions about him if he didn't return soon.

“If I could get a message to the Colonel, he could pass it on to Shorty. Shorty would find a way to come and get us. He hates Brady as much as I do. Maybe more.”

“Why?”

“Remember what I told you about Brady?”

“You had something on him.”

“He was taking money from the budget. He requisitioned equipment that was never delivered. He fudged the inventory. We were risking our lives out there in the field, and the clips we had were short on bullets.”

“And you found out but didn't do anything about it?”

“Couldn't. I went to him to tell him I knew what he was doing. Next thing I know, Shorty is begging me to leave the guy alone. Some chick in accounting made some accusations of sexual harassment. Shorty swore up and down he was innocent. He'd just gotten married. Brady offered to make the whole thing go away if I got off his back. He knew Shorty and I were friends. He promised to quit messing with inventory. There wasn't much I could do. I had little proof to start with.”

“Hmmm.” Tessa straightened her spine. “What's that?”

Wind howled outside, but he picked up something else, too, a rumbling kind of sound that came from close by, almost as if from inside the cabin.

“Probably the air, coming down the chimney,” he said after a moment. Then he heard something else, something heavy moving on the other side of the door, and the growling became louder.

“Bear.” The short hairs on his arms stood straight up. He glanced to the sole window, but it was covered with thick wood shutters outside.

“A grizzly,” she said calmly and reached for the gun.

“Could be a black bear.” Not that they were less dangerous, but at least they were smaller, easier to bring down.

She shook her head, turning as the logs rattled behind the stove. “We woke a grizzly. They don't truly hibernate, it's more like they go to sleep.”

“The gunshot.” When he'd shot the lock off, the sound had echoed in their small canyon.

“That and the smell of food.”

The bear growled again and clawed on the logs outside, shaking loose some of the moss chinking that had kept the draft out. Its paws banged on the low roof. She was right. Definitely a grizzly. A black bear couldn't reach that high.

But the logs and the cabin held. Still, the bear spent a good half hour trying to get at them before it gave up and lumbered away.

Mike opened the door inch by inch. The bear tracks were a good reminder to be careful. The small
clearing around the house was empty. Nothing charged from the woods, but he didn't feel confident enough just yet to walk all the way to the creek. He stepped away from the house far enough to fill a metal bucket with clean snow, then went back in, barring the door tightly behind him.

“Here, I'll do that.” Tessa was no longer holding the gun. She took the bucket from him and set it on the stove.

Better make himself useful. He picked up the lamp and walked around, inventoried the contents of the cabin. The area under the sleeping loft seemed to be used mostly for storage. After he moved some boxes around, he found three pairs of snowshoes. He'd look them over and pick the two best later. Next to the door, half-hidden by a stack of metal cans, he came across a lidded plastic bucket.

“I think I found the bathroom.”

She glanced in his direction and nodded. “The honeypot. That's what the trappers call it. I'm glad we won't have to go outside.” She turned back to the stove. “Water is ready.”

He eyed the ladder. “I'll check out the loft. Why don't you wash and do whatever you have to.” He climbed up to give her some privacy, checked out the bed, dug through the chest, but found little that would have been of use to them. Then he looked up and
found more storage, and a large green sack tucked onto a shelf.

“Got ourselves a tent,” he called down, feeling more optimistic by the minute. He pushed back the bag and fingered the material inside: double-sided, a good four-season tent. Excellent.

He rummaged through the rest of the stuff until Tessa came up.

“Your turn.”

He handed her the lamp, the eight-by-eight platform seeming to shrink to half its size now that they were sharing it.

“I'll be right back,” he said, and climbed down, eager to slip under the covers next to her with as little delay as possible.

 

T
HE FIRST TIME
she woke, it was to a sharp pain in her feet. They seemed to be freezing. They were freezing! The cabin was dark; no glow came from the stove below. Their fire had gone out.

She was pressed against Mike, snuggled into the nook below his chin, his arms around her. They were clearly on his side of the bed, so she couldn't even be mad at him for taking advantage. She had gone to him—for heat, nothing else. Her exhausted body had migrated toward the nearest heat source in the cold night.

She sat up and reached over him, trying to get the lamp without having to come out from under the covers. He came awake and alert instantly, seizing her, making her sprawl on top of him.

“Tess?” he murmured in a sleep heavy voice and pulled her up, rubbed his large hands down her arms. “You're cold.”

They were face-to-face, just about every inch of their bodies touching.

“The fire is out. I'm going to start a new one.” She lifted up to pull away.

He gathered her back to him. “Stay. I'll warm you.”

He had tried to get her warm when they'd gone to bed, but she had resisted the temptation. She wasn't going to fall into the trap now. She was almost twenty-eight. Old enough to know better.

“Let go,” she said in a voice that would have made the toughest drill sergeant proud.

“Why are you doing this to us?”

“There is no us.” The sooner he accepted that the better. “You ended us three years ago.”

“You walked out.”

“You gave me some damned good reasons.”

And there they were, at a stalemate again. She rolled off him.

“You stay here. I'll go.” He grabbed the lamp and
lit it, was on his feet before she could think of any good reasons why she should protest.

Let him go, if his macho ego needed to do it. He had to handle everything, never could accept that she was strong enough, never could take her for an equal. It was one of the things that had undermined their relationship, more so perhaps than that last night at the hotel when everything had blown up.

She snuggled into the covers that were rapidly losing heat without him, relieved when ten minutes later he slipped back in. She made sure she stayed on her own side.

“Okay, I'll knock it off. I won't try anything. Come back here, at least until the fire gets going good. There's no sense in getting sick just to make a point.”

She
was
freezing, curled up into a ball on her side. She inched closer, making sure to keep her back to him. She stopped as soon as she could feel his body heat, without actually touching.

“You have got to be the most stubborn woman.” He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her closer, spooning her body with his. “Go to sleep.”

He left his arm around her, and it felt so good she didn't have it in her to push him away.

The bear, she thought, forcing her mind to other things. They would have to be careful when they left the cabin. And the wildlife was only a small part of
the danger that awaited them. She had a feeling that, come first light, the CIA chopper would be back.

 

T
HE NEXT TIME
she woke, it was to the sounds of a motor, and she scrambled around for the rifle she couldn't find, registering that she was alone in bed. Her body clock said it was morning, but no light filtered in from outside.

“Mike?”

She looked over the edge of the loft and found the main room empty. The fire was burning hot in the stove. He'd been up for some time.

The sound of the motor wasn't coming from above. It came from outside the cabin. She made it down the ladder just as Mike walked in.

“I found a generator in the shed,” he said with a huge grin on his freshly shaven face, dragging an electric cord behind him.

A small transformer and the radio were already set up on the table. He hooked up everything, looking as if he knew what he was doing.

He turned the dial, picked up the handset, switched through the channels until they heard someone talking. He rattled off some funky code name. “Mike McDonald here. I'm up by Loggers Creek, does anybody have a copy?”

A few seconds passed before the staticky response
reached them, the disembodied voice identifying himself with a string of numbers. “It's Jonah from Indian Valley. Are you up here trapping? Go ahead.”

“Yeah. Not getting much, though. I ran into some trouble and I'm a couple of days late. You got access to a phone? Over.”

“Sure. Need a message passed along? Go ahead.”

“My old man is probably getting worried about me. Would you mind calling? You can call collect. Over.”

“No trouble at all. Go ahead.”

Mike dictated a number. “Tell him, I'm fine. I'm heading toward Black Horse Pass. Over.”

“You need any help? Want me to call the ranger? You said you ran into trouble. Go ahead.”

“Three hoodlums. We were checking on a friend's cabin and they came at us. Two Russians, one local. They took most of our supplies and busted up my boy pretty good. Watch out if you see them. Over.”

“I will. Thanks for the warning. Go ahead.”

“You know if the pass is still open? Over.”

“It was two days ago when I was up that way. We haven't had much snow since. Go ahead.”

Mike thanked the guy for his help and put down the handset. “Let's grab something to eat and move out.”

They were packed and ready to go, Mike about to put away the radio when a message crackled through from Jonah.

“I was just talking to my brother-in-law in Nome, telling him about those criminals loose in the woods down here. He said four men, some ours, some Russkies, offered him a boatload of money to take them to Uelen with their crates. Go ahead.”

Mike sat up straight. “Did he do it? Over.”

“Weather is too bad up there. I told him to stay away from them. Go ahead.”

Mike signed off and swore.

“Four? Sounds like the guy you shot at the edge of the woods made it,” she said.

“That's the least of our problems. They're taking the warheads to Siberia.”

She'd figured as much. Uelen was a small fishing town on the Russian side. “The CIA will catch them.”

He shook his head. “The Colonel said they were focusing on the Canadian border. Maybe they didn't figure on anyone going north this time of the year. I bet they don't know the Russians are involved. They can't cross over into sovereign Russian territory, anyway.”

He was right. That would cause a major international incident.

“And they can't ask the Russians for help, either. The warheads aren't supposed to exist.” He shook his head.

“Those crates can't reach the black market. If they
do—” She didn't even want to think about it. “We have to go after them.”

He nodded, and the enormity of the task left her speechless for a moment. They had to make their way across the Alaskan ice fields, evade the CIA, follow a group of weapons dealers into Siberia and retrieve a couple of stolen nuclear warheads. All that with the Arctic winter snapping at their heels. She didn't want to think about how slim their chances of survival were, let alone the chances of success.

It didn't help that her partner was the one man she'd sworn never to trust again as long as she lived.

They trudged through the grove of pines, heads down to protect their faces against the wind and the frozen specks of snow flying at them, some sharp enough to draw blood. Mike walked in the front, trying to block as much wind from Tessa as possible, frustrated with how little protection he could truly give her.

A shadow moved among the trees, just outside his range of vision.

A timber wolf.

It wasn't alone. The pack had been following them for almost an hour. This one was closer than the others had been, though. They were getting braver.

Mike picked up speed, walking with a purpose that showed strength and betrayed none of his exhaustion, relieved when Tessa pushed harder, too, and kept up with him. They could not afford to appear weak.

“How many?” she asked from behind.

He should have known she would notice. “A dozen. Maybe as much as twenty.” The wolves would not yet come out into the open, but soon. They were getting impatient.

The winter light wasn't much, and the pines blocked most of it. He was hoping for a better place to fight them than this patch of woods. He had precious few bullets left, none that he could afford to waste.

The walking wasn't hard, the snow good and frozen, plenty of support for the snowshoes. They had to go around trees and bushes and boulders here and there, but that was all part of the terrain, part of what made this land beautiful. If not for the wind and the wolves, their passage could have been pleasant.

He glanced at a set of day-old tracks that converged with theirs.

“Snowshoe rabbit,” Tessa said.

He looked around, and although he couldn't see a single wolf now, he sensed them. They were still there, stalking, hunting. He had hoped they would lose interest eventually, or get distracted by the scent of another prey. They had likely seen men before, were afraid of the gun, or they would have attacked already. He pushed on.

“We can't keep up this pace for long.”

“I know,” he said.

He was starting to sweat, too, the curse of any prolonged exertion when a person was wearing as much clothing as they were. He'd borrowed a parka from the cabin that was thicker and heavier than his own, wanting to blend in should someone spot them, trying to avoid being seen in something that was clearly military issue. This coat, unfortunately, was not made of special fibers that wicked moisture away from the body. Damp undergarments could kill a man in this weather as fast as any pack of wolves. They drew heat from the skin.

Mike strained his eyes to see ahead. Soon they would have to stop, set a fire and get dry. But not yet. They were in a bad spot where they would be easily surrounded and attacked before the fire grew large enough to protect them.

His shoulders relaxed when he finally glimpsed a lighter spot through the trees ahead, some kind of open area, either a meadow or the end of the woods. They had to reach that.

A good twenty minutes passed before they finally made it, stopping at the edge of the open snowfield that stretched in front of them. He spotted a large brown shape a hundred yards ahead and squinted. It was a bull moose, his breath a frozen cloud in the air above him. The animal had pawed the snow off the
ground in a windswept spot and was grazing on the frozen tundra grass.

Mike lifted his hand in warning for Tessa, but he didn't have to. She was already squatting in the cover of a leafless berry bush.

The wind blew from the direction of the moose. Good. Maybe it would give the wolves something else to think about.

He waited, shivering. They would have to start a fire soon. The predators would have smelled the bull by now. What were they waiting for?

He looked at the formidable double rack the animal sported. Perhaps the wolves thought their chances were better with the humans. Seemed a safe assumption on the face of things, two scrawny humans as opposed to a bull moose in his full power. He would just have to stack the odds in their own favor again.

The bull lifted his head and looked in their direction.

Mike lifted his rifle and took aim. The sound of the discharged weapon echoed through the plain, tearing the silence. The moose stood still for a moment then shuddered, but did not fall.

Did he miss? Mike glanced at the gun. The cold shouldn't have affected it. Not by that much as to miss a huge animal like that altogether.

He took aim again, just below the neck this time,
between the shoulder bones, at the heart. But before he could pull the trigger, the animal collapsed in a heap, sending puffs of snow into the air.

Mike took a moment to gather an armload of fallen branches from around them then made a run for it. “Come on.”

Tessa was right behind him. “We're going to need more than this.” She dropped her load of wood and went to move the snow from around the animal without having to be told.

As soon as they had enough clean ground for the fire he started one, using the shelter of his body while Tessa built up a windbreak of snow. They worked well together, in harmony, without direction given or the next step discussed. They each knew what needed to be done.

“I'm going to get more wood.” He left her with the safety of the flames, his rifle slung over his shoulder.

“Be careful,” she said, not that she had to.

He crossed the short stretch of open land, but did not go into the woods. He skirted the tree line instead. Shadows moved impatiently not a dozen feet in. The smell of blood mixed with the smell of humans had to be tantalizing for the wolves.

He piled on as much wood as he could. They'd better have a large fire while they rested.

When he was done, he walked backward, not
daring to turn his back on the sharp-toothed hunters. It would be too easy for them to sneak up quietly from behind. He hoped that if they did attack, he would have enough time to drop the wood and take good aim.

But the wolves waited patiently, perhaps for nightfall, perhaps because they were spooked by the smell of smoke.

“How do you feel about fresh meat?” Tessa smiled at him when he got back, and he forgot all about the predators.

She had already cut two double palm-size slices and laid them in the snow, tingeing the white with red.

“Some seasoning would be good,” she said.

A flash from the past hit him. “Do you remember the rattlesnake stew?”

It had been the first time she'd told him she'd loved him. And it had scared him to death. He would have given anything now to have that moment back.

“I don't want to remember,” she said slowly, as the smile faded off her face.

Funny how much pain a few little words could inflict. That was a surprise to him. The power of her words, that he could be hurt. He'd never been before, not by a woman.

He glanced over to the edge of the woods where the wolves waited, then started a separate fire and
built it high for protection while he let the first one die down so they could use the hot embers for cooking.

Where had the pain come from? From vanity? He'd been rejected before, not many times, granted, but he'd never given those a second thought.

Before Tessa, no woman had been more than a game to him. Tessa, too, to be honest. She'd been the one woman among the trainees no man could get, no matter how hard he had tried. Mike had been cocky enough to find a challenge like that irresistible. That's how it had started. But something had changed. He could not forget about her like he had about the rest.

He would be smart not to push her. She was stubborn that way. If he pushed, he might push her away. And he wasn't sure what else he could do. He was a soldier, trained to fight to achieve his objective, to take it by whatever force necessary. And this was one situation where being aggressive would never work.

Frustration rose in him swiftly. “So what, you hate me now?”

She watched the fire, thinking, and it bothered him how long she took to think.

“I used to,” she said at last in a low voice, lifting her gaze to his. “I cursed you a time or two while I was stuck in the research trailer for months on end.” She shook her head.

“And now?”

“What happened, happened. You can't be anybody else but who you are.” She fell silent for a moment then went on. “I'm sorry I socked you at the trailer. When I saw you, all that old stuff came right back.”

“I'm not the same person anymore,” he said, hoping desperately that it was true.

“Really?” She gave him a halfhearted grin. “Going AWOL on a madcap rescue mission that has as much chance of succeeding as a snowshoe rabbit against a grizzly in a fist fight…You're right, it's not as crazy as some of the stuff you've done. It's even crazier!”

He couldn't help grinning back. “I changed in
other
ways.”

“I'm sure,” she said more soberly now. “You're a good man, Mike. But I'm sorry, I can't love you again. Not anymore.”

She skewered the meat on two sticks and damn if it didn't feel like she was skewering some vital organ of his. He had hurt her, badly, worse than he had ever imagined, he saw that now on her face and hated himself for it.

“So what were you and George working on?” he asked, having had about as much of the previous topic as he could handle. Not that he was eager to bring up the man who had “tried” to be her boyfriend.

“You know I can't tell you.”

“Developing some new biological weapon for arctic warfare?”

She turned the meat. “Hardly. Small-time lab testing.”

He took off his parka to let the clothes dry underneath, took their lunch from her so she could do the same and kicked off his boots. They sat in silence for a while, ate when the steaks were ready.

Moose meat was rich and dark, and they were both happy for it, a welcome change from the canned food they'd brought from the cabin.

Tessa picked up her head.

He looked toward the woods. The wolves were pacing around but keeping their distance. He scanned the sky as he heard the rotors of a chopper.

“Lie down.”

She did so without a moment of hesitation, without asking questions, an instinct they'd both developed during their Special Forces training when their lives had often depended on each other.

He pulled the tent from its carrying case and covered her with it, shoved in her mukluks, her snowshoes. He pulled on his parka, and by the time the chopper came over the tree line, he looked like any lone native hunter, enjoying the spoils of his kill.

He was acutely aware of several things at once: the chopper's hesitation, the rifle within arm's reach, the
distance to the woods. He looked up and offered a friendly wave. They were far enough away not to be able to see his face.

The helicopter circled once then moved on.

“You can come out,” he said when it was safe.

“Do you think they recognized you?” She pushed back the tent canvas.

He shook his head. “I have a different parka on and I'm alone. They're looking for a man and a woman.”

She folded up the tent and put it away. “We should go. We have less than three hours before nightfall.”

He got up and warmed his hands by the fire one last time before sliding them back into his gloves. After she'd done the same, he kicked snow over the flames.

They moved out briskly. He carried the backpack while she handled the tent—and had gotten about a hundred feet before the wolf pack took over the kill. He turned back at the sound of snapping teeth and growling, the pack leader establishing order. Blood splashed onto the snow, innards dragged between two animals that were playing tug-of-war. “That should keep them for a while,” he said as he turned back to walking.

“Hopefully by the time they get hungry again we'll have passed out of their territory.” Tessa walked next to him, and even through the parka, he could see
the shiver that ran through her body. Her face was set with determination, but he saw the aversion and twinge of fear in her eyes.

The wolves bothered her more than she let on. He would protect her with his life; she had to know that. But being the mule-headed queen of independence, Miss I-don't-need-anyone, she would bloody consider it an insult if he reminded her. Women were a troublesome bunch on the whole. It figured that he had to go and fall for the most stubborn of them all. Penance for his misguided youth and other multitude of sins, no doubt.

She picked up speed and he pushed harder to keep up. Wolves and helicopters aside, they still had over a hundred miles to go before they reached Nome and no time to waste in getting there.

 

T
HE WIND HOWLED
, but they were comfortable enough inside the small tent, snow piled high outside for insulation. Amazing the difference a single candle could make in a well-made tent. Its light was a big improvement to sitting in the dark, and it gave just enough warmth to take the bite out of the cold.

Between the flickering flame and their own body heat, they were comfortable enough to sleep. Not that she could. Tessa turned her head and found Mike watching. His cinnamon eyes looked black in the
semidarkness, the strong line of his jaw covered by rough stubble, a major weakness of hers. The soft prickle on her skin as he would tease her by rubbing his face over her neck, her inner thighs, her secret sensitive spots, used to drive her crazy. It was as if each hair connected with one of her nerve endings and sent electricity zinging through her body.

She looked away. All she needed was for him to pick up on her fantasizing about him. There'd be no living with the man.

“I'm sorry,” he said, and she brought her head up sharply. “About everything.”

Sorry? Mike McNair had made a virtue of never being sorry about anything. It was his main philosophy that life was meant to be lived instead of analyzed and felt guilty over.

He
had
changed after all.

“It's okay,” she said, and took a deep breath. It was okay, wasn't it? They were teammates again, almost friends. They had a military objective, which they would have to achieve. They had to find a way to work together.