Michael's Temptation

Her breath stopped up in her throat. Her eyes widened.

Something blacked out her star.

“Reverend? Are you there?” The voice was male and scarcely louder than her heartbeat. It came from only inches away. “Reverend Kelleher?”

It was also American.

Dizziness hit. If she had been standing, she would have fallen. “Yes,” she whispered, and had to swallow. “Yes, I’m here.”

A pause. “I’m going to kill Scopes,” that wonderful voice whispered.

“Wh-what?”

“I was expecting a baritone, not a soprano.” There was a hint of drawl in the whisper, a deliciously familiar echo of Texas. “Lieutenant Michael West, ma’am. Special Forces. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

“Thank God.” The prayer was heartfelt.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two.” She bit back the urge to ask him how old he was.

“Are you injured?”

“No, I—”

“On a scale of couch potato to superjock, how fit are you?”

Oh—he needed to know if she would be able to keep up. “I’m in good shape, Lieutenant. But Sister Maria Elena is over sixty, and her leg—”

“Who?” The word came out sharp and a little louder.

“Sister Maria Elena,” she repeated, confused. “She was injured when the soldiers overran the village. I’m afraid she won’t be able to…Lieutenant?”

He’d begun to curse, fluently and almost soundlessly. “This nun—is she a U.S. citizen?”

“No, but surely that doesn’t matter.”

“The U.S. can’t rescue every native endangered by a bunch of Che Guevara wannabes. And what would I do with her? Guatemala and Honduras aren’t accepting refugees from San Christóbal, and Nicaragua is still pissed at the U.S. over the carrier incident last spring. They wouldn’t let us land a military helicopter.”

“But—but you can’t just leave her here!”

“Reverend, getting you out is going to be tricky enough.”

A.J. leaned her forehead against one rough board and swallowed hope. It lumped up sick and cold in her stomach. “Then I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t go with you.”

There was a beat of silence. “Do you have any idea what El Jefe will do to you if you’re still here when he gets back?”

“I hope you aren’t planning to give me any gruesome details. It won’t help. I can’t leave Sister Maria Elena.” Her voice wobbled. “She’s feverish. It started with a cut on her foot that got infected. Sh-she’ll die without care.”

“Lady, she’s going to die whether you stay or go.”

She wanted desperately to go with him. She couldn’t. “I can’t leave her.”

Another, longer silence. “Do you know anything about the truck parked beside the barracks?”

She shook her head, trying to keep up with the odd jumps his mind made. “I don’t know. They brought me here in a truck. A flatbed truck with metal sides that smells like a chicken coop.”

“That’s the one. It was running last week?”

She nodded, then felt foolish. He couldn’t see her. “Yes.”

“Okay. Get your things together. Wait here—I’ll be back.”

She nearly choked on a giggle, afraid that if she started laughing she wouldn’t be able to stop. “Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”

The moon was a skimpy sliver, casting barely enough light to mark the boundaries between shadows. Michael waited in a puddle of deeper darkness, his back pressed to the cement blocks of El Jefe’s house. A sentry passed fifteen feet away.

The sentries didn’t worry him. He had a pair of Uncle Sam’s best night goggles, while the sentries had to rely on whatever night vision came naturally. He also had his weapons—a SIG Sauer and the CAR 16 slung over his shoulder—but hoped like hell he wouldn’t have to use them. Shooting was likely to attract attention. If he had to silence one of the sentries, he’d rather use one of the darts in his vest pocket. They were loaded with a nifty knockout drug.

El Jefe’s headquarters was like the rest of his military efforts—military in style but inadequate. The self-styled liberator should have stayed a guerrilla leader, relying on sneak attacks. He lacked the training to hold what he’d taken. In Michael’s not-so-humble opinion, San Christóbal’s government would have to screw up mightily to lose this nasty little war. In a week or two, government troops should be battling their way up the slope El Jefe’s house perched on.

But what the guerrilla leader lacked in military training he made up for in sheer, bloody fanaticism. A week would be too late for the soft-voiced woman Michael had just left.

What was the fool woman doing here? His mouth tightened. Maybe she was no more foolish than the three U.S. biologists they’d already picked up, who were waiting nervously aboard the chopper. But she was female, damn it.

One sentry rounded the west corner of the house. The other had almost reached the end of his patrol. Michael bent and made his way quickly and silently across the cleared slope separating the compound from the forest. Then he paused to scan the area behind him. The goggles rendered everything in grays, some areas sharp, others fuzzy. Out in the open, though, where the sentry moved, visibility was excellent. Michael waited patiently as the man passed the boarded-up window. He wouldn’t move on until he was sure he wouldn’t lead anyone to the rendezvous.

He was definitely going to kill Scopes.

It was Scopes who’d passed on word from a villager about some do-gooder missionary who’d been captured by El Jefe’s troops. He must have known the minister was a woman, damn him. Andrew Scopes was going to strangle on his twisted sense of humor this time, Michael promised himself.

Maybe the minister’s sex shouldn’t make a difference. But it did.

He remembered the way her voice had shaken when she’d whispered that she couldn’t go with him. She’d probably been crying. He hated a woman’s tears, and resented that he’d heard hers.

She was scared out of her mind. But she wasn’t budging, not without her nun.

A nun. God almighty. Michael started winding through the trunks of the giants that held up the forest canopy. Even with the goggles the light was poor here, murky and indistinct, but he could see well enough to avoid running into anything.

Why did there have to be a nun?

Since he’d joined the service, he’d had more than one hard decision to make. Some of them haunted him late at night when ghosts come calling. But a nun! He shook his head. His memories of St. Vincent’s Academy weren’t all pleasant, but they were vivid. Especially his memories of Sister Mary Agnes. She’d reminded him of Ada. Mean as a lioness with PMS if you hadn’t done your homework, and twice as fierce in defense of one of her kids.

Dammit to hell. This was supposed to have been a simple mission. Simple, at least, for Michael’s team. His men were good. True, Crowe was new, but so far he’d proved steady. But gathering intelligence on the deadly spat brewing between El Jefe and the government of San Christóbal, rounding up a few terrified biologists on the side, was a far cry from snatching captives from a quasi-military compound.

Still, the compound wasn’t heavily guarded, and the soldiers left behind when El Jefe left to take the mountain road weren’t well trained or equipped. Michael and his men had watched the place for two days and a night; he knew what they were up against. No floodlights, thank God, and the forest provided great cover. Once they got their target out, they had three miles to cover to reach the clearing where the Cobra waited with its cargo of nervous biologists. An easy run—unless you were carrying an injured nun with fifteen armed soldiers in hot pursuit.

But El Jefe had thoughtfully left a truck behind. And, according to the Reverend, it had been running a week ago, when they brought her here. There was a good chance it was in working order.