Her Wild Hero

“They’ve moved in front of us now, and to either side of our line of travel.” Declan tested the breeze with his nose. “They’re not even trying to hide it now. We’re being surrounded.”


Carmichael strode over, an annoyed look on his face. “What the hell are you saying?”

“He’s saying we’re about to be attacked,” Tate said softly. He took up a defensive position several steps away from Declan’s left shoulder while Gavin and Brent quickly moved up behind Kendra, putting her in the middle of a protective box.

“And how the hell does he know that?” Carmichael demanded.

Tate gave him a sidelong glance. “You don’t surround a group of armed people if you want to ask them to play poker.”

Carmichael opened his mouth to reply when a rifle grenade hit the ground a few feet from where they stood.

***

Declan shoved Kendra to the ground the second he heard the pop of the rifle grenade’s projecting cartridge go off. He didn’t have to look to know the rest of his team would be on the ground, too. He had no idea if the other men took cover, and there wasn’t much he could do to warn them. They weren’t going to believe they were in trouble until it’d been rammed up their asses sideways.

There was a sharp crack of an explosion, followed by small fragments smacking into the trees and dirt around him and Kendra. Men shouted, some cursed, then bullets started flying. Damn, he hated being right sometimes.

He’d woken up around 0200 last night with the feeling that someone was watching their camp. He’d gone to check it out, running out into the rain-soaked jungle in just his pants and boots with his M4, only to hear whoever it was slip away before he’d gotten close. That had really worried him. Whoever was out there was really frigging fast. They’d been playing with Declan the entire day, like they were testing him, just to see if he’d know they were there. But when Declan had heard approaching movement from three different sides a few minutes ago—including the direction they’d been heading—he knew playtime was over.

He heard feet crashing over the jungle floor before the rumble of the initial explosion died down. There were a lot of them, and they were coming fast.

Declan’s first thought was to run straight toward the force attacking from the north, which was most likely where he’d find their leader. Take him out and the rest of the men would be lost.

But Declan couldn’t do what his gut and his training shouted at him to do. He had to protect Kendra and get her the hell out of there.

He jumped up, scooped Kendra into his arms, and ran in the only direction that seemed to be clear to them—south. He hated being herded anywhere, but it was the best option available.

Behind him, he heard Tate, Brent, and Gavin trying to get their ragtag group to work together in an organized retreat. Declan had a pretty good sense of the numbers they were up against. If Tate couldn’t make that happen, there was a good possibility no one was going to make it out of this jungle alive.

“What happened?” Kendra asked.

Declan expected her to be freaking out or shouting for him to put her down. But instead she was holding on tightly while trying to see over his shoulder. Hell, she was probably calmer than most of the men around them.

“Whoever has been shadowing us all day finally decided it was time to start the ambush.”

He jumped a small stream. Carrying Kendra, his weapon, and his rucksack, he couldn’t move as fast as he normally would, but he still could have outrun the others if he wanted to. But running off into the jungle wouldn’t help keep her safe. Even now, he could hear the bad guys sprinting hard to get ahead of them, repositioning themselves to keep the jaws of the ambush clamped closed.

Tate must have succeeded in getting everyone going in the same direction because Brent, Gavin, and several of the marines and DEA agents moved in front of Declan, creating a wedge that’d hopefully break through the attackers’ line.

Declan finally got a visual on the enemy, and what he saw shocked the hell out of him. He assumed they’d stumbled across a drug cartel farming site or perhaps a small group of revolutionaries—FARC maybe—hiding out in the huge, uninhabited tracts of the La Amistad Park. But while he saw a few faces that looked local, most looked European. He’d bet some were even American. They all wore military-style uniforms and carried state-of-the-art military weaponry. This wasn’t some lightly armed guerilla camp they’d stumbled on. He didn’t know what the hell it was.