Page 31 of Breaking Danger (Ghost Ops #3)

CHAPTER NINE

Jon cast a worried glance at Sophie, huddled shivering in a corner. Her head was on her knees, hands tucked under her arms, in a vain attempt to hide from him the fact that they were trembling.

Hell. There was nothing to be ashamed of. They’d just come out of something worse than a firefight.

For all the tight situations he’d been in, outnumbered and outgunned, Jon had never faced a battle like that before.

In every other firefight he’d been combating humans and he could understand even the worst scumbag.

These infected—they had no sense of self-preservation.

It was terrifying to see them throw themselves into the water, hungry to attack, and then sink to the bottom.

To see them throwing themselves over the parapet to land with broken bones on the small pier had unnerved him because it went against the human grain.

They couldn’t think, couldn’t reason so you couldn’t outwit them in any way. They were absolutely terrifying.

He was fucking spooked, too.

Sophie had been as brave as any warrior. She was untrained—a scientist for fuck’s sake—and yet she’d outshone many a fellow soldier, never losing her nerve under hair-raising circumstances.

They’d done it, but now Sophie needed a little care, which he was more than happy to provide.

They’d lucked out with this boat. It was a working fishing boat but its owner had tricked it out with every modern enhancement.

It had excellent radar so he had no fear of running into other boats and it had the latest type of autopilot.

He could leave the helm and tend to Sophie, and know they wouldn’t be running aground and they wouldn’t be ramming another boat.

The system was very sophisticated and would move around any obstacles.

He was going to travel up the coast until he was more or less at the same latitude as Mount Blue.

It was going to be hard to make their way overland.

The infected were everywhere even if not as concentrated as in San Francisco.

They needed to find a vehicle and try to make their way on roads that were clogged with stalled cars.

On the way down, he’d found very few roads with clear stretches and without abandoned cars, so it would have to be a vehicle with off the road capabilities.

God, he wished he had one of their hovercars, little miracle cars could be driven either in wheeled vehicle mode or hovercraft mode. But he didn’t.

He’d have to try to find an undamaged four wheel drive with a full tank of gas and/or a fully charged engine. Not easy, because there weren’t going to be functioning charging stations and there weren’t going to be gas stations anywhere on the route to Haven.

But that was for after they landed. First things first.

The galley was well equipped. It had all the fixings for a traumatized young woman.

He hunkered down next to Sophie with a steaming cup of tea with a good finger of excellent whiskey in it.

She looked at it, then at him, deep blue eyes sad and lost. She made no move to reach for the tea though she obviously wanted it.

Very gently, Jon pulled one of her hands away, put the cup in her hand then placed his hand under hers. It was trembling. No way would he allow that hot tea to spill on her. He had her hand. He watched as she sipped, coughed.

“This is the second time you’ve done this. I like whiskey,” she said. “Too bad you put tea in it.”

“Drink,” he said.

She did. By the time she finished the cup color had come back into her face and her hands no longer trembled in his.

He searched her eyes. “You okay?”

She didn’t even try to misunderstand. “That was so scary,” she whispered. “I thought we weren’t going to make it. If you hadn’t been so fast with that gun we wouldn’t have. It was so close!”

She was spooked. He had to help her with this, otherwise she’d play those scenes over and over again in her head.

He knew hardened warriors who suffered from PTSD from less harrowing experiences.

Jon took her chin in his hand, keeping her focused on him.

He had to convince her now and it had to stick.

“We made it. It’s in the past. Over. The infected can’t touch you now and that’s what counts.

Wipe it from your mind. Close only counts in horseshoes?—”

“And hand grenades,” she added, with a faint smile.

Jon looked at her carefully. What he wanted to do was grab her up and hold her tight, for her and for himself.

He’d been scared shitless that he’d lose her back at the pier.

If he grabbed her and held her she’d understand that he’d been scared and that wouldn’t do.

So he merely bent to touch his lips to hers.

Soft lips that opened under his…oh yeah.

The comms unit beeped. He pulled back, looked at Sophie with a raised brow and she nodded.

He set it to hologram and speakerphone, not communicating just over his ear unit.

She had every right to hear the intel. They were lovers, but they were also teammates on a dangerous mission. You don’t hide intel from a teammate.

Mac and Nick were in the foreground. Jon could see Catherine and Elle working in the background with people he didn’t recognize.

“Helo’s down,” Jon said.

“Yeah.” Mac’s basso profundo voice was grim. “We saw the whole thing. That was quick thinking, making for the marina. We’re glad you got out. Elle nearly had a heart attack.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah, we had some tense moments there, bro. Luckily you paid attention to my sterling soldiering advice.”

It was a running joke, to the extent that Nick was able to joke. They were of equal abilities. Nick was a slightly better shooter and Jon was sneakier, better at lying, better at strategizing. But they were both more than mission capable.

Jon let the snark slide. “Well, we could use some advice right about now. Do you have us up on screen?”

“Oh yeah,” Mac said. “And we’ve got your waypoints mapped out.

And something else.” Mac turned behind him and beckoned.

A middle-aged guy stepped forward. Plaid shirt, chinos.

Balding. Thin intelligent face. Unusually, he wore glasses.

Most people had their eyes corrected with surgery.

Wearing glasses was definitely a retro statement.

“Jon, meet Jason Robb. Jason’s one of our refugees and he’s got some intel for you. ”

Robb’s face filled the hologram. “I watched on screen as your helicopter blew up and you guys escaped. Really impressive, man. It’s my understanding that Dr. Daniels and you are carrying a vaccine. Everyone’s rooting for you, son.”

Jon nodded. It was nice that people were rooting for him, but he needed a little more than that. They were streaming north but once they made landfall they were going to be in a shitload of trouble.

“We’ve been looking at the maps,” Mac said. “The best place to make landfall is around Eureka, where there’s a straight line over to us here at Haven.”

Jon kept quiet. Robb might be a newbie at this but Mac and Nick weren’t. They knew damn well how difficult making landfall and making their way east to Haven was going to be. It was almost a suicide mission.

“That’s where I come in,” Robb said, pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose.

“I run—I ran a sort of fancy B & B about forty kilometers south of Eureka, near the Humbolt Bay Refuge. Right now, the drones show no infected in the entire Refuge itself. My B & B has a wall around it and is open only to the sea. We have a pier you can dock at. Let me show you. These are stored images because Google went down about two hours ago.” He tapped on a tablet and aerial views came up of a stucco compound, landscaped gardens around it, a bright blue oval that was a swimming pool, surrounded by adobe walls.

Sure enough, a small wooden finger jutted out from the beach. A pier.

“So we were thinking of you and Sophie holing up there during daylight. The Redwood Highway is free of obstacles nearly back up to Eureka and you can head east here.” Nick’s finger traced up the Redwood Highway to a point two miles south of the city.

“There’s a pileup here so you’ll have to leave the road.

“I have a four wheel drive in the garage,” Robb said.

“It’s a hybrid. A Lynx. I don’t know whether the charger is working or not but even if the electricity is down, it should have had time to charge before it went offline.

And the LPG tank is full. I don’t know if it can carry you all the way over, that depends on how many detours you have to take but with some luck you can siphon some LPG from abandoned hybrids if you have to.

I think all the charging stations are down.

The Lynx’s real hardy. You can go off road.

The only problem is that they tell me you should drive after sundown, without headlights. I don’t know how you can do that.”

“You still night-vision capable?” Mac asked.

“Yeah.” His NV goggles were still fully charged. It would have been a nightmare driving off road for 250 miles in the dark. Even with NV it was going to be almost impossible.

But impossible was what Ghost Ops used to do for breakfast. And the stakes were higher than any mission he’d ever been on. He had a beautiful woman to keep safe and a vaccine that could save millions to deliver. He was going to get them safely to Haven. No question.

“So, Mr. Ryan,” Robb began.

“Jon.”