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“Somebody get over to Echo position and pass that ammo around. We’re not gonna last two more minutes at this rate!

” she ordered tersely. Crud. They were in a heap of trouble.

She had only sixteen guys left standing out of fifty, and the enemy had close to forty.

She had to do something radical, here. Something unexpected.

Think, Vanessa! The woods around them had plenty of cover for enemy shooters, and that’s why they were getting slaughtered like trapped rats in this foxhole complex.

She had to turn the tables. Make the woods work against the advancing forces.

She glanced up at the trees overhead. Big, mature oaks, mostly. Sturdy. Strong enough to climb…

“Guys,” she called out low, “I’ve got an idea. Huddle.” The enemy was close enough to hear her plan if she shouted it to the far end of the bunker.

“We’re going to crawl out of here and climb the trees around this position.

Then we’ll let the enemy advance to the foxholes and pick them off from above.

Set your weapons for single shots. We don’t have enough ammo left to spray their lines with automatic fire.

Use sticks and leaves to camouflage yourselves.

Get up high in the branches, and when I give the signal, start firing down through the leaves.

Think snipers, here. No wild shots. Wait till your targets are close enough to guarantee a hit.

Take your time. Aim carefully. Keep your wits about you. Got it?”

The glum faces around her lit up with hope. They were all likely to die messy deaths before this day was out, but by God, they’d go out fighting if she had anything to say about it.

“We’re gonna have to move fast. We’ll split up and crawl out each end of the bunker.

Stay behind cover as much as you can, but keep moving.

We’ve only got a couple minutes to get into position.

Let’s do it,” she said forcefully. She turned and led half the men in a crouching run to one end of the linked foxholes.

She slithered on her belly out of the red clay muck of the foxhole, her bulky rifle cradled awkwardly across her elbows.

Belly crawling with a fast twisting motion of her torso, like the alligators that inhabited the area, she passed up a couple trees with nice, low branches for climbing.

Better leave those to the guys with less physical strength than her.

One by one, she dropped off her troops in an arc around the enemy’s right flank.

And then she was alone. Staying low, she tossed a length of nylon rope around the girth of a giant oak tree.

Using the rope as a climbing harness, she shimmied up the tree as slick as any lumberjack.

She worked her way a good thirty feet up the tree and turned to survey the situation. Perfect. Clear line of sight down the brown-shirted line of enemy soldiers. She chambered a round in her rifle and took aim carefully. And fired.

A satisfying red circle blossomed in the middle of the chest of one of the enemy soldiers. One down. Shots began to rain down from all directions, and in a matter of seconds, half the enemy line was out.

“Fall back!” the enemy commander screamed. Chaos ensued as his forces attempted to obey in the midst of the death raining from above.

“Everybody down!” Vanessa shouted. “Charge!”

She shimmied out of the tree and joined up with her troops. They took off in hot pursuit, picking off stragglers as the skirmish turned into a lopsided rout.

August 6, 8:15 a.m.

Free-fire zone Alpha

“Jeez Louise. What a mess,” Lieutenant Colonel Jack Scatalone announced in disgust from the fat edge of the battlefield as he watched the tide of the mock battle turn abruptly. He put down the field glasses and held out his hand. “Give me one of those toy guns.”

“Are you sure, sir? Your uniform…”

“It can be cleaned,” he snapped. “Or replaced. How do you fire this damn thing? Is it loaded?” He inspected the oval canister attached to the top of the half-scale rifle that somebody had thrust into his hands.

“It’s full, sir,” his host stammered. “Two hundred half-inch paint pellets. It’s really an honor to have you show us a couple moves.” The eager kid quickly showed him how to pressurize and fire the paintball rifle.

He took off his wheel cap and stripped off his dark blue Class A jacket, with its multiple Special Forces badges and Christmas tree of ribbons.

He passed them to a pair of waiting hands along with his crisply starched, light blue shirt and tie.

He squatted, scooped up handfuls of red mud and streaked his face with the stuff.

A little in his hair, and great stripes of it across his white T-shirt, and then he was off and running, low and fast. He circled wide of the current action, closing in silently from the left rear.

Rather than fire his weapon and give away his position with the popping sound of the air rifle, he stepped up behind his targets, pressed the rifle barrel into their ribs and murmured low in their ears, “Bang. You’re dead, buddy.”

He took out most of the right end of the line before Major Blake realized her troops were disappearing like magic. Jack heard her call for her remaining men to pull in tight in a close fighting formation.

Thank you, Major. Now her men were all nicely clumped for him to wipe out all at once. He moved in for the easy kill.

The eight remaining men had taken cover behind a huge, fallen log.

He was going to have to circle around it and come in from the other side.

But the poor bastards would be ducks in a shooting gallery.

This wasn’t even going to be a challenge.

He eased forward, at one with the woods around him.

One foot in front of another in complete silence, he glided forward.

He hadn’t been in the Special Forces for fourteen years for nothing.

Down a hill streaked with runoff gullies to that little stand of brush at the bottom.

It would provide perfect camouflage for the shot.

Dead leaves lay in an ankle-deep carpet in this part of the woods, and he eased each foot down separately to minimize the rustling noise of his passing.

He crouched and braced the barrel of the toy rifle against a sapling.

Peering through the leaves, he caught sight of the cluster of scared-looking soldiers.

Bingo. He took aim and began to squeeze the trigger.

And jolted violently as an apparition in brown rose out of the flat ground beside him.

Something hit him hard in the chest, stinging sharply.

He looked down in disbelief at the circular splatter of red paint on his chest. Then looked up at the broad, white grin showing out of a face completely covered in mud and crushed leaves.

“Gotcha,” the woman declared triumphantly.

Sonofabitch. She must have laid down in one of those runoff gullies and covered herself in leaves.

And she’d done it so carefully he hadn’t noticed the disturbance to the ground cover.

He scowled narrowly. Okay, so Vanessa Blake was good in a game of paintball.

Big deal. But that didn’t mean she’d be worth a damn under live-fire conditions.

“Major Blake, I presume?” he said coldly.

Leisurely, she brushed leaves off herself. Not that it did a bit of good. She was caked from head to foot in red mud. Only after she’d made him wait a few seconds did she ask coolly, “Who wants to know?”

“I do,” he bit out. “Lieutenant Colonel Jack Scatalone.” Normally, he’d expect a salute from a lower-ranking officer, but they weren’t in uniform, and she’d just killed him. Dammit.

“What brings you out here today?” She glanced down at his ruined navy blue uniform slacks. “You’re not exactly dressed for this kind of fun.”

“I was sent to fetch you.” The words tasted sour in his mouth. He did not appreciate being the errand boy for anyone, even if his new boss was a four-star general.

One graceful eyebrow arched under the mud. “By whom?”

“If you’re done playing toy soldier, come with me. I’ll tell you more on the way.”

He held a hand down to her and she grasped it firmly.

His first impression was of surprising strength.

Their gazes met, and suddenly their palms transformed into pressure plates with electricity zinging back and forth between them.

Abrupt, intense awareness of her slim curves as he hauled her to her feet made his gaze narrow in irritation.

He was not here to get a boner for this woman. And yet, that very thing was happening.

He spun away from her and commencing marching back toward the clubhouse.

“Do I have time for a shower?” she asked as she tromped out of the woods beside him.

It gave him a perverse sense of satisfaction to think about dragging her through the pristine halls of the Pentagon looking like a pig in swill. “No,” he snapped. In fact, they probably did have the time, but he’d cooled his jets long enough playing toy soldier this morning in search of her.

His foul mood didn’t improve one bit when he and the major emerged from the woods. A rousing cheer went up, and a hundred weekend warriors grinned like idiots at the big, fat splotch of red on his chest.

Bested by a woman. Double damn.

The good news was that he was going to get all kinds of opportunities to get even with her. The hot major just didn’t know it yet. But she would soon.

August 6, 10 a.m.

northern North Carolina

Vanessa studied the man driving the civilian car in hostile silence beside her. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark tan. Severe features. Hard. His profile could’ve been chiseled from rock. So could his personality. He hadn’t said two words since they’d left the paintball range an hour ago.