“I’m an analyst, not a field operative!” she protested. She didn’t even like being outdoors, let alone playing soldier.
“You’re a field operator now. Welcome to the big leagues, kid.”
Even Cole had to admit he was glad to see land as the coast of Louisiana came into sight, a low black line on the horizon. The hurricane was stalled offshore at the moment, and the last hour of motoring north had taken them out of the heart of the storm. For now. As long as Jessamine parked over the warm, shallow waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico, she would only grow in strength.
The breathtakingly huge swells had diminished to merely god-awful seas, and the first faint light of dawn was barely visible in the east.
What a hell of a night. Cole had never seen a ship so close to capsizing before. Climbing aboard the Anna Belle had wigged him out worse than he would ever admit. Every time she’d rolled onto her side, he’d been sure that was the one where she would keep on going and drag them all down to a watery death.
“So. Anyone got reward points at a decent resort along the coast we can cash in?” Bass asked drolly as they approached a line of cypress trees and grassy wetlands.
The guy was the team’s clown and great for morale. Cole had missed working with the Cajun. But then Cole had missed working in the field, period. This was his first op back as a team commander in four long years.
It figured that the mission had not gone to plan. At all. The target wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Cole had had to put his team in extreme peril to search the Anna Belle, the civilian with them had completely panicked and their egress plan had been shot to hell by the sabotage to the ship.
They’d caught a minor break when the hurricane stalled offshore, but he didn’t have any illusions that riding out a major hurricane in whatever improvised shelter they could find was going to be anything but ridiculously hazardous. They were far from clear of life-threatening danger. It was Cole’s job to adapt to whatever came their way, but he had to wonder if he was too rusty to be out here in the field anymore. Should he have anticipated these contingencies and planned better for them?
Right now, he had to get them as far inland and on as high ground as possible before Jessamine came calling. He put Bass at the prow to guide the Rigid Inflatable Boat ashore. Bastien “Bass” LeBlanc was native to this area and more familiar with these coastal waters than anyone else on the team.
To his surprise, Bass called back to Ashe to turn the RIB and parallel the coast. “What are you looking for?” Cole asked.
“Inlet. The storm surge is already flooding the edges of the bayou. If we motor ashore now, we’ll hit a submerged cypress stump and rip the bottom out of the boat.”
Nissa piped up. “What will an inlet look like? Can we help you spot one?”
“Two roughly parallel rows of trees leading inland,” Bass answered absently, staring shoreward through a big pair of binoculars.
“Weather report, Ashe?” Cole asked over the radios.
“Cat 3 and growing. Expected to start moving due north in the next few hours. Winds should hit before noon, and the eye wall should make landfall by evening.”
Damn. They could not catch a break on this mission! He checked the fuel gauges, which were perilously low, flirting with the red empty line.
“Is that an inlet?” Nissa called, pointing from inside her survival bag.
Cole squinted through a rain squall that had just sprung up, obscuring his vision. “What do you think, Bass? We’re getting way low on fuel and we need to make land before we become a cork out here.”
“Let’s give it a try, sir.”
The RIB slowed to a crawl, and they all kept their gazes on the water before them, looking for submerged hazards. The storm surge was already a good ten feet above normal and all sorts of stumps and small trees that would normally be above water were now covered—treacherous traps waiting to destroy their vessel.
Dawn arrived in a thin strip of color beneath the ominous overhang of clouds forming one of the storm bands of the hurricane. The rain abated just long enough for them to see the line of sky streaked with every hue from palest pink to fiery red. The CIA asset, Nissa, turned to stare at the sunrise as the brilliant ball of liquid red crept over the edge of the gulf and then nearly as quickly disappeared behind the roiling cloud line.
“Wow,” she breathed.
One corner of Cole’s mouth turned down cynically at her innocence. It had been a long time since a sunrise had been enough to cause him wonder. Almost twenty years in the SEALs in one capacity or another had made him a hard man who didn’t look for beauty in the world anymore.
“We’ve got an inlet!” Bass called. “Come right five degrees.”
In another minute, two rows of cypress trees rose on either side of them. They looked more like truncated bushes in the early morning light, much of their height below the floodwaters.
They proceeded cautiously up the inlet for perhaps twenty minutes, buffeted by the choppy water almost worse than when they’d bobbed on the open ocean’s big swells. Cole went back to spell Ashe, who shook out his noodled arms as he moved up front to pull stump watch.
The right engine sputtered then caught again. Its fuel needle lay on the peg to the far left side of the gauge and didn’t budge. At least the left needle was still bouncing off the peg with each wave.
“Find us a spot to land, Bastien. This is about as far inland as the RIB’s going to take us.”
“Roger that, Frosty.” Bass scanned the lines of trees on either side of the canal they were following. In about a minute he hooted in excitement and yelled, “Bring her hard right!”
Cole complied, following Bass’s instructions for the next minute or so, aiming for a particularly tall cypress looming over the edge of the flooded canal. They made it past the big tree when the right motor cut out entirely and the left engine started to sputter.
“Just a few more yards,” Bass called.
That was probably about all they had before they turned into drifters.
“Cut the motor!” Bass called.
Cole complied with alacrity, just before the bottom of the boat scraped hard on something that sounded like gravel. A rain squall was rolling in on them, and Cole barely saw Bass and Ashe jump out of the boat into what turned out to be knee-deep water. They’d run aground.
Ashe fought to steady the RIB as a huge wind gust tried to shove it sideways off the spit of land, while Bass ran ahead with a line and tied off the prow to a tree.
Cole moved over to Nissa in her waterproof bag. “We’ve got to get you out of that thing so you can walk.”
She was already flailing around inside the sack to no avail. He realized with a start that she was panicking. Poor girl had been through a lot in the past fifteen hours.
“Easy, Nissa,” he murmured. “Sit still so I can get you out.”
His words had no effect on her. And now that he was within arm’s length of her, he realized her eyes were glazed over and unseeing. She was lost in a full-blown panic attack. Only one fix for that. He wrapped her up in a bear hug, survival bag and all. She thrashed wildly in his arms, but her small frame was no match for his iron strength. He hung on grimly and let the panic attack run its course...and tried hard not to notice how great her body felt writhing against his. He was a total jerk for even registering it, given how panicked she was. He did his best to project calm and comfort to her through his silent touch.
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