“Yeah, I noticed,” he replied drily. Using the tip of his Ka-Bar knife, he pried loose the water-soaked knot at her neck. Finally, the cord gave way and the top of the survival bag popped open. Nissa shoved it down her body and jumped clear of the thing, giving it a dirty look. She gave the piled bag a swift kick with her combat boot for good measure.
“It’s dead. You killed it,” Cole commented.
“Good riddance,” she declared.
“It would have saved your life if we’d gone down at sea.”
A shudder passed over her. “I’d have gone crazy if I had ended up floating around in that thing.”
He shrugged. “You would have done what you had to in order to survive. It would have sucked, but you’d have pulled through.” In his experience most people were a lot stronger than they realized. It was just that most people were never put into actual life-and-death situations.
“I dunno. I have pretty bad claustrophobia,” she disagreed.
“Then last night sucked worse for you than I realized.”
She threw him a bleary glare that said he didn’t know the half of it. His respect for her notched up a bit more. She had been brave as hell to go out with his team into the storm and then to crawl around the Anna Belle in the dark with the big ship trying hard to capsize.
“C’mon. Let’s get you onto dry land,” he said, offering her a hand to steady her as she crawled forward around the saddle seats to the prow.
“It may be land but it won’t be dry,” she snapped.
She’d earned the right to be a little testy after the past night. He helped her over the edge of the boat into Bass’s arms. The big Cajun set her down into the water and helped her wade ashore to join Ashe, who was depositing a bag of gear on the soggy ground.
Cole passed the remaining gear bags out of the RIB and Bass retied the boat using a loose hurricane tie that would allow it to stay afloat as the storm surge rose.
“Now what?” Nissa asked Cole as he joined the others.
“Now we find shelter.”
“Any chance we can find a phone for me to report in to my boss?”
“Don’t hold your breath on that. Where there’s no electricity, there’s usually no phone service.”
“Can’t the Coast Guard or whomever you guys have been talking to relay messages to my people?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Your call. Personally, I wouldn’t be broadcasting that Markus Petrov got away on an open frequency. No telling who’s listening in. The way you talk about him, I gather Petrov has spies and informants all over the place.”
“Good point. I’ll need a secure phone line to make a full report.”
“You may have to wait awhile for one of those. Right now, the priority is shelter from the storm.”
“Isn’t the Coast Guard going to come pick us up?”
He snorted. “Not with that monster storm bearing down on us. Besides, they’ll have their hands full with rescues already. We’re on our own to ride this thing out.”
Nissa was already pretty pale, but he thought she went a shade or two whiter with that revelation. He said bracingly, “It’s just a storm. At least no one’s shooting at us. We’ll be fine.”
“Promise?” she asked in a wobbly voice.
“Yeah. Sure.” It was a lie, but he needed the civilian female not to freak out. If they didn’t find solid shelter and soon, they were in serious trouble.
“And then we can get some sleep, yes?” she asked hopefully.
“All the sleep you want.”
He and his guys could go five days without much more than a nap now and then. But he realized that most normal mortals were not aware that they, too, could match the feat. It was all about motivation. Find the right one, and anyone, man or woman, would die rather than give in to mere exhaustion.
Cole continued, “Once the worst of the storm passes, we’ll make our way back to New Orleans and figure out how we’re going to acquire our target and take him into custody.”
“I have some ideas—”
“Later,” he said, cutting her off. “The core of the storm will be here in a few hours, and we need to be under cover before then. How do you feel about running?”
Nissa stared up at him, her blue eyes even bigger and wider than usual. She was a looker, all right. The sea-land suit the Navy had lent her clung to her slender legs and girly curves, showing off a slight body any Hollywood starlet would be proud to have. Her blond hair was French-braided back from her face, but it only accentuated her elfin features.
“As a rule, I’m not fond of running as a form of exercise.”
“That’s too bad,” Cole replied.
“I don’t have any choice about the running thing, do I?” Nissa asked mournfully.
“Nope. Let’s move out.” He grabbed the extra pack of gear meant for her and shouldered it on top of his own pack. It meant he was carrying close to sixty pounds of gear, but no way could Nissa keep up with his team if she were carrying any weight at all. As it was, he suspected she was going to slow them down badly.
It turned out that Nissa could go for about fifteen minutes at a time at a steady, but slow, jog if she got a three-or four-minute break to catch her breath in between. A SEAL team was only as fast as its slowest member, and right now, that was she. But as egressing with a totally untrained civilian went, she wasn’t doing half bad. He’d had missions where they’d had to carry out the principal.
The trek was miserable. What solid ground they could find was saturated and spongy, giving way without warning beneath their feet, sinking them knee-deep in black muck and pitching them on their faces. Everybody took at least a few such spills.
Even when they remained upright, the going wasn’t great. They caught blowing tree limbs in the face, thorny brambles clutched at their bodies and backpacks, and bouts of driving rain pecked at them like angry crows. The only good news was that the gusty wind was mostly at their backs.
They jogged and rested, jogged and rested, for almost two hours. How Bastien was finding his way through the swampy bayou country, Cole had no idea. The rain was whipping around them now on fifty-mile-per-hour gusts, and the brief hint of dawn had faded into twilight gloom as the hurricane roared ashore. They had to find high ground and some sort of shelter before long, or they were going to be in deadly peril.
They jogged maybe another ten minutes before Bass veered suddenly to his right. They had to hack their way through a veritable wall of kudzu vines and brambles, but when they popped out the far side, Cole spotted what had made Bastien change course. A house. Or more accurately, a dilapidated-looking shack.
The one-story dwelling was raised on stilts that, as they approached the structure, turned out to be two dozen massive cypress pilings. The exterior badly needed a coat of paint, and rust from the metal roof stained the gray wood siding orange. But as they climbed the stairs to the wraparound porch, the building looked sturdier than his first impression. They might just survive the storm, yet.
Bass pounded on the front door loudly and long enough for them to be sure no one was inside. Ashe picked the door lock and dead bolt with quick efficiency, and in under a minute, they had all piled inside the cabin.
The dwelling was as rough inside as out with a log-framed couch sagging in front of a small wood-burning stove. What looked like handmade chairs and a crude table were tucked in one corner of the main room. A huge alligator skull hung on the wall above the stove. Cole would have hated to see the live beast it had come from. That gator