In the now.
Taz’s specialty.
Together, she and Jeremy stood on a shelf of rock notched into the cliff like a cave with no roof but the sky. It offered a sweeping view of this valley lost in the middle of Baja’s mountains. The peaks to the west shadowed them from the blaze of the late afternoon sun.
If she didn’t look too closely, the camo covering disappeared into the background. A step closer to the cliff and it was completely out of sight.
The easy roll of the desert floor stretched brown to the far hills. The river, dry in this season—in most seasons—was marked by a stripe of withered brush just waiting for its brief moment to flourish when the rare flash flood swept by.
“This is an amazing ecosystem,” Jeremy stood beside her. “You wouldn’t think that someplace so barren could harbor life. But there are snakes—which would totally freak out Mike so don’t tell him—jackrabbits, lizards, and the occasional kit fox. Even in this place—”
“Why did I bring you here?” Taz cut him off.
“If you don’t know, then I certainly don’t.”
Serving at the general’s command, she’d given all of herself to the “now” with no other thought allowed.
The now.
Then she knew exactly what she wanted.
She pulled his t-shirt out of where it was neatly tucked into his pants. Once she peeled it off over his head, he just looked at her wild-eyed.
He was slender, but fit. Not built like some soldier. No battle wounds. Except—
She traced her finger along a scar on his shoulder.
Jeremy looked down at it. “My sister. I was fourteen, she was thirteen, and I teased her about something. She finally got so angry that she threw a hammer at me. The claw caught me there and I needed five stitches.”
“What were you teasing her about?”
Jeremy blushed brightly. His brief glance at her chest and then the doubling of the blush on his fair skin answered that.
“Late bloomer?”
He nodded fiercely. “And we’re Vietnamese. She never got very—” then he looked down at her chest again and lost his words.
“I wasn’t.”
He nodded fiercely again, then shook his head, then realized he was still staring down at her chest. His blush surged once more.
“It’s okay to look.” She peeled her own t-shirt and sports bra.
Jeremy glanced down, looked at her face, inspected the sky, and then checked her out again before stammering out, “Uh, those are…um…nice ones. Not that I’ve seen a lot. But, you know, they look really nice on you. I mean…”
She let him keep stumbling along as she undid his pants, finally kneeling to remove his sneakers as well when he seemed too shocked to help. Taz had them both naked while Jeremy was still trying to describe how he had so little to compare her breasts to in real life, other than a graduation present from someone named Nancy that he described in some detail, though he’d certainly seen breasts in movies, of course, but that was different and…
Taz wondered what Mike’s smile had meant as he’d slipped something into Jeremy’s pocket—he had been into the medkit. She retrieved Jeremy’s pants from the ground long enough to unearth the twin foil packets. Mike was a good friend and more perceptive than she’d like.
When she held them up before Jeremy’s eyes, his verbal wanderings finally stumbled to a halt. His arousal was very prominent.
At a gentle push on the center of his chest, he practically fell. A step back, then his knees appeared to give out and he sat down abruptly on the pile of their clothes. Another small nudge against his chest and he lay on them.
She peeled open a packet, sheathed him, and knelt over his hips.
“You’re so beautiful,” he managed in a whisper.
That stopped her. “You just like seeing a woman’s breasts for the second time in your life.”
In answer, he raised a hand and slipped his fingers into her hair. She hadn’t remembered loosening it from its normal severe bun.
Jeremy toyed with it for a long moment before resting his hand on the side of her face and brushing a thumb along her check. “You feel amazing.”
“You think that feels good?” Taz slid her hips down on him.
51
Lieutenant General Jorge Martinez stood on the hard sand surface beneath the burning Mexican sun, but he didn’t feel the heat. It had taken him years, but the time had finally arrived and nothing else mattered.
“Former three-star general of the US Air Force,” he told the parched desert.
He wished it could make him feel good…or bad. Something.
But all he felt was anger.
Not at the Air Force. He’d loved the Academy, his thirty-five years of service, and his part of making it the greatest fighting force in the world. They were more effective than the rest of the world’s air forces combined.
No. There was nothing wrong with the tool. The problem was with the politicians who couldn’t be trusted to wield a butter knife without fucking it up.
Desert Storm, where they’d been sent in to kick Saddam’s ass—but only out of Kuwait. They should have taken him out in 1991, not 2003. Then once they’d finally gone in, the official Rules of Engagement had so tied their hands in Iraq and Afghanistan that they’d barely been able to act.
Known Prime Target in sights? Not even any risk of collateral civilian damage? Nope! Still need clearance from the politicos back in DC.
Taliban’s and al-Qaeda’s only ROE was kill. Fuckers didn’t even care who so long as it got the job done. That’s what America’s Rules Of Engagement should have been.
Taz had picked a fine spot. With his wife Consuela gone, Taz was the only person he truly trusted and he’d been right to do so.
This small valley in the center of the Baja California lay just south of the Sierra de San Pedro Mártir—the highest mountains of the entire peninsula. Despite the narrowness of the peninsula, just a hundred kilometers wide here, it was easy to get lost in these mountains. The nearest road that deserved a name lay thirty kilometers away. The nearest town even farther.
The valley, his valley, had just one dirt track leading through it sideways. To the west Taz had dropped a cliff on it, and to the east she’d blown a switchback off the face of a steep pass. Now the only way in and out was by air or scrambling scree on foot.
The woman was amazing. Not Consuela, but amazing.
Consuela had stuck with him through the Academy and followed him around the globe as he’d flown the old AC-130H gunships. He’d taken them into Panama and flown for Bush I into Kuwait against Saddam.
For nine years, the Spectre and Consuela Martinez had been the core of his life. Nine short years before she was knifed by a couple of coked-up yuppie punks needing the two hundred bucks she’d just gotten from the ATM for their next fix of Mexican nose candy. She’d lived just long enough to make sure they got life in prison.
When they were released on good behavior a mere six years later, his life had shifted paths. First he’d made sure they both died in pain far worse than Consuela’s, fully aware of why.
Then he’d started building.
If the American justice system was so broken, he’d fix it himself.