Covert Read Online Free PDF Page A

and nodded his thanks.
    Davidson turned his attention back to his team. Brandt and the rest were still hiking upward to an unknown location. Davidson hoped they hurried. The firefight, and the diversion it caused, was dying down rapidly. Especially once the French soldier rejoined his team, they would melt back into the jungle, leaving all eyes on the mine.
    Once that happened, any shot Davidson took would be noticed. He could only hope that the little dot leading Brandt knew what they were doing.
    * * *
    “They‘re on their way,” the guide said, his gun hand shaking. This was not a Disciple. This was simply a greedy young man in way over his head.
    “The Disciples, the people who hired you, aren’t going to pay you,” Rebecca explained.
    “They are going to kill you,” Bunny finished.
    Rebecca had been trying to work up to that, but it was true.
    “No, they already transferred two hundred thousand into my account as a deposit.”
    “Which you won’t be able to spend, once they dispatch you,” Rebecca explained. “Do you think they are going to leave any witnesses to our kidnapping?”
    The man had no idea who he was dealing with. He hadn’t been hounded across several continents by the religious fanatics.
    “Even with a special forces team,” Bunny stated, “we barely made it out alive.”
    “You normally travel with a special forces team?” the tour leader asked.
    “Yeah,” Bunny answered. “ Duh .”
    And they sure could use them right about now. But Brandt had been in jungle camouflage and had said that he was going to get a good night’s rest on the plane, so he was more than likely an entire ocean away. It was just her, Bunny, and the owner of the tour company. Against a man with a gun and a cadre of Disciples on the way. Not great odds.
    Their only advantage? The guide looked scared out of his mind. “They just want to talk to you,” the man said.
    “Who pays fifteen thousand to ‘talk’?” Bunny demanded. “They mean to kill you and torture us.”
    Again, the redhead wasn’t wrong, but Rebecca was trying to calm the guy down so she could reason with him and Bunny wasn’t helping.
    “Let us go, and we won’t turn you in.”
    “Speak for yourself,” the tour leader grumbled.
    And Brandt would probably hunt the guy down and let him know exactly how displeased he was with the man who had held a gun to his fiancée, but the guide didn’t need to know that.
    “Just put the gun down, Erik,” Rebecca urged. “We can talk this through.”
    “I can’t,” the guide insisted.
    “Erik,” the tour leader barked. “You have to.”
    “And what?” the guide asked. “Go back to minimum wage wrangling of snooty Europeans and pushy Americans? I need the money. I want the money.”
    The younger guide’s feet took on a stronger stance as he raised the gun higher, his decision made.
    “I can’t let you,” the tour leader said before he sprang forward and grabbed the guide.
    The gun went off in the struggle. The tour leader grabbed his belly as blood gushed between his fingers. Bunny used the moment to put an elbow to the guide’s nose, then snatch the gun away. Guess Brandt’s hand-to-hand training came in handy.
    Rebecca dropped to her knees beside the tour leader. “Why did you do that?”
    “Just trying to protect the women,” the man choked out then spit up blood. “Like your special forces buddies.”
    The only difference with that was that Brandt would have pulled it off. His act was definitely one that should not be tried at home.
    Erik dropped to his knees next to his boss. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean…”
    The bright red blood on the ice didn’t care what the guide meant to do or didn’t mean to do. Rebecca kept pressure on the belly wound the best she could.
    “I think I hear footsteps,” Bunny warned from the mouth of the chamber. A bullet whizzed past her head, digging deep into the ice behind her. “They are here .”
    “Erik, help me get him on his