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Mace was miserable. He thought he knew what depression was. What grief was. But this pain in his chest had started the morning Sierra had left his arms and walked onto that Black Hawk bound for the Cusco hospital. He’d thought he had led a decent life. One that made a difference. But this sensation of loneliness cut so deep into him that he felt like he was invisibly hemorrhaging from the loss of her in his life. Sierra had lifted him. Had made him smile, which wasn’t something he did often. She’d made him laugh, and he rarely found anything in his hard life to laugh about.
Sierra had struggled while she was with him. And he had too. He was still struggling. Somehow, she’d made peace with her past, or at least, it seemed so. She had openly admitted she wanted a relationship with him. What the hell could he give her? Three months of incredible, sheer joy? And then leave for nine months? Her not knowing if he would ever return? Leave her a widow? Cause her more pain and suffering. She’d suffered enough already with the loss of Jeb and their baby. Wasn’t that enough?
A new kind of gutting sadness filtered through Mace as he sat there, mulling over his feelings about Sierra. When he’d called earlier, it was out of guilt. He’d already made up his mind to not visit her. Not leave her dangling, giving her false hope. Just walk away. Not give her more pain. More worry. Mace did not want to hurt this woman. She was special. She was artless, honest and didn’t play games. And the moment he heard her voice on the phone, his prior decision to brush her off had exploded. What the hell was he going to do? What could he honestly offer her?
He’d made a promise to his dead brother, Caleb, so long ago, to take down those fucking drug murderers. He’d gone after the head of the snake: going into drug cartel country, their own back yard, and had killed his fair share of them over the years. It had given him brute satisfaction. Just one more bastard in the dirt who wasn’t going to kill another innocent young person like his brother.
Somehow, Mace had to get his shit together, call Sierra back, and tell her he wasn’t coming. That he couldn’t. That he didn’t DARE. Because he knew himself well enough to know that Sierra gently held his heart as no other woman ever had or would. And he’d want to stay with her forever. She didn’t deserve to be hurt like that.
What did that make him? A damn coward, that’s what. Mace could feel his heart tearing open, the pain of the almost literal feeling so profound that he placed his hand against his chest. Worse, he wanted to cry for what he could never have. Cry for Sierra because she was priceless to him and all he could ever give her was pain, grief and anxiety. Even if they were married, she’d end up a widow eventually. Mace was a realist. In his line of duty, he’d lasted longer than most. But his number would come up. Sooner or later, it would. He knew Sierra was falling in love with him and he wasn’t going to put her through that trauma again. He’d suffered through it himself. And so had she. Mace wouldn’t drag her through it a second time.
CHAPTER 17
Mace couldn’t doit. He’d bought a burner phone the last day of their R&R in Cusco. Walking through the city in the morning, paying no attention to the tourists crowding every plaza, his heart was at war with his mind. Nate and Cale had both bitched that he was turning into a moody bastard on this trip.No shit.For the first time in his life, he was torn in making a decision that wasn’t black or white. Sierra was a gray area. A no-mans’-land that he was completely unfamiliar with.
Every time he’d thought of calling her, he knew it would mean losing her. The very thought of that weight of loss felt like a sixteen-pound sledgehammer walloping him in the chest so hard that he could barely catch his breath. The anguish that came after the blow was overwhelming. Sierra made him want to live, dammit. Made him want to dream of other things. Like a house. A real home. A wife. Children. He was thirty years old. And he was only thinking within these parameters now?!
Plus, he didn’t want to hurt her, dammit. She’d been honest with him every step of the way. He was the one pulling his punch. The one who was lying. Not telling her the whole truth, always hiding in a maze of partial truths. Mace had only felt this miserable once before: the day Ana Beth and their baby had died. In Cusco he had even gone into the local Catholic church for noontime mass, sitting in the back pew, just staring at the black Christ hanging on the cross at the front of the packed church. He felt a little like Him; pulled between two worlds. He’d borne his own fair share of crosses in his life. First, for his father, after his mother died of cancer when Mace was fourteen. And then another when Joseph ran away to Charleston at sixteen and got drawn into drug dealing. Sitting there, listening to the priest drone on in Latin, Mace felt the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. He’d grown up as a kid who’d been turned into a workhorse back in the times long before he could even remember. That’s all he knew how to do: Carry burdens for others.
But he’d promised his father he’d avenge Caleb’s death. Make a difference by drilling a hole in the hull of the drug shipments being smuggled into the USA. And he had, ever since the age of eighteen. Mace was tired. He could feel it seeping through every cell in his body. When Sierra had been with him, he’d felt alive for the first time since he could even remember. His love for Ana Beth had been a teenager’s puppy-love. What he felt for Sierra was far more mature, much more intense, making him feel open to consider other branches of work.
That was a murky quicksand at best. He could become a security contractor, which is where most operators went after leaving the military. And he’d be right back into danger. And Sierra would worry. She’d become a widow, sure as hell.
Rubbing his face, Mace saw no way out. Only that he wanted out, but there was no clear path. No clean, down-and-dirty answer. Everything was… well… gray. As he got up in the middle of the church mass and walked out, he finally made his decision. He wouldn’t call Sierra. Needing more time, Mace headed down the long flight of stairs from the building’s arched doorway. Tomorrow morning, he and his team were going back into the jungle. And he had three more months to slog through on his deployment before he could do anything. Maybe, in the next three months, things would become clearer. He hoped so. He couldn’t stand being stretched like this, feeling like he was being drawn and quartered. Emotionally, he was exhausted and there was no one he could talk to about any of this. His men needed to keep their focus on their quarry: Kushnir.
“Look out!”
Nate’s sharp warning came too late for Mace to react. They were preparing to cross a stream around midday, up near the Highlands. He caught a flash of a six-foot-long snake, a Fer-de-lance, right by where his boot was coming down on the bank. The pit viper, one of the deadliest in both Central and South America, lunged at him, mouth wide open. He tried to twist away but the lightning strike of the venomous reptile’s fangs sank deep into Mace’s right boot. He felt the flash of pain as they pierced through the thick, wet leather and into his foot.Son-of-a-bitch!
Cale pulled his pistol, saw the snake coil away from Mace’s boot, its attack done, and shot.
The Fer-de-lance’s head separated from its twisting, writhing body.
Mace hit the ground hard, rolling. He heard Nate cursing. Heard him running toward him. Swiftly, Mace sat up, jerking off his ruck. Each of the men carried a vial of antivenin for Fer-de-lance bites on them at all times. The viper was everywhere down here and none of the A-teams went anywhere without those life-saving vials.
Cale cursed richly, racing to Mace’s side. Time was of the essence. If they couldn’t get the antivenin into him within the first twenty minutes, he could outright die. Cale hauled off his ruck, dug around in it for his vial, then thrust it into Mace’s hand.
Nate dropped by his side, his medical ruck already open. He ripped his knife from its sheath, cutting through the laces of Mace’s boot, hauling it off, then stripped his soggy sock off as well, throwing it aside.
Mace steadied his breathing. “I’ve got two doses of antivenins ready,” he told Nate, watching the man’s hands fly between his bleeding foot and his ruck. “Cale? Get that elastic wrap? I need it now.” Standard operating procedure was for Nate to make crosswise slices into the two fang marks that were bleeding on the side of Mace’s foot. He saw the medic draw a scalpel and tensed, knowing he’d feel the pain of the cuts. Nate worked fast and in moments, the cuts were bleeding. Hoping like hell the Fer-de-lance had already used its venom on some other animal, Mace sat up. His heart had to be above the venom bite, or he would go into shock and maybe into cardiac arrest. His two men were working fast, speaking low, knowing what was at stake here.
“Wrap him,” Nate quietly told Cale. Nate grabbed the sat phone out of his ruck, making a call to the Night Stalkers in Lima. They were going to have to scramblenow, and haul ass getting that Black Hawk up here. He told the sergeant at the other end what had happened in a low, calm voice. He knew it would do no good to go hysterical. That would only raise Mace’s blood pressure and push the deadly venom through his bloodstream that much faster.
Cale wrapped the elastic bandage tightly just below Mace’s knee, as a tourniquet. It would slow the venom’s march through his body. Nate’s brow knit as he concentrated.
“Cale,” Nate said, only his equally furrowed brow betraying the calm in his voice, “get that antivenin into Mace’s main artery at the bend in his elbow. Get the IV in first, and then stick the needle into the port after you have it going. Okay?
“Roger that.” Cale got up, moving hurriedly around Mace.
Mace felt his foot swelling. He couldn’t see it, but he sure as hell could feel it. The two huge fang marks were big ones, blood was running freely off his foot. He knew how much trouble he was in. Judging from the tension in his men’s faces, they knew too. The Fer-De-Lance was the deadliest of all the jungle vipers down here. Most people died because they were caught too far out to get to a hospital in time.
“One antivenin shot into the port?” Cale snapped to Nate.
“Both! That’s a fuckin’ mother of a snake. Over six feet long! It has more venom than the smaller ones.”
Mace knew that he was going to probably lose consciousness at some point soon. He also understood the effects of the viper’s bite. It would destroy his red blood cells, dissolve the platelets which were key in clotting his blood and stopping him from hemorrhaging to death. And this huge viper’s venom would surely do its job faster than usual.
“How you doing Mace?”
