Hostile territory shadow.., p.1
Hostile Territory (Shadow Team Book 5), page 1
HOSTILE TERRITORY
Lindsay McKenna
Hostile Territory
First edition 2024
Original Copyright © 2015, R. Eileen Nauman
ISBN Kindle Edition: 978-1-951236-50-2
Excerpt from Shadow Target
Original Copyright © 2015, R. Eileen Nauman
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Blue Turtle Publishing, 7050 Oak Level Road, Bassett, VA 24055 USA.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition is published by arrangement with Blue Turtle Publishing Company.
Dear Readers,
Now, book 5, Hostile Territory, features Special Forces Army Sergeant Mace Kilmer and Sierra Chastain, sniper. The last thing he wants in this hellhole of this Peruvian jungle where he hunts down drug lords, is to see a woman backing up his team. They are a hunter-killer team sent under top secret orders to stop the incursion of Russian drug teams pushing into the Highlands of Peru, near Machu Picchu, a World Heritage site and Cusco, a major city. His three-man team operates in the dark, along with three other teams. Together, they are hunting down the murderous Russians who take no prisoners. The other two Latino drug lords are outgunned by these ex-Spetsnaz storm troopers who rape, kill and plunder the innocent villagers to get more cocaine out of them, than ever before.
Sierra Chastain works for Shield Security, a global security company run by an ex-US Navy SEAL. Because she speaks Spanish, she is being sent undercover to link up with Kilmer’s team to hunt down a lethal Russian drug ringleader. When Kilmer sees what he thinks is a man leaping off the lip of a Blackhawk helicopter, he’s more than shocked to see a woman staring back at him. They are like two territorial dogs in a fight. Sierra is a seasoned sniper and isn’t going to take Patriarchal male B.S. from him. It’s not a match made in heaven, but in hell.
Mace doesn’t want to like Sierra, even though she’s a vaunted Marine Corps trained sniper. She’s a team member, gets along well with his other two sergeants, who adore her. Bringing goodies from the U.S. like hot sauce, candy, and junk food galore, the three of them have no quarrel with one another. Except Kilmer, who runs the team. His snarly attitude doesn’t get far with Sierra. She’s not afraid to stand up to male who has misplaced his authority, and he is caught off guard by her confidence…never mind he’s drawn to her, man-to-woman. That is the thorn in his side, but he hides it, not sure what to do about it. How to treat her like any other military person and ignore her sex. He’s been out in this green hell far too long.
There’s no “handling” Chastain. Mace knows he has to somehow make amends and peace with her because she has an important job to do, and they can’t do it without her. His ugly family past and destroyed marriage get in the way of seeing her skills and abilities. All his life he has worked with men, not women. Somehow, she gets inside his gruffness and snarly nature and over time and danger, knowing they will only survive if they are a team, Sierra quells his distrust and gains it, instead. And worse, they both know they are powerfully drawn to one another and can’t do one damn thing about it. Not in this high-octane lethal environment. Will they survive?
Warmly,
Lindsay McKenna aka Eileen Nauman
Dedication
To all the readers who love romantic military suspense!
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dear Readers
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Excerpt from Shadow Target
Available from Lindsay McKenna
Everything Lindsay McKenna
CHAPTER 1
Sierra needed help. She tried not to limp into the Shield Security facility where she worked. Hefting her black, nylon weapons bag over her left shoulder, she headed straight for the basement where the men’s and women’s locker rooms were located. Damn, but her right calf ached like a sonofabitch. Every bone in her body was stiff.
The flight out of Nairobi, Africa, had been long, and she’d slept most of the way back, until the landing gear thudding into place had awoken her on the approach into Reagan International Airport, Washington D.C. She had slept deeply, thankful that Shield always paid for business class tickets for their security contractors. If she’d been stuffed back in the cattle car of coach, she probably would have needed a pry bar to get her out of the seat with her leg in its current condition.
It was late afternoon at Shield Security. She passed by a couple of contractors she knew as she walked to the stairs leading to the basement.
“Hey, Chastain, good to see you back,” one man called, lifting his hand in hello to her. “Good hunting?”
Sierra wearily raised her own hand back. “Yeah, we nailed that bastard in Somalia. Hey, is Alex Kazak around? Have you seen him?”
“Yeah, he’s in a brief with Jack Driscoll on an upcoming mission to South America. Want me to send him down to the women’s locker room?” and he grinned.
“Yeah, do that,” she said in all seriousness. Gripping the oak rail on one side of the wide stairs that led down into the well-lit locker area, all Sierra wanted to do was get her weapons to the Weapons Room armorer down there. The sniper rifle she’d used, an XP, had handled the sand, heat and wind that Somalia was infamous for. Damn, her leg hurt.
Sierra dropped off her weapons bag to the woman manning the Armory. Freed of the seventy-pound load, her calf felt better. She wanted to get out of her civilian clothes and yearned for a long, hot, hot shower. She’d been able to clean up at a top-secret SEAL facility across the Somali border, in Kenya, and throw on her scruffy jeans, a red long-sleeved tee, plus a denim jacket for the trip home to the headquarters of Shield Security here in Alexandria, Virginia. Outside, it was snowing, building into a blizzard, late December as it was.
Halting at her locker, she shed her clothes, not looking too closely at her handiwork on her wounded right calf. She’d adhered the six-inch-long knife cut back together with green duct tape. It was an old SEAL fix for any wound when one didn’t have the time to tend to it properly. Grimacing, she decided to leave the tape on while showering. Quickly unbraiding her black hair, feeling the sand and grit on her scalp, she yearned for real shampoo and conditioner. Hobbling into the shower area, Sierra hoped by the time she was done, that Alex would come down and help her.
Alex Kazak stuck his head around the corner of the women’s entry point to their locker area, knocking on the wooden frame. “Sierra?” he called, his low voice echoing through the utility. He knew better than to enter unannounced. Half of Shield’s security contractors were women, and he had no wish to run into a naked one of them by accident. The door was as far as he’d go.
“Yeah! Alex?”
“It’s me. You need my medical services, Sierra?”
“I do,” she hollered back. “Hold on one sec…”
Alex stepped away from the door, holding it open. He saw tall, curvy Sierra, her long black hair damp around her proud shoulders, come limping out. She was wearing a long red t-shirt that hung to her knees. Instantly, his gaze moved to her right leg. “What happened?” he demanded, pointing toward it.
Mouth quirking, Sierra limped out of the bathroom utility and pulled the white towel around her shoulders. “Last-minute knife fight with some Somalis who were a little pissed we shot their leader.” She grinned up at the tall Ukrainian ex-Spetsnaz operator. “Let’s go to the dispensary?” and she pointed to the right.
“Yes,” he murmured, worried. “You wrapped it in duct tape?”
Scrubbing her damp hair with the towel as they walked down the tiled hall toward the medical facility, she said, “Yeah. Old SEAL trick.”
“You were with SEALs?”
“This time around, yes.” She smiled up at the broad-shouldered Ukrainian, huge in comparison to her. Sierra was five foot ten inches tall and weighed one-hundred and sixty pounds. She came from medium-boned stock via her Eastern Cherokee mother and was not a little thing at all. But, against Alex, she looked it. The big Ukrainian had married Lauren Parker, Chief Sniper Instructor at Shield. It had been a beautiful Autumn wedding. Sierra counted herself lucky to have been able to attend their small but warm ceremony before leaving for her sniper assignment in Somalia.
“Did you get the HVT?” Alex asked, opening the dispensary door for her. Inside, there was a small waiting room and reception desk. Alex was one of two combat medics at Shield and, whenever he was on duty, he handled minor medical issues for the contractors. If it was serious, they were taken to the nearby hospital for treatment. Motioning toward the opened door on the left side of reception, he said, “Take room number one. No one is around. It is near quitting time on a Friday night.” He smiled down at her. “You know how everyone leaves early on Friday afternoon?”
Sierra pushed room number one’s door open. Inside was a gurney covered with paper and a medical room filled with everything that Alex would need to sew her up. “Yes. And there’s a blizzard coming in.”
“First of the season, they say,” Alex said. He quietly closed the door behind him and set his medical bag on the counter. Going over to the examination table, he pulled out the bottom ramp for her. “Why don’t you lay on your left side and expose that wounded right leg for me?” He helped Sierra up the step. She was fully capable of doing so herself, of course, but in Alex’s eyes and world, she was a woman and therefore deserved respect. He watched Sierra closely, careful that she wasn’t putting too much weight on her wounded calf. Releasing her elbow, he went to the cabinet and pulled out two warm light-blue blankets. Once she’d gotten settled and had tugged the hem of her nightie t-shirt down to her knees, he made sure she was comfy, and covered her with the blankets so that only the leg with the green duct tape on it was available to him from beneath them.
Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he took a pair of blunt-nosed scissors and then gently felt around the wound with them. “Tell me about this?” he asked. He saw Sierra snuggle into the pillow, knowing she was exhausted. Her skin was golden-colored because she was half-Cherokee and half-Caucasian. Her black hair was still slightly damp and lay around her head and shoulders.
“Not much to tell,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “I nailed the HVT and we were on the roof of a building across from where the tangos were at. They were like a hive of angry hornets and they came boiling out of every damned entrance of that building afterward.”
Alex gently pushed and prodded here and there, watching her expression. “You had egress points? Yes?”
“Of course. It’s just that it took a few seconds for me to break down my XP, get it in its sheath, and strap it onto my ruck before ex-filling.” She let out a huff of air. “By that time, the tangos had spotted us on the roof and came over to say hello.”
Alex grinned. “Okay, I am going to cut this tape off your calf. You know it will hurt.”
“I know,” Sierra muttered, steeling herself. Duct tape was great to stop bleeding, close a wound, and give it support, but it was hell peeling it off the skin around the wound later.
Alex carefully cut away the tape. As he did, blood leaked out all over his gloved hands and onto the paper beneath her leg. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday,” Sierra admitted. “And don’t start ragging on me, Alex. I wasn’t anywhere that I could get it looked at.”
“Surely, you could have stopped at a hospital before taking the flight home?”
“I just wanted to come home,” Sierra muttered, tensing as he began to pull the tape off her flesh. Her fist curved tight, and she forced herself to breathe through the red-hot pain.
“Okay,” Alex murmured, removing the tape. “It is over. You can relax now, Sierra.”
“How bad is it?”
Alex studied the six-inch knife wound, looking closely at the swollen, bloody area. “It is clean. No infection. Yet. Did you take antibiotics as soon as you could?”
“Yes. The max load prescribed. I know what infection in Africa can do.”
“Good,” he praised quietly, gently moving his long, large fingers along parallel to the deep cut. “Do you know if the man had a rusty knife? Did you see?”
She snorted. “Oh, come on, Alex! Like I was looking to see if the blade was clean steel or rusted? In the middle of a knife fight for our lives? Hell, I don’t know.”
“But you did give yourself a tetanus shot as soon after was you could?” and he lifted his chin, looking up at her. Sierra was laying with her eyes tightly shut, her wide, expressive mouth thinned. Her hand was still in a fist, telling him she was feeling quite a bit of pain from the wound. He daubed the area with lidocaine to reduce the pain. Instantly, her mouth relaxed.
“Of course, I gave myself that tetanus shot. You make sure our blowout kit has one of everything in it,” she said, barley opening one eye and giving him a half grin.
“You are a model patient, Sierra.”
“I was going to try and stitch it up, Alex, but I almost missed my flight. There was nowhere in business class that I could do it.” She laughed. “If I had, the people around me would probably have fainted from all the blood.”
He laughed along with her, nodding. “Okay, I am going to put some lidocaine into a syringe. You know the drill. I’ll put it outside and around the wound, and then I will wait until the numbness takes hold. After it’s numb I’ll put some in the wound and you won’t feel a thing.”
“Then,” Sierra said wryly, “you’re going to scrub the shit out of it and disinfect it and then tape me up so there won’t be a scar or, worse, an infection. Right?” and she raised one arched, black eyebrow, giving him a demanding stare.
Alex’s mouth moved into a sour smile. “Yes. You should have become a combat medic, Sierra. You are good at this.” He continued to numb the wound site. Sierra didn’t move, didn’t jerk her leg out of his hands. She lay still and tolerated the pain as it lessened.
“No thanks. I like being a sniper. Not as messy.”
“Okay, this stage is done.” He dropped the syringe into the sharps container on the wall and said, “let me examine the rest of you while that lidocaine takes hold, and I can brush the area?” That was protocol. He didn’t trust Sierra not to have other cuts. And when in Africa, or any other jungle environment, infection could blow up on a person in a matter of hours and kill them if they didn’t get medical help right away.
Sierra groaned. “I’m fine, Alex. I’m just exhausted. Can’t I just lay here under these nice warm blankets?”
“No,” he murmured. “You know the drill. You are supposed to be getting an exam after every mission is complete.” He peeled off the blanket from her shoulders and patted it around her waist. “This will not hurt,” he promised, moving her damp hair aside, critically examining her skull, face, ears, hairline and neck.
Making an unhappy sound, Sierra muttered, “You’re too damned good, Alex.” She relaxed as the Ukrainian lifted her shoulder to make sure it worked, pushed up the material, examining her arm on all sides, and then laid it back down gently against her body. “Really. I’m okay, Alex.”
“Mmm,” was all he said, using his hands to check her ribcage by gently pressing inward to test each bone. Sierra flinched.
“Just bruises, Alex. That’s all.”
He stood there, watching her forest-green eyes narrow a little as he pressed her lower ribs a bit more firmly. She winced again. “Want to tell me about this, Sierra?” he asked in a casual manner. Alex had found all operators tended to let bruises, and even fractures, go if they could get away with it. They all said the same thing: they were okay. Nothing was wrong. Right.
“During our exfil, we got into a fight with five Somalis who were supposed to protect the warlord of theirs. The one I’d killed. They all had machetes and knives on them.”
“How many SEALs in your team?”
“Four, plus me, the non-SEAL.” She grinned a little. “It was a fair fight. Five against five.”
He placed his large hand gently against her cranky ribs. “And how did you get this?”
“I was pushed into a palm tree,” she admitted. “Hit here,” and she took her right hand and pointed to her tender ribs. “Just bruises Alex. Honest to God, just bruises.”
“Any broken skin?”
“No. I looked all over my torso when I showered at the SEAL facility afterward.”
“Hmmm, okay, I’m going to poke and prod a little more to make sure there is no fractures, Sierra.”
“I knew you’d say that,” she grumped, scowling.
A slight smile hovered around Alex’s mouth as he examined her ribs through the t-shirt. Watching Sierra’s expression closely, her mouth thinned a little, but she didn’t try and move away from his fingers as he pushed a little more here and there. “Okay, I believe you. But you have three bruised ribs, Sierra.”
