Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart of the Jaguar

In one heated moment out of time, all Ann longed for was finally happening. It was all so crazy. So mixed-up. Yet as she lifted her chin and felt his strong mouth settle upon her lips, nothing had ever felt so right. So pure. So devastatingly beautiful. His strong arms moved around her back and she felt him put her against him.

There was no mistake about his gesture; it was clearly that of a man claiming his woman….

Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of the Jaguar

Lindsay McKenna

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A homeopathic educator, Lindsay McKenna teaches at the Desert Institute of Classical Homeopathy in Phoenix, Arizona. When she isn’t teaching alternative medicine, she is writing books about love. She feels love is the single greatest healer in the world and hopes that her books touch her readers on those levels. Coming from an Eastern Cherokee medicine family, Lindsay has taught ceremony and healing ways from the time she was nine years old. She creates flower and gem essences in accordance with nature and remains closely in touch with her Native American roots and upbringing.

To all my wonderful readers who have been

with me over the years. You are the greatest!

Contents

Prologue

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

Prologue

“Oh, hell…I’m dying….”

The thought slammed through Captain Mike Houston’s spinning mind and then, in disgust, he uttered the desperate words out loud. Sliding his long, muddied fingers along his camouflaged right thigh, he looked down to see bright red blood spurting like a pulsing fountain. A bullet had ricocheted off a tree and nicked his femoral artery, and he was bleeding like a butchered hog. Instinctively, because he was trained as a paramedic, he put direct pressure on the wound with his dirty hand.

Lying in the midst of the Peruvian jungle, Mike knew there wouldn’t be any rescue coming. No, the helicopter he’d been in had been shot down by Eduardo Escovar’s drug cartel mercenaries, who were intent on hunting him down and murdering him. As far as Mike knew, he was the only survivor of the flaming wreckage. The redness and blisters on his forearms, the tightness of his face, told him he hadn’t gotten away without being burned. Gasping, he threw back his head. Sweat trailed down the sides of his hardened face as he began to feel each single beat of his heart in his heaving chest.

Though he’d leaped from the falling bird before it hit the triple canopy of trees, Mike knew his Peruvian army team hadn’t survived the attack. The helicopter had been hit by a rocket at five hundred feet and had slowly turned over on its side like a wounded, shrieking eagle, twisting around and around until it hit the thick jungle cover.

In the distance, he could hear flames from the downed aircraft still snapping and popping. He heard the excited voices of Escovar’s men as they searched through the jungle, hunting for any survivors. It was only a matter of time now, actually. A pained, one-cornered smile twisted Mike’s mouth. Helluva place to pack it all in: in his mother’s homeland. She was Quechua Indian and had been concerned when he was assigned by the U.S. Army to teach Peruvian soldiers how to begin ridding their land of the cocaine lords. She’d wept in his arms, pleading with him not to go down there, that he’d die.

Well, it looked like she was right. Mike scowled. At twenty-six years old, he didn’t want to die. Hell, he’d barely lived yet. He’d only been an Army Special Forces officer since he graduated from college at age twenty-two. He had his whole career—his whole life—ahead of him. But as he lay in the shallow depression, the surrounding green, leafy jungle effectively hiding him, the soft, spongy ground beneath him damp with rotting vegetation, he began to feel light-headed. That was the first sign of shock, he noted coldly. Pretty soon I’m going to dump, my blood pressure will drop through the floor and I’ll lose consciousness and die. It would be like going to sleep.

Still, he’d been in so many close calls over the years as he’d directed Peruvian army teams against the continuing battle with drug lords in the highlands of this jungle country that he believed he might have a chance. He had luck—his mother’s Indian luck. She prayed for him constantly. It made a difference.

He could feel his heart thudding hard in his chest. And, he became aware of the pulse of blood through his body. The sticky red substance had completely soaked the material around his thigh. He tried to put more pressure on the wound. No, he thought gravely, this time there would be no help, no helicopter coming, no relief to make up the difference. He knew that the copilot had gotten off a mayday message shortly after they were hit because he’d heard him scream out their location as the out-of-control helicopter plunged toward earth. But who knew if anyone had picked up the transmission? There was little chance of a rescue being organized.

The heavy jungle growth felt comforting to him. In his green-and-tan camouflage uniform, he was well hidden. With a mirthless smile, Mike lay on his left side, placing his arm beneath his head like a pillow while his right hand closed more firmly over his hard, massive thigh. It was only a matter of time. Escovar’s men were local villagers. They knew how to hunt and track. They’d eventually pick up his trail. He hadn’t been able to hide his tracks this time. Usually, he was just as good as they were in hiding his whereabouts, but not on this misty, cool morning. Blinking through the sweat dripping off his bunched brow, Houston looked up through the wide, wet leaves.

Humidity lay like a blanket above the canopy. On most days, sunlight never reached the jungle floor. His eyes blurred briefly and everything went hazy. The beat of his heart became pronounced. As he lost more blood, his heart pumped harder, trying to make do with less. It was a losing battle. His mind was shorting out, too. He wondered if he’d bleed to death before the cocaine soldiers found him. He hoped so, because what they’d do to him wouldn’t be pretty. He laughed to himself. The Geneva Convention didn’t mean a damn thing down here. Its declaration of the rights of prisoners was a piece of paper in some far-off land. Here, the law of the jungle prevailed. Any prisoner taken could expect horrendous, painful torture until death released him from the agony. To torment one’s enemy wasn’t just permitted, it was a right.

Pain throbbed up and down his leg. He had to try and get his web belt around his thigh and make a tourniquet. Mike laughed at himself once again. Why the hell was he trying to save his own miserable life? So Escovar’s men could finish him off, an inch at a time? He kept his hand gripped on his thigh. No belt. Screw it. I’ll die instead. He shut his eyes, the black, spiky lashes resting against his ashen, glistening features. Ordinarily, he looked like a Peruvian Indian, his skin not copper colored, but a dark, dusky hue that hinted at the norteamericano blood interfaced with Indian. He spoke Spanish and the Quechua language as easily as he did English, thanks to his mother’s influence.

“Never forget your upbringing, Michael!” she would remonstrate, shaking that small, brown finger in his face. “Your father might think you’re all norteamericano, but you are not! Your heart belongs to my people. Your spirit belongs to the Jaguar Clan in the jungles of Peru. Never forget that.”

Mike chuckled softly, his face pressing into the scratchy leaves and branches where he lay. He was weakening further. In spite of the humid hell that surrounded him, he felt cold, and he was dying of thirst. Oh, for a drink of water right now! Somewhere in his hazy mind, he knew he was going to go through every classic symptom of shock as the blood leaked out of his body. For a moment, he felt lighter, the heaviness of his body, the belts of ammunition he wore criss-crossed around his chest no longer pulling him downward. Despite his tightly shut eyes, he saw the dull, whitish yellow glow of clouds that always embraced the jungle. The light always reminded him of his mother’s belief that the clouds were actually the veil between the worlds. On this side was the “real world,” she’d told him, when he was a child on her knee, listening as she spun story after story of her Indian heritage. But the other side…ahh…that was the world of the shamans and the Jaguar Clan. It was a world full of magic, danger, mystery and terror. Only trained medicine people could go between the worlds and come back alive from the experience. Anyone else foolish enough to try it would die.

I’m dying now. I’m going between the worlds. Part of him, the norteamericano side, laughed derisively at the thought. But his mother’s Indian blood, that part of him connected deeply with Mother Earth, believed it. Until now, Mike hadn’t really thought much about his mother’s belief system. In these moments before his death, her words were more important to him than he’d ever realized.

Mike heard the shout of a soldier no more than a hundred feet away from where he lay. He knew he’d done a bad job of hiding himself beneath the damp, rotting leaves and branches that filled the shallow depression he’d dug, but his leg wound had taken most of his attention. Now consciousness was draining from him. His fingers began to slip away from his wound and he felt the pulse of warm blood spreading across them. He didn’t have the strength to hold pressure over the bullet hole in his thigh any longer.

He was breathing shallowly now. His heartbeat was growing weaker. He was dumping. His blood pressure would plummet any second now, and he’d die. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing but that humid, moist veil to another world. Funny, he couldn’t see anything else anymore. He supposed that was part of dying. Blinking away the sweat running into his eyes, he realized he no longer felt its sting. Yes, he was definitely going through the dying process. He began to lose his fear of being discovered. Absorbed by the white-and-gold light that now surrounded him, he realized the cold that had been flowing up his legs and into the center of his body had stopped. He blinked again.

A voice inside his head told him to look down at his arm, which was flung out before him. He shifted his gaze slightly across the surface of the ground, thinking he would only be able to see the white light. But he could make out his darkly haired arm, the camouflage material torn away, leaving the lower part exposed.

His vision was changing. As if he were looking at his arm through a microscope, Mike saw each black hair and his darkly tanned flesh beneath. His focus moved to his large-knuckled, heavily scarred hand. Suddenly, he felt something shift within him.

The feeling wasn’t that noticeable, just a vague sense of readjustment. Mike wasn’t sure what caused it, but there was a rumbling feeling in his chest, like a heavy truck grinding up a steep hill in low gear.

Sounds blurred around him. The drip, drip, drip of water falling from the leaves was amplified, while the shouts of the soldiers dissolved. Mike felt oddly uncomfortable, but his pain was nearly gone. Even the throbbing sensation in his leg had disappeared.

Puzzled, Houston blinked and continued to stare dazedly at his outstretched arm. The sight of it was his last hold on reality, he figured. Pretty soon, his vision would dim and he’d be gone—forever, this time. He felt lighter and lighter, all the noises and the pain slowly dissolving. He felt as if he were whirling and the sensation made him dizzy as it became more and more profound. His gaze clung to his dirty, bloodied arm, as if he were trying to absorb one last reminder of his physical body before he died. A part of him didn’t want to die. It was his Indian spirit fighting, he guessed.

All of Mike’s focus was drawn to the dark hairs that carpeted his forearm. Suddenly some of the hair began to turn a deep gold color. The black hairs remaining took on the shape of black crescent moons all over his now golden-haired arm. What the hell was going down? He didn’t have the strength to utter the question. His mind spun. He couldn’t think straight any longer. He watched, mesmerized, as his forearm continued to change. Gasping he saw his long, callused fingers transformed into claws. He was no longer staring at his hand, but the huge paw of a big cat! What was happening? Was he hallucinating? That was it. He was hallucinating just as he was dying.

A new strength began to flow up his right arm, a startlingly powerful, pulsing sensation of life triumphing unexpectedly over death. Groaning, Mike rolled onto his back. He closed his eyes, unable to comprehend this strange new feeling. As the warmth and power tunneled up his right arm and flowed into his thickly corded neck and head, he felt changes. Unusual changes. He felt his teeth elongate in his mouth. Strangely, miraculously, he began to regain his senses.

His left arm began to feel like his right one. Then his torso felt like it was shifting—expanding here, narrowing there. The warmth flowed down into his legs and he felt them change shape, too. He was dying, that was all. Dying. But if this was death, why was his heart beating so powerfully in his chest? He opened his mouth and took in a deep, ragged breath. Air flowed into his lungs, life-giving and galvanizing. What’s going on? His mind wasn’t working right. His senses were suddenly, inexplicably acute. Even more so, his sense of smell was heightened. He could scent the soldiers and detect the direction they were coming from. Even better, he could hear them as he’d never heard them before.

Mike rolled onto his stomach. He shouldn’t have been able to due to his wound, but he did. The jungle had taken on different colors to him—not the shades he was used to seeing. Soft light surrounded every leaf, branch and tree. Everything was connected by that river of slowly moving light.

The first soldier was nearly upon him. Mike crouched and waited. Anger tunneled through him as he saw the man lift his rifle and quicken his pace toward where he lay hiding. The soldier was dressed in camouflage fatigues and heavily armed, his black eyes narrowed with a sort of savage pleasure. There was no denying his murderous intent, and Mike sensed this intruder into his domain had tortured many victims and enjoyed their pain, their screams. Blinking, Mike saw a dark gray color around the man. It wasn’t at all like the clear, unbeguiling light he saw around the plants and trees. No, this man’s light was murky. Evil.

Instinctively, Mike crouched, every fiber of his being set to defend himself. He didn’t know where the strength came from, but he felt his hind legs tense, lower slightly, and then he lunged out of his hiding place, his body a projectile, his claws aimed at the man’s exposed neck.

The soldier shrieked and tried to halt. Too late! Everything went black in front of Mike. As he slashed savagely at the soldier’s neck, he heard the man’s scream die in his throat. Within seconds, three more soldiers arrived. Though Mike did not see them, he heard their choking cries and screams of surprise, felt the powerful, flowing movement of his well-muscled, sleek body. The only thing he knew was that his life was at stake and he had to kill them before they killed him.

Once the killing was over, he felt blackness rimming his vision, the gold-and-white light rapidly beginning to fade. With a groan that seemed more like a low growl to his ears, he felt himself running, or more appropriately, loping. He could feel the slap of leaves against his body, but he couldn’t see anything! His energy began to seep away. Strength left his legs, flowing up through his torso. He felt the damp earth beneath his hands and he suddenly collapsed onto it with a groan. The light was gone; the darkness rapidly moved toward him. He was dead. He was sure of it as he lay there on the jungle floor, covered in the humid mist that divided this world and the next.

Houston regained consciousness slowly. Prying his heavy lids open languidly, he stared upward. He lay on his back, hidden by the thick, luxuriant growth around him. Yes, he could see the dark silhouettes of the trees outlined in the mist. But something was different. What? His mind was groggy and he was having trouble remembering much of anything. Above the dense, humid white clouds above the canopy, the sun had shifted. It was almost dusk, he realized.

Little by little, strength flowed back to him. He groaned and rolled slowly onto his left side. Recalling his deadly wound, he propped himself up against a tree and groggily looked down at his right thigh. Blood was everywhere across his lower body. Yet where was the wound? Weakly lifting his hand, his fingers trembling badly, he tried to find the rip in the material where the bullet had entered. There was none. Frowning, he tried to think. It was impossible.

Was he dead and just didn’t know it? Looking up, he realized he felt different, but very much alive. He dug his fingers into the damp, rotting leaves to assure himself of the reality of his surroundings. As he continued to stare down at the place where his wound should have been, he realized something else had changed. The entire front of his uniform was splattered with blood. He hadn’t been wounded in the chest. What would cause blood to cover the front of his shirt? Moving his hand slowly up his wrinkled, muddy uniform, Houston realized the blood had dried, stiffening the fabric. The metallic odor clung nauseatingly to his flaring nostrils.

How did he get covered with so much blood? It couldn’t be his own. His mind railed at the illogic of it all. Lifting his head, Mike slowly tried to absorb everything around him. Yes, he was still in a jungle. The same one he’d crash-landed into, as far as he could tell. Monkeys screamed in the distance, their howling somehow comforting him. A few colorful parrots flew above him looking for a night perch before dusk ended in darkness.

As his gaze dropped from the jungle around him to his left arm, hanging at his side, he felt a jolt. There were gold hairs on his arm. Gold and black. He frowned, thinking he was seeing things. Using what little strength he had left, he lifted his arm and stared at it. What the hell? His vision blurred and then cleared once again. There, on his forearm near his wrist, was an irregular patch of gold hair with two black crescent-moon shapes. This couldn’t be real, he reasoned. As he moved his fingers across the patch of hair, his heart thudded hard, once, in his chest. It was fur. Soft, short, thick fur, surrounded by his own hair. But as he explored it, it disappeared beneath his fingertips.

Overwhelmed, Houston leaned his head back against the tree and drew several deep breaths of air into his lungs. His senses were no longer as acute, but he heard voices not too far from where he lay. Escovar’s men? Snapping his eyes open, Mike waited. For some reason, he didn’t feel danger. That was silly, too. Just moments ago, several of Escovar’s men were going to kill him. Confused, Mike narrowed his eyes and gazed toward the sound.

An aged white man, barefoot and wearing dark blue pants, with a jaguar skin draped over his shoulders, appeared out of the jungle in front of him. Houston raised his eyes to the gray-haired man’s bearded face and met his crinkled gray eyes. The old man nodded in greeting and exposed strong white teeth in a welcoming smile. The man’s two cohorts came toward Mike, an African man and a young Indian girl with willow green eyes.

“I was told you were out here,” the old man said, leaning heavily against a staff that had brightly colored macaw feathers attached to its top. He touched the claw necklace around his neck and chuckled. “I see your guardian has left you your life, hombre. We will take you back to the village. You will be safe with us. Come….”

Chapter 1

“Mike? Mike, it’s time to get up!”

Groaning, Houston turned on his side, jamming his face into the feather pillow. Damn, he thought groggily, he’d had that nightmare again. A flashback really, the same one he’d had a hundred times before…

“Mike?”

“Uh, yeah…I’m awake….” he muttered.

Where was he? Rolling over, he forced his eyes open. The plain timbers of the Santa Fe architecture of the room met his eyes, reminding him he was no longer in the jungle. The sounds were different here. He heard the crow of a nearby rooster and the soft snort of some horses in a corral. As he blinked the sleep out of his eyes, he heard the lowing of cattle, too. Oh yeah, he remembered suddenly. He was staying at the Donovan Ranch near Sedona, Arizona. Helluva long way from his normal digs.

He shoved himself upright in the old brass bed, the covers falling away to expose his naked chest and upper body. When he got the chance, he never slept with clothes on—even pajamas—preferring nakedness instead. All too often in his work he had to sleep in his fatigues, ready to leap up and start moving at a moment’s notice. In fact, sleeping in a bed was a luxury for him.

Savagely rubbing his face to wake up, Mike felt the stiff prickle of beard beneath his fingers. He’d had that post-traumatic-stress-disorder dream again, reminding him of who he really was, of what made him different from other men, other human beings. Scowling, he shook his head and sent the fragments of memory back into the depths of that cauldron, his subconscious. More like Pandora’s box with an ugly twist, he thought with a sleepy grin.

What time is it? he wondered, shoving his feet from beneath the covers and placing them on the cool cedar floor. The clock on his bed stand said 0800.

Dr. Ann Parsons had called him from the next room, he realized belatedly. The alarm clock must have gone off and he hadn’t heard it. Damn. He’d promised Morgan Trayhern that he’d meet him at 0800 to get the details of his next mission. Grunting, Mike launched himself out of bed and stretched. He liked the feeling of each group of muscles in his body bunching, stretching and relaxing. Arcing his arms over his head, he closed his eyes and appreciated his physical strength. It was one helluva body, one that had more scars on it, had taken more blows and survived more than most.

Exhaling loudly, he ran his fingers through his military short, dark hair and headed to the bathroom that adjoined his room. As he padded across the pale gold floor, he remembered his nightmare. A smile cut across his thinned lips as he opened the door to the shower and turned it on. Nine years had passed since that incident in the jungle, and at thirty-five years of age, he still dreamed about that miraculous, life-changing event.

As he stepped into the pummeling stream of hot water for his morning shower—another luxury—the steam roiled in clouds around him reminding him of the endless twisting clouds that haunted the jungles of South America. He grabbed the soap and began to briskly wash himself. There was nothing like a hot shower to get the blood flowing and wake him up. For the first hour of the morning Houston was a bear of sorts, until he was fully awake and had poured a cup of good, black espresso down his gullet. Then and only then was he human and not growling or snarling at everyone. Mike had a reputation of being a grizzly in the morning.

Soaping his left arm, he blinked away the water running in rivulets across his face. Grinning, he studied the burn scars on his darkly haired arm, reminding him of his escape from the flaming copter that had been shot down. Various white scars from shrapnel that had exploded from the craft after it had crashed were also visible reminders of that day he’d faced death and won.