nightmare here on earth was more like it. Luc was firmly convinced that his survival—and a close thing that had been—had rested entirely on his grandmother’s daily rosary for his health and the fact that he shared a name with le bon père Saint Lucas of the Jungle, the rugged nineteenth century priest who had disappeared into the jungle to bring the natives to Christ. Three years later, explorers from the outpost had been stunned to find Saint Lucas alive and well, ministering to his local parishioners. Every stinking, nasty day in that jungle, Luc had prayed to Saint Lucas to, well, basically intercede for his sorry ass and get him the hell out of there. He’d prayed for other things, too, but they hadn’t been granted.
And now it looked as if Saint Lucas was collecting on the promises Luc had made him. “This girl, she can’t know what it’s like down there, or else she wouldn’t even think of going.” Luc still got a chill down his spine when he saw a map of the Amazon.
“According to the congressman, his late wife grew up in a missionary settlement in San Lucas, where her parents were doctors.”
“They lived there on purpose?” Luc couldn’t even imagine. “And why can’t the congressman talk his daughter out of it? Is she dumb or something? Has a death wish?”
“He’s tried everything short of having the State Department pull her passport but she has apparently grown up on exotic tales of the jungle.” Olie waggled his fingers in a fake-mystic way. “She’s signed up to teach the locals in the same settlement—wants to follow in the family footsteps.”
“And she’s picking the jungle over politics.”
Olie laughed. “Might be fewer snakes in the jungle.”
Luc snorted. “So what the hell do I do, Olie? This jerk-off would really screw me over?”
“In a heartbeat.” His CO looked away and drank some beer, flicking his forefinger against his thumb.
“What is it?” Olie only did that little thing with his hand when he was jittery.
“Nothing.”
“Olie…” Luc cajoled him.
“Nothing. I said it was nothing, and I mean nothing, Boudreaux.”
“No way.” Luc shook his head in amazement. “He threatened you and the rest of the team, too, didn’t he? And you didn’t want to tell me ‘cuz that would pressure me to agree.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Sergeant Boudreaux, I am a big boy whose career doesn’t depend on the good opinion of some shit-eating congressman—and yours doesn’t, either.”
“Shit,” Luc said. He never figured on making general someday but didn’t want to leave the army before he was good and ready. Or slink out with his tail between his legs as if he’d been dishonorably discharged. And to let Olie and the team get screwed over, too?
“I’ll do it.”
“You sure?” Olie gave him a steely glare.
“I’m sure.” Luc managed to fake a laugh. “Maybe once Daddy’s Little Princess sees what survival training is like, she’ll go back to the snakes in Washington, D.C.”
“YOU MADE ARRANGEMENTS for what?” Claire Cook dug her nails into her palms and winced at the pain.
“Jungle survival lessons.” Her father gave her a wide smile and helped himself to a glass of sweet tea from the pitcher in the cherry-paneled, extra-large refrigerator. “Ah, delicious. Did you brew mint leaves into it, as well? Very refreshing.”
Claire had been a politician’s daughter long enough to know tap dancing when she saw it. “Survival lessons?” she prompted.
Her dad set down the glass and dropped his soothing tone. “Since you have decided this is your course of action, foolish as it may be, I am helping you to implement your choice in the safest way possible.”
“Dad, really. The settlement at Río San Lucas is its own little town—just like Cooksville.” Their hometown was named after their ancestor, who helped settle central Virginia before the Revolutionary War. The redbrick house they were standing in had been commandeered by the British as a barracks during that war and barely escaped being burned by the Yankees during what her grandfather Cook had always referred to as the War of Northern Aggression.
But her dad was on a roll. “Cooksville isn’t surrounded by deadly rain forest, killer snakes and venomous spiders.”
Claire made a face. There he was harping on the snakes and spiders again, just because she didn’t even like the supposedly harmless daddy longlegs spiders. Maybe she should try killing them on her own rather than yelling for their housekeeper, Louella. She flinched at a tickle on her neck and realized it was a stray dark hair falling out of her ponytail. She really had to get over that.
“Not to mention jaguars, feral pigs and half-naked tribesmen who would be more than happy to add an exotically beautiful young girl to their harem, or squad of wives, or concubine crew, or whatever they call it down there.”
Claire had to roll her eyes. Brown hair, brown eyes and brown freckles scattered across a nose that hovered on the edge of snub was hardly exotic. And honestly, she’d had plenty of practice fighting off overly amorous men among the suit-wearing tribes of the Potomac River. A couple she hadn’t fought at all, but her dad didn’t need to know that.
“I will be fine,” she enunciated carefully. “So thank you, but no thanks. Dr. Schmidt will show me the ropes once I get down there and I won’t have any problems.”
“Claire, Claire, Claire.” Her father shook his carefully coiffed silver head in what she figured was mock ruefulness.
“Dad, Dad, Dad.” She copied him right back.
He dropped the Mr. Nice Dad act and pulled on his congressman face—not the kindly, wise face the cameras saw, but the face his opponents saw when they tried to block his bills or basically thwart his not-inconsiderable will. “You will take this training, or you won’t go to San Lucas. Not to teach, not to visit, not even to fly over it.”
“And I told you, if you try to pull my passport, I will go to the media. I’m sure that TV reporter you accidentally called a ‘slime-sucking son of a bitch’ on live feed would be happy to interview me.”
Her old man pulled his face into a half grin. “Ah, you wound me, Claire. To think that I of all people would be so obvious, and after all these years in politics, no less.”
A knot tightened in her stomach. “If you’re not going to be obvious, then what?”
“Dr. Schmidt is coming to the States on a fund-raising lecture tour in January, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Claire eyed him narrowly.
“And the settlement gets most of its funding from American donations, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” she muttered. Dammit, she knew what was coming.
“If the kind European Dr. Schmidt is found to have some problem that might prevent his American visa from being approved, perhaps the nasty rumor of association with the narcoterrorists
