Ryker E-Book

Mayer Dale

• Herausgeber: Valley Publishing Ltd.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

After his last assignment, Ryker is ready for a rest. And he gets it—but only a few hours …

That’s even too long for a geologist kidnapped by guerrillas in the Columbian jungle. Ryker has plenty of experience in jungles around the world but, keeping Manila safe—along with the two men she’s traveling with and their injured guide—exposes them for who they are. It quickly becomes apparent, under these most gruelling conditions, which of her party steps up and which plan to step out.

Manila’s life has become one of never-ending misery at the hands of her captors as they await word from their bosses, who decide her ultimate fate. That she’s hunting platinum doesn’t matter to them. Nor that she’s fighting against the invasive illegal gold mining taking over parts of the area. When Ryker rescues her from her prison tent, she places her trust in his ability to get her and her team safely away. Not yet realizing she’d be gifting him both her body and her heart too.

Ryker needs to keep them all alive and together long enough to get them out of this hellhole—hopefully alive …

Leseprobe

Ryker

The Mavericks, Book 6

Dale Mayer

Books in This Series:

Kerrick, Book 1

Griffin, Book 2

Jax, Book 3

Beau, Book 4

Asher, Book 5

Ryker, Book 6

Miles, Book 7

Nico, Book 8

Keane, Book 9

Lennox, Book 10

Gavin, Book 11

Shane, Book 12

Diesel, Book 13

Jerricho, Book 14

Killian, Book 15

Hatch, Book 16

Corbin, Book 17

Aiden, Book 18

The Mavericks, Books 1–2

The Mavericks, Books 3–4

The Mavericks, Books 5–6

The Mavericks, Books 7–8

The Mavericks, Books 9–10

The Mavericks, Books 11–12

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About This Book

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

Epilogue

About Miles

Author’s Note

Complimentary Download

About the Author

Copyright Page

About This Book

What happens when the very men—trained to make the hard decisions—come up against the rules and regulations that hold them back from doing what needs to be done? They either stay and work within the constraints given to them or they walk away. Only now, for a select few, they have another option:

The Mavericks. A covert black ops team that steps up and break all the rules … but gets the job done.

Welcome to a new military romance series by USA Today best-selling author Dale Mayer. A series where you meet new friends and just might get to meet old ones too in this raw and compelling look at the men who keep us safe every day from the darkness where they operate—and live—in the shadows … until someone special helps them step into the light.

After his last assignment, Ryker is ready for a rest. And he gets it—but only a few hours …

That’s even too long for a geologist kidnapped by guerrillas in the Colombian jungle. Ryker has plenty of experience in jungles around the world but, keeping Manila safe—along with the two men she’s traveling with and their injured guide—exposes them for who they are. It quickly becomes apparent, under these most gruelling conditions, which of her party steps up and which plan to step out.

Manila’s life has become one of never-ending misery at the hands of her captors as they await word from their bosses, who decide her ultimate fate. That she’s hunting platinum doesn’t matter to them. Nor that she’s fighting against the invasive illegal gold mining taking over parts of the area. When Ryker rescues her from her prison tent, she places her trust in his ability to get her and her team safely away. Not yet realizing she’d be gifting him both her body and her heart too.

Ryker needs to keep them all alive and together long enough to get them out of this hellhole—hopefully alive …

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Chapter 1

Ryker Landers landed in California. He’d stayed an extra night in Geneva and had spent it with Mickey and Asher. They’d gone out for dinner, sat down at the lake for a long time, and just generally had a good old time without the pressure and strain of all the action they’d been through. Ryker had no idea where he was going next, but he hoped for a few days off. He headed to his brother’s place now. He figured he’d catch a couple days of doing nothing but maybe playing a few video games and something mundane, like mowing the lawn. That sounded good to him. Especially if it came with a cold beer.

He hopped into his vehicle and drove away from the airport. He hated the traffic, the smell and the smog, but something was very comforting about being home again. As he pulled up to his brother’s front door, it opened, and his nephew came barreling out. “Ryker, Ryker,” he said. “You came.”

“I said I would, buddy.” He picked him up, tossed him high in the air and laughed.

As he stepped inside, his sister-in-law came over and gave him a kiss. “You look tired.”

“Yeah, it’s been a bit of a rush,” he said. “After a few days here I’ll be fine.”

His brother, Reggie, walked over, patted his back and said, “Will they give you a few days?”

“I hope so,” he said.

But just over a day later his phone chimed. He looked down and it read, You ready?

He thought about it, smiled and answered, Yes.

Good, came the reply. You’re heading to the jungle. A geologist has gone missing. Dr. Manila Folgers.

I could take a whole team in there and still not find him.

And we thinkshehas been taken by guerrillas.

The animal variety? he typed, half as a bad joke.

No, the well-armed variety. We need somebody to get her out, without causing a war.

But I like causing wars, Ryker said.

Then cause it with her. She’s been looking for platinum, a hot commodity in the world. We’re afraid she found some—and someone else found out.

Ouch.

Get ready. You’re leaving in the morning.

Chapter 2

Ryker stood on the upper deck of the cruiser and studied the coastline. “When he said the Colombian jungle,” he muttered to himself, “he meant it.” He stared at the heavy overgrowth. Anything one hundred yards from the water was almost a dense thicket, and the best information he could get was that his missing geologist was in the Pacific Region of Colombia. That was the smallest of the five regions and had one major city on the coast that served as a major shipping port. Of course, many small villages were up and down the coast.

He was coming up to Tumaco, the second port in the region, but they were still a long way off the shoreline, and he would have an awful lot of inland traveling to do. Which is why he would travel at night and would get dropped off by a helicopter to Manila’s last known location, which had been pulled off the locator on her phone. Then it had gone dead.

Ryker was aiming to land somewhere close to where she’d gone missing last to see if he could track her from there. This was definitely guerrilla territory, and he was not looking forward to being out here without reliable communication while trying to find a woman who was most likely already dead. But apparently not only was she a geologist interested in stopping a lot of the illegal gold mining in the Chocó Department region—good luck with that—but she was also looking for platinum, a resource at a very low ebb around the world, making it even more valuable.

He shook his head. She had come here as part of a group of five, including their two guides to help carry some of the gear and the samples. Normally she went out alone, but, this time, Global Mining Industries had insisted. Her university shared her with Global for these joint pursuits. The team idea was a good thing in theory, but it didn’t matter in reality because all of them were missing now. Nobody knew if the guides had been taken prisoner as well or if they had just taken off. As far as Ryker’s jaded mind would say though, the guides had been part of the kidnapping too. Gain a few dollars, head back home and nobody would be the wiser. It happened all the time. People went missing in these far corners, and nobody ever came and checked. This was a lawless land here.

Behind him, he heard a slight sound. Being on a navy cruiser, he ignored it.

“Ryker?”

He recognized the voice. Ever so slowly, he turned in surprise. “Miles?”

His old friend reached out a hand, but, rather than shake, they half hugged and smacked each other on the shoulders.

“Damn, it’s good to see you,” Ryker said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Miles nodded toward the jungle out there. “Heading back into my worst nightmare,” he said with a tilt of his mouth.

It took a moment for Ryker to understand. “Are you coming with me?”

Miles nodded.

“Oh, I remember,” Ryker said. “Didn’t you get bitten by a viper?”

“Sure did. Lost a chunk of my foot on that deal,” Miles said cheerfully.

“So why the hell did you volunteer to come back in?”

“A couple reasons. The primary one being that you need help, and I don’t want you in there alone because the odds are against you coming back out again. I don’t give a shit what anybody says about this region being a cakewalk. It’s not by any stretch of the imagination. Two, I don’t want something like that to beat me,” he said. “I’d done an awful lot of antiguerrilla warfare training well before we went in the last time, and I had been at the top of my game. Well, until that damn snake bite. I was carried out by my teammates, and I swore—if anybody ever needed me to return again—I’d do it just to help save myself.”

“Outside of checking that you were okay, I didn’t see much of you after that trip.”

“And that trip was a few years ago,” Miles admitted. “Don’t know about you, but I decided I needed a change of pace.”

Ryker snorted. “This is hardly a change of pace.”

Miles’s British accent came in heavily as he laughed. “But it is,” he said. “This is faster and more dangerous but without the brass interference. We can make decisions without having to worry about permission.”

“I hear that,” Ryker said. “The trouble is, I was always guided—and limited in that way—by my own honor system. And that is always way more intense than whatever the brass deems from above.”

“I get you,” Miles said, “but still, it’s me or nobody.”

“Oh, hey. Don’t worry. I want you with me,” Ryker said. “I was already trying to figure out how the hell I was supposed to handle this job alone. It’s one thing to go in without backup on a small job, but something like this?” He shook his head. “No, I’ll be glad to have you at my side.”

“Good thing,” Miles said, “because it is what it is already.”

“Yeah, and it’s good,” he said. “I wish we had more information though.”

“We have the latitude and longitude of the GPS where they were,” Miles said. “And I have preliminary files on everybody on the team. But I wonder how we’ll get the rest while in the jungle here, blocking any reception. Plus we have nothing on the two guides.”

“Gee, what a surprise,” Ryker said. “What’s the chance they’re in on it?”

Miles nodded. “Unfortunately, in Colombia, everybody will take a paycheck or an extra little bit of cash for something like this. The guerrillas keep everybody in the loop. And the guerrillas keep them all on their side by paying them.”

“And now the guerrillas are attached to the drug cartels as well, giving the guerrillas access to even more money to buy allegiances,” Ryker muttered. “After that one attempt by their government to rehabilitate and to make peace, they’ve more or less aligned with all the drugs cartels instead.”

“And yet, anybody with a brain could have seen that one coming,” Miles said. “The authorities got them to surrender and took out half of them, and the rest saw the writing on the wall, then headed back to the jungle. They handed over the bulk of their weapons in this plea or negotiation deal, which was a bad deal for them. A lot of them were put into the land and supposed civilization, but a lot of them couldn’t handle it.”

“Isn’t that the truth. Once you’ve been in a war full time, it makes you wonder if you can ever leave it. I’ve had that thought a time or two myself.”

“I know,” Miles said. “I was thinking that this job could be the last one.”

“You too, huh? But then I feel that way about every job,” Ryker said, laughing.

“Right?” Miles said. “I’ve got weapons in our kit all packed up. You should take a look.”

“Good,” he said as he turned to look around at the deck of the cruiser. “Does anybody even know we’re here? I get that everybody knows, but it’s like we don’t exist. It’s a bizarre feeling.”

“Exactly,” Miles said. “And that’s the way they like it. The less they know, the less they have to even think about it. As far as these guys are concerned, we’re here on a secret mission, and that’s it.”

“Well,” Ryker said, “that’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“We’re leaving at midnight, if you’re okay with that.”

“Yeah. We should land just in perfect jaguar-hunting time,” he said with a laugh.

Manila Folgers stayed huddled in the small tent that she’d been given, and she was damn grateful to have that. Being in the middle of the guerrilla camp was not a good place for a white woman. And particularly not one in her position. She should have known better and not listened to her bosses. She’d planned to come all alone—how arrogant and foolish, yes—yet she would’ve been better off alone. As far as she was concerned, one of the guides had given her up and had taken a payout and was even now back in his village, happily laughing at having made a smart move with his guerrilla friends.

She didn’t even know which group of guerrillas these were. She thought they were still part of the same FARC group, an acronym for some bloody remnants of an all-powerful guerrilla warfare group back in the nineties and way before. They made a plea deal that had gone bad for a lot of them, and the remainder of the group got more powerful by attaching themselves to a lot of the Colombian drug world.

Not that any of that should have impacted her, but, right now, not only did the guerrillas say that she wasn’t allowed to go where she wanted to go, but they also said that she wasn’t going anywhere without their permission. She suspected that some of her team might already have been executed too, and that brought on her cold sweats.

The gold mining so rampant in this part of the Colombian countryside was destroying a lot of the natural habitats of this country. It was illegal, and it was destructive, but it was a moneymaker, and everybody was jumping on that bandwagon. She made a mental note anytime she ran across these activities, to share with others more actively working to stop this.

However, she was here solely looking for platinum, something the world was quickly running out of. And there was a good chance some deposits were along here, and she needed to be pulling her samples.

She had all her paperwork in order.

This guerrilla group was so young as a whole. Spoke to the scarcity of jobs in this country. But there were so many of them, and all of them heavily armed. She didn’t know what the guerrillas would do with her, and honestly, it sounded like they didn’t know what they would do either. She understood Spanish but didn’t let them know that. She was deliberately speaking English, but, then again, who knew what her guides had told these guerrillas?

Just then her tent flap flipped back, and a young woman stepped inside. She motioned for Manila to get up. Slowly she got up and stared at her. She motioned again for Manila to walk ahead of her. She walked out of her tent to see her team members also being shepherded over to one side. Both of them thankfully. Just the two guides were missing. She was quite surprised when she and her team were then given water. She quickly washed her face and the back of her neck and then took some to drink.

Her team members looked at her warily.

She shrugged. “No idea,” she said quietly. “Just stay cooperative.”

“Yes, stay cooperative,” said a man from the side, his voice harsh.

She glanced at him as he laughed to see two missing front teeth, but, of course, he carried two rifles, as if that made up for it.

She opened her mouth again and said, “We mean you no harm.”

“You’re an interfering foreigner. We don’t want you here,” he snapped.

“If by that you mean, I’m a geologist, and I’m looking for platinum, then, yes.”

His face worked as he tried to sort through what that meant.

Somebody on the other side said, “Platinum?”

She turned and nodded. “There’s a very good chance that Colombia has wonderful stores of it. But I won’t know until I get some of my samples back to the lab.”

“What company do you work for?”

“Global Mining Industries,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of them.”

Of course, nothing but blank stares gazed back at her. She lifted the water and took another big drink. It was always a problem to drink enough to compensate for the heat down here. You weren’t supposed to drink it all at once. You were supposed to drink it slowly to allow your body to tank back up again. “When can we leave?” she asked.

The man missing two teeth laughed again. “Why should we let you go anywhere?”

“Because I haven’t done you any harm,” she said quietly. “We’re here with your government’s permission.”

“We don’t give a shit about our government,” Toothless said. “If you don’t pay the price for being here with us, then we don’t have to let you do anything.”

“Ah,” she said with a nod. “So this is just about money.”

“It’s not just about money,” he said, getting angry. Then a shout came from across the path. It was almost a road, but there were no vehicles. They were all on foot. Immediately Toothless subsided. He shouldered his rifle and turned and walked away.

She glanced at her team members. “Hold on,” she said.

“We should never have come,” Andy announced.

“Nope, you shouldn’t have,” the second guerrilla said. “It makes no sense that you’re here, unless you’re spies.”

She stared at him in surprise. “Of course we’re not spies. We didn’t even know you were here.”

He didn’t like that answer either. Whether his ego thought that everybody should know where they were or whether he had some other reason for that, she didn’t know. But his glare told her that he definitely didn’t like her answer. She shrugged and waited for whatever would happen next. She didn’t have to wait long. Two other gunmen joined them, and these were immediately visible as the bosses.

She smiled and held out a hand. “Thank you very much,” she said. “The water is much welcome.”

One stared down at her hand and said, “Why are you here?”

She quickly repeated how she sought platinum here.

“Seriously?”

“It’s a valuable mineral, and it’s needed in the world.”

“Potentially,” he said. “You sure you aren’t after the gold?”

She shook her head. “The illegal gold mining in this area is vast. What’s that got to do with me searching for platinum?”

“Maybe nothing,” he said, “but we have to at least check it out.”

“Feel free to do that. I just don’t know how you would.”

“We’re not so cut off from the world as you may think,” he said. “I already have men on it.”

“Good,” she said. She went to lift her backpack off her back, when immediately several rifles were pointed at her. She froze. She lifted her head to stare at the leader. “I can show you some rocks of what I’m looking for and want to ask if you had seen anything like it.”

He motioned at her to continue.

Slowly she opened the flap to her backpack, wondering how this bag had even been left with her in the first place. Their other bags had been taken, but this one she had been given back to keep—which held her laptop and her samples. Her personal belongings were long gone though, she figured. She pulled out several rocks, looking for the one she wanted. When she found it, she held it up.

“I’m looking for rocks like this,” she said, “that contain platinum. This is what we’re looking for,” she repeated. “Have you seen more of these rocks?”

He studied the rock and then shrugged. “It looks much like the other rocks of our region.”

“Yes, and no,” she said. “Look at these colors here and look at the markings.” With a disinterested shake of his head, she pulled out some of her maps and some of the satellite photos she had. Then she spread out the map and awkwardly placed on it several of the images that she had, as of course there was no table and nobody stepped forward to help her. “We’re looking for outcroppings like this. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that would give us a general direction.”

“And why should we help you?”

She just blinked at him. “Well, I suppose it would get us out of your hair much faster.”

“I don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “Nobody is coming after you.”

“Why is that?”

“Because they’ll try to deal with our government, but our government doesn’t deal with us,” he said with a flat stare. “We’re in a cold war at the moment with them.”

“Ah, I understand,” she said and then proceeded to act as if she had no clue what he just said. “So have you seen any of these outcroppings?” She glanced around at the rocks around them, then pointed. “It’d be like that but bigger and longer. We’re looking for different color tones here.” She pointed at the side of her rock sample, and he shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so.”

But from the other side of her came a spat of Spanish.

Manila understood most of it, but it was a different dialect than what she was accustomed to. Somebody thought that they had seen something. She glanced at one woman. “So, was that a yes that you have seen this?” she asked hopefully.

A young woman stepped forward. She had on a camouflage T-shirt that hung down past her pants pockets and was dressed like many of the soldiers. She pointed off to the right. And then she talked to the leader in another spat of rapid-fire Spanish so thick with her accent that it was almost impossible to pick up.

But the Spanish itself was fairly clear. This girl had seen something. A large series of rocks were a couple miles from here. The leader asked her if the rocks looked like this, and she nodded.

“Any chance I can see it?”

“Why would we let you do that?”

“Well, the platinum is very valuable,” she said. “And, in the right hands, it would offer an awful lot of power and negotiation for your region.”

He stared at her for a long moment.

“And, of course, none of that makes any difference,” she said, “if I can’t actually see it and if we can’t take some samples back.”

He frowned at that.

And she could see that he was desperately trying to find the right response, but, at the same time, he didn’t really want anything to do with her and her plans. “I can probably tell when I see it,” she said. “I can’t tell if it’s platinum for sure until I see it and test it.”

He frowned at her again for that and then shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. Then he turned and walked away. As he turned, he called and ordered to have them all taken back to a tent.

She quickly had another sip of water and then tried to take the water with her, but it was removed from her hand. Expecting that, she didn’t say anything more, but they were all put into one tent, which was interesting. The rest of her team asked, “Are you okay?”

“Of course I am,” she said. “Now it’s a case of whether we’ll get a chance to see that rock formation or not.”

“Are you expecting them to take you?” Andy asked, surprised.

“Expecting, no, but considering it could be valuable, it’s in their best interests. Besides, we have to do what we can to stay alive,” she said. “They don’t believe anybody will come to our rescue, but I do.”

“And why would anybody?” asked her other team member. Andy was the young kid on the block, but Benjamin was the older, grumpier one and very pessimistic. “It’s not as if the company gives a shit.”

“Well, considering I already told Global that I found one vein of platinum that looked very possible,” she said calmly, “I highly doubt that.”

“Well, the chances are they had your GPS at the same time that they lost track of us,” Benjamin said. “All they’ll do is keep that for future reference. Not to save us now. Maybe to send in another team with more weapons.”

“More weapons?”

“Sure,” he said. “I had a handgun with me, and they took it.”

“I did too,” Andy said.

She nodded. “Of course. Enough predators are out here of the four-legged variety to justify any number of weapons. But, to kill the guerrillas, that won’t be wise.”

“We didn’t realize they were in this area,” Andy said. “We did as much research as we could, but we certainly weren’t planning to do them any harm.”

“No, but you came to Colombia,” Benjamin said. “You might as well be prepared to come up against guerrillas.”

“How far off the coast are we, do you think?” Manila asked everyone.

“Maybe twenty miles, twenty-five miles,” Andy said. “Why?”

She shrugged. “That’ll be our easiest way out of here.”

He snorted. “No way. That’s not just twenty-something miles but that’s miles of the Colombian jungle. More snakes and venomous animals are in this part of the world than anywhere.”

“Sure,” she said, “but we have a scheduled pickup in just four days.”

“Do you think that will happen?”

“We were supposed to return the other direction,” she said, “to make our rendezvous. I highly doubt we’ll get there.”

“So what good will the coast do?”

“It’ll only do us any good if we can get some help there,” she said, “but it’s at least a decent option to try.”

“Well, that won’t happen,” Benjamin said. “You know, no one is coming.”

“They will,” she said. “For that reason alone, we need to make sure that we help the guerrillas in whatever way they think is necessary.”

“And that won’t end well either,” Benjamin said. “Have you forgotten who is the white woman here?”

She stiffened at that. “I’ve forgotten nothing,” she said. “I might be worth getting a ransom paid.”

“True,” Andy said with a smile. “Have you told the guerrillas that?”

“No, not yet,” she said. “But they’re not stupid. They’re dealing with the drug cartels in this part of the world, so those might be the groups who are more interested in keeping me, just because I’m worth money.”

“Keeping you alive,” Benjamin said with a snort. “Who gives a shit about the rest of us, right?”

“I’m not even getting into that discussion with you,” she said in an exhausted voice. “Did anybody consider the fact that maybe the guides were in on this?”

Silence came from the other two.

She nodded. “I was thinking the older man was part of it. It sucks, but it makes sense.”

“Well, it makes sense that everybody here is corrupt,” Andy said. “But you’re right. He’s the one who seemed to be always a little bit off to the side, as if waiting to be taken out.”

“Right,” she said, “and I don’t know what happened to the younger one.”

“Who knows?” Benjamin said, flopping flat on his back. “I wonder how long they plan on keeping us here.”