Jackson
JACKSON
SEALs of Honor, Book 19
Dale Mayer
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About This Book
Complimentary Download
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
Epilogue
About Kanen
Author’s Note
Complimentary Download
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
A bullet takes out his rig, but a mechanic captures his heart…
When Jackson is forced to pull his rig to the side of the road as the radiator overheats, he’s not impressed, but when a bouncy mechanic in camo drives back to help him, he’s even less enthralled – with himself. She’s smart, capable, single and knows a whole lot more about mechanical things than he does.
But when he hears that it’s a bullet that’s brought his rig to a stop, he knows exactly what to do – save the woman at his side and find the men who did this.
Deli was sent to assist Jackson and his sidelined rig. Only to find they are caught up in a double cross that has bullets flying and bodies dropping… some of them very close to her.
If only it was that simple… as the bodies start to fall, and their passion starts to heat up… who will be the final casualties in take the last shot in the final act?
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Prologue
Jackson Pearson walked to the front of the military rig full of equipment, now on the roadside with steam pouring out of the engine, and popped open the hood. Damn truck. He was part of a convoy, heading from training back into Coronado. A smaller navy rig pulled up in front of him. The driver walked toward him with a smile. He looked at her and asked, “Can I help you?”
She chuckled. “The question really is, can I help you? I was instructed to see if you were in trouble when you fell behind. Truck problems? I might be able to fix your rig and get you back on the road.”
While he watched, she clambered up on the bumper and took a look under the hood. She frowned and muttered. He was about to check it out himself but hadn’t had a chance before she got here.
“Your engine obviously is overheating,” she said. “Looks like you’ve got a hole in the radiator.” She continued to check underneath the hood for a moment, then slid off the bumper and stood next to him. She frowned and asked, “Where were you stopped last?”
He motioned back up the highway. “Popped into the gas station to get water.”
She nodded. “Interesting.”
“Why?” he asked, staring at her, then at the steam. She was small, maybe five feet, two inches, tiny, and didn’t look like she knew the front end of a truck from the back end. But, not only was she knowledgeable, she appeared to be all business.
“Because I’ve seen that hole before.” She turned to look around. “I’m thinking this vehicle needs to be towed back.”
“Why? What is it?”
“Did anybody know you were going into that store?”
Exasperated, he put his hands on his hips. “Are you going to tell me about the hole?”
“When you went inside the store,” she said, without answering him, “did you see anyone outside, hanging around your truck, anything unusual?”
Slowly realizing something was seriously wrong, he said, “No. Why? What was I supposed to see?”
“Not see,” she said firmly. “But hear.”
He stared at her, confused, looked at the radiator and shook his head. He frowned at the rig and turned to her again, recognition now in his gaze.
She nodded. “Yes, that’s a bullet hole.”
Chapter 1
“Show me,” Jackson snapped, his voice hard. Why the hell hadn’t he seen that? Well, of course he hadn’t. She’d gotten in the engine first. “What’s your name?”
“Dahlia Montgomery.” She wore a big smile. “My friends call me Deli.”
His eyebrows shot up. “That’s a … nice name.”
She shrugged. “I make a mean sandwich. What can I say?”
That startled a broken laugh out of him. “Okay, Deli—if I may call you that?” he asked, one eyebrow up.
She nodded. “Sure. We’re friends until I have a reason not to be,” she said cheerfully. “If you come around to this side, you can see what I’m looking at.”
It took a bit of twisting and bending to see what she pointed out, but, indeed, a nice neat little hole was very apparent in the radiator. “We can’t see if it went out the back, can we?” he asked, straining to look.
“Not without some help.” She took out her cell phone, turned on the flashlight and used it to direct a beam of light into the hole. And, sure enough, it came out on the other side.
He swore. “What the hell?”
“Missed the grill,” she said. “Lucky shot there. The grill would have deflected it a little more off to the side, but, as it is, the radiator is history. This vehicle is going nowhere until I can plug that.” She frowned and looked at it. “Any chance we can find the bullet at the store you stopped at?”
Jackson shook his head. “The shooter would have retrieved it, whether intentional or a stray shot.”
“Well, if the bullet bounced around in the engine before exiting the rig, she’s definitely not going anywhere.”
“Got anything to plug the radiator with?”
She nodded. “But, in this case, I think we’re better off to have forensics look at it.”
“Nobody was killed though,” he said jokingly.
“No, but what if it was an attempt to kill you?” She turned to look at him. “Do I need to rethink my decision about letting you be my friend?”
He could tell from her tone of voice that she wasn’t serious, but the subject matter definitely was. “If you’re asking whether I have any enemies or any reason to consider why somebody is trying to kill me, the answer is no. At least I don’t think so. I have no idea what’s going on here.”
“Tell me what happened when you went to the station.”
He organized his thoughts. “I pulled in, didn’t need gas, so I parked right in front of the restaurant side of the building, went into the convenience store, picked up coffee and a couple bottles of water.”
“How was the coffee?” she asked curiously.
He slanted her an odd look and then shrugged. “It was gas station coffee. How do you expect it to be?”
He then went through his next steps. “I went into the men’s room, used the facilities, washed my hands, went through the cash register, came back out to the truck and drove to catch up.”
“You fell behind the convoy,” she asked, “but not so far back to look like you did it on purpose?”
“On purpose? … As in hoping to shut down the vehicle myself, so I couldn’t make it into the convoy or to separate me from the convoy?”
“Who can tell at this point,” she said quietly. She reached up to close the hood, then turned to look at him, and he realized just how short she was.
“What do you know about all this?” he asked.
She beamed a great bubbly smile at him again and said, “Nothing. I don’t like to play cops and robbers. I like to play with cars and motorcycles and planes, anything mechanical. But, when they break dow
n or are damaged like this, I get really pissed. In this case you should be pissed because your rig took the bullet.”
“But it wasn’t intended for me,” he argued.
“Yeah? What’s your evidence of that?”
He stopped and looked back the way he’d driven. “It’s more likely it was a wayward bullet,” he announced. And yet, even that didn’t make sense. The path looked to be straight through and through at that height. He stepped back, dropped his hand. The trajectory of the bullet meant someone had shot from the hip. “Why would somebody shoot in at this angle?”
“No clue,” she said. “Depending on where you rank in the military, it could be somebody else’s job to figure out, not yours or mine.”
He snorted. “Oh, I’ll be on the team that handles this.”
She turned to look at him. “Really?”
“If I can, yes.” He pulled out his phone and made a call. “Hey, Swede. Mason anywhere around?”
“Yeah, hang on,” Swede’s booming voice announced.
The phone was shuffled, and Mason came on. “Where the hell are you, Jackson?”
“In a spot of trouble, sir.”
“Damn it, knock off with the sir.”
Jackson grinned. He did it mostly to rile Mason. They were the same age, but he knew it made Mason feel old. “It’s that age thing, sir.”
Mason said in exasperation, “Then spit it out, young’un.”
At that Jackson started to laugh. “Well, I could use a hand.”
“What do you need?” Mason’s voice turned businesslike.
“My rig picked up a bullet hole. Two rather, as the bullet went through the radiator.”
There was silence for a brief second, then Mason exploded. “Where exactly are you?”
“Four miles past the last rest stop. I went in to get water and coffee, then to use the bathroom, came back out, hit the road again. I’ve got Deli here, who was sent to see what was causing me trouble.”
“Dahlia? That’s awesome. She’s great. Is she the one who found the bullet holes?”
For some reason that rankled Jackson. But he admitted it readily enough. “Yes, she’s the one who found the bullet holes.”
“Yeah, she’s good that way.”
“It’d be hard not to see it,” he said in exasperation. “It’s a through-and-through shot.”
“We’ll get you towed back here then.”
“I believe she’s got that already organized.”
Mason’s voice warmed again. “She would. She’s really efficient.”
“You know her?”
“Best mechanic on the base. Don’t tell the guys in the garage that, but she’s got the feel for it. When I went to buy that secondhand vehicle for Tesla from her uncle, I didn’t trust it. I had Deli take a quick look at it. She found all kinds of shit going on. But we got it fixed, and now it’s the safest it can be.”
Jackson smiled. Mason wouldn’t leave his wife unprotected. “Can you insert me into the investigation team?”
“You know the MPs will be all over this one. They’ll probably tow it back for a forensic visit and then conclude it was just something to note in the files and to not worry about. As long as there are no casualties and not too much vehicular damage, then it won’t get very much publicity or investigation hours.”
“But somebody shot at the vehicle,” Jackson said in exasperation. “Were they shooting at me? Were they shooting to stop the vehicle down the road so they could hijack us? I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about that right now.” Then Mason hung up.
When Jackson put away his phone, he turned to look at Deli. “Mason doesn’t seem to think anybody’ll give a crap.”
At the name Mason, her face lit up. “Are you friends?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’m relatively new to the unit, but all of us in that group are friends.”
“You’re a SEAL then?” She smiled. “But a green one.”
His hands went to his hips, and he glared at her. “Hardly green,” he snapped.
She chuckled. “We all have to start somewhere. What you don’t know is, I started at about age six with a wrench in my dad’s garage. I’ve been wrenching ever since.”
He just rolled his eyes.
At the sound of a vehicle they both stepped out of the way. A black pickup truck drove past at an exorbitant speed.
When Jackson realized something had been stuck out the window, he grabbed Deli and pulled her to the ground.
Gunfire shattered the windshield of his rig, as the pickup drove right past them.
Jackson tried to identify the plates, but the truck was going too fast.
“Did they just try to kill us?” Deli gasped.
He nodded. “Looks like it. Or to scare the crap out of us at least.”
“Why the hell aren’t you armed?” Deli asked Jackson.
He pointed to his rig. “I had plenty of firepower when on assignment or on these exercises. It’s in back of this rig and the others.”
“You don’t even carry a knife?” she asked, incredulous.
“You are talking to a trained SEAL,” he informed her.
A second and third vehicle came down the road just then. This time there were two military rigs, one the tow truck.
Deli raced to the second vehicle and explained about the pickup that had just fired on them. It took off, giving chase as the tow truck pulled a U-turn and worked to hitch up the front of Jackson’s military rig. He had it ready to move in about five minutes, while Jackson kept watch on the road, alternating with checking his watch.
She turned to Jackson and asked, “Are you okay to ride in the cab of the tow truck? Or you can catch a ride when a driver comes for my rig.”
He still stared at the road where the others had gone. “Did you hear back from them?”
“No, not likely to either,” she said. “I don’t know who they were. But they could have caught the asshole already.”
“Shouldn’t they be back by now?” He didn’t like this at all. He pulled out his phone and called Tanner. “Are you around?”
“Yeah. Mason called me. I’m heading in your direction, buddy. You got a lift yet?”
“If I want to be a threesome inside a tow truck, I’ve got a lift, yeah,” he said with light sarcasm.
“I got your back. I’ll be there in ten.”
Feeling much better, Jackson turned to Deli and said, “Tanner is about to pick me up.”
She nodded, walked up to the tow truck and said, “Good for you.” She opened the door and started to climb in.
He walked over to her. “Hey, if you want to ride back with us, that’s cool too.”
She smiled but shook her head. “I don’t wanna let your vehicle out of my sight. We’ve got this.” And, with that, the tow truck pulled away.
Jackson sat on the side of the road with just a backpack, water bottle, and a now-cold cup of coffee in his hands. He turned to look in the direction the other vehicle had gone after the pickup. It bothered him that they hadn’t returned yet. If the black pickup had been happy to shoot at them parked on the road, there was no reason they wouldn’t attack another military vehicle coming up behind them.
While he was still musing, a big black Jeep Wrangler drove up. And there was Tanner. Jackson crossed the road, hopped into the passenger side and said, “Are you doing anything right now?”
Tanner raised an eyebrow and looked at him. “You mean, outside of picking you up?”
Jackson told him about the pickup truck that had shot at them and the military vehicle that had gone after the shooter but hadn’t returned. Before he’d finished speaking, Tanner had the Jeep heading down the road after the vehicles of interest.
“How long since the pickup drove by?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe thirty,” Jackson said, his voice dark. “I can’t imagine what the hell will be on up ahead.”
They found out soon enough. They went around a corner, followed by a hairpin turn and another cor
ner. Off to the side of the road, the military vehicle was upside down in the ditch, its front wheels still spinning. Jackson and Tanner jumped out as soon as their vehicle stopped, raced down the hillside to find both men unconscious but alive.
Tanner made the necessary calls while Jackson removed the passenger from the vehicle, laid him out gently on the side of the road, checked him over and realized—outside of a goose egg already forming on his head and a badly broken leg and potentially some rib injuries—he didn’t appear to be critical. He went to check the driver, and this time he found one bullet had grazed alongside the man’s temple and another had gone through his shoulder.
Swearing lightly, Jackson checked for a pulse, cut the man’s seat belt and gently eased him from the vehicle. He didn’t appear to have any injuries to his arms or legs, but the bullet wounds were bad enough. Jackson ripped off a chunk of his T-shirt and wadded it up against the slowly welling blood coming from the man’s shoulder. He’d need another one to stop the bleeding on the man’s head.
Tanner raced down with his phone going back into his pocket. “Help is on the way.”
“Cut off more of my T-shirt. We need to stop the bleeding on his head.”
With the bulk of his T-shirt now in strips, they wadded it up and used light pressure on the driver’s head and shoulder to slow down the bleeding.
“My water bottle is in the Jeep, I should have brought it down with me,” Jackson said.
Just then the driver reached up and grabbed his hand. “Water,” he whispered.
Jackson patted him gently and said, “We’ll get you some. Hang on.”
Tanner shook his head, scrambled up the loose rocky terrain of the ravine to the Jeep. He pulled out the water and came back down. When he held the bottle to the man’s lips, Jackson lifted his head and gently helped the man get into a better position to drink.
Tanner joined the passenger on the other side of the vehicle.
When the driver had had enough water, Jackson asked him, “What happened?”
“Chasing a truck,” he whispered. “But they were waiting for us.”