Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,1

tired, but his skin was dry and burned from too long, too personal contact with the corrosive powers of ocean water. He needed a bar of soap and plenty of clear, running water. A shower’d be nice. Top that off with a thick coat of petroleum jelly he meant to slather everywhere—if he could find a jar.

But first...

Walker stashed his empty wrappers and bottle back into his bag, then kicked out of his fins and pulled off his dive boots. Into his waterproof rucksack they went, on top of his garbage, his prized modified, bolt-action SOCOM MK-13 rifle, two pistols, his knife, and what was left of his ammo. And, oh yeah, he’d almost forgotten that hypo of Special K from his last close escape. That he kept in a tiny sealed pocket in his bag. One could never be too careful.

He’d packaged everything separately in zippered waterproof pouches designed specifically for underwater black ops. Explosives. Blow-out kits. Just enough protein bars to get by. Bottled water. Important stuff like that. Made expressly for SEALs, the bags could handle almost everything. Best of all, they kept every drop of saltwater out.

Unzipping his suit from neck to hip, he peeled it slowly and methodically over and off his shoulders, then pulled both arms free of their skin-tight sleeves, and folded the suit over his legs. Undressing always hurt in intimate, excruciating ways. Though he knew better, it always felt as if the suit took every last body hair and the topmost layers of epidermis with it. To work, neoprene had to lie flat against a man’s body. And Walker’s suit was the best. It had almost become part of him. Hence the pain of separation.

He had no SCUBA gear, comm link, or rebreather. This swim had been entirely unscripted, and he’d been unprepared when it began. But that was what guys on the run did. They improvised.

Climbing to his feet, he stepped out of his suit, then rolled the top and bottoms together, avoiding getting more sand in them. Methodically, he stowed the suit with the rest of his gear. At last down to his swim trunks, he unzipped another waterproof bag, pulled out one more bottled water, and rinsed his mask. The mask went alone into a dry, soft cloth bag to protect its lens, then back into yet another protective bag. SEALs always took care of their gear. Even former SEALs.

He’d no sooner zipped his bag, when the tiny hairs on the back of his neck prickled to attention. This beach was too open. He wasn’t alone. Time to go.

“You’re dripping on my sand,” a lazy feminine voice drawled from somewhere within the shaded trees ahead.

His head snapped on target. There she was. A lone woman. Behind that screen of tall beach grass. Leaned back in an Adirondack chair beneath a gnarly eucalyptus, itself shaded by the lofty pine on its westward side. Which explained why he hadn’t spotted her until now. But where had she come from? Had she been there all along? Why was she here?

There weren’t any other lights on this tiny island. Yet she wore dark glasses. Day tripper maybe? Or someone sent to take him in? Damn it. She’d been there the whole time, watching him come ashore and undress. Hell, watching everything. His demeanor. His current lack of weaponry. Hell, even where he’d stowed his knife. At least he hadn’t peed on the beach.

Walker cocked his head, striving to see the stranger better in the diminishing light of day. Her two long, bare legs were crossed, hardly visible from where he stood. One white woven sandal slapped the heel of an extended foot, taunting him. Daring him. But those legs…

She had to be in a swimsuit to be showing that much leg. Walker licked his chapped lips, pissed that his mind had already gone—there. Up those legs. Between those legs. Hopefully, wishfully, to sweet, sweet heaven. It’d been a long time since he’d been with a real woman. The last one, a wannabe USN wife, a frog hog whose name he refused to remember, didn’t count. Barflies were the same the world over. Shallow. Selfish. Nameless. Users, like him.

But this mystery gal had attitude. “Your sand? I don’t see any No Trespassing signs.”

Slap, slap, slap went that lazy sandal. “Well, bless my heart, you’re a nosy son of a bitch, aren’t you?” She stabbed those dark glasses up higher on her nose. “Like I said, my sand. You’re on it. You got a