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couture.”
    “High Neanderthal fashion, maybe.” She laughed. “On television, you guys use nice, civilized grease paint and a few twigs in your helmet. What’s with this pig-in-swill look?”
    “On television, we don’t give away our secrets,” he retorted. “The last thing we need is to broadcast how we really operate on the evening news for our enemies to see.”
    “Are you sure it’s terrorists and not the rest of America you don’t want seeing how you really operate?”
    He paused, kneeling before the shelter entrance. He looked up at her. “The American people don’t want to know how we really operate, darlin’.”
    She crouched beside him, bringing her into disturbingly close proximity. Close enough for him to lean forward just a little and kiss her. The memory of the warm, sultry taste of her swirled through his head with aphrodisiac intensity.
    “The American people have a right to know what you do with their tax dollars,” she murmured.
    He frowned at her. What was going on here? She actually wanted to sit in the middle of a jungle full of kidnappers and discuss politics? An undercurrent flowed through her words. Something more personal than a mere point of view. What was it she had against soldiers like him?
    “Look,” he said on a sigh. “You’re welcome to your opinion, and I’ll stick to mine. The reason I do what I do is so you can have your opinion and express it freely.”
    She frowned, but he continued. “When you get back home safe and sound, you can do your worst to convince Congress to disband my unit. But in the meantime, I’ve got a job to do, whether you approve of it or not.” He shoved the beret, which he took from inside his shirt, into her hands. “Eat these.”
    She picked up one of the green berries he’d collected and examined it suspiciously. “What is it?”
    “It comes from a native vine. I don’t know the name. The berries taste terrible, but they won’t kill you. The locals distill its juice into a truly evil rotgut.”
    She popped one in her mouth and immediately puckered up, shuddering. “God, that’s worse than a lemon!”
    He made a sympathetic face. “Just swallow them down as fast as you can. You need to eat. We could be out here for several weeks.”
    She popped another berry into her mouth. She chewed it minimally and gulped it down.
    He talked to distract her while she dutifully consumed the fruit. “I found some signs of other humans besides our visitor.”
    She stopped eating abruptly. “How close?”
    “A couple hundred yards. Fortunately not real fresh. Probably some poachers. But tomorrow we’ll need to take precautions and move more carefully.”
    “What sort of precautions?”
    “For starters, we’ll need to camouflage you, too.”
    She asked in dismay, “Do I have to do the whole mud-and-grass-in-the-hair thing? Couldn’t I just smear on a little grease paint and call it good?”
    “Sorry. I don’t have any grease paint with me on this trip.”
    “Why not?”
    He snorted. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to get kidnapped and end up in a South American jungle when I went to work yesterday. As it is, we’re lucky I’ve got any survival gear on me at all.”
    She frowned. “Exactly how much gear do you have?”
    “Enough for us to live on, if that’s what you’re asking. I’ve got the knife I just picked off that soldier, and we have rope and a cigarette lighter from the guard in the truck. I happened to have a space blanket in the pocket of my pants, and that’s a real piece of luck. Not to mention a couple ounces of DEET in my shooting gear. Plus, we have the two rifles. Although we’ll only use those as a last resort.”
    “What’s a space blanket?”
    “It’s a thin piece of plastic coated with a Mylar heat reflecting surface. Folds up into a little bundle about the size of my fist. It’ll keep us dry and warm in a pinch.”
    “We’re supposed to survive out here for weeks with a knife, some rope, a lighter and a