Rat-at-at-at!
Jones laid down suppressing fire as Ortiz maneuvered the Land Cruiser behind the wall of jersey barriers, giving them solid cover—but potentially leaving them trapped.
“Jenna, lock the doors, and stay down!” Derek didn’t want to make it easy for Qassim to grab her if they fell. “Don’t come out for anyone or anything!”
She shook her head. “I won’t lock you out!”
“Do it!” Derek threw open the door, strapped his helmet onto his head, and took up a position on the corner of the wall, while Jones climbed onto the Land Cruiser’s hood and Ortiz took the other corner. “Cobra HQ this is Team Two, we have taken cover and are returning fire. Awaiting reinforcements. Out.”
18
Jenna was trapped in a nightmare, barely able to breathe, pulse pounding in her ears as gunfire exploded around her. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed.
God, please keep them safe! Keep them safe!
“Changing!” Derek shouted. “Ortiz, you’ve got one sneaking around your way!”
“I see him!”
Rat-at-at! Rat-at-at!
“Cruz is down!” That was Malik. “I can’t see how bad it is, but he’s not moving!”
Oh, God!
The two men were close friends. Was Dylan dead?
Her stomach rolled.
“Cobra HQ, this is Team Two. We have a man down. No details available. Still taking fire. Requesting medevac, over.”
Please let him live! Keep them safe!
“Changing!” Malik shouted. “I’ve got two mags left!”
Were they running out of bullets? Is that what he meant?
“Conserve your ammo!” Derek shouted back.
Why was this happening?
She wasn’t worth this. She wasn’t worth the effort Qassim was making. She sure as hell wasn’t worth other men’s lives.
She could stop it. She could pick up a gun and shoot or step out of the Land Cruiser and give herself up to Qassim.
You’d probably get shot, and all of this would be for nothing.
Seconds dragged on like hours, the gunfire incessant, shouts mingling with the cries of injured men. Was one of them Dylan?
“Where the fuck is that bird?” Malik shouted to Derek.
“They’re four mikes out!”
Four mikes?
Did that mean four minutes? Four minutes was an eternity.
We can survive that. God, help us to survive that long!
Malik cried out, fell back against the Land Cruiser’s bullet-pocked windshield, blood hitting the glass with him.
“Cobra AQ, this is Team Two. We’ve taken multiple casualties and need evac now, over?” Derek shouted.
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
Jenna didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the big trauma kit she’d seen in the back and climbed out to find Malik already in shock, sweat beading on his brown skin, blood pouring from a gunshot wound to the right side of his chest just below his clavicle and from an exit wound in his back.
“Malik, stay awake! Help me get you down.” She wrapped one of his arms around her shoulders and lowered him as carefully as she could to the asphalt.
“Jenna, get back in the vehicle!”
“Not without Malik!” She did her best to ignore the gunfire and focus on Malik, her training taking over. She pulled off his gloves, body armor, and shirt, then ripped into the medical kit and slipped into a pair of nitrile gloves. “How old are you?”
His teeth chattered. “Thirty-six.”
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
“I’m going to do my best to help you.” She found an autoinjector of morphine, twisted off the top, and jammed it into his quadriceps, then searched for some way to seal his chest wound. She was about to use a plastic dressing when she saw an Asherman chest seal. “Are you allergic to latex?”
He shook his head, his breathing labored.
She ripped the adhesive strip off the back of the seal, wiped the blood off his chest as best she could, then lined up the vent over the bullet wound, and stuck the seal to his skin. She repeated the process for the exit wound on his back, air and blood burbling out of the vents—exactly what he needed.
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
“I’m going to get an IV going so you’ll be ready when the medics get here.”
“Th-thanks.” His body trembled. “You’re one t-tough chick.”
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t tough at all. She was shaking and scared to death.
Alcohol pads. Large-bore IV needles. Lactated Ringer’s.
Thank God!
She searched for a vein, wiped his skin with an alcohol pad, then did her best to get the IV in place—not easy with bullets whizzing overhead. It took two sticks for her to get it right. “Sorry!”
He was all but unconscious now.
“Stay with me, Malik.” She loosened the plastic tubing around the bag of fluids, hung the bag from the vehicle’s antenna, then connected the tubing to his IV, and opened the fluids wide. But it wouldn’t keep him alive for long. He needed to get to a hospital. He needed surgery—stat.
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
Ortiz groaned and sank to the ground. “Fuck! I caught a ricochet in my goddamned thigh!”
Jenna started toward him, but he stopped her, tearing a small med kit out of his pack and treating himself. “I’ve got this! Stay with Malik!”
“Jenna, get back inside and lock the door!” Derek shouted. “Changing!”
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
She picked up the trauma kit and ran toward the vehicle, then heard Derek grunt, his rifle falling to the ground.
Rat-at-at-at!
Another bullet strike. A dull thud.
Derek was thrown back and lay still.
“Derek!”
God, no!
She crawled over to Derek, saw blood seeping from the torn fabric of his shirt near his shoulder. “Derek!”
Please let him be alive!
She checked for a pulse and found one. He was breathing, his airway clear.
Thank God!
She tore open his shirt.
There was an entry wound on his left shoulder, but no exit wound.
Damn it!
That meant the bullet could have ricocheted inside him. It could be anywhere—in bone, in his chest, in his abdomen. He could be hemorrhaging internally.
Get yourself together!
No blood in his mouth or coming from his ears.
That was a good sign.
She found a flattened lead ball embedded in the center of his body armor. It hadn’t penetrated, but it had hit him hard.
But the gunfire had stopped, the silence sending chills down her spine.
Men shouted in a language she didn’t understand.
Moans. Boots on asphalt. The distant thrum of a helicopter.
Hurry, Javier!
Derek moaned, drew in a breath, his eyes fluttering open, pain etched into his face. “Get … into the vehicle.”
“Stay quiet.” She fought to keep her emotions out of it, tearing open a hemostatic dressing and fixing it over the bullet wound.
He tried to reach for his rifle.
“You’ve got a bullet still inside you, so take it easy.” She jammed the autoinjector into his thigh, shoving another one into her bra just in case.
“No … morphine.”
“Too late.”
He didn’t seem to have a pneumothorax, so she focused on his bleeding. “This is going to hurt.”
He grimaced as she pressed down hard on his shoulder.
The boots drew nearer.
“Stay still. They’re coming.”
Maybe if they thought he was already dead…
Her heart pounding so hard it hurt, she looked up just as armed men came around both corners, weapons pointed at her and Ortiz, whose hands were red with blood.
She recognized Qassim from the dro
ne photos and glared up at him, shouting at him in Dari, her fear momentarily gone. “You dog!”
He ignored her.
“What do you want me to do with them?” one of his men asked, pointing the barrel of his rifle directly at Derek’s head.
“No!” Jenna cried out in a voice she barely recognized as her own, throwing herself over him, protecting him with her body. “Don’t you touch him!”
“Bring him and the girl. Leave the rest to the vultures.”
* * *
Derek slowly came out of his morphine haze, pain dragging him to awareness. His left hand was numb, but his arm hurt like hell. The pain in his chest was just as bad. The round that had hit his vest must have broken ribs or cracked his sternum.
God, it hurt to breathe.
He opened his eyes, found himself lying on his back in the rear of one of Qassim’s Jeeps, his wrists and feet bound.
Okay, so he’d been in worse spots. But his men…
Jones, Cruz, O’Neal, Ortiz. Four good men wounded, maybe dying, maybe dead.
Goddamn.
They’d taken out his earpiece, so he had no idea what was going on. The bird had been on its way. Derek had called out medical. Were they still alive?
Derek had lost men before. He’d lost an entire team the day Laura Nilsson had been abducted. That had been his fault, his responsibility. Was this his doing, too?
You can’t change it now. Concentrate on getting through this.
He focused on his heartbeat, trying to assess his condition. It wasn’t fast or thready, which told him that he hadn’t lost too much blood.
Thank God for Jenna.
She had defied him and risked getting shot herself to care for him and for Jones. She’d slowed his bleeding and done her best to ease his pain. Then she’d thrown herself on top of him, trying to protect him. She’d even called Qassim a dog.
Don’t you touch him!
Yeah, Jenna had her brother’s strength.
She sat in the seat in front of him, arguing with Qassim, hidden under a burqa. “I’m a nurse! Let me care for him unless you want the death of an important U.S. citizen on your hands.”
Jenna, be careful.
Qassim and his men laughed.
“Shut up, woman, or I’ll cut out your tongue!”
Derek wanted to tell Jenna to keep quiet, to stay passive, but he didn’t want to give away the fact that he was conscious. The weaker he seemed, the better the chance that Qassim would underestimate him. Not that he’d be any good in a fight just this minute, especially not trussed like a turkey.
“You wouldn’t dare! I know you know who my father is. If you want money from him, you’d be wise not to touch me.”
Then again, Jenna seemed to be holding her own against these fuckers.
“When we get to the camp, we’re going to pass you around, let all of the men enjoy you, and when we’re done, we’ll let the dogs have you. Isn’t that right?”
Men’s laughter and shouts of agreement.
“Be quiet, Perooz. No one is to harm her. Any man who touches her faces me.”
So, the mouthy bastard was Qassim’s son, the punk who’d left the car bomb.
Derek was going to enjoy killing him.
They turned off the highway and onto a rutted road, the jarring motion forcing Derek to grit his teeth to keep from groaning.
Son of a bitch!
“This bouncing might make him bleed to death. Please, let me help him.”
“It might be better for him to die now.” That was Qassim. “You we won’t touch, but he killed more than a dozen of my men and passed information to The Lion.”
“He was just doing his job, protecting me.”
It put a hitch in Derek’s chest to hear her fighting so hard for him. But if she was expecting forgiveness or mercy from Qassim, she was going to be disappointed. The folks around here were still angry at Genghis Khan, and he’d been dead for a while now.
“Cobra has more money than my father,” Jenna said. “He’s worth more to you than I am. You’re a fool if you harm him or let him die.”
Derek wasn’t worried—not yet, anyway. By abducting him and Jenna, and attacking, injuring, and possibly killing Cobra operatives, Qassim had brought a metric shit ton of pain down on his head. He just didn’t know it yet.
More ruts.
Pain lanced through Derek’s shoulder and chest, drove the breath from his lungs.
Fuck!
“He’s awake.” Perooz peered at him over the back seat, grinning.
“Let me at least check to make sure he’s not bleeding to death.”
“Be quick,” said Qassim. “If you try to escape, I will kill him.”
The vehicle slowed, then stopped.
Jenna rose up and turned in her seat, and an arm emerged from her burqa, something gripped in her closed fist. “He is losing blood.”
Their gazes met for just a moment through the mesh of her burqa, and Derek saw in those green eyes the fear and worry she was trying so hard to hide.
“They’ll come,” he whispered.
“I know.” Without warning, she jabbed something into his thigh.
Morphine.
God, he loved her.
The drug rushed through him like warm honey, blunting his pain, making him high as a fucking kite.
It’s not going to be like this when they get to where they’re going. They’re going to rough you up. They might even kill you if Cobra can’t move in fast enough.
He knew it was true, but right now he didn’t seem to care.
Perooz grabbed Jenna by her shoulders, shook her. “What did you do to him? What did you say?”
Bastard.
“I gave him pain medicine so that he won’t suffer. I told him to sleep.”
The last thing Derek saw as he drifted into unconsciousness was a distant flash of silver high in the blue sky above.
* * *
Jenna huddled inside her burqa, cold to the bone and hungry, the shackle on her ankle biting into her skin. They had taken her cell phone, searched her for weapons, and staked her like an animal in the corner of a house with dirt floors, the coal fire in the center of the room doing nothing to keep her warm.
But Derek was suffering much worse.
“What did you say to The Lion about me?” Qassim had been asking Derek questions for the past hour, beating him, Derek’s suffering unbearable to her.
Still, Derek was a smart ass. “I told him you fuck little boys.”
The dull thud of a fist striking flesh, another grunt of pain.
Tears streamed down Jenna’s cheeks.
“You think you are a tough guy, I know. I think you are not so tough. That looks like a bad wound in your shoulder. How does it feel now?”
Derek cried out, a terrible, agonized sound, like a scream through gritted teeth.
What were they doing to him? Where was Cobra? Where was Javier?
If they didn’t come soon, it might be too late. But without her phone, how would Javier find them to mount a rescue?
Jenna was used to the sound of suffering, the cries of women in labor. Their pain tugged at her heart, but this was different. Qassim was doing his best to hurt Derek, to break him. He might even kill him.
The cry ended.
“Go to hell!” Derek shouted.
Another blow. Another grunt.
“What did you tell The Lion?”
“Your best chance … for ending today alive ... is to let Ms. Hamilton go.”
He sounded like he was out of breath. Was he having trouble breathing?
She had asked to see him, offering to treat their wounded men in exchange for being able to care for Derek. But they had ignored her as if they hadn’t even heard her, as if she were nothing and no one.
Another blow. A grunt.
“What did you tell The Lion? Speak—or I will geld you like a goat!”
“No!” Jenna jerked against the chain, her heart thudding sickeningly in her chest.
Another terrible cry—this one cut short.
“Leave him to bleed to death.” Qassim stormed out of the room, ignoring her and stomping outside, his two men behind him.
There was blood on his hands—Derek’s blood.
Had the bastard castrated Derek? Was Derek bleeding to death?
Feeling sick, her blood cold with panic, Jenna called to him, listening for any sound of life from the next room. “Derek?”
No answer.
“Derek!”
Still no answer.
Desperate to reach him, Jenna tried to pry the shackle open, then grabbed the wooden stake, rocking it back and forth with all her strength, trying to pull it out of the hard, dry earth. The stake came free without warning, and Jenna fell flat on her butt. It was a lot longer than she’d thought—and it was sharp on one end.
A weapon.
She picked it up together with the chain that was still shackled to her ankle and ran to the next room, the chain clinking softly.
“Derek!”
He sagged, shirtless and unconscious, from a tall wooden post, fresh blood streaming down his left arm, his pants down around his ankles, his body still intact.
Thank God!
Almost legless with relief, she ran to him. There was a terrible dark bruise in the center of his chest where the bullet had hit his body armor and fresh bruises on his ribs. His face was bruised, too, lacerations on his cheeks, his lip bleeding, the pressure bandage she’d put on his shoulder wound lying, bloody, in the dirt.
She dropped the stake, threw off her burqa. He was breathing, but his skin was cold and clammy, his pulse thready. “Derek, can you hear me?”
He raised his head. “Jenna? You shouldn’t … If he finds you … he’ll hurt you.”
She looked for the knots that held his bonds then went to work untying them. “I can’t sit there and do nothing while he tortures you.”
“Yes, you can. If it means survival … you can.”
The knots were tight, but she kept at it until the one around his ankles and then the one around his wrists came free.
“I’ve got you.” She eased him to the ground, grabbing the shirt they’d torn off him, and covering him with it for warmth. Then she tore the burqa, making strips and fashioning them into a bandage to stop his bleeding.
Hard Target: A Cobra Elite Novel Page 17