P.J. held her breath, hoping, praying to hear Harvard’s voice, as well.
She heard Blue McCoy telling Wes to stay cool, to stay hidden. Intel reports had come in informing them that Kim’s army was rumored to be heading north. Maybe even in as few as three or four hours, before dawn.
P.J. made certain her mike was off before she cursed again. Dear Lord Jesus, the news kept getting worse. They would have to try to rescue Joe Catalanotto knowing that in a matter of hours Sherman’s installation was going to be under attack from opposing forces.
That is, if Harvard weren’t already lying somewhere, dead or dying.
And even if he weren’t, she’d only been kidding herself all evening long. He wasn’t going to come back. He couldn’t handle letting her face the danger. He may well love her, but he didn’t love her enough to accept her as she was, as an equal.
She was a fool for thinking she could convince him otherwise.
Then she heard another noise. Barely discernible. Almost nonexistent. Metal against metal.
Someone was coming.
P.J. faded into the hut, out of range of the silvery moonlight, and lifted the barrel of her rifle. Aim for the eyes, Crash had advised her. Paint balls could do considerable damage to someone not wearing protective goggles.
Then, as if she’d conjured him from the shadows, tall and magnificent and solidly real, Harvard appeared.
He’d come back.
He’d actually come back!
P.J. stepped farther into the darkness of the hut. The hot rush of emotion made her knees weak, and tears flooded her eyes. For the briefest, dizzying moment, she felt as if she were going to faint.
“P.J.” He spoke softly from outside the door.
She took a deep breath, forcing back the dizzyness and the tears, forcing the muscles in her legs to hold her up. She set down her weapon. “Come in,” she said. Her voice sounded only a tiny bit strained. “Don’t worry, I won’t shoot you.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to surprise you and get a paint ball in some uncomfortable place.” He stepped inside, pausing to set what looked like a small arsenal—weapons and ammunition—on the floor.
“Was that you? All that noise from the south?” she asked, amazed that she could stand there and ask him questions as if she had expected him to return, as if she didn’t desperately want to throw her arms around him and never let go. “How did you get here so fast?”
He was organizing the weapons he’d stolen, putting the correct ammunition with the various guns. Altogether, there looked to be about six of them, ranging from compact handguns to several HK MP5 submachine guns. “I cut a long fuse. And I ran most of the way here.”
P.J. realized his camouflaged face was slick with perspiration.
“I tried to create a diversion so Bob, Wes and Chuck could escape,” he told her. He laughed, but without humor. “Didn’t happen.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I heard.” God, she wanted him to hold her. But he kept working, crouched close to the ground. He glanced at her in the darkness. She asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I had hardly any trouble at all. The outer edges of the camp aren’t even patrolled. The place should’ve had a sign saying Weapons R Us. I walked in and helped myself to what I wanted from several different tents. The irony is that the only real guards in the area are the ones standing by the structure where the CSF team is hiding.” He straightened and held a small handgun—a Browning—and several clips of ammunition out to her. “Here. Sorry I couldn’t get you a holster.”
That was when she saw it—the streak of blood on his cheek. “You’re bleeding.”
He touched his face with the back of his hand and looked at the trace of blood that had been transferred to it. “It’s just a scratch.”
She worked to keep her voice calm. Conversational. “Are you going to tell me what happened? How you got scratched?”
He met her eyes briefly. “I wasn’t as invisible as I’d hoped to be. I had to convince someone to take a nap rather than report that I was in the neighborhood. He wasn’t too happy about that. In the struggle, he grabbed my lip mike and snapped it off—tried to take out my eye with it, too. That’s what I get for being nice. If I’d stopped him with my knife right from the start, I wouldn’t be out a vital piece of equipment right now.”
“You can use my headset,” P.J. told him.
“No. You’re going to need it. I can still listen in, but I’m not going to be able to talk to you unless I can get this thing rewired.” He laughed again, humorlessly. “This op just keeps getting more and more complicated, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “I take it you heard the news?”
“About Kim’s sunrise attack? Oh, yeah. I heard.”
“And still you came back,” she said softly.
“Yeah,” he said. “I lost my mind. I came back.”
“I guess you really do love me,” she whispered.
He didn’t say anything. He just stood there looking at her. And P.J. realized, in the soft glow of the moonlight, that his eyes were suddenly brimming with tears.
She stepped toward him as he reached for her and then, God, she was in his arms. He held her tightly, tucking her head under his chin.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for listening to what I told you.”
“This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” His voice was choked. “But you were right. Everything you said was too damn right. I was trying to change who you are, because part of who you are scares the hell out of me. But if I’d wanted a lady who needed to be taken care of, someone who was happier sitting home watching TV instead of chasing bad guys across the globe, I would’ve found her and married her a long time ago.” He drew in a deep breath. “I do love who you are. And right now, God help me, who you are is the FInCOM agent who’s going to help me save the captain.”
“I know we can pull this off,” she told him, believing it for the first time. With this man by her side, she was certain she could do anything.
“I think we can, too.” He pushed her hair from her face as he searched her eyes. “You’re going to go in that air duct and—with stealth—you’re going to locate the captain and then you’re going to come out. You find him, we pinpoint his location and then we figure out the next step once you’re safely out of there. Are we together on this?”
She nodded. “Absolutely, Senior Chief.”
“Good.” He kissed her. “Let’s do this and go home.”
P.J. had to smile. “This is going to sound weird, but I feel kind of sad leaving here—kind of like this place is our home.”
Harvard shook his head. “No, it’s not this place. It’s this thing—” he gestured helplessly between the two of them “—this thing we share. And that’s going to follow wherever we go.”
“You mean love?”
He traced her lips with his thumb. “Yeah,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you were quite ready to call it that, but…yeah. I know it’s love. Gotta be. It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever felt before.”
“No, it’s not,” P.J. said softly. “It’s smaller. Small enough to fill all the cracks in my heart. Small enough to sneak in when I wasn’t looking. Small enough to get under my skin and into my blood. Like some kind of virus that’s impossible to shake.” She laughed softly at the look on his face. “Not that I’d ever want to shake it.”
The tears were back in his beautiful eyes, and P.J. knew that as hard and as scary as it was to put what she was feeling into words, it was well worth it. She knew that he wanted so badly to hear the things she was saying.
“You know, I expected to live my entire life without knowing what love really is,” she told him quietly. “But every time I look at you, every time you smile at me, I think, Oh! So that’s love. That odd, wonderful, awful feeling that makes me both hot and cold, makes me want to laugh and cry. For the first time in my life, Daryl, I know what the fuss is all about.
“I was hoping you’d und
erstand when I gave you my body today that my heart and soul were permanently attached. But since you like to talk—you do like your words—I know you’d want to hear it in plain English. I figured since we weren’t going to get much of a chance to chat after we leave this place, I better say this now. I love you. All of you. Till death do us part, and probably long after that, too. I was too chicken to say that when we were…when I—”
“When you married me,” Harvard said, kissing her so sweetly on the lips. “When we got back to the States, I was going to make you realize just how real those vows we made were. I was going to wear you down until you agreed to do an encore performance in front of the pastor of my parents’ new church.”
When we get back. Not if.
But marriage?
“Marriage takes so much time to make it work,” P.J. said cautiously. “We both have jobs that take us all over the country—all over the world. We don’t have time—”
Harvard handed her one of the submachine guns. “We don’t have time not to spend every minute we can together. I think if I learned only one thing in these past few hours, it’s that.” He looped the straps of the other weapons over his shoulders. “So what do you say? Are you good to go?”
P.J. nodded. “Yes,” she said. It didn’t matter if he were talking about this mission or their future. As long as he was with her, she was definitely good to go.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“YOU HAVE AN HOUR, NINETY MINUTES TOPS,” Harvard told P.J., “before the guards’ shift changes.”
P.J. had made the climb to the roof of Sherman’s headquarters with no complaining. And now she was going to have to dangle over the edge of the roof while she squeezed herself into an air vent in which Harvard couldn’t possibly fit.
He’d taken several moments in the jungle to try to rewire his microphone. He got a connection, but it was poor, at best, coming and going, crackling and weak. It was held together by duct tape and a prayer, but it was better than nothing.
They’d also switched to a different radio channel from the one being monitored by the USS Irvin.
P.J. stripped off her pack and combat vest to make herself as small as possible for her trip through the ventilation system. She tucked the handgun into her pants at the small of her back and carried the MP5 and a small flashlight.
She took a deep breath. “I’m ready,” she said.
She was cool and calm. He was the one having the cold sweats.
“The clock’s running,” she reminded him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Talk to me while you’re in there.”
“I will—if I can.”
He couldn’t ask for anything more. They’d been over this four hundred times. There wasn’t much else he could say, except to say again, “If something goes wrong, and you do get caught, tell me where you are in the building. Which floor you’re on, which corner of the building you’re closest to. Because I’ll come and get you out, okay? I’ll figure out a way.” He removed the grille from the vent and lifted P.J. in his arms. “Don’t look down.”
“I won’t. Oh, God.”
She had to go into the vent headfirst. Weapon first.
“Be careful,” he told her.
“I promise I will.”
Bracing himself, Harvard took a deep breath, then lowered the woman he loved more than life itself over the edge of the roof.
It was hot as hell in there.
P.J. had imagined it would be cool. It was part of the air-conditioning system, after all. But she realized the duct she was in was the equivalent of a giant exhaust pipe. It was hot and smelled faintly of human waste.
It was incredibly close, too.
Small places didn’t bother her, thank God. But Harvard would’ve hated it. He certainly would have done it if he had to, but he would have hated it the entire time.
Of course, the point was moot. He would never fit. She barely fit herself.
Her shirt caught on another of the metal seams, and she impatiently tugged it free. It caught again ten feet down the vent, and she wriggled out of it.
She checked it quickly, making sure it was sanitized—that there was nothing on it, no marks or writing that would link it to her or to anyone American. But it was only a green and brown camouflage shirt. High fashion for the well-dressed guerrilla in jungles everywhere.
P.J. left it behind and kept going.
She concentrated on moving soundlessly. Moving forward was taking her longer than she’d anticipated. She had to exert quite a bit of energy to remain silent in the boomy metal air duct. Unless she was very, very careful, her boots could make a racket, as could the MP5.
She pulled herself along on her elbows, weapon in front of her, praying this duct would lead her straight to Captain Joe Catalanotto.
As Harvard attached the grille to the air duct, he had to be careful. The mortar between the concrete blocks was crumbling. He didn’t want a pile of fine white dust gathering on the ground to catch some alert guard’s eye and tip him off to the activity on the roof.
Up close, it was clear the entire building was in a more pronounced state of decay than he’d thought.
Harvard felt a tug of satisfaction at that. No doubt the past few years’ crackdown on the local drug trade had had an effect on John Sherman’s bank accounts.
If they were lucky—if they were really lucky—he and P.J. would pull the captain out, and then these two warring drug lords would efficiently proceed to wipe each other out.
“Approaching a vent.” P.J.’s voice came over his headset and he gave her his full attention.
“It’s on the left side of the air duct,” she continued almost soundlessly. “Much too small to use as an exit, even for me.”
Harvard found himself praying again. Please, God, keep her safe. Please, God, don’t let anyone hear her.
More minutes passed in silence.
“Wait a minute,” he heard her say. “There’s something, some kind of trapdoor above me.”
Harvard held his breath. He had to strain to hear her voice, she was speaking so quietly.
“It opens into some kind of attic,” she reported. “Or at least part of it is an attic. I’m going up to take a look.”
For several moments, Harvard heard only her quiet breathing, then, finally, she spoke again.
“The building’s actually divided into thirds. The two outer thirds have this atticlike loft I’m standing in. They’re clearly being used for storage. The edges—the loft—overlooks the center of the building, which is open from the roof all the way down to the ground floor. There are emergency lights—dim yellow lights—by the main doors. From what I can see, it looks big enough to house half a dozen tanks.” Her voice got even lower. “Right now it’s being used as sleeping quarters for what’s got to be five hundred men.”
Five hundred…
“Here are my choices,” she continued. “Either I take a set of stairs down and tiptoe across a room filled with sleeping soldiers—”
“No,” Harvard said. “Do you copy, P.J.? I said, no.”
“I copy. And that was my first reaction, too. But the only other way to the northeast section of the building—where Crash thought Joe might be held—is a series of catwalks up by the roof.”
Harvard swore.
“Yeah, I copy that, too,” she said.
“Come back,” he said. “We’ll figure out another way in.”
“Can’t hear you, Senior Chief,” she told him. “Better fix that mike again. Your message is breaking up.”
“You heard me and you damn well know it.”
“I can do this, Daryl.” Her voice rang with conviction. “I know I can. All I have to do is think of you, and it’s like you’re right here with me. Holding my hand, you know?”
He knew. He opened his mouth to speak, but then shut it. He took a deep breath before he spoke. “Just don’t look down.”
P.J. had to look down. She had to make sure none of the men sleeping below had awakened and spotted her.
>
There were no guards in the room, at least. That was a lucky break.
She moved silently and very, very slowly along the catwalk.
Of course, even taking that one lucky break into account, this was about as bad as it could be. The catwalk swayed slightly with every step she took. It was metal and ancient and didn’t even give the illusion of being solid. The part she was walking on was like a grille. She could see through the strips of metal, past her feet, all the way down to the concrete floor.
Adrenaline surged through her, making her ears roar. What she needed most was a clear head and total silence to hear the slight movement that would indicate one of the five hundred men was rolling over, temporarily awake and staring at the ceiling.
Still, being up here was better than walking through a minefield, of that she was certain.
P.J. took another step.
She could feel Harvard’s presence. She could sense him listening to her breathing. She could feel him with her, every step she took.
She clutched her weapon—the Browning he’d risked his life to get for her—and took another step forward. And another step. And another.
Crash leaned over Blue McCoy’s shoulder.
“Harvard’s not responding,” Blue said grimly. “Either his radio’s off or he’s switched to another channel.”
They both knew there was another possibility. He could be dead.
“I’ll start looking for him.” The look in Blue’s eyes told Crash he would not consider that third possibility.
Crash keyed the thumb switch to his radio and spoke in rapid French. He turned to Blue. “Let’s keep that original channel open, too.”
“Already doing that.”
Harvard sat on the roof, watching for an unexpected guard and listening to P.J.’s steady breathing as she walked across a flimsy catwalk two stories above five hundred sleeping enemy soldiers.
She was doing okay. He could tell from the way she was breathing that she was doing okay. He was the one who was totally tied in knots.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 124