Jake lifted his hand. “Sounds good.” He called five waiting men with shovels to follow with him.
Hamid’s brows rose. “Wajiha, you are going to dig a ditch?”
Merriment came to her eyes. “Absolutely, Lord Hamid. In our country, women do work that they choose to do.”
Scratching his beard, the other elders whispering in his ear, he said, “Are you sure? You are a woman.”
Laughing, Morgan pulled the field hat down a little tighter and slipped on her wraparound sunglasses. “Don’t worry, Hamid. I won’t break. I’d like to get this ditch finished by sunset tomorrow.”
Hamid shook his head. “What strange customs Americans have….”
Then they all heard a helicopter coming from the southeast. Jake looked up, squinting into the light blue sky. There was a CH-47 transport helicopter being escorted by two Apache gunships. He grinned and looked down the field. Morgan was systematically digging up dirt along with her five-man team. “Hey,” he called into the radio mic near his mouth, “we got company coming. Looks like the charity helo at ten o’clock.”
Morgan wiped her brow with the back of her arm. “Okay, I’ll switch channels, contact them and we’ll go meet them.”
By the time Jake walked back to where Morgan stood, she was in contact with all three helos coming quickly down the throat of the valley. Morgan directed the CH-47 helicopter to a flat area outside the gate that the children had cleared earlier of stones, brush and anything else that might fly up from beneath the whirling blades of the helo as it landed. IEDs had already been searched for by the farmers at dawn. It was a safe, clear landing area.
Hamid appeared to be very happy, and he and the other elders went toward the landing site located out in front of the gates of the village to meet the incoming teams. Jake waited until Morgan ended the transmission.
“Let’s go meet them,” he urged Morgan. And then he grinned. “Unless you want to keep digging the ditch? I’m impressed with all your dirt building skills.”
Morgan put the shovel into the dirt, a feral smile on her mouth. “Yeah, I took Ditch Digging 101 at Annapolis. Looks like you did, too, SEAL boy. I’ll go play paramedic for a while and help the medical team set up the child-and-woman clinic.” Lifting the hat off her head, Morgan wiped her brow and settled it back into place. Jake had his sunglasses on, and she couldn’t see his eyes. Which was why SEALs wore them. If a person couldn’t see their eye movement, they couldn’t tell which direction they were going to move. In a gunfight, that was an advantage.
“I like it when you’re feisty, Boland. You must have gotten a good night’s sleep.” He met her grin with one of his own. Jake gestured toward the village. “I’ll go and help set up the men’s clinic.” He rubbed the back of his neck, felt the danger. Damn. It had to be Khogani watching them.
Lifting his chin, he glared up at the gray, rocky slopes of the mountain. At twelve thousand feet, he and his men could be hidden anywhere. Chances were, however, if Khogani was around, he was probably hightailing it into one of the hundreds of caves up there to hide from the malevolent eyes of the Apache gunships escorting the charity helicopter.
Morgan seemed happy. She was alert, always looking around, never taking anything for granted. The villagers did, but they did not. His neck prickled again. Jake’s mouth thinned as he walked toward the front of the village. Something was wrong….
Chapter Nine
Sangar Khogani felt every sharp rock biting and sticking up through his clothing as he lay flat on his belly on a ridge. He followed the activity below at the village of Dor Babba. The binoculars showed a CH-47 that had just landed. What was going on? He felt Droon, his second-in-command, drop quietly to his side.
“Are the men in the cave?” Khogani demanded, watching developments below. They had heard the hard, puncturing beats that signaled an Apache in the area. Sangar had ordered his twenty men and horses to hide in a nearby cave so they did not become targets.
“They are, my lord.”
“Apaches!” he spat. “Demons of the air!”
Droon wiped his mouth. “Too bad our Stinger missiles can’t reach them.” That was, if the battery still worked. No battery, no ability to fire the Stinger at any aircraft. And a battery had a shelf life.
Snorting, Sangar growled, “With those Apaches around, we’ll wait.”
“What do you see?” Droon asked, watching the two Apaches peel off after the CH-47 had landed. He was familiar with their pattern of operation. One would make a wide circle around the village, ever watchful with their instruments in their cockpit that could locate their body heat or actually spot them with a television camera on board. The second combat helicopter rose until it would be higher than the twelve-thousand-foot mountain they hid upon. Then it would turn on its camera and infrared and hunt for them. They had a few minutes before the second Apache was able to gain the elevation it needed. Then they would have to quickly escape into the nearby cave. Fortunately, Apaches had no ability to look inside a cave to see the twenty horses and soldiers hiding within it.
“It’s a charity,” Sangar growled. He handed Droon the binoculars. “Hamid has nerve. He knows I hate infidels. You’d think the IEDs we plant once every three months out in their fields and fruit orchards would be enough of a warning.” He tapped his fingers, the nails dirty and broken, and then stroked his unkempt black beard. Hatred welled up inside him.
Droon studied the helicopter. “Looks as if there are two groups coming off it. Not military.”
“Probably medical teams.”
Droon handed the binoculars to his leader. His whole family had been wiped out like Sangar’s by an American drone that carried a missile. Since then, they had sworn allegiance to the Taliban, increased their numbers until more than two hundred men, mostly from other countries, rode with them. The fact that Khogani was the lord of the Hill tribe put him in a good position with the Pakistanis. They wanted all the opium he could bring across the Khyber Pass to them.
Sangar looked up. The Apache was nearly level with the mountain they were on. “Let’s go.” He pushed up on his hands and knees. They quickly moved off the scree, their clothing black, brown and cream-colored, blending in perfectly with the surrounding landscape. Running into the cave, Sangar saw all his men sitting on their haunches, reins of their horses in hand, waiting for their leader.
“Make camp,” he ordered. “Move as far back as you can. The Apache is hunting us!”
The twenty men quickly rose and did Khogani’s bidding, leading their horses down a tunnel. The tunnel was getting smaller, but they knew it eventually opened up into a large cavern big enough to hold Sangar’s army of two hundred. There, they would make camp, start a small fire and rest. The smoke would easily dissipate through the many holes in the Swiss-cheese-like ceiling overhead. They would remain undetected.
“What do you want to do about Hamid?” Droon asked, walking at Khogani’s shoulder. His leader was tall for an Afghan and towered over him. Sangar’s narrow, deeply brown face turned into a snarl.
“When the Apaches leave, I will send Hamid a message he won’t soon forget.”
“There were two commandos down there with that group,” Droon cautioned. “SEALs.” They knew their enemy well by what they wore. And Droon was far more scared of SEALs than Army Special Forces, Rangers, Delta Force or any other black-ops units who operated in the area. The binoculars weren’t strong enough to pick up faces, only the color of their uniforms and the way they wore their pistols low on their right legs. SEALs were famous for that.
Shrugging, Khogani picked up the reins on his bay gelding. “They’re more than likely with that helicopter. They will drop these teams in, guard them and then fly off with them.” He smiled, showing his yellowed teeth. Two of his front teeth were missing because of the nearby explosion from the drone that had killed his entire family. He’d been the only survivor. The blast had knocked the teeth out of his head, burned his left shoulder and upper back.
“I wi
sh we could watch and make sure,” Droon said, worried. “That way we’d make sure those SEALs aren’t staying behind in Dor Babba.”
Waving his hand, Sangar growled, “It doesn’t matter!”
Yes, Droon thought, it did. But he remained silent, following the soldiers down the narrow, twisting passage. The cave smelled of bat feces and dry earth. There was no water in this cave. The snort of horses soothed his worry.
“Hamid’s going to regret this,” Sangar promised softly.
“I’m sad to see everyone go,” Morgan confided to Jake as they stood near the gates watching the CH-47 lift off. Above them flew two guard-dog Apaches, guaranteeing they wouldn’t be shot at by the Taliban while leaving the valley. Dust and pebbles kicked up in furious, billowing yellow clouds in every direction. The sun was setting, the last long rays in the west as they silently stole across the valley, touching the tips of the Hindu Kush in the east.
“Those two teams did a lot in a short amount of time,” Jake agreed. Both had spent the day providing medical aid and helping the doctors and nurses tend villagers with medical issues. It made Jake feel good to do something for these people who lived on the harshest edge of survival every day.
“I’m going to stay with Duniya and her mother tonight,” Morgan said, looking up at him. Jake’s eyes were narrowed, the palm of his hand resting on the butt of his SIG. The M-4 was looped over his broad left shoulder. “She’s invited me over for dinner. It will give me a chance to have some quality time with them. You okay with me not being at Hamid’s house tonight?”
“Not a problem. We have radio contact.”
“Right.” She was very tired. The sun had set, the clouds on the horizon starting to turn pink along the peaks of the mountains. It was a beautiful sight. Eden in hell. So damned beautiful but so friggin’ deadly.
“Tell me about Duniya.”
Morgan wiped her cheeks dry of perspiration. “Three years ago I was here with a SEAL team. Duniya had tuberculosis. She was dying. Luckily, we had antibiotics and some other medicines to pull her out of it.”
“I noticed she had a pigeon chest,” Jake said. He heard the emotion in Morgan’s husky voice, savoring this alone time with her.
“Yes, typical body build of a tuberculosis patient. Her mother had just lost her husband to an IED. She was a grieving widow and her child was dying in her arms. The SEAL OIC had a lot of cash on him. You know how we buy things over here with greenbacks?”
“Can’t do without them,” Jake agreed.
“I persuaded him to give the mother enough money to survive on. Most women, when widowed, die of starvation and so do their children.” Morgan sighed. “There just isn’t that much food to go around. Everyone is always on the edge of starvation here, Jake. Always. I don’t know how they survive. I couldn’t.”
“And so you pick up the slack here and there whenever you go into a village?”
“Yeah. Every SEAL team I’ve been assigned to has been generous with their time, food and money. I know money buys loyalty among the Afghans, but it also buys children time to grow without their legs bowing because of scurvy. When I first came over here three years ago and realized so many of the children were bowlegged, I started carrying bottles of vitamin C tablets in my third-line gear. I’d give the bottle to the mother.”
“Otherwise,” Jake said with a slight smile, “the kids thought it was candy and gobbled it down in a night’s time.”
She joined his quiet laughter. “Oh, yeah, and the next day those kids had the worst diarrhea you’ve ever seen.”
Jake wanted to reach out and move his index finger down the clean line of her jaw. Morgan’s profile was classic. “Hey,” he said, “tell me how you broke your nose. Two years ago, it was straight. What happened?”
The unexpected question shook Morgan. She licked her lower lip, mind spinning. She decided to tell Jake part of the truth. “I was visiting my parents about a year after I saw you in Afghanistan. The bathroom door near my old bedroom always hangs ajar. My dad hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet. I got up one morning, leaned down to turn on the faucets for a bath. As I straightened and turned, I slammed my face into the edge of the door.” Morgan forced a smile she didn’t feel and rubbed the bump on her nose. “I remember reeling backward, stunned. It nearly knocked me unconscious. When blood gushed like a faucet out of my nose, that’s when I groggily realized I’d broken it.”
“Helluva way to break it,” Jake murmured, frowning. There was something else in the recesses of Morgan’s eyes as she glanced in his direction. He couldn’t decipher it, but he felt there was more to the story. Shifting from one foot to another, hands resting relaxed on his H-gear belt, he said, “And you never got it fixed?”
The corners of her mouth pulled inward. “No. I don’t like surgery. You know that. If I could get away with never being cut on, it would be fine with me.” Morgan struggled not to tell Jake the rest of the story. She had just been hit with the first contraction while carrying Emma as she’d straightened to turn around. The excruciating pain had caused her to strike the edge of the bathroom door with her face. It had broken her nose. She’d started to fall, caught herself, reeling in shock and pain. Fortunately, her mother had been in the next room and heard the commotion and had run to help her. Morgan had ended up with a swollen nose and black eyes while delivering Emma the next day at home. Swallowing hard, Morgan wavered.
Right now, Jake and she were in that zone where trust was present. She could see it in his eyes. He enjoyed her nearness and so did she. This was one of those times, when it magically occurred, that made Morgan question her decision to keep Emma’s birth from him. She wanted to tell him, but she couldn’t. He always ran. She didn’t want Emma to know her father and then have him disappear for years at a time. She didn’t want her child’s life emotionally torn up as her own had been by Jake. As his gaze narrowed on her upturned face, Morgan felt genuine care radiating off him toward her. Damn it. Life was torture. This was one of those times.
“Well,” Jake said, giving her a teasing look, “you sure as hell picked the wrong career field, didn’t you? In our business, the surgeon is only a step away if we get wounded.”
She held up her fingers and crossed them. “So far, so good. Three years with boots on the ground and all I have to gripe about are a few shrapnel scars and bruises.” And then Morgan added in a wry voice, “And a few puncture scars in my butt from those damned Afghan saddle nails.”
Jake’s brows fell as she pointed to her darkly tanned lower arm with its visible thin, white scars. Reaching out without thinking, his fingers barely grazed her arm. “I know. And it hurts me to see you having suffered, Morgan….”
His huskily spoken words flowed through her. Jake’s gesture surprised her. It wasn’t sexual, but sincere and caring. Kindness. Her skin tingled and warmed beneath his unexpected touch. This was something new between them. Where had Jake developed this side to himself? Certainly not with her. Maybe he was maturing after all? Dropping her arm to her side, Morgan whispered, “Listen, in the black-ops business, this is part of the price you pay to be in the game.”
Nodding, Jake absorbed her nearness, their intimacy strong as they watched the sunset deepen, the light pink of the clouds hanging on the peaks of the Hindu Kush turning a fiery orange. “Yeah, one of many things we pay for the price of admission.”
“I don’t regret it.”
“Neither do I. I can’t conceive of myself doing anything else in my life. Being a SEAL is all I ever dreamed. I’m happy where I’m at.”
It felt as if a stake had been driven into Morgan’s heart. If she’d had any doubts about telling Jake about Emma, she didn’t now. SEALs rotated on a two-year turntable. Eighteen months of continuous, nonstop training and schooling in the U.S. and then six months of combat duty in Afghanistan for Team Three SEALs. Other teams were assigned to far-flung locations where SEALs were needed elsewhere in the world. Jake was with ST3, and they were always focused on Middle East assignments.
She managed to say softly, “I know you’re happy.”
Hearing the strain in her tone, Jake looked over at her. “You’re not?”
“I didn’t say that.” If things were different, if Jake wasn’t in the SEALs, Morgan might have revealed that he was a father. Emma deserved a father in her life, although her own dad, Jim Boland, was the closest her daughter had to a father figure. For that, Morgan was grateful. Emma was doted upon, deeply loved and cared for by her parents. They gave her a steady, affectionate foundation, and she was thriving beneath their care.
Looking up into Jake’s eyes, seeing the light of conviction in them, her spirits sank. Even if she told him Emma was his daughter, he’d run from that responsibility again, just as he’d run from her at Annapolis when she’d miscarried their first child. Anguish moved through Morgan along with frustration. It was a terrible secret to carry. Sometimes, at moments of weakness like this, with Jake at her side, attentive and caring, she was guilt-ridden.
Desperate to change topics, she said, “The Apaches found nothing up there.” She pointed toward the twelve-thousand-foot mountain south of the village. “Hamid is sending the boys with the goat herds up there tomorrow morning to snoop around.”
“Yeah, but Apache infrared can’t shoot into a cave to locate and confirm warm bodies. I think we need to have ground assets, people on the ground to do the hard work. Maybe one of those boys will spot Khogani again.” Jake rubbed the back of his neck, still uneasy. All day, he’d been tense and alert as the medical teams had gone about their work in the village. Even with two Apaches flying overhead and watching to keep the teams safe, he hadn’t felt good about the situation. Finally, he muttered, “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Morgan.”
Down Range (Mills & Boon M&B) (Shadow Warriors - Book 2) Page 9