Course of Action: Crossfire

by Lindsay McKenna;Merline Lovelace

“Have you?”

  “Remind me to tell you sometime about the Special Forces Advanced Mountain Operations School at Fort Carson. You complete that course, you could give a mountain goat lessons in scrambling up a sheer precipice.”

  That reassured her. Some.

  “Okay,” he said as he tested the point he’d made of the second band, “that’s the best I can do. Time to strip off and add to our rope.”

  He had Riley sacrifice her baggy pants but not the thigh-length tunic. Pete, however, donated both shirt and trousers to their cause. She tried her best not to goggle at the acre or so of sculpted chest that came into view when he peeled off the blood-stained white shirt. Or the muscled thighs and the trim, tight butt displayed to perfection by a pair of thigh-hugging briefs.

  “Didn’t have time to buy shorts to go with my spiffy new tux,” he said with a quick grin when he caught her sneaking a peek. “We call these Ranger panties. They’re the latest in tactical hot weather gear. Moisture-wicking and heat-signature-reducing.”

  “If you say so.”

  The grin widened. “They’re functional, but sure not as enticing as that scrap of red lace you’re wearing under that tunic.”

  “Ha! I should have known you wouldn’t keep your face to the wall.”

  “I tried. I really did.”

  She was about to give that another “Ha!” when he angled toward her and she caught sight of the tattoo banding his right bicep.

  “Is that a snake?”

  “Sure is. A sidewinder. Fastest, meanest rattler west of the Pecos.”

  He flexed his arm, and the snake’s mouth widened to display a nasty set of fangs. Riley grimaced, but Pete gazed down at the vicious reptile with the same fondness a dog lover might display for his pet schnauzer.

  “We all have the same tat,” he told her. “Travis, Duke, Jack, Josh, Dan and me. Like our mascot here, we were fast and mean. Best football players ever to come out of Rush Springs, if I do say so myself.”

  “I’ll take your word for that.”

  “It’s a fact,” he assured her as he set to work tearing his shirt and their trousers into useable strips. Riley settled beside him, helping to weave the pieces together and add them to what they’d done earlier.

  “Looks like about fifteen feet,” Pete murmured some time later, snaking out the long braid. “Not as much as I’d hoped but we’ll have to go with it.”

  He coiled the rope, then wrapped a leftover piece of cloth around one of the pieces of bent metal. He kept his voice easy, but his eyes were dark rounds of utter seriousness as he passed Riley the makeshift tool.

  “Here’s the drill. I’m going to put you on my shoulders so you can reach inside the tower. You’ll have to dig two handholds. Three, if you can stretch a little higher. Then I’ll set you down, jump up and take it from there.”

  Disbelieving, Riley looked from the shaft to his shoulders and back again. The drill, as he called it, would never work. Despite that boast about being able to teach mountain goats to climb, Riley didn’t see how he could leap up, get a grip on whatever shallow indentations she could hack out, and shimmy up that narrow tunnel.

  “Ready?”

  Swallowing her doubts, she stepped onto his bent knee. The sidewinder seemed to hiss at her, its fangs wide, as Pete’s muscles bunched and he guided her into a kneeling position on his shoulders. She tottered dangerously, sure she was going to fall on her face, but he pinned her in place with a bruising grip on her thighs and slowly straightened. Just as slowly, Riley pushed upright. The shaft was within reach!

  Anchored on his shoulders, she hacked at the inside of the tower. Adobe flaked off in small chunks. The hard-baked mud brick underneath proved tougher to crack until Pete told her to chink at the mortar between the bricks. Following his instructions, she dug out a shallow opening.

  Dust swirled in the confined space. Sweat dripped from her forehead. Her nostrils were clogged and her eyes stung when she reached higher and started on a second cut. By the time she hacked out a third, her arms were on fire and she was wobbling dangerously on Pete’s shoulders.

  “That’s good enough,” he said.

  Lowering her slowly, he supported her until her legs stopped shaking and feeling had returned to her arms. Then he looped the braided rope over her head and settled it under her arms.

  “I’ll give it a tug when I’m ready to pull you up.” His intent gaze raked her dust-caked face. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Then it was his turn. As agile as the mountain goat he’d referenced, he leaped straight up and caught the lowest handhold on his first try. Reached for the second. Hauled himself up to the third. His taut, corded thighs dangled in midair while he used the tool he’d reclaimed from Riley to carve a fourth handhold. Then a fifth. When he pulled himself high enough up to wedge his back against one wall of the tower and get his foot in the first step, her heart was hammering so hard and fast it hurt.

  He worked his way up the shaft inch by steady inch. The rough adobe had to be murder on his bare back and shoulders, but he kept going. All the while, Riley’s glance darted from the tower to the door and back again. She’d almost forgotten how to breathe when the loop around her upper chest suddenly went taut. She grabbed the rope above her head with both hands to keep it from slicing into her armpits while Pete hauled her up slowly, steadily.

  The tower walls closed in on her. Cloying, choking claustrophobia filled her throat. She held onto the rope with desperate hands, scrabbling for a toehold, scraping both knees against the rough surface. She almost panicked when she heard a slow, agonized creak above her. Like the sound of old wood pulling free of rusty nails.

  Oh, God! The tower was coming apart around them!

  She cranked her head back as far as she could and gasped in relief when she realized it was just Pete shimmying through one of the openings between the tower and its wooden roof. When he disappeared over the rim, the rope she dangled from sawed up, down, up again. Riley jerked around like a puppet, panic clawing at her again, until the pull steadied and brought her up to the top.

  Any other time the symphony that greeted her eager eyes would have called to the artist in her. A treble clef of black sky spangled with a thousand twinkling notes. A bass clef of dark, undulating desert stretching to infinity. And there, far off on the horizon, the faint glow of lights that just might signal civilization!

  On a rush of pure adrenaline, Riley straddled the tower’s rim. Her rush took a quick dive when she looked down and discovered a twelve-or fifteen-foot drop to the flat roof below. Pete must have rappelled the tower’s outer wall, using his weight to pull her up inside as he went down. She, he indicated with urgent hand signals, would have to drop into his arms. Sucking in a quick breath, she swung her other leg over the rim, mouthed a silent prayer and pushed off.

  The catch was awkward. He took a knee to the ribs and an elbow in his face but merely grunted. When he set her on her feet and dropped into a crouch, however, Riley was the one who wanted to weep. His shoulders looked as though someone had taken a meat tenderizer to them. Blood streaked his back and thighs. But before she could say anything, he grabbed her hand and dragged her down beside him.

  They crouched side by side, getting their bearings, waiting for their hearts to slow. Riley saw then he’d been right about this being an abandoned outpost. Except for the building they’d been held in, everything else was in ruins. Her gaze took in sunken rooftops. Tumbled walls. What must have once been a round guard or grain tower spearing empty arms up at the night sky. And a dark, oblong bulk hidden in the shadows of a date palm.

  “Pete!” She elbowed him in the side and jabbed a finger at the palm. “The Range Rover!”

  “Yeah,” he whispered back, “I see it.”

  She knew it was asking too much to pray the kidnappers had left the keys in it. But she did! Dear God, she did! With every fiber of her being.

  Her heart stuttered as she and Pete crept across the flat roof and approached the edge.
But after the wind-catcher climb, exiting the roof turned out to be a piece of cake. They found a low corner, dropped to the sand and made for the Range Rover.

  Riley crouched in the shadows of the palm while Pete hunkered low on the running board and peered through the side window. Unable to corral her galloping nerves, she hissed at him.

  “The keys? Are they there?”

  “No.”

  She was fighting to hold back a groan when he dropped down beside her.

  “But this baby is so old, any ten-year-old could hot-wire it. So here’s the plan.”

  “Plan?” Nerves bit at her like sharp little sand fleas. “Why do we need a plan? We get in, you jiggle the wires, we get out of here!”

  “Close. We get in. I strip the ignition wires and show you how to cross them. Then I go back for Prince Malik.”

  She wasn’t surprised. She’d half expected this mucho macho warrior to revert to type. Although... She bit her lip, ashamed that a cowardly corner of her mind had tried hard to blank out what must have happened to the prince. But Pete wasn’t letting her blank anything out now. Wrapping a hard hand around her nape, he pulled her close.

  “If you hear anything—anything!—that sounds like trouble, promise me you’ll get the hell out of here.”

  “Oh, sure,” she huffed. “Like I’m just going to drive off into the desert and leave you behind.”

  “Dammit, Riley. I can’t do what I need to do if I’m looking over my shoulder the whole time, worrying about you. Promise me you’ll make tracks.”

  “Okay! I promise.”

  His grin was a white slash in the dark. “That’s my girl.”

  She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called her a girl. And she knew no one had ever held her collared like this. They were nose-to-nose, breath-to-breath, his fingers hard on her nape, his mouth just inches away.

  “You saw the lights in the far distance?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Aim straight for them and don’t stop.”

  “I will.”

  “At the first sound of trouble.”

  “I will, Pete.”

  His grip eased. His thumb stroked the soft hair at the back of her neck. Riley sensed what was coming and was ready, so ready, when his mouth locked on hers.

  The kiss seemed to hold everything they’d gone through, every desperate moment they’d shared. It was hard. Hungry. A triumph over impossible odds. A taste of things to come. Assuming, of course, they got out of this damned desert alive.

  “You have to promise me something, too.” She pushed back a few inches. “You will not, I repeat, you will not get yourself killed!”

  “Not planning on it,” he muttered, crushing her mouth again.

  She was still feeling the heat when he crawled into the Range Rover. The overhead light flashed on, stopping the breath in her throat, but he doused it almost instantly. Then he wedged himself under the steering column and played with the wires.

  “Go around and climb in,” he whispered a few moments later. “I’ll show you how this works.”

  Riley crawled on hands and knees to the driver’s side of the vehicle. Once she’d hauled herself up and into the cab, she had to swallow an ironic laugh. She’d been taking lessons for as long as she could remember. Voice. Diction. Piano. Cello. French. Italian. Drama. She’d even spent a mind-numbing week with her business manager—her actual business manager—after she’d finally cut her mother out of her financial affairs and needed to learn where her earnings had been invested. This was her first shot at hot-wiring a truck, however. Or driving one, for that matter. She sweated about that for several nervous seconds until a panicked glance confirmed it was an automatic.

  “All you do is cross these two wires.”

  The terse instruction dragged her attention from the gearshift to the man sprawled beneath the steering column. He’d located two wires—one red, one yellow—and used his bucket tool to peel away an inch of the plastic coating. Holding up the exposed ends, he waved them at Riley.

  “Just put the tips together and give ’em a little twist. That’ll kick the engine over. Don’t do it now!” He jerked the wires away from her outstretched hands. “Wait till you’re ready to hit the gas.”

  As she watched him melt into the darkness, a tiny niggle of guilt wormed through her almost suffocating tension. She hadn’t lied. Exactly. She’d promised to make tracks at the first sound of trouble, and she would. She’d simply reserved the right to categorize what trouble sounded like.

  She held the two wires nervously, red in one hand, yellow in the other, their tips six inches apart. Hunched low in the driver’s seat, she searched the structure she and Pete had escaped only moments ago. It was little more than a dark bulk against the night sky, with a few bars of light slanting through cracks in the shuttered windows. They must have lit an oil lamp. That faint glow was the only sign of life amid the tumbled ruins of what must have once been a thriving desert community.

  Her gaze darted to the empty desert beyond. The sheer immensity of it sent a shiver down her spine. But there were those other lights, she reminded herself forcefully. Miles away. Maybe hours. Beacons of hope. Of safety and...

  “Khalass!”

  The shout shattered the stillness. Riley jumped a good inch off the seat and lost her grip on the red wire. She’d ducked sideways, scrabbling for it, and gave a sob of pure terror when gunshots rattled through the night.

  Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!

  Hands shaking, heart galloping, she fished frantically under the steering column. Her groping fingers finally located the loose red wire and somehow, some way, connected it to the yellow. Bent over, she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, until the engine coughed, sputtered, caught.

  Another burst of gunfire popped her upright. She locked one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gearshift. Jamming her left foot on the brake, she found the gas pedal with the right and shoved the Range Rover into Drive.

  All Riley had to do was release the brake. Hit the gas. Roar off into the desert like she’d promised. But she kept one foot on the brake even as she pressed the accelerator. The truck lurched like an old warhorse straining at the bit, caught between competing, compelling forces.

  Her desperate gaze swept the ruins. The building where they’d been held loomed dark and menacing, with only those faint bars of light seeping through the shuttered windows.

  Suddenly, a door burst open. The figure that staggered through it cradled one of those vicious-looking automatic weapons in his hand. His black robe flapped as he spun, searching the darkness. When he zeroed in on the date palm, Riley gave a moan of terror and stomped on the gas.

  The Range Rover’s rear wheels spun, spitting sand for several terrifying seconds, then caught. The jerk slammed Riley against the seat back, but she put the pedal to the floorboard again and aimed for the black-robed figure. Her only thought, only plan, was to smash the bastard like a bug.

  “Bug,” she got out on a note of pure hysteria. “Big ugly g— Oh!”

  She jammed the brake, standing almost straight up, as a second figure burst through the door. Even with the light behind him and his face nothing more than a dim blur, she couldn’t mistake Pete’s broad shoulders or naked chest. He caught up to the first man, grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the truck.

  It was the prince, Riley saw now. She could make out the gold tassels decorating al Said’s black robe. And the dark stains on the white robe underneath! Halfway to the truck he stumbled and sagged to one knee. His arm lifted and to Riley’s horrified eyes, he seemed to be gesturing at Pete to go on without him.

  Pete didn’t bother to argue. Just stooped, hauled the man over his shoulder and raced for the Range Rover. Riley’s heart stopped dead for the five or ten seconds it took for him to reach the truck. He angled past her, aiming for the rear, and hefted the prince into the back. She heard al Said land with a thud, heard Pete clamber in after him, then his shout from the back.

  �
�Drive!”

  Chapter 6

  The race to those distant lights seemed to take two lifetimes. The dunes were treacherous enough in daylight. At night they became a shifting, sinister patchwork of shadows. Riley could barely tell what was solid earth and what was a drop into nothingness.

  The two men remained in the back of the Range Rover. Prince Malik had taken a bullet, Pete shouted over the shake and rattle of the truck. He’d also lost the first two fingers of one hand. While Pete worked to staunch the blood and fought to keep the prince from going into shock, Riley strained to separate sand from shadow and repeated every prayer she knew over and over again.

  When the truck finally climbed the last, treacherous dune, the once-distant lights came into sharp focus directly below. They were floodlights! Racks of bright floods mounted on tall poles, illuminating what looked like some kind of tribal enclave. Tents circled a large open space. Low tables formed a second ring inside the open area. Dozens of figures sat cross-legged or lounged on colorful pillows around the tables. Parked outside the tents, Riley saw with a sharp intake of breath, was a whole convoy of Hummers and SUVs. And camels. At least a half dozen of them tied near the vehicles.

  Riley stood on the brake, terrified all over again. Was this Scarface’s home base? Had she driven them right into the hornet’s nest?

  “Pete!”

  Her cry brought him scrambling forward. Crouching over her seat back, he assessed the scene with a single glance. “It’s a tourist safari!”

  “A what?”

  “An excursion into the desert to give visitors a taste of Bedouin life. The troops at Thumrait arranged one for us when we first arrived. Hit the gas. We’re going to crash their party.”

  She careened down the dune and rolled past the Hummers, almost taking down a tent before she got the Range Rover under control. Pete leaped out even before she shoved it into Park. As he raced for the camp, Riley tried to imagine the tourists’ reactions at the sudden appearance of a near-naked man drenched in his own, and the prince’s, blood.

  She shouldered open her door, her nose twitching at the tantalizing scents of charcoal braziers and roasting meats. Ignoring her stomach’s leap of eager joy at aromas, she climbed into the rear and hunkered down beside Prince Malik. One glimpse of him made her stomach do another lurch. The long-sleeved white dishdasha he’d worn under his black robe was in tatters. Part of it presumably now formed the bulky, bloodstained bandage wrapped around his right hand. Another strip circled his upper torso and held a thick, equally bloody pad in place. He didn’t stir when she lifted his good hand and gripped it between hers. Didn’t respond when she murmured his name. She was grappling with the fear he might have slipped into a coma when Pete returned. A small army of tourists and tour guides had come with him. One of them, a short, chunky blonde in khakis and a pink flowered shirt, hoisted herself into the truck. She was carrying a black bag and elbowed Riley out of the way.