by Jade Kerrion
“You’re a Navy SEAL, not a doctor, damn it. Not even Danyael balked as much as you’re doing now.”
“Danyael’s not a killer, and neither are you.”
She jolted as if Klah had struck her. Of course Danyael had openly disapproved of her casual attitude to killing. He had used his empathic powers to send people into a panicked scramble before she could shoot them. More than once, he had sliced the edge off her icy fury in time to halt the killing blow.
The one time he had been driven to kill was to save her life. Danyael—the alpha empath, the doctor, the healer—had killed—not one, but ten people—to save the life of an assassin. He loved her, but why? That question kept her awake at night. If she could answer that question, perhaps she could answer the other one—what to do about her damnable, blasted feelings for him.
Fluttering motions rippled through her; the baby had chosen that moment to squirm. She often did whenever Zara thought of Danyael; surely it was no more than a coincidence. Zara pressed her hand over the sensation to still it, but the squirming intensified. She scowled at Klah. “If you want to find out who they are, go for it. If you can keep them from assaulting my house, even better, but if I see any movement toward my house, they’re going down.”
Klah peered toward her compound, framed in solitary splendor on a plateau. Beyond it, a hill rose over her home. “Is it coincidence that the rest of Baalbek is covered with trees, except for your property?”
“I make my own coincidences. Did you really think I’d make it easy for people to sneak up on me?”
“What if it’s a trap?”
“Even better. They’ll have it coming.”
“Zara.”
Zara chuckled. When he used that tone of weary resignation, Klah even sounded like Danyael.
“Aren’t you even going to consider the possibility that they may not be hostiles?”
“After being shot at most of today? No, I’m not. I’ll apologize later if I’m wrong, but I won’t feel like apologizing if I’m dead.” She leaned forward to tap Idris on the shoulder. “Pull over and let him out.”
“I’ll call you with intel,” Klah said.
Zara shrugged. She didn’t promise to listen.
His face tight, Klah stepped out of the car. He drew his robes around him and tugged his headdress over his head before vanishing down a side street.
Idris frowned. “Will he be okay?”
“He’s a big boy. He makes his own decisions.” And she could do her job better without her walking conscience tagging along. “Take this road out of town. It’ll curve around to the north. I want to be out of sight of the village when I climb that hill.”
Idris followed her directions. He drove her around town and pulled the car to a stop at the base of the hill. Her home—the multiple buildings of the walled compound gleaming white in the final light of the evening—lay on a lower plateau a mile to the south. The massive temple complex sprawled across the plains two miles to the east.
She tugged on the bulletproof vest she had stashed in her gun case and met Idris’s gaze. “Go to town. Stay there. Don’t come back, whatever you hear.”
“Will you be all right?” Idris’s voice shook.
“Of course.”
His cab squealed into a U-turn and headed back to the village. She hefted her gun case on her back and began the climb. As she approached the top of the hill, she dropped to her stomach and crawled the rest of the way, dragging her case with her. Being noticed would spoil all the fun.
The last sliver of light faded as she reached the top of the grass-covered, treeless plateau. She crawled over to the only landmark on that hilltop—a small marble grave marker planted into the soil. Zara brushed the dry leaves away from its white surface.
Valeria Falcón Itani. Beloved wife and mother.
Her mother had died to save her.
Danyael had saved her and he was—
Enough. She pushed aside the stray thoughts of Danyael and flipped the locks on her gun case. Unhurriedly, she assembled her sniper rifle and set the bipod stands on the flat surface of her mother’s grave marker. She glanced over her right shoulder as the full moon began its trek across the sky.
She visited her mother’s grave each time she returned to Baalbek, although those occasions were rare. Sitting on the hilltop, enjoying the light breeze against her face, she wondered why she had stayed away for as long as she had. Here, she felt closest to her mother, closest to her past. She had never felt lonely or alone out here—
The baby kicked hard.
She stroked her hand over the motion. No, not alone. She had not been alone for a while now. She placed a hand over the squirming child in her womb and another on the cool gravestone. Mi madre, I’m pregnant. She’s a girl. She’s always moving, like she’s dancing.
Zara’s chest ached. The last time she had danced for the sheer joy of dancing, of living, was the day her mother died. If you were alive, would you have told me to keep her?
The wind whistling through blades of grass offered no answer, but an old memory stirred, of a picnic on that hilltop. The grasses were longer, watered by spring rains, and their tender blades softer beneath her bare feet. Her mother and father lounged on spread blankets with crackers, cheese, and grapes on a plate between them. Zara, then six, had searched the surrounding low bushes for the fairy eyes that her mother said always watched over her, but found only large bugs and tiny rodents. Finally tired, she returned to her parents. “I want you to come play with me.”
“Later, Zara. Your father and I are talking.” Her mother reached out to stroke her hair, but Zara tossed her head like a restive pony.
“You’re always talking. I want someone to play with.”
“In a few minutes.”
“You always say that.” She threw herself down between her parents. “You never play with me. Why won’t you give me a brother or sister to play with?”
Her parents exchanged darting glances. “Well, sometimes, it’s hard to grow the family, but if you could choose, would you want a brother or a sister?” her mother asked.
“I want a sister.” The answer was perfectly obvious to Zara. “A big sister.”
Her mother’s laughter rang like silver bells. “We’ll see what we can do.”
Her parents must not have tried too hard; the promised sibling never materialized. Years after her mother’s death, in a passing conversation with her father, Zara learned that a major blood vessel in Valeria’s womb had been nicked during the botched caesarean section that delivered Zara. The infected and damaged womb was eventually removed. Zara was fated to be Bashir and Valeria Itani’s only child; she had been treasured as such.
Treasured. Protected. Loved.
Within her, the child she did not want squirmed, protected in spite of herself.
Zara spared a glance at her mother’s gravestone. How far was the stretch from protected to treasured and loved? Was it a chasm or the small yet obvious next step?
She scowled. For the question to matter, she would have to survive the night. With a caressing hand on her sniper rifle, Zara chewed on an energy bar and assessed the situation. If the men in the village were hostiles, they would have to be taken out—all of them—before she attempted to move the girls. As much as she had tried to shove the responsibility off on Klah, those girls were also under her protection. She would be damned if she placed herself in a situation with that much risk of collateral damage.
Beneath the light of the moon, distant shapes moved through the countryside toward her house. A faint smile curved her lips. Right on time.
A beam of light cut through the night as a car drove toward the hill. Her smile deepened as it wound its way up the road. Apparently, the prospects of a sniper’s perch had occurred to others too. Slowly, she took her sniper rifle from its perch and inched down the far side of the hill. Out of sight, she reached for her handgun, its barrel extended by the silencer.
She pressed against the grass and listened for the
heavy tread of feet and the murmur of voices.
“Perfect,” a voice said in American-accented English.
“We’ll set up here,” someone else spoke in deeper tones. “This shouldn’t take long. We’ve got them outclassed and outgunned.”
Several minutes passed, the only sound that of metal sliding into place. “Echo,” the second person said, obviously speaking through a microphone to the rest of the team. “We’re in place. Roll out.”
From the approximate placement of that voice, at least one man was already prone on the ground, prepared to shoot through his sniper rifle. The other, his spotter probably, knelt beside him. Zara crawled through the grass until she was perpendicular to their position and then pushed to her knees.
Her first shot took out the sniper. Her second grazed the spotter as he swung up his rifle. She rolled to the side as bullets tore patches from the ground. Her next shot took out the man’s knee, and he dropped to the ground with a scream. Her fourth, carefully aimed, punched through his right hand, shattering bone. She strode up to him and kicked his assault rifle away from him. “Who do you work for?”
He bared his teeth. “Bitch.”
Zara shrugged. She’d been called worse by far nicer people. “You’ll bleed to death unless you start talking.” And you’ll probably still bleed to death anyway.
He glared at her. His only response was a grunt.
She glanced down at the figures moving through the dark fields surrounding her home. “Fine. I’ve got work to do.” She rammed her knee into his back and gagged him, before cuffing his hands behind his back. He screamed into his gag as Zara wiped her blood-streaked hands on his black shirt.
She retrieved her sniper rifle and set it up on her mother’s grave, before tugging the dead sniper’s earpiece from his ear and sliding it into hers. Through the scope, she counted targets. Twelve…no, thirteen. She had counted at least twenty men in the village. Including the two on the hilltop, where were the other five?
She couldn’t worry about that—not with the thirteen closing in on the house. Her first target lingered behind the others. Her finger steady against her trigger, she traced his progress through the low grass. The surroundings seemed to vanish as her focus zeroed in on her target.
One shot, one kill. She couldn’t afford the outcry.
Her breath steadied, slowed, and for a fraction of a moment, held. Her finger squeezed the trigger.
Two and a half seconds later, her target dropped to his knees and collapsed facedown. He did not get up.
She chose her next target, a laggard approaching from the opposite direction. The muffled noises coming from the man she had injured faded into white noise. The wind picked up, bending the long blades of grass. She studied the angle of the grass and shifted her aim slightly.
Her next bullet dropped another man, as did her third and fourth.
A voice hissed into her earpiece. “An unseen sniper just took out Harris. Drake, can you see him?”
Her, not him, Zara corrected. She shifted her aim to another person and pulled gently on the trigger.
“Move, move!” the man roared into the earpiece. “On the house! We’re fish in a barrel out here. Call out!”
A blur of voices filled the communication channel. Zara counted along with each name. Thirteen. There were only eight left alive that she could see. Where were the other five, damn it?
“Drake? Jackson?”
Silence.
“He got our snipers. Where is that goddamned SEAL? Why didn’t he warn us? Keep moving. Get out of the open.”
How fast could a man move in three seconds? Zara aimed ahead of her next target’s path and squeezed the trigger. The man ran into the view of her scope and jerked as the bullet plowed through his chest. He dropped to his knees, blood leaking from his mouth.
Someone shrieked. “We’re taking fire from the house too!” His voice ended in a gurgle.
Good. Nazrol was hard at work. She had to move. Now that the mercenaries knew that their snipers were down, her position was compromised. The hilltop would be the first place they would look for her. She shoved away from her sniper rifle but froze as a column of smoke, likely from a smoke grenade, rose near the house.
A mercenary darted through the smoke and clambered over the wall of the compound. The top of his head was scarcely visible. Damn it, she should have warned Nazrol about that corner of the compound. It provided a perfect place from which to snipe at the house while perfectly shielded from return fire. Nazrol and his men would have no way of taking out that mercenary.
She had to do it, with little more to go on than a fractional view.
The glare of headlights flared up the side of the hill. “Up there!” someone shouted. Footsteps pounded toward her.
She was out of time. She could still escape with a chance of saving herself or—
At that moment, the wind picked up, whipping the smoke sideways in a controlled frenzy that would define the drift of her bullet’s trajectory. If she wanted to hit the man—Zara dropped into a prone position and braced the sniper rifle against her shoulder. She shifted her aim to a spot to the far right of her target. He was not even in her scope when she squeezed the trigger.
Death sped unseen through the air.
“Mitch is down!” someone shouted. “Get that sniper!”
Movement flickered in her peripheral vision. She reached for her handgun as she rolled away from her sniper rifle. Bullets kicked up the dirt where she had been lying. She swung her gun up and fired at the five men racing toward her, their rifles aimed in her direction.
She knew what her odds were when she squeezed off several rounds.
Somewhere less than zero.
When the first bullet hit her chest, her immediate and last conscious thought caught her off guard.
Not my baby.
18
Something cold splashed over her face and snapped her awake. Pain throbbed through her chest. How many rounds had her bulletproof vest absorbed? Enough to save her life, although not enough to prevent deep, internal bruising.
She gritted her teeth and tried to focus her vision on the three men standing above her. Of the five men who had attacked her, one lay on the ground, dead, and another sprawled next to the body of his companion, with his hand pressed against his shoulder. Blood stained his uniform.
“Hell,” one of the three men muttered. “She’s just a woman.” Disbelief infused his voice.
“Armed with some of the most expensive shit in the market,” another said. He looked toward the house. “She took them out.”
“Impossible. There must have been someone else,” the first man said. “Search the area.”
Zara resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It wasn’t hard, not with all her attention focused on drawing a breath that didn’t hurt. She must have cracked a rib or two. Motion fluttered between her pelvic bones. She had never imagined that she would have been grateful to have her bladder kicked by a pissed-off baby, but she was. At least it meant her baby was still alive.
Two men turned away to scout in ever widening circles around the hill. Zara spared a glance at the house. At least six more men were out there. Surely Nazrol could handle those. And where the hell was Klah?
“Found him!” someone shouted. “Raghead.”
Zara glanced over her shoulder. The painful tug along her rib cage made her breath catch.
The mercenary dragged a squirming figure up the hill.
Idris! What the hell was he doing there?
The mercenary frisked Idris for weapons. Finding none, they shoved him to the ground. The young man raised his gaze to Zara. His eyes were wide, and his lips trembled, shaping inaudible words.
Had the stupid boy come back for her in spite of her orders to stay away? Didn’t he know it was dangerous?
The mercenary standing over Idris swung his rifle around and pulled the trigger. A spray of blood exploded through Idris’s forehead.
“No!” Zara screamed. She lunged to h
er feet, grabbed the mercenary’s rifle with both hands and jerked it up, slamming the gun against the side of his face. His head snapped back. She twisted the gun further until the muzzle aimed under the man’s chin.
Panic flared in the man’s eyes. “No,” he breathed a plea as she squeezed the trigger.
The bullets shattered his face. His blood sprayed over her.
Something struck her back and drove her to her knees. She twisted as she fell, bringing the rifle around in a spray of bullets. A man collapsed, screaming.
Her gun clicked. She swung it up like a staff at the remaining man. It caught him under the chin, but he rolled with the blow and ducked beneath the upward momentum of the gun. He lunged, wrapped his arms around her waist, and tackled her to the ground.
The impact punched the air out of her lungs. Lights flashed through her skull.
His strong hands gripped the sides of her head, raised her head off the ground, and slammed it back onto the hard surface.
Her vision blurred.
“Nailed one in the house!” a voice crowed through her earpiece.
Damn it.
The strobe lights bursting through her vision grayed along the edges. She reached up, her fingers groping along the man’s neck for the critical acupressure point. She found it, pressed hard, and with her other hand, she struck a precise point on his wrist.
The man’s hand weakened, enough for her to twist out of his grip and roll to the side. She snatched her dagger from her boot as he reached for his utility blade. He lunged; she sidestepped into a turn, her dagger ripping down his left side.
The metallic scent of his blood filled her nostrils. She gritted her teeth. Her vision swam; her head spun.
I got lucky.
She had to end the fight before her luck ran out.
She recoiled out of the range of his second attack, but his third slashed across her midsection, ripping through the vest. Adrenaline overrode the initial flare of pain, but her breath caught on the stinging sensation burning through her flesh.
When he lunged at her, she allowed his weight to slam her down. Her skull rattled from the impact with the ground, but she swung her feet up, and their joined momentum rolled him over her head. She scrambled to her feet. Ducking beneath his swinging fists, she stabbed out. Her blade sank into his groin.