by Julie Rowe
She wasn’t sure how long they’d been running when the echoing sound of gunshots reached them. Sharp didn’t look back, but she did.
How far had they run?
Was it far enough?
Finally, sometime later, Sharp slowed and seemed to be looking for something.
“Sharp?”
“We need another cave.” His voice sounded raspy, dry. Tired.
“How long will that take?” He was probably dehydrated and in pain. Damn it, what was it with tough men never allowing anyone to know they need help? Suffering in silence was stupid, especially when one word, one word, to her would get him the water he needed.
“Not long. Our team studied topographical maps of this area. It’s full of caves.”
His voice, with slight hesitation at the end of the sentence, made her ask, “But?”
“But...we have to be careful not to pick an occupied one. People use caves in this area for homes sometimes.”
“Great,” she breathed.
He moved on, continuing to examine both the ground close to them and look for signs of caves.
He picked up his pace again and they detoured into a small gully, and despite the fact that the whole place looked like solid ground all around, led her into a cave. This one was much bigger than the first one they’d stayed in. Unlike the last time, Sharp sat down with a thump.
Grace crouched next to him. He should have been sweating. Instead his skin looked dry and wrinkled, his eyes sunken. She put her fingers to his neck to check his heart rate.
“Headache?”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“Let me see your tongue.”
An unholy grin wiped the pain and fatigue from his face. “Just see?”
She wasn’t going to slap him. She wasn’t. She wanted to, but she wasn’t. “Let. Me. See. Your. Tongue.”
He stuck it out. It looked dry and leathery.
“You’re seriously dehydrated. Your heart rate is high and you’re not sweating.” She pulled open her backpack, pulled out one of the full water bottles and handed it to him. “Drink all of this.”
“No, we might need...”
Her head came up and she gave him her specially crafted don’t fuck with me look. “If you don’t rehydrate, your kidneys will shut down. Stop being a goddamn martyr and drink.”
He swore under his breath, but he took the water and began drinking.
“Let me see your leg,” she ordered.
“Bossy.”
His thigh wounds had bled through, leaving his pants leg and sock bloody.
“Shit,” he said after swallowing another mouthful of water.
She knew what he was thinking. “Did we leave a trail?”
“Did you notice any blood on the ground?”
“No.”
“That will have to do, because you’re right. I’m...”
“You need recovery time,” she said, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah.”
“Let me check the rest of you.”
“For what?”
“I know they beat you, I could hear it.” She swallowed hard. “It was all I could do to stay hidden.”
Sharp surprised her by snatching her hands and shook her. “Damn right you stayed hid. You’re more important to this mission. You’re the expert. You have the samples.”
“I will not leave someone I—a friend—to die of broken bones and internal injuries,” she snarled. “Why do you think I set off that flare? To give me a chance to get to you. To get you out.”
“It was a stupid rookie mistake.”
“So, I should’ve left you to be tortured and murdered?”
“Yes,” he hissed.
Her mouth fell open and she gaped at him for a couple of long seconds. “You...you suck.”
He snickered, let go of her hands and sat back again. “Don’t say that in front of the team. I’ll get a reputation.”
“This is not funny.” She was so angry with him, she might hit him after all.
“Sure, it is. It’s a damn comedy of errors. Nothing on this mission has gone right. Not from the get-go.”
She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times as his words penetrated her own mental fog of exhaustion and stress. “You sound suspicious,” she said, pointing at him and then the floor of the cave.
He got the hint and lay down. “I’m beyond that. I think this has been planned for a long time. Someone has studied our responses to other...emergencies and very carefully crafted a way to strike at the Afghan authorities and their American allies in multiple ways during the same event.”
“Emergencies,” Grace huffed. “You make it sound like you’re firemen or something.”
“Different training, similar mind-set. We all put our lives on the line to save others.”
Oh yes, the noble sacrifices men make. “What about the people who love you? Do you think about what your sacrifice does to them?”
“I don’t give a shit if my dad likes it or not. My mom succeeded in working herself to death when I was sixteen.” He speared her with a glance. “She was a nurse.”
Grace wasn’t going anywhere near that, not even with a bio-suit on. “And your girlfriend? How does she feel about it?”
He shook his head. “Don’t have one. I’ve watched too many guys get Dear Johned. That shit can fuck you up.” He cleared his throat. “Not that I think you’d do that.”
Me? He was out of his mind. “Do not go there.”
“Where?”
“Crazyland.”
“I don’t know, crazy can be a good place sometimes. A necessary place.” He looked around them at the cave they were in. “Better than this place.”
Chapter Ten
Sharp watched Grace’s face as she thought about what he said and didn’t say.
He opened his mouth, but he never got the chance to say anything.
She kissed him.
He froze, letting those soft lips slide against his own.
After a couple of seconds, he let his lips follow hers, allowed her to take the lead. When she nibbled on his bottom lip, he groaned. She took total advantage of his lapse by sending her tongue on a teasing foray into his mouth. He had to fight with himself to keep his hands off her, to let her set the pace.
She pulled back with a frown. “What the hell am I doing?”
Sharp played dumb. “Kissing?”
“Exactly. First we’re kissing, then we’re fighting, then we’re kissing again. We shouldn’t be kissing at all.”
“Just for the record, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.”
She snorted. “You are a menace.”
“To what?”
“My peace of mind.”
“If I had a nickel for every time a woman said that to me...”
“You’d have five cents.”
“Probably. What do you say, Doc, want to get some rest?”
She answered with a chuckle that told him she was okay.
Despite the pain from his injuries, the lack of sleep and the precariousness of their situation, he’d never felt better. He settled into the uneven ground beneath him with a twitch of his shoulders and damn near purred, “Anytime you want to make out, I’m your guy.”
* * *
Grace woke to Sharp shaking her with one hand and holding the other over her mouth. Fear spiked through her, leaving her shaking. It took a few seconds for her vision to adjust to the darkness and for her to realize what was happening.
The sound of feet scuffing against the rocky ground outside their cave had her nodding at Sharp to let her go and reaching for her Beretta.
Sharp put his hand on her wrist and pushed hers down. When she glanced at him, he
sat up, pulled a knife and motioned for her to back away from the entrance.
What was he going to do, kill whoever was outside in hand-to-hand combat?
Idiot, of course that’s what he’s going to do.
By the time she thought of questioning his plan, he was already gone, out into the gathering darkness with no sound at all.
Would the man he was about to kill hear him coming, or die not knowing he was being hunted?
Grace waited, straining to hear any sound that might tell her what was going on outside. A short, faint moan was all she heard, gone almost immediately. No sounds of movement reached her. No sounds at all other than faint insect noises.
A dark wraith slipped into the cave and came to rest in front of her. It surprised the hell out of her and she sucked in a breath.
Two fingers covered her lips and she relaxed as she recognized Sharp’s touch. He leaned in and put his mouth to her ear. “Only one man,” he said in that soundless whisper she wished she could reproduce. “I put him down and hid the body in another cave. There are others searching for us, though. We need to move.”
“Where?” she asked. “You’re injured. How far are we likely to get?”
“I heard helicopter blades out there. I think those flares you used may have been seen by our guys and they’re now looking for us. We need to find another spot to set off another flare. Someplace defendable.”
“You know of a place?”
“Yeah, about a half mile from here.”
“How’s your leg?”
“It’ll hold. How are you?”
She had so many cuts, bruises and aches she wondered if any part of her was injury free. “I’ll make it. There’s no other choice.”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed. “We have to go now.”
She nodded and he led her out of the cave.
She’d been wrong about how late it was. The sun was just setting, but it was overcast and the clouds were low and dark.
A few feet away from the cave, there was a wet patch on the sandy soil, with a trail of blood leading a few feet toward the surrounding rocks.
More blood. Lots and lots of blood.
As long as it wasn’t Sharp’s blood.
Grace forced herself to follow Sharp, who moved quickly and silently. How he could do it in his current condition, she had no idea.
He’d probably smirk and say, That’s what put the special in Special Forces.
Twice, they had to hide from Afghan men. Sharp whispered that it was better if they didn’t kill anyone else, since that person could be missed or the body discovered, alerting all the searchers.
That was just fine with her.
They were approaching a plateau when a helicopter seemed to emerge out of the cooling air. The markings on the bird proclaimed its allegiance and function. It was American. A Combat Rescue team.
Relief spurred her feet and she ran with Sharp toward the craft.
Unfortunately they weren’t the only ones.
From three o’clock came movement on the ground, along with gunfire.
Sharp put his stolen rifle to his shoulder and returned fire. So did soldiers on the bird. As they came closer to the helicopter, now hovering a few feet above the ground, the Afghans rushed the aircraft.
Grace pulled her Beretta and fired until her clip was empty.
Sharp stumbled and fell to one knee, but was up, firing and running at the same time almost immediately, with one difference.
He was limping worse than before.
“Are you injured?” she yelled at him.
He didn’t answer.
She scanned his body, trying to see what had happened and narrowed her gaze on his right leg. It looked wet. Again. Bloody. Again. “Have you been shot?”
“Not now, Grace. You can screech at me later. If we survive.”
“Screech?” Ha. She was going to take a strip off of him, she really was. She was also very tired of being shot at.
More shots were fired behind them. Sharp shoved her down behind a pile of rocks, spun and returned fire. They were only ten or fifteen feet from the helicopter.
“Get over here, you moron,” she yelled. “You don’t have any body armor on!” Okay, maybe she was screeching a little.
But the gunfire directed at the helicopter stopped. Sharp grabbed her by the scruff of her uniform and dragged her with him as he continued on.
“Sharp, how bad is your leg?”
“It’s still attached,” he barked at her. “Get in the bird.”
A soldier manning the doorway, returned fire over her Grace’s head as Sharp threw her inside and covered her body on the floor of the helicopter.
She tried to get up, but he yelled in her ear, “Stay down.” With his entire weight on her, she didn’t have any choice.
More bullets pinged overhead as they lifted off. This time two soldiers fired back before slamming the door shut. She couldn’t see much, but she could tell the men on board were yelling at each other, trading hand signals and preparing for God knows what.
Sharp finally got off her and helped her up. She immediately looked at his leg. Damn it, he had blood all over himself. She got in his face and yelled, “Sit down. I want to see your leg.”
He hesitated, like he was going to argue, but sat down in one of the jump seats instead. She put her hands on his leg and began searching for the wound.
Someone put a headset over her ears.
“Ma’am,” a man said over the headset. “I need to check your injuries.”
She looked over her shoulder at the soldier behind her. He wore a paramedic patch on his shoulder and his helmet.
“I’m a trauma surgeon. Major Samuels,” she told him calmly. “My injuries are minor and can wait. Sergeant Foster has sustained multiple wounds to his leg. He’s first priority.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. He dipped his head and came up with a pair of scissors.
She loved working with the Combat Rescue guys. They were prepared for everything.
Grace cut Sharp’s pants where the blood seemed heaviest and found the bullet wound she’d bandaged hours before sluggishly bleeding. She checked the back of his thigh to see if there was anything new there, but aside from more bleeding, it was okay. She reached up and squeezed Sharp’s hand.
“Through and through happened a few hours ago,” she said to the paramedic. “Doesn’t seem to have involved the femoral artery, but he might need a transfusion. Let’s pack it for now. He can be sewn up at the base.”
She and the medic went to work, put an IV line in and had him bandaged up in a few minutes.
“Am I gonna live?” Sharp asked, now wearing his own headset.
“Yep. You might have some muscle damage, but nothing that should put you on the sidelines for long.”
A grimace etched lines onto his forehead and around his mouth. “Sidelines? I don’t want to go there at all, Doc.”
She got herself strapped into the jump seat facing her patient. “You don’t get a choice, Sharp.”
His grimace dug in deeper. “We might all have fewer choices when we get back to the base.”
That sounded ominous. “What does that mean?”
“I mean, these guys—” Sharp glanced around at the soldiers surrounding them “—say Marshall is not a happy camper. He’s pissed. At you.”
“Because I went over his head about his cleaning plans?” She pressed her lips together. “Too damn bad. It’s not a situation he’s in control of. He doesn’t have enough info to make the right decisions.”
“He doesn’t agree.”
“He doesn’t need to. This is over his head and his pay grade.”
“He can still make trouble. Slow things down.”
“Why would he do
that? He’d be risking lives of soldiers and civilians both.”
“I didn’t say I agreed with him, I said what I think he’s going to do. Right or wrong, the guy was king shit of his island until you voted him out without a paddle or a canoe.”
And here she thought the man couldn’t get any lower or behave any worse. “Well, that’s just fucking perfect.”
Chapter Eleven
A grin came and went on Sharp’s face. “Wow, so you do know how to swear.”
She looked at the other soldiers on the helicopter. Most of them still wore grins, but a couple didn’t. They frowned and avoided her gaze. Great. Marshall was probably going to hear a complete report of everything they’d said here within minutes of their arrival at the base. She’d need to talk to Max ASAP to make sure Marshall didn’t get in the way of what needed to be done, rather than what one power-hungry asshole wanted done.
He was going to come at her with everything he had, which was a lot. His initial patrol infected, the helicopter crash and her having gone over his head before she left.
Yep, he was going to attempt to tear her limb from limb.
She let one of the combat rescue medics check her over and re-dress the injuries on her left arm and leg. Sharp was lying quietly on his gurney on the floor of the aircraft, staring at the bulkhead above him or at her face. She listened as he asked the medic monitoring him how much longer until they arrived at the base.
Fifteen minutes.
Grace let her head fall back. Fifteen minutes of relative peace before having to face Marshall and the rest of Sharp’s team. Rasker and Williams had died in the crash, and so had the rest of the men with them. All of them soldiers. All of them her responsibility.
No matter how rational an explanation there was for their deaths, she was the reason they’d been in that helicopter, the reason they died.
Maybe she deserved to get yelled at, because she’d accomplished nothing. She still had the original samples, yes, but they were over twenty hours old now, and they’d had the shit shaken out of them.
She was going to have to go back to the village and get fresh ones.
Marshall wasn’t going to like that.