Medusa's Sheik

by Cindy Dees

  He scowled. Sometimes in business, a man had to know how to give in gracefully. But he didn’t have to like it. He yanked on the robe. “Fine. Now what?”

  “I put my arm over your shoulder and we stand up just enough to be seen trying to limp toward the ridge. Give it, say, three steps, and then hit the dirt. Got it?”

  “Got it.” She put her arm over his shoulder and he hoisted her to her feet. They hop-skipped a few steps while she pretended to drag a leg behind her, and then they dived together for the ground. Just in time, too, for the ground just ahead of them exploded with bullets hitting rock. They scrambled backward behind the cover of their original boulder.

  “Well. That was fun,” he panted.

  H.O.T. Watch cut in, “Shooters moving fast in your direction.”

  Casey retorted, “Let me know when they reach the SUVs.”

  “Roger. SUVs in five…four…three…two…one…”

  Boom.

  Hake jumped, but was grinning before he landed back on the dirt. That was his girl. She’d managed to rig both vehicles to blow up without the terrorists spotting it. But then she yelled, “Run!” and he had no more time to think. He leaped up and took off running after her.

  That fifty-foot open area took a dozen lifetimes to race across. With every step, the back of his neck braced for hot lead to rip through it. But then Casey took a running dive in front of him and he followed suit. He landed in a relatively soft patch of sand behind a low outcropping of sharp, volcanic rock.

  Casey panted, “Catch your breath and then we’ll start working our way up into the rocks. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a cave.”

  He nodded, too winded to speak.

  Another voice intruded inside his head. The guy from H.O.T. Watch again. “We have movement in the south ridge opposite your position. Range three hundred yards. Eight hostiles moving on foot. Another dozen are circling wide to your left. Looks like they’re planning to flank you and approach you from behind.”

  “Can we beat them over the ridge at our back?” Casey asked tersely.

  “Negative.”

  “How much longer till that aerial drone gets here?” she demanded.

  “Twelve minutes.”

  Hake frowned. It didn’t take a military expert to know they were in trouble.

  “Options?” Casey asked as she looked around, studying their position.

  “Best bet is to hide,” H.O.T. Watch replied.

  Hake shook his head. “These are locals, if I had to bet. They’ll know every nook and cranny of these mountains. It’s likely the reason they chose this place for the handoff. We won’t be able to hide from them.”

  Casey winced. “Unfortunately, Hake’s right. How long until these guys are on top of us?”

  The man replied, “Five to seven minutes at current speed. If you shoot at them, pin them down a little, you might stretch that to ten.”

  “Or they could just decide to run full-out at us and be here in three,” she retorted.

  She had a point. Hake looked around. They weren’t in a good spot. Hostiles in front of them, a steep ridge about to be crawling with hostiles to their left and rear and only the gorge on their right. The gorge… “Casey, what if we go down instead of up?” he asked.

  She frowned at him, then glanced at the gaping blackness on their right. “Go over the cliff? It’s a thought. Let’s have a look.”

  She took off crawling on her belly like an alligator, and he imitated the movement. In about five seconds, his arms and back were protesting even though he was in pretty darned good shape. Meanwhile, Casey slithered along effortlessly in front of him. He caught up to her when she paused, her head jutting over the edge of a drop-off that made him light-headed to look at. The gorge yawned before him with nearly vertical walls. It might as well have been the Grand Canyon. No way could they climb down there.

  “It’s perfect,” Casey announced.

  He stared over at her. “Are you out of your mind? This is a sheer cliff. We’ll kill ourselves if we try to climb it.”

  “That’s why we’re not climbing it. You’ll jump.”

  “Are you mad?” he burst out.

  She grinned. “Certifiably.” As he stared in open disbelief, she added, “I’ve got a rappelling harness and cable. You’ll put it on and go over the edge. I’ll stay here and cover our position.”

  “I don’t think so,” he snapped. “You’ll wear the harness and go over the edge, and I’ll stay here to cover you.”

  “Hake, you’re the civilian I’m here to protect. You’re going down there. Besides, if I stay here, I can shoot at the bad guys until they take the truck and leave.”

  “I love you and take responsibility for you. I’ll protect you.”

  She glared at him. “This isn’t open to discussion.”

  “You’re right,” he replied grimly. “It’s not.”

  Chapter 18

  C asey stared at Hake in total exasperation. Did he have to go all macho and stubborn on her now? They didn’t have time for this. She had to find a decent anchor point for her rappelling line, get him in the harness and make sure he knew how to use it. And she had about two minutes to make all of that happen.

  “I’m not arguing with you about this—” she started.

  He cut her off. “Good. Then don’t. I’m done with you treating me like a helpless child you have to look after. I’m neither helpless nor a child. I knew what I was getting into when I came out here, and I was willing to do it to protect the people I love. And that includes you.”

  “I appreciate that, and I love you, too. But it doesn’t change my mission parameters, which include protecting you.”

  The mission or her feelings for him—which was motivating her the most, she couldn’t say. She supposed it didn’t really matter. Either way, he was going over that cliff and she was staying behind.

  “Listen to me, Casey. You’ve spent a good chunk of your adult life sacrificing your personal feelings for the job. And it’s time to stop. You have a right to a life of your own. To happiness. Love. Quit being so damned noble and let me do this for you!”

  “This is who I am,” she ground out.

  “And I love you for it. But part of loving someone is letting them love you back.”

  She stared at him, stunned. Was that her problem? She’d thought all along that she wasn’t lovable. Not feminine enough or soft enough for any man. But was the problem really that she was incapable of letting anyone love her?

  “Let me love you, Casey. I swear, it’ll be worth the risk.”

  Risk. Now there was a word for it. Maybe she wasn’t incapable of letting anyone love her. Maybe she was just afraid to. Terrified to the depths of her soul, in fact. Except this was Hake. He’d shown her over and over that he loved her and wanted to be with her, and she’d been too blinded by her own hang-ups to see it.

  “What about you?” she challenged as she pulled her climbing gear out of her backpack and began untying it. “You’re the one who keeps saying you don’t do relationships. Why should I believe you?”

  “People change. I’ve changed. Once I met you, I knew I’d be making the biggest mistake of my life if I let you get away from me. And I’m not a man who makes mistakes often.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Fear and denial swirled inside her, twisting around her heart like a pair of serpents.

  “Because I love you. Because I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Because I’m asking you to marry me.”

  Marry him? Her entire being tumbled in confusion. He wanted to marry her? “But I’m a Hershey bar,” she mumbled.

  That damned voice from H.O.T. Watch intruded in her head again. “You’re about to be a dead Hershey bar if you don’t get moving.”

  He was right. She glared up at Hake. “We don’t have time for this now. Put on this climbing harness.” She shoved a jumble of webbing at him. “You step into these holes with your legs and buckle this part around your waist.”

  “I know ho
w to use a climbing harness,” he snapped. “And you’re putting it on. You may ignore my marriage proposal, but you can’t ignore the fact that I love you. I’d rather die than go on living without you.” As she glared at him, he added implacably, “That’s how I feel. Deal with it.”

  Damn him! Marriage and love and not living without her…it was heady stuff. Distracting stuff that would get them killed if she didn’t get her mind back in the game and fast.

  “How much do you weigh?” she asked abruptly.

  “Two hundred pounds, give or take a couple. Why?”

  “My cable’s rated to two hundred fifty pounds. I weigh one-thirty. If I shed all my gear, we’re eighty pounds over the max. That’s about thirty percent. It might not work, but I’m willing to try us both riding down the cable.”

  He nodded briskly. “Done.”

  “You put on the harness. I’ll ride on top of you,” she ordered. “I’m lighter and have plenty of upper-body strength to hang on.”

  Thankfully, he grabbed the harness and yanked it over his feet.

  “ETA on our hostiles?” she bit out.

  H.O.T. Watch answered, “Three minutes. In about thirty seconds, the group at your twelve o’clock will come into the open. Suppression fire should be effective.”

  “Roger,” she murmured. She pulled out her MP7 semi-automatic weapon and stretched out in a prone firing position. She began scanning the shadows before her.

  “What can I do to help?” Hake asked quietly from beside her.

  “You know how to shoot a weapon like this?” she asked.

  “Yup. How about I provide cover fire while you tie off the rappelling cable.”

  “Perfect.” She passed him the MP7. “Safety’s off.”

  She inched backward, shocked to realize that she’d just entrusted him with a deadly weapon and her life and hadn’t thought twice about it. He said he knew how to shoot and would cover her, and she believed him, no questions asked. Then why couldn’t she believe him when he said he loved her and wanted to marry her?

  She shoved the thought aside. They had to live through the next five minutes first, or the question would be moot. She looked around fast and spotted a solid-looking outcrop near the edge of the gorge. She made for it on her belly, catching a mouthful of dust and painful gravel down her shirt.

  Bang! Hake had just shot behind her. Crud. The bad guys were almost here. As his pace of fire increased, she worked fast wedging crampons into crevices in the rocks and hammering them into place. She ran the end of the thin steel-and-titantium rappelling cable through all three tie-off points and secured it. If one crampon gave, the other two should hold. Assuming that any of this gear could take the extra thirty percent load they were about to put on it.

  Bang! Bang, bang, bang. Hake was firing rapidly now, and H.O.T. Watch was calling out targets to him as fast as he could sight and fire at them.

  “Hake!” she transmitted. “When I start firing, make your way over to me. Ready?”

  “Yes,” he grunted. “I’m almost out of ammo anyway.”

  “On my mark. Three…two…one…go!” she called as she started shooting her spare pistol at the moving shadows behind her. She ejected one clip and slammed in a second, resuming firing almost without pause. She had two more clips. Hake had to be at her side and ready to go by then, or they’d both die.

  “Hurry,” she gritted out as she continued firing grimly.

  “Coming,” he grunted, his voice strained with effort.

  She slammed in her third clip. There seemed to be hostiles behind every rock out there, the muzzle flashes of their weapons pinpointing their positions. And then she caught a glimpse of something that made her blood run cold. More shadows swarming over the top of the ridge at her left.

  Just a few more yards and Hake would reach her. She shoved in her last clip of ammo. But then she jumped as an explosion of noise erupted just in front of her. Hake was firing the MP7 one-handed as he crawled. It was actually damned hard to fire like that, but he sent a volley of lead up the slope, and the shadows momentarily stopped and ducked. She fired the last of her rounds over his back. Her pistol clicked. Empty.

  “I’m out,” he gasped.

  She looked over her shoulder and swore. They still had a dozen feet of open space to cross prior to the cliff.

  And then a new voice spoke in her head. “Need a little cover, Scorpion?”

  Vanessa. And then her boss gave an order that warmed Casey all the way to her toes. “Fire at will, Medusas.”

  The night exploded into sound as a dozen high-powered weapons fired from across the gorge as expert markswomen unleashed hell’s fury at the ridge behind her. “Time to go,” she bit out.

  She and Hake crawled low to the lip of the gorge. He lay down at the very edge of the cliff and she crawled on top of him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. Their gazes met in a moment of naked honesty that said it all. Fear, acceptance and, most of all, love passed between them in that instant.

  The two of them had had a heck of a good run. If this was the end for both of them, there would be no regrets. Casey was stunned to see in his eyes the same gladness that he was here with her, like this. If he had to face death, he wanted to do it with her. Shockingly, she felt exactly the same way about him. And that was when she knew.

  She truly loved him. This was the real deal.

  He rolled to his side. Her legs came around his waist and she hung on to him for all she was worth.

  “Don’t you even think about letting go to sacrifice yourself for me,” he muttered.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  His arms gripped her every bit as tightly as hers held him, and then they were falling, a sickening drop into space as the metal cable unwound from its holder with a metallic schwinging noise. They slammed into something hard, fetching up against the cliff face. She nearly lost her grip on Hake, but his arms tightened even more around her waist, crushing her against him.

  They banged their way down the cliff face, tearing their clothes and getting scraped painfully. And then the cable tightened. The jerk of their fall breaking nearly dislodged her from Hake, despite both of them hanging on to each other with all their strength. Her legs came free, dangling in midair, and she scrabbled as her hands began to slip from around his neck, panicked. The abyss below beckoned.

  “I’ve got you,” he grunted, his arms tightening around her. She yanked her legs up and managed to get them wrapped around his waist once more. Thank God he was as big and strong as he was, or she’d have been a goner.

  He leaned back in the harness, canting his body into a seated position within the webbing. She was able to rest much of her weight on his thighs as long as she maintained a good grip on him and kept her weight forward, close to his.

  They spun in a slow circle, dangling under a small overhang.

  “Seems like the cable’s holding,” he breathed.

  “As long as the hostiles don’t find our line and cut it, we might make it out of this,” she breathed back.

  Vanessa commented grimly, “Nobody’s getting close to that line if I have anything to say about it. Report, Scorpion.”

  “So far so good,” Casey replied.

  The silence from above was nerve-wracking as she envisioned hostiles creeping toward the edge of the cliff to peer over. But then a faint sound reached her ears. Relief poured over her like a warm shower. That was the jet engine of an unmanned aerial vehicle. The drone was here.

  “You are cleared to fire,” the H.O.T. Watch controller announced after guiding the UAV to the far side of the ridge where the Medusas’ weapons couldn’t reach. A sound of automatic weapon fire erupted. God bless the soldier on the other end of the drone’s remote controller. Shouts and the sounds of general chaos floated down into the gorge. Hake smiled at her, and she smiled back.

  The drone made three passes overhead, and after the final one, another sound intruded upon the night. The engine of the truck Hake had brought to the meeting start
ed up and the vehicle drove away. Silence fell once more.

  “Did we make it?” Hake finally asked.

  “We’re not off this cable yet,” she answered.

  “Are we going to have to climb for it?” He looked doubtfully at the cliff behind them.

  “We don’t have the gear for a technical climb. A helicopter will have to come for us.”

  “How long is that going to take?” he asked.

  She calculated the distance to the nearest U.S. Navy ship. “It could be an hour. Are you going to be okay for that long?”

  “I’d hang here for a week if it meant you and me getting home alive,” he declared.

  She laid her head on his shoulder for a moment as the adrenaline of the immediate threat to their lives drained away, leaving her mostly tired and a lot scared. She knew the fear for what it was. Aftermath. Her mind was trained to hold off all emotions until the threat was over, and then, when the crisis was past, the feelings all came pouring in at once.

  Except tonight, a host of other emotions came flooding in as well. Disbelief. Dismay. Joy. Exultation. Had Hake really proposed to her? Told her he’d rather die than live without her?

  Caution—or maybe more of her same-old fear and unwillingness to let anyone get close to her—kicked in. Maybe that had just been Hake’s adrenaline talking. He’d been facing death, and maybe he’d just blurted that stuff out by way of stress relief. She felt herself beginning to pull back emotionally. Dammit, she was going to lose him if she kept this up! She forcibly halted her retreat and asked in a small voice, “Did you mean what you said before?”

  “About what?”

  “About marrying me. And that stuff about preferring to die than go on without me?”

  “Yes to both,” he replied grimly. “For better or worse, that’s how I feel.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t just stress talking? I mean I’m fine if you just said all that to distract yourself from the fact that we were about to die.”

  “Casey, love?”

  “What?”

  “You think too much.”