The Woman Left Behind: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  Assume the worst.

  She had to destroy the laptop. That had been drilled into her over and over, into all of the drone operators. The software was highly classified and could not be allowed to fall into anyone else’s hands. Before she did anything else, even before she tried to save herself, she had to do her job and destroy the laptop.

  Feeling along the edge, she located the switch on the upper left of the casing, and toggled it down. There was a bright, brief flash as the hard drive was destroyed. She had to trust that the destruction was complete because she had no way of checking.

  Now she had to save herself.

  Her scrabbling fingers couldn’t locate her bag, the NVD, anything. Ahead, a flashlight beam . . . two beams . . . were slashing through the dust and smoke. She couldn’t go out that way, couldn’t hear if they were talking, if they thought she was dead and were looking for her body, or if they assumed she’d lived through the destruction and was waiting for them, possibly injured but definitely armed.

  Armed. Her pistol had been lying beside her. Now it was God knows where, and she didn’t have the time to feel around for it.

  The hole, the one she’d located in the back wall—that was her only chance. Her gut instinct to not be trapped in the back with no escape had been completely on point. A flashlight beam flashed too close and quickly she ducked to the floor. She had seconds, literally less than a minute, before they would be back here unless by some miracle she found her pistol and shot in their direction. She wasn’t waiting for that miracle, she had to move and move now. She half crawled, half slithered back and to the left, holding her breath so she wouldn’t cough and give away her position, assuming the people searching for her could hear better than she could.

  She reached the back of the ruin, couldn’t go any farther. She scrabbled around, searching for the opening, and finally found the partially blocked hole. More stones had fallen, slowing her down. She shoved some rock out of the way, got down on her belly, tried to wiggle through. The stones scraped on her arms, caught on her shoulders. No. Desperately she turned on her side, worked her head through, pulled with her hands, pushed with her feet, and her shoulders were free. She was half in, half out, completely helpless if anyone saw her. She sucked in a breath and dust clogged her nostrils, her throat. Quickly she covered her mouth with both hands and tried to muffle the harsh cough she couldn’t stifle.

  Out. She had to get out. She pushed some more, got her hips free, and pulled her legs out. Quickly she turned, on her belly, and reached back through the wall, pulled some debris back in place to hide the hole. Maybe that would buy her some time before they realized she’d escaped rather than being buried under the rubble. Staying flat, she belly-crawled to where she remembered the wadi being, though she couldn’t see a damn thing and could only pray she was going in the correct direction.

  The ground fell out from under her and she slid into the wadi, rocks and sand going with her. Found it.

  She had to move, she couldn’t stop and assess the situation until she was in a safer location. All they—whoever they were—had to do was walk to the edge of the wadi and shine one of those flashlights down, and they’d see her.

  Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel her fingertips throbbing. She knew what direction the team had gone in, but when she thought about what she’d seen through Tweety’s cameras, she remembered that the wadi went roughly left to right, not on the diagonal she wanted. But it wasn’t as if she had another to select, she had to go with the wadi she had. She chose to go right, stumbling along the rough bottom, tripping over rocks, falling again. Shit! The delay and possible noise dismayed her more than any pain she might have felt if she’d thought about it.

  On her feet, move, keep moving.

  Her eyesight was adjusting, clearing, now that she was away from the smoke and dust. She could see deeper shadows, tell that the wadi curved back to the left, taking her more in the direction she wanted and the curve effectively hiding her from anyone still at the ruin. She stumbled along, unable to run because the bottom of the wadi was so rough, but at least she was moving.

  She realized there was light, a strange light, with an odd flicker to it; she glanced back and saw the night sky lit by the red, pulsing glow of fire, at least a hundred yards behind her. Whatever had exploded was now burning. What? Couldn’t be the ruin, stone neither exploded—on its own, anyway—nor burned. The truck. Had to be. There was nothing else there.

  The pieces fell into place. Mamoon. He’d been talking to someone. The little bastard! He and his uncle—if Yasser was indeed his uncle—were part of the ambush. When he’d seen on the laptop that she was surveilling the area ahead of the team, and that she could see them in the dark, he’d left immediately, likely to warn the others. Then whoever he’d told had faced the problem of both alerting the ambush waiting, and preventing her from giving the alarm to the team. He’d failed in the last, but succeeded in the first.

  Levi. The team.

  The ringing in her ears was fading a little, enough that she could hear rapid, muted sounds. It took her a few seconds to identify gunfire, but where? Blindly she spun in a circle, oriented herself by the glow from the fire, focused in on the distorted sound.

  There.

  Yes. The gunfire was coming from the direction of the team.

  Her stomach clenched. At least she’d been able to give them warning. Her headset had been knocked askew but was still around her neck; she fumbled for the earbud, put it in place. Through the ringing in her ears she could hear disjointed curses, grunts, the cracks and booms of gunfire, but she couldn’t distinguish individual voices.

  She started walking again. Her headset was out of place, wrenched sideways by the explosion, or when she’d pushed herself through the jagged hole. The strap was twisted, the throat mic . . . her fingers ran over it. The mic was damaged, she could tell just by touch. Shit. Shit! She couldn’t make radio contact with the guys.

  She tried anyway, clicking on the mic—no, the mic had been on, she’d at least gotten out a warning about the ambush, so she had just turned it off. She clicked again, opened her mouth, then shut it. Anything she said right now, assuming her mic worked, would be a distraction.

  The wadi turned sharply to the right, once more taking her away from their direction. She didn’t dare climb out of it, not yet, she wasn’t far enough away from the ruin, and they were in the middle of a firefight.

  She couldn’t get to them.

  Sick with worry, she continued cautiously following the wadi; in some places the dry creek bed was shallow enough that she could see around her, plainly see the blaze in the distance, though it was beginning to die down. She had to bend double to not offer a silhouette in case Mamoon or the man—men?—with him was scanning the area with night-vision goggles. An NVD had fairly limited range of vision and she thought she might be beyond that now, but she wasn’t certain.

  The wadi continued to bear to the right; if she continued following it, it would take her farther and farther from the team. Uneasy, she stopped, trying to make sense of the cacophony she could hear from the earbud.

  The rapid RAT-TAT-TAT of automatic weapons in the distance died down. Anxiously she waited, her heart pounding, sweat pouring off her. Please, God, oh please, let them be all right.

  At Babe’s two sharp words, “Ambush! Ambush!,” they all hit the ground. Simultaneously behind them was a boom! and Levi snapped a look over his shoulder to see, in the distance, a spreading glow exactly where the ruin would have been.

  The internal shock wave that hit him was staggering. Jina! Before he could process anything else, Yasser wheeled, holding a weapon he must have had hidden beneath his loose clothing, and began firing while he ran to the side. Yasser didn’t have an NVD so he was shooting wildly toward where he thought Levi’s team was, which came close enough. A bullet zinged overhead with an angry whine. Levi rolled, aimed, and stitched a line of shots across Yasser’s torso. The man staggered, shook, went down. He twitched
a time or two, then was still.

  Not taking anything for granted, both Levi and Trapper took almost simultaneous head shots at Yasser. Careless people got killed by other people who weren’t quite dead yet. Levi wasn’t careless, and Yasser was now completely dead.

  Jina.

  He did a quick surveillance and saw nothing, urgently surged to his feet. Had Jina been telling them there was an ambush at the ruin, or warning them of Yasser? Maybe both. Already moving, he jerked his NVD up and stared in the direction of the ruin. Even at this distance, the glow had become a noticeable fire, pulsing skyward, bright enough to have blinded him if he’d kept the NVD in place.

  The entire team was on their feet, looking back toward the fire.

  Another shot, this one from the direction where the informant had been hiding. They hit the ground again. Cursing silently, Levi pulled his NVD back into place. The white flare of muzzle flashes revealed the location of the new attackers; they were running, advancing fast.

  The good news was, that drastically affected their accuracy, which in his experience wasn’t great anyway; it was more blast away until they ran out of cartridges. The bad news was that the team was outnumbered by at least two to one.

  He began squeezing off shots, carefully placing the rounds for maximum effectiveness, moving after each shot because his muzzle flash revealed his position, too. The rest of the team was returning fire, doing the same thing he was doing, looking for what cover they could find before the attackers overran them. They scrambled, looking for indentions in the terrain, a pile of rocks, anything. He saw Voodoo get hit, go down, get up, and keep moving.

  Then some of the attackers began diving for cover, too, proving that they had at least some training. Shit! He was pinned down by these assholes when every cell of his body was being eaten by urgency to get back to Jina. Never before—never—had he had to force himself to concentrate during a firefight.

  By his count six attackers are down and unmoving, seven if he counted Yasser. There were nine more, unless a couple had hung back to maybe flank them and come up behind them. He did a swift check of his six—clear—and also checked on Voodoo, who signaled a thumbs-up.

  Using hand signals, Levi sent Jelly and Crutch snaking around to the left. He and Boom shifted to the right—not too much, didn’t want to get in the line of fire from Jelly and Crutch. Snake and Trapper, along with Voodoo, held the middle, but Voodoo was a worry despite the thumbs-up because Levi didn’t know how mobile his man was.

  “Let’s take care of these fuckers,” he said.

  “Report.”

  Levi’s voice. Even though her hearing was still muffled she recognized that rough tone, and tears of relief sprang to her eyes. She wiped them on her grimy sleeve, then had to blink away the dust. She thought she’d heard him say something before, but the sound had been garbled.

  “Crutch and Voodoo are down.” That was Snake.

  Ah, no. No no no. Down didn’t mean dead, but they were a long way from the secondary pickup point, and that wasn’t good.

  One by one the team reported, except for Crutch and Voodoo. Then Levi spoke again. “Babe, report in.”

  She couldn’t. Automatically she reached for her holster so she could fire a shot to let them know her location—she’d also be alerting the bad guys who might or might not still be at the ruins, but that couldn’t be helped—and her hand slapped an empty holster.

  Damn it, damn it! Why had she ever taken it from the holster? She’d felt uneasy, yeah, and with good reason, but she wished she’d ignored that impulse.

  “Babe!” His tone was sharp now. “Report in.”

  “Shit,” Boom said softly, a few seconds later.

  “Trapper and I will go back—”

  “No.” Levi cut Jelly off.

  “She might be alive—”

  “Snake, what are their conditions?” Again Levi’s voice overrode Jelly’s.

  “Crutch has an abdominal. Voodoo was hit in the leg and upper right torso. They’re both bad.”

  “Find something to make litters. We’re carrying them out of here.” There was both ice and steel in Levi’s tone. “Snake, do what you can to stabilize them. We have to move fast.”

  “Ace . . .” That was Boom, his voice shaking a little, then it steadied. “Do what he said, guys, and double-time it.”

  “But I’m here,” Jina whispered into the night. “Don’t leave me.”

  Twenty

  Jina scrambled out of the wadi, no longer caring if she was exposed to anyone at the ruin who might have been looking for her. The fire had burned down to a much smaller blaze now and was farther off than she’d thought it would be. Wildly she looked around, but without Tweety and the laptop she couldn’t pinpoint the guys’ location, and without the night-vision goggles she had only the starlight to see by.

  She could hear the guys in her ear, as if she was there with them. They made litters with the materials they had at hand, scavenged from the bodies of those they’d been in the firefight with, and within an impossibly short length of time they were moving. Boom and Jelly were carrying Voodoo, Snake and Trapper were carrying Crutch, and Levi was on point. They would swap out positions, to give each of them in turn a rest.

  She tried yelling, only to find that the dust she’d inhaled had scratched her throat so much she couldn’t get much volume. They were too far away to hear, anyway, but she tried.

  They were gone. They were gone.

  She was alone.

  They’d left her.

  The realization was like a knife, slicing into her gut. Knowing why they had—two of the team were seriously wounded, and they had to get them out—that was accepted by her logic. Her heart, though, felt as if a giant hand was squeezing her. They’d left her behind, hadn’t even sent someone back to check.

  She was the least valuable member of the team.

  Knowing that and feeling it were two different things, and feeling it was shattering.

  Despite the heat her teeth chattered, and her breath hitched in her throat. They thought she was likely dead, but they hadn’t checked and now she would die. She had no weapon, no water, no shelter. She would die out here tomorrow, or the next day, assuming someone didn’t capture her and she thought she’d rather die first, all things considered.

  Mom! The single word echoed in her brain, brought all of them, her family, into sharp focus. They would never know exactly what happened to her, never have a body to bury. At best they’d be told that her remains were unrecoverable.

  But the guys hadn’t even tried. They’d left her behind.

  No! She had to get past that, push it away. She couldn’t just stand here and wait to die, she had to do something, and she couldn’t function if she let herself get sucked into despair. They’d done what they had to do. Now she had to do what she had to do.

  Inaction wasn’t an option. She refused to accept defeat, refused to give up. She had a chance, because she knew where they were going, knew the coordinates of the secondary exfil point.

  Willfully she fought down the thought-clouding panic; she needed every brain cell she had to get out of this alive. Not only did she know where they were going, but she had that damn compass in her cargo pocket, because months ago, almost a year now, they had insisted she learn it, use it, keep it with her, because sometimes phones and GPS didn’t work. Like now.

  “I can do this,” she said aloud, and hoped she wasn’t lying to herself.

  Cautiously she slid back down into the wadi and pulled out her little penlight, something else the guys had impressed on her to always keep with her—not in a bag, not nearby, but with her, just like the compass. They might have left her behind, but perhaps they’d also given her the means to survive.

  She had to plot her course. She had nothing to write on other than the ground, and her finger to scratch in the sand with, but she could do this. She opened the compass, figured the variable, and set her course, as much in her head as in the scratching on the ground. Then she st
ood and rubbed her boot over the scratches, because she didn’t want to give anyone who might look for her in the morning, in daylight, an idea where she had gone.

  If she let herself think about what she had to do, she’d be defeated before she even started, because this was so much more than she’d ever asked of herself before. She took some deep breaths, both calming herself and gearing up for what she had to do, then climbed out of the wadi again, and set out across the desert in a trot.

  Panic lurked, nipping at her heels. She wanted to run, she wanted to set a blistering pace across the sand, but she couldn’t. She shoved it down, forced herself to focus on what was real, on the now and perhaps the next five minutes. If she thought about the future, or the what-ifs, then she was done.

  Reality was that she was in the dark and she didn’t dare turn on the penlight to see better, because not only would she use up the battery way before daylight, but if any unfriendlies were out there, the light would pinpoint her location for them. Light was visible for long distances, even tiny pinpoints of light.

  But—what if the guys were close enough they could see the light, too? Would they investigate?

  They might shoot her.They had their NVDs, but the range of their weapons was greater than the visual range of the NVDs.

  There was no safe way to reunite with them en route. She had to get to the secondary location.

  She had to keep going. Focus, push, keep going. Set a steady, easy pace, and keep going.

  The heat and the night and the wind pressed down on her. Even at a trot, soon sweat was pouring off her. Her lungs burned, her mouth was cotton dry. No matter how easy the pace, in this kind of heat she needed water, water that she didn’t have and had no way of finding. Without water, she had no chance of surviving the daytime heat.

  Do this or die. Do this or die.

  She stepped on a rock that slid out from under her foot and she went down, sprawled on the sandy, rocky ground. Her fingerless gloves protected her palms, but her knees scraped. She ignored the pain, got up, resumed her pace.