The Way Home oj-2

by Cindy Gerard

  Nate leaned around the woman and yelled at Cooper as they ran the gauntlet of enemy fire. “Blow the cobs out of this bitch!”

  “HOW’S YOUR AMMO?” Ty asked Mike. Ty was down to three loaded rounds and one more mag.

  “So low that that I might have to start calling them names and hope they’ll run home crying to their Mommas. ”

  “I’m low, too.” Waldrop zeroed in on another suicide runner.

  They were fairly well protected behind the berm—until the baddies put two and two together and figured out that they could surround them and pick them off like carnival ducks.

  They were also outmanned and outgunned, and right now, the only thing that stood between them and a very bad day was for Nate and the boys to come rolling up and call in the air strike. And soon might not be soon enough.

  Ty had heard the radio commo. He knew Nate and the team had Jeff Albert onboard. He’d wanted to be there when they found him. At the least, he’d wanted to be in the cockpit when Albert boarded the bird. Wanted to be able to look him in the eye, see that this man had gone through hell, and know he’d done the right thing coming after him and bringing him home to Jess.

  Helluva deal. Now it looked as if he was the one who might not come home alive.

  “Hooah!” Waldrop crowed. “Lookie lookie who came to play.”

  Ty poked his head up to see an overloaded truck barreling toward them, the muzzle flashes of Alpha and Bravo squads lighting the way.

  Relief shot through his blood. They were a long way from home-free, but things were finally looking up.

  Mike keyed his radio. “Lead. Friendlies at your twelve.”

  “Roger that, Reaper. Get ready. We’re coming in.”

  Ty loaded his last magazine, and when the truck roared up in front of the berm, he, Mike, and Waldrop jumped up firing and leaped into the back of the truck.

  “Gentlemen.” Reed snagged Ty’s hand with a grin. “The conductor will be by soon to check your tickets.”

  The charges on their downed chopper blew just as they cleared the blast radius.

  Mike grinned. “Let DOD try to take that out of my paycheck.”

  “THIS HORSE IS going to pull up lame any minute now!” Cooper yelled as they bounced over the rough terrain. The truck was so overloaded the shocks kissed the ground every few feet, as they put as much ground as possible between them and the advancing Taliban fighters.

  “That’s what happens when you try to stuff two tons of rocks into a one-ton box,” Nate agreed.

  Damn. He was happy as hell they’d hooked up with the Reaper crew. Now he could call in that much-needed air support. His radio cracked just as he reached for his mike.

  “Charlie to Lead. It looks bad down there, Nate. You ready for that air support?”

  Nate flipped an IR strobe back to Reed, who tapped it to the roof of the truck’s cab. “Charlie, see our strobe?”

  “Roger that.”

  “Then give Striker permission to light up anything he sees moving within a quarter-mile radius of us.”

  “My pleasure. Lead, stand by.”

  Moments later, a faint sound of propellers hummed overhead. Next came a chainsaw-like buzz from what he figured was the gunship’s 25mm cannon, followed by an explosion that shook the ground beneath their wheels. Two more explosions followed in quick succession.

  “Charlie to Lead.” B.J. this time. “Three trucks scratched.”

  “I’ll thank you properly next time I see you.”

  “The hell you will,” Mendoza groused from the back.

  “See, boss,” Reed put in. “I’m not the only one who gets twitchy where my wife is concerned.”

  “I’m not twitchy,” Mendoza groused. “I’m damn weary of getting shot at.”

  Because they were two of his best and because he knew this kind of nonsense was how they let off steam, Nate ignored them. “Charlie, be advised, our transpo isn’t going to last much longer. What can you do for us?”

  “Way ahead of you, Lead. There’s a significant force at Firebase Shaker.”

  “Say again.” He’d thought that all FOBs had all pulled out of the province.

  “What the mainstream media doesn’t know can’t hurt us and all that,” B.J. replied. “They’re already on the move to meet up with your team. ETA your position thirty mikes. You can radio contact them on channel seventeen.”

  “All right!” Mendoza crowed, overhearing the commo. “You now have my permission to kiss my wife, sir. Reed’s, too. They have saved our sorry selves yet one more time.”

  For the first time since things had started going south, Nate smiled.

  “Roger that, Charlie. You two better pucker up. You’re both going to be mighty popular when we get back.”

  If the team could only hold on for a little while, the cavalry would arrive, and they were golden.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Crystal advised, sounding worried. “We’re seeing multiple dismounts headed your way. Danger close. Too close for air strikes. You’re going to have to roll out fast or hunker down and hang on until Firebase Shaker arrives to evac.”

  “Roger that.” Nate turned to Cooper. “Let’s roll.”

  They rolled all of twenty yards, and the truck groaned, gasped, and stalled.

  TY HAD BEEN looking for a meeting with Jeff Albert—J.R.—and he’d finally gotten it. When he’d jumped into the back of the truck, he’d landed across from him. And damn, the shape the man was in, made his own back pain seem like a tickle.

  He was a shadow of the man in the photograph that hung behind the register in Jess’s store. At first glance, he’d thought they’d picked up a Taliban captive. He was dressed like a local, at least eighty pounds lighter than his photo, and sporting a beard that covered half of his face. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes barely slits. And clearly, he was suffering.

  Yes, he said to himself. Yes, he’d done the right thing. But Jess… there was no way in the world Jess could be even remotely prepared to see this man who was her husband.

  He was not going to be her husband. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  “That’s it.” Cooper’s voice carried from the cab to the truck box after attempting to turn over the engine several times. “She’s dead.”

  “Everybody out,” Nate ordered. “This is where we make a stand.”

  Wincing against the knifing pain in his back, Ty climbed out with the rest of them, ashamed of himself for an instant of hesitation before reaching for Albert’s arm and helping him and the woman and her father out of the truck.

  Albert nodded his thanks and leaned heavily against the tailgate.

  “You doing OK?” Ty asked. Albert was sheet-white as he slid to the ground.

  “Holding up,” Albert said through gritted teeth.

  Poor sonofabitch, Ty thought. A stand-up soldier. He was amazed that he’d made it three and a half years with the ISI and come out alive.

  “How’s your father doing?” he asked the woman, who had moved beside the old man, her arm linked through his in support.

  “He will be fine.”

  Ty had to look away then. He couldn’t look at Albert without wishing for something that was no longer his.

  He scanned the area. There was minimal cover here. Open ground.

  Nate moved up beside them. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’d better start digging.”

  Ty grabbed a shovel from Taggart’s gear. Neither Taggart nor Green would be digging with those bullet holes in their arms. Instead, the two of them provided cover while the rest of the team started digging shallow Ranger graves.

  They had barely enough time to dig a long, shallow trench when a shot rang out, too close for comfort.

  “Take cover!” Nate shouted.

  Ty helped Nate get the woman and her father away from the truck and into a Ranger grave. Once he had them settled, he went back for Albert, who leaned heavily on him, stumbling across the ground like a drunk. When they reached the small berm, both
of them dropped behind it. “Hold on, bud.”

  He’d just scrambled in beside him when he caught his brother’s eye.

  A mix of pride and sympathy accompanied Mike’s sharp nod.

  Ty couldn’t bear looking at him. Couldn’t bear knowing that Mike was wishing the same thing he was. That everyone came out of this alive and got what he wanted.

  Right now, Ty figured the best he could hope for was the alive part.

  THE TRIP FROM the village to pick up the Reaper squad and run like hell had seemed like an eternity. In fact, it had been all of fifteen minutes. The next thirty minutes, however, as they fought off Taliban and waited for ground support, were among the longest Nate had ever lived. He was down to one magazine for his pistol. His rifle was empty, despite taking ammo from dead Taliban.

  Everyone else was in pretty much the same state. They grouped tightly together to provide as much mutually supporting fire as they could, given their ammo situation.

  Beside him in the trench, blood trickled down Jones’s temple and splattered Mendoza’s fatigues.

  “How bad?” Nate asked.

  Mendoza grinned. “Not mine. The big guy here stuck his head in front of a bullet and decided to bleed all over me.”

  “Hard as a steel plate,” Jones assured his boss. “Relax. It’s a scratch.”

  “Coulter,” Nate called, as AK-47 fire continued to zip around them.

  “Right behind you.” Hunkering low, Coulter removed Jones’s helmet and checked out what, fortunately, turned out to be a flesh wound. “You make my life so hard.”

  “I make your life complete.” Jones grinned at him. “We all know that.”

  “I thought I made your life complete,” Reed protested.

  “I know this goes against the grain,” Nate cut in, “but now might be a good time to stay focused.”

  Out of the dark, directly in front of them, a horde of Taliban fighters ran screaming toward them with one goal in mind.

  This is it, Nate thought, seeing his wife’s face as clearly as if Juliana were beside him. This was where he was going to die.

  Then he heard it. The distinct sound of MK19 40mm grenade launchers and Browning M-2 fifty-caliber machine guns bombarding the air.

  He glanced over his shoulder. Three Stryker armored fighting vehicles rolled to a stop directly behind them, their big guns blazing.

  Beside him, his men let out a whoop, and faced with the intimidating guns mounted on the Strykers, the Taliban fighters who were still alive turned and ran in the other direction.

  The cavalry had indeed arrived.

  Chapter 27

  JEFF WAS ALONE IN THE hospital room when he woke up the second time. A machine blipped softly in the background. He lifted his arm, let it fall. A plastic tube ran into an IV port inserted into the back of his hand. A cuff on his arm tightened, measuring his blood pressure and pulse. The plastic clip on his finger measured his blood-oxygen levels.

  He vaguely remembered someone telling him they were treating him with IV fluids that dripped from a bag hanging somewhere behind him.

  He specifically remembered Nate Black assuring him that they’d made it. That he was safe. Once again, he didn’t remember everything that had happened to him. He remembered that the rough, hot, dizzying ride inside the belly of the Stryker had kicked up the vertigo with a vengeance. He’d puked his guts out and then gotten the dry heaves. Long before they’d made base, he’d been barely conscious despite the team medic—Coulter—hanging an IV to rehydrate him.

  He didn’t remember much after that, including the flight to the AFB or his admission into the hospital.

  “The NATO-run hospital at the Kandahar Air Force Base is a forty-plus-million-dollar facility,” Black had assured him, as he’d helped him into the ambulance that had met their air transport from FOB Shaker. “The medical staff will do everything humanly possible to get you squared away again.”

  Everything but one. They hadn’t let him see Rabia.

  “Rabia.” He could barely speak, his throat and mouth were so dry. He didn’t know how long he’d been out this time, but he was frantic to know what was happening with her. “Rabia.” He tried again. Her name came out as a hoarse croak.

  “Well, hello, soldier. Welcome back to the land of the living. How you feeling?”

  He opened his eyes. A tidy Air Force nurse in a prim white uniform stood by the side of the bed.

  “Rabia,” he croaked again.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t understand you.” She turned away, then came back with a wet sponge swab that she gently wiped over his lips. “See if this helps.”

  He sucked on the swab like a man dying of thirst.

  “Better? How about an ice chip? It’s not much, I know, but we don’t want to overdo it.”

  He nodded, then regretted it as the room began to spin.

  “The vertigo should settle down a bit for you soon.” She laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Doctor prescribed both antinausea and antivertigo meds. That’s why you conked out on us again. Stuff makes you sleepy, but I guess you already figured that out. We’re pumping fluids to get you rehydrated. In the meantime, try to stay still and let the meds do their work. If you continue to progress, I wouldn’t be surprised if they authorize a flight home to a hospital in the States tomorrow.”

  She went on, checking his IV bag, then fluffing his pillow, “Normally, they would ship you to Ramstein AFB in Germany, but since you’re a special case, you’re going straight home.”

  He was a special case, all right. He still didn’t know where home was. He had so many questions. No one had come up with any answers.

  He opened his mouth for the ice chip, let it melt, then reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Where. Is. Rabia?”

  “Rabia? Is that the Pashtun woman who came in with you?”

  “Yes. Where is she?”

  “She’s down the hall.”

  “I want to see her.”

  She carefully removed his hand from her arm and laid it on top of the pristine white sheets. “Let me go see what I can find out, OK?”

  He closed his eyes, afraid to feel too much relief. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be right back. You rest.”

  NATE ADDRESSED THE team once Albert had been turned over to the medical staff. “It goes without saying, we need to keep the mission and Sergeant Albert’s rescue quiet, for national security reasons and for Albert’s privacy. The last thing the guy needs is for his story to blow wide open on an international scale. He’d be bombarded by the press. Hell, his story has blockbuster movie written all over it. But for now, he has a lot of recovery ahead of him. A lot of healing physically and emotionally. A lot of adjusting to do.”

  For that reason, Nate asked for a volunteer to stand guard outside Albert’s hospital room.

  Despite the fact that his back was killing him, Ty had stepped forward without hesitation and now stood at parade rest outside Albert’s door.

  For the same reason that he couldn’t articulate why he needed to be a part of the rescue mission, he couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he’d volunteered for this duty.

  “Why are you doing this to yourself, bro?” Mike had asked on the plane from Minnesota to Virginia before they’d deployed to Kandahar.

  “What would you do?” Ty had asked. “If you suddenly found out the woman you loved had a husband, a war hero, a man who has to have been through hell and back… wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want to see for yourself if he was alive and, if he was, face him so you’d know firsthand what kind of man she’s leaving you for?”

  “You don’t know that she’ll go back to him.”

  Unfortunately, he did know. Now that he’d seen Albert and knew what sad shape he was in, he knew exactly what she would do. “I know Jess. She’s loyal. She doesn’t quit on anything. If he needs her, she’ll be there for him. And we both know where that leaves me.”

  So yeah, maybe in a way, he was doing this more for Jess. He sure as hel
l wasn’t doing it for himself. Was he glad Jeff was alive? Of course. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dying by degrees knowing he’d lose Jess because of it.

  So here he stood, making sure he knew that Albert was a stand-up guy. Making sure he wasn’t so far off the deep end emotionally and mentally after his ordeal that Jess wouldn’t be safe with him. And making sure he had an impression of the man to remind himself that Albert had Jess first, so he would always remember where his place was.

  He overheard Albert and the nurse speaking. Sensed Albert’s distress when he’d asked about the Pashtun woman, Rabia. After observing the two of them together in the back of the truck and then in the Stryker, Ty could see there were very close ties between them. What kind of close he wasn’t even going to speculate. She had saved his life. He’d depended on her for his very existence for months. They’d been through a lot together. Now she and her father were homeless, and Albert got to add guilt to the pile of things he needed to deal with.

  The nurse slipped out of the room, gave him a quick smile, and headed silently down the hall in her soft-soled shoes. Not long after, footsteps brought his head around to see Nate Black escorting the Pashtun woman toward Albert’s room.

  The hospital staff had helped her clean up and given her a pair of scrubs and a scarf to replace her dirty clothes. Her head was down, but he could see enough of her face to know she looked drawn and exhausted. In shock, no doubt. She’d been through a firefight. She’d lost her home. Now she was going to lose Albert. Regardless of what they meant to each other, everything in her world had turned upside down in a few hours.

  “You’re relieved, son.” Nate nodded to him. “Go find Reed to replace you, then get someone to look at your back and get some shut-eye. As soon as the base commander and the medical staff release him, we’ll see Albert the rest of the way home.”

  It wasn’t exactly relief Ty felt as he nodded and walked away.

  It wasn’t exactly anything. Physically he was in pain. Emotionally, he felt numb. He felt as if his body and his mind were operating on two separate planes. And it felt as if his heart was back home in a cabin by a lake, in a big log bed where he would never lie with the woman he loved.