Morgan's Rescue

by Lindsay McKenna

  “Hold still,” Culver ordered gruffly as he pulled the stained and bloody blouse away from her left shoulder. His eyes narrowed at the sight of her swollen, purplish skin. “Those sons of bitches,” he rasped as he gently replaced the material.

  Pilar looked dazedly up into his fiery gaze. “Th-they said they would give me medical treatment if I told them everything,” she managed to whisper. Her lips pulled into a grimace. “I told them nothing, mi querido.”

  Culver touched her feverish face. “I know,” he whispered thickly. “Hang on, Pilar. Just hang on. We’ve got an hour’s hike to the LZ, where Houston will meet us.”

  Pilar barely managed to nod her understanding. Then, as Culver picked her back up, she felt herself floating out of her body. No longer was she in pain, and because of her shamanic training, she recognized that she had slipped into an altered state of consciousness. Culver’s mouth pressed momentarily to hers as he lifted her against him. Weakly, Pilar tried to respond, but it was impossible. Still, his mouth was natural and strong against her lips, feeding her strength and energy.

  Moving in and out of consciousness, Pilar was barely aware of leaves swatting against them, splattering them with dew. At least it was clean water and how she’d longed, at first, for a shower. But, more than anything, she was thirsty. The guards had withheld even water. Her mouth was cottony, and she felt nearly delirious for moisture in any form. As Culver carried her through the dense jungle, droplets of water occasionally splashed on her lips, and she ran her tongue across them to absorb the precious liquid.

  A siren began to wail.

  “Damn!” Culver muttered, turning briefly back toward the compound. They had come nearly a mile. A guard must have discovered Pilar missing. The hunt was on. His arms tightened around Pilar’s light body. Glancing down at her, he saw that she was unconscious again, her head lolling back across his arm.

  His heart rate soaring with anxiety, Culver began to trot awkwardly with his load. Pilar moaned softly with each footfall, and he knew the jarring motion was hurting her. His fingers flexed, holding her even more snugly against him.

  If the guards found them, they’d kill them. He increased his stride, lifting his boots higher to avoid tripping over roots. Leaves and branches swatted at him continuously, some of them cutting mercilessly at his face and arms. Pilar might die. The thought terrified him. He knew the bullet was still in her body. What if it was near an artery? This jostling could sever it, and she’d bleed to death in minutes.

  The added sound of barking dogs made his skin crawl. Ramirez’s men had called in guard dogs to follow their scent through the jungle. Culver increased his speed. He had to run. Despite Pilar’s thinness, she still weighed at least a hundred pounds, and the muscles in his back began to protest. Culver knew he had another twenty minutes before they reached the small clearing north of the compound. Would Mike get there in time with the helicopter? If he was late, Ramirez’s men and dogs would catch them without question, and Mike, too, would be endangered.

  His mind gyrated back to Pilar. He loved her. He loved her more than life. And still he hadn’t told her. If she died, what would he do? How could he go on living? Culver hadn’t realized how dark his days had been for those years without her, until she’d magically reentered his life, like rays of pure sunlight and fresh breezes filling a room too long closed away. He no longer cared about the past or her reasons for what she’d done. He’d forgiven her. All he wanted now was a second chance, and with each step, he prayed to be given it.

  The baying of the dogs grew closer. He and Pilar were ten minutes from the clearing. Culver pressed her head and shoulders tightly against his chest as he ran, covering the ground in long, loping strides. He was grateful she had passed out, so she no longer felt the awful pain of her wound. Then, to his terror, he felt something sticky and warm trickling across his arm. He jerked his head, glancing downward. Pilar’s wound was bleeding heavily.

  From far in the distance, Culver began to hear the faint sounds of a helicopter speeding toward them. The dogs were closing in. Five minutes. Just five minutes to the clearing. The guards were firing wildly through the trees in a wide arc, though they couldn’t yet see him. Bullets whined and gasping for breath, Culver hunched over, using his body to shield Pilar. He heard her moan, then cry out as he leapt over an exposed root.

  “Hang on,” he gasped, tearing through the foliage and brush like a madman. He felt her hand weakly try to grasp his shirt, without success.

  Suddenly, Culver burst out into the clearing. He jerked to a halt, panting heavily. The helicopter was close, though he couldn’t see it. The dogs were closer, too. Placing Pilar on the ground, he allowed her to lean against his body as he knelt beside her. Pulling out his radio, he contacted Houston.

  “Roger, White Raven, our ETA is two minutes. Out,” Houston said.

  Culver shoved the radio back into the web belt around his waist. Anxiously, he looked down at Pilar. She had slumped against his left side, her head sagging wearily on his chest. Culver tried to steady his breathing as he glanced behind them. He pulled out his revolver, knowing that any minute now the dogs would find them. The vicious Dobermans were trained to kill. He’d have no remorse about shooting them.

  “Culver…”

  He leaned down, struggling to catch his breath as he placed his ear near Pilar’s mouth. She was speaking softly, in delirious fragments.

  “What is it?” he rasped, dividing his attention between her, the approaching aircraft and the howling dogs.

  “Mi querido…you must know…” Pilar used the last of her waning strength to reach up and wrap her fingers into the damp cotton of his shirt. She saw the hard set of his jaw, saw the terror and anger in his eyes. “Listen…” she pleaded faintly.

  Culver looked into her dazed eyes, filled with tears. “What is it?”

  “Rane…” she forced out the name, feeling the fingers of oblivion pulling at her again, “Promise to take care…”

  “Dammit, I told you I would. Now stop this, Pilar. You aren’t going to die. I want you to hang on. I love you. You can’t die. You have everything to live for.”

  Culver loved her. Though the words were distorted by her semiconscious state, Pilar clung to them, focused on them. She felt her fingers slipping nervelessly from the fabric of his shirt as she tried to hold his attention. “Rane…” she whispered faintly, “your daughter…Promise to raise her, mi querido… .”

  Thunderstruck, Culver stared down at Pilar as she sagged against him, unconscious. A trail of fresh blood gleamed like a dark river across her left breast and arm. Had he heard right? Rane was his daughter? So much was happening that Culver didn’t have time to think clearly about it. He saw the dark shapes of two Dobermans hurtling toward them. Without hesitation, he lifted the revolver and fired off two shots. The dogs yelped and dropped dead to the jungle floor.

  Holstering his weapon, Culver scooped Pilar into his arms. The helicopter was landing, its whapping blades like thunder pounding through the jungle around them. Bullets whined as Culver sprinted across the clearing, the wind from the blades buffeting him like the blows of a boxer. Any second now the guards would burst into the clearing, firing.

  As the helicopter touched down, Culver saw the door slide open. Mike Houston had a submachine gun, and the gunner at the door had an M-60 machine gun. Both began firing over Culver’s head into the jungle as he ran. Fifty more feet. Forty feet. Thirty. All he had to do was make it to the helicopter. He dug his toes into the damp jungle floor, smelling the fresh blood from Pilar’s wound and the hot oil of the helicopter engine. Smelling death.

  His breath tore from him in ragged gulps and his chest burned from exertion as he prayed that they would be allowed to live. His muscles were in spasms of torturous pain, but the anguish in his heart overrode in his physical discomfort. All that was important was Pilar. Just as he reached the helicopter, a spate of bullets peppered it. Ducking, Culver saw a medic just inside the helicopter, his arms outstretch
ed. Mike Houston was on the man’s left, the machine gunner on his right. In a supreme effort, Culver lifted Pilar up to the medic.

  More bullets exploded around him. With a grunt, Culver leapt into the helicopter and rolled heavily onto the metal deck.

  “Lift off! Lift off!” Houston thundered, jerking the door closed.

  Culver swore violently as the helicopter broke contact with the earth. He was thrown against the bulkhead as the aircraft made erratic maneuvers to escape, but his attention remained focused on Pilar, who lay sprawled on the deck behind him. He saw the paramedic frantically working over her. Houston pulled Culver upright and handed him a set of earphones plugged into intercabin communication.

  “What’s her condition?” he demanded.

  “Critical,” Culver rasped, wiping the sweat off his brow.

  “I’m a trained paramedic,” Houston barked. “I’ll help Sergeant Ernesto, who’s a Peruvian army medic. Just stay out of the way.”

  Culver nodded, feeling helpless. With the two men bent over Pilar, he could see nothing. He sank against the bulkhead as the helicopter strained for higher altitude and safety. Suddenly a faintness flowed into him. His muscles were knotted with cramps in his back, legs and arms, and he was shaking badly—shaking from the fear of losing Pilar. As he tipped his head back, he squeezed his eyes shut, her last words haunting him: Rane was his daughter. Oh, God, now it all made sense. Those four beautiful times they’d made love, he hadn’t worn any protection. They’d been unplanned moments between violence and danger, and he and Pilar had come together out of a need to reaffirm the life link between them.

  Rubbing his face savagely, Culver felt hot tears prick the backs of his eyes. The helicopters swaying and bobbing had stopped and flew in a straight, steady line toward Tarapoto. Pilar had become pregnant with his child. With beautiful, ethereal Rane, who looked so much like her mother. No wonder the little girl had such light skin and eyes. Now that he thought about it, Culver realized Rane’s jaw was shaped exactly like his. Picturing her, he began to see other small things in her face and body that spoke of his indelible stamp. She was going to be much taller than Pilar and strongly built, like the men and women in his family.

  His lips parted, and he felt tears trickle through the stubble of his beard, squeezing between his fingers, which were pressed hard against his face. Pilar had had to disappear, he realized, once she’d found out she was pregnant with his child. With a jab of pain, he recalled telling her he wasn’t ready for a family yet. But in South America it was taboo for a woman to be pregnant and unmarried. It was a sin of the worst kind in this culture, and Culver saw more clearly why Pilar had married Fernando—out of safety for her child and herself. Lifting his head, he saw Houston holding an IV above Pilar’s still form. The tears in his eyes blurred his view of the two men working frantically to save her life.

  What if Pilar died? Oh, God, no. Not now…

  Pilar must have thought he would spurn her—refuse to marry her and give their child his name. They had spent three months on that mission—most of it in danger. The sexual attraction between them had been explosive. Pilar hadn’t had a chance to get a real grasp of him as a person, Culver realized.

  The vibration of the helicopter moved through him as it flew swiftly through the night toward the small hospital in Tarapoto. Pilar hadn’t known him well enough to believe he sure as hell would have married her and insisted on keeping their child.

  Culver lifted his face, warm tears streaming from his eyes, no longer caring if anyone saw him. He’d made so many assumptions, all of them negative, and had held his anger against Pilar for all those years.

  Agony ripped through him at the look of worry in Houston’s eyes as the other man turned to him.

  “It isn’t good, Lachlan. She’s lost too much blood. We’re doing what we can to staunch it. Didn’t they take the bullet out?”

  “No,” he croaked. “I gave her a shot of antibiotics back at the compound. Ramirez was going to let her die if she didn’t tell him about the mission.”

  Grimly, Houston nodded. “Her blood pressure is very low, and she could go into cardiac arrest any minute. She needs a transfusion. Surgery.”

  A cry ripped from Culver as he scrambled from his position on the deck of the aircraft. He made a wild grab for Houston’s arm. “You save her life, you hear me?” he yelled, glaring into the other man’s haggard face. “Dammit, save her life!”

  Chapter 13

  “Pilar is in intensive care,” Major Mike Houston said tiredly in way of greeting as he gripped Culver’s slumped shoulder. “I just talked to the surgeon.”

  Culver roused himself. He’d been sitting in the hospital waiting room for nearly six hours. In the ambulance, he’d sat with Pilar, her small hand swallowed up by his, and at the emergency room door, he’d made the surgeon promise to allow Pilar to hold her medicine bag in her hand. The surgeon had understood, placing the small object in her limp fingers.

  “She’s out?” he croaked, his voice thick with exhaustion.

  Houston came around the chair and stood in front of him, hands on his narrow hips. “Yeah, I caught up with Dr. Juarez in the scrub room. He’ll be out to see you shortly.” The officer smiled a little. “You look like hell, Lachlan. Why don’t you get a hotel room down the street, take a shower and hit the sack? You can’t do anything here for her right now.”

  Scowling, Culver stood. The Special Forces major still wore his tiger-striped fatigues, and darkness showed beneath his eyes. Houston had stayed with him in the hospital, and Culver was grateful for the American’s care and interest. Right now, he felt damned alone. Helpless. He hadn’t slept in over sixty hours, and he swayed drunkenly on his feet.

  “They got a shower facility here?” he demanded.

  “Yeah, in the surgeon’s quarters. Why?”

  “Can you get me some clean clothes from somewhere?”

  Houston gave him an assessing look. “Yes.”

  Rubbing his bearded jaw, Culver nodded. “Good.”

  “You’re staying.” Houston didn’t phrase it as a question; it was a realization. With a shrug, he said, “I’ll get my aide, Sergeant Javier, to rustle up some civilian clothes.”

  “Thanks.” Culver’s vision kept blurring. He had been sitting in that chair sweating for six hours. As badly as he needed sleep, he couldn’t rest. His mind raced with thoughts about Pilar, Rane and himself. He so desperately needed to talk to Pilar.

  “This woman,” Houston began awkwardly. “She means a lot to you, doesn’t she?”

  Culver nodded wearily as he began to walk down the polished tile hall toward the surgeon’s scrub area, Houston falling into step beside him.

  “I just got off the phone with Perseus. I thought you’d like to know that their aircraft is on its way to the U.S.”

  “Anything on Morgan’s condition?” Culver asked. His feet felt as if they were weighted with cement.

  “They’ve got him stabilized. They brought a flight surgeon with them, a woman doctor who works for Perseus. Arrangements have already been made to put Morgan in Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.”

  “Did the flight surgeon say anything about his condition? You saw what he was like—a vegetable, with no memory of anything.”

  Houston nodded grimly and pursed his lips as they slowed down in front of the surgeon’s area. “No…no change, I’m sorry to say.”

  “And he’s got a wife and two kids,” Culver muttered. “He either has amnesia or they’ve permanently wiped out his memory. The poor bastard.”

  Houston opened the door for him. “I feel for his family.”

  Culver agreed as he walked through the entrance and saw the surgeon changing out of his green operating clothes. Turning, he held out his hand to Houston. “Thanks—for everything.”

  Grinning a little, the major gripped his hand and shook it. “I’ll be hanging around until things stabilize for you here.”

  Culver nodded gratefully. First he’d talk with the sur
geon, then he’d get a hot shower, shave and put on some clean clothes. After that he’d sit with Pilar. She wouldn’t know he was there, but that didn’t matter.

  Culver awoke instantly when Pilar regained consciousness for the first time. He’d been sitting in an uncomfortable chair next to her bed, his head tipped back against the wall. Major Houston had a lot of power in Tarapoto Hospital, Culver had discovered very quickly. Ordinarily, visitors weren’t allowed to stay in intensive care, but Houston had seen to it that he was allowed to sit with Pilar. The beeps and sighs of machines surrounded him as he tried to shake off the grogginess.

  Culver had completely lost track of time. He’d nodded off while stroking Pilar’s cool, limp hand. The clock on the wall read 6:00 p.m., so he must have slept a long time. Blinking away the drowsiness, he focused on Pilar.

  She lay with IVs in both arms, her shoulder heavily bandaged beneath a light blue gown. Her hair, once muddy and tangled, had been washed. Though it hadn’t been combed very well, the strands lay like shining raven’s wings about her pale face. Her once-beautiful lips were badly cracked. Culver had been told that more than anything else, Pilar had been dehydrated. At once he’d realized she must have been denied water since her capture. He wanted to kill Ramirez for his inhumanity. But now the IVs fed her life-giving fluids to help her body fight off the massive infection.

  Culver turned to call for a nurse, but she was already there. His attention riveted on Pilar, who had begun to move her head slightly. She closed and opened her mouth, whispering something. Leaning closer until his ear nearly touched her lips, Culver strained to hear her words.

  “Rane…Culver…”

  Holding her fingers in his, Culver swallowed with difficulty. The nurse, after checking the monitors, seemed satisfied.

  “Is she doing okay?” Culver asked.