by Linda Howard
She didn’t let herself think. This was big, maybe bigger than she could handle, and if she got caught in the details, she’d falter. She had to be a machine, she had to run the way she’d trained to run—beyond how she’d trained, because this was farther than she’d ever run before. This was hours and hours in the dark, in the heat, unable to avoid pitfalls or vipers or anything else. One of those weird rabbit/kangaroo rats—what had Mamoon called it? She couldn’t remember—might jump on her and trip her.
Don’t think, Jina. Don’t worry about the rat. Just move, keep moving.
Was she still alive?
The possibility, slim as it was, ate at his guts. Levi set a brutal pace when he was on point, driven by the need to move, to get his men to safety and good medical care before it was too late, before they were carrying two corpses instead of two teammates. The faster he got to the pickup point, the sooner he could go back.
He had to. He had to find her.
Even if she hadn’t survived, he had to bring her body back. No man left behind. No woman, either. That was the creed he’d operated under when he was in the military, and nothing had changed when he joined the GO-Teams. He wouldn’t leave her for the jackals, the rats.
Only Voodoo and Crutch, saving them, kept him focused. Every time he thought about Jina, hearing the explosion and seeing the fire glow in the distance, he nearly buckled under the despair that gutted him. He hadn’t kept her safe.
He’d done what he thought he had to do, for the cohesion of the team, and kept her at a distance, always thinking that things would change, that he’d have time later to explore this thing between them. Now it was too late. She was gone. All the things he thought he’d have time for, holding her and laughing with her, fighting with her, those were gone with her.
“Hold up!” Snake said and did a quick check of the wounded men. Voodoo was in danger of bleeding out, and Crutch had an abdominal wound that could be fatal even if he’d had instant medical care. The massive infection from wounds to the gut was difficult to overcome, period.
Unable to help himself, Levi turned and looked behind them, as if he could conjure a small figure emerging from the night, blue-and-amber eyes flashing while she called them morons for going off and leaving her.
He’d left her.
Boom’s hand closed on his shoulder. Levi didn’t look at his friend and teammate, because sometimes not looking was easier.
“You couldn’t have done anything,” Boom said, his tone rough with emotion.
“Doesn’t matter.” Guilt and regret, grief and rage and despair, all balled together in his chest until he felt as if he could barely breathe. “When we get Voodoo and Crutch on the bird, I’m going back.”
“I’ll go with you,” Boom immediately volunteered.
Levi shook his head. “No. You have Terisa and the kids to go home to, so you go. The mission is done, it was an ambush. Fuck if I know how it was set up, or why. You can report as well as I can.”
“Two doubles the chance of success,” Boom retorted.
“I can go,” Trapper said. “I’m not married.”
“Or me,” Jelly offered.
Snake had a savage expression on his face. Not only did he have a family, too, but he had to stay with Crutch and Voodoo, keep them alive if he could.
Again Levi shook his head no. “This is on me. I won’t risk any of you. I made the decision to leave her, and I’m going back for her.”
The ground went out from under her. Jina gave a hoarse shriek as she tumbled down the rough side of a dry wadi. She hit hard, narrowly missed a large rock. She scrambled away from the rock, in case a snake was using it as shelter. Or maybe snakes were using the night to hunt, and sheltered during the searing heat of the day.
The impact hurt, but she hadn’t broken any bones. Was this the human version of having a beat-up chassis but a good motor? She don’t look like much, fellas, but she runs good.
She ran good. Hours and hours and hours of running. Legs like steel. Lungs like . . . lungs like jellyfish. Breathing hard, she decided now was a good time to recheck her course. The short rest would keep her from overtaxing her stamina.
Shaking, she pulled out the compass and penlight, and replotted. She’d gone a little off course, but not too bad. Okay. Really, she was doing pretty good. She’d covered some ground, not as much as she’d have liked because what she’d have liked was to be there right now, but a decent distance.
What time was it? How could she not have thought of that before? She roughly estimated the distance, then looked at the luminous hands on her heavy-duty wristwatch like all the guys wore. The world’s top marathoners could run that distance in two-something hours, but she wasn’t a top marathoner, and they ran in daylight, in sneakers on city streets, with people giving them water along the way. She figured her speed would be less than half that, so . . . at best she had, probably, another five hours of running, and that was if she didn’t fall and break a leg or crush her skull, though in the case of skull-crush, her worries were over.
Covering that distance in five hours was a reasonable expectation, she thought. A nice brisk walk would cover a mile in fifteen minutes, four miles an hour, twenty miles in five hours.
Five hours would at least be nautical twilight, and she’d be able to see.
What kind of time would the guys make? They were by necessity traveling slower, but had a shorter distance, and she knew they would push themselves to get Crutch and Voodoo to medical help as fast as possible. They were strong, they could see, and they had water. They might not be much slower.
If they got to the exfil point ahead of her, Levi would call in the helicopter for pickup, and they might be gone before she could get there. It was a short hop for the helicopter, across the Iraqi border just into Syria, then back. It wouldn’t wait; as soon as the guys were on board, it would lift off.
She had to go faster.
She climbed out of the wadi and set off again, picking up the pace. The boots rubbed up and down on her feet despite the two pairs of socks she wore. She was sweating so much her socks were damp, anyway. Nothing she could do. She felt the blisters rubbing, felt the pain burning. She ran. She had to cut that time down.
She ran. She fell. She got up and ran again. Over and over. Her gasping breath burned in her chest. But every time she fell she used the opportunity to recheck her course, to catch her breath. Veering off course would be disastrous.
God, her feet hurt. The pain was crippling, so debilitating that tears stung her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. Furiously she ordered herself to stop crying, because she couldn’t afford to lose even that much moisture. She stopped, stood weaving back and forth. Could she pull her boots off, run barefoot? Yes, there were rocks and rough shrubs and all sorts of other things, but could that hurt worse than scrubbing her feet raw?
Yes, it could. Her feet were already raw, she could tell by the sharpness of the pain. If she tried running barefoot she’d be inviting massive infection in her feet. Her fault; she’d grabbed the wrong boots.
Run anyway. No matter what, she had to run anyway. Forget her feet. One step after another, that was all she had to do, take the next step, and the next, and the next. Five hours. She could get through five hours. She could focus only on the next step, the next yard, the next mile. She could because she had no choice.
She ran.
What was Levi thinking? Did it bother him that he’d left her behind, was he thinking of her at all, or only about getting his wounded men to safety?
She began crying again.
He’d told her, in words so plain there was no misunderstanding: she was the least valuable member of the team. And now he’d proven it to her.
How many miles? She stopped, tried to calculate how far she’d gone, but the numbers didn’t make sense. She couldn’t remember, but she knew the coordinates, knew the time. She felt the minutes passing, tick-tock, closer and closer, later and later. Any minute could be one minute too late. She concentrated, dug deep
er.
Her feet were agony.
The next time she fell, she lay facedown in the gritty sand, the sudden transition from upright to prone so overwhelming her entire body went limp in relief. She thought about closing her eyes and going to sleep. How blissful that would be, and how easy, just go to sleep and forget about this pain, this spirit-breaking struggle.
The temptation was so strong that she forced herself to sit up and dig the compass from her pocket. She opened it, stared at it with blurred vision, unable to make the dial make sense. Blinking hard, she tried again. Still blurred. Shit. She closed her eyes and sat, sucking in deep breaths, trying to gather her thoughts. She had to do this or she’d die. She couldn’t quit, not now.
When she felt a little steadier, she opened her eyes and made herself focus. She painstakingly checked the compass, replotted her course, then did it again to make sure she had it right. Okay. She could do this. She clicked off the penlight . . . and realized the darkness wasn’t absolute any longer. The black was becoming gray—a dark gray, but still a definite lightening around her.
Daylight was coming. She was running out of time.
She got up and ran.
Her feet pounded in time with her thoughts. I can do this. I have to do this. Left behind. Left behind. Left behind.
Staying upright was harder now. She kept listing to the side. She stopped, sucked in air, focused once more.
“Don’t quit,” she chanted to herself, under her breath. “Don’t quit.”
She’d never quit anything. She couldn’t start now.
She ran. Her mind felt as if she was running, but her body seemed to be rebelling, going slower and slower. Hours. How many hours had she been running? Was it five hours yet? She’d estimated five hours, that was her target. If she could keep going for the full five hours, she’d be there. She couldn’t let herself think anything else.
The dark gray became a light gray, the rocky sand took on a reddish hue, like blood. She puzzled over the color, finally realized that she could see. She wasn’t running in the unending darkness now, time had worked its unending magic and unending hell, because it was running out, time was running out.
The terrain was rougher, there was more vegetation—not much, but enough to matter, because that meant if the guys were close by she might be blocked from their view.
Don’t quit.
“I won’t,” she promised, her tone broken, breathless. “I won’t.”
Something . . . a noise, barely heard over the harsh rasp of her breathing. A strange rhythmic whump-whump that made her frown, because it seemed familiar but she couldn’t place it. Her instinct said to keep moving but the noise bothered her and she stopped, her head tilted as she listened to it. What was that? She’d heard it before, she knew she had.
Because she’d stopped, she dragged out the compass; it was habit now. Frowning, she stared down at the dial, the reading, concentrated.
The compass was wrong. She must have broken it. It said she was almost there, but she wasn’t, she was still alone and in Bumfuck Egypt, wherever the hell that was. No . . . Syria. She was in Syria. Bumfuck Syria. Ha! Egypt had a better ring to it.
But if the compass was broken, then she’d be here forever because she didn’t know how to find her way out.
Whump-whump-whump.
She looked up and saw a giant black insect thing, silhouetted against the horizon, and then it settled down to the earth.
Helicopter! Her dazed brain seized on the word, screamed it at her. It was the helicopter, their helicopter. She’d made it!
No, she hadn’t, because she was still standing there. Clumsily she began to run toward the helicopter, her legs not working quite right so that she lurched more than ran, but she was moving.
“Wait for me,” she croaked, her voice barely audible. “Here! I’m here! I’m coming. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”
Twenty-One
“Hostile approaching!” one of the Blackhawk gunners urgently sang out.
They had already loaded Crutch and Voodoo, and Snake was checking them. His face was tense, knowing they were on borrowed time and things could go south for them at any minute. The whole march to the secondary pickup point had been tense, a battle against time and distance in the effort to save them, and underscored by the sick knowledge that they’d lost Babe and been forced to leave her body behind.
Levi’s head snapped around. He’d seen his men loaded, and he was getting ready to do what he had to do, knowing he might not ever see them again. Going back was a huge risk, with maybe a fifty/fifty chance of getting out alive. He’d take what water and food they had with them; he couldn’t travel during the day, on foot, in heat that would likely be in the 130-degree range. He’d been awake all night and would have to shelter during the day, get some sleep, then start out when the sun went down and the heat dissipated some. The bodies they’d left behind would have been sniffed out by the desert predators by now, and they might have gotten into the ruin— He shut that thought down, fast, because he couldn’t let himself go there.
He’d find her, find his Babe, bury her if he couldn’t bring her remains out.
But first they had to deal with one more piece of shit in a shit-filled mission.
The gunner had brought his barrel around. Levi narrowed his eyes, gripping his own weapon, moving for cover. Then—something. Something about the distant approaching figure made him shoot his hand out, grab the barrel, and push it up. “Wait,” he muttered, staring hard through fatigue-blurred eyes. The unknown lurching toward them was small, a woman or a kid, and thin, and so completely covered with dust that making out individual features was impossible. But the clothes were . . . not Syrian, and there seemed to be a long mop of hair swinging—
“It’s her,” he said, blurting the words before his brain could catch up to his mouth.
“What?” Boom whirled, already halfway on the helicopter. All of them turned, staring hard at the stumbling figure approaching them. But Levi knew, knew somehow in his gut, and relief hit him so hard he almost staggered himself.
Then he was running, bent low under the whirling blades of the helicopter. “Wait, man,” the gunner said sharply, but Levi charged across the sand and rocks toward her. If anyone was chasing her, she’d need cover. If no one was chasing her, she’d need help, because she was lurching wildly, unable to keep a straight course. Boom caught up with him and the two of them closed on her.
His throat clogged, choking him with a massive wave of emotions he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t joy, it was as if he’d been thrown into hell and suddenly jerked back, as if his life had been over and now it wasn’t.
He and Boom reached her, reached out to support her. If he hadn’t known it was Jina, he wouldn’t have recognized her. Her face was gaunt, coated with sweat and dust, her eyes blind and staring. It was as if she didn’t see them, as if she was so focused on keeping her feet moving that she plowed right into them. Levi caught her, then caught the feeble punch she threw at him because she was who she was and never stopped fighting. “Easy, babe,” he said, then dipped his knees and tilted her over his shoulder, stood upright with the slight burden of her safe in his grip. The scent of blood hit him, made his stomach twist.
He and Boom loped back to the helicopter. Boom climbed in, reached out, and Levi handed her over. The helicopter had room for eleven combat personnel or six stretchers; with Voodoo and Crutch on stretchers, space was tight, but there was room to lay her down.
“Leave me alone,” she muttered, the words barely legible.
Levi vaulted aboard, yelled, “Go!” to the pilot, and they lifted off in a storm of dust and debris. He reached out and gripped one of her ankles, knowing what kind of shape her feet were in, to ease her boots off.
She kicked out violently, her heel catching him on the shin. “Leave me alone,” she said again, her tone fierce, then she turned on her side with her back to them, curling up in a protective ball, and he saw her go limp.
&
nbsp; With a quick check on the two wounded, Snake scrambled over to her, shook her. She didn’t respond.
“She’s out!” Levi yelled as he swiftly began unlacing her boots.
Snake put two fingers on her neck, checked her pulse. “Heart rate’s too fast!” he yelled back. Quickly he pinched the back of her hand, watched the skin stay pinched. “Dehydrated, bad! We need to get some fluids in her!”
Voodoo and Crutch were already getting fluids, in an effort to keep them alive until they could get to a field hospital. There were no more IV lines available. Severe dehydration was critical; she might go into cardiac arrest. Abandoning her boots, Levi grabbed one of the remaining bottles of water, poured it over her head and the back of her neck. She didn’t move, even when the water ran down into her face. She couldn’t swallow; she was unconscious, and she’d choke if they tried to pour water down her. Pouring it over her wasn’t much, but it was all he could do to cool her down with the supplies they had. He held his hand out and Boom slapped another bottle of water into it.
He slowly poured more water over her head while Snake cut her boots off. Her socks were bloody—not just a little, but bloody from her toes up to her ankles. Snake cut the socks off, too, exposed her raw and bleeding feet. There was almost no skin left on her heels or across her toes, just exposed meat.
“Ten minutes!” the copilot bellowed, aware that every minute counted.
Ten minutes. They were almost there, if Voodoo and Crutch could hang on. In ten minutes, they’d have help, blood, and antibiotics to support them while they underwent emergency surgery. In ten minutes someone would start an IV line, get some fluids in her before she started convulsing.
Ten minutes.
It felt like a lifetime.
Jina woke in a white tent. She stared around, her vision blurry. She was lying down; her tired brain deciphered that much. But she didn’t know where she was, and she didn’t care. She wasn’t alone; she could see what seemed like a row of people . . . maybe. Or maybe she was alone.