by Cindy Dees
Tom drew breath to call the attack, when Howdy’s voice came across the headset tersely. “Movement. Ferrare’s backup thugs are closing in.”
Outstanding. The gunmen were about to give his team their backs. Tom closed his mouth and watched the four mercenaries run at a half crouch toward the confrontation in the gazebo, rifles held at the ready in front of them. They acted confident. Sure that they were in charge. The corner of Tom’s mouth curled up sardonically. Clearly, they didn’t know Charlie Squad was on the field.
One of the commandos shouted in a British accent. “Freeze! We’ve got you covered, Dutcher.”
Dutch rolled and climbed to his feet slowly, dragging his right leg. Tom nodded knowingly. Dutch’s standard fake-injury move. Dutch wasn’t anywhere near as hurt as he was pretending. Tom recognized the act from a dozen previous missions.
Another few seconds to let this farce play out. And then it would be time for the endgame.
Julia lay in a tangled heap with her father, unsure of what to do next. If she stayed on top of him, maybe his men wouldn’t kill her. But then she looked up. Into a beautiful pair of sapphire-blue eyes. Dutch was alive! The man had more lives than a cat. She’d seen the bullets slam into him. How was he still standing?
He offered a hand down to her. Dazed, she reached for it and let him help her to her feet. He squeezed her hand tightly and displayed easy strength as he pulled her up. But then he limped away from her and her heart went into her throat at the sight of him wounded. Her gaze went frantically to his torso, looking for mortal wounds.
No blood. How was that possible? She frowned. She’d been certain several bullets had hit him in the upper body. How was it his leg was hurt, then? Maybe a ricochet. And then she had no more time to think as four armed men dressed in black burst into the light.
“You should’ve taken the deal, baby,” Dutch murmured wryly as he raised his hands over his head.
“Shut up!” one of the British commandos yelled. One of Eduardo’s personal bodyguards helped Julia’s father to his feet and brushed at his cashmere coat until Eduardo snapped at him to quit fussing.
Her father sneered at her. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t expect G.I. Joe to come with you tonight?”
She glanced over at Dutch. How had he found out about this meeting, anyway? She’d been so careful…
Her father was talking again. Giving sharp orders. “Tie them up and get them into the helicopter. Then take me someplace where I can dispose of their bodies. After I hurt them a lot.”
One of the commandos stepped forward and prodded her in the back with the barrel of his rifle. Dutch slapped the metal away and took a fist in the kidney for his trouble. He doubled over beside her with a moan of pain.
She bent down beside him, grabbing his arm to help him back up. “Don’t get yourself hurt on my account,” she murmured frantically. “I’m dead, anyway. Get yourself out of this alive. Please. Do it for me.”
“Sorry. No can do,” he murmured back.
“Shut up, you two,” Eduardo barked. “Get some rope on them and gag them, for God’s sake. I don’t need to listen to them whining at each other.”
She saw a flash of anger in Dutch’s icy, calculating, blue gaze, and then it was masked instantly. Thank God he had such iron self-control and wouldn’t rise to Eduardo’s bait. Not that it was going to do them a bit of good now.
She stumbled alongside Dutch toward the helicopter, and tears began to run down her cheeks. She would have loved to grow old with him. Fill a home with laughter and children. His children. To have given him all the love in her heart. Drawn him out from behind his walls for good. But none of that was going to happen now. He was going to die because she’d led him into this trap. Again. She’d done it unwittingly this time, but the result was the same. Anguish speared through her.
“I’m so sorry,” she half sobbed to Dutch. “This is all my fault. You’re going to die because of me.”
Eduardo glared over his shoulder at her. “If you don’t shut up, I’m gonna make both of your deaths even slower and more painful. Got it?”
She glared back at her father and dashed at the cold tear tracks on her cheeks.
And then a loud sound behind them made her jump half out of her skin.
“Freeze!” someone shouted through a bullhorn. “Everyone drop your weapons!”
Another sound, a ripple that sounded like dozens of safeties being released on weapons. The black-clad mercenaries around them froze.
“Do it!” the amplified voice barked. “We have orders to shoot to kill.”
The four mercenaries bent over slowly and began to lower their weapons.
“Don’t you dare!” her father screamed. “You work for me! You take orders from me!”
One of the men retorted, “You ain’t payin’ me enough to sacrifice my hide for you, mister. I’m out of this fight.”
One by one the four mercenaries laid down their weapons. But Eduardo was having none of this peaceful-surrender stuff. He whipped around, yanking his pistol out from under his jacket. Julia watched in horror as his gaze met hers, only a few feet in front of her. The pistol pointed at her for an instant, and then it shifted. To her right. Toward Dutch. The bastard was going to inflict maximum pain on her before he went down, and he had realized that killing her wasn’t the way to do it. Killing Dutch was.
She opened her mouth to scream, then she leaped.
Dutch yelled as Julia jumped in front of him. To take a bullet for him. “No!”
He caught her in his arms as she fell. Wet warmth flowed over his hands and onto his lap. Oh God. She was hit!
“Doc! Medic!” he bellowed, oblivious to the shooting going on all around. Brass bullet casings rained around him, and dimly heard explosions rocked the ground, but none of it was real. Just Julia’s limp body in his arms, her life’s blood flowing out of her from entrance and exit wounds right over her heart.
He pressed both hands frantically over her wounds, willing the flow of hot blood to stop. But it was futile. Like trying to stem the flow of a mighty river with his bare hands. God, no. Not now! Not when they’d nearly made it. Not when he finally believed her. When he could finally let go and love her.
Feet pounded past him and weapons fired nearby. Members of Charlie Squad in hot pursuit of Eduardo and his bodyguards as they hightailed it to the helicopter. And then a heavy thwock noise. A rush of bitterly cold wind as the craft leaped into the air. And through it all, his one true love lay bleeding, dying in his arms.
Finally, Doc came. Pushed aside his hands. Slashed away fabric with a knife. Frantically applied pressure bandages.
Tom Folly’s voice over his shoulder. “How’s she looking?”
Doc’s voice was clipped, choppy, as he worked. “Entrance wound in the chest cavity. Exit wound in the upper back. Bleeding just above her heart. Pulse erratic and thready. Rapid loss of blood. Left lung collapsed. Going into shock.”
“What do you need?” the colonel bit out.
“Blood. Chopper. A trauma center ASAP.”
“Roger,” the colonel replied sharply. “Get on the horn, Howdy.”
“Already calling, sir.”
Dutch pushed her hair away from her pale forehead. “Hang on, baby. You’ve got to fight, honey. Don’t you die on me. I can’t lose you,” he begged her.
“Uh, Colonel, we’ve got a little problem,” Howdy said behind Dutch.
“Talk,” the colonel ordered.
“The police have one chopper close enough to respond right now. They can chase down Eduardo Ferrare or they can come here and pick up Julia. But they can’t do both.”
Dutch looked up at his boss. A plea for Julia’s life stuck in his throat. Instead, his eyes filmed over with moisture. Must be some sweat or something burning his eyes like that. He understood Colonel Folly’s duty. An international criminal who’d killed hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people was getting away. Julia would have to make do with Doc’s best efforts.
> Colonel Folly looked at Julia, then at him, his gaze hard.
“Please, sir,” Dutch finally managed to whisper. “She’s my life.”
The colonel looked up at Howdy. “Tell the police to get their chopper here as fast as they can. We’ve got an innocent down.”
“They’ll be here in fifteen minutes, sir,” Howdy reported.
“Make it ten,” the colonel reported. “Tell the pilot to firewall that bird.”
Dutch sagged over Julia’s inert form and hot tears splashed down upon her porcelain pale cheeks.
Chapter 18
“Get my kit out of the car,” Doc ordered.
As if on cue, Tex raced up out of the dark and shoved a black, nylon pack into the medic’s outstretched hand. “Thought you might need this,” Tex panted.
As Doc rummaged in the sack, pulling out surgical instruments and alcohol, he ordered, “Lay her on her back, but keep her head and shoulders elevated on your legs, Dutch. She’ll drown in her own blood if we lay her out flat.”
“What’re you going to do?” Dutch asked, eyeing the scalpel and clamps.
“She’s losing too much blood. She’ll never last until that chopper gets here. I’ve got to get the bleeding clamped off. I need you to hang on to her. Thing is,” the medic continued, “she’s too shocky for me to use what anesthesia I’ve got. I’m gonna have to cut on her without painkillers. Can you hold her down or do you want one of the other guys to do it?”
“I’ll do it,” Dutch said instantly. He cradled her head in his lap and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “I’ve got you, Julia. You’re safe now.” He nodded and Doc leaned forward.
“This is gonna be messy, Dutch. Don’t look if you’re gonna faint on me.”
“Just do it,” Dutch bit out.
Doc swabbed Betadine on the wound just above Julia’s heart, and she lurched in his arms. It was the first sign of life she’d shown, other than her faint breathing. “Hang on, baby,” Dutch murmured in her ear, feeling her pain as if it were his own. “I’m here with you.”
A rip of sterile packaging, and then Doc was slicing on her ragged, torn skin, digging with his fingers into her flesh. A stab with a clamp.
“Got one end of the artery,” Doc grunted. “Can’t find the other one.”
“You’ve got to save her,” Dutch gritted out.
The medic nodded as he fished around in the slippery pool of blood and flesh that was her wound.
“Come on, come on,” Dutch urged. Seconds counted with bleeding like this.
“Got it!” Doc crowed. A quick flick of his wrist, and the second clamp was closed. “Get me the blood-pressure cuff.”
Folly passed the sleeve and a stethoscope to Doc, who wrapped the cuff around her arm and pumped it up tight.
Dutch bit out, “Aorta?”
Doc shook his head in the negative. “No, it wasn’t a major artery.”
Thank God. Dutch held his breath as Doc pumped up the cuff and listened intently. Dutch urged her, “Come on, baby. Fight. You still owe me a houseful of kids.”
The medic announced, “Vitals are way low. And she’s lost a ton of blood.”
“Give her some of mine,” Dutch suggested. “A direct transfer.”
Doc frowned. “We don’t know if she’s HIV negative or if your blood types match.”
Dutch growled, “I’m O positive. I match any blood type. Take it, dammit!”
Doc nodded in decision and pulled out surgical tubing and needles. “Give me your arm.”
It only took a matter of seconds for Doc to hook up the arm-to-arm blood transfer. And then a stream of life giving fluid flowed from his body into hers.
Doc timed the exchange. “That’s about a pint. Should hold her until the chopper gets here.” He reached for the needles.
Dutch put his hand over Doc’s. “Leave it a little longer. I’m not taking any chances.”
“It won’t do anyone any good to have you bleed out, too,” Doc argued.
“I can spare some more. Let her have it.”
Doc opened his mouth to argue, but the colonel’s hand landed on the medic’s shoulder. “Let him do it,” the colonel said quietly.
Doc subsided. He took her blood pressure again. “A little better.”
The medic was just removing the needle from his arm when Dutch heard a faint noise in the distance. The chopper. Please God, let Julia hang on just a few more minutes.
While Doc watched over Julia’s wound dressings, the other men lifted her carefully and rushed her over to the helicopter that swooped down into the parking lot. Doc climbed in beside her, but there wasn’t enough room for Dutch to go along.
The medic looked up at Doc. “I’ll take care of her for you. I promise.”
Dutch nodded, his throat too tight for words.
One of the pilots gave Colonel Folly quick driving instructions to the hospital they’d be going to, and then the craft lifted off and disappeared into the night.
Dutch watched until he couldn’t see its lights anymore. His heart—hell, his life—winged away into the blackness with it.
He turned to head for his motorcycle. And staggered.
“Easy there, big guy,” Colonel Folly chuckled as he wedged a shoulder under Dutch’s armpit. “That second pint of blood must have come out of your head.”
Tex commented as he caught him under the other shoulder, “Nah, it’s all thick skull in there. No room for blood.”
Dutch drew breath to tell Tex where to stick it, but was arrested by a stabbing pain in the ribs. He let out an involuntary grunt of pain.
Colonel Folly ordered quietly, “Bring the car around, will you, Howdy?”
The sniper melted into the night, running fast and silent. How Dutch got into the back seat of the car, he wasn’t quite sure. The last thing he remembered was his forehead landing against the cold glass of the window as he passed out.
Julia woke up slowly, swimming through thick layers of fog toward consciousness. Her throat hurt. And there was something in it. A tube of some kind. A steady sucking sound came from off to her left. A machine. The light was really bright. It hurt her eyes and she squinted against it.
“How are you feeling, Julia?” a male voice said from her right.
She turned her head in that direction, but stopped short when the movement sent pain shooting through her chest. She remembered that voice from somewhere. Barking orders at people that had to do with saving her life.
“Who…” she tried to croak, but failed, instead making a rasping noise in her throat.
“Who am I?” the voice asked. “You can call me Doc. I’m a friend of Dutch’s.”
She tried to pronounce the word “Where…” but only her lips moved. No sound came out of her throat.
“Where’s Dutch?” Doc finished for her. “Recuperating nicely and very impatient to see you. When you’re a little more conscious, I’ll go tell him you’re awake.”
She tried to say, “See…” but it was hopeless.
“You want to see him? I figured you would. He wants to see you, too. That tube will come out of your throat soon so you two can talk.”
She subsided against the mattress. Thank God this Doc guy was psychic. But what did his comment mean? Dutch wanted to see her, too. To rail at her for nearly getting him killed again? For leading Charlie Squad into yet another shoot-out with her father? She truly hadn’t intended for it to work out that way.
A cool hand smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “Rest now,” a female voice murmured. “You’ll need your strength to get through the next few days.”
No kidding. How was she ever going to survive losing Dutch again? Tears slipped out of the corners of her eyes as she squeezed them shut in misery.
Stay in bed? Forget it! Not until he knew Julia was going to be all right. When the nurses argued with him, threatening to restrain and sedate him if he didn’t calm down, Dutch raised such a ruckus that the staff finally fetched Colonel Folly and Doc to his bedside in a l
ast-ditch effort to keep him in the damn thing.
“Doc, tell them I’m fine. Tell them I can walk.”
The medic laughed at him. “Dude, you’ve got six broken ribs and your right lung is only just reinflated. You’re going to have to cool your jets for a while. In bed.”
“How is she?” Dutch asked raggedly.
“She’s going to be fine. The bullet that nicked the artery also grazed her heart, but the surgeons found no life-threatening damage to it. She’s going to be in some serious pain for a couple of weeks, but I swear to you, she’s going to live.”
Dutch subsided against the pillows. “I want to see her as soon as she wakes up.”
Doc nodded. “She regained consciousness briefly after she came out of surgery, but they knocked her out with painkillers right after that. She’ll be out for a good twenty-four hours.”
They were the longest twenty-four hours of Dutch’s life. He kept remembering her standing up to her father and refusing to betray him or the squad again. Remembering her willingness to sacrifice her sister’s life for him. Remembering that awful moment when she threw her body in front of him, sacrificing herself to save him.
Sleep eluded him, even when he reluctantly agreed to swallow the little pills the nurses insisted he take. How could he sleep when the woman he loved was fighting for her life?
The next evening, Colonel Folly walked into his room. Not exactly the person he’d choose to see just now, but at least the visit would keep him from climbing the walls in his frustration at being separated from Julia.
The colonel closed the door. “We need to have a little talk,” he said quietly.
Dutch swallowed. Time to pay the piper for disobeying orders.
“Turns out you were right about her,” Colonel Folly said. “We had a microphone on the entire conversation with her old man. And she didn’t sell us out.”
Dutch nodded cautiously.
“That being the case, a person could make an argument that you did the right thing in disobeying my order to arrest her and bring her in. I’m prepared to lose the cassette in my desk drawer of that particular phone conversation.”