Fast Lane (SEAL Team Alpha Book 16)

by Zoe Dawson

  That left her, CIA Officer Anna Sinclair. She was lethal with a handgun, had thwarted both Zasha and Muhammad Anger Said from wreaking havoc on the US satellite system, the Pope, a group of Rhodes Scholars, Fort Bragg, and The New York Stock Exchange, assisted by her deadly husband, Oliver “Artful Dodger” Graham. She loved him with every fiber of her being, and Zasha was responsible for multiple attacks on his team. Enough was enough. She couldn’t stand by while he had been severely wounded. She couldn’t sit at the hospital and wait for Oliver’s fate. When Chry had located the mole and contacted them about going after her themselves with the help of Karasu, Anna had jumped at the chance.

  Her phone rang and she looked down to see it was Max calling her. It was about time, but she suspected his hands had been tied due to the communications blackout. She saw that she had missed his first call, but she’d been in a powwow with Karasu and the others about their next course of action. She answered on the second ring. “Max.”

  His face appeared on her phone. He looked disheveled. Black stubble coated his jaw and his eyes were bloodshot, his hair a tangled mess, his face haggard. “Anna! Where the fuck are you?”

  “Nice to talk to you, too, Max.” Her first instinct was to deny everything, but she knew denial was pointless. He already suspected, and she couldn’t really hide her motives or intent. He already knew. Feeling emotionally naked, she drew in her defenses to bolster her.

  “Christ, Anna.” He watched her, the muscles in his jaw rigid, his gaze hard and drilling. “This is not a time for sarcasm. Why aren’t you in Germany?” She could tell he was doing that jaw clenching thing, and his expression was compressed into hard lines. She didn’t like causing her brother anxiety, but he also had to understand her position.

  “I’m not going to sit in a hospital waiting for Dodger to either die or recover. I’m going to do what needs to be done.” Reality swept in, and Anna closed her eyes, a chilling comprehension washing through her. The attention of the three women in the room focused on her. Her legs suddenly too weak to hold her, she sank onto one of the nearby chairs, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Oh, God, Oliver. She closed her eyes again and slipped her shaking hand under her thigh, trying to contain her fear.

  His voice clipped, he said, “Anna. You’re not doing this. Get your ass on a plane to Germany.” When she said nothing, he went on, his voice lowering a notch. “Leave it to us.”

  Too numb to respond, Anna sat with her hand still jammed under her thigh, staring at the worn toes of her boots, so many painful emotions churning around in her that she couldn’t sort them all out. Her vision blurring, she looked away, trying to swallow the awful ache in her throat.

  Max exhaled a heavy sigh, the edge completely gone from his voice when he said quietly, “I know this must be hard and you’re pissed and scared, but putting yourself in danger isn’t going to help Dodger.”

  “No, Max, it will protect him. I have that right. She hurt Oliver. This ends now. She will never get a chance to hurt him again.”

  Max stared at her, his color fading beneath his dark tan. The muscles in his jaw tensed, then tensed again, his expression fixed and inscrutable, his voice was flat. “Anna, for fuck’s sake—”

  “You don’t know the hell that Dodger went through for me.” Her face wet with tears, her voice shaking with emotion, Anna stood her ground. “He loved me, Max, enough to make the kind of sacrifices few men are prepared to make. He put everything, everything, on the line for me. Before you condemn me, I think you’d better ask yourself what you would do for Renata. I already know that answer.”

  He tipped his head back, as though trying to release the tension in him. Finally, he looked at her, all the toughness gone, the expression in his eyes dark and solemn. “Goddammit, Anna.” She could see his understanding and his acquiescence as he rubbed at his moist eyes. “Don’t go getting yourself killed. Dodger needs you. We need you.” He ended the call.

  A half-forgotten image formed in Anna’s mind. Dodger laughing like hell, running pell-mell as that damn goose chased him down the road during one of their visits to his parents’ house in London. A ragged sob tore loose, the pain from that one image so wrenching, so devastating, that the numbness broke beneath the pressure, and grief—sharp and rending—overwhelmed her. Oliver—her Oliver, the man who had given her such joy—was waiting for her to go to him. Mak grabbed her into her arms while Shea and Chry gave her silent comfort.

  Anna was terrified she would lose him while she was working this mission, giving up what may be her last chance to say goodbye. She would have ripped out her own heart to save him. But she realized whether she was there or not, it was out of her hands. This was something she could do. This would give her all the closure she needed.

  I won’t be the one dying, Max. You can count on it.

  The cold slap of the wind woke her. Solace’s brain knew she wasn’t waking from a nap. Layers of fuzzy memory shone through the black of her perception. She took a gasping breath and opened her eyes. The chopper’s windshield was cracked with spidery veins. At first, she was pissed off that someone had damaged her bird. Secondly, she was grateful to be alive. Her immediate thought was for Fast Lane and her crew.

  She moved and her shoulder protested. It was caught in the webbing of the seat restraint. She unbuckled her belt and worked it free. They were just starting to lose the light. The long shadows of the massive mountains loomed over them like giants.

  Memory came flooding back. A missile had glanced off the tail rotor, damaging it just enough to make the Blackhawk sluggish. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She’d heard the whine, and from experience knew that the unearthly, building scream was the precursor to completely losing the rotor. If that happened, then there would be a punishing spin she couldn’t control, and they would smash into the side of a mountain and that would be the end of them. She made the decision to shut down the engines, thereby eliminating the torque.

  Centrifugal force was not their friend here.

  Their only hope was autorotation. When a disabled helo went down, a pilot could control the craft by using the air currents beneath the rotors to land as gently as she could. She used her cyclic, the main control stick, to pitch the chopper up, lifting its nose until she got close to landing. She was all about airspeed at that point, and even though the rotors were blades, they acted as effectively as a parachute to keep the aircraft from plummeting. Her Blackhawk had done its job to perfection, even the pitch of the seats to reduce the stress on the pilot was right on the money. She figured she bruised her shoulder, but the rest of her seemed to be working all right. She probably wouldn’t feel all the aches and pains until the adrenaline that was secreting into her bloodstream wore off.

  She turned to her copilot. “Lonnie?” she called, but he didn’t move, and her heart sank. Then she heard a grunt, and he turned his head, a gash on his forehead oozing blood. “Dammit, Annie. That was one hell of a landing. It’s a good thing we practice the hell out of crashing.”

  “You okay?” she said with a chuckle. Pilots….

  “Yeah, I think so. You?”

  “Yes.” She turned around to find her two crewmen and Fast Lane still in their seats. She stepped back into the cargo bay and went immediately to her ex-husband, her heart racing. The acrid smell of spilled jet fuel mixed with the snap of the cold air that was flowing in through the broken windshield and damaged doors. “Ford,” she said, shaking him, and his eyes popped open.

  “Solace? What…happened?”

  She breathed a huge sigh of relief. He was alive and her world righted itself. “Someone was waiting for us. They shot us out of the freaking sky.”

  “Fucking Zasha.”

  “Yeah, she is well-informed.”

  She went to her crewmen and both of them were coming to, groaning slightly, but alive. “Kenny? Phil?”

  “You’re the man, Annie. Good thing our girl was at the controls,” Phil rasped out, undoing his helmet and pulling it off.
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  “Soft landing, huh?” Kenny rubbed at his shoulder, then his hip. They unbuckled and started moving. She heard a gasp of pain behind her.

  She turned to find Fast Lane grasping his right leg. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered between his clenched teeth.

  She went back to him as her two crewmen started to move. “Get our packs and find some shelter.” She looked out the broken door, which dangled by a thread. She could see the clouds and sighed. They had predicted a storm. A bad one in the mountains, but Solace was sure they would be well clear of the blizzard before they were encumbered by it. Now they were going to be trapped in it.

  She reached around her seat and grabbed a flashlight from her stash of equipment. Lonnie was working the radio, seeing if he could get TOC to let them know they were alive and stranded. It didn’t look like it was working. Good old Murphy.

  Shining the light down on his leg, she saw that his pants were wet with blood, then she saw the metal from the seat back, the blood dripping from it.

  “You got punctured by a piece of metal. Hang on.” She went into the back and rummaged around until she found the first aid kit. She didn’t bother with anything except the ace bandage and a pad of gauze. They would have to wait until they were to shelter before they tended to the wound. If they were caught out here in the icy, blinding whiteout, they were all going to freeze to death.

  She bound his leg quickly, tightly, and he grunted. “Your bedside manner needs some work, doc. It stinks.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t need a bedside manner if you really were made out of steel, Superman, now would I?” They also didn’t have time to spare. If she knew Zasha, her goons would be looking for them as soon as this blizzard passed. She wasn’t going to dwell on that. She only felt the need to get to cover and a grim determination to survive.

  Worrying about Zasha was counterproductive. It was better for her to transfer that worry into action and prepare for the inevitable. What Zasha did was out of Solace’s control. But getting her guys to shelter, tending to Fast Lane’s wounded leg, getting them warm and fed was all within her control.

  “Lonnie, help me get him out of the chopper.” Lonnie came around and pried off the damaged door. It made a soft thud as it landed in the hard-packed powder. Reaching in, he supported Fast Lane as he used his left leg to anchor himself out of the helo.

  She followed him out into the frigid air, their breaths frosting and hanging for a moment. Fast Lane was breathing hard, and she knew he was in pain, but he kept his groans low and barely audible.

  Luckily, they were close to the ground as her Blackhawk was belly-down in the snow, the landing-gear struts had crumpled when they’d crashed, absorbing as much impact per their excellent design. Its big rotors were still and drooping like the ears of a floppy dog. As she had expected, the tail rotor was gone, the tail boom looking charred and ragged without the assembly that allowed the chopper its amazing maneuverability.

  They had landed on flat ground that she had spotted from the air in a small clearing. The forsaken wilderness of the Hindu Kush filled her with a feeling of solitary awe. The miles and miles of forest were punctuated with craggy outcrops and countless crystal-clear lakes. There was a raw, wild beauty about it, but there was also a haunting aura of isolation. The silence of the uninhabited wilderness was eerie, almost smothering in its intensity, and Solace knew part of that breath-stealing force was the thinner air.

  The mountains loomed up in majestic splendor, creating an impregnable barrier that thrust jaggedly into the sky. The only way they were getting off this rock was by air.

  “I found a cave. It’s not far,” Kenny yelled out. She, Lonnie, and Fast Lane followed Phil as he headed in the direction of Kenny’s voice.

  They could only rely on themselves. J-Bad was behind them and I-Bad in front, but they were stuck in the mountains during a blizzard. It was disorienting to Solace to be suddenly in such deep wilderness, so completely removed from her usual way of life, away from the safety nets, everyday comforts, and her buddies. She saw this vista from the air, never on the ground. The Hindu Kush was massive, a kind of wild where no one lived, and the land and mountains seemed to stretch on to infinity.

  “I’m going to rig the chopper to blow. Then we can do it from here once we…,” Phil said, trailing off. As they entered a small cave, Solace could see it was just roomy enough for the five of them to fit. The overhang would protect them from the worst of the wind, no one would see anything in the accompanying whiteout.

  “Be careful,” Solace said.

  He nodded. They all knew their duty. Whatever it took, that chopper could not land in the enemy’s hands, even disabled and stuck on a mountaintop. They would have to destroy it if—

  She switched her thoughts as they lowered Fast Lane down on a tarp that Kenny had set on the rock floor. He was busy unloading the stuff in the packs, including a small stove and water. Without being told to, he was getting some into a collapsible pot and warming it to clean Fast Lane’s wound.

  “Your tetanus shots up to date, sailor?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. She noticed blood trickling down the side of his face. She gently unbuckled his helmet and pulled it off.

  “What?”

  “More boo-boos,” she said, and he released a pained chuckle.

  She turned and took the med kit from Kenny’s hands as he smiled at her. “Water is almost ready.”

  “Thanks, Kenny.”

  He nodded. “I’ll get some chow going and something warm to drink.” Solace turned back to Fast Lane and using a pair of scissors in the kit, she cut a small hole in his pants. At the tip of his thigh, just below his groin, was the torn flesh and bright blood. She pressed it with gauze. Blood pooled quickly and kept dripping over the side of a puncture. There was dark bruising, his skin was already turning a deep purple. Just next to the opening and a quarter inch from the wound was his femoral artery. Any closer and the metal would have severed it. But to her utter relief, it was pulsing away just beyond the edge of the injury.

  She took a hard breath, trying not to think about losing him just as they had found each other again. They had so much more living to do. She wanted kids with him—

  Her thought cut off, and she took another hard breath. Okay, that came out of the blue. She had to push that revelation to the back of her mind where it sat like a beacon.

  Kenny was a godsend. He had the irrigation syringe filled with hot water and an antibacterial solution. Fast Lane leaned his head back as she pushed the plunger, making sure she cleaned out any detritus and flushing it out completely.

  “Fuck,” he whispered softly, breathing heavily and squirming.

  Solace drew a deep, stabilizing breath, reaching down for control. She used the syringe a couple more times to be sure to clean it thoroughly, his thigh jerking with each ministration. By this time, Fast Lane was groaning, then growling uncontrollably.

  As soon as she was sure it was the best she could do, she placed a gauze pad over the wound, then wrapped the ace bandage around it again to keep it clean and to help promote blood clotting again.

  Kenny was ready with a bottle of water, a pack of antibiotics, and pain meds. She handed everything to Fast Lane.

  “Thanks.”

  Her voice was unsteady when she answered. “You’re welcome.” Her insides in turmoil, she tucked the scissors back in the kit and picked up the discarded pad and the wrappings. Kenny held out a plastic bag and she dumped them in. She kept back one pad. Dousing it with a bit of the solution from the syringe, she reached over him and wiped at the gash on his forehead, then peeled off the backs of the butterfly bandage, setting the ends on either side of the torn flesh to pull it together.

  Fast Lane reached out and took her hand. Something gave way around her heart. Feeling almost too raw to speak, she reached out and zipped up his jacket. Searching around in his pocket, she found his warm hat. She snuggled it over his head, careful of his cut.

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sp; She started to lean back, but he gripped her wrist. They exchanged a long, silent look—intimate, warm, the kind of closeness she had craved from him for so long, a kind of unspoken honesty. She could see it in his eyes. They might be stranded and, in the morning, would be in terrible danger, but there was nothing about his demeanor that even remotely suggested he was going to give up.

  SEALs just didn’t have the quitting gene in them. If there was one person she could rely on in this world, it was Ford Nixon. He would never let her down and when they fought for their lives in the morning, it would be side by side.

  Jumping out of a speeding aircraft definitely had its drawbacks, Anna thought. Freezing cold, breathing bottled air, a twenty-thousand-foot drop onto a hostile target, and the tangible suspicion that the leap into the jet-black night might be the last one she took.

  And she’d never see Dodger again. Her chest tightened for a split second, then eased. She was sitting next to Mak, who turned to her and said, “We should all get code names. How about Ballbuster?”

  Shea laughed and shook her head.

  “Ballbreaker?”

  Shea nodded and gave Mak a thumbs up. “What about Anna?”

  “Easy,” Mak said over the roar of the plane’s engines. “Badass.”

  “Perfect.” Anna looked at them and rolled her eyes.

  “I like Huntress,” Chry said, tapping away on her laptop. “Karasu already has one, but Battle Maiden fits.”

  Karasu grunted. “What about you, Shea?”

  “Hemingway calls me his Warrior Queen.”

  “There you go,” Mak confirmed quietly, leaving no doubt all of them were thinking about the loves of their lives currently in a hospital in Germany.

  “ETA five minutes,” Chry announced.

  They each wore comms and carried automatic weapons along with side arms, NVGs Velcro-strapped against their chests.

  “Time to take that leap, ladies.” Anna barely spoke, voice vibration carrying her words to Mak, Shea, Karasu, and Chry. They looked fierce in black camouflage paint and oxygen masks.