Soldier's Heart Part Four: Brotherhood Protectors World

by Ilsa J. Bick

“Yeah.” The other man proffered the tablet. “Take a look.”

  “Something wrong?” Boone asked.

  “No.” Actually, he wasn’t sure. The only thing he was positive about was this.

  There had been three wolves, one of which was very large. Now, there were only two.

  The big one, the alpha, was gone.

  Chapter 5

  “Jesus!” Paulsen’s shoulders came up, an instinctive reaction and a good one, if you were a soldier and had just heard an explosion, however small and faraway. “What was that? I don’t think it was real close, but—”

  “East of us.” There’d be a whump, a sound she associated with summers and her dad flicking a match over briquets he’d doused with lighter fluid.

  “Tell you what it sounded like to me,” Paulsen said. “Like a mortar, maybe.”

  “In Montana?” She was more interested in just where the sound had come from. What lay east of Dead Man?

  “Chaney Peak.” Jack paused. “Perhaps it was Gabriel.”

  That made no sense. Why could Gabriel set off an explosion?

  “Two possibilities, Kate. Either he did it deliberately—”

  Yes, but why?

  “Distress signal comes to mind. It’s like being lost in the woods and sending up smoke signals, or being on a boat and shooting off a flare. Someone’s bound to notice, especially around here.”

  She could buy that. She wondered what Gabriel had found that made him do that in the first place.

  “Well…as I said, there are two possibilities. This might not have been deliberate, Kate.”

  God. The pit of her stomach iced. A booby trap?

  “Is there a problem?” Paulsen asked.

  “No,” she said, thinking, Shit, yeah. But there was nothing she could do, either.

  “Hey!” When she turned to look into the tunnel, all she could make out were the fuzzy balls of headlamps. “There a problem?” Wynn called.

  “No,” she lied. Problems? She had a boatload: biobots, a tracker that couldn’t make up its mind, Vance and his men, and oh gee, well, her friend quite possibly just got blown to smithereens.

  And she was to blame. Yet again. If she’d only listened to Gabriel, if they’d stuck together…

  “Déjà vu all over again, Kate,” Jack said.

  Thanks, Yogi, but this isn’t funny.

  “And you don’t know what’s happened to Gabriel. If it was something terrible, you can’t change it now, either. Enough with the self-recriminations. You can’t keep looking over your shoulder. You’re so focused on where you’ve been, you can’t see your way ahead.”

  Because all roads lead to the same point. She eyed that slit of a tunnel. I always end up in Afghanistan, one way or the other. All this time has passed, and I’ve never had Christmas, Jack. I’ve never gotten there. She’d heard of logic loops, where machines got themselves stuck in an endless algorithm. Maybe this was hers. Memories, especially traumatic ones, were like that. They just kept coming back.

  “Hey.” Paulsen prodded her back with his rifle. “Let’s move.”

  “Sure. Just…” She aimed a last look into the forest, and her heart twisted with an emotion she couldn’t identify.

  Because the alpha was there, but so far distant in the trees a normal person would never spot him. Of course, she hadn’t been normal for a while and even at this remove, she felt the pressure of those golden eyes and detected that scent which spoke of the alpha’s…curiosity? Possessiveness? She didn’t know and wondered if she would ever understand.

  “Wittgenstein,” Jack said. “If lions could speak.”

  God, but I hope you understand. She stared at the alpha. Feelings altered scents; she knew this better than anyone. So she thought, very hard, with all her might. Stay where you are. Stay where you belong. Where I’m going, you can’t follow.

  “Today,” Paulsen said.

  “Right.” Turning, she squared her shoulders and took a step forward—

  And into the past.

  Chapter 6

  Afghanistan, 2014

  This can’t be how it ends. Kate fumbled with the buckles on Tompkins’s armored vest. We can’t die, not now, not when we’re so close, when our time is so short.

  “Come on, McEvoy, move it!” To her left, Pederson grimaced, hugging his shattered right arm against his chest. The arm was mangled, broken in two by a well-placed round midway between the shoulder and elbow which had also shredded arteries and, more likely than not, nerves. If they got out of this, the doctor would be lucky if they didn’t amputate. Kate had quickly staunched the bleeding, but Pederson had refused morphine. He might be out of the fight, but even wounded, Pederson was a pip. “Jesus, I know snails faster than you.”

  “I’m—” She cringed as another ricochet zinged off rock, sending up a spray of stony shrapnel pinging off her helmet. “I’m trying!” Bullets kept flying, cleaving the air with a nasty, angry brrr, and then a higher ka-ting as metal skipped off rock, the one sound movies managed to get right.

  They’d made it into the cave, but only barely. Anticipating their move, the insurgents swarmed down the plateau and dropped into the cut. She and the others had blasted past the men inside the entrance. The worst off of the four didn’t react, though the other three actually smiled, and why shouldn’t they? The cavalry had just come roaring to their rescue.

  Pushed back from that first room, they’d holed up in the narrow throat of the tunnel leading from it. Forward of her position, Jack was plastered against the right wall, radio at his feet and Gholam a short distance behind. Crouched low behind a hump of rock on the left, Lowry returned fire, trading off with Amir Ali, while she worked, frantically, over Tompkins.

  “Uhhh,” Tompkins moaned, his breath coming harder, harsher. When the dog handler had cried out, she’d left Pederson and vaulted to his side, awkwardly catching Tompkins as he crumpled, and shouted, “Where? Where are you hit, Tompkins, where are you hit?” Not waiting for his reply, she flipped him onto his back, grabbed the neck of his armored vest, and hauled him twenty feet back, taking cover behind a bulge of rock. Now, finally working his buckles loose, she yanked his vest to one side, frantically searching for an entry wound.

  “Well?” Pederson demanded.

  “I don’t see anything. No entry wound.” But that was crazy, there had to be—

  “C-can’t...” Gasping, Tompkins clutched at his chest with hands hooked into claws. He writhed, his face wreathed in agony. “Buh-buh-buh...S-Si-Six, wuh?” Tompkins tried to raise himself on an elbow. “Wuh-where’s Six?”

  At the sound of its name, the shepherd’s ears swiveled to attention. Tompkins had downed the dog as soon as the shooting started, and she’d repeated the command when she’d dragged Tompkins back. Now sprawled along Tompkins’s left leg, the dog let out a short, sharp whine and stretched toward Tompkins’s hand, his long tongue unfurling in a lick.

  “He’s right here, okay?” she said. “Now, relax, let me figure out what’s going on.”

  “Yes, sometime this century would be nice,” Pederson said. “You check for breath sounds?”

  Please, shut up. Like she’d heard anything through a stethoscope in the middle of a firefight. Instead, she watched Tompkins’s hands fluttering restlessly over his chest. Too damn dark in here. The way was lit only with the feeble glow of lanterns. Shoving Tompkins’s hands aside, she scanned for an entry wound, an exit, anything. He was hit, but where?

  This is your fault. It was a nasty little voice, nipping at the back of her mind. You and your ego, thinking you were going to save the world. You can’t even save your friend.

  The voice was right. She’d screwed up. Those guys out there would strip their uniforms, take whatever was useful then dump her body and Jack’s and everyone else in the mountains where time and animals would do the rest. They’d shoot Six, too. The only things she’d done right had been getting Bibi and the kids out of here and warning Jack about Gholam. Which hadn’t mattered, though, had it? Beca
use Gholam was here, anyway.

  Which was weird. It wasn’t as if Gholam’s man, Bashir, hadn’t taken it in the neck, almost literally. No one could be that careful in a firefight, could they? For that matter, all Gholam had to do was pop each of them now, fast, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Pederson couldn’t shoot. She had her hands full. Tompkins was down. Gholam could take out Jack and then Lowry, maybe even his own guy, Amir. But he was fighting alongside them and for his—

  Her fingers found something wet and slippery just under Tompkins’s left arm.

  Oh holy shit. Now, she understood. “I got it.”

  “What?” Pederson snapped.

  “He got tagged by a ricochet.” It had probably happened in that first volley once they were in the cave. Ripping open a quick-drop pouch strapped to her left thigh, Kate yanked a fourteen-gauge angiocath from its slot. “The bullet slipped in between his armor at his armpit.”

  “Pneumothorax, for sure. Maybe even a hemothorax.” Pederson cursed. “For God’s sake, get the needle in, get it in!”

  “Please shut the fuck up,” she muttered. Tompkins’s breathing was more labored, his eyes starting to glaze. His boots scuffed stone, his feet moving in a herky-jerky stutter, trying to run, trying to move. She knew that kind of terminal dance, too.

  Six let out another whimper.

  “Roger that, boy. Going as fast as I can.” Of them all, the dog was probably the calmest. “Fix him up good as new and then we’ll get the hell out of here.” She hoped. If there were more guys beyond the cave who circled around to the exit, they were toast. As she stripped away the catheter’s sterile packaging, another sudden rapid-fire sputter ruptured the air as bullets screeched by only inches over her head.

  “Shit!” Flinging herself over Tompkins, she shielded him as rounds blistered past to blast rock. Pederson ducked back, flattening himself against stone. Pressing even closer, Six glued himself to her left thigh. Good boy. Beneath her, Tompkins struggled for breath, and now she heard just the faintest bubbly gurgle. An all-too-familiar scent assaulted her nose, something brackish and wet like swamp mist in high summer. Blood. No doubt about it. With every labored, tortured breath, air and blood from Tompkins’s left lung leaked into his chest cavity. His neck veins were distended, his pulse rabbiting along. His trachea was shifting, too, his Adam’s apple pushed to the right as air and blood built up to fill the space his lung normally occupied. Either the pressure or blood loss would kill him.

  Screw this. She gripped the angiocath. She couldn’t wait. “Watch out, Six. Back up, boy.” The dog complied, squirming backward, belly low to the ground as she hitched herself onto her knees.

  “What are you doing, McEvoy?” Pederson rasped. “Stay down!”

  She paid no attention. Flattening, she slithered over Tompkins until she was astride him, her knees at his hips, her chest an inch above his.

  “Kate!” Never taking his eyes from his targets, Jack touched off three fast rounds high as Gholam aimed low. To his left, Lowry was jacking out a magazine, butting another into place, while Amir Ali clutched a service pistol. “We have to move!” Jack shouted. “What about Tompkins?”

  “Just a few more seconds!” She was at the wrong angle for this, but she had no choice. Lining up her hand with the middle of Tompkins’s armpit, she walked her fingers over his ribs.

  “Watch out for the aorta,” Pederson warned. “The heart. Second and third—”

  Yeah, yeah. “The intercostal space between the second and third rib. Believe it or not, they covered this in training.” Picking her spot, she slipped the needle’s point into skin and muscle just along the top of Tompkins’s third rib. There was a slight hesitation as the tip met taut muscle and tendon, but she applied pressure, felt the slight pop as the needle slid through. Almost instantly, she was rewarded with a rush of trapped air, and plenty of blood. Sliding the stiff plastic catheter deeper into Tompkins’s chest, she pulled out the needle at the same time. Air and blood kept coming. How long could someone live with a hemothorax?

  “Kate?” Jack, again. “Talk to me!”

  “Almost there!” Tompkins was moving air better; his color was improving and his eyes were losing their glazed look. Slipping off Tompkins’s body, she fixed surgical tape to keep the catheter in place.

  She felt Pederson move in to her left. “Good job, McEvoy,” he said, eyeing the catheter placement and her tape job. “Moving him will be tough, though. You can’t buckle the vest without compromising the catheter, which means no more one-handed grabs. We’ll have to move him together.” Pederson tipped his head to indicate the tunnel. “You said there were more rooms. What’s beyond this tunnel?”

  Quickly, over the stutter of gunfire, she explained about the complex, the rooms of chemicals and supplies. “There are pallets in the next room, and bolts of cloth. I’ve got duct tape. So does Tompkins. Maybe we can make a stretcher.”

  “Doubt it.” Pederson had a habit of arranging his face as if someone had just farted. “That takes time we probably don’t have. Plus, if you’re lugging a stretcher, you can’t shoot. If only there was a way to block off this damn tunnel, give us some time to go over our options—”

  “K-K-Kate.” She looked down to see Tompkins’s eyes, wide and shiny with pain. He reached for her with a trembling hand. “K-Kate?”

  “Are you in pain?” She hadn’t wanted to stick him if she could help it, worried morphine would only depress his respirations. “Listen, just hang on.”

  “N-no, listen.” He moved his head in a feeble negative, though his grip on her left wrist was strong. He dragged in breath on a long wheeze. “I...m-marked...marked it.”

  “What?” She had no idea what he was talking about. “Marked what?”

  “C-4,” he whispered. “F-f-flag.”

  Wait, she remembered that: Six alerting to the explosive and Tompkins setting his little orange flag to mark the spot. But that wouldn’t help them. It wasn’t as if they could set the phone’s timer or send a signal to trip the detonator. Shoot C-4 and nothing happened. Soldiers lit the stuff to warm up food. The stuff was inert for a reason. Another explosion, though—

  Oh holy shit. She felt her jaw drop. Another explosion.

  “Yesss,” Tompkins hissed. “The f-flag. The flag.”

  Pederson scowled. “What?”

  “No time. Watch him. Six, stay!” Swiveling on the balls of her feet, she plotted out her course. A quick dash to the left, let Lowry see her then right, hug the wall. Stay low.

  Get to Jack.

  There was a split second where no bullets flew and that’s when she said, “Moving!”

  “You’re what?” Lowry threw her a startled look as she crammed in, butting up against Amir. The Afghan policeman’s face gleamed, and his mouth had turned down in a pained grimace. “Kate,” Lowry said, “what are you—”

  “Got something to tell Jack. Don’t shoot me.” Glancing down, she saw Amir’s left hand clapped to a blood-stained thigh. “I’ll fix that soonest, Amir. Just hang on.”

  “It’s nothing,” Amir grunted. “You should go.”

  No need to tell her twice. “Moving!”

  “Gotcha! Go!” Lowry barked, firing a burst of covering fire. Ducking low, she scurried forward. She caught the pale flash of Jack’s face and then Gholam’s as they both turned a quick look. Slamming up behind Jack, she said, fast, the words tumbling over themselves, “There’s a bomb, booby trap. Tompkins marked it. It goes off, so does the room those guys are in.”

  “And so might this tunnel,” Gholam rapped. “Then we are dead men.”

  She flared. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not doing so hot as it is.”

  “And whose fault is this?”

  “Enough.” Pausing at a lull from the other room, Jack took a quick peek, squeezed off three single shots—one right, two left. There was an abortive yelp, a gabble of voices, as Jack rolled back, all business. “Kate, we can’t trip the booby trap. No way to detonate it.”

  “Yes, ther
e is.” She admired his cool, so much better than Schwarzenegger-cool I’ll be back. Movies never got it right. Well, except Restrepo, but that was because it was a documentary and everything was real, like now. “It’s just that the way to do it also sucks.”

  “What sucks?” Gholam demanded.

  “Oh Jesus.” She saw the second Jack got it. “She’s right,” he said. “It does suck. Kate, we do that, we lose our way out.”

  “No, there’s an exit,” she said. “Tompkins knows. It’s how Bibi and the kids got away.”

  “Kids?” Gholam echoed. “What kids? Where is my officer?”

  She didn’t bother to explain. Soon enough, asshole. “We can’t pick them off forever. All they got to do is wait for reinforcements. Desperate times, Jack.”

  His jaw firmed. “Where’s the bomb?”

  “Across the room, to the left, just inside the entrance. You’ll have to draw them right.” A risk, she knew. Jack would have to dart left while firing right to move the shooters around. She also had to hope that, in the confusion, the marker had been overlooked. Jack would have only one shot at this. “Pederson and I will take care of Tompkins.”

  “All right. Tell Lowry and Amir. Get everyone to move. Gholam.” Jack’s right hand reached for a pouch on his vest. “Go with her.”

  “No, I could stay, I could help,” Gholam protested.

  “You’ve got a handgun and you need to lose thirty pounds. I don’t want to have to worry about saving your ass. Now, go with her.” Ignoring Gholam’s bluster, Jack looked at Kate. “Fifteen seconds. Two more bursts then I go.”

  “Got it.” She was already turning away. “Moving.” She low-sprinted back to Lowry, Gholam lumbering behind. Fourteen one-thousand, thirteen... “Lowry, M67 in ten. We go after two more bursts.”

  “Got it.” Lowry didn’t add, Oh fuck, but it sounded like he wanted to.

  “What is this, M67?” Amir asked.

  “A Hail Mary, that’s what.” Lowry lifted into a crouch. “All right, go.”

  “Moving! Six, up!” The dog jumped out of the way as she clattered up. Ten one-thousand, nine one-thousand... The first burst of gunfire sounded. Jack, keeping up the game, choosing his targets. Nothing wild, nothing wasted. The point was to suppress, herd the enemy back and as close to one side of the room as possible. “Pederson, get moving. The major and I will grab Tompkins. Gholam, take his right arm. I got the left.” No way she would risk letting the catheter on that side get knocked out or crimped. Slinging on her medic’s bag, she hooked a hand under Tompkins’s left armpit. “Everyone, stay low.”