Nineteen
NINETEEN
T ARIK BURST INTO the house ahead of Sandberg, the two of them jabbering away in Pashto, and it made Jackson even more uneasy because he had no way of knowing what the fuck they were saying. He stayed right on Sandberg’s ass as he introduced himself to Haversham—who shot an incredulous look at Jackson—and headed to the back room where Maya was.
The instant Sandberg reached the threshold, Maya jerked upright with her weapon aimed at his head.
Sandberg threw up his hands in surprise. “Whoa, there. You wouldn’t shoot me after I went to all that trouble of getting you here in the first place, would you?”
Her fever-glazed eyes narrowed a fraction at his English. “Who are you?” she demanded in a rough whisper.
“His name’s Sandberg,” Jackson answered for him, “and he says he’s one of us.”
Sandberg twisted his head around to give Jackson a bland look, taking in his pistol held at the ready. “I am one of you.” He turned back to Maya. “I’ve got a helo coming in to get all of you out of here, but it’s a long ways off and we don’t have much time. There’re at least two enemy forces headed this way, so we have to move fast.” He took a step forward, and Maya chambered a round, the sound loud in the quiet room. Sandberg stopped and sighed in exasperation.
She didn’t take her eyes off him. “Jackson?”
“Everything he said makes sense,” he answered. “I don’t think we have any other choice but to follow him for the time being.”
She seemed to process that for a few moments and finally lowered her weapon to pull back the slide. When she put her hand down to push herself to her feet, she was so weak and shaky that her arm trembled. Sandberg stepped forward again, and Maya stopped him cold with a single, cutting look. “I don’t need your help.”
Throwing Jackson an exasperated look, Sandberg turned and moved past him with a muttered, “I’ll get Haversham.”
Half turning to keep his eye on the guy, Jackson bent and slid his arm behind Maya’s back to brace her, pulling up and forward. She sucked in a breath and bent over, coughing into the bend of her elbow. He winced in sympathy. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” She didn’t protest when he wrapped the blanket around her for extra warmth, and that alone told him just how ill she was. With an arm around her shoulders to steady her, he walked her through the doorway.
Out in the main room, he found Haversham rolled on to his hip as though he meant to get up. His eyes met Jackson’s and he jerked his chin at Sandberg, who was shrugging out of his ruck. “He’s legit.”
“How do you know?”
“He knew my code word.”
“Your code word?”
“My government one.”
Okay, that helped ease his mind a little. Actually, not really.
Sandberg was busy digging through the ruck he’d dumped on the floor. He was pulling out pieces of an M4 when he glanced up at Jackson. “Figured you could use this, just in case.”
Frowning, Jackson released Maya, handed her his pistol and went to his knees to take the pieces and put the weapon together, noting the full magazine. “You got a radio in there too?”
“No, had to ditch it after I left Khalid’s camp in case anyone intercepted me. We’re on our own for the time being, I’m afraid.”
Once he had it together and loaded, Jackson slung it across his chest and stood to gather Maya close with a hand on the small of her back. Haversham’s and Sandberg’s eyes both followed his move. If his actions looked territorial, too bad, because that’s exactly how he was feeling. Maya was his to protect and yeah, he wanted it clear how he felt about her. Surprisingly she didn’t object, rather continued watching Sandberg repack his ruck with a somewhat hostile expression on her face. A few short months ago, Jackson had been on the receiving end of that look. It felt good to know he’d won her loyalty and trust.
Sandberg’s lips quirked as he tipped his ruck onto his back and spoke to Tarik. The old man nodded and rushed away to get them another small bladder full of water. “Can you carry that?” Sandberg asked her.
With a firm nod, she took it and looped the thin leather strap around her neck so that the bladder rested against her chest. “We ready?” Even worn down and ill as she was, she still wore that natural air of authority he’d recognized in her from the first time he’d seen her at Bagram. And she wore it well.
“Let’s move out,” Sandberg said on a grunt as he hoisted Haversham to his feet, then across his shoulders.
“Fucking hell , I hate this part,” Haversham gritted out as his wounded leg got jostled.
“Don’t blame you,” Sandberg replied.
“Then you won’t mind when I puke all over your back,” the Secretary muttered.
“It’s happened before.” Shifting Haversham to distribute the weight better and earning a choked cry from his passenger, Sandberg started for the front door. Tarik stood next to it. Jackson met his gaze and nodded his thanks. The old man placed a hand over his heart and bowed slightly. Jackson returned the gesture, grateful for his hospitality, then reached toward Maya, intending to carry her.
She pushed against his shoulder and gave a tight shake of her head. “I can walk.”
He straightened to look down into her face. “You’re in no condition to walk.” She wasn’t in any condition to be standing, as far as he was concerned.
Her lips pressed together for a moment. “I’m walking out of here.”
She didn’t want anyone to see her weak and helpless. Jackson understood that. But he also wasn’t going to allow her pride to place her or the rest of them in jeopardy. “I’ll let you walk until we’re out of sight of the village if you can get that far. But the moment you can’t keep up, you’re takin’ a ride over my shoulder.”
She gave a firm nod. “Fair enough.”
He let her exit the house ahead of him and brought up the rear, not taking any chances in case anyone in the village had it in his mind to take a shot at them on their way out of town. Luckily no one tried anything, and soon they had passed through the village to make their way down the sloping hill into another shallow valley.
So far Maya was keeping pace okay, but he could see the effort it cost her. A few times she paused to cough, and when she walked he could hear the wheezing quality of her breaths. The accessory breathing muscles in her neck stood out in sharp relief as she gasped. Over the next thirty minutes, the space between them and Sandberg started to increase. At the top of the next rise Sandberg paused to look back, and when he saw how far behind they were, he set Haversham down to have a rest.
Maya saw it and pushed herself even harder, determination stamped all over her face. But the incline was too much for her. Partway up, a bad coughing spasm had her doubling over and going to her knees. Jackson reached out to catch her before she could topple over and waited only until she’d caught her breath before pulling her up. Her face was blanched of color, slick with sweat.
“No more hiking for you,” he told her, and bent to hoist her over his shoulders. She grunted in discomfort and wrapped her good arm around his chest to steady herself but didn’t try to argue. He could feel her shaking from pain and cold. Reaching the top of the hill, he took in the scene below him. The trail wound through the barren landscape like a dusty ribbon in the dun-colored soil, rising and falling with the landscape before it vanished around a bend in the distance.
“We have to hump it six klicks to the west-northwest, just before we hit that bend,” Sandberg said.
Jackson studied the topography, not loving what he was seeing. In addition to the boulder-strewn terrain and steep climbs they’d have to make, there were plenty of blind corners and other places where the enemy could be hiding. Not to mention the other potential concealment spots he couldn’t see.
Paying careful attention to his surroundings, Jackson started down the slope after Sandberg. The ground was littered with small rocks and pebbles, making it slippery, but he was more concerned with speed than he was about keeping his tracks to a minimum.
Small as she was, Maya was solid muscle and heavy for her size. Every few minutes he had to shift her to ease the strain on his back and shoulders, causing her further pain. He didn’t let himself think about the burn in his muscles or the distance they had to travel, because that was wasted mental effort and a self-defeating mindset. In the Pipeline, they’d taught him to be mentally tough and break seemingly impossible tasks into little ones, then focus on the immediate one at hand. He used that training now, breaking the march down into smaller sections marked by each short pause they took.
At the bend in the trail, they broke left and headed west-northwest. Jackson was winded from carrying Maya. He hated moving out in the open like this, but there was no way around it. The sun was fast approaching its zenith, beating down on them with surprising intensity, considering it was only early March. Sweat soaked his back and chest, his face and neck. At one point, Maya reached out with a corner of the blanket she’d unwrapped around her to dab at his face and forehead.
“You give good piggybacks,” she whispered close to his ear.
He swallowed a crack of laughter at that. “Had lots of practice,” he managed, his lungs working overtime with the added demand for oxygen from his muscles.
“You carry sick women around often?” Her voice was dry, the wheeze in her chest pronounced.
“This is a first,” he admitted. “Mostly guys in the field. And my nephews, o’course.” Who he couldn’t wait to get home to see. Had his sister found out he was missing and told the boys? They’d be devastated. He had to make it home and be with his family again. And he wanted Maya to go with him. “So, when we get back...” He paused a second to catch his breath. “Will you come visit my family with me?”
He felt her stiffen in surprise against his shoulders and she was silent for a long moment. “You want me to meet your family?”
“Yeah. They’d love you.” The boys would go nuts over her, a real-life American heroine. They’d build Maya Lego figurines in her honor. When she didn’t answer right away, he swore he could hear the wheels of suspicion turning in her head.
“I’ll...think about it.”
“You do that.” With her background, he knew she’d need time to wrap her mind around that one, and he was okay with that as long as she consented in the end.
They took their next break in the shade of a small rock overhang. Sandberg looked as done in as Jackson felt. The guy was soaked in sweat as he dumped his ruck with a rough groan and bent to divvy up water and some protein bars. Jackson, Haversham and Maya wolfed them down, desperate for the nutrition and calories of any kind. Right then, Jackson was fantasizing about a big box full of Kit Kat bars he’d seen at the back of the Pat Tillman USO. He could do serious damage to that box right now.
All too soon it was time to head out again. He adjusted the M4 into place across his chest and reached for Maya, who backed up a step.
“I’ll walk for a bit.” Her cheeks had red flags of color on them and she’d just finished another coughing fit that had left her gasping and wheezing.
Jackson shook his head once. “Don’t even,” he warned and hauled her into the air, the muscles in his back and shoulders screaming in protest. She huffed out a pained breath and hung on to him with her good hand, her cheek resting on the back of his shoulder.
“Another two klicks, then we head due north until we hit the LZ,” Sandberg panted, stumbling a bit under Haversham’s weight. He quickly shot out a hand to steady himself against the rock wall and started off again. This time they kept to the shadows to conceal their movements, winding their way up a steep slope in their path.
Gritting his teeth, Jackson forced his burning quads and glutes to propel him and Maya upward, reaching out for a rock near the top to help get him the last few yards up. Sandberg was sucking wind too and didn’t look like he had much more in him, yet he set off down the hill without pausing, carrying a sweaty-faced Haversham safely down the other side. They did it two more times before finally reaching the next change in course.
A good twenty minutes later at the edge of a dry riverbed, Sandberg slid his wounded passenger off him and all but fell to his knees in the dust beside Haversham. He shrugged out of his ruck and bent forward to rest his weight on his hands while he tried to catch his breath, smoked from carrying his heavier passenger. Jackson set Maya down as gently as he could and went to one knee, head bowed, chest heaving, grateful that she weighed much less than the Sec Def.
“How much farther?” he gasped.
Sandberg had just opened his mouth to respond when a puff of dust erupted on the hillside in front of them, followed a split second later by the report of a high-powered rifle.
“ Fuck. ” Sandberg rolled behind a rock as Jackson dragged Maya behind cover and flattened himself on top of her. She jerked and bit back a gasp of pain as another round impacted, closer this time. The report echoed too much for Jackson to get an accurate read on the location.
Maya struggled beneath him, trying to lift up on her good arm. Jackson pinned her flat. He knew he was hurting her but didn’t care at the moment if it saved her from getting shot. He cut a scathing glare at Sandberg, who had his AK up and aimed. “You set this up?”
In answer, he got an annoyed eat-shit-and-die look and a clipped, “Does it look like it?”
From the way he was returning fire, no. But the timing of this new threat seemed pretty damn suspicious.
Haversham belly-crawled toward them, his grunts of pain muffled behind gritted teeth. He slid up beside them with a pistol in one hand, gaze darting across the hillside across from them. “See anything?”
Jackson scanned the horizon. “Not yet.” Sniper could be anywhere out there. The ground here was too uneven and exposed. They couldn’t move using any kind of cover, but staying put made them sitting targets. And whatever enemy force the shooter was attached to had to be on the move now that they had a bead on their location.
The moment he thought it, an eerie howl rose into the clear afternoon air. The hair on his arms stood up. Holy shit.
Beyond the far side of the riverbed where the hill curved up and away, a group of men dressed in dark clothes charged toward them, weapons glinting dully in the sunlight. Jackson rolled away from Maya and aimed his rifle just as the roar of gunfire filled the tiny valley.
* * *
M AYA SCRAMBLED UP on to her right elbow when Jackson’s weight left her, using the edge of her splint to pull back the slide on her pistol. The rattle of automatic weapons fire made her heart slam, but it was the enemy’s shrill cries that sent a spiral of fear corkscrewing down her backbone. Her fever and aches forgotten, she kept her eyes on the men racing toward them and held fast to the pistol in her right hand. Jackson and the others were deathly still beside her. What were they going to do? They were pinned down with nowhere to go.
“We gotta take out as many as we can and make a run for it,” Sandberg yelled over the noise, firing precise bursts from his weapon.
Jackson didn’t respond, focused on the attackers, methodically firing single and double taps. The sound of the M4 was distinctive among the bark of the AKs. Two men near the front of the group fell and crumpled to the ground, but the others rushed on. At least a dozen of them, maybe more. “Stay down, Maya,” he ordered without looking at her.
She did, but only because the sidearm was completely useless at this range. Haversham was so close his hip pressed against hers, his broken leg bumping her foot as he waited with her, unable to do anything yet. Her heart thundered in her ears as she watched Jackson and Sandberg fire repeatedly. No matter how many attackers they hit, the rest just kept on coming, trying to overwhelm them with sheer force of numbers, splitting their force into groups that charged from different directions. Some of them ducked down behind whatever concealment they could find, making it impossible to hit them.
“Can’t help at this range,” she yelled to Haversham, ducking on instinct when a bullet buried itself in the rock wall over their heads. Jackson and Sandberg were damn good shots, but they had their hands full. The enemy charging on the right put their flank at risk. She had to protect their right flank. Twisting her head to look around, she spotted a group of large rocks a few yards away and got Haversham’s attention. “Over there.” Pointing, she started to inch away from her cover, assuming he’d follow, only to be brought up short by Jackson’s angry shout.
“Don’t you fucking move, Maya.”
The abrupt command made her hesitate for only a second before she resumed crawling.
“Maya!”
“Shut up and shoot!” she yelled back, gritting her teeth at the sharp twinge in her ribs.
Three enemy fighters broke off and darted to her right. The one in the lead was smaller than the others, and when he was close enough for her to see his scraggly beard, she realized it was that kid, Mohammed. Someone shouted something at him that made him stumble and twist around to look behind him. When Maya saw who it was, her blood ran cold. Then the heat of rage transformed it into a heat so molten it burned in her veins.
Khalid. He was at the rear, orchestrating this whole attack, both arms wrapped in bloody bandages. If Maya had her way, he’d be losing a lot more than blood today.
Cursing at the pain in her broken bones and the rocks digging into her flesh, Maya crawled over behind her new cover and peeked around the rock before her, her pistol up and ready. It seemed to take forever for them to come into range.
Mohammed yelled something back at his leader then turned toward her, his expression full of determination and fury. Suddenly he jerked and went down, clutching his leg where either Sandberg or Jackson had hit him. But he didn’t stay down. He dragged himself up, his face twisted with pain and rage as he brought the barrel of his rifle up and fired a wild burst that went wide, peppering the rocks between her and Haversham. The others were all occupied trying to pick off the other shooters, and Mohammed was close enough now.
Maya didn’t hesitate.
Rising to one knee, she took aim and fired three shots, hitting him twice in the belly. He dropped his rifle and fell clutching his middle, writhing on the ground. Another man rushed up to him. Maya fired again and again, emptying her magazine, but only managed to wing him in the shoulder. On his belly, he began dragging Mohammed back to their own lines.
Out of ammo and with her quarry too far away even if she’d had any bullets left, Maya could only watch as the survivors on her right flank hauled the wounded boy back to where they’d come from. The others followed suit, leaving their dead behind on the battlefield as they periodically wheeled to spray bullets in their direction. In the lull, Jackson and Sandberg stopped shooting. The sudden silence was almost as eerie as those terrible battle cries had been.
Maya’s eyes were glued to one particular spot across that deadly space. There was no sign of Khalid, who had melted back somewhere into the shadows. But he’d been there and couldn’t have gone far. He was just biding his time, regrouping for another attack.
“What the fuck do you think you were doing ?”
She tensed at the terse whisper beside her. Bracing herself for the coming argument, she turned her head and met Jackson’s enraged gaze.