CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Light spilled into the far end of the tunnel, and Boone glanced at Lucas.
They closed the distance and heard whimpering, sniffling, and crying.
Water dripped from some unknown source. The deeper underground they ventured, the colder it became, and with water dripping more freely down the walls, the dirt beneath their boots had turned into mud.
A man’s harsh whisper carried down the tunnel toward them. “Shut up and move.” He spoke in Urdu, the native language of the area.
Boone held up a fist, and they stopped just about ten feet from the opening. They pressed their backs against opposite sides of the tunnel, and he risked a quick peek.
On the far side of the room, an oil lamp flickered where it sat on the ground. An oversize shadow drifted across the wall, but he couldn’t be sure it was Udall and not one of the girls.
He pointed in the general direction of where he saw movement.
Lucas nodded in acknowledgment.
Boone held up three fingers and dropped them one at a time in a silent countdown.
Three.
Two.
One.
They lifted their rifles and exploded into action, with Lucas taking the left side of the space and Boone sweeping his rifle toward the right. They both sighted in the threat at the same time.
Standing on the far side of the space, centered in the crosshairs of Boone’s scope, a man pressed the muzzle of a Glock semiauto pistol against the temple of a terrified girl who looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old.
Her body trembled, her eyes were wide with fear, and tears streaked through the dirt on her cheeks.
The guy’s other arm was wrapped around her waist, using her as a human shield.
He recognized his old teammate immediately, and Udall’s eyes blazed with the unhinged madness of a desperate man who knew he was trapped in a cage of his own making.
“Well, if it isn’t my old buddy, Rancher.” Udall shifted so the only exposed part of him was a portion of the right side of his face. The rest of him was blocked by the girl’s body. “I suspected someone might be following me the other day. I just never imagined it would be you.”
“Let her go.” Boone kept his rifle on him and moved a few feet into the space, in the opposite direction of the group of girls that were now huddled together by the wall on Lucas’s side of the cavern.
“Stop!” Udall pressed the muzzle harder against the girl’s skin. She whimpered louder, closed her eyes, and a tear rolled down her cheek. “I swear, I’ll kill her.”
“And then what?” Boone just needed to keep the asshole distracted long enough for Lucas to get in position to cover the other girls. “You kill her, then I kill you. Is that what you want?”
Boone moved to the right as Lucas shifted to the left.
Udall’s eyes bounced back and forth between them and landed on Boone.
Lucas capitalized on his distraction and managed to move a few feet closer to the girls until he was only one big step sideways from them.
Udall shuffled forward slightly, keeping the girl in front of him, and kicked over the lamp.
It landed in a stream of water. The flame hissed and sputtered out, plunging the room into pitch-black darkness.
Footsteps shuffled and scuffed over the dirt, and the girls’ screams bounced off the rock.
Through the cacophony of noise, Boone heard Luna’s steady voice in his earpiece.
“Boone, your body cam’s infrared showed that his and the girl’s heat signatures faded behind where he was standing.” Her voice was the calm amidst a raging storm. “There must be an opening in the cave wall.”
To avoid being detected, he tucked his flashlight in his vest and flipped his NVGs down in front of his eyes.
“I’ll take them back the way we came in.” Lucas had his own NVGs in place and was already gathering up the girls. “Go after them.”
“Roger that.” Boone navigated his way around the chamber by dragging his hand over the wall.
“Keep going. It’s about five feet to your left,” Luna said.
His glove scraped along the rough rock until he felt cool air blow across his face. He kept skimming his hand over the wall until he found what he thought might be an opening.
“I found the opening.” He felt along the edge and realized it was only about five feet high by about three feet wide.
“He must know another way out of there,” Luna said.
“Maybe there’s another opening somewhere in the woods behind the ruins.” Boone ducked down and headed into the carved tunnel.
“That would explain the disappearing heat signature.” Luna tapped keys in the background. “Cole and Hawk are already searching in that area while Viking provides overwatch.”
“Going silent,” he whispered.
His broad shoulders grazed along the jagged rocks jutting out from both sides of the tunnel. The back of his protective vest scraped and caught against the rough-hewn ceiling as he rushed to keep up with the fading light of Udall’s flashlight.
With each step, the ground became wetter until his boots were kicking up water.
A terrified scream echoed from the other end of the tunnel, and Udall’s light went out.
“You bitch!” he growled.
The screaming came closer, and a bright green heat signature charged toward Boone. The girl was looking back over her shoulder and slammed right into him. He caught her before she fell, and she starting screaming, flailing her arms, and fighting against his hold.
“It’s okay. I’m here to help you.” It had been a while since he’d spoken in Urdu and hoped she could understand him. “Where is he?”
“I … I … scratch him and … and push him.” She was sobbing so hard, she could barely talk. “He … he fall and … and I run away.” She pointed toward the darkest part of the tunnel. “He … there.”
He slipped his small flashlight from a vest pocket.
He whispered, “Here, take this and go that way.” He turned her toward the main chamber. “Someone will be there to help you.” He clicked on the flashlight and gave her a gentle nudge forward.
She gave a frantic nod and started running.
“Eddie, Calliope, there’s a girl coming your way,” Luna said.
He heard the splat of the poor girl’s bare feet in the mud as she raced away, and the flashlight beam bounced with each step.
Boone waited until she was completely out of sight before he resumed his search for Udall.
A few minutes later, Calliope confirmed, “We’ve got the girl.”
“All girls have been secured,” Luna said. “Now go get that asshole.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Boone took off after Udall and only made it about fifty feet when he came to a wider space with what looked like three more tunnel entrances.
He closed his eyes and tuned in to the sounds around him.
Water dripped from multiple places, and he felt a whisper of air across his face.
There was a rustling of movement to his right, followed by the unmistakable sound of a pin being pulled from a grenade.
Something thumped onto the ground and rolled nearby.
“Shit!” He turned, started running back the way he came, and an explosion ripped through the tunnel.
The sound hammered off the walls, and the force of the blast slammed him to the ground. His eardrums popped, and he threw his arms over his head just as a blast of heat barreled over him. Rock, debris, and dirt dropped from the ceiling and landed on his left side.
“Argh,” he groaned and heard Luna calling out his name.
“BOONE!”
“Lu-na.” Her name scraped its way up his throat and came out raspy and weak.
“I’m here, Boone! I’m here.” She sounded so scared. “Just listen to my voice, okay? Just keep listening to my voice.”
“I … love”—he coughed, and a blinding pain seared through his rib cage—“love you.”
His body screamed in agony, and his mind became fuzzy.
The world became eerily silent, like a vacuum had sucked all sound from existence.
Luna appeared before him in the pitch-blackness of the cave. Golden and glowing like his very own angel, she held her hand out to him, as if beckoning him to her.
Boone tried to reach for her but couldn’t move.
Luna’s brilliant smile was the last thing he saw before the inescapable grip of darkness dragged him to its ominous depths.
BOOM!
Luna stood so fast, her chair rolled across the room and bumped into her mini fridge.
“BOONE!”
His body camera instantly went dark, and she thought she heard a thudding sound, like objects landing on something.
“BOONE!” She screamed his name again.
“Lu-na.” His voice was barely audible.
She rushed over to the console and tried to adjust the volume.
“I’m here, Boone. I’m here.” She pressed her headset closer to her ears in an effort to hear him better. “Just listen to my voice, okay? Just keep listening to my voice.”
“I … love”—he coughed, and it didn’t sound good—“love you.”
“I love you, too.”
There was the scratch and crackle of static, then nothing but a chilling, dead silence.
She stared up at the screen, desperate for his body camera to miraculously start functioning again.
Minutes that felt like decades ticked by. She clicked a few keys and still nothing.
“No.” She shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no.”
In her headset, she heard Calliope shouting. “Boone!” She ran toward the front of the tomb. “Come on, Boone, answer me. Please say something.” Her anguished plea to her brother was heartbreaking.
Cole and Hawk were running to join her.
The rest of the team remained in position, ominously silent—all of them waiting for some sign that their teammate, their friend, their brother was still alive.
Luna checked Boone’s bio-patch reading, but it no longer appeared on the screen with the others.
Her body instantly felt numb, and she forgot how to breathe.
“Boone—” Her voice sounded frail and small.
The letter in the drawer taunted her, and a horrible vision of him in a dark cave, alone and hurt or worse, tore at her soul.
The ominous silence and painful loss were too heavy a burden to bear, and as if in slow motion, her legs gave out and she collapsed to her knees on the floor.
She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth, racked by great, agonizing sobs wrenched from the darkest depths of her soul. Her heart physically ached from the crushing sense of loss.
The hiss of the ops center door barely registered before Caleb was kneeling beside her and circling his arms around her.
Cole said, “Caleb—”
“I’ve got her.” Caleb held her tight, as if worried she might break apart.
Too late—she was already shattered into a million pieces.
“We’re going in after Boone,” her boss replied. “Hawk, Calliope, you’re with me. Eddie and Viking, keep watch for Udall. Lucas, find someplace safe to hide the girls and stay with them.”
Hearing everyone’s names, especially Calliope’s, was a harsh reminder that Luna wasn’t the only one facing an excruciating loss.
Boone’s words came back to her, “Make no mistake, Luna—you are our lifeline.”
Dammit, he was right.
She needed to pull her shit together—her team needed her.
Boone needed her.
Luna sucked in a few deep beaths and blew them out slowly.
“I’m okay, Caleb.” She would fall apart later. Right now, she had work to do.
He held her slightly away from him and looked her in the eye. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Luna nodded, and he lowered his arms.
She swiped the useless tears from her face, pushed up from the floor, and rolled her chair back to the console to sit down.
Upon checking the feeds from all of their body cams, she could tell Calliope was running past the destroyed columns and into the tomb.
Her attention shifted from one video monitor to the next, ending on Lucas’s. He spoke gently and with extreme compassion to the scared group of girls, reassuring them they would be okay, as he guided them to a …
Luna must be hallucinating.
She tapped a few keys, leaned closer, and zoomed in on the image from his body cam.
He was holding back the branches of a willow tree so the girls could duck beneath the boughs. Once the last one was through, they all huddled together on the far side of the space.
Lucas held a finger to his lips. “Shhh.” The girls quieted.
Once they were well hidden, he let the branches fall back into place, stood with his back to the tree, and kept watch for any threats.
She was immediately yanked back to her time with Boone, beneath his own special willow tree. That’s when she’d begun to fall in love with him.
She listened, hoping and praying to hear his voice.
There was nothing but the sound of the team’s boots cutting through the eerie silence as they ran to find their teammate.
Surely, life couldn’t be so cruel and unfair as to take away the only man she ever loved, could it?