Chapter Six
T he heat sucked every bit of moisture out of the air. Grace’s tongue felt two times too big for her mouth, and at the pace Sharp set, all she wanted to do was hang it out and pant.
He had them moving toward the nearest hills at a ground-eating trot, his head roving from side to side, watching for possible threats. After a few minutes, the terrain changed from barren stony hills to low scrub brush and washout ravines, the only sound the skitter of small creatures running for cover.
Was there room for her under one of their rocks?
Sharp came to a stop, his head poised to listen, one hand extended behind him with his palm out in a stop gesture.
She stopped.
He waved that hand toward the ground.
She crouched, the butt of the Beretta rough against her palms. Her stomach tightened until breathing was painful. It had become second nature for her to hold the weapon at ready, safety off during training, but at this moment, it felt wrong. She was a doctor, a surgeon. Her muscles should remember what to do with a scalpel, not a gun.
Nausea threatened, but she beat it down with ruthless anger. No time to panic, freak out, or let her inner pansy ass out to throw up on the situation. That bitch had already had enough airtime today.
There was only room for the soldier to be in control.
She closed her eyes for five seconds. Took in three deep breaths and deliberately relaxed her shoulders. They would get through this. They had to. She wasn’t ready to die, and Sharp didn’t look like he was interested in it much either.
They waited for a long time. Shadows grew and lengthened like pulled taffy, turning the desert into a moonscape of craters and valleys an eternity from home. The pack on her back gained weight with every passing second, and the sample container dug invisible claws into her side.
Finally, long after the muscles in her thighs and calves began to burn, his fingers lifted in a come-closer sign.
She walked slowly, quietly until she was right behind him, then reached out with her left hand and placed it on his shoulder so he’d know she was there.
His reaction was a subtle relaxation in the muscles under her hand. “Stay on my ass,” he whispered, the sound more of a sigh than a vocalization.
She attempted to reply as quietly. “Understood.”
He moved forward, weapon ready, the butt of his rifle anchored in the hollow of his shoulder.
She followed, keeping as close as possible without tripping over him.
They traveled for what seemed like hours, following the ravines until Sharp paused for an extra moment longer, looking at a collection of prickly brush perched about ten feet up from the bottom of the ravine.
He signaled her to remain where she was, then rushed up to the vegetation. A second later, she couldn’t see him at all.
Grace waited, growing unease twisting in her chest until she could barely breathe. Finally, Sharp appeared out of the darkness as if he were made of the same shadows cast by the half-moon in the sky.
He waved at her to follow, and she found herself climbing the rocks, sliding behind some low brush and into the dark.
A cave.
The opening wasn’t large. She had to bend over almost in half, but it opened up a bit more a few feet inside.
A snap echoed softly, then an orange glow-in-the-dark stick lit up and illuminated the cave. It wasn’t high enough for Sharp to stand up in it, but she almost could. There were animal tracks on the dirt floor of the cave, but none were large or looked recent. The cave ended after about ten feet, making it just large enough for the two of them to be comfortable.
She snorted at the thought. Comfortable was not a word she’d be using to describe her situation for the foreseeable future. Her father had always told her a comfortable soldier was a lazy soldier, but he couldn’t have meant this.
“Is this place safe?” she asked, afraid to speak too loud in case the cave created an echo.
“As safe as we’re going to get,” Sharp said. “I’m going to go out, scout around, and see if I can erase any tracks we might have left on our way up here. Maybe lay some false trails to give anyone hunting us something to follow.”
She nodded. “What do you want me to do?”
“Wait here. No noise, no moving around.”
“Got it.” A second later he was gone, a silent ghost among the shadows.
She knelt down, unslung the container of samples, placing it in a small nook near the mouth of the cave, then took her pack off. Inside were three water bottles. She took one and sipped slowly from it, stopping before her thirst was quenched. They were going to have to ration it, and she might as well start now.
The sun was going down rapidly, so she mostly buried the glow stick. There was enough of a moon rising to light up the landscape.
The temperature outside the cave was dropping fast, but inside, it was still warm. She sat down, using her pack as a back brace, and watched the entrance for Sharp’s return.
At first, she kept a careful watch, every sound bringing her to attention and leaning forward to check for someone sneaking close. After a while, she began to recognize insect noise and birdcalls. All good things to hear. It was when they got quiet that she would have to worry about another human being in the area. After a while, her muscles began to relax, her mind drifted, and flashes of memory struck like snakes after prey.
The smiling face of the soldier next to her on the plane was shoved aside by his death mask.
Her anger at the senseless killing of her teammates by the Afghan men.
The freeze of seeing their bodies lying still and bloody on the ground after she shot them.
Hope at finding Rasker alive.
Anguish at giving him permission to die.
Conflicting emotions, images and utter confusion at having no escape, no outlet for the cacophony, threatened to suck her into a tornado of despair with the power to drown her in her own guilt and self-doubt.
She should have died, too. She should have been able to protect and help those men, yet every one of them now lay dead in the helicopter’s carcass, their blood coating the smoking broken bones of the aircraft and the greedy sand beneath it.
She was the reason those men had gotten into that doomed machine.
Their deaths were on her hands.
She and Sharp might not get out of this predicament alive either, and there was nothing she could do about it. Except follow Sharp’s instructions.
Grace wiggled deeper into the sand, closed her eyes, and let exhaustion pull her into the dark pit of sleep.
A sound woke her.
She blinked, and it took a moment before she remembered everything that had happened. The sound reached her again. A sliding, kind of swishing sound. Something or someone was closing in on the entrance of the cave.
Her hands moved before she could decide what to do, the Beretta poised and ready.
A voice floated through the night with a whispered stealth she could only dream of someday accomplishing. “Doc?”
“Sharp.” She let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding, and her arms fell to her sides. Hope warred with dread, making her hands shake, but she managed to holster her weapon.
What had he discovered?
Were they followed?
Were they safe?
She had no strength left, no armor for her feelings and no skills left to cope with the meltdown she could feel beginning inside the core of her soul.
He slipped inside the cave, but crouched at the entrance, anchoring branches and foliage he must have taken from brush and bushes, creating a screen to hide them. He planted them carefully, using one small branch with small dark green leaves to sweep away the evidence that a human put them there.
“Where did you get all that?” she asked quietly.
“Here and there.” He moved back from his handiwork and took a look at it. With a nod, he took off his backpack, set it aside, then pulled out something from one of the large pockets along the leg of his pants. At first, she thought it was a small square of fabric, but he unfolded it until it was large enough to cover most of the cave’s opening.
She leaned forward, trying to make out what it was. “Is that...some kind of mesh?”
“Camo mesh, yeah,” Sharp said, as he anchored a corner of it on one side of the opening with a small nail he fished out of a different pocket. He did the same with the other side.
He eased back and studied the entrance. “That should do for camouflage. The branches with the mesh behind it will make this opening look like solid rock.”
“How many men are looking for us?”
“At least three groups.” His response was a sigh she felt more than heard. “I went back to take a look at the crash site.”
When he didn’t continue, she asked, “And?”
“It was being watched, while others were searching.”
“Any good guys?”
“Not that I could see.” He turned to her. “But we’re safe here. I laid a couple of false trails that crossed their own well-worn paths. Tracking us will have them running into each other.”
It took her a moment to digest his answer, but when she did, nausea threatened again. “We can’t go back, can we?”
“Not now. Not if we want to stay alive.”
“Will they look for us?”
“Yes. Someone killed those men. They’re looking for a survivor. But since you did such a good job of walking in my footprints, there’s only one set. Same as my false trails.”
“How will our guys even know we survived if we’re not at the helicopter? Couldn’t we find a closer place to wait? So we’ll hear them coming?”
“In my opinion, closer isn’t safe. There are extremists all over these hills and they’re now waiting for a rescue helicopter, too, so they can try to shoot it down. If we jump up and wave our arms in the air, they’re going to shoot us first.”
“Point to you. How will our people know we survived?”
Sharp’s reply took a moment or two. “There aren’t enough bodies.”
“What do you mean? At the crash site? There are plenty of bodies. More than there should be.” She was responsible for some of those bodies.
“Not American soldiers. They’ll look and they’ll count. The bastards who shot us down are now looking for whoever killed their men. They know there’s a survivor out here, hunkered down somewhere, waiting for help. They’ll be watching for a chance to kill that survivor before they can be safely extracted.”
“What are we going to do, then?”
“Our guys can’t leave the wreckage to be picked over. There are a lot of useable supplies and gear on board. Plus, they’re going to want to recover the bodies. We’ll have to wait until a full retrieval team gets here. Then we can make a fast, quiet run for it.”
“How long until that happens?”
He shrugged. “Maybe six to twelve hours. If we stay hidden and quiet, we have a good chance of making it.” He scuttled farther into the cave. “In the meantime, why don’t we figure out where you’re wounded?”
She paused, confused. “What are you talking about? I wasn’t hurt.”
“Doc, you’re bleeding from somewhere. I found a blood trail one of us left, and since you bandaged me up already, it sure isn’t me.”
Yes, she had a few sore spots. Her left arm ached, as did her left calf, but those were just bumps and bruises. “I’m fine.”
“I know that, but it isn’t relevant to this conversation.”
Wait, what did he say? “Are you trying to flirt with me?”
“I don’t know. Is it working?” He gave her a once-over that was so not appropriate.
“It’s pissing me off.” She wanted to smack him, yell at him, beat her fists against his chest.
He shrugged. “I’ll take pissed off over nothing at all.”
“Stop talking. You’re not making any sense.” She glared at him, daring him to say something more.
He smiled grimly at her. “Doc, get your butt over here.”
She stared at him. He wasn’t kidding.
Pffft. She wasn’t bleeding, and she’d prove it. Grace pushed to her feet, crouching a little so she didn’t hit her head on the ceiling of the cave, and looked down.
There was a wet spot on the dirt where she’d been sitting. She palpated it with two fingers and brought the bit of sand closer to her face so she could smell it. The bitterness of iron coated the back of her throat.
Blood. Shit.
Sharp wasn’t going to let her live this down.
“Doc?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” She moved farther in. “Let’s check my left side. It hurts more than anywhere else.”
“Where exactly?”
“Bicep and calf.”
He reached for her leg, then wrapped his hand around the muscle. She was surprised by the sting of pain that went with it. “Ow.”
“Looks like something here. Where else?”
She sat down and he checked her arm.
“Blood here too.”
She was an idiot. “I can’t believe I got hurt and didn’t know it.”
“Adrenaline is a marvelous thing,” Sharp said as he urged her to take off her body armor. “I’ve seen guys keep running, fighting or firing after getting hit with a fatal strike. Your brain can keep going for a surprisingly long time before it realizes you’re dead.”
Her mouth twisted into a grimace. “If you’re trying to cheer me up, it’s not working.”
“Just keeping it real, Doc.” Sharp turned away to open his pack and pull out one of the first-aid kits. “Let’s start with your leg.” He gave her left leg a moment’s consideration, then lifted a hand toward her fly.
She stepped back before she could stop herself and he froze.
He dropped his hand, wiggled his eyebrows at her and said, “Take off your pants.”