Chapter Twenty-Eight
R age gripped Sharp by the throat and threatened to shake him out of his normal calm, professional persona while waiting for his quarry to make a mistake and show himself. Patience had always come easy. Until now. Until Grace decided to do exactly what she’d promised not to do.
It had been impossible to miss. She’d been all too visible standing on the outcropping of stone. He hadn’t seen who she was stalking, but he recognized her body language and movements. They’d come straight out of the how to sneak up on the enemy US Army handbook. She’d fired twice. Then someone began shooting the assholes who thought they were sneaking up on him.
She’d saved his ass again.
There was no way he could let a woman this perfect for him slip out of his life. There had to be a way for them to be together.
If they survived this shit, he was going to find it.
A head popped up, the one he’d been waiting for, and he fired. A hit. There was some frantic movement as the last target moved, but he didn’t have a clear shot at this one.
Two shots were fired by someone else from a different direction and the movement stopped.
Smoke’s voice whispered over the radio, “Clear.”
“Return to Beta position,” Sharp said, then started moving himself. He had a doctor to discipline.
On the way back to the cave entrance, he checked on the men Grace had shot. One dead, one wounded. The wounded man lifted his weapon. Sharp shot him before he could fire, but he wasn’t happy about that either. He wanted answers and wouldn’t get any from a corpse.
He arrived at the cave before Smoke. As he slipped inside, he came face-to-face with Grace lowering her Beretta.
Good. At least she’d been prepared to shoot if he hadn’t been friendly.
She ducked her head and walked away, her shoulders hunched like a woman who’d been hit by someone she loved.
Was she hurt?
He lunged after her and pulled her to a stop. “Are you injured?”
Her face was solemn. “Not really.” She glanced into the dark interior of the cave. “March...died.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck .
His anger flared again and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, wrapping up the rage, frustration, and sadness with steel bands of control. He couldn’t afford to let his emotions rule him until they were in a safe place.
But he could offer her support. “Come here,” he whispered. “Let me hold you.”
Yeah, he was an ass, because he was totally taking advantage of her kindness and empathy for him, so he could comfort her.
She came to him without hesitation, without question, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder. She didn’t cry, but she held on tight. So tight her arms shook.
A crunch on the rocks behind him accompanied by a whisper of sound.
Sharp glanced over his shoulder to find Smoke there, his face set in cold lines.
“March is gone,” Sharp told him.
Smoke only nodded, then turned away to stand guard at the entrance.
“I’m so tired of my friends dying,” Grace said to him, her voice rough with tears. “So tired of killing people.” She pulled away and wiped her face with her sleeve. “No one is going to win. There is no win.”
He didn’t say anything. What was there to say? She was right.
“When did he pass?”
“A few minutes before you got back. I held his hand. I told him he could go, and he went.”
He buried his face in her hair and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you for being there for him.”
“If it had been you, I’d have yelled and screamed at you to stay.” She pulled back far enough to meet his gaze. “I wouldn’t have let you go.”
A glad sort of fierceness filled him at knowing she would have fought for him. He smiled savagely. “Good.”
He hugged her for another moment, then pulled away to frown at her. “You promised not to take risks.”
“I didn’t.”
“You climbed a couple stories and anyone looking in your direction would have seen you.”
“There was a sniper up there taking shots at you.”
“I knew he was there.”
“He was trying to flush you out so his friends could kill you.”
“I knew that too.”
She growled at him. “So, I’m just supposed to stay out of sight, stay safe, while you play hide-and-seek with a bunch of men who are trying their best to kill you?” She poked him in the chest. “Fuck that.”
Her growl and willingness to have his back had his cock at fucking attention. “You promised you’d take no unnecessary risks. That risk was unnecessary.”
“I can’t read your mind, Sharp. I saw a situation and knew I had to do something. The least you could do is trust me enough to know what I’m doing.”
“I do trust you.”
“Oh yeah? Then what’s with the I’m-the-soldier-you’re-the-asset routine?”
“Grace—” He cut himself off. They didn’t have time to argue. “Just leave it for now. We’ve got to get back to the base.”
She scowled at him for a second, then nodded her head once in agreement. “I thought a helicopter was going to pick us up?”
“The base came under fire about ten minutes ago. No one can land or take off. We’re on our own for now.”
“Our friends,” Smoke said, “left a couple of trucks.”
She stared at him, then at Sharp. “But we didn’t accomplish anything here.”
“We know this was a trap that almost worked.”
“It did work. Clark, Runnel, and March are dead.”
“Grace. We expected to find a lab here. We didn’t. I think this whole place was intended as a distraction at the least or a deadly trap at best.”
“So, if we didn’t find the lab here,” she said slowly. “Where is it?”
“Exactly.”
She looked at him, tilted her head to one side and asked, “If it were you planning this attack with anthrax spores inside grenades, how would you do it?”
Both men froze, their gazes unfocused, considering her question.
Sharp answered first. “The boy who cried wolf.”
“Yes,” Smoke agreed.
“Distraction. Distraction. Distraction. Direct attack,” Sharp explained.
A simple plan.
Simple plans work more often than complicated plans.
“Where are we in the pattern?” Grace asked.
Sharp ticked one finger off. “The attack on the village.”
Smoke ticked off the next one. “The deaths of Cutter and the two Marines at the base.”
Grace ticked off the last one. “This decoy slash trap.”
“The direct attack is happening now,” Sharp said.
They stared at each other for three long seconds.
Grace swallowed and turned to Smoke. “Where did you say those trucks are?”
***
S harp hung on to the door as Smoke yanked the steering wheel of the ancient half-ton truck he drove to the right then the left in order to miss a rock that would have hung them up. He followed no road, driving straight across country in a direct line, or as direct as he could manage, toward the base at the fastest speed he dared.
All three of them would be lucky to arrive with their bones intact and their insides not upside down.
Sharp was ready to rearrange the insides of the enlisted moron on the radio. He’d explained that the base was in danger of attack, a second anthrax attack, but the moron kept trying to tell him they had it handled.
“You will do your fucking job,” he said into the radio in a tone promising bad, nasty things if his orders weren’t followed. “You will inform General Stone of my report and you will do it now.”
The moron finally said he’d find someone to report it to and requested Sharp keep the channel open.
“Wow,” Grace said to Smoke. She sat between him and Smoke on the torn-up bench seat. “It sounds like Sharp’s ready to carve that kid up.”
Smoke grunted his agreement, then frowned at the dip in the terrain coming at them and growled, “Hang on.”
Grace, unable to reach anything bolted down, grabbed Sharp around the waist. After a couple of hard bounces and a jerk resulting in a metallic clang , they headed down into a small valley.
“What was that?” Grace asked.
“Probably the suspension,” Sharp said. “Or the muffler.” He thought about it some more. “Or it could have been the brakes.”
Smoke pumped them and nothing happened. “Brakes.”
“No brakes?” Grace yelled.
“Don’t need ’em,” Sharp said. “We’ll be going uphill in a couple of seconds.”
The truck gave an almighty shake as they started up the other side of the valley. Three seconds up the slope, the drive shaft dropped out like it had only been attached to the vehicle with Silly String.
The engine gave a cough and a wheeze then died altogether.
The truck came to a stop then rolled backward.
“Abandon ship,” Sharp said, grabbing his weapon and leaping out the passenger’s side. Grace followed him while Smoke went out the driver’s side.
His radio squawked.
“Who the fuck am I talking to now?” Sharp snarled into it as if he hadn’t just jumped out of a moving vehicle.
“General Stone.”
“My apologies, General, I have no patience for stupidity or assholes. The cave was in use by Akbar, but not as his lab. It was a trap. We lost three men inside and had to fight our way out.”
“Major Samuels?”
“She’s good and keeping up with Smoke and me just fine. Sir, we think Akbar is going to attack the base with grenades containing spores.”
“We came under attack, small arms, about thirty minutes ago. I’m preparing to send out units. One to you and one to deal with whoever is shooting at us.”
“Don’t. I think this is all a distraction to make it easier for Akbar to get his anthrax grenade where he wants it.”
There was a two-second pause. “Your dead?”
“Inside the cave. I don’t think anyone is going to bother them while we find the fucker responsible for killing them.”
“Agreed. Get your asses back here.”
“Yes, sir.”
With Smoke on his right and Grace behind him, Sharp crested the hill. He took a good look around with binoculars. The base was visible to the northwest, about two miles away, and nothing much between them and it but rocks, brush, and a landscape that could easily hide a few men with a grenade launcher.
“What are we doing?” Grace asked.
“Going back to the base. Up for a run?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.”
She shook her head, the picture of female exasperation, but followed him readily enough when he started out.
Smoke took rear guard.
Sharp kept the pace steady as he watched for anything out of place.
A weakly waving arm qualified.
Sharp brought Grace and Smoke to a stop and a crouch with a hand signal. He pulled out his binoculars and scanned the area. The hand wavered like the owner of it didn’t have enough strength to keep waving all the time. He could see little else, his view blocked by brush and terrain.
“There’s someone ahead with a hand in the air, like they’ve been wounded,” Sharp reported.
“What are the chances they’re American?”
“Not very good.”
“Another distraction?” Grace asked.
“Or a decoy.” Sharp scanned the area again with his binoculars, then went out wider. Could this be another attempt to draw help away from the base or remove defenders from it?
“We can’t leave him like that,” Grace hissed.
She was right, but probably not for the reason she was thinking.
They couldn’t leave a possible hostile in a position where he could approach from behind.
“Smoke,” Sharp said. He didn’t have to say anything else. The big man moved out, fast and quiet.
“How does he do that?” Grace muttered.
“What?”
“Disappear. I didn’t even hear him move.”
Sharp shrugged. “We don’t call him Smoke just because it’s his name.”
It took a couple of minutes before Smoke broke radio silence with a single word, “Doc.”
Sharp nodded at her and they both headed Smoke’s way. What they found chilled Sharp’s blood down to the bone.
An Afghan man lay curled up on the ground. The visible parts of his body, hands, face and neck were covered with bloody sores. He was breathing, but it sounded like he was doing it through an old-fashioned coffee percolator. The kind his grandfather used on the stove. The man coughed, and blood droplets appeared on the ground in front of his face.
Grace knelt next to the man, but didn’t touch him in any way.
“Anthrax?” Sharp asked.
“Yes.” She looked up, glanced at the man on the ground and shook her head.
He wasn’t going to make it.
“He was left behind,” Smoke said. “Fresh tracks, two men, continue toward the base.”
“Shit.” A high point in the terrain wasn’t far. He jogged over with Smoke beside him and looked around using his scope.
Two men carrying something in a long sack were within five hundred feet of the base. They didn’t need to be close. Anywhere within four hundred feet would work for what they wanted to do. Including introducing a deadly spore to everyone inside.