Chapter Twenty-Nine
G race wanted to ease the Afghan man’s suffering, but she didn’t dare touch him. He could have spores on his skin and clothing.
His face told her more eloquently than words that he was in agony. The coughs racking his body only made things worse. She sighed and was about to move back when his hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist.
She tugged out of his grip fairly easily and crab-crawled backward, until she saw what was in his other hand.
A grenade.
A grenade with its safety pin removed. She had no idea if this grenade had spores in it, but given the condition of the dead man in front of her, the possibility was high.
The man’s hand shook and he almost dropped it on the ground. She lunged forward and grabbed it before he could release the safety lever.
No gloves on.
Damn it, wasn’t this just lovely.
The man coughed again, then fell silent.
Now, what the hell was she supposed to do? She was holding the worst sort of bomb. The kind that killed slowly.
Sharp and Smoke weren’t far away, looking for the men who’d left this poor man behind. Men with more grenades.
She couldn’t ask Sharp and Smoke for help. It would put them at risk, and she wasn’t about to endanger them any more than they already managed to do for themselves. Damn Special Forces soldiers thought they were indestructible —until they weren’t. Sharp would take the grenade from her and sacrifice himself. It was the way he was built —to protect, to give and give until he had nothing left.
Her body shook with the rejection of that possibility. No. This was one sacrifice she couldn’t allow him to make.
On the heels of that thought came another. Like a freight train, it smashed through every barrier and fortress she’d ever built around her heart, and for a moment, everything stopped. Her breathing, her heartbeat, and her perception of the world around her.
She loved him.
Moments of them together flickered through her mind. Sharp smiling and laughing, playing chess and poker, kissing her, touching her, his hands and lips making her feel like she was the only woman in his world.
All of it solidified into one thought, one unalterable truth.
The biological weapon in her fist wasn’t going to eat him alive. She wouldn’t permit it.
She had enough cuts on her hands to make infection likely, and Sharp had lost too much already, too many of the people he cared about. She wasn’t going to make him watch her die too.
“I’m so dead.” There was no hope. None. Not a single move left open to her.
Except for one.
She had to go somewhere where she could throw this death trap away without risk of infecting anyone else.
Anthrax spores were hardy and could survive with all their lethal capabilities intact for decades in some environments.
She couldn’t think of a single safe place.
If she threw it down a well, the spores would contaminate the water.
If she threw it into a ravine, the spores would get spread around and picked up by people and wildlife alike.
She needed somewhere isolated. Somewhere people were unlikely to go. Somewhere a sustained, controlled fire could destroy all the spores without spreading them around.
The cave?
It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best option she could think of that she could reach on her own without help.
Sharp and Smoke were out of sight behind the brush, but she could hear them speaking softly to each other. Distances. Wind speed. Smoke was acting as Sharp’s spotter.
She crept around the plants, kept the hand holding the grenade at her side and out of sight, and waited until Smoke noticed her. It didn’t take long.
“He’s dead,” she said, jerking her head toward the deceased Afghan. “Do you have a target?”
“Yeah.”
“You do what you’ve got to do. I’m going to move back a little ways and keep watch to be sure no one tries to sneak up on us.”
“Stay safe,” Sharp said in a tone that told her if she didn’t, there’d be hell to pay.
She was already paying. Knowing she wasn’t going to be able to tell him how she felt about him, how much his trust, respect, and desire for her meant to her, was an open, festering wound.
Better than watching him die next to her.
She’d go to the cave and let the grenade destroy its deadly payload and herself quickly.
With one last admiring look at his fabulous ass, she turned and broke into Sharp’s ground-eating run.
***
S harp’s target wasn’t cooperating. “Come on, you fucker. A little to the right.” He could see a scrap of cloth from the top of the Afghan’s pakol , or hat.
Smoke’s whisper was little more than a wisp of fog on a cold day in his ears. “Wind speed steady. Range six hundred yards. Two targets.”
Through the scope, Sharp could see the spotter for the shooter clearly, but he wanted them both. Leaving one alive wasn’t an option.
A moment later, the tip of the grenade launcher rose into the air. Come on, fucker, come on.
The shooter’s head rose.
Sharp took the shot. He immediately repositioned for the second target and fired.
“Both targets down,” Smoke reported.
“Look for movement or a secondary team,” Sharp ordered.
Smoke was already on it, already scanning the area with his binoculars. “No contact.”
Sharp radioed the base. “Targets are down,” he said, then repeated it. “Targets are down.”
“Can you confirm the kill?” the base radio operator asked. Not the same guy as the moron.
“Not without a bio-suit,” Sharp told him. “Advise a one-hundred-yard safe zone around the targets.”
“Understood. Return to base, Sergeant.”
“Roger.” Sharp pulled out of his shooting position. “Fuck, I’m tired.”
“The doc is quiet,” Smoke observed. “Sleeping?”
“She’s been tough to keep up with us this long,” Sharp replied. He wasn’t going to say a word to anyone if they found her sacked out in a hole.
They walked to their rear, looking for her, but she didn’t seem to be about. “You see her, Smoke?” Sharp asked the other man.
“I see her tracks,” Smoke answered.
Sharp joined him.
“She walked this far,” the big man said. “Then she started running.” He pointed in the direction of the route they’d taken from the cave.
“What the fuck ?” Sharp stared at the deserted landscape between them and the cave. Nothing. What the hell could she be thinking?
“Only one reason to go back,” Smoke said.
“Fuck me, Smoke, I can’t come up with any .”
“To protect us.”
She would too, do anything to protect her team. She’d shown her loyalty to them, to him , in a thousand ways. She wouldn’t think twice.
Frustrated fury made his words come out sounding like they’d been mixed with gravel. “You think that Afghan got her sick?”
“Or had something that could get us sick.”
The goddamn woman was doing it again. Taking care of him by putting herself in harm’s way. When he caught up to her, he was going to spank her sweet ass until it was red and she was begging him to fuck her. Sharp radioed the base. “Base, we’ve lost contact with Major Samuels. We’re beginning our search for her.”
There was a long pause while Sharp and Smoke began their run to chase down their doctor.
“Say again, Sergeant?”
“We’ve lost contact with Major Samuels.”
This time, it was General Stone’s voice over the radio. “Explain that to me, soldier.”
Smoke had the balls to grunt a laugh.
“Sir, we think she’s headed back to the cave.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, sir. We’re following her trail.”
“You sonsabitches don’t come back without her. Got that?”
“Understood.” It was an order he was happy to comply with. After a few minutes Smoke said, “She’s a good runner.”
“She found her stride the night we crashed,” Sharp said. “Kept up with me and stayed on my six like a tick on a hound.”
“When’s the wedding?”
Sharp couldn’t stop the grin. “Shit, am I that obvious?”
“Yeah.”
“As soon as possible.” Sharp let his words rattle around his head for a minute. “She’d better be okay.”
***
G race almost stepped on one of the men she’d killed earlier and had to stuff her sleeve in her mouth to keep from screaming. Now that she’d stopped, her legs felt like noodles and her knees were telling her enough was enough. But she wasn’t quite done.
She still had to dispose of the grenade in her hand. At least the cave was only a little farther. She could even see the narrow entrance from this angle.
If she didn’t do this quick, she might lose her nerve and not do it at all.
The climb up to the entrance was almost more than she could manage, but she got there, glanced over her shoulder and saw the last thing she wanted to see.
Sharp and Smoke running toward her, only a couple hundred yards away.
“No!” She turned and showed them what was in her hand. “It’s got no pin.”
Did that stop them? No, of course not, not big, bad extra Special Forces soldiers. They didn’t hesitate as they climbed up to stop only a few feet away.
She stared at them, utterly defeated. “You two are the stupidest people I know.”
Sharp looked at the grenade. “I wouldn’t throw stones if I were you, princess.”
“I didn’t pick this up for fun, asshole. That Afghan handed it to me right before he died. It’s got no pin, so it’s going to go off. I was trying to do it somewhere safe for everyone, but no,” she said, trying and failing to stuff the fear and horror overtaking her back inside. “You morons have to run to my rescue.” She barely got the last word out around the choke point in her throat.
She wasn’t going to make it, wasn’t going to be able to stop the tears or the howls of pain for much longer. If she didn’t get rid of them, they were going to see everything, he was going to see every nightmare and hopeless fantasy she had. She pointed in the general direction of the base. “Not this time. Get lost. Go home, or whatever.”
“Either you have a fever again or you’re so exhausted you don’t know what you’re saying,” Sharp told her with a shake of his head. “Because we’re not leaving without you.”
Goddamn stubborn man.
Despair pulled all the starch from her bones and she sagged against the rocks lining one side of the mouth of the cave. A sob escaped its captivity deep in her chest and she hastily slammed the door on the rest. Nothing could stop the tears from coursing down her face.
Sharp took a step toward her and she pushed away. “No, I could be contaminated with spores. Don’t touch me.”
He froze for a moment, then let his hand drop as he growled, “I’m not leaving you to do this alone.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I outrank you. I order you to leave ,” she yelled, desperate, willing to do anything to convince him to go.
He snarled at her. “You promised to follow my commands in situations where I’m the expert.”
He wasn’t going to go. She could see it in his eyes, in the set of his face. He smiled, a long, sad upturn of his lips, and turned to Smoke. “Get us some support here.”
“You sure, boss?”
“Never more sure in my life.”
Smoke left.
“Okay, sweetheart,” Sharp said to her as if they were discussing a plumbing problem and not the instrument of their death. “Let’s have a look at this grenade.”
She wanted to smack his face. She wanted to kiss the living daylights out of him. She settled for holding out the grenade and wiping cold tears off her face. “You are an idiot.”
“Nope,” he said, giving the device a thorough examination, though it was still in her hand. “Just a schmuck in love.”
“What?” He couldn’t have said what she thought he’d said.
He smiled again. “Speaking of which, will you marry me?”
Speechless, her jaw opened and closed a couple of times, before she managed to snap it closed and say from between her teeth, “Not funny.”
“Not joking.”
“Ha. We’re both going to die .”
His expression turned serious. “How sure are you of that?”
She lost her righteous anger in a heartbeat. “The possibility is good.” She swallowed hard and begged, “Please, I...I love you, too.” The last few words came out as a whisper. She cleared her throat. “Let me finish this alone.”
He put his hand over hers on the grenade. “Could you let me do it alone?”
Bastard. Smart, stubborn bastard. He had to know how she felt or he wouldn’t have asked the question. “No.” Her shoulders sank. “This is going to kill us both.”
He didn’t respond to her prediction, but asked, “Do you have a plan?”
“Nothing past getting here, throwing the grenade inside and running for my life.”
“That’s not bad. Let’s see if it would work.” He moved past her and into the cave. A flashlight came on and he led her inside a few feet until the walls of the cave expanded a bit.
“If we throw it up against that side,” he said, pointing to the right. “The blast might deflect off this side and back in on itself rather than funneling outside.”
“Okay.”
He pointed the light at her, just below her neck, and watched her for a moment. “You look tired, sweetheart.”
She was so tired. “Yeah, I’m going to crash soon.”
“It’s almost over, darlin’.”
He made it sound like something was going to change, but they were both inside the nightmare now. “I don’t even know what that would feel like.”
“We’ll both be able to rest soon,” he said, coming close and tucking a stray hair behind her ear.
“I’ve killed you,” she whispered, leaning into his hand. “Rest isn’t something I’m ever going to have again.”
“Won’t know until we get there.” Sharp took the grenade out of her hand. One second she had it, the next he did. “Start running. I’m going to throw this thing in ten, nine, eight...”
She ran.
Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one...
Sharp flew out of the cave and flattened himself over her, huddled against the exterior wall of rock just as an explosion blasted sound, rocks and dirt around them.
Sharp tugged at her and they scrambled down the slope and away as fast as they could go. After a couple of hundred yards, Grace ran out of air, strength, and everything else.
“I’ve got nothing left,” she said, folding in on herself and sitting on her butt on the ground.
“Okay,” Sharp said, reaching into his pack and pulling out a bottle of water. He took a swig and handed it to her. “We’ll wait here for the cavalry.”
She nodded, breathing hard. “Make sure they’re wearing bio-suits.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sat down next to her, then pulled her into his lap, his arms around her, his head resting on top of hers.
She relaxed into his embrace. This might be the last time she had to be close to him, to feel his chest rising and falling with each breath, to hear his heart beating under her ear.
She cried a little more and soaked in the nonsensical words he murmured into her ear. She calmed after a while and he asked, sounding no more curious than if he asked her for the temperature, “How long until we know if we’re going to die?”
She sniffed and tightened her arms around him. “A few hours. Not long.”
“Don’t cry, darlin’. Wherever you go, I go.”