22. Doc
DOC
Bullets cut through the trees.
I take Mara down behind the ridge.
She lands beneath me.
Again.
“This is becoming a habit,” she says.
“I’m comfortable with it.”
“I’m not.”
A round strikes the dirt less than two feet from my head.
Mara pulls me lower.
“I take it back. Stay there.”
Sheriff Tate shouts into his radio.
“Return fire! Keep them away from the aircraft!”
Rangers move on both sides of us.
Wolf and Trigger fire from the right.
Blaze, Ace, and Havoc advance from the far end of the runway with the deputies.
Harlan’s men spread out beneath the jet’s wings.
They’re trained.
Disciplined.
Not ordinary private-security guards.
They move like soldiers.
Because some of them probably are.
Mara rolls onto her stomach beside me.
She raises her weapon.
“What are you doing?”
“My job.”
“I liked you better beneath me.”
She turns her head.
“Was that supposed to sound the way it did?”
“Not now.”
“I’m going to remind you later.”
“Please do.”
She fires twice.
One of Harlan’s men dives behind the black SUV.
Sheriff Tate crawls toward us.
“How many?”
“I saw six get off the plane,” I say.
“Two more are firing from inside the hangar.”
“And the pilots?”
“Unknown.”
Mara looks toward the jet.
“Harlan is moving.”
I lift my head enough to see the runway.
Arthur Harlan walks backward toward the aircraft.
Two armed men cover him.
Robert Vance is still beneath the hangar light.
He looks from Harlan to the gunman beside him.
The silver key lies near his feet.
Harlan dropped it.
He knows it’s useless.
Vance finally understands Kane was right.
The Colonel never intended to take him out of the country.
“Harlan!” Vance shouts.
Harlan doesn’t look back.
“You said there would be a seat for me!”
Harlan reaches the stairs.
“There was.”
He looks at the gunman beside Vance.
“Finish it.”
The gunman turns his weapon toward Vance.
Vance fires first.
The man falls.
Then Vance runs into the hangar.
“Vance is moving!” I shout.
Mara rises to follow him.
I catch the back of her vest.
She turns.
“Stop doing that!”
“You don’t chase an armed man into a dark building alone.”
“I wasn’t going alone.”
“You didn’t invite me.”
“I assumed you’d follow.”
“That isn’t an invitation.”
A bullet strikes the ridge between us.
We drop.
Mara looks at me.
“Colin Shaw, would you like to chase a murderer into a dark hangar with me?”
“I’d be delighted.”
We move.
Wolf and Trigger cover us as we run along the ridge.
Sheriff Tate stays near the center, directing deputies toward the jet.
Harlan reaches the top of the stairs.
The aircraft engines grow louder.
“He’s trying to leave!” Trigger shouts.
Sheriff Tate’s voice carries across the runway.
“Block the runway!”
Two sheriff’s SUVs race from the access road.
They turn sideways across the asphalt.
The jet can’t take off without hitting them.
Harlan stops in the aircraft doorway.
For the first time, he doesn’t look bored.
He says something to one of his men.
The gunman raises a rifle toward the vehicles.
Wolf fires.
The rifle falls onto the runway.
The gunman drops behind the stairs.
Mara and I reach the side of the hangar.
The metal wall vibrates with the sound of gunfire.
I press my back against it.
Mara takes position beside the open door.
We look at each other.
Three.
Two.
One.
We enter.
The hangar is larger than it looked from the ridge.
One work light hangs near the center.
Old equipment lines the walls.
A fuel truck sits near the rear doors.
Vance is nowhere in sight.
Mara moves left.
I move right.
A metal door slams somewhere behind us.
We both turn.
“Office,” she whispers.
A row of small rooms runs along the back wall.
Vance could be inside any of them.
Or he could be waiting between the equipment racks.
I point toward the upper level.
A narrow metal walkway crosses the back of the building.
Stairs rise beside the fuel truck.
Mara nods.
We move together.
A shot erupts from above.
I grab Mara and pull her behind an old engine cart.
The bullet strikes the concrete where she was standing.
“I had him,” she says.
“He had you first.”
“He missed.”
“He won’t miss twice.”
Vance’s voice echoes through the hangar.
“You should’ve stayed in Fort Worth, Doc.”
I look toward the walkway.
“You should’ve stayed hidden.”
“You brought this to Eagle River.”
“No. Grant did.”
Silence.
Then Vance laughs.
“Grant never knew when to stop.”
Mara’s hand tightens around her weapon.
I touch her shoulder.
Wait.
Keep him talking.
“You were at Site Seventeen,” I say.
“I was everywhere that mattered.”
“Did you kill the twenty-three men?”
“Harlan gave the order.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Vance moves along the walkway.
I catch part of his reflection in a dirty window.
He’s heading toward the stairs.
“Harlan didn’t pull a trigger that night,” Vance says.
“You did.”
“I followed orders.”
“So did Miller.”
“Fred was weak.”
“Grant wasn’t.”
“No.”
Something in Vance’s voice changes.
“Grant was the only one who looked at those graves and saw men. The rest of us saw a problem.”
Mara’s breathing changes beside me.
“He had families,” she says.
Vance stops moving.
“Hello, Mara.”
I step in front of her.
She grabs my vest and pulls me back beside her.
“We work together,” she whispers.
Vance laughs.
“Doc promised your brother he would keep you safe.”
“I don’t need Colin to stand in front of me.”
“No. You’ve always been reckless enough to get yourself killed.”
“You’ve been watching me for a long time.”
“Since Grant mailed that box home.”
My pulse changes.
“You knew he sent it?” I ask.
“I knew something left Afghanistan before the mission.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know. That was the problem.”
“Then you spent fifteen years trying to find out.”
“Your mother made that difficult.”
Mara goes still.
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I searched the house twice. She never knew.”
Mara looks at me.
Vance entered her mother’s home.
More than once.
The thought does something violent to my chest.
“Where were you when Grant died?” I ask.
Vance moves again.
Closer to the stairs.
“The valley.”
“You were waiting with Harlan’s men.”
“Yes.”
“Did you shoot Grant?”
Silence.
Mara’s hand finds my arm.
She already knows the answer.
So do I.
But I need to hear him say it.
“Did you shoot him?”
Vance reaches the bottom of the stairs.
His shadow stretches across the concrete.
“Harlan wanted the entire Ranger team eliminated.”
My blood turns cold.
“The ambush wasn’t meant for Grant.”
“No.”
“It was meant for all of us.”
“Yes.”
“Miller changed our extraction route.”
“And led you into the valley.”
“Where seventeen men were waiting.”
“Seventeen men and me.”
Eight entered the valley.
Seventeen were waiting.
I understand now.
The seventeen weren’t the men inside Site Seventeen.
They were Harlan’s kill team.
“What went wrong?” I ask.
Vance laughs softly.
“You Rangers refused to die.”
Grant did.
The rest of us didn’t.
Because Grant held the line long enough to let us move.
Because he kept firing after the first bullet hit him.
Then the second.
Then the third.
My throat closes.
“Who shot him?”
“I did.”
Mara rises.
I catch her arm.
She doesn’t look at me.
Vance steps from behind the stairs.
His pistol is pressed against the side of a deputy’s head.
I recognize the young man from the perimeter.
Vance must have dragged him through the rear door.
The deputy’s weapon is gone.
Blood runs from a cut above his eye.
“Drop your guns,” Vance says.
Mara aims at him.
“Let Deputy Cole go.”
“Drop it.”
“You’re not leaving this hangar.”
“I don’t need to leave. I only need to reach the fuel truck.”
I look toward the vehicle behind him.
His left hand holds a road flare.
If he lights it and drops it near the leaking fuel line beneath the truck, the entire hangar could go up.
“You’ll die too,” I say.
“Harlan already decided I’m dead.”
“Then help us take him down.”
Vance’s mouth twists.
“You think testimony will save me?”
“No.”
Mara’s voice is cold.
“But it might keep Harlan from murdering anyone else.”
“People like Harlan don’t go to prison.”
“They do when twenty-three bodies are pulled out of the ground.”
Vance glances toward the open hangar door.
Outside, Harlan’s men are losing ground.
Two are down.
Another has surrendered.
The jet remains trapped on the runway.
Harlan is no longer in the doorway.
Vance looks back at us.
“He left the plane.”
I feel it too.
The black SUV is no longer visible beneath the wing.
Harlan used the firefight to escape.
“He abandoned you,” Mara says.
“He abandoned all of us.”
“Put down the flare.”
Vance tightens his arm around the deputy’s throat.
“No.”
The deputy looks at me.
His eyes drop toward Vance’s right leg.
The holster.
Empty.
Vance’s pistol is against his head.
But a knife is strapped to his ankle.
The deputy shifts his weight.
I shake my head slightly.
Don’t.
He does it anyway.
He drives his heel down on Vance’s foot and throws his head backward.
Vance’s nose breaks.
The gun moves away from the deputy’s skull.
Mara fires.
The bullet hits Vance’s shoulder.
The deputy drops.
I rush forward.
Vance swings the pistol toward me.
I fire.
My round strikes his chest.
He stumbles backward against the fuel truck.
The flare falls from his hand.
It rolls across the concrete.
Already burning.
“Mara!”
She dives for it.
Vance fires again.
I turn toward her.
The bullet tears across my side.
Pain explodes through me.
I go down.
“Colin!”
Mara reaches the flare and kicks it away from the leaking fuel.
Then she sees me.
Vance raises his weapon.
Not at me.
At Mara.
I try to lift my gun.
My arm doesn’t work.
Vance smiles through the blood covering his mouth.
“Grant died trying to protect everyone too.”
Mara turns.
She fires twice.
Both rounds strike Vance in the chest.
He falls against the fuel truck.
His weapon hits the concrete.
For one second, he remains upright.
Then his knees buckle.
Robert Vance drops beside the burning flare.
Mara kicks it farther away before running to me.
She lands on her knees.
Her hands press against my side.
“Colin.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been shot.”
“Grazed.”
“There’s too much blood.”
“Side wounds bleed.”
“Don’t tell me that like I don’t have eyes.”
I cover her hand with mine.
“Vance?”
Her gaze moves toward the fuel truck.
Vance is on his back.
Not moving.
The deputy checks for a pulse.
Then he looks at us and shakes his head.
Robert Vance is dead.
Grant’s killer is dead.
But Arthur Harlan is gone.
Mara tears open my shirt.
I wince.
Her face pales.
“I told you not to stand in front of me.”
“I didn’t.”
“You turned toward me.”
“He was shooting at you.”
“I had him.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Because I love you.”
The words come out before I can stop them.
Mara freezes.
Gunfire echoes outside.
Sirens scream along the runway.
The hangar could still be full of Harlan’s men.
None of it matters.
Not for this one second.
Her hands are covered in my blood.
Her eyes fill with tears.
“You picked a terrible time to say that.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’re not dying.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You’d better not.”
She presses harder against the wound.
Pain burns through me.
I manage a smile.
“You love me too.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“No.”
Her eyes hold mine.
“Yes.”
The word is barely a whisper.
But I hear it.
I feel it.
Fifteen years of loneliness end on a dirty hangar floor while Mara Ellis tries to stop me from bleeding.
“I love you,” she says. “So you’re going to stay awake, let me stop this bleeding, and never jump in front of another bullet for me.”
“I can agree to two of those.”
“Colin.”
“I love you.”
She kisses me.
Hard.
Fast.
Terrified.
Then she pulls away.
“We’re finishing this discussion later.”
“I look forward to it.”
Sheriff Tate rushes into the hangar with Wolf and Trigger.
He sees Mara kneeling over me.
His face changes.
“How bad?”
“Graze,” I say.
“Bullet wound,” Mara says at the same time.
Trigger kneels beside me.
“You shot?”
“Apparently.”
“Head injury?”
“Not this time.”
Wolf checks the wound.
“You’ll live.”
Mara looks at him.
“He’d better.”
Sheriff Tate speaks into his radio.
“Where is Harlan?”
A deputy answers through the static.
“Black SUV broke through the east gate.”
“Direction?”
“South.”
Toward Eagle River.
Toward the station.
Toward Grant’s lockbox and the black key.
Mara looks at me.
“Harlan knows the real key is there.”
I push myself upright.
Pain rips across my side.
Mara shoves me back down.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“He’s going after the evidence.”
“And you’ve been shot.”
“Tate, take her.”
Her head turns slowly.
Sheriff Tate backs away.
“No.”
“You’re her sheriff.”
“I want to live.”
Mara points at me.
“You stay here with the paramedics.”
“Mara—”
“You said we don’t make decisions for each other.”
“That was you.”
“It was a good rule.”
She grabs Vance’s fallen weapon, removes the magazine, and hands it to Tate as evidence.
Then she leans close to me.
“I love you.”
My heart stops all over again.
“Say it one more time.”
“When I get back.”
“That sounds like a promise.”
“It is.”
She kisses my forehead and stands.
Wolf looks at me.
“I’ll stay with him.”
“No,” I say.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Go with Mara.”
“Doc—”
“Grant died protecting us from Harlan. I’m not letting Mara face him without Rangers beside her.”
Wolf studies me.
Then nods.
He and Trigger follow Mara toward the door.
Sheriff Tate stops beside me.
“We’ll get him.”
“You’d better.”
He looks toward Mara.
“She loves you.”
“I know.”
“You hurt her, and a gunshot will be the least painful thing that happens to you.”
“Understood.”
Tate runs after them.
I lie on the concrete while the deputy kneels beside me and applies pressure to my side.
Outside, Mara climbs into Wolf’s truck.
The engine roars.
They race toward Eagle River.
Vance is dead.
Grant has been avenged.
But the man who ordered his murder is heading straight for the last pieces of evidence.
And Mara is going after him.