Chapter Twenty-Five
A li’s stomach churned as she ran for the entrance of the building and its wide windows, Max a few steps in front of her. The rest of the team, what there was left of it, crowded around the windows when they reached the trashed reception area.
The smoke from the crash was easily visible down the valley, but that was all they could see.
“We need to get higher,” she said to Max.
“Take Jessup with you,” he said, pinning her in place with a gaze that was one part horror, one part fear and all the way angry. “I want a report in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” She glanced at Jessup, who nodded at her.
“You know a good spot?”
“Yeah.”
“Lead the way, Kemosabe.”
“Call me that again and I will kick your ass,” she said in a mild tone most women would use to chastise a four-year-old.
His lips twitched, but he managed not to smile. Good for him. She was in the mood to kick some more ass. She looked at Max again and had to force herself not to react to the change in his face.
Before, he’d been all military, concerned for the team and for the situation. Now, there was a heat in his gaze that made her want to crawl all over him. If there’d been any chance to do it without an audience, she’d have done it.
Instead, she had to stuff her need to reassure him that she could do this—was in fact, the best soldier to do this—and hope he read between the lines.
“Ten minutes,” she said, her voice huskier than was professional. “I promise.”
His nostrils flared and she knew he wanted to say something, but he looked so damned combustible she was afraid anything he said would blow up the fiction that they weren’t involved to smithereens.
So, she left before he could comment. Left with Jessup on her heels and a single-minded focus on getting the intel they needed and back again as fast as possible.
Despite the speed of her departure, she hadn’t sacrificed stealth, making sure no one was following them as they worked their way up the mountain. It took only four minutes to reach the spot she’d used before for reconnaissance. Only a few seconds to determine that the news was all bad.
“Does that look like a drone aircraft?” she asked Jessup as she sighted down the scope on her weapon.
He was doing the same. “Yep, one of ours.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “When is that drop supposed to happen?”
“About thirty minutes.”
“This couldn’t be that plane, could it?”
“Maybe this one was taking pictures for the desk pilots at the base.”
“Fuck, I hope so.”
They both watched armed men swarm the smoking wreckage, then walk away with pieces of the machine.
“Fuck, that’s not good,” Jessup whispered. “There’s a lot of technology on those birds.”
“Hopefully nothing they can use right away.”
“Seen enough?”
“Yeah.” She broke cover and they made their way back to the battered-looking building they’d taken over.
Jessup was silent for most of the way, but about a minute out he asked, “Do you think Max can cook up a vaccine that will work?”
She glanced at him, but he was watching their perimeter. “If anyone can, it’ll be Max. Or are you really asking if any of us are going to survive this killer flu?”
“That too, I guess.”
“I don’t know.” She continued to watch her own perimeter while taking quick glances at Jessup. How worried was he? “I do know that Max hasn’t given up and neither have I.”
“Don’t get your thong in a bunch, Stone, I’ve just never seen a bug kill this many people so fast. There can’t be much doubt that it’s a weapon.”
She was going to ignore the thong comment. “Was the Black Death a weapon? Was the Spanish flu? Both of them killed large portions of the population, and both were naturally occurring pandemics. Until we know for sure, we can’t assume anything.”
“Well, aren’t you the voice of reason.”
“What the fuck is with the sarcasm?” she asked, out of patience for male bullshit.
“I thought since you’re banging the colonel you’d have some intel the rest of us don’t.” It was said in a casual tone, the kind a guy used to talk about the weather. That just made it a bigger insult.
Hmm, punch him, shoot him...punch him, shoot him? “You are, without a doubt, a moron,” she told him.
Jessup shrugged. “Just calling it like I see it.”
“Go fuck yourself. I don’t assume you’re fucking the man in front of you when you’re nut-to-butt in the dirt, do I?”
“Yeah, but—”
She cut him off with a sharp gesture. “Here’s a newsflash, I don’t work with morons.”
He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t bother answering. They reached the hospital and went inside. Max and the rest of the team were waiting for them.
“It looks like a drone.” She kept her tone tightly professional. “It’s too early for it to be the drop aircraft. This one might have been scouting. The machine is already being picked over by scavengers.”
“Not good news, but not really bad news,” Max said. “For the moment, anyway. How many men did you see picking through the debris?”
“About a dozen, which isn’t very many.” She thought about that for a moment. “Either we’ve put a serious dent in the bad guys, or a lot of them are sick.”
“Or dead.” Max glanced at his watch, then nodded at her. “You’d better get to the drop site.”
“I’ll leave now, but I’m not taking this moron with me.” She angled a thumb over her shoulder at Jessup.
“Moron?” Max asked, his voice hard. “How big a moron?”
She glanced at Jessup now and from his frown, he still had no idea what that meant.
“What did you do, man?” Hunt demanded.
Jessup’s surprised face told her he hadn’t expected anyone else to care. “I didn’t do anything.”
His defensive tone said it all. “All I did was ask a question.”
Max stared at him; all traces of understanding mentor gone. “What question?”
“I asked her if this flu was a man-made weapon.”
“How would she know the answer to that question?” Max’s voice was silky smooth. Bad things happened when he sounded like that.
“Well, she’s, uh, sleeping with...you, so I figured you might have told her a few things you hadn’t told us.”
No one said anything for about three seconds.
“You’re right,” Hunt said to Ali. “He is a moron.” He glanced at Max. “I’ll back her up, if that’s all right with you, Colonel.”
Max looked at her, and she nodded.
“Yes. Go.”
Ali and Hunt headed out.
“Stupid fuck,” Hunt muttered as he left.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the moron,” Ali said conversationally. “I work my ass off trying to get you guys trained, but every once in a while, an asshole still makes it through.”
“I might not always like you, Stone, but I damned sure respect you. Anyone who doesn’t is too stupid for the teams.”
“I can’t be everyone’s friend,” she said, keeping her tone level. “I have to be a bitch and push people to their limits in training or they’ll never discover just how much they can do or how far they’ll go. Hell, even Max knows that and he’s not a Snake Eater, he’s Medical.”
Hunt was silent as they quickly slid around the back of the hospital and up the mountain. Where they were going offered no good views of the valley or easy trail to leave the area, but it was full of gullies and washout ravines, the perfect area to drop a small bundle of supplies.
“Deployed is a terrible time to start a relationship.”
Ali looked sidelong at the other soldier. “Really? After the conversation I just had with the moron, you’re going to say that to me?”
“I have eyes in my head, you know, and they work too.”
“So what?”
“So, you two have your own...language.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“When a man and a woman really give a shit about each other, they have a way of looking at each other. Expressions and gestures meaning something more. Code words and phrases. They talk with their eyes.”
“I had no idea you were such a romantic.”
“I’m not, but my parents are like that.”
“You think the colonel and I have...that?”
“Yeah. You both try to act professional, but to anyone who knows you, it’s obvious. You defer to him like I’ve only ever seen you do with your father. Actually, it’s more. And he, shit, he eats you up with his eyes, and when you see it, you smile. If you saw that expression on anyone else, you’d tear their face off.” Hunt chuckled. “It’s been kind of cute watching the two of you.”
Cute? It was cute watching them? It was lucky she hadn’t eaten anything much in the past couple of hours or she would have thrown it all up right on Hunt’s boots.
It was her worst nightmare, and now it was a reality.
All the men she’d trained, all the respect she’d gained, gone.
Poof.
They could all see it. They all knew. Sergeant Stone was fucking a man who was her superior officer and the man she was assigned to protect. She’d lost her objectivity and crossed a line she’d sworn never to cross.
“Say the word cute again in reference to me and I will punch you in the face.” She said the sentence absolutely deadpan because she absolutely meant it.
Hunt chuckled again, unaware of how close to death he was skating, because right now she really, really wanted to choke him.
They left the village behind, and she forced herself to walk ahead of Hunt to give herself time to calm down before they stopped and she had to look at him again.
If he wore a smug expression of any kind, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop herself from...what? Taking her stupidity out on the first handy person who came within reach? She was the one who turned her relationship with Max into one that violated every promise she’d ever made to herself when she joined the army.
It wasn’t Hunt who deserved a beating.
She deserved every smirk and joke that came her way. Every one .
“I see it,” Hunt said behind her.
She stopped and looked in the direction he indicated. There it was, a camo-green package.
They scrambled down an embankment to reach it. Bigger than she’d expected. Four feet by four feet and covered in green cargo netting, it might be hard to sneak through the village without attracting attention.
Then again, people might still be interested in the drone they’d shot down.
It didn’t require conversation for Hunt to grab one side of the package while she nabbed the other. It didn’t require conversation to start heading up the hill either.
Hunt kept glancing at her, though, actual concern on his face.
“What?” she asked as they reached the goat track. “Worried I’ll break a nail?”
“Uh, no.” He cleared his throat and muttered, “I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“Probably, but you didn’t.”
He’d done her a favor, really. At least now, she had time to figure out some kind of exit route before shit got embarrassing.
“Look,” Hunt said, sounding nervous. “I’m sorry. It was unprofessional of me to bring it up while we’re out on a mission.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s none of my business and, hell, you haven’t even admitted it, so maybe I’m wrong and there’s nothing going on between you and Max.”
“Just drop it, okay?”
“On one hand, I’m happy for you, you know,” Hunt continued, seemingly unaware of her deteriorating temper. “You’ve got this iron maiden reputation, but it’s good to know you—”
Ali cut him off. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
He shut up.
So did she.
They reached the edge of the village and took a moment to make sure they were unobserved before slipping in through the outermost houses. The smell of death and decay from inside told Ali that their occupants were no threat.
As they made their way to the old hospital, the odd gunshot was audible in the distance, but nothing close by. The locals, or whoever was around, must still be picking through the crash debris, looking for useful bits to sell or trade.
A small herd of goats and two cows trotted past them, on their way to the grassy hillside surrounding the village.
Either the farmer had let them out, or their owners were dead, and they’d found an escape. One of those goats would make a decent meal for the people who were now under their protection.
She glanced over her shoulder and noted the direction the animals took. She could go after one once the package was delivered.
The hospital finally came into view, and they walked through the doorway without incident.
Why did that feel way too easy?
Max came rushing toward them. “Everything okay? No one followed you?”
Hunt was right. Max treated him like he was invisible. All of the colonel’s attention was on her.