Table of Contents
Synopsis
Applause for L.L. Raand’s Midnight Hunters Series
Acclaim for Radclyffe’s Fiction
By Radclyffe
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
About the Author
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
Synopsis
After two years and too many lost troops, Navy medic Max de Milles is ready to go home. Her last tour is up in four days and she will soon be catching a transport to the States. Life is looking good until she gets detailed to evacuate a humanitarian group in south Somalia.
Rachel Winslow and her Red Cross team are caught in the crossfire during a vicious civil uprising, but she refuses to abandon her team members as the rebels close in on their camp. By the time Max and the Black Hawk arrive, it may already be too late.
Hunted by extremists, Max and Rachel are forced to work together if they are to survive, and in the process, discover something far more lasting.
Applause for L.L. Raand’s Midnight Hunters Series
The Midnight Hunt
RWA 2012 VCRW Laurel Wreath winner Blood Hunt
Night Hunt
The Lone Hunt
“Raand has built a complex world inhabited by werewolves, vampires, and other paranormal beings…Raand has given her readers a complex plot filled with wonderful characters as well as insight into the hierarchy of Sylvan’s pack and vampire clans. There are many plot twists and turns, as well as erotic sex scenes in this riveting novel that keep the pages flying until its satisfying conclusion.”—Just About Write
“Once again, I am amazed at the storytelling ability of L.L. Raand aka Radclyffe. In Blood Hunt, she mixes high levels of sheer eroticism that will leave you squirming in your seat with an impeccable multi-character storyline all streaming together to form one great read.”—Queer Magazine Online
“The Midnight Hunt has a gripping story to tell, and while there are also some truly erotic sex scenes, the story always takes precedence. This is a great read which is not easily put down nor easily forgotten.”—Just About Write
“Are you sick of the same old hetero vampire/werewolf story plastered in every bookstore and at every movie theater? Well, I’ve got the cure to your werewolf fever. The Midnight Hunt is first in, what I hope is, a long-running series of fantasy erotica for L.L. Raand (aka Radclyffe).”—Queer Magazine Online
“Any reader familiar with Radclyffe’s writing will recognize the author’s style within The Midnight Hunt, yet at the same time it is most definitely a new direction. The author delivers an excellent story here, one that is engrossing from the very beginning. Raand has pieced together an intricate world, and provided just enough details for the reader to become enmeshed in the new world. The action moves quickly throughout the book and it’s hard to put down.”—Three Dollar Bill Reviews
Acclaim for Radclyffe’s Fiction
2013 RWA/New England Bean Pot award winner for contemporary romance Crossroads “will draw the reader in and make her heart ache, willing the two main characters to find love and a life together. It’s a story that lingers long after coming to ‘the end.’ ” —Lambda Literary
In 2012 RWA/FTHRW Lories and RWA HODRW Aspen Gold award winner Firestorm “Radclyffe brings another hot lesbian romance for her readers.”—The Lesbrary
Foreword Review Book of the Year finalist and IPPY silver medalist Trauma Alert “is hard to put down and it will sizzle in the reader’s hands. The characters are hot, the sex scenes explicit and explosive, and the book is moved along by an interesting plot with well drawn secondary characters. The real star of this show is the attraction between the two characters, both of whom resist and then fall head over heels.”—Lambda Literary Reviews
Lambda Literary Finalist Best Lesbian Romance 2010 features “stories [that] are diverse in tone, style, and subject, making for more variety than in many, similar anthologies…well written, each containing a satisfying, surprising twist. Best Lesbian Romance series editor Radclyffe has assembled a respectable crop of 17 authors for this year’s offering.”—Curve Magazine
2010 Prism award winner and ForeWord Review Book of the Year Award finalist Secrets in the Stone is “so powerfully [written] that the worlds of these three women shimmer between reality and dreams…A strong, must read novel that will linger in the minds of readers long after the last page is turned.”—Just About Write
In Benjamin Franklin Award finalist Desire by Starlight “Radclyffe writes romance with such heart and her down-to-earth characters not only come to life but leap off the page until you feel like you know them. What Jenna and Gard feel for each other is not only a spark but an inferno and, as a reader, you will be washed away in this tumultuous romance until you can do nothing but succumb to it.”—Queer Magazine Online
Lambda Literary Award winner Stolen Moments “is a collection of steamy stories about women who just couldn’t wait. It’s sex when desire overrides reason, and it’s incredibly hot!”—On Our Backs
Lambda Literary Award winner Distant Shores, Silent Thunder “weaves an intricate tapestry about passion and commitment between lovers. The story explores the fragile nature of trust and the sanctuary provided by loving relationships.”—Sapphic Reader
Lambda Literary Award Finalist Justice Served delivers a “crisply written, fast-paced story with twists and turns and keeps us guessing until the final explosive ending.”—Independent Gay Writer
Lambda Literary Award finalist Turn Back Time “is filled with wonderful love scenes, which are both tender and hot.”—MegaScene
Taking Fire
Brought to you by
eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com
eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.
By Radclyffe
Romances
Innocent Hearts
Promising Hearts
Love’s Melody Lost
Love’s Tender Warriors
Tomorrow’s Promise
Love’s Masquerade
shadowland
Passion’s Bright Fury
Fated Love
Turn Back Time
When Dreams Tremble
The Lonely Hearts Club
Night Call
Secrets in the Stone
Desire by Starlight
Crossroads
Homestead
Honor Series
Above All, Honor
Honor Bound
Love & Honor
Honor Guards
Honor Reclaimed
Honor Under Siege
Word of Honor
Code of Honor
Justice Series
A Matter of Trust (prequel)
Shield of Justice
In Pursuit of Justice
Justice in the Shadows
Justice Served
Justice For All
The Provincetown Tales
Safe Harbor
Beyond the Breakwater
Distant Shores, Silent Thunder
Storms of Change
Winds of Fortune
Returning Tides
Sheltering Dunes
First Responders Novels
Trauma Alert
Firestorm
Oath of Honor
Taking Fire
Short Fiction
Collected Stories by Radclyffe
Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace
Radical Encounters
Edited by Radclyffe:
Best Lesbian Romance 2009-2014
Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.:
Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments
Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love
Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions
Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games
Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery
Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets
Breathless: Tales of Celebration
Women of the Dark Streets: Lesbian Paranormal
Amore and More: Love Everafter
By L.L. Raand
Midnight Hunters
The Midnight Hunt
Blood Hunt
Night Hunt
The Lone Hunt
The Magic Hunt
Taking Fire
© 2014 By Radclyffe. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-115-4
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: July 2014
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editors: Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design By Sheri (GraphicArtist2020@hotmail.com)
Acknowledgments
When I was five I wanted to be a space commander like Captain Glendora, who “manned” the spaceship SS Glendora on a local TV show. By ten I had switched to alternately being a soldier—I faithfully watched Combat!, a WWII TV drama, every week—or a sheriff, à la Gunsmoke. I had the various toy guns, hats, helmets, badges, and patches to go with every persona. No one mentioned I might not be able to be those things seeing as how I was a girl, although I occasionally had problems convincing my friends (all boys in my neighborhood) that I should be in charge. Contrary to popular criticisms, those shows didn’t instill a tendency for violence or disregard of life in me, but rather a deep appreciation for honor, justice, valor, and self-sacrifice. I love to write heroes because I think the world needs them—whether they be military, law enforcement, firefighters, medical, or unsung family and friends. The First Responder series lets me write about a variety of heroes, and this one was a challenge on many levels. Having never been to Africa, I had to do a lot of Google mapping; having never been in a Black Hawk—ditto fact searching; having never seen death in war, I had to read about it. I am indebted to Phil Klay, whose book Redeployment offers an unflinching and soul-shattering view of the war in the Middle East. I apologize for any factual errors in this work and hope that I have done justice to the many heroes who have experienced what I have not.
Thanks go to senior editor Sandy Lowe, whose patience is limitless; to editor Ruth Sternglantz for refining my work; to Stacia Seaman for keeping me honest; and to my first readers Connie, Eva, and Paula for constant encouragement.
Sheri got the cover exactly right—thank you for fourteen years of amazing artwork.
And to Lee, my own personal hero–Amo te.
Radclyffe, 2014
For Lee, for taking chances
Chapter One
Djibouti, Africa
Four more days before she punched her one-way ticket out of hell. New York City wasn’t exactly Max’s idea of heaven, but it would be an improvement over Djibouti and nirvana compared to Afghanistan. The life she’d left fourteen months ago hadn’t consisted of much more than work, but no matter how empty the rest of her existence might be, no one would be shooting at her in Manhattan. Maybe.
Max lay on her cot in the twilight watching the sand swirl in random eddies through the half-open door of the containerized living unit. The other compartment in the ten-by-twenty sand-colored metal box was empty, as were most of the other CLUs in the neighborhood. Only one thing could empty the hundreds of identical boxes in CLUville so completely—chow time. She couldn’t be bothered to traverse the heat and the flies and the hundred-yard trek to the chow hall even though the food at Camp Lemonnier was a thousand times better than what she’d grown immune to at the forward operating bases. Half the time the pre-packaged meals at the FOBs tasted about like the cardboard they were shipped in. Besides, calories were calories, and drinking them had its advantages. The bottle of no-label whiskey tucked under her mattress provided fuel for the engine with the side benefit of a few hours’ oblivion. If she couldn’t sleep, she’d take what she could get. At least the alcohol blanked the dreams—a civilized term for the images that haunted her, awake and asleep.
A shadow fell across her face and a blocky form filled the doorway. “Yo, Deuce—you gonna grab some chow?”
“Hey, Grif. You go ahead.” Max had told the corpsman a thousand times to call her Max, but the closest he could get to ignoring her rank was the nickname she’d gotten the first time she’d set foot on the sand. Lieutenant Commander Max de Milles, US Navy Medical Corps. MDM, MD fast became MD2 and from there just plain Deuce.
“You sure?”
She could hear his frown, although his face was lost to shadow. “Yeah, I’m good. Just going to catch some sleep before my next duty shift.”
“Won’t be long before you can do that with both eyes closed instead of just one,” he said. “When’s your ride out?”
“End of the week.” She tried to sound casual, like it didn’t really matter, but she hated to even talk about the end of this tour. She’d always been a little superstitious—most surgeons were, but war had a way of honing everything down to the sharp, bright core, and superstition had become a religion. She’d learned pretty quickly on her first tour that talking about something was a sure way to jinx it. Or worse, bring your nightmares to life. Everyone knew the consequences of breaking the unwritten rules: never discuss the danger of going outside the wire, never brag about the girl waiting back home, never count the days until end of tour. If you did, you might mistake that buried IED for a rock, or log on to the Dear John email, or get the last-minute change in your separation orders.
“Man,” Grif sighed. “A few weeks on a ship and a day’s flight—you’ll be home before Labor Day.”
“You won’t be far behind me.” She didn’t want to make small talk. She didn’t want to hear about Ken Griffin’s high-school-sweetheart-now-wife or his three kids back in Kansas City, or how he was going back to his job as an EMT. She didn’t want to imagine him with his family or hear about his dreams—not when all that could end in a millisecond. After tending countless troops with shattered bones and battered bodies and devastated lives, she’d finally managed to wall herself off from the human beings who depended upon her. Her brain and hands functioned mechanically to fix their torn flesh as efficiently as ever, but her emotions had disconnected. When she failed, when she lost one, she no longer thought about the suffering of the husband or wife or kids back home. She just moved on. Until she fell asleep.
Grif grinned the soft, loopy grin he got when talking about his family. “Yep—maybe I’ll bring Laurie and the kids to New York City and look you up.”
“Sure,” Max said. Just shut up. Just…don’t say any more. Don’t you know it only takes a second, one misstep, to change everything forever?
“Right then.” His tone held a little uncertainty, a little concern. Grif was worse than a girl sometimes—his feelings played across his face like images on a marquee in Times Square. He worried and fretted and most of his anxiety was directed at her. Not because she was a girl, but because she never unloaded. Never got drunk and trashed her tent, never shot off her mouth about the fucking Taliban, never joined in movie night and hooted at the lousy porn, even though plenty of the female troops did. She burned inside like a boiler about to blow at the seams. She knew it and so did he. What he didn’t know about were the nights she walked outside the wire until the lights of the FOB faded and there was just her and her constant companion, death. Or how she sat in the sand in the still, dark desert with her bottle and watched the stars revolve overhead and dared the gods of war to come and get her. None ever did.
No one knew. No one ever would.
“I’ll email you my number,” Max lied. “You give me a call and we’ll meet for dinner.”
“Awesome. ’Night, Deuce.”
“’Night.” Max waited until he moved away, leaving a patch of black sky and a haze of dust in his wake, and reached for the bottle.
*
Juba jungle, Somalia
The tent flap twitched aside and Amina peered in. “A Skype request came through for you to call back soonest.”
Rachel frowned, closed her laptop, and tucked it under her arm. She wasn’t scheduled to use the camp’s satellite hookup and wasn’t expecting any communication from Red Cross headquarters. She joined the dark-haired interpreter, who had started out as her liaison with the Somali Red Crescent Society and had soon become a friend, on the walk through camp to the base station. “Who was it, do you know?”
“It was from America. A pleasant blond woman requested we have you call. She did not say why. Only that you’re to use official channels.”
“Oh.” Rachel was glad the weak illumination from the solar lights strung at intervals along the perimeter of the encampment hid her blush. She hated having attention drawn to her special status, one she tried very hard to downplay if not erase. Blending in at the field outpost with Somalis from the Red Crescent Society, the multinational delegates from the Red Cross, and the French medical team from Doctors Without Borders would have been a lot simpler if she didn’t have special diplomatic status on top of being one of the few Americans. “I’m sorry I’ll be using up someone else’s airtime.”
“No one here has anyone at home who can afford to have Internet, or if they do, they’re too busy to use it.”
Amina’s smile lightened her voice, and the affection in her nut-brown eyes and the teasing expression on her elegant face showed even in the almost-dark. Rachel was thankful for the hundredth time she’d found a friend who didn’t care about her family or her status. “I thought you said your fiancé was a techie.”
“He is, and he spends all his waking hours working with or playing on his computers—not Skyping me.”
“Then he’s crazy.”
Amina slipped her arm through Rachel’s. “Something tells me you could teach him how a betrothed should act.”
Rachel laughed. Amina had been educated in England and was far worldlier than the other Somali women on the Red Crescent relief team, but she doubted Amina would have made the comment if she’d known Rachel’s preference for partners. The subject had never come up—why would it out here in the jungle where there were so many more important things to think about, like how to stem the measles epidemic that was devastating the nomadic populations, or how to get food and shelter to the displaced herders and farmers in the wake of the famine and devastation brought on by recent tropical storms, widespread flooding, and attacks from marauding rebels.
Anyone’s sex life or, in her case, lack thereof, was way down on the list of pressing topics. When she and Amina spoke of personal things, she simply said she had no one waiting at home. Technically true. She doubted Christie was pining away and would have plenty of women to entertain her among her rich and powerful friends. Of course, to be fair, Rachel had told Christie not to wait for her, and although Christie had been gracious enough to protest, she was sure Christie had moved on as soon she’d left for Mogadishu. At least she hoped she had.
If the circumstances had been reversed, Rachel would have done the same. She’d dated Christie Benedict exclusively for six months because she found Christie’s company preferable to the alternatives. Women who moved in her family’s circles—or more specifically her father’s—rapidly lost interest when they discovered she had no desire to swim in the shark-infested waters of Capitol Hill or, worse, pretended they didn’t care while subtly urging her to use her influence to further their personal agendas. At least Christie had her own access to influence and power. She was beautiful, cultured, and good in bed. She should have made a perfect partner, but even in their most intimate moments, Rachel never felt a spark. Not a flicker of true desire, let alone passion. She’d observed her parents’ perfectly serviceable marriage for twenty-five years—far longer than needed to recognize the signs of a union sealed not by love and passion, but by mutual convenience. Her father needed a wife to complete his image, and her mother needed a husband to fulfill her desire for family and status. They probably even loved each other, in some way, but not in the way she wanted for herself. Not with a fire that burned in their hearts. So leaving Christie had been easy and a secret relief. No doubt Christie felt the same.
“I’m sure you can handle whatever lessons he might need,” Rachel said as they neared the headquarters tent, the largest in the encampment other than the huge hospital tent. The smaller two-person sleeping tents ringed the flat central area where they took their meals and met with villagers and nomads who ventured into the camp for medical care or other assistance. In recent weeks, the stream of Somalis in need of aid had grown into a river of sick, injured, and starving people.
Amina sighed. “He does not like me doing this work, but I feel I must.” She swept an arm toward the dense jungle, rapidly darkening into a solid wall of blackness. Out there somewhere, thousands of men, women, and children were homeless without food or basic resources. “Who else will help them if not us?”
“We’re here and we won’t leave them.” Rachel squeezed Amina’s arm. “When you tell him how bad it is out here and how important this work is, he’ll understand.”
“I hope so.” In the light slanting through the netting covering the door of the tent, Amina’s face brightened. “But you’re right. We won’t abandon them.”
“No,” Rachel said, lifting the netting aside, “we won’t.”
“Do you want me to wait and walk back with you?” Amina asked.
“No, I’m fine.” Rachel wasn’t worried about being alone in the camp—she knew all the team members, and despite constant reports of armed rebels in the surrounding jungle, none had ever been spotted by the guards posted around the encampment. “Get some sleep. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“Good night then,” Amina said and slipped into the night.
Rachel crossed the sparsely furnished sixty-foot square tent to the trio of folding tables that made up the communications center—a few laptop computers, a satellite radio hookup, a shortwave radio for communicating with the ATVs, and three metal camp chairs stationed in a snaggletoothed row. The sidewalls were high enough to accommodate her five feet ten inches without her having to stoop. Squares of netting formed windows at regular intervals and allowed enough air to circulate to counteract the faintly musty smell of well-used canvas. The chairs were empty, as was the rest of the admin center. She was likely the last one up and about other than the sentries on the perimeter and the medical personnel in the hospital tent. Someone was on duty there around the clock.
Satisfied she was alone, Rachel settled onto a narrow metal chair, plugged her secure laptop into the outlet in the generator under the table, and connected to the sat line. The signal strength was good for once. Low cloud cover. She hurriedly brought up the scrambled video link and typed in her password.
The screen flickered, and a few seconds later her father’s face rippled into view and settled into the familiar lines of his craggily handsome face, thick dark leonine hair, and bristling brows. He wasn’t at the office—no seal preceded his connection. That might not mean anything—he often called her at odd hours from some place he was traveling. She didn’t know his itinerary. Or he could be calling from an unofficial location because he didn’t want their conversation on record. She’d long ago ceased asking or wondering.
“Rachel,” he said in his deep baritone.
“Hi, Dad.” She hoped she didn’t sound as wary as she felt. A call from her father was rare. Usually any contact came from his assistant, and those messages were relayed through Red Cross headquarters in Geneva or the local counterpart in Mogadishu. In the two months she’d been in-country, she’d heard from him once. “Is Mother all right?”
“Your mother is busy with a fundraiser at the museum at the moment and perfectly well. This concerns you, and I’ll be brief. I’d appreciate it if you’d hear me out before arguing.”
Rachel’s chest tightened. So it would be that way, would it? Her father preempting any discussion with an order. That used to work when she was fifteen, but she wasn’t fifteen any longer. They didn’t have much time for the call, and rather than protest and waste more of it, she just nodded.
“Your location is no longer secure. A team is flying in to evacuate you before morning.”
“What? What kind of team? From where?”
Her father sighed audibly. “Navy personnel from Lemonnier. The details aren’t important.”
Rachel stared at the image of her father, flattened and faded by distance and time. His eyes were still easy to read—hard and certain and unswayable. Some theorized he would be president one day. He would probably be tremendous in the role, but she didn’t even want to imagine what that would mean for her. “Why?”
“That’s classified.”
“I think you’re safe in telling me—I’m hardly a security risk out here.”
His mouth thinned. “You are a security risk by virtue of who you are. I was against you taking a field assignment and this is why.”
“You’re saying someone wants to kidnap me?” Her voice rose as incredulity won out over anger. She’d used her middle name as a surname in all her professional dealings since college just so she could avoid special treatment or the presumption of privilege. “Oh, come on. No one knows who I am, other than I have diplomatic status like half the other Americans on the continent.”
“There are no secrets in our line of work, you should know that by now. If you were to be captured—” He shook his head as if annoyed he’d said too much. “There’s no point in having the discussion now. Just be ready at zero five hundred.”
“What about my team—and the others? Are they—”
“Plans are still being finalized, and until they are, any discussion with anyone could jeopardize everyone’s safety. You are not to disclose this information to anyone.”
She glanced at the timer on the lower corner of the screen. Just over two minutes had elapsed. Much longer and they ran the risk of their transmission being picked up by someone randomly monitoring satellite feeds.
“What do you mean no longer secure? What’s the emergency? I can’t just leave—”
“This is not negotiable. Your safety comes first. Please don’t argue—the decision has been made. Just be ready. I’ll speak to you again when you’re in a secure location.”
The screen went blank. Rachel could almost believe she’d imagined the conversation. She was on a humanitarian mission for the Red Cross—they were a neutral delegation protected by the internationally recognized agreements of the Geneva Conventions. She was safe, or as safe as anyone in the jungles of a nation that was ravaged by natural disaster and generations-long civil war could be.
Her father couldn’t honestly believe she was just going to walk away from her responsibility and her colleagues because he ordered her to, and if he did, he was very wrong.
Chapter Two
The bird rocked as the concussive blasts from rocket fire buffeted them like leaves in a windstorm. Flaming red tongues cleaved the night. The air, heavy with soot, tasted of acid and gasoline and terror. The pilot nuanced the lift and thrust and kept the rotors spinning, and they descended through billowing clouds of greasy black smoke into chaos. The armored truck, once tan like the desert sand, lay on its side, a mangled mass of blackened metal half submerged in a huge crater in the center of a narrow dirt road that twisted into the barren mountainside.
The Black Hawk lurched to the ground and wraithlike shapes raced out of the dark, faceless phantoms silhouetted against the pyre like refugees from a nightmare. Max jumped out and ran past the troops carrying wounded to the Black Hawk. She had to reach the truck, get to the survivors before snipers or fire beat her to them. Thunder roared and the earth shuddered. Max flew through the air and landed hard on her right side. Rocks and metal rained down on her. Head spinning, she picked herself up off the ground and stumbled across what was left of the road, tripping into holes and over smoldering bits of debris. Blood ran wet and warm down her cheek and she blinked the sweat and sticky fluid from her eyes. Automatically she felt for her first aid kit. The canvas IFAK still hugged her shoulders, although her numb hands could only register the bulk of it banging against her back as she half ran, half staggered toward the forms littering the ground around the burning truck.
The thunder of the IEDs pounding against her eardrums slowly dwindled to a throbbing roar. Screams and shouts floated through her confused mind like words shouted underwater. Her legs wouldn’t move fast enough, her lungs burned from sucking in air so hot her nasal passages cracked and bled. Specters, their features obliterated by grime and blood and smoke, beckoned to her.
Medic medic medic. Always the same. Medic medic medic.
They needed her and she couldn’t reach them. Her leg plunged into a blast hole and she fell, pain lancing through her thigh. She caught herself on outstretched hands and muffled a moan. Her pain was nothing compared to theirs. She pulled herself free and tried to stand. Her leg buckled and she fell again. This time she couldn’t smother the cry of agony.
No matter. Pain was her penance. They depended on her and she was too slow. She had to be strong. She dragged herself forward on her forearms, pushing with her uninjured leg, dragging the other.
Up ahead, they were dying. Everywhere around her, they were dying. She wasn’t fast enough, she wasn’t strong enough, she wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t good enough. Another crack of thunder and the world exploded. Hell on earth had arrived.
Max jerked awake in the dark. Breath rushed from her chest as if she’d been punched in the solar plexus. Her olive drab T-shirt clung to her torso, black with the sweat drenching her hair and body. Her fingers cramped, and she forced her fists to loosen their grip on the thin mattress under her. She mercilessly ordered her muscles to relax and ordered herself to lie still when all she wanted was to get up and run. She laughed, and the desperate sound echoed in the metal box like so many mocking voices. Run to where? There was no escaping her dreams. She’d tried tempting fate outside the wire, but exchanging one hell for another never worked.
She was alive, and the price she paid was guilt. She didn’t need a shrink to tell her that. She pressed her thigh where shrapnel had penetrated when a buried IED exploded on a twisting road in Afghanistan. They’d dug it out in the field hospital, patched her up, and she’d gone back to her unit a few days later. A few inches higher, an inch to the left, and her femoral artery would have been severed and she would have bled out on the road like so many had done before her eyes. She had lived and the man next to her had died. The woman behind her had lost a leg. She descended into hell again and again to atone, but it was never enough.
No matter what she did, no matter how hard she fought the images, struggled to deafen the screams resounding in her head, she couldn’t escape. She slid her hand under the mattress, found the smooth outline of the small flat glass bottle, and pulled it out. She unscrewed the cap with shaking fingers and took a swallow. The whiskey burned like the air that had scorched her lungs, but the fire in her belly promised to settle her nerves in a minute or two even if it didn’t cleanse her sins. She took another swallow, recapped the bottle, and pushed it back out of sight. She held up her wrist and read almost twenty hundred in the luminescent numbers on her watch. She was due for her last twenty-four-hour shift in another six hours.
Even though the medevac callouts this far from the hot zones of Iraq and Afghanistan were far fewer than they had been, she couldn’t risk being less than 100 percent functional. Soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors, and allies still got injured and shot and blown up. She still had a job to do. She’d have to tough out the rest of the night without the momentary help of the whiskey.
She curled on her side, drew her knees up, and closed her eyes. All she had to do was hang on for four more days and she’d be back at NYU, where even the most horrendous cases would seem simple compared to the inhuman carnage of war. She was alone, and thankful no one had witnessed her nightmare. CC, a machinist specialist who shared her CLU, wouldn’t be back until after Max left for her shift. Sharing ten by thirty feet for months on end would be unimaginable to most people, but out here, these accommodations were among the best. They had a window air-conditioning unit, a partition between their sleeping areas, and mattresses that weren’t bug infested or grimy with filth. They had hot showers and decent food. She had it good.
She and CC weren’t overly personal, but they shared more than either of them did with those they’d left behind. CC would keep Max’s secrets even if she knew, but Max guarded her privacy ferociously. Her demons were her own.
A sharp rap sounded on the metal door of her CLU, and Max swung upright on the side of her cot.
A voice called, “Commander de Milles?”
“Yes.”
“Captain Inouye wants you.”
Max pushed her hands through her hair, found a plastic bottle of water and splashed some on her face and neck, and strode to the end of the container. She pulled the door open and stepped out onto the top of the two metal steps leading down to the ground. An ensign saluted and she returned the salute.
“Sorry to disturb you, ma’am. There’s a briefing at twenty thirty hours in the com center.”
“Right,” Max said, her mouth suddenly as dry as if she were breathing burning air. Never talk about what might happen outside the wire. Never brag about the girl back home. Never count the days until end of tour.
Anything could happen. Anything was about to.
*
Shivering with a ripple of anxiety, Rachel quickly skirted the two large fire pits in the center of the camp they kept burning day and night. They didn’t need the heat, not when the average temperature ranged above 100°F every day and didn’t fall much lower at night, but they conserved their propane for the generators by using the open fires to keep water boiling and coffee, endless coffee, constantly available. The dozen sleeping tents ringing the encampment, forming a barrier between the jungle and their living space, were dark except for one, where a dim light within silhouetted the hunched form of a man sitting on the side of his cot, perhaps reading or composing a letter. The canvas sides glowed like a giant jack-o’-lantern, and Rachel had the uncomfortable thought that the oblivious occupant made an easy target. Pushing the disquieting image firmly aside, she slipped inside the tent she shared with Amina as quietly as she could. Their days were long, starting before sunrise, and if that wasn’t exhausting enough, fighting dehydration was a never-ending battle. By suppertime, everyone was drained, mentally and physically, and bedtime came early. The first few nights after they’d arrived, everyone on the disaster recovery team had stayed up well past dark, sitting around the fires, getting to know one another, eager to undertake the challenge of their mission. After two months, faced with the endless deprivation of the Somalis caught in the crossfire of a war they did not understand or welcome, the diseases that had long been eradicated in more prosperous countries, and the seemingly endless task of restructuring a society devastated by enemies natural and manmade, their enthusiasm had transformed into weary but dogged determination. No one stayed up late imagining great victories. Everyone went to bed early to conserve their strength for another day in the endless battle.
She’d been in the field twice before as a disaster relief coordinator—once after the hurricanes that devastated Haiti and again following the massive flooding in the central United States—but she’d never been this far from the life she had known in miles or in experience. She could barely remember what it was like to sleep in a bed, to wake to hot showers and brewed coffee, and not to be cut off from the rest of the world for long stretches of time. The constant connectedness of the electronic world was a memory. Here she was as detached from her past life as she could possibly be, and yet she had never felt more herself. Her needs, her goals, her pleasures had been stripped down to the core. Out here what she did mattered, her life had meaning. She made a difference every time she fed a child or gave a bag of seed to a farmer or a loaf of bread to a tribesman. Her work wasn’t done, and if she left before it was, she feared she’d be haunted by the faces of those she’d failed to help.
Rachel sank onto the edge of her cot and, resting her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her hands. She had promised not to leave. What would she do in ten hours when the helicopter arrived for her? None of this made sense. If she thought her father would be more forthcoming, she’d call him back, but she knew him. He’d said all he was going to say and expected her to obey him. Rachel sighed, wanting to pace, furious at her father for leaving her in the dark. He probably never even considered how his authoritative bearing affected her. He was used to everyone in every sphere of his life doing as he wished without explanation. Even her mother rarely challenged his decisions or desires. Her older brother, groomed since childhood to follow in her father’s footsteps, had never seemed to mind. He’d finished law school and had already entered local politics. Rachel had been the only one who refused to follow his orders without question. She had been the only one to challenge his authority. When she’d been old enough, she’d demanded to choose her own path.
“Bad news?” Amina whispered from the darkness.
“I don’t know,” Rachel said, her father’s words echoing in her mind. Do not discuss this. Why? Did he think the doctors, the engineers, the teachers and epidemiologists and translators were spies? His fundamental distrust of everyone’s motives was fueled by a lifetime of immersion in politics and the manipulation and maneuvering that went with it. Even though she’d been only too happy to leave that world behind, she wasn’t foolish enough to discount her father’s warnings. He might be exaggerating the danger for some agenda of his own, but what if he wasn’t? She considered her words cautiously. “Have you heard any news about…anything affecting our security?”
Amina pushed aside the light sheet that covered her and sat up. Now that Rachel’s eyes had adjusted, she could see the glint in Amina’s eyes and the faint glow of her caramel skin in the little bit of moonlight slanting through the folded-back flaps of the mesh screens. She centered herself in Amina’s steady, honest gaze and grew more certain of the rightness of what she was doing.
“I have not heard anything,” Amina said, “but Dacar handles security and receives briefings by radio almost every day, I think. We only are informed about ordinary things—supplies and medical deliveries, when the trucks will arrive to transport patients, that sort of thing.”
“No one has mentioned evacuation?”
Across from her, Amina drew a sharp breath. “No. Not that I’ve been told. Is there something we should tell Dacar?”
Amina didn’t ask what Rachel knew, only waited, not because she was passive or intimidated, but because she trusted Rachel to tell her what she could. Her trust in Rachel, in Rachel’s commitment to their mission they shared, meant more to Rachel than all the feigned interest or attention of Christie and the other women she’d been involved with.
“I don’t know what’s happening—if anything at all is really happening,” Rachel said, “but I’ve been told we are to be evacuated. All of us. Something about a security issue, but I don’t have any details.”
“But the patients. What of them? We are not scheduled to send anyone to meet the trucks for another two days. What of those who are not ambulatory?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there are other plans to move them.”
The patients, who usually numbered around twenty, were mostly children, pregnant women, and the elderly of both sexes. Their illnesses ranged from dehydration and malnutrition to febrile convulsions accompanying a measles infection. Rarely they’d see someone with a gunshot wound—a victim of a run-in with the al-Shabaab rebels who continued to wage their decades-long war to overthrow the African Union–backed government. The team from Doctors Without Borders had a rudimentary operating room for emergencies, but most of their efforts were focused on public health issues. The rest of the Red Cross members concentrated on long-term rehabilitation or relocation of the civilians who found their way to them in increasing numbers every day.
“Then someone should have told us by now, no?” Amina’s voice vibrated with tension. “Should we talk to Maribel?”
Rachel felt a breath of hope. Certainly Maribel Fleur, the head of the Doctors Without Borders team, would have been informed if evacuation was imminent, but there was no activity beyond the usual at the hospital. Everything at the camp seemed normal. If they were in danger, there was no sign of it. But she couldn’t afford to be wrong. The lives of her colleagues and those they had all come to help might be in danger if she kept silent. And if she didn’t, if she revealed what little she knew, perhaps she would endanger everyone even more. Waiting was not in her nature, but this time she’d have to.
“The camp seems secure, and there’s nothing else we can do tonight. Let’s wait until morning.” She might have no choice but to wait, but she had a choice about going. When morning arrived and she made it clear she wasn’t leaving, she’d find out what was happening.
Chapter Three
Max entered the briefing room at HQ, a larger rectangular version of her sleeping quarters, and edged around the long table covered with maps and reports that took up most of the space. The windowless walls were lined with shelves holding field manuals and thick folders. Captain Inouye, an average-sized middle-aged guy with short sandy hair and a square boxer’s build, stood by a projection screen at the opposite end of the room. Dan Fox, a Black Hawk pilot she’d flown with a number of times before, slumped in his flight jacket on one side of the table next to his wingman, Ariel Jordan, a young African American with sleek dark hair long on the sides and gathered at her nape into a short tail. The bird’s crew chief, Ollie Rampart, a big blond Iowa farm boy who spoke slow and moved fast in a firefight, and several junior officers from Inouye’s support staff made up the rest of the group.
“Commander de Milles,” Captain Inouye said by way of greeting when she walked in.
“Sir.” Max saluted.
“Have a seat, everyone, please.” Inouye turned to the screen and someone dimmed the lights.
Max sat opposite Fox and regarded the screen where an ensign projected a map of the Horn of Africa, showing Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, and the adjoining countries.
“We’re here,” Inouye said, unnecessarily tapping his finger on the city of Djibouti on the coast just north of Somalia. “We’re the biggest expeditionary force left out here with the exception of the troops at the forward bases in Afghanistan.” He slid his finger in a straight line down to Mogadishu in southern Somalia. “We’ve got a small advisory force here. Their main objective is to help coordinate the National Army’s response to the ongoing civil unrest and escalating terrorist activity in the area. I stress the word advisory.”
Inouye’s sarcasm was subtle, but Max’s stomach roiled uneasily. She already didn’t like where this was going. Somalia was an unstable hellhole, and every US involvement in the last twenty years seemed to escalate from support to intervention, whether the politicians called the situation advisory or not. They’d lost troops there more than once when the line between support and combat had blurred. Birds had gone down and troops had died. This time around, the rebels were reported to have joined forces with al-Qaeda, which meant better arms, better intelligence, and better organization. All those things made for a stronger, more dangerous enemy. She kept her eyes to the front and her posture relaxed. Fear was a luxury she couldn’t afford.
“Down here,” Inouye way went on, moving his finger south of Mogadishu and drawing a circle on the southernmost part of Somalia, “is the Juba jungle area. It’s believed the rebels are gathering in force in the jungle where their bases are hidden from aerial surveillance and from which they can launch surprise attacks into neighboring areas.” He tapped Kenya. “Most recently, a suicide attack at a Kenyan mall killed a number of civilians, including Americans.”
Inouye managed to look commanding without being aloof. He always seemed to be holding a conversation rather than relaying orders, but Max wasn’t fooled. Whatever was coming, she’d have nothing to say about it. Her job was to follow orders, and she accepted that nothing they did would succeed if that simple premise was ignored. She had no doubt Inouye was leading up to a special mission of some kind, and the image of Manhattan that had been slowly gathering strength in her mind began to fade. She might still get home, but maybe she wouldn’t. The other side of a mission was always a question mark—a blank space in the future where it was best not to dwell. Her hands had been clenched, but now they relaxed. Her shoulders settled against the back of the seat. The familiar, even when it brought danger, was oddly comforting. All that mattered was that she do her job. The future was an indulgence not meant for warriors. Only the here and now mattered.
“And right about here,” Inouye went on in his conversational tone, pushing a red pin into the map in the middle of the jungle, “is an International Red Cross emergency response station. A dozen people—six from the Mogadishu division of the International Red Crescent Society, all Somalis; three French medics from Doctors Without Borders; and an American and two Swiss, including their team coordinator, an engineer, and a water and irrigation specialist. About twenty-five clicks away”—he swept his hand in a crescent behind the red pin—“is the bulk of the rebel encampment. We estimate a force of several hundred.”
Max heard the next words before he even said them. She figured everyone else in the room knew what was coming too. No one said anything. No one coughed or even moved.
“We need to go get these folks and bring them out of there,” Captain Inouye said. “Simple extraction. In and out. We’re sending two birds—extraction at zero five hundred.” He paused and took a breath. “There’s one more thing.”
The map disappeared and a head shot of a woman with a list of stats next to the photo took its place. Clear gray-green eyes, auburn shoulder-length hair with scattered gold highlights. A broad, sculpted mouth with the barest hint of a smile. Strong nose with a tiny bump on the bridge beneath a faint crescent scar. Tension in the long smooth jawline, a few frown lines creasing the otherwise creamy forehead. Serious, intense. Not beautiful. But striking. The text identified her as Rachel Winslow, age twenty-eight, nationality American, occupation Red Cross disaster response coordinator. Max focused on Rachel Winslow’s eyes. Her gaze was direct and confident, like the eyes of a woman who knew what she wanted.
“She is your priority,” Inouye said. “You will transport out the others if possible, but in the advent of resistance or other unforeseen conditions forcing you to abort, you will do so only after she is secured. You do not leave without her. Any questions?”
Max looked at Dan Fox. The Swampfox was known for getting in and out of hot zones when no one else would even chance touching down. This was right up his alley. He’d be team leader once they took to the air. He’d maintain contact with the mission controllers and relay situation updates as events played out, but when everything went sideways—and on a mission like this it was bound to, he’d determine their actions in the field. As if on cue, Fox said, “What can we expect from ground resistance?”
“Short answer, we don’t know. The rebels move their weapons stores constantly. They might have surface-to-air missiles, they’ll certainly have small arms, but how much and where they might be, we don’t know. Surprise is on our side. Fast run in, quick extract, out again.”
That approach had worked before. Small teams could penetrate even highly fortified areas more quickly than larger forces with their columns of support vehicles and heavy armaments. Six months before, an American diplomat and a Danish reporter had been extracted by a US Navy SEAL team from a city under siege in Kenya. No one asked Inouye why they were making this trip. It didn’t matter. Orders were orders.
“You’ll travel light—essential personnel only—to leave room for the civilians and any patients who require transport.”
Max wasn’t expendable—and tonight she’d be doing double duty as medic and combat troop. Every team carried a medic—either a regular soldier also trained as a medic or a corpsman or flight surgeon, like Max. Once the assignment of medics to combat missions had become routine, the mortality rates of even the worst injuries were drastically lowered, and now their presence was critical to troop morale. Troops faced the dangers of combat and the possibility of mortal injury with more confidence if they knew medical assistance was close at hand. If the troops believed they would survive if injured, their performance was sharper, mentally and physically. Max’s job was to keep them and their belief alive.
“Who is the target?” Fox asked.
“You know what I know,” Inouye said, waving toward the screen. He narrowed his eyes. “But someone pretty important wants her out of there.”
“Shit,” someone muttered.
“Handle with care,” Inouye said flatly. “Anyone else?”
Max said, “I’ll need at least one more corpsman with that many civilians at risk.”
Inouye nodded. “Griffin will be riding along. That it?”
No one else had anything to say.
“Very well then. Lieutenant Fox can take over from here.”
The captain left and Swampfox walked to the map. He studied it for a moment and turned to the rest of them. “Flying time’s a little less than two hours, depending on headwinds. We’ll leave at zero three hundred. Anybody have anything to add?”
No one did. Max left without speaking to the others and headed directly to the Black Hawk to check the medical supplies. This would be her one and only chance to be certain she had what she needed in the field. This bird was not a medevac helicopter like the ones she usually rode in when picking up wounded. This bird wasn’t marked with the identifiable red cross of a noncombatant helicopter, although in this war the neutrality of medics and their machines, on the ground or in the air, had been ignored to such an extent that many medevac birds now carried defensive armaments. Medics carried assault rifles and sidearms too in case they needed to defend themselves or their wounded. This bird wasn’t going to have the full complement of medical equipment, and she planned to supplement what was there with her individual first aid kit. She relied more on her IFAK when treating injured anyhow—she always knew what she had on hand and could find it in the dark. She was going through the IV bags, checking labels and drugs, when Grif spoke from behind her.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
Max glanced over her shoulder. “Guess you heard, huh?”
He shrugged, his big oval face with its dusting of freckles calm as usual. “Got tapped for a ride along. Not much else to know. Sorry your nap got trashed.”
“No problem. Too hot to sleep anyhow.” Max grinned, the adrenaline anticipation of the upcoming mission having burned off the lingering melancholy and dulling effects of the alcohol. Nothing put the brakes on guilt and self-recrimination like the imminent threat of mortal danger. “At least we’ll be cool up there.”
“Need a hand?” Grif climbed into the belly of the Black Hawk.
“Yeah, now that you’re here, can you check the med boxes for me and stock as much extra antibiotics and IV opiates as you can find room for in your IFAK? Field bandages too.”
“Sure thing. Expecting trouble?”
Max smiled faintly. “Always.”
When she was satisfied they had the bird set for their mission, she told Grif to go get some sleep and headed back to her CLU. CLUville was quiet, or as quiet as it ever got in the middle of the night. The streets were never empty, but most of the admin buildings were dark, the DFAC was dark—late-night suppertime having come and gone. Anyone who wanted food now would have to make do with whatever they could find in the vending machines scattered around the base until the dining facility opened again at zero five hundred. Just about when most troops were sitting down to eggs and bacon, she’d be dropping out of a Black Hawk onto the jungle floor.
The photo of Rachel Winslow flashed through her mind. Whoever she was, she wasn’t just a Red Cross worker. Someone wanted her out of harm’s way and had enough power to make it happen. Max wondered what was really happening in the Juba jungle that these aid workers needed to be pulled out now. They’d been there for a while, so what had changed? She didn’t need to know, any more than she needed to know what had brought Rachel Winslow to the darkest part of a lost land even God had forgotten.
Max detoured to the communal showers and stood under the hot water for a long time, letting her mind empty. When she set out on this mission she wanted her reactions to be sharp and nothing in her head but the objective. Back in her CLU she changed into clean field camos, checked her gear, weapons, and IFAK. When she was satisfied she was prepared, she set her watch and stretched out on her cot in the dark to wait.
*
The night was never silent. After the humans settled into their tents for the night, the animals ruled. The susurrus of insect wings on canvas, the hacking cough of a hyena, the deep-throated roar of a lion. And always, beneath it all, the soughing of the canopy overhead that sheltered them from the sun during the day and shrouded them in shadow at night. At first Rachel had had a hard time getting used to the perpetual shade on the jungle floor, but she soon came to appreciate the protection the dense foliage provided from the relentless heat. Tonight, though, she felt as if the jungle were closing in, isolating them from the rest of the world. She wasn’t naïve. She knew the dangers, environmental and civil, of this mission. She’d always been cautious and careful, but until tonight, she’d never been afraid.
She prided herself on choosing her own path, controlling her own destiny, and now she waited in the dark while events she didn’t understand and couldn’t control unfolded around her. Distant thunder boomed, then boomed again, closer this time. Rachel sat up.
Not thunder. Explosions.
Chapter Four
The Black Hawks crossed into Somalia at 2,000 feet, flying at an average cruise speed of 170 miles per hour. Max rode in the open left rear door, her legs hanging out as she watched the undulating contours of the slowly changing landscape. As the minutes passed, vast expanses of desert and low scrubland slowly gave way to the denser ground cover of the jungle. Reconnaissance images she’d seen taken in daylight showed sparse smatterings of small villages comprising no more than a few ramshackle huts, a parched acre or two of struggling crops, and scraggly goats running through twisting rutted paths; nomadic tribespeople in tent camps ringed by camels; and the ever-increasing masses of displaced natives sleeping on the ground next to their bundles of belongings. Now all was dark except for the reflection of the moon off the few streams traversing the high ground like silver ribbons. The deprivation and desperation of the land and its people were hidden in a shroud of shadows.
The second Black Hawk trailed behind them, gunners on both sides and six Hellfire missiles mounted underneath. Neither bird held a full crew. Besides Swampfox and his copilot, she, Grif, Ollie, and the second crew chief and gunner, Bucky Burns, were the only occupants of their bird. The other Black Hawk carried only four. With luck, they’d be able to transport everyone out, including patients. She understood their orders and that Rachel Winslow was their priority, but leaving anyone behind went against everything she believed in. Wounded or dead, no one was left behind, and those civilians were now her responsibility, just like the troops who ventured outside the wire on a mission. Everybody came home. No matter what.
Burns and Ollie scanned out the doors for signs of enemy activity with long-range night-vision scopes. The rebel forces had no airpower, but a vigorous pipeline of arms and ammunition from Yemen provided them with automatic weapons capable of firing rounds that could penetrate the bird’s fuselage or windshield. Word had it that 400 surface-to-air missiles powerful enough to take out an airliner had been stolen by al-Qaeda forces during a recent attack on Benghazi. The rebels were mobile, at home in the jungle, and skilled after decades of strife. And a Black Hawk was a big target. Rumor had it there was a bounty on Black Hawks.
The wind, as dry and empty as the land, whipped her face below her goggles, an arid slap reminding her she did not belong in this country, but here she was. Here they all were, bound by duty and ideology and, some would say, trapped by the same. She didn’t feel trapped or tricked or coerced into fighting this war whose goals had long since morphed into something far different than they had been a decade before. She and her fellow troops weren’t even in the same country where it had all begun. In Africa, war was a way of life. Entire generations were born into it, lived in it, and died in it without ever knowing anything else.
She’d known when she’d signed up for the Navy to subsidize her medical training she might one day be sent to a place like this for reasons that were not hers to question. That was the way of war. She didn’t regret her decision to get her medical training on the Navy’s dime—she wouldn’t have been able to afford it any other way, and she was willing to pay up on her obligation in any way the Navy demanded. She only regretted the consequences of the war for those she had pledged to serve.
The rhythmic drone of the engines and the whir of the rotors were hypnotic, oddly soothing, and all too conducive to introspection. Out here, where bursts of adrenalized excitement and fear alternated with hours and days of boredom while waiting for the next call, introspection was an all-too-familiar companion. Tonight, Max could do without the solitary voice of her own thoughts.
They’d been in the air almost two hours, with no sign of activity below, and she wasn’t sure at first she’d actually seen the quick flare of orange that winked out almost as soon as it appeared. Max blinked, clearing her vision. Another flicker of light shot across her visual field. A trick of sight, brought on by fatigue or distraction. When it came again, she touched the radio mic at her throat. “Swampfox, did you see that? Ten o’clock. Light flares.”
Roger that. Standby.
Fox would be calling in to base for a situation update. Max’s skin prickled. Nothing was worse than heading into enemy fire, even though by now she should be used to it. Fox’s voice crackled in her headphones.
Rocket fire in the vicinity of the LZ. Heads up.
Burns and Ollie shifted the machine guns into position and half leaned out the open doorways. Grif moved back out of the way. Max stayed put. She could use a weapon if she had to, but for now she’d just act as lookout. She flipped down her night-vision goggles, and the area of heavy vegetation off to her left where she’d first seen the momentary flare lit up with green fluorescent puffs of smoke that plumed and fractured, then drifted away like thin strands of seaweed undulating below the surface of a quiet pond.
The sight would have been eerily beautiful if it hadn’t meant death had come calling.
*
Rachel jumped up and pushed her feet into her boots. Across from her, Amina was hastily doing the same.
“What is it?” Amina asked in a high thin whisper.
“I don’t know.” Rachel answered automatically, but what else could it be? Unless some storm had unexpectedly blown up without warning, those thunderous booms were coming from a battle, and judging by their loudness, the fight was on its way to them. Whatever was happening, she did not intend to be trapped in her tent, blind and helpless. “I’m going to find Dacar.”
“I’m coming with you,” Amina said.
Rachel unzipped the tent flap, stepped out, and grabbed Amina’s hand. The solar lights that usually lit the encampment were gone. A man with a rifle—one of Dacar’s Somali security guards?—poured water on the fire. The camp plunged into darkness except for the dim glow of the propane-powered lights inside the hospital tent that burned day and night. Muffled shouts came from everywhere. Rachel couldn’t recognize the voices or the words, only the tenor of fear and urgency. She thought she heard Dacar calling orders, but she couldn’t be certain. Another volley of explosions lit up the sky like perverted Fourth of July fireworks. Red and orange starbursts—bombs, not festivity.
The headquarters tent was at the opposite end of the camp, and Rachel saw only blackness in that direction. She’d long ago conquered her fear of the dark, or so she’d thought, but tonight the distant terrors of childhood crept back to taunt her. She didn’t want to venture very far from the only bit of light and safety she could see, no matter how false the sense of security might be.
“Let’s try the hospital.” Rachel had to trust that Dacar and the other guards were looking after their safety, and she would be of no help to them in that. But she could help with the patients. She and Amina ran hand in hand over the familiar ground, made strange and somehow dangerous by the inky dark, to the big hospital tent. Inside, cots lined one side and stacks of supplies the other. A second smaller room in the rear, behind a canvas flap, served as an operating and treatment room. Maribel, Jean-Claude, and Robert moved among the cots, comforting the crying children and trying to calm the anxious adults. Amina instantly joined them, translating for those who did not understand and soothing those who were too terrified to listen.
Rachel smelled smoke, acrid and sharp. More shouts, closer now. Gunfire, rapid staccato cracks like hammer blows on steel. Her heart pounded so quickly she couldn’t think. But she had to—the drills they’d practiced in case of emergency evacuation replayed in her mind. No drill had prepared her for this. The noise alone was disorienting. She forced her mind to focus. Gather necessary supplies—medicine, food, drinking water. Communication devices, flashlights. Weapons. God, they didn’t have weapons. They were noncombatants. Neutral. Humanitarian. Did those words mean anything to whoever was out there, shooting? She feared they might not. Her stomach knotted. The overwhelming urge to run built inside her like pressure rising in a geyser. Sweat broke over her skin in a cold, sick wash of terror.
Patients panicked. Those who could move jumped from their beds, some of them barefoot in hospital scrubs, and rushed toward the exit, their eyes wide with dread. Several women grabbed children and, despite Amina’s and the medical personnel’s pleading, fled into the night. A pair of elderly patients, too ill or unaware to flee, remained along with a pair of toddlers who cried and cowered in their crib.
Amina spun around, her eyes stark. “They say it’s the rebels. They say we’ll all be killed.”
Rachel took a deep breath, Amina’s fear blunting her own. “We’re noncombatants. We’re no threat to them. If they come through here, they’ll be looking for drugs or supplies or weapons. They can take what they want.”
“Yes,” Amina said, her voice shaking. “I do not think we want to be here when they arrive, but”—she looked at the frail old man with the infected leg and the blind woman with pneumonia and the children with raging fevers from measles—“we have no choice.”
Rachel held her wrist close to one of the flickering lights. Almost five a.m. She thought of her father’s instructions for her to be ready to leave. Did her father know this was coming? How could he have kept her in the dark and allowed everyone here to be endangered? She couldn’t believe that of him. He was rigid and authoritarian, but he was not so ruthless as to ignore the safety of international aid workers and helpless civilians. Right now, she didn’t care what he knew or what he expected her to do—she wasn’t leaving without her friends and coworkers, and she wasn’t abandoning those who depended on her.
“I’m going to headquarters. If Dacar isn’t there, I’ll try to radio the center in Mogadishu myself. Will you be all right here?”
“Yes,” Amina said. “But hurry.”
“Tell the medical staff to prepare the patients to be transported. You should grab anything you need too. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Rachel hurried toward the exit, paused, and turned back. Amina was staring after her, looking small and vulnerable in khaki pants and a loose white T-shirt. “In case I’m…delayed, there’s a helicopter coming. Get the patients on there and everyone else you can find.”
“But what about you?”
“I’ll catch up.” Rachel smiled. “I promise. Just take care of things here.”
She slipped through the tent flap and quickly took cover in the shadows beyond the glow of the light filtering through the canvas. Keeping close to the edge of the clearing with the jungle at her back, she worked her way around behind the sleeping tents toward headquarters. The gunfire had stopped, and she didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not.
Ten yards in front of her, three men burst out of the jungle. Rachel froze, the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears so loud she couldn’t believe they didn’t hear it. Each wore a scarf around his neck, a tunic-like shirt that came to the tops of his thighs, long loose pants, and boots. Two carried rifles. The third had some kind of tubular weapon about four feet in length balanced on his shoulder and a heavy rucksack strapped to his back. They were laughing. They didn’t look her way.
Rachel didn’t breathe for so long her vision dimmed and her head spun. When no one else came and the sounds of the men’s voices disappeared, she crept forward again. Where had they gone? Most of the supplies were kept on a wooden platform under a tarp next to headquarters. If they were there, she wouldn’t be able to reach the radio.
The wind picked up and she took advantage of the rustling to move a little faster. A streak of lightning shot across the clearing. Rachel stumbled and looked up.
Not lightning. Searchlights. Not wind—rotor wash. A helicopter slid into view like a huge black bird of prey. Rachel’s heart lurched, and relief, so intense she almost cried out, surged through her.
Gunfire erupted from all around the camp, the sharp cracks making her jump and her legs tremble. Caught halfway between the hospital and headquarters, she had nowhere safe to run. She did the only thing she could. She sprinted into the jungle to hide.
Chapter Five
The sky lit up with tracer trails. The rattle of automatic weapons fire penetrated Max’s protective ear coverings, concussive pops beating against her eardrums. Fox’s voice, tight but controlled, announced, “We’re taking fire. Hold on.”
Max gripped the edge of the open portal. The bird pitched and rolled, an intentional maneuver to give those on the ground an even more difficult moving target. Below her, the jungle vegetation morphed from black into spurts of vibrant green relief as the light from muzzle flashes and rocket flares illuminated their surroundings for brief seconds. The fractured kaleidoscopic images of the trees and earth jumped and flickered as the helicopters descended with their noses and rockets pointed down.
Dawn was on the horizon. She wouldn’t need the night-vision goggles any longer and was about to toss them aside when an uneasy sixth sense warned her not to count on anything, or to count anything out. She pushed them up, secured them to her helmet, and squinted down at the landing zone. The only place to land appeared to be right in the middle of the encampment—and right in the center of the firefight. A ring of small square tan tents came into view, bordering a clearing about half the size of a football field. Dense jungle vegetation crowded in around the perimeter, providing excellent cover from which to attack. Two larger tents sat at either end of the clearing like chaperones at homecoming, policing the exits. The place looked eerily deserted. Where was everyone? And who the hell was shooting at them?
In another second, the bird settled lower over the LZ and she had her answer. Three men carrying assault rifles and a grenade launcher knelt and started firing up at them. The pings of bullets ricocheting off the Black Hawk were followed by another round of communication from both birds.
Verify your targets. We’ve got friendlies down there.
Those aren’t friendlies lobbing RPGs at us.
I hear you. Visually verify—rules of engagement.
They weren’t to fire unless fired upon, but that seemed to be a foregone conclusion now. Beside her, Ollie fired out the side window and rounds kicked up dirt like deadly raindrops racing across the sand.
Ollie, Burns, stand by on the ropes, Fox said. We’re going in hot.
Roger, Ollie said and Burns echoed him.
Cover fire, Romeo Two Four, Fox requested of the second Black Hawk that hovered above them.
Roger, Swampfox One.
Both crew chiefs fired the machine guns nonstop, round after round strafing the border between jungle and the clearing to force the insurgents back into the jungle and away from the LZ. Oil-scented steam rose from their weapons. Coils of three-inch-thick nylon ropes lay by their feet ready to be tossed out for a rapid descent. They would drop down and clear the immediate area so Max and Grif could deploy and find Rachel Winslow.
Max pushed the image of Winslow from her mind and sighted her weapon on the figures milling about on the ground. She had no idea who they were, and if they weren’t firing directly at the birds, she wasn’t about to fire on them. Some of them could be the Red Cross people they’d come here to protect. Clouds of sand whipped up by the rotors caked her nose and mouth. She tried not to breathe too deeply.
When they were fifty feet above the ground, a man and a woman carrying a litter made of two poles with sagging canvas strung between them erupted out of one of the large tents and ran awkwardly across the open ground toward them. She keyed her mic. “We’ve got wounded approaching. Get us down.”
Roger that, Fox grunted. Ollie, Burns. Go! Go!
The crew chiefs tossed the ropes, pulled off their headphones, and jumped. Max fired toward the jungle, trying to keep her rounds above head height to deter anyone from shooting back, and hoping not to hit a friendly. Ollie and Burns slid down to the ground and crouched in the swirling red-brown dirt, firing at rebels who appeared and disappeared like wisps of smoke.
Grif crouched beside Max in the portal, waiting for the skids to touch ground. He squeezed her shoulder.
“Keep your head down, Deuce.”
“Planning on it,” Max yelled. She had jumped out of birds into hot zones plenty of times before, and she didn’t worry about what might happen. She couldn’t stop a bullet if it had her name on it. “You get those medics with the litter on board. That must be the hospital tent up ahead. I’ll check it.”
“Roger, Deuce.”
Closer now, Max could make out the features of the woman at the front end of the litter. She wore plain tan hospital scrubs and field boots. Her thick blond hair escaped from a twist at her nape and thick curls flew about her face in the wind. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open, and she appeared to be panting in panic or exertion. Not Rachel Winslow.
Max brushed aside an unexpected twinge of disappointment and jumped the last five feet, landing next to Ollie. Automatic weapons chattered all around her. Another man and woman broke from the jungle twenty yards away and ran toward her, shouting, “We’re Red Cross. Help us!”
“Get into the helicopter,” Max shouted, waving them toward Ollie and Burns, and raced toward the people carrying the litter. A wizened old man, or possibly a very malnourished young one, lay on the litter, his eyes glazed. “Are you the doctor? How many more patients are back there?”
“Yes, I am Maribel Fleur,” the woman said with a hint of a French accent. She gulped for breath. “We have another non-ambulatory and two children.”
“We’ll get them. You two get on board,” Max said.
“You will need help. I will go back—”
“No! I’m a doctor. I’ll handle it.” Max waved for Grif to grab the litter, signaling him to get both the old man and the two French medics into the bird. “They’ll need you to look after them inside. Go. Go.”
She didn’t wait to see that the woman followed her instructions. Grif would take over. She held her rifle close to her chest and sprinted for the hospital tent. Just as she reached it, another woman and man pushed through the opening bearing a second litter with a thin, white-haired woman on it. The woman carrying the litter was young and dark-haired with a smooth caramel complexion. The man with her was white, in his mid-forties with a day’s worth of reddish beard and terror in his eyes.
“The children,” the young woman gasped. “Two of them inside.”
“I’ll get them,” Max said. “Where is Rachel Winslow?”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t know. She went to the headquarters tent.”
“Headquarters. Which one is that? The other big one?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“When?”
“Ten minutes ago? Then there was shouting and more shooting. I was afraid to go after her.” The woman’s face contorted with fear and guilt. “I shouldn’t have let her go alone.”
Max pointed to the Black Hawk. “It’s all right. I’ll find her. Go to the helicopter. Hurry.”
The man shouted something in French that was lost in the wind, and the two of them rushed toward the Black Hawk with the litter bobbing precariously with every step. Max shoved inside the tent, swept the room quickly with her weapon ready, and spied the two toddlers, a boy and a girl of about three, standing in a common crib. Their faces were smeared with tears and splotched with blisters, and both were wailing.
“All right you two, you’re all right.” Max slung her rifle onto her back and scooped up one under each arm. They grabbed onto her with surprising strength, their legs settling on either side of her hips. “We’re gonna run for it. You’ll be fine.”
A boom sounded from somewhere close by. Big caliber rocket or shoulder-launched mortar shells. If one of those took out vital parts of the Black Hawks, none of them would be getting into the air again. They didn’t have much time. Maybe none at all.
“Hold on! We’ll be okay!” The kids wouldn’t be able to understand her, but they’d know she wasn’t afraid. She only hoped Ollie, Burns, and the gunners on the second Black Hawk had cleared the LZ because she couldn’t fire her weapon and carry the kids too. Looking neither right nor left, she fixed on the belly of the bird and raced across the open ground, the air thick with dust and smelling of hot metal and death. The kids clung to her like limpets. Neither of them cried. The French doctor, hair flying and face set, jumped from the bird and rushed to meet them. She held out her arms. “Give them to me.”
Max handed over the children. “Stay in the helicopter this time!”
The blonde pointed in the direction of headquarters where two bodies lay in front of the tent. “What about them? There are injured—the rest of our team is out there somewhere!”
Max’s chest tightened. Was one of those bodies Rachel Winslow? Maybe all this was for nothing. No, not nothing. Two old people, the French medics, a couple of civilians, and two kids were safe. Almost safe, anyhow. If the Black Hawks got up into the air and out of there soon, they would be. “I’ll see to them. You’re out of this now.”
The blonde looked like she might argue. She clearly was not afraid. Or not afraid enough. The little boy started crying again. The blonde hugged him and the girl to her chest, nodded curtly, and scurried back to the Black Hawk.
Fox’s voice came over her radio. Ground fire is getting heavy. They’re firing RPGs. We need to get airborne.
Max ducked behind a tent. The flimsy barrier would at least keep her from being a visible target. She touched her mic. “Five minutes. I can’t find Winslow, and there may be more wounded.”
We didn’t plan on this, Fox said. Burns took a round to the shoulder. We need to get him and these civilians out of here. It’s too hot to land the other bird. I’ll give you as long as I can.
Grif skated around the corner of the tent with a collapsible litter balanced on his shoulder. His smile gleamed through a layer of camouflage paint and dirt. “Good day for a jog.”
Max snorted and pointed toward the bodies in front of the big tent. “Rachel Winslow might be over there. Let’s go.”
Heads down, they ran across the clearing, skirting the smoldering fire pits.
Two men in plain khakis lay on the hard-packed earth. One was still breathing, and they rolled him onto the litter. Blood bubbled from a wound in his chest. Max knelt next to the other one. A large chunk of his neck was missing—probably torn away by a rocket grenade fragment. His eyes were fixed and staring, and he was beyond any help she could provide. She needed to get inside the big tent to search for Rachel Winslow. She called back to Grif, “Get him stabilized and give me one minute to check inside. If she’s not here, we’ll get him back to the bird.”
“Go ahead. I’m good,” Grif said, opening his IFAK with practiced efficiency and withdrawing bandage packs and an IV.
Bounding up, Max ran for the tent, shouldered her rifle, and burst inside, fanning the room with her weapon, half expecting to find the rebels pointing weapons back at her. A woman in a torn, grimy white shirt and black cargo pants spun around, her eyes wide with adrenaline and shock. She stared at Max’s rifle.
“Rachel Winslow?” Max rasped. Her throat burned from the smoke and dust and her voice came out a low growl.
Rachel couldn’t answer, her father’s warning resounding in her memory. If you are kidnapped…kidnapped…kidnapped. The intruder’s face was indiscernible beneath the layer of grease and grime that covered every exposed inch. The rifle pointed at her was quite recognizable, though. Rachel glanced past the soldier toward the opening in the tent. Could she get out? She would never make it across the camp, even if she did somehow elude this soldier. She searched the dirt-caked uniform for some kind of insignia. Rebels wore uniforms too. She couldn’t make out a patch, a name, a flag—no, wait—a glint of gold at the collar. Rachel stared at the twin snakes encircling the staff. A caduceus. A medic. She drew in a breath, felt as if she had just surfaced after having been held underwater for hours. “Yes. I’m Rachel Winslow.”
The rifle lowered. “Come with me.”
“Who are you?”
The soldier—the woman soldier, Rachel realized as she calmed down and took a closer look—gave an impatient shake of her head and strode toward her in three long steps. A hand closed over her upper arm. “Commander Max de Milles. US Navy. Come on. There’s no time.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Rachel yanked her arm free. “I’ve got to get back to the hospital tent. Amina is over there. The patients, my team—”
“They’re taken care of. You’re the last one. Let’s go.”
Max tugged and Rachel stumbled outside. The encampment still looked very much the same at first glance. A few of the tents had been shredded and their torn canvas flickered in the wind like skeletal flags. She sucked in a breath and everything changed. Dacar lay on the ground a few feet in front of the tent. She grasped the hand gripping her arm and tried to break free. “Let me go. That’s one of our people.”
“He’s dead. You will be too if you keep fighting me.”
On the far side of the camp, a helicopter hovered a few feet off the ground. Gunfire clattered from a second one, circling higher up. Amina appeared from behind the closest tent and ran toward them. “Rachel! Rachel, I can’t find the others! I think Mahad is dead!”
“That’s one of our security team,” Rachel said. “We need to check—maybe he—”
“There’s no time.” Max dragged Rachel toward another soldier who knelt over a wounded man. “Status?”
The medic looked up and shook his head. Rachel felt a hand in the center of her back pushing her forward, and Max said, “Get her into the bird, Grif.”
“What about you,” Grif yelled, jumping to his feet.
Max ignored him and said to Amina, “Show me.”
“Deuce,” Grif said, “forget it. It’s too hot down here. We need to get out of here.”
“We’ll be right behind you. Get Winslow on that bird!”
Rachel tried to pull away, but Grif was bigger and stronger even than Max de Milles had been. “I’m not leaving until everyone—”
An explosion of gunfire and rocket bursts drowned her words. The ground kicked up around them, splattering her with bits of dirt and rocks. Her cheek stung and blood ran down her face.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Grif said, practically carrying her now. “We’ll come back for the others. You can count on—”
He grunted, stumbled, and fell, pulling Rachel to her knees beside him. Blood shot from his upper thigh in a brilliant red arc. Rachel instinctively pressed both hands on his leg. Crimson fluid, warm and thick, oozed between her fingers. She pressed harder.
“No,” he groaned. “Leave it. Get to the helicopter.”
“I can’t! You’re bleeding.” So much blood. Rachel leaned down with all her weight, terror closing her throat.
Behind them, the roaring grew louder and dirt swirled in thick clouds. The helicopter rose, and a few seconds later a fusillade of gunfire filled the air with endless metallic clattering. The jungle on the far side of the camp seemed to disintegrate. Tree trunks splintered, leaves split into confetti-sized pieces, and mounds of dirt heaved upward. Rachel crouched over Grif, expecting to be struck by a bullet at any second.
“Get into the tent,” Max shouted, pushing Rachel aside. “That’s cover fire—they won’t shoot at the tent.”
Amina grasped Rachel’s arm. “Come, come inside!”
“I can’t,” Rachel said. “His leg—”
“I’ve got it. Go, goddamn it.” Max ripped open a hemostatic pack, pulled out a pressure bandage, and slapped both onto Grif’s leg. She gripped Grif under the arms and pulled. His heavy body lurched forward slowly, and he groaned.
“Leave it, Deuce,” he gasped.
“Shut the fuck up and push with your good leg. If I try to carry you, that bandage is going to give way.”
Rachel pushed Amina toward the tent, ran back, and grabbed Grif’s ankles. She looked up and saw surprise in Max’s clear blue eyes. “Pull. I’ll get his legs.” Overhead, the helicopters grew smaller until they were just black smudges against a brilliant red sunrise.
Chapter Six
Max spared one quick look into the sky. Both Black Hawks lifted higher and swung away in sharp curves to the north, to safety. Good. The mission had gone to hell, but they’d managed to salvage part of it with only two casualties on their side—Burns and Grif. The civilians had not fared as well. Two Somalis dead and another injured or dead that she knew of. The other three were either dead in the jungle, captured, or hiding. She had an unknown number of rebel forces who might close in at any minute, and she had to keep Grif and the rest of them alive. The firing had stopped and the silence was like a vacuum, leaving the air thin and empty. She scanned the encampment. Nothing moved except the fluttering of torn canvas, weary banners celebrating a questionable victory. The battle was over for the moment but the mission objective had not been achieved. They’d failed to extract Rachel Winslow.
“You need to get to cover,” Max said.
“You can’t carry him alone.” Rachel Winslow’s gaze never wavered, locked on Max’s face like a laser-guided missile. Her face was set in a mixture of defiance and controlled fear—pale lips slightly parted, teeth clenched, pupils so wide the black eclipsed the green Max remembered from the photo. Grif was a former Iowa State linebacker—six-five, two hundred and forty pounds of muscle—but Rachel held Grif’s legs off the ground by the ankles as if he weighed nothing. Adrenaline strength.
Max should order her to get inside. Not that she had any faith Winslow would listen to her. She didn’t have any choice but to give in. Grif’s life was in the balance, he was only intermittently conscious, and if she tried getting him up onto her shoulder, the leg wound was going to blow wide open. That fountain of blood spelled arterial tear, and a big one. He might still bleed to death at any minute. She needed help, Winslow wasn’t going anywhere, and no place here was safer than the other.
“On my count,” Max shouted. “Lift his legs and keep your damn head down.”
Rachel nodded, keeping her focus on Max, on the sharp hard strength in her eyes. The pressure in her chest eased enough for her to breathe, and the scream that threatened to erupt from her raw throat faded. The horror was out there, a few feet away in the bodies of her friends and the still-echoing clatter of thousands of bullets crackling through the air, but she could push the awfulness back to the shadows if she just held on to the certainty in Max’s eyes. “I’m ready.”
For no reason that made any sense, Max felt a wave of calmness flow through her, calm she had no right to be feeling in the midst of chaos and carnage. Strength suffused her muscles. “Three. Two. One!”
Max lifted and so did Rachel, and between them they half carried, half dragged Grif’s big frame the twenty yards to the headquarters tent and inside. As soon as they stretched him out on the packed-dirt floor, Max unslung her rifle and pushed it into Rachel’s hands. “Guard the door.”
Rachel looked from the rifle to Max and her expression widened in disbelief. “I don’t know how to shoot this thing.”
“You’ll learn quickly when someone shoots at you,” Max said, not looking up as she ripped open her IFAK and pulled out a bag of saline and the attached tubing. “If you see someone coming you don’t know, point and pull the trigger. The weapon will do the rest.”
“I am a noncombatant.”
Max paused as she knelt in the dirt, while the blood of her friend seeped through her pants, and spared the woman a fleeting glance. She had no time to debate or reassure or explain. She needed Rachel to follow her orders. “We’re all combatants now, or didn’t you notice the people trying to kill us? The people who were killing us?”
Rachel’s mouth set in a thin line but she turned, went to the doorway, and crouched behind the folded back flap. Something about the set of her shoulders made Max think she could handle what might come at her from out of the jungle, and right now she needed someone to watch her back. She’d have to trust her, and trusting anyone except one of her fellow troops didn’t come easy. Resolutely, she focused on Grif.
Winslow’s friend, the young woman with the dark compassionate eyes, approached and knelt on Grif’s other side. She said softly, “What can I do to help you?”
“What’s your name?” Max asked, cutting Grif’s sleeve open from wrist to shoulder with her knife.
“Amina.”
Max handed her the IV bag. “Hold this up in the air, Amina. As soon as I get the IV line in, squeeze it. He needs fluid.”
“Yes. All right.”
Max pushed a plastic catheter into one of the big veins on Grif’s forearm. Fortunately, he had veins like tree branches and they hadn’t disappeared despite his blood loss. She was in in seconds and slapped a piece of tape over the tubing. “Squeeze.”
She checked his BP again—eighty over nothing. His pulse was thready and his color pasty. He was just this side of shock. She grabbed another bag of saline and shoved a second IV into his other arm. “Can you handle this bag too?”
“Yes,” Amina said, and took the other bag.
The pressure bandage on Grif’s thigh was saturated. Blood seeped from beneath it and ran down his leg in rapidly widening rivers. She needed to control the bleeding or she’d still be playing catch-up while he bled out.
“Keep squeezing.” Max found an ampoule of broad-spectrum antibiotics, popped it into the accompanying syringe, and snipped Grif’s pants from knee to hip. She plunged the needle into his ass and pushed the ampoule home. He grunted and his eyelids twitched open.
“Jesus Christ,” Grif groaned. “What the hell happened?”
“You took a round in the thigh.” Max loaded up another ampoule with intravenous Demerol.
“Fuck. What about my balls?” Grif fumbled for his crotch, stretching the IV tubing extending from his arm.
“Stop fussing. I haven’t checked them personally yet,” Max said flatly, “but from the location of the entry wound, I think you’re safe there.”
“Keep them that way.”
“Trust me, your balls are my utmost concern.”
Grif’s mouth twitched into a grin. “Fuck, it hurts, Deuce.”
“I know.” She pushed the Demerol. The dose was calibrated for an average-sized man, but Grif wasn’t average sized. The narcotic would help with the pain but it wouldn’t obliterate it, and she couldn’t give him any more. His BP was too low, and she didn’t know how long they’d be out in the field. She didn’t want to run out. “The Demerol will kick in shortly, but I’m going to need to get a look underneath this bandage. That’s gonna hurt a lot more in a minute or two.”
“Great.” Grif turned his head, struggling to focus on Max. His pupils were pinpoint and divergent. The Demerol was starting to work. “What about the target? We get her out?”
“Not yet.” Max glanced toward the door where Rachel squatted, staring out, the assault rifle held stiffly away from her body as if it were a wild thing that might bite her. A rare slice of sunlight illuminated the side of her face. Her shoulder-length hair had come loose from its tie and lay in soft tangles on her shoulders. Her jaw was long and shapely, her cheekbones delicately arched, her nose straight above the whimsical mouth. Her eyebrows were distinct and subtly arched. A laceration marred her cheek just below her right eye, and a smear of blood discolored the skin over her jaw. Even bruised, bloody, and dirt-smudged, her face was an arresting combination of strength and beauty.
Max had witnessed her strength, physical and emotional, seconds earlier when Rachel had insisted on carrying Grif despite the rounds whizzing by their heads. Unfortunately, Rachel was also stubborn and prone to ignore authority. Personally, Max would prefer Rachel be a little less brave and a lot more pliable, but she’d worry about that later. She realized the woman, the target, had become Rachel to her sometime in the last half hour, and she pushed that strange and unwelcome realization aside. She needed to concentrate on priorities, and the first was keeping Grif from bleeding to death. She didn’t doubt for a single second that someone would come for them if she could keep them all alive. She just wasn’t sure how she was going to do that.
“Anything out there?” Max asked as she broke open another pack of hemostatic gauze and a new pressure bandage.
“No. Not that I can see.” Rachel blinked against the bright sunlight illuminating the center of the clearing. When had the sun come up? She strained to see into the shadows where the jungle canopy obscured the demarcation between the bare ground around the tents and the nearby undergrowth. She imagined she could see a hundred pairs of eyes peering out at her, the glint of sunlight off a hundred rifle barrels, and the menacing faces of enemies everywhere. Dacar’s body and that of another guard lay not more than twenty feet from where she knelt, but already they seemed unrecognizable to her. Their features had not changed all that much, but the absence of life left them looking vacant and empty, as if they had never been vibrant human beings with goals and ambitions and fears and joys. How could this have happened? Of course, rationally she knew how it could happen. She was in the middle of a country that had been at constant war for more than two decades, in a continent where almost every country had a centuries-long history of internecine strife. She knew the risks, but her mind rebelled against the senselessness of it all.
The Red Cross was recognized around the world for its humanitarian goals and its careful neutrality. She and her coworkers had come to help the very people whom the rebels purported to represent—the native Somalis, the people of this land. She’d seen the briefing reports. She knew that Islamist extremists had joined forces with the rebels, strengthening and feeding their militant might and fervor. But why had they attacked the camp?
Her father had warned her the area was no longer safe, but if he’d known they were about to be attacked, he would have told her. Maybe he had, in his own way. He’d insisted she be ready to leave just before dawn. Maybe the attack had come early. Maybe he’d breached security to contact her at all. She wanted to believe that, but none of it really mattered any longer. She was here now, and her father and all his resources and power could not change that.
She checked over her shoulder to see how Grif was doing. Max knelt by his side, speaking in short curt phrases to Amina, her movements rapid and sure as she worked. She was more than just a soldier. The caduceus on her collar spoke to that, but how could a healer justify the violence of war? The two extremes were impossible for Rachel to reconcile. All the same, she was glad Max was here, because she suspected she and Amina would both be dead without her. They still might be.
“Where are they?” Rachel asked, almost wishing she could see someone. She didn’t want to shoot anyone, but she didn’t want to sit here waiting to be shot either.
“They’re probably gone,” Max said in her level, emotionless way. “The rebels are known for their hit-and-run tactics. Once the birds opened up on them, they probably decided they’d had enough of a fight for one day.”
“Will they be back?”
“Possibly. Do you have anything here of particular value?”
“I don’t know what they would consider of value.”
Max smiled faintly and wrapped some kind of external pressure device around Grif’s leg. “Good point. Weapons?”
Rachel shook her head. “Only what Dacar…” Her throat suddenly closed on the name. She didn’t know him very well. He’d been a quiet, reserved man, but his smile had been friendly and he seemed competent and professional. She only saw the others briefly whenever they changed shifts and came in to eat before returning to their tents to sleep or talk quietly among themselves. She’d never known anything about them beyond their names. “Only what the guards were carrying. We have no money.”
Amina spoke up. “We have the hospital. Equipment, medicine, drugs. And we have food.”
Max grimaced. “Yes. And those are valuable commodities. If they’re aware that you have these things, they’ll be back.”
“What are we going to do?” Rachel surprised herself with the question, realizing she had automatically assumed that Max de Milles would be in charge from now on. Why had she done that? She never looked to others to solve her problems or protect her. The answer was simple and unavoidable. She was completely out of her depth. She knew nothing about the waging of war, only the consequences.
“My team will be back,” Max said.
“How can you be sure?” Rachel asked.
Max’s brows, two heavy dark slashes above intense blue-black eyes, lowered. “They’ll be back.”
“But they don’t know we’re alive.”
“It doesn’t matter. We don’t leave anyone behind—and we make no distinction between the living and the dead.”
The way she said it, as if for her life and death were indistinguishable, chilled Rachel’s heart. Was this what war did, crushed the emotions, obliterated the value of life? Or was it that in order to wage war, one must already have lost one’s humanity?
Chapter Seven
“I’m going to take this dressing off,” Max said to Amina. “There will be more bleeding.”
“I’ve seen blood before,” Amina said, her voice almost sad.
“Okay. Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Max pulled on a clean pair of gloves and gently removed the old bandage, trying not to dislodge any clot that might have formed. Bright red blood spurted onto her sleeve, and she pressed a finger over the femoral artery above the inch-wide entrance wound in the center of the fleshy part of Grif’s upper left leg. The wound was through and through, with a ragged exit hole four times as big on the back. His balls were fine, he’d be happy to learn, but from the nature of the bleeding, the round had nicked a branch of the big artery in his thigh. If they were lucky, it was just a branch. If the femoral was hit, they were in deep shit.
Grif had lapsed into semiconsciousness again, partly narcotic effect and partly blood loss. His vitals had stabilized, but he was rocky. The golden hour—the optimal time period to transport the wounded from the field to a forward hospital for definitive care—was about up, and she doubted they’d be extracted anytime soon. All she’d done so far was control the immediate threat, but that wasn’t going to be enough if the bleeding continued.
Amina gave Max a worried glance. “How is he?”
“Better than he was. You don’t need to squeeze the fluid in anymore.” Max finished applying the new dressing and sat back on her heels. She capped one of the IVs and connected a fresh bag of saline to the line running into his left arm. Four liters in already. Much more and she’d need to start worrying about his lungs and fluid overload. “Could you bring one of those chairs over here? I’ll hang his IV from it so you don’t have to keep holding it.”
“Of course.” Amina retrieved a folding chair from in front of the long table holding the communication equipment and placed it next to Grif’s shoulder. “I think there are blankets in the back. Should I get some to cover him?”
“That would be good. Thanks.” Max propped up the IV bag and rubbed her face. Amina had been as steady while Max changed Grif’s dressings as if she’d had battlefield experience, and maybe in her own way she had. Violence was a way of life in this place. “You did great.”
Amina smiled almost shyly and went to retrieve the blankets. Max rose, stretched the cramps from her lower back, and checked her watch. Seven hundred hours. She felt as if they’d been inside the sweltering tent with its stale, oppressive air for a week already. Her shirt stuck to her back with cold sweat despite the heat, and she loosened her clamshell body armor and set her equipment belt on the floor next to Grif. Now that he was stable for the moment, she had to deal with the rest of their situation. She joined Rachel at the door and looked out.
“Everything quiet?”
“Yes, but I keep thinking I see things. And then I don’t.”
“That’s pretty common the first few times on watch. Don’t worry about it. If there’s someone out there who doesn’t want you to see them, you won’t. And when you do see them, you’ll know for sure. They’ll be pointing a rifle at you and probably firing.”
Rachel sucked in a breath. “Why are you so calm? Doesn’t that frighten you—the idea of being a target, or do you get used to it?”
“There’s no point thinking about it, and there’s no way to change it. You just deal with what is.” Max had spent so much time with troops the last few years—with those who lived under the same cloud of violence and death as her—she’d forgotten how foreign her reality must seem to those who were strangers to war. She wondered, seeing the questions and confusion in Rachel’s eyes, why she had looked forward to going home, where she’d be an outsider surrounded by people who had no concept of where she’d been or what she’d seen.
“The ultimate living in the now?” Rachel asked.
“You train for every eventuality, prepare for any contingency, until you know, down to your last cell, you’re ready. Then you put it aside.” Max shrugged. Fear could get you killed as quickly as arrogance. If she’d ever been philosophical, and she couldn’t remember a time when she was, she’d long since lost any interest in trying to understand the why of the random happenings she saw around her every day—why one person took a round in the forehead, while another, standing inches away, went unscathed, as if there was some cosmic meaning to events. Maybe there was some great plan, maybe everyone’s fate was preordained, but she couldn’t see how that mattered. All that mattered was what she did in response. Was that living in the now or merely surviving?
Out here there wasn’t much difference. She summed it up and hoped that would be the end of the conversation. Rachel Winslow couldn’t possibly understand, and why should she? Even the suffering of the displaced civilians Rachel had come to help couldn’t compare to the depraved cruelty of war, and Max had no desire to enlighten her. “The less you worry about what might happen, the better.”
Rachel’s brows furrowed. She clearly wasn’t a woman who accepted anything at face value. “Is that scientific fact or personal opinion?”
“Experience.”
“How long you been out here?”
“This time? A little over a year. The first time about the same.”
“That sounds…hard.”
“I joined the Navy. I knew what that meant.”
“Did you,” Rachel said softly. She cut her gaze to the camp and the jungle beyond. “How could you possibly? How could anyone?”
Max said nothing. She had no answer, and Rachel wasn’t really talking to her. She was trying to make sense of a senseless situation. She’d learn not to soon enough.
Rachel turned back. “The helicopters—you’re sure they’re coming back?”
“Yes.”
“Can you call them or something?” Her eyes brightened. “We have a satellite connection—maybe we can call headquarters in Mogadishu? If they know what happened—”
“They know,” Max said. “The people who need to know already know, and they’re not in Mog. They’re at Lemonnier.”
“Is that where you came from?”
“Yes.” Max scanned the jungle, dense and green and impenetrable. An ancient force onto itself, neither friend nor enemy. “The rebels were a lot closer than we expected. I’d rather not try radio contact now until we’re sure they’re not still out there. No point putting a big sign over our heads.”
“How far are we from your base?”
“A few hours’ flying time. They’ll contact us if they can when they’re back in range.” Or they’d just materialize out of the dark, troops and birds dropping from the sky like something out of myth, or nightmare.
“When will they be back?”
Max debated how much to say. She needed to keep the civilians from panicking. Rachel and Amina had handled themselves better than most in the midst of the crisis, but the danger was far from over.
“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Rachel said briskly. “We have a right to know what we’re facing.”
“My guess is not before sundown, at the earliest. The birds are made for night maneuvers, and it’ll take a while for command to sort out what happened here and why. This was supposed to be straightforward in and out.” She didn’t want to say it might not be sundown tonight. If a large rebel contingent with surface-to-air rockets or a stockpile of RPGs had located in the area, the birds might not be able to land. If an extraction team had to infiltrate on foot, it would take a day or two. At best.
Rachel grimaced. “Someone’s intelligence was faulty.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. The rebels could’ve hit here purely at random, and it was just a coincidence that we arrived at the same time.”
“I don’t know about you, but I find that coincidence a stretch.” Rachel sighed, her exasperation clear. “I don’t understand any of this. We’ve been here almost two months. They must have known we were no threat.”
“They took a trouncing this morning,” Max said. “Random attack or not, there’s not a lot of reason for them to return. You said yourself you don’t have much they might want except the medical supplies.”
“Maybe that’s reason enough,” Rachel said, but she didn’t look or sound convinced.
Max had an uneasy feeling Rachel might know something more about what had prompted the attack than she let on. Considering the mission objectives, she was almost certain Rachel knew they were coming that morning. The French medics had been ready to evacuate the patients before the birds had even gotten into range. “What else do you know about this morning?”
“What? Nothing—why should I?”
“You tell me. Someone in your life must be pretty important, because we were sent here specifically for you. You, most importantly.”
“I don’t know why,” Rachel said, the heat rising in her cheeks. She didn’t want to betray her father by revealing his call. She really didn’t know why he’d insisted she leave, and she had no clue if the attack was related to her. All the same, her stomach roiled. Had her friends been killed because of her? Had the soldiers and sailors been shot because of her? She repeated softly, “I don’t know.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Rachel Winslow.” Rachel stared into the flinty blue eyes that examined her with stony calculation. Max de Milles didn’t trust her. The realization hurt, though she couldn’t say why. The woman was a stranger, hardened and cynical and cold. “You know that. You asked for me by name.”
“That’s because we were sent here to retrieve you. But I still don’t know who you are that made that necessary.”
“Does it matter? Am I any more important than the other eleven people who were here?” Rachel could hear how defensive she sounded, but she wasn’t more important than her friends, her coworkers. She hadn’t asked for special privileges. She certainly hadn’t asked for people to put their lives in danger because of her. She wouldn’t have this woman holding her responsible for something that had not been her choice.
“Someone thinks you’re more important.”
The way she said it made it sound as if Rachel felt the same way. Rachel’s back stiffened. “Shouldn’t we be concerned about what happens next and not spend time on fruitless questions? That sounds like something to suit your logical view of things.”
The corner of Max’s mouth twitched, and damn it if she didn’t smile. Her remoteness faded for the briefest instant and she suddenly looked approachable. Human. And despite the dirt and sweat that caked her face, incredibly attractive. Rachel’s heart skipped, a sensation she would not have believed if it hadn’t happened again when a soft chuckle reverberated in Max’s throat.
“Well, you’re quick,” Max said. “No, none of that matters all that much right now.”
The tension in Rachel’s shoulders lessened and a swift wave of relief passed through her, as if she’d been forgiven, which was ridiculous since she hadn’t done anything wrong. Why she even cared what Max de Milles thought of her given the situation was equally absurd. Feeling foolish and uncharacteristically unsure, she bristled. “Well, now that we’ve established where we both stand, what’s next?”
“We need to secure the camp in case our rebel friends come back.”
“We can’t possibly fight them. In case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t exactly soldiers. Shouldn’t we try to…I don’t know, walk out of here on our own?”
“I’m assuming you know where you are,” Max said, impressed with Rachel’s spirit if not her stubbornness. Her reluctance to give up control could be a problem.
“Of course I know,” Rachel said, her lustrous green eyes flashing. “I wasn’t suggesting we walk the entire way, but we can hardly sit here in this tent waiting for someone to come back and shoot at us again.”
“It’s a couple hundred miles to Mog, and the jungle is peppered with mines. We’d never make it. Besides, when the birds come back for us, we need to be here.” Max glanced back at Grif. He wasn’t ambulatory and moving him at all might be dangerous. He wasn’t going anywhere, and if he wasn’t going anywhere, neither was she.
“There are villages not that far from here—that’s where our supplies come through. They would help us.”
Max shook her head. “You don’t know that—and you can be sure the rebels know about the villages too. We don’t want to stumble into a patrol out there, even if we could manage to find our way around the mines.” With an injured man and two women who have no combat skills. Max shook her head. “We’re staying.”
Her dismissive tone sounded a lot like the one Rachel’s father used with everyone, and her response was knee-jerk. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not soldiers. We don’t just mindlessly follow orders.”
“Believe me, I’m aware,” Max said. “But I plan on keeping you alive, so you’ll just have to learn to take orders.”
Rachel bit back another retort. She didn’t even know why she was fighting what obviously made sense. She sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Her apology caught Max by surprise. Stubborn and proud, but not so proud she couldn’t admit being on the wrong side of an argument. “Forget it.”
“I still don’t see how you expect us to deal with another attack.” Rachel scanned the jungle. She hadn’t been more than a few feet beyond the camp perimeter since she’d arrived. “Shouldn’t we hide or something?”
“I’m not planning a counteroffensive. If there’s something here the rebels want, they’ll be back after dark when they don’t make easy targets. By then, we’ll be in a bunker, better protected, and even a poor shot can hit something with an automatic weapon.”
“A bunker.” Rachel took in the tattered tents, the smoldering fires, and the pallets of food and other relief supplies they’d stockpiled for the Somali natives. This wasn’t a military base. Was the woman crazy? “A bunker. I don’t see a bunker.”
“That’s because we haven’t dug it yet.”
“Dug it.” Rachel’s head spun. Obviously Max felt no fear. Maybe she had stopped feeling anything at all. Rachel fought her instinct to object, to point out the insanity of the plan. Giving over control to a stranger would have been impossible even a day earlier, but now she had no choice. After all, as had been made perfectly clear, Max was the professional. “I’ll do what you say…but I’m not a robot. I need to understand.”
Max’s gaze narrowed. “It’s not enough to trust that I know what I’m doing?”
“Should it be?”
“We don’t have time for a long engagement.”
“Well, I’m not ready to elope,” Rachel said flatly. “Tell me what you want me to do and why, and we’ll get along.” She paused. Had it always been this hard to let someone else help her? When had independence become a wall? No time to worry about that now. “I’m grateful that you’re here—for all you’ve done. I know Amina and I probably wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you and the others.”
“I don’t want your gratitude,” Max said gruffly. Her mouth thinned. The smile was long gone. “That’s not what I want.”
Rachel wondered what she did want. If she even knew. “Well, I want you to know that you have it anyway.”
“Let’s give off worrying about who did or didn’t do what. We’ve got other things to worry about.”
“Is the past so easy to set aside for you?” Rachel mused aloud, wondering more about herself than Max. Maybe if she could let go and just be in the moment. She almost laughed—just not these moments.
“No.” Max turned away. “Amina, will you take care of Grif? Check his vital signs every thirty minutes, let me know if you see anything that changes?”
“Yes.” Amina had already pulled over another chair and was sitting by Grif’s side.
“When the IV runs low, I’ll show you how to change it.”
“I can do that. I’ve assisted in the hospital here many times.”
“Good, thank you.”
“And me?” Rachel asked.
“We need someone to stand guard.”
“Shouldn’t that be you? You’re the soldier—”
“Sailor.”
Rachel frowned. “That doesn’t seem right, out here in the middle of the jungle.”
“Most Navy personnel spend very little time on a ship. Navy pilots, Navy medics, Navy SEALs—we’re all over out here.”
“All right. You’re the sailor—shouldn’t you be the one with the gun on guard duty?”
“I will be, later.” Max blanked her expression. “But first I need to take care of the bodies. They’re going to decompose rapidly in this heat, and we don’t need them drawing predators into camp on top of everything else.”
“Oh God,” Rachel said softly, “how could I forget already? How are you going to bury them by yourself?”
“I’m not. I’m going to take them out and cover them enough to keep the predators away. We’ll come back for the bodies later.”
Rachel’s chin came up. “I’ll help you.”
Tough woman. Max couldn’t help but be a little impressed. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather not get shot while I’m working. I need you to watch my back.”
Rachel studied her for a long moment. “All right. I can do that.”
“Good,” Max said abruptly, uncomfortable under Rachel’s scrutiny, as if something she meant to keep hidden, something she no longer recognized, was suddenly exposed. She didn’t like the feeling. Or worse, maybe she did. “Let’s get started.”
Chapter Eight
Max covered her nose and mouth with a strip of cloth she’d torn from one of the tattered tents. Breathing through the stiff fabric was like straining air through sand, but it cut down on the cloying odor of blood and death. She dragged the third body a dozen yards or so into the bush, checking every few feet to be sure she hadn’t drawn the attention of the rebels, or a cat. She’d stationed Rachel at the edge of the jungle. If they were attacked, she could hold off the attackers long enough for Rachel to get back to the main tent, but once she was dead, there would be nothing to stand between the insurgents and the camp. If the rebels got past her, they might not fire on the tent, and Rachel and Amina would have a chance to survive. The rebels would execute Grif. Best-case scenario, the rebels would loot the camp and leave the women alive. Hoping they would also leave them unharmed was wishful thinking.
Max gritted her teeth and swiped sweat from her eyes. She wasn’t going to waste time and energy she didn’t have envisioning Amina and Rachel at the hands of men who thought nothing of taking what they wanted from any woman. She wouldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t let Grif be shot while he lay helpless, or Amina and Rachel be taken as if they were spoils of war. Not while she breathed. She laid the bodies of the three men side by side in a patch of thick underbrush. She couldn’t find any rocks, but the rounds the Black Hawks had poured into the jungle had cut down tree trunks like matchsticks. She dragged and rolled half a dozen logs over the bodies. It wasn’t a proper burial, but it might protect their remains from being carried off and strewn about by predators. She’d make sure someone from Mog or the base came back for them as soon as they could.
Dripping sweat, light-headed from hunger and fatigue, she slashed at a tangle of vines with her knife to cover the burial mound. Behind her, branches rustled. She swung around in a crouch, making herself a smaller target, and swung her rifle onto her shoulder. Rachel stumbled to a halt, her lips parted on a gasp.
“Fuck!” Max’s pulse hammered in her ears. “I told you to stay put!”
“I couldn’t see you,” Rachel whispered, “and you’ve been in here a long time. I thought—”
“I don’t want you to think.” Max lowered her rifle and retrieved her knife. Jamming the KA-BAR into the sheath on her thigh, she straightened, stepping between Rachel and the mound of log-covered bodies. “I need you to do what I say.” She gripped Rachel’s arm and propelled her toward camp. “What part of that don’t you get?”
“The part where my brain suddenly stops functioning.” Rachel jerked her arm loose. “And in case it hasn’t occurred to you, if you go and get yourself killed, the rest of us don’t have much chance of getting out of here.”
Max swore under her breath. Images of bullets tearing into Rachel’s unprotected body, of laughing men with their hands on her, of her victimized and broken made her head pound. Her vision wavered as she tried to rein in her fury. “This is the way it has to work—I make the rules. I give the orders. You don’t argue, you don’t question, you just do. And then maybe, just maybe, we’ll all get out of here in one piece.”
Rachel’s fear and anger drained away as quickly as it had come, leaving her more tired than she’d ever been in her life. She couldn’t imagine how Max was still functioning—still doing what had to be done. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Again.”
“Forget it. Again.” Max held out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”
Rachel grasped Max’s hand almost automatically, as if she weren’t really aware of doing it. “I’ll do my best. If you promise to stop pointing your gun at me.”
Max smiled, caught off guard by the teasing note in Rachel’s voice. They were nearly eye-to-eye. She was a shade over five-eleven and used to looking down at most women, but Rachel’s eyes were on a level with hers, and this close she could pick out the tiny gold flecks dancing through the heather green. The hand that gripped hers was as strong as she would’ve expected from a woman like Rachel, but surprisingly softer than she anticipated. She hadn’t touched any part of a woman in a long time and had forgotten what a contrast in strength and tenderness a woman’s body could be. She glanced down at her own fingers curled around Rachel’s. Her hands were covered in dirt and blood and, feeling oddly unworthy, she loosened her grip. Rachel’s hand fell away at the same time as hers.
As she looked into Rachel’s eyes, the silence in the clearing was as loud as gunfire. “Come on, I want to take a look at that cut.”
Rachel swallowed, her gaze searching, as if she was trying to find some secret Max had hidden deep inside. “What cut?”
“The one on your cheek.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Rachel said.
Approaching midday, the clearing was an oven. Sweat tricked down the back of Max’s neck. A film of moisture coated Rachel’s upper lip, and Max had a sudden crazy urge to brush it away with her thumb. She clenched her fist. “It’s not nothing. We’re out in the middle of the jungle. If we don’t get it cleaned up and it gets infected, you could be in trouble. Besides, this way the scarring will be less.”
Rachel laughed, a choking sound devoid of humor. “A scar? From a tiny cut? And you really think I care?”
“Maybe not now. But when you’re back in your normal life, you probably will.”
“My normal life.” Rachel said the words as if they were foreign to her. The intensity of her gaze heightened. “And what do you imagine that to be?”
Max had no idea. Rachel wasn’t anything like the privileged, probably slightly pampered and entitled woman she’d imagined when she’d learned they were going on a mission to extract her. What she knew of her was born of death and horror, unimaginable to most people. But Rachel hadn’t broken, not yet. She was fighting back. Hell, she was fighting Max when she had nowhere else to vent her anger. The answer to Rachel’s question suddenly seemed important.
Staring around the stark empty encampment that had until then just been a battlefield in her mind, Max tried to imagine the place bustling with aid workers rendering emergency care and simple human kindness to people whose language they couldn’t understand and whose lives and history must be foreign to their own. In order to do that in the midst of personal danger and unrelenting despair, they must have shared a common goal, a common passion. This had been a community, not just a group of strangers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“What?” Rachel asked, sounding breathless, almost stunned.
“Your friends. Everything you had here. I’m sorry.”
“I…thank you.” Rachel’s throat tightened, and to her horror, tears filled her eyes. After all the fear and terror she’d been battling to keep at bay, this simple bit of sympathy, of understanding, cut the legs out from under her. The horror of the morning rushed back to her. The gunfire, the hideous stench, the panic, the death. She closed her eyes, her head swimming. An arm came around her waist, and she was pulled close to a hard body.
“Easy,” Max murmured. “Come on. It’s a hundred and fifteen out here. You need something to drink. Some food.”
Rachel opened her eyes, feeling foolish and weak. Max’s face was an inch away, those impossibly blue eyes immeasurably kind. Her eyes were so fascinating, shifting from cold, hard calculation to unexpected compassion like the wind. Rachel’s heart beat hard beneath her breast, and she flushed, embarrassed at what it revealed. She wanted to pretend she didn’t need the comfort, but she did. Deep inside, in her primitive core where her instincts were to survive by any means possible, she was terrified, ready to claw and scratch and kill to stay alive. Terrified that the gunmen would return, terrified that she would be taken. Terrified of placing her trust in anyone, especially this woman whose embrace felt too natural, too welcome. Max de Milles might be a savior, but she was also a stranger, and anything Rachel was feeling right now was a product of the unreal world she’d been thrust into. Gratitude, comfort. That didn’t frighten her. But the desire kindling in the pit of her stomach did.
The hand pressed in the center of her back was warm and firm. Max’s chest armor, some kind of hard plastic shell, pressed against Rachel’s breasts. She was exposed, vulnerable, and Max was like a mountain shielded in rock. Rachel thrust a hand between them, pressed her palm against the armor. Pushed away.
“I’m all right.” I don’t need you to lean on.
“Come on.” A curtain dropped over Max’s eyes, her hand fell away, and she stepped back. “We’re sitting ducks out here. And we’ve still got a lot of work yet to do today.”
Rachel swallowed around the dust in her throat. “Yes. Right. What’s next?”
“First the cut, then some food.”
Max turned and walked away, leaving Rachel to follow. Rachel paced herself to Max’s long strides, her heart still beating way too fast. The center of her back tingled where Max’s hand had rested, and the heaviness in her pelvis throbbed. Her life was not her own, her fate was not her own, and now, even her body was betraying her. All she could do was pray this ended before she no longer recognized herself.
*
Max pulled back the edge of the tent, ducked under the flap, and slipped into the semidarkness. She heard Rachel come in behind her, sensing her presence as if they were still touching. Still connected. Even as she knelt by Grif’s side, she was aware of Rachel slumping down onto a cot that Amina must have brought out from the back. She needed to check Grif’s vital signs, see if the bleeding had stopped, but she kept remembering the color fading from Rachel’s face as she swayed outside in the heat, about to faint. Her instinct had been to pick her up into her arms, to keep her from falling. To keep her from harm. Nothing unusual about that. That was her job, to keep others from harm, to take care of them when they were injured. But she’d never experienced the wild sense of protectiveness she’d felt while holding Rachel.
Rachel’s eyes sent so many messages—anger, defiance, grief, need—that called up feelings in her she couldn’t afford to have out here if she wanted them all to survive. She’d wanted to keep standing there with Rachel, immersed in those shifting sensations, and that kind of distraction could be deadly. She didn’t have time for tenderness, couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by sympathy. Or the other tangle of emotions simmering in her belly. She kept her back to Rachel. Grif needed her now.
“How’s he doing?” she asked Amina.
“His pulse is up a little bit,” Amina said. “I found one of our first aid kits in the back and took his temperature. He has a fever.”
Max’s stomach clenched. Not good. Not a damn thing she could do about it. She checked her watch. Headed for twelve hundred hours. “In another two hours we’ll dose him again with antibiotics. Have you had anything to eat?”
Amina shook her head, dark circles making her dark eyes appear larger, wounded.
“You think you can find something for us? Everyone needs to keep their strength up. And water?”
“We have food packs prepared to give to the displaced,” Amina said. “They’re stored on the supply platform out behind this tent. I’ll get them.”
“How far is it?”
“Just a few steps.”
Max picked up her rifle. She couldn’t let Amina walk around alone, even though she doubted a daylight attack. “I’ll walk out with you.”
“Thank you.”
Once satisfied the field was clear, Max left Amina in charge of supplies and came back inside. She checked Grif’s vitals, regulated the IV rate, and prepared another dose of antibiotics. After he was settled, she sorted through the supplies for what she needed to take care of Rachel and carried it to the cot where Rachel sat watching her with an unreadable expression.
“First I’m going to clean it out.” Max squatted and soaked a gauze pad in saline. “It’ll sting some.”
“I can do it,” Rachel said.
“It’s easier if I do.” Max dabbed the solution on the two-inch laceration below Rachel’s right eye. “Besides, you might ease up if it starts to hurt.”
Rachel half smiled. “And you won’t mind hurting me?”
Max laughed softly. “Nope. I intend to be completely heartless.”
Rachel shook her head slightly. “Somehow, I don’t quite believe it.”
“Maybe you should.” Max stopped what she was doing. Rachel didn’t know her, couldn’t know her, and now was as good a time as any to interject a little perspective into their situation. “Don’t mistake duty for anything else. I’m only doing my job.”
“Yes. I got that part loud and clear.” Rachel didn’t argue the point. Max had a right to her boundaries. And if she chose to keep people at a distance, that was no one’s business. Despite Max’s insistence on appearing detached and aloof, however, her hands were gentle as she cupped Rachel’s jaw in the palm of her hand and continued to clean the laceration. Rachel had nowhere to look except into Max’s face as she worked, and she found herself visually tracing the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. She suspected she’d developed the same lines after weeks of squinting into the unrelenting sun. Those little imperfections only added to the attractiveness of the picture. Max had a beautiful face. Strong and elegant with a square jaw and high straight nose. Looking into her eyes was like looking into the sea—deep and fathomless one minute, stormy and gray the next. Her black hair was thick and shaggy, and the untamed look made her appear carelessly handsome. Even the smudges of grease under her eyes and dust shadowing her jaw accentuated the rugged appeal.
“Where are you from?” Rachel asked, needing to distract herself from thinking about Max’s face, or her hands, or the way Max had taken her into her arms as if she had every right to hold her.
“Djibouti.”
“I meant—before.”
For a second, Max looked confused, as if the question made no sense. Then a bit of color touched her pale cheeks. “Oh. New York City, I guess.”
“Not sure?”
“Well, I’m not really from there, but that’s where I live now. Where I work.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Buffalo,” Max said shortly. The way she said it, her past didn’t appear to be something she was interested in discussing.
“Big family? Only child?”
“Youngest of seven.” A shadow passed through Max’s eyes. “My father kept trying for a son. He never got one.”
Something there, Rachel thought, and moved away from the pain she hadn’t meant to stir up. “Married? Engaged?”
Max dropped the used gauze onto the small pile of litter by her side and opened the pack of Steri-Strips. “No and no.”
“Never and never?”
“Not even close.” Max tilted Rachel’s face to the side. “Hold still.”
Rachel waited while Max taped up her cheek. It seemed absurd, to be giving this tiny injury so much attention after all the horrible wounds she’d seen that morning. All the same, she was a little disappointed when Max finished. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” Max gathered up the debris. “Amina’s finding us something to eat. Make sure you get something.”
“You should too.”
“Right. I will.”
The walls Max so carefully maintained came down between them with a resounding thud, and Rachel wondered if her questions had been the cause. She’d barely broached the personal, but clearly Max’s armor shielded more than just her body. She could respect that—she had plenty of her own walls, but the more she knew of Max de Milles, the more she wanted to.
Chapter Nine
Rachel sat next to Amina on the cot and opened the meal packet. She’d had MREs before—nutritionally balanced combinations of protein, carbohydrates, and fats in the form of familiar-looking foods that always tasted bland. The meal-ready-to-eat was designed to be eaten as-is or warmed with the self-contained cooking unit, but she doubted even heating the bits of chicken, beans, and rice would make it more palatable today. She had no appetite and was only eating because she knew she should. Beside her, Amina methodically did the same. Rachel squeezed her forearm. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Amina said softly. “Part of me wants to pretend it’s all a dream, a very, very bad dream, but that seems disrespectful somehow.”
“What do you mean?” Rachel broke open the Fig Newton cookie wrapper and nibbled on the corner. Sugar was a good energy source at least. “Disrespectful?”
“Of our friends who died here, and those who have been injured trying to help us.” Amina’s gaze drifted to Grif and Max, who leaned over him, checking him again, murmuring softly to him. He didn’t appear to hear or to answer. “The least we can do is remember.”
“Yes,” Rachel said, although she wasn’t worried about remembering. She was never going to forget, even though part of her desperately wanted to. “I’d like to think none of this is happening either but…I can’t.” She couldn’t erase the images burned into her mind—Dacar, dead on the ground with part of his neck missing. Grif rushing to help her and then falling, a brilliant arc of warm red blood spurting from his leg. Grif, ignoring his own plight and telling her to leave him, to save herself. Max, facing her first with a gun, then with unexpected and immeasurable kindness in her eyes. The noise, the heat, the stench of cordite and blood. All of it was etched into her consciousness for all time. She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Will the Americans be back?” Amina asked.
“Max said they will come.” Rachel realized as she answered how completely she’d accepted Max’s certainty. She never relied on anyone without question, not even her father, but she was trusting her very survival to Max.
“When?”
Rachel rolled down the foil and set the food aside. “Max says tonight after sundown. If they can.”
“And what about al-Qaeda? Are they coming back too?”
“I don’t know.”
“What will we do if the enemy return?”
“We’ll fight.” Rachel hadn’t really thought of the rebels as her enemy until now. She’d known of them well before she’d reached Somalia—of the threat they posed to the mission, of the barbaric acts they committed, of the terror they perpetrated on the Somali people whose land they overran, whose animals and food and crops they confiscated. She’d understood intellectually the rebels were a potential danger to her and the others, but enemy was not a word she would have used for anyone in her life. She counted only a few people in her life as friends—those with whom she shared her hopes and dreams and, rarely, her fears. Most, even the women she’d been intimate with, were more acquaintances whom she allowed only brief glimpses of her innermost self. She knew individuals she’d rather avoid, but no one she would have called an enemy until now. Here in this foreign land the compass of her life had been recalibrated, and everything took on a different meaning. She squeezed Amina’s hand again. “They may not come back. Try not to worry.”
“Impossible,” Amina said, “but I am glad we are not alone here.”
Rachel glanced at Max. She had no choice but to rely on Max’s knowledge and skill, but she wasn’t going to let Max carry all the burden of keeping them safe alone. She might not be a soldier, but she’d had plenty of practice caring for people in need. Grif needed care. She had no idea what Max needed, but she could still offer. She slid over next to Max. “Is there something that I can do for him? Or…you?”
Max set her stethoscope into her pack. “No. He’s about the same. He just needs to be watched. Amina’s doing a good job with that.”
“Then you should eat something.”
“I will, as soon as—”
“It’s quiet right now. It might not be later,” Rachel said. Max obviously considered herself indestructible, and ordinarily Rachel wouldn’t have pushed her. Everyone was entitled to a little self-delusion if it harmed no one else, but they needed Max healthy if they were going to get out of this mess alive. “Follow your own orders.”
Max sighed. “All right. You ought to try to get some sleep. We’ll need to take turns tonight standing watch.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to collect all the weapons I can find, hit the hospital tent to stock up on medical supplies, and then I’m going to make us a safe place to spend the night.”
“Then I’m going with you. Someone to watch your back, remember?”
“It’s apparent that you never forget anything and I’m likely to find my words coming back at me.” Max smiled. “I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
“You’re right, but then, I doubt you ever say anything you don’t mean, so there’s no need to worry about it.” Rachel smiled and handed her a MRE. “Eat first. Turnabout and all.”
“Fair enough.” Max pulled over a wooden crate, sat down, and shook out the plastic utensil that came in the package. She scooped up a forkful of beef and vegetables and pointed to the plastic bottles Amina had brought inside. “Drink another bottle of water to get hydrated if you’re coming with me.”
“I’m used to the heat,” Rachel said, not wanting to be yet another thing Max had to worry about, but she downed another bottle of water all the same.
“Good.” Max gave her a long look as she upended the foil pack and palmed the cookie that fell out. After disposing of the dessert in one bite, she emptied the big pack Grif had carried on his back and handed it to Amina. “Can you fill this with MREs and water?”
“Yes.” Amina took the bag and pressed it to her chest. “Can you call your base? Is it safe to do that?”
“It’s safe to send a short burst,” Max said, “and I tried several times when I was…out in the jungle, but I’m getting nothing but static. Probably interference from the heavy tree cover and the distance we are from base. Radio silence doesn’t mean they aren’t planning to come for us. They’ll get sat images and recon shots from drone flyovers. They’ll use those to see what our friends out there are up to and figure out a way back.”
“That’s good then, right?” Rachel said. “If our people can see the rebels, they’ll know if we’re in for more trouble. They’ll come sooner then, right?”
“If there are signs of heavy encampment nearby, they may need longer to coordinate the necessary personnel and air support, but they’ll come.” Max shifted some of the ammunition from Grif’s pack to hers, shouldered her pack, and grabbed her rifle. “Until then, we get ready.”
Rachel slipped her rifle over her shoulder with the naturalness she had once used to picked up a briefcase. How quickly she had come to accept the weapon and what it meant about her life. She caught up to Max, who was collecting the rifles and ammunition she had taken off the guards’ bodies earlier. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“You know what I know.” Max motioned to the tent, and after they piled the weapons inside, they started for the medical tent.
“I’m not talking about what you know.” Rachel strode beside Max, trying not to look at the forlorn belongings of her friends and teammates abandoned in the tattered tents along the way. Now she understood the shock and confusion she’d seen over and over again in the faces of the men, women, and children who had straggled into the camp, struggling to survive in a world turned upside down in an instant. “I’m talking about what you think. We’re not children, and we’re not afraid of the dark.” She still was, so it seemed, but she wasn’t going to let Max know that. She’d face those demons on her own when the time came.
The edge of Max’s jaw tightened. “I know you’re not children.”
Rachel said softly, “Remember the part where you explain what’s happening and I say Yes, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You don’t look like a ma’am. And I can tell when you’re trying to change the subject.”
“If surveillance shows an al-Qaeda camp nearby, the birds will be at risk coming back in. If I were planning the op, I’d strike the rebel camp at the same time as I sent a team to rescue us to keep them busy. That kind of op takes coordination.” She grimaced. “And it takes clearance from Washington. As soon as you throw politicians into the mix, everything slows down.”
“So we might be here a while.” Rachel knew her father would be doing everything he could to get her—all of them—out of here, but Max was right. Even with his influence, mounting any kind of offensive would require a lot of debate in Washington and beyond.
“A few days, possibly.”
“What about Grif?”
“He’ll make it,” Max said flatly. “Wait here.” She shouldered her rifle, pushed the flap aside on the medical tent, and ducked inside. “Clear.”
Rachel followed her in. “The supply racks are in the back.”
Max pointed to a canvas litter lying against the side of the tent. “We’ll pile them on that.”
Once they’d loaded the instruments and medicines Max wanted, they hefted the litter and carried it back. Amina sat by Grif on a pile of empty flour sacks, looking tired but calm. When she started to rise, Max shook her head.
“We’ve got this.”
Rachel helped Max pile the medical supplies on a table and stowed the litter on the floor. “Next?”
“You sure you don’t need a break?” Max asked as she started back outside.
Rachel wanted to curl up on the flimsy cot, close her eyes, and sleep for a year. She wanted to wake up and be in a hotel in Mogadishu, with a toilet that flushed and a shower that wasn’t hanging from a tree and food that came on a plate. She wanted not to be afraid, not to see blood everywhere she looked, not to ache with loss. God help her, she wanted to go home. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Two hours later she was ready to admit defeat. She’d thought she’d gotten used to the heat. The temperature inside the tents, where she usually spent the day, was as high as or higher than outside, but the intensity of the direct sunlight elevated hot to a new level. Her skin felt as if it was on fire. Every breath scorched her throat. The surface of her eyes burned. Her shirt and pants were soaked with sweat, and rivulets of water ran down her face, over her neck, between her breasts. She wasn’t sure she could stand another minute under the unrelenting rays. But Max wouldn’t quit. How could she?
She concentrated on the rhythmic scrape of Max’s shovel. Max had been at it for hours with only short breaks to drink water from the canteen clipped on her belt, steadily driving her short square spade into the ground, lifting a shovelful of dirt, flinging it over her shoulder in a red-brown arc. The hole was almost eight feet wide and more than half as deep by now. The dirt she’d heaved out of it was piled high around the edges, and the walls sloped inward. She understood Max intended for them to spend the night in that hole. She definitely knew she would not be sleeping.
“Won’t we be trapped in there if they overrun the camp?” Rachel asked. Max undoubtedly knew what she was doing, but even conversation was better than thinking about the hell she’d been thrust into.
“If they overrun the camp, we’ll be trapped no matter where we are.” Max’s shoulders and arms flexed as she dug the shovel into the soil again. “At least from in here a few of us can hold off five times our number in all directions. Even inexperienced shooters like the two of you. If we take enough of them out, they might think hard before sacrificing too many people to get to us.”
“Do we have enough ammunition?”
Max wiped her forearm across her face and looked up. “We’ll be all right.”
“You should drink some more water.”
“I’m out.”
“Good thing I’m not.” Rachel pulled another bottle from the pocket of her cargo pants, uncapped it, and handed it down to Max. Max had shed her armor and camo jacket and worked in just T-shirt and pants. Sweat plastered the tan T-shirt to her shoulders and chest. She was solidly built, the muscles in her torso sculpted beneath the tight cotton, her biceps and forearms etched with muscle. She wore no rings, only a large watch on her left wrist and dull silver dog tags on a chain around her neck. Her uniform pants, even with her heavy equipment belt laden down with ammunition, her sidearm, and other things Rachel couldn’t identify, didn’t quite obliterate the curve of her toned hips and thighs. Even dirty, sweat-soaked, and disheveled, Max was more attractive than any woman she’d ever met.
“You need to keep hydrated,” Rachel said, her voice husky.
Max swallowed the warm water until the plastic bottle was empty, watching Rachel appraise her as she drank. She was used to being surrounded by troops, used to eating and sleeping in close quarters, used to semi-strangers seeing her in various stages of undress, but no one had ever looked at her the way Rachel did now, with appreciation and interest. Rachel’s eyes tracked up her chest to her face and, when their eyes met, Rachel’s cheeks flushed.
Max grinned, liking Rachel’s consternation. She liked the way Rachel’s mouth thinned a little too, as if she was irritated at being caught with her guard down. There wasn’t much of anything to be happy about out here. Just being alive rated pretty high on the be-thankful list. The spark of playful pleasure Rachel set off in her when she least expected it was completely foreign. Even back in her other life, she hadn’t enjoyed anything quite as much as the swift stirring in her belly ignited by Rachel’s slow-lidded smile. She crushed the plastic bottle in her fist and stuffed it into an outside pocket of her pants. “Thanks for the water.”
Rachel nodded, the tip of her tongue sweeping over her lips as if searching for words. “Anytime.”
“Is there rice or flour on those pallets behind the tent?”
“Rice, I think,” Rachel said. “Why?”
“Sandbags.”
“Oh. I guess that means we have to carry them over here.”
Max shook her head. Rachel was trying to be tough but her face was drawn and pale despite the sunburn coloring the stark arches of her cheekbones. She tossed the shovel up and out. “I’ll take a look around. There must be something around here with wheels on it.”
Rachel knelt by the edge of the pit and reached down to Max. “I’ll come with you.”
Max grasped her hand, dug her toes into the side of the pit, and with the other arm, levered herself out. She dusted herself off, shouldered her rifle, and scanned the jungle. Nothing out of the ordinary. The animals were quiet during the heat of the day. Even the birdsong had faded. “We’ve got a couple more hours till sundown. I can handle this. You go check on Amina.”
Rachel hesitated. She dreaded the oncoming darkness. In the sunlight, she felt more in control, but in the dark, fears were so much harder to push aside, courage more elusive. She wondered if Max dreaded the dark, and somehow doubted it. Her focus was so singular, so intense, Rachel doubted Max really noticed much of a difference between day and night. She was not a woman who dealt in shades of gray. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. So stop trying to get rid of me.”
“I could make it an order.” Max pulled on her camo jacket. “You agreed to follow orders.”
“Don’t test me,” Rachel muttered. “I know how to shoot this thing now.”
Max laughed, a sound so alien in this place of death and horror, Rachel’s heart lurched at the sound. That had to be the cause of the rush of blood through her veins. She turned away to break the spell, but she could still see the way Max’s eyes gleamed with mischief and something a lot more intriguing.
Chapter Ten
Max dragged the small flatbed wagon across the camp for the fifth time. Her shoulders ached, the back of her neck was burned raw, and her skin itched everywhere from the sand embedded in her clothes, inside her socks, in her hair and ears. Her legs quivered, the muscles having turned to jelly in the soup of humid air, festering heat, and stress. Rachel waited for her beside the jerry-rigged sandbag barrier they’d built up around the foxhole out of fifty-pound bags of rice. Rachel hadn’t complained, hadn’t flagged, though every time she picked up one of the heavy bags of rice to pile it on top of the others, her arms visibly trembled. Max would have ordered her inside if she’d thought Rachel might go without a fight, but that was unlikely. And she had to admit, she needed her help. “This is the last of it.”
“Can’t say I’m sorry,” Rachel muttered. “I never thought I could hate an inanimate object quite so much, but I’ll never eat rice again.”
Max laughed. The sound hurt her dry, sandy throat, but the little bit of humor helped ease the tension twisting her muscles into steel bands. “What do you do for showers around here?”
“We’ve got portable ones rigged up out behind the medical tent. Always guaranteed to be lukewarm.” A shadow passed over Rachel’s face. “There should be plenty of water stored up. Today would have been shower day.”
Max didn’t have to be a mind reader to know Rachel was thinking about those who hadn’t gotten out. Somehow, giving Rachel some comfort, even a distraction, seemed as important as keeping her physically safe. Usually her job ended when the blood stopped flowing or the wounded were loaded onto transport for a trip to the base hospital. She rarely had time or reason to worry about the toll this place took on the heart and mind, beyond a few minutes of battlefield comfort. Words they’d all repeated so many times she barely heard them any longer. Don’t worry, troop. Doesn’t look too bad. Nothing keeps a Marine down long. You’ll be fine. Merciful lies, and she regretted none of them, but she wanted more than hollow reassurance for Rachel. She had none and felt lacking. “I’d say we’ve earned a shower.”
Rachel’s face brightened and some of the sadness left her eyes. “Can we? I mean”—a bit of color returned to her cheeks—“is it safe?”
“I’ll stand guard for you if you stand guard for me.” A fleeting image of Rachel under the water, sunlight bathing her and water streaming down the slope of her back and over the curve of her ass, popped into Max’s head. Afraid for a second Rachel could read her mind, she said quickly, “I even promise not to peek.”
Rachel gave her a look through narrowed lids. “Under other circumstances I might find that insulting.”
The teasing lift of Rachel’s smile caught Max off guard. Maybe Rachel had read her mind, but that didn’t track. If they’d met anywhere else in the world, Rachel likely wouldn’t give her a passing thought. Their lives were as different as the arid desert sands and the bright lights of Times Square. “Under other circumstances, you probably wouldn’t care.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Rachel said. “You don’t seem to know—”
“Max!” Amina’s scream cut through the air with the force of a gunshot. “Max!”
“Down!” Max pushed Rachel to the ground and crouched over her, her rifle on her shoulder. She panned the perimeter, expecting a surge of rebel forces or a barrage of gunfire. Nothing moved. She listened. Nothing. “Clear! Come on.”
As soon as Max let her up, Rachel grabbed her rifle and they sprinted to the tent. Max burst inside, searching for enemy. Amina knelt by Grif, both hands pressed to his thigh. Scarlet streaked her arms.
“What happened?” Max dropped her rifle and squatted across from Amina.
“He woke up and started thrashing. The bleeding started so fast…” Amina’s breath caught. “There’s so much.”
“Don’t move.” Max pulled her med kit closer and dug around for drugs and bandages. She was running low on both.
Grif jerked, nearly throwing Amina aside, and shouted, “Contact! We have enemy contact!”
“It’s okay, Grif,” Max said calmly. “I’m here. You’re okay.”
Grif pushed his big body up with surprising strength, bracing himself on his arms. He stared from one to the other, his eyes glazed with confusion. Sweat rolled down his face, rivers of tears coursing through the paint and grime. “They’re shooting. Fuck. Shooting everywhere. Deuce!”
“I’m here. Keep your head down, buddy. You’re okay.” Max drew up an ampoule of Demerol, slid it into the IV, and pushed it home. “Everything’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
For an instant, Grif’s eyes cleared and he focused on Max. “Fuck, Deuce. I don’t want to die out here.”
“You’re not going to.”
“Tell Laurie I love her.”
“Fuck, no.” Max gripped his shoulders, her face close to his, and pushed him back down. She looked into his eyes as the Demerol started to take him away. “You’ll have to do that yourself. I hate that kind of thing.”
He grinned. “No wonder you never get any women.”
“Yeah. Like you would know.”
His lids fluttered closed and his body relaxed. Wiping sweat from her eyes, Max shifted down to where Amina held both hands on his thigh. Blood welled between her fingers and puddled on the floor. She’d run out of time. “Rachel, can you get that propane light from that table over there and figure out how to get it to work?”
Rachel crouched a few feet away, her pupils black and big as dimes. A pulse hammered in her throat. “Yes.”
Her voice was firm.
“Good. Prop it on that chair.”
For once, Rachel didn’t have a single question. She bent over the lantern-shaped light, ignited the propane, and brought it back. “What are you going to do?”
Max nearly smiled at the question, welcoming the familiar in the midst of chaos. “I need to explore this wound and get the bleeding stopped. I need both of you to help me.”
“In here?” Amina asked. “In the hospital ten—”
“Believe me, I’d like to have a nice clean OR table to put him on and a full set of shiny instruments, but we can’t move him. Right now, getting the bleeding stopped is our number one priority.”
“I’m sorry,” Amina said.
“Don’t be.” Max knew she sounded gruff and didn’t have time to worry about it. “You saved his life.”
“What can we do?” Rachel said.
Max pulled off her jacket and gear and dropped it next to her rifle. “Find that big pack of medical instruments we brought over from the hospital. Open it up next to me.”
While Rachel hunted for the instruments, Max tore open a foil container of Betadine, swabbed her forearms, and pulled on gloves from her kit. “Amina, get ready to take those scissors and cut the bandage free. Keep pressing down in the center of his thigh with your other hand. Rachel, put on a pair of gloves and open the gauze packs. I’ll need you to keep the field clear.”
“I…” Rachel glanced at Grif’s face. “Will he know?”
“Not consciously, but he might react. If he does start moving around, I want you to kneel on his lower legs and keep them still.”
“Okay,” Rachel whispered.
“I need you to do exactly what I say when I tell you to do it.”
“I will.”
Max looked across at Amina. Her jaw was set, her mouth a thin tight line. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
“You see those two small right-angle retractors that look like little scoops about two inches wide?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to use them to hold the wound open so I can see inside.” The less time she gave them to think about what they were about to do, the less likely they were to get nervous. “I’m going to take the bandages off, put the retractors into the wound, and you’re going to hold them apart. You’ll need to pull. You won’t hurt him. We’re going to save his life.”
Amina swallowed visibly. “All right.”
“Good. Now.” Max removed the field bandage, and bright red arterial blood immediately welled up and spilled down Grif’s thigh. Max slid the right-angle retractors into the center of the crater with their slim, eight-inch handles sticking out either side. “Amina, take these and pull. Rachel, keep the field as dry as you can. Just keep mopping it up.”
“Yes,” Rachel said, “I’ve got it.”
Max grabbed a hemostat and a gauze pad and studied the depths of the wound. The round had passed through the thick inner thigh muscles, missing the bone. The femoral artery ran deep between the muscles, coursing from the groin down to the knee where it branched to supply the calf and foot. The deep femoral branch came off the main artery a few inches below the groin crease to supply all the big muscles of the thigh. That had to be what was bleeding. She just had to find the tear in the artery and fix it.
The key to finding a bleeder in the midst of a pool of blood and shredded muscle was to look—to see, to distinguish the border between the damaged and the undamaged. There, at the edge of destruction, the natural planes of the body remained, even in the worst trauma, pristine layers radiating out from the injury. Carefully she swabbed, ignoring the small bleeders that would eventually stop on their own. She identified the various muscles, tracing the course of the artery in her mind. It should be here, diving beneath the adductors toward the femur, but it wasn’t. The round had probably taken out a segment of the vessel along with a sizeable chunk of muscle. She’d have to look higher to find the proximal end, the one leading from the main artery. If she could control that, the hemostatic gauze packs and pressure bandage would eventually take care of the rest of the bleeding until they could get him into the operating room and clean up the wound. She couldn’t fix it if she couldn’t see it.
“Amina, pull harder.”
Amina sucked in a breath and did as Max asked. Grif groaned and his thigh tensed. The undamaged muscles flexed, blood squirted, and the field disappeared under a pool of red.
“Rachel,” Max snapped, “keep him still.”
Rachel straddled both of Grif’s lower legs, a knee on either side of his calves, and held him down with her body. Leaning forward, she swabbed, her gloves drenched with blood.
Max put a finger deep into the wound, pulled back a ragged flap of muscle, and widened her field of vision, letting the filmy strands of fascia separating one band of muscle from the other guide her eyes along the native planes. A tan ring the width of a pencil pulsed in the depth of the wound like a tiny heart. “There you are.”
Only five millimeters wide, the pliable artery jumped with every beat of Grif’s heart, pumping out blood in a steady stream. Max slid the open jaws of the hemostat on either side of the severed vessel and clamped it closed. Immediately the bleeding slowed.
“Oh my God,” Rachel murmured. “Is that it? Did you get it?”
“Almost.” Max kept her gaze fixed on the end of the fragile vessel and supported the instrument in her palm. If Grif came to again and thrashed around, that artery would shred like wet Kleenex. “Just keep him still a minute longer.”
“I will.”
“Rachel, the blue foil pack. Pass it to me.” Max opened the 4.0 nylon suture pack, gently rested the hemostat on Grif’s thigh, and loaded the curved needle into the jaws of a blunt needle holder. Holding the hemostat steady again, she passed the suture through the vessel above the hemostat, brought the ends of the nylon around the instrument, and tied them down. When she eased off the stat, the stump of the severed artery filled with blood and throbbed as if it were alive and trying to escape. But the ligature held and the bleeding stopped.
“There you go, you bastard.” Max took the first full breath she’d had in five minutes. She found another hemostatic bandage and packed it into the wound. After wrapping his thigh, she gave him another dose of antibiotics. She glanced from Rachel to Amina. They both looked a little dazed. “You did great. Both of you. Rachel, you can get off his legs now. He’s out for a while.”
Rachel stood and pulled at her blood-caked gloves. “It’s so hot in here. Isn’t it? I—don’t feel…”
Max grabbed her as she started to sway. “Easy. You’re okay. Just a little too much sun.”
“I’m fine,” Rachel muttered, leaning against Max’s side. “I’m not usually—”
“This isn’t usual. Come on. Lie down over here.” Max kept her arm around Rachel’s waist and guided her to the cot. “That’s it. Close your eyes.”
Rachel stared up at her. “I don’t believe you did that. It was…amazing.”
Max smiled. “Thanks, but not really. It’s what I do.”
“All the time?”
“Yes.”
“That’s horrible.”
“I know. It is.” Max pulled an IV bag from the supplies she’d pilfered earlier. “You’re dehydrated. I’m going to give you some fluid. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
Max understood. Most of the time, neither did she. “Then you don’t have to. But you do have to stay here until the IV runs in. Deal?”
Rachel frowned. “I don’t think I like your deals. I think they’re rigged somehow.”
“Well, until you figure out how, just go along with it.” Max slipped in an IV and hooked up the fluid. When she finished taping the line down, Rachel was asleep.
“You should rest too,” Amina said from beside Max.
“I will.” Max looked from Rachel to Grif. “When we get out of here, I’ll have a big meal, a bigger glass of whiskey, and I’ll sleep for a week.”
Amina smiled. “I never thought I’d say this, but that sounds really good.”
Chapter Eleven
Rachel jerked awake, surrounded by the rattle and roar of gunfire and helicopter rotors, the taste of sand in her mouth, the stench of cordite, the sweet cloying odor of fresh blood. Terror so deep she couldn’t think enveloped her. Above her the sun shuddered behind thick clouds of dust. Pain and fear dimmed her vision. She grabbed a breath and gripped the sides of the cot with both hands. The room spun and more memories assaulted her. Grif’s anguished cries of pain, Dacar’s blank accusing eyes, Max’s lethal gaze above the barrel of an assault rifle. Max. Another breath forced down her tight throat. Max’s hand on her back, steady and sure, the tenderness in her eyes she tried to hide, the certainty and gentleness of her hands as she tended to Grif’s damaged body.
Rachel centered herself. She was in the tent. She was alive. The erratic pounding of her heart settled into a steady cadence. Her right forearm ached and she held up her hand. Clear tubing ran to a plastic catheter taped above her wrist. An IV bag sat next to her, clipped to the back of one of the wooden chairs. She swallowed. Her throat was dry, her eyes ached. Nausea was a constant companion.
But she was alive. “Max?”
“You’re awake,” Amina said. “How do you feel?”
Rachel turned her head and looked at Amina as she had so many times in their tent—in the early morning before rising and the last thing at night before going to sleep, when they’d whisper a few minutes about things beyond the heat and oppression of this tortured land. Amina would speak longingly of family and friends, of hopes and dreams, and Rachel would listen. She had little that was personal to share and tried not to dwell on what that said about her life. If Amina noticed her silence, she never let on. Her lovely dark eyes, then as now, had always been warm and calming and accepting.
Tonight, Amina stretched out on a cot across from her, lying on her side, her head propped on her elbow, just as she always did. Strands of her ebony hair had escaped the tie at her nape and curled loosely around her shoulders. Rachel couldn’t remember ever seeing Amina with a single hair out of place, but nothing was as it had been, and so many things she’d once worried about didn’t seem to matter now. What mattered was food and water and keeping each other safe. What mattered was Grif, lying on a makeshift litter in the space between them. He appeared to be sleeping. She hoped so.
“I’m fine,” Rachel said.
“Really?”
Rachel laughed wryly. “No, actually I feel terrible. My head feels like the inside of a snare drum. But I’m all right, considering. How are you?”
“I’m all right too, I guess.” Amina glanced at Grif. “I’m so sad about Dacar and the others. So sad and so angry.”
“Yes. Me too.” The anger, Rachel realized, was much sharper than the sadness—a knife blade slashing through her, dulling the crushing pain of loss. She wouldn’t forget the dead, nor fail to mourn them, but she’d keep her anger for the strength she found in it. Amina was no stranger to loss. Both her father and older brother had been killed in some kind of clan conflict when she was just a young girl. Perhaps she’d replaced pain with empathy, channeling her grief into the aid program and a passion for justice. Rachel didn’t think she’d be able to find any empathy for those who killed for power and lust and greed. No, she’d keep her anger and, for the time being, her rifle. She scanned the tent and her stomach tensed.
“Where’s Max?” Rachel asked.
“She said something about reconnaissance. She went out twenty minutes ago.”
“Alone?” Rachel grimaced. “Of course, alone. There’s no one else here. How long have I been sleeping?”
“Not long. An hour, perhaps.”
Rachel sat up on the side of the cot, and the throbbing in her head disappeared in a rush of adrenaline. “She shouldn’t be out there without backup. Why didn’t she wait for me?”
“She’s a soldier,” Amina said softly.
“She’s a doctor.”
“And you’re already seriously dehydrated. It’s still a hundred degrees out there.”
“I’m going after her.” Rachel loosened the tape on her wrist, closed the port on the IV, and pulled the needle from her arm.
Amina rose, opened a paper pack of gauze, and taped a folded square over the IV site on Rachel’s wrist. “I don’t think you should. We are not soldiers.”
“I think we are now.” Rachel hugged Amina quickly and let her go. “Look after Grif. I won’t leave the camp, but I can’t sit in here waiting.”
“It will be night soon. It will at least get cooler.”
“I’m not worried about the temperature.” Rachel didn’t want to say what they were both thinking. When night fell, they might be rescued. Or the rebels might return. She didn’t know, and there were no answers. All her life, she’d sought answers—why her father cared more about power and prestige than happiness, why she never met a woman who would risk social status for love, why no matter how much she achieved, she still felt restless and dissatisfied. Suddenly the questions seemed self-indulgent and the answers didn’t matter any longer. What mattered was what she could do in the moment. What mattered was now. She shook her head as she took her assault rifle and stepped out into the camp. Max was turning her into a soldier after all. As she searched the camp and couldn’t find her, the tension in her middle swelled. Shaking off a wave of fear at the thought of Max in danger, she wondered what else Max was doing to her.
*
Max stopped in the first clearing she could find where she could actually see the sky through the dense canopy. The sun was an angry red eye in the west, and she estimated another hour before dark. She tried her sat com again.
“Foxtrot Charlie, this is Fox MD2, requesting immediate extraction. Over.”
Like all the other times she’d tried from closer to camp, she got only static in response. She repeated the message and waited.
…D2…repeat…
Max gripped the radio, her pulse jumping. “Foxtrot Charlie, this is Fox MD2, requesting immediate extraction. Over.”
…status…
“Four to transport. We have wounded. Over.”
Static.
Max squeezed the radio, wanted to scream at it. Steadily, clearly, she said, “Foxtrot Charlie, come in. Over.”
Nothing but dead air.
Max waited another ten minutes, repeating her message, and got no further response. She checked her compass and set a course back to camp, her fatigue and hunger and worry fading a bit. That fragment of contact, the sound of a friendly voice from home, was almost as heartening as the drone of rotors drawing near. The troops in Djibouti, her family far more than the mother and father with too many children and not enough means or interest to care for them, knew she was out here, and help would come. She’d never doubted it, but the insidious feeling of being isolated and abandoned lurked inside her, emerging when she was at her weakest. Not knowing when or if another attack was coming had gnawed at her all day. She’d told Rachel it didn’t matter what was coming—all that mattered was to be prepared and face it head-on. She wasn’t worried for herself. She would never feel the round that took her out, but she had two civilians and a seriously wounded sailor on her hands and at least a few more hours to wait until the birds returned. If there was a race between the Black Hawks and the rebels to get to them, she put her money on the Black Hawks.
The attack that morning had been a disorganized raid by a few rebels who’d likely stumbled on the camp by accident. The small scout force might have attacked without knowing the identity of the Red Cross contingent. She doubted the insurgents would have cared about the neutrality of the aid workers even if they had known, considering they assaulted the locals whenever the villagers or herders came close to rebel territory. The main rebel force was probably still miles away. The rebel survivors would have wounded, and by the time they reached their base, even if another attack was planned, it would take time to organize the forces and return. A return raid might not even be a priority—unless they had a specific target. Just like she’d had. Rachel.
Two Black Hawks had been sent to extract Rachel specifically. Rachel had avoided talking about herself, but someone with power had arranged something like that. If she’d been the focus of the attack that morning too, the rebels were likely to return for another try. Max blew out air. Thinking about Rachel in the hands of the rebels short-circuited her reason. She needed to concentrate on what she knew and what she could do. She’d heard from base. Help would be on the way, and until it arrived, she had to be ready to fight again. She started back for camp, glad to be bringing good news to Rachel. To Rachel and Amina and Grif.
The footpath was hardly recognizable at first, barely wide enough for a hyena let alone a human, and she’d stepped onto it before she’d realized it. The trail ran parallel to the camp, about fifty yards into the jungle, and was only one of hundreds crisscrossing the area, traveled by hunters, herders, and nomadic tribes—and, in the last few months, by rebel forces using the jungle as a sanctuary from aerial and ground attack. This was probably the route the rebels who’d raided the camp that morning had taken. From the looks of the trail, it wasn’t a major access route. Nothing suggested mechanized transport or even a large volume of foot traffic.
Stomach crawling with dread, she stood absolutely still and looked for signs the ground around her had been disturbed. Intelligence gathered from the Somalis indicated the land all along the jungle trails was mined. If she lost a foot or leg out here, she’d die of exposure, animal attack, or infection if she didn’t bleed to death first. Amina and Rachel would probably survive without her until help arrived as long as the rebels didn’t attack again. They were both tough and resourceful, but Grif was already critical. He could go south at any second, and without a medic he’d never make it.
She backed away slowly, carefully retracing her steps along the route she’d taken from camp. She could just make out the first break in the canopy indicating the edge of camp when branches swayed directly in front of her where no breeze could penetrate. She ducked behind a tree trunk and aimed where she’d sensed movement. Five minutes. Nothing. She crept closer, mouth dry and heart hammering. Had the rebels circled behind her? Were they already in the camp? Had she been wrong about everything? Had the rebel forces been closer than she calculated? Had they returned before dark? Were Rachel and Amina and Grif already dead?
She halted just at the edge of the jungle and scanned the camp. All quiet. Keeping low, she ran to the side of one of the smaller tents, using it for cover. Stones crunched behind her and she spun around. Rachel knelt by an adjacent tent, her assault rifle angled across her chest. She glared at Max.
“I could’ve shot you, you know,” Rachel said.
Rachel’s bravado was so genuine, Max’s anxiety evaporated on a swell of relief. She grinned. “Getting pretty cocky, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t say it would only take one bullet.” Rachel straightened, her narrowed eyes still flashing. “Are you all right?”
Max shrugged, annoyance resurfacing now that she knew Rachel was safe. “Of course I’m all right. What the hell are you doing out here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” Jaw tight, Rachel stalked toward her. “What are you doing, going off by yourself into the jungle?”
Max felt her eyebrows climb. “I thought it might be a good idea to make sure our perimeter was reasonably secure.”
“And what would you have done if you’d wandered into the middle of a bunch of rebels? Fought them all by yourself?”
“I would’ve hightailed it back here. What was your plan if a dozen of them stormed into camp while you were out here playing patrol?”
“What you taught me. Point and shoot. A lot.”
Max smothered another grin. Rachel had done just what she would have done. Grabbed a weapon and gone out to check. All the same, she was prepared to die. Maybe Rachel was too, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. The thought of Rachel being hurt roughened her voice. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“I’m not a patient,” Rachel snapped. “And you’re not Rambo. Stop taking chances.”
“I’m sorry if I worried you.”
Rachel’s teeth ached from clenching her jaws. The woman was infuriating. Did she really think she was invincible, or did she just not care if some sociopath shot her or, worse, dragged her off to torture her first? Just about every scenario she could imagine had passed through her mind while she waited for some sign of Max. Only Max’s warning earlier not to stray into the jungle because of mines had kept her inside the camp. That and she hadn’t wanted to leave Amina alone. When Max had slipped out of the jungle, she’d wanted to shout with relief and run to her. Now she just wanted to throttle her. What if she’d never come back? What if she never saw her again? The sinking feeling in her stomach was far worse than the fear she’d felt at the idea of the rebels returning. She had a rifle—she could fight. The one thing she could not fight was death. Max took too many chances, and that scared her in a way she’d never been afraid before. “You didn’t worry me. You just pissed me off.”
“Well, that’s nothing unusual.” Max glanced up at the sky as if searching for something. When she looked back at Rachel, the startling blue of her eyes pulled Rachel in, and for just an instant, the war and death and fear disappeared.
“Did you find anything out there?” Rachel asked, determined to break the spell. Max de Milles might be an attractive woman—okay, an amazingly attractive woman—but she also had a God complex that was likely to get her killed. And she was controlling and authoritarian and just plain frustrating on every level. So forgetting about her incredible blue eyes and gorgeous grin was a very good idea.
Max hesitated. “A trail runs pretty near the camp. I think that’s the way the rebels came in this morning. No sign of them now.”
Rachel sighed, relief tinged with annoyance. “Damn it, Max. You might have run into them.”
“I also got through to the base.”
“Oh my God! Why didn’t you say something!”
Max laughed. “I would have, but you weren’t finished dressing me down.”
Rachel gripped Max’s arm. “Are they coming?”
“I told you they were,” Max said. “The transmission was broken up, but they know we’re here. They’ll come.”
Rachel’s joy dampened, and she glanced toward the tent. “No word when?”
“No. Are Amina and Grif okay?”
“Yes. Amina says his vital signs are stable. He was still asleep when I came outside.”
“How about you? How are you feeling?”
“Hungry, but the thought of another packet of preserved chicken doesn’t really appeal.” Rachel realized she still held Max’s arm and let go. “And I’m still pissed off at you.”
“Uh-huh. We’ve got a little light left and the area is clear. Will it help if I stand guard while you take a shower?”
Rachel studied her. “I’m not sure two minutes under a trickle of lukewarm water is going to be enough to drown my annoyance.”
“It’s a start.”
Chapter Twelve
Rachel stepped into the three-by-three-foot square plywood enclosure and tilted her head back. A nozzle hung from a pole above her face and warm spray drenched her like gentle rain. The makeshift stall was open to the sky, and if she didn’t think about Max standing guard with an assault rifle, didn’t picture all that had happened, she could almost believe when she stepped out into the encampment, her friends would be gathered around the fires preparing for supper. Maribel would be recounting some story of Paris, her mellifluous French-accented voice floating above the low bass background rumble of Dacar and his men, while the conversation of Amina and the others filled in the melody, and the jungle night sounds provided a chorus. Pumping a handful of liquid soap into her palm and spreading it over her skin, she could almost believe life as she knew it would continue—night would fall after a long hard day, bringing the peace and satisfaction of a job worth doing. She might even imagine a shower such as this one, and indulge in the fantasy of the sensuous flow of hands skimming over her body. Fantasy, she admitted, rather than a pleasant memory, the fiction a reminder that she’d rarely been touched with love. Lust and desire, yes. Love and passion, not that she’d ever recalled. Not that she’d ever missed until the specter of death haunted her every moment.
She tilted her face to the blood-red sky again. Sunset would soon give way to the dark. Water sluiced through her hair and down her body, bravely etching inroads into the dust caking her skin. She’d left the wooden half-door open, needing an escape route if the enemy suddenly appeared. Through partially closed lids, she saw Max standing with her legs widespread, her rifle canted across her chest, her back to the shower. She’d seen the body beneath the armor that afternoon as Max dug the foxhole, and now she pictured the stretch of her thin cotton T-shirt across her sculpted shoulders, the tapering of her muscular back to her waist, and the faint flare of her hips. Beneath the uniform, Max was sensuous as well as strong.
“How much longer?” Rachel asked, rinsing away the last bit of suds.
Max turned and their eyes met. Rachel stilled, her hands cupping her breasts, water streaming down her torso, over her belly, and between her thighs with the sensuous glide of a lover’s skin on hers. Max’s gaze moved lower, then slowly rose and returned to hers.
“Two minutes,” Max said, her voice rough enough to be angry, but her eyes weren’t angry. Her eyes were flame. “I want you and Amina secure before sundown.”
Rachel let her hands fall to her sides, unembarrassed by her exposure. Max had seen her naked in far more important ways than this. Max had seen her terror and grief and anger, all the things she usually kept hidden behind a façade of control and unconcern. “Yes, all right. Is there time for Amina?”
“If she hurries.”
“I’ll get her.” Rachel twisted the clamp on the water line closed and shook out her dusty clothes. Max’s back was turned again, and as she dressed, she tried not to think about the way her nipples had tightened under Max’s perusal or the twisting in the pit of her stomach or the tingling between her thighs that pulsed even now. She’d been looked at by women before, by women she’d taken to her bed and by those she hadn’t. She’d seen appreciation, seen longing, sometimes even envy. She’d thought she’d seen desire, thought she’d seen hunger, but she’d been wrong. She knew what hunger looked like now, and she doubted anything less would ever stir her again. She drew a ragged breath. “What about you?”
Max turned around again, the blue of her eyes as black as the ocean beneath a storm-tossed sky. “Amina first. I’ll be fine.”
“Thank you.” Rachel fumbled the buttons closed on her once-white shirt, stiff and yellowed with ingrained dust.
“Gather up the weapons and pack any loose ammo in one of the backpacks.”
“I will.” Rachel strode toward their makeshift base without looking back. She didn’t need to ask why. When night came, they’d have to be ready for anything.
Max watched her go. The water had turned her auburn hair nearly black, and the dark strands curled around her neck and face with careless abandon. Her face showed signs of a light burn from all the hours in the sun, but the skin on her chest and abdomen was smooth and creamy. An image of her oval breasts and light tan nipples rose in Max’s mind. She should’ve looked away, but she couldn’t. She’d been in the desert for months, and for years before that, she’d existed in the desert of her life—working, spending nights alone, letting her achievements fill her needs. She hadn’t touched a woman in almost two years, and she’d barely been present for that. After an OR party she hadn’t been able to avoid, she’d passed a few hazy hours of mutual desperation with a nurse who’d been flirting with her for half a year. Never mind that the nurse was married with two children, except, as the nurse was quick to point out, she and her husband were in the midst of a trial separation, so technically the sex wasn’t cheating. Max hadn’t asked for details. She’d had one too many drinks to hear the inevitable tale of disinterest, distance, and disillusion, and the nurse was not so drunk she couldn’t be responsible for policing her own marriage. There’d never been a repeat, although the nurse had indicated she would be more than willing.
Max could barely remember now what the woman looked like, if her breasts had been large or small, her stomach toned or full, her hips narrow or wide. She couldn’t recall the texture of her skin or the scent of her hair. Just a glimpse of Rachel had awakened all her senses, as indelibly as if they’d touched. Her fingers tingled with the glide of silky skin beneath her hands, her breath hitched at the firm press of a nipple against her tongue, her skin heated with the slickness of desire spreading over her thigh. She should have looked away, but she didn’t want to. Her body came alive when she looked at Rachel, and the sensation was so foreign and so exhilarating, she couldn’t let it go. Not yet.
The tent flap parted and Amina hurried toward her, a bundle of clothing in her arms. “Thank you so much. It’s so hot inside.”
Max did a quick scan of their surroundings. Nothing moved. Everything was quiet. “All right. Go ahead.”
“How long?”
Behind Max the water came on and she checked her watch. “Two minutes.”
“Two whole minutes! Oh, it’s so wonderful.”
After all Rachel and Amina had been through, a few minutes under a stream of tepid water seemed little enough reward. Max was used to going days without a shower, eating and sleeping in the dirt. The first thing she did when she got back to her CLU was take a long hot shower, hoping the steaming water would wash away the blood and mute the screams. It never did. Maybe Amina and Rachel would be luckier. She hoped so.
The water stopped, the wooden door squeaked opened and thudded shut. Amina’s breath was soft and regular as she moved about. Max was careful not to turn until Amina stepped up beside her, fully dressed. “All set?”
“Yes. I want to thank you—”
“No,” Max said. “You don’t need to. You’ve looked after Grif alone in that sweatbox all day. I owe you the thanks.”
Amina flushed. “Come back now. You need some rest and food.”
“You go ahead. I want to look around.”
“Don’t stay out too long or Rachel will insist on joining you again.”
Max grunted. “And I suppose telling her to stay inside wouldn’t do any good.”
Amina smiled. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. Let me walk you back.” Max escorted Amina to the tent and broke off to circle the perimeter one more time. The sun was down and the light was fading. Time to move the civilians to the bunker. By morning, this would be over.
*
The bunker Max had constructed was barely large enough for Rachel and Amina to stand or sit side by side after they piled the extra weapons, ammunition, food, and water at one end. The sky overhead, clear enough for a million stars to shine through the wisps of clouds, helped make the tight space seem less confining. Max had left gaps at irregular intervals in the rice-bag barrier to allow anyone inside to get a 360-degree view of the camp.
Rachel stood, body pressed against the dirt wall, still warm from the day, and peered out. Shadows played with her perception in the moonlight. The flutter of a tent flap became a man slipping closer, the flicker of starlight off hard-packed sand the glint of a gun barrel. For a moment she was five again, huddled in bed with knees drawn up and arms wrapped around her legs to make herself small, staring into the dark corners of her room where monsters lurked. She’d stopped calling out for her parents to come. They’d told her she was imagining the long fingers and looming forms that glided across the ceiling above her bed.
Close your eyes and go to sleep, Rachel, her mother had said, there’s nothing there. But she’d known better.
She didn’t sleep with the light on anymore, but she still distrusted what she couldn’t see. She wouldn’t be sleeping tonight, wouldn’t have slept if a platoon of soldiers stood between her and the jungle. As the dark closed in around her, she would watch for the enemy to slip out of the jungle and creep across the open yard. Max wouldn’t be sleeping, but she couldn’t trust everything to her. She did trust her, totally. Trusted her to stand for her and Amina and Grif, to stand between them and danger, but trusting her to do it all alone wasn’t fair. Then again, none of this was fair. Or rational. Everything about this place was totally insane. If she thought too long about the complete madness of being in the middle of a jungle waiting for someone to shoot at her, to kill her, she would lose her tenuous hold on her own reason.
“I swear to God you’ll be sorry,” she muttered to the monsters in the dark and gripped the rifle by her side.
“What is it?” Amina asked.
Rachel drew in a breath. “Nothing, sorry. Just venting.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Amina said. “It is better to shout than cry.”
“You’re right.” Rachel looked out through her portal again. A shadow coalesced into a figure. Her breath stopped and her mind went blank.
“American friendly,” Max’s voice whispered.
“God,” Rachel gasped.
Max leaned over the barrier and handed her a stack of blankets. “On the off chance there’s explosions out here, cover up with these.”
“Thanks.” Rachel didn’t even question the why of it—she was numb to the possibility of one more form of horror. She passed them to Amina and made room for Max to climb in, but Max turned away. “Where are you going?”
“I can’t leave Grif alone, and I’ll have a better chance of cutting off an attack from out here.”
Rachel understood the bunker now. Max wanted her and Amina out of the line of fire. She’d never planned to join them. What if there’s too many? What if they— “Max, what if they come in force?”
“You know what to do.”
“I’ll help you move Grif. He’ll be safer in here.”
Max shook her head. “I just checked him. His pressure is low, his heart rate is up. If he bleeds again I’ll lose him.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” Rachel pushed her feet into the toeholds Max had dug into the side of the bunker and reached up onto the wall to pull herself out.
“No, you’re not.” Max loomed over her, blocking her way. “You’ll be safer where you are. Out here, I can’t protect you.”
“I can help.”
Max squatted and faced her over the barrier. “Listen to me. This isn’t your war. You’re just caught up in the middle of it. You’re not a soldier. You’ve done great today, but this is my job. I won’t have you hurt.”
Rachel swallowed. Moonlight wreathed Max’s head. The camouflage paint had worn off, and the smudges of dirt disappeared into the velvet sheen of darkness. Her face was as smooth as carved marble. She was very beautiful. “I will be very unhappy if you go and get yourself killed. So be careful not to.”
Max smiled. “I’ll consider that an order.”
“See that you do.”
“Don’t worry. Chances are good we’ll have a quiet night.”
Rachel wanted to grab Max and pull her to safety, but she could no more do that than she could close her eyes against the monsters. Instead, she reached over the barrier and touched her fingertips to the strong line of Max’s jaw. “Keep your head down, Deuce.”
“Roger that.” Max pressed her cheek into Rachel’s palm for the briefest of breaths. “See you soon.”
And then she was gone, a shadow merging into the other shifting shadows. Rachel leaned hard against the wall, bracing herself on folded arms to steady her shaking legs.
“She came here for you, didn’t she?” Amina murmured.
“Yes.”
“We’re fortunate, then.”
“Yes, we are.” Rachel stared hard, searching for Max, and couldn’t find her.
Chapter Thirteen
Max flipped down her night-vision goggles, and the world morphed from black to shades of green. The jungle, lush and thick in daylight, flattened into a monochromatic wall several stories tall. Scanning slowly, she let her brain decipher the layers of overlapping images, much as she did when she looked into a wound and found the natural planes buried in debris. Order out of chaos. She steadied her breathing, centered her consciousness, let the night come close. There a flash of moonlight gleamed off a pair of close-set eyes peering from beneath the brush at the edge of the clearing. Hyena, maybe. Branches flickered lazily in an insolent breeze that did nothing but move the still-hot air over her sweat-slicked skin. In another few hours the temperature might drop enough to dry her sweat to a dusty, itchy film, but as with the gnats that clouded around her face and crawled along her lashes and into her ears, the constant physical discomfort had become the norm. Turning in slow increments, she checked for a branch that moved out of sync with its neighbors, the darting shadow of a predator startled from its hiding place, the coalescence of random forms into a recognizable human shape. She listened for the silence that signaled the ultimate predator was on the prowl, heard only the chittering of insects, the distant roar of a cat, the wild bark of a hyena.
ТЕЛЕГРАМБот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
Канал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
ВКОНТАКТЕБольшая библиотека с любыми жанрами и авторами
Большая Библиотека
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2 книги