Lear

by Jasinda Wilder

  I had to slow, now, as I reached the ramp. They heard me.

  Spun.

  Slow motion, then:

  My rifle slamming up to my shoulder, jerking as I triggered a burst, shells flipping out of the mechanism—

  Cuddy spinning, hearing the firing, seeing me, seeing the three mercenaries—

  Three M4s whipping up almost in unison, jerking jerking jerking, muzzle flashes in starburst—

  My own rifle still chattering, bursts forgotten as I stepped left and strafed right, hoping to dodge the incoming rounds—

  Angry bees hummed past my ear, snapped overhead, burned my cheek.

  I heard a scream at the same moment I felt a quartet of hammers jar me in a quick percussive rattle, slamming into my chest. I felt myself being twisted and pushed backward, another hammer cracking against the vest. It didn’t hurt—not yet…it was a shock, the force of it, taking my breath away.

  I saw the world twisting, and realized I was falling, my rounds going far wide. Cuddy didn’t miss, but neither did they.

  Pain, now.

  Shoulder, bicep, side—the hit to the side was the worst, deep and hard and slicing through flesh and things more vital.

  Agony, then.

  I saw them moving, one trying to bring his barrel to bear on Cuddy, one firing at the space where I’d been, the other in motion. Cuddy’s burst caught the one gunning for her, dropped him. Her next slammed into the one in motion. Third caught the final merc firing at me, blasting him open from the back of the skull forward, a mess of red bursting into the sunlight.

  Sudden silence, in the absence of gunfire.

  The props were loud, though, and my heartbeat was deafening in my own ears.

  Agony was louder, yet.

  I felt Cuddy’s grip on my vest, yanking me hard and pulling me up the ramp onto the floor of the transport. My vision doubled, twisted. I saw Cuddy kneeling over me, elbow on her knee bracing her rifle. Firing in burst after burst, pausing to switch mags without losing a beat. Shells flipped and spun in the early morning sun. A tendril of black hair wisped across her forehead, stuck to a rivulet of sweat. Her body jerked with the kick of her rifle. I felt my head topple to one side, saw a line of Cain’s mercs jogging for the transport, firing. Bullets pinged, ricocheted. They fell, here and there, from Cuddy’s firing, from Anselm’s rifle, from Duke, from Thresh.

  I saw Thresh in the distance, a hulk of a man with a body flung over one shoulder, gripping a full-size assault rifle one-handed and firing from the hip in a strafe—something else movies make look easy but actually is nearly impossible to pull off effectively. But Thresh is superhuman, and can do shit like that.

  Duke was charging across the airstrip, trying to catch us.

  Normally jovial under the worst of circumstances, he was straining, pissed, upset. Even his fastest sprint, which was Olympic-caliber—couldn’t catch the transport as it taxied away. The pilot either didn’t realize or didn’t care who was back here, or that the ramp was down.

  I watched Duke slow as he realized the futility of his effort. I lifted a hand, waving at him, hoping to reassure him.

  Only, it fucking hurts, and darkness is rolling over me.

  I watched Cuddy rise to her feet and move carefully across the pitched deck of the transport as it angled upward in takeoff—she slammed the button to close the ramp, and daylight slowly disappeared in a narrowing slice of brilliance.

  Cuddy vanished again, past me. I heard voices, a shout, a shot. Dragging sounds, and the dull heavy thump of a body. Another series of low snarls from Cuddy, and then I felt the transport angle, tilting as it shifted vectors.

  Something inside me wasn’t working, and it burned, ached, fire and pressure and something acidic.

  Cuddy, then—leaning over me.

  Tears on her face. “Lear?”

  I wanted to reassure her. “Hi.”

  “You got fucking shot, you idiot.”

  “I…I noticed.” I blinked at her, trying to smile. “Couldn’t let them get you.”

  “You didn’t. But, Lear…”

  I winced as a lance of pain seared through me. “Yeah?”

  “We’re on a plane bound for the Baltic. No stops.”

  “I know.” I gasped, wincing again. “Riga, right?”

  She nodded, looking around. “Need to see if there’s a med kit on this thing.”

  I shook my head. “It’s in there, Dani.”

  “I have to do something.”

  “So do it.” I coughed. “I’ll admit I’m not enjoying this. If you can find something to kill the pain, I’ll take it. Maybe a detour to a doctor?”

  She shrugged. “If we do that, Cain will know something’s up.”

  “He has to know shit went sideways at the airfield,” I said.

  She nodded. “But he doesn’t know we’re on this plane.”

  “So this is our only chance to catch him.” I tried to adjust positions, but the pain was too much. “I hope my guys are tracking us.”

  “Your guys are incredible,” she said.

  “Yes, they are.” I looked her over, best I could. “You hurt?”

  She twisted to one side, showed me a through-and-through wound low on her hip, more of a glancing wound from the round hitting, angling off her hipbone, and ricocheting away. Painful, but not life-threatening.

  Not like mine.

  She left me, then, and eventually returned with a woefully inadequate first aid kit. There wasn’t much to be done for the bullet lodged in my side but enough to stanch the bleeding. The other two wounds were fairly minor.

  When she’d done what she could do, she helped me move—not without a lot of pain, mind you—to the side of the fuselage, where she could put her back to the wall and hold my head on her lap.

  I felt faint, woozy.

  No painkillers, so I had to just tough it out.

  I lay with my head on Dani’s lap, and a thought hit me. I grinned up at her. “I know I owe you one, but if you wanted my face between your thighs, there was probably an easier way.”

  She sniffled a laugh. “Dammit, Lear, you’re making jokes right now?”

  “Sure.” I did my best to sound confident and casual. “You’re not worried are you?”

  She let out a slow breath. “Quit playing hard-ass. You know as well as I do what that wound you’ve got can do.”

  Go septic, depending on what was punctured inside me. Yeah, I knew.

  “Dani, I’ll be fine.”

  She shook her head. “We’ve been through too much shit to play dumb, Lear.”

  “Fine,” I snapped. “It hurts like a motherfucker, I’m worried it’ll go septic, and I’m scared out of my fucking mind. I had much different plans in mind for this trip across the ocean, for you and me. I don’t want to fucking die. I don’t want to leave you, and I can’t stand letting Cain get away.” I met her eyes. “That what you want to hear, Cuddy?”

  Her expression was one of raw emotional pain. “Better than a bluff, so yeah.”

  “Some comfort you are,” I muttered.

  She flinched. “Wow.”

  I hissed. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I reached, found her hands, and clutched them in mine. “I’m sorry, Dani.”

  She smoothed hair away from my face with a fingertip. “Me too. I’m worried and scared, and I don’t like feeling this way. I tend to get pretty brutal about facing things head-on when I’m scared.”

  “What are you scared of?”

  She sniffled. “Losing you, you dumbfuck,” she breathed. “I just found you. I’ve just started to accept how I’m feeling about you.”

  “Which is what?”

  A long, long silence. Her eyes remained closed, but I saw moisture seeping around the edges. “I’m in love with you, goddammit.”

  Her eyes opened, then, and lowered to fix on mine.

  I couldn’t smile, didn’t try—it wasn’t appropriate, not now, not like this. “Same,” I whispered.

  She snorted. “Cop out.
”

  I laughed, and then moaned at the agony that caused. “Fine, fine.” I winced, met her eyes. “I’m in love with you too. How the shit that happened in less than seventy-two hours, I don’t even fucking know, but it did.”

  “You hear how intense situations can escalate emotional bonds, but this is ridiculous.”

  I swallowed, and it hurt. “You think we’d have ended up in love had we not gone through all this together?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yeah. Just more slowly.”

  “I think so, too.” Not talking anymore sounded nice. I had something else to say, though. “Dani?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You gotta get him for me. Put one right in the T-box, and watch him bleed out.”

  She rested her palm on my cheek. “I will. I promise.”

  That was what I needed to hear.

  I felt the darkness slipping through me, over me. It was a heavier, deeper, thicker darkness than mere falling asleep. I couldn’t fight it. I didn’t know that I’d be coming out of it, but it was too strong.

  I gripped Dani’s hand as hard as I could, wanting to stay with her.

  Something wet dripped on my cheek.

  I squeezed…she squeezed back.

  There was no light, no tunnel, so I hoped this wasn’t that darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Devil You Know

  I felt the change in the engines, heard their tempo shift. Felt the tilt.

  I jerked awake and blinked down at Lear, his head in my lap—still breathing. I felt for his pulse in his throat: it was slow and steady. He looked pale, but the shoddy bandaging I’d done to his side wasn’t entirely soaked, so I had hope.

  I slid carefully out from under him, pillowing his head on a blanket I’d found, covering him with a second. Then I went forward to the cockpit, stepping over the corpse of the copilot, who lay in a pool of tacky reddish-brown, following the smear to the cockpit.

  I felt vicious, riding a razor’s edge of control over my panicked rage. If Lear didn’t make it…I was afraid of what I’d do, what I’d become.

  I let myself into the cockpit, found the pilot at the controls, sipping coffee. “Landing soon?” I asked.

  Middle-aged, bald with a thick brown beard shot with gray, he was sagging around the middle but still brawny through the chest and shoulders. He glared at me. “Ya. Soon.”

  “What’s next, after you land?”

  A shrug. “Not my business. I land, someone radios new instructions to me. Wait, fly to some other place, whatever.” His accent was Eastern European, thick, heavy, as if he was chewing on his words. “What is in back, I do not know, I do not care. I fly, I get my money, I go home.”

  “Well, if they radio you, it’s business as normal. I’ll be sitting right here, watching.”

  He smirked at me. “I say the wrong thing, you will shoot me?”

  I nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “And then land this plane yourself?” His sarcasm was clear.

  I nodded. “Not much I can’t do. Not sure the plane would survive, but I will. You won’t, though.”

  He shrugged. “I only fly the plane.”

  I snorted. “You know damn well what happened back there.”

  “I am not part of it. I only—”

  “You only fly the plane,” I cut in. “I get it.” I glanced at him. “What kind of cargo do you normally fly? I know you said you don’t know, don’t care, but I call bullshit. You peek.”

  He looked at me, gauging me. A shrug and nod. “Yes, I peek sometimes.” A wave of his hand. “Sometimes, big crates, many of them on pallets. Guns, I think, ammunition, explosives. Scary stuff. Sometimes it is drugs, kilos and kilos of it. Cocaine, I think.” A hesitation. “Sometimes, people.”

  “People?”

  His expression darkened; he didn’t like this answer. “Women. In cages.” Another, longer hesitation. “Sometimes, the guards, they take one or two from the cages and…” A wave of his hand. “Do things. There are bad sounds. I not like this very much, but what can I do? I do not fly, I ask questions, they kill me, they kill my wife, they kill my sons, and then it is my daughters in the cages, ya? I have two daughters. Young, beautiful, kind. Smart. They go to university in Budapest.”

  “Fucking animals,” I snarled.

  “What can I do?” Another of those shrugs.

  “You know what you can do? You can help me. I’m gonna take that fucker down.” I tapped a finger in the center of his nose, in the middle of the T-box, above the bridge of his nose and between his eyebrows, under his forehead, where a bullet is an instant kill.

  He frowned at me. “Him? You mean…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You mean Cain?”

  I laughed. “What, you think he’s here? You think he’s listening?”

  A shrug. “Who knows? He finds people, he knows things he shouldn’t. Who knows how he finds out?”

  I waved my hand. “Whatever. He’s not all-powerful. He’s a man, and he’s a dead one.”

  He stared at me for a long time. Then, eventually, he nodded. “Sure, I help you. The things I have seen in the back of this plane…it is not right. It should not be. I do not sleep, sometimes, knowing what I am part of.”

  “What about your friend?” I jerked my thumb at the corpse behind me.

  He pretended to spit to one side. “That, for him. He is like the worst of the guards. Sometimes, if there are the cages of women, he goes back, leaves me to fly and is part of the bad things.”

  “So you’re not upset he’s dead.”

  A shake of his head. “No. It is good.” He eyed me. “You kill Cain, it is good. I do not know that you can, but I hope. And I will do what I can to help.”

  I felt a little hint of relief at that, because I knew I’d need all the help I could get. I had to assume I was on my own, now. I mean, sure, Lear’s guys with A1S had tagged the airplane and I think they knew its general destination, but I couldn’t count on help when we landed.

  Shit was dire, though.

  I was down to one spare mag for my HK, and the one in my weapon had ten rounds at most. One sidearm, three mags, a KA-BAR. Lear had his Steyr Aug, a partially expended mag in it and two spares on his webbing, an HK UMP40 with only one spare mag, a 9mm sidearm with a spare mag, his knife. Another sidearm from the copilot. Seemed like a lot at first glance, but when you took into account how many soldiers Cain had fielded at that airstrip, it was nowhere near enough. The one saving grace of my ammo situation was that my HK, Lear’s, and both of our pistols all used 9mm ammo, so I had options there. But still, it just wasn’t enough firepower for what I feared I was heading into.

  I left the pilot to his business and headed back to the cargo area, and began redistributing my ammo. If I got down to pistols, I was fucked anyway, so I left myself with two pistols and just one full magazine each, splitting the rest between my HK and the UMP40. I could only carry so many rifles, obviously, and I was most familiar with the HKs, and liked the interchangeability of the ammunition.

  Once that was done, there wasn’t much to do but wait.

  I watched Lear sleep, checked his bandages, and hoped like hell I was good enough to get us out of this alive.

  Really, as much as I wanted to take down Cain—I’d promised I would, after all, and I kept my promises—at the heart of things, I really just wanted to stay alive, get Lear fixed, and then spend a month alone in bed with him…after he was healed.

  I wanted to explore what we had.

  I wanted to explore this new side of myself—Dani…the woman who was all Danielle and all Cuddy, and something new that was neither.

  After a while, I felt the tilt and the lurch in momentum as the pilot brought the aircraft around and feathered the throttle for landing. My heart tipped into my throat as we descended. I kept a grip on Lear’s webbing and another on the netting lining the side of the cargo bay, preparing for landing.

  “Here we go!” the pilot called. “Touching down…now!”

&nb
sp; We smacked the tarmac at the moment of his shout, and I heard the bark of the tires. I had to grip hard as momentum threatened to pull Lear’s prone, limp body forward toward the nose, and I nearly lost my grip as it was. I felt my hold on his webbing slipping.

  I strained, gritted my teeth and snarled as I fought to keep him from sliding away, and then our momentum was bled off by the roar of the brakes. I let go, then, and gathered my feet under me. Left Lear where he was and moved to a far back corner of the cargo hold—up near the nose, hidden in among spare tie-downs and clips and netting and pallets.

  And waited.

  We taxied for a while, and then I felt the final lurch as we came to a halt. Sudden and deafening silence ensued as the props span down. A pounding, a voice calling out something in a language I didn’t understand.

  The pilot came out, looking around. I remained hidden, so he wouldn’t give me away with an accidental glance at the wrong moment. I think he had the same notion, as he didn’t try to find me. Just moved for the ramp controls and lowered it down. The voices were angry, and I heard him responding in that testy, condescending tone he’d given me.

  I heard the tromp of feet, and tightened my grip on my HK, barely breathing, not moving so much as an eyelash. One, two, three, four, five, six men, all armed, three in a chevron formation in front, one alone in the middle, and two behind. They moved with military precision, but wore plain black tactical gear, with black ball caps and mirrored sunglasses.

  The man in the middle was imposingly tall, broad-shouldered, a hint of a middle-aged belly showing. He was still a massive man, impressively muscled, light on his feet. He wore the same black BDUs as the guards, but he was clearly the leader. Brown eyes, piercing even from here, even not looking at me. Expensively cut brown hair, shot through with gray at the temples. Clean-shaven, but with a hint of stubble. He carried an AK-47 one-handed, the strap dangling, barrel angled down beside his thigh.

  He spoke quickly, in a clipped, annoyed tone. The pilot responded, slowly, and the other man replied with even greater irritation; communication issues, it seemed like, as if they didn’t speak the same native language, and neither was fluent in the other.