by Cindy Dees
“You okay?” he bit out.
She nodded beneath him, too crushed to make a sound.
He rolled off of her and she popped up beside him to peer at her handiwork. Another explosion sent a fireball up into the night just then, and they ducked behind the log once more.
John shook his head at her in amazement.
She grinned back. “Can I cook, or can I cook?”
Static crackled in John’s ear and then Hathaway’s voice materialized from the chaotic noise. “Report, Cowboy! What the hell was that?”
He keyed his microphone. “Mel thought we could use a diversion.”
“Remind me never to piss her off,” Hathaway bit out. “All teams report.”
A quick checkoff revealed that everyone had survived the blast, including the team trapped in the bunker, although a couple of their guys had busted eardrums. A moment of silence ensued, and then shouting voices erupted over the radios.
“…incoming fire!”
“Say location!”
“…coming out of the woods…”
“…surrounded…”
John whirled to face the slope behind them, his back against the log. “Get on the other side of the log. Now,” he ordered Melina tersely.
She rolled across the broad surface, and as John plunked down beside her, asked him, “What’s happening?”
“Ambush. Huayar’s got more men out there.”
She cast her mind back frantically to the briefing she’d overheard earlier. “Does it mean anything when Huayar said, ‘Deploy fire teams one through four on the ridges. On my signal close the net’?”
John stared at her. “Where did you hear that?”
“It’s what Huayar told his men earlier.”
“How many men does he have?”
“He had about six men around the table with him. I think they each had about twenty-five men.”
Crap. He keyed his mike. “Mel says total troop strength is around 150. With the fifty in the camp, we’re looking at about a hundred men closing from the ridges in four fire teams.”
He didn’t need to be standing beside Hathaway to hear the guy swearing under his breath and thinking fast. How in the hell were they supposed to get out of here with a force that size closing on them if they couldn’t shoot back?
“What’s going on?” Mel whispered insistently beside him.
“About a hundred of Huayar’s men are coming down the hills and shooting at us.”
“So shoot back!”
“Can’t. We’re here strictly on a search-and-rescue. No authorization to engage in a firefight.”
She looked appalled. “Do you people need me to run down into the middle of camp so you’ll technically be rescuing me?”
“It would help.” The comment slipped out before he thought about it. And he knew it was a mistake the second the words left his mouth.
Melina was up and on her feet, darting down the hill before he could make a swipe at her and grab her. Dammit! He jumped up and took off running after her, calling into his mike as he went, “Melina is entering camp from the south end. Bring all resources to bear on her and keep any hostiles from approaching her!”
Hathaway shot back, “What’s she doing?”
“Turning this fiasco into a search-and-rescue so we can open fire, dammit!”
A short pause, then Hathaway replied, “You heard the man. All hands are greenlighted to fire to protect the lady.”
John’s eyes went wide as he realized what Hathaway had in mind. All of his men would fire into the camp-aiming nearly at Melina-and knock out any person who approached her. They would lay down a veritable wall of covering fire around her. It was incredibly dangerous. A single bullet off target would kill her. One unlucky ricochet, one round passing through a hostile and striking her, and she’d die. Hathaway expected her to stand out in the middle of the fish barrel while all of Bravo Squad fired around her.
Sure, it was an exercise they practiced in their hostage rescue training, to shoot around the innocent, missing the victim by a whisker while they took out the hostiles. But that innocent was Melina! And there was nothing to stop Huayar from turning his weapon on her and taking her out except his lust for a drug recipe, and the wealth and power it represented.
Melina screeched to a halt in the dead center of the camp, where the bonfire had been until the flood of water extinguished it. She shouted up into the night, “Here I am! Come and get me, Huayar!”
A dozen hostiles rushed her…and dropped in a neat ring around her.
John’s earpiece erupted once more. “…more incoming fire from our flanks…hostiles in sight on the ridge…request instructions…” And then shots rang out behind John. He ducked as a chip of wood flew up from the log above his head. He ducked and took cover from the advancing wave of hostiles from above.
He desperately wanted to join Melina, but these guys would shoot him in the back long before he reached her. He had to take them out first.
Hathaway’s disgusted voice came across the radios. “Screw this. Fire at will, men. Take these assholes down. All of them.”
John’s sigh of relief was heartfelt. Hathaway had probably just thrown away his career, but he’d also given Bravo Squad and the Montez family a fighting chance at getting out of here. It was a ballsy call, but ultimately the right thing to do. God bless Brady Hathaway.
A barrage of lead from above drew his attention. The Peruvians might be good, but he and his gear were better. He flipped on the heat-painting feature of his night-vision goggles, and the hidden forms of Huayar’s men leaped out in bright, white relief. He picked them off like ducks in a shooting gallery. It probably took less than a minute to wipe out every form on the hill, but it felt like much longer to him.
Every blob that tumbled down the hillside was therapeutic. How many times he’d played this scenario in his head, of being healthy and armed and able to shoot back at his ambushers, he couldn’t count. But dammit, this time he wasn’t going down without a fight.
A second wave of hostiles came into sight on the hillside. This bunch had figured out his location, and he was forced to move. He made a shooting retreat down into the camp, using the nearest shack for cover as he made his way toward Melina. Hang on baby, I’m coming.
Somewhere in the midst of carnage, an odd thing happened. Peace came over him. An inner quiet he hadn’t known for a long time. Death was his job, but it wasn’t who he was. He was the man who loved Melina, who Melina loved back. He didn’t seek to kill and took no pleasure in it, but he didn’t hesitate when it was called for. His adversaries asked for no quarter, as he and his men asked for none in return. Some fights were to the death, and you only lost one of those. For eight of his men, a cold mountain in Afghanistan had been their one and only run of bad luck.
Maybe tonight would be his moment, maybe not. But until that moment came, his job was to keep living. And loving. He glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of Melina. She had her hands over her ears, her eyes screwed tightly shut, and she looked frightened beyond belief.
He yelled into his radio, “Bravo Squad! Hold your fire! I’m going in to join Melina.”
“Are you nuts?” Hathaway bit out.
“She can’t take it alone. I say again, hold your fire!” he shouted back into his radio as he sprinted toward her, standing there alone and terrified in the center of hell.
Melina couldn’t wrap her brain around what was happening. Men were falling all around her like toy soldiers. Falling singly. Falling in waves. Covering the ground in a carpet of blood and bodies thick enough to walk on without ever touching dirt. Bullets flew past her so close she felt them brush her cheeks, her arms, her belly. And Huayar’s men kept on coming, and kept on dying.
Why one of them hadn’t just raised his gun and shot her before now, she had no idea. Huayar must have given some sort of order not to kill her. Where was he, anyway? She’d seen no sign of him since he ran out of the shack a lifetime ago, when the water tower collapsed
.
Hot lead caressed her neck, lifting her hair away from her skin with its passage, and yet another man fell, this time practically at her feet. She would have jumped back from him, but dared not move within the sarcophagus of flying lead hemming her in. Dead eyes stared up at her, impossibly young, as naïve and misguided as her brother. Oh, God. That boy had a mother. A father. Maybe a sweetheart somewhere. And now he was dead. In an instant-
Strong arms swept around her from behind.
“Mel.”
She turned in his embrace and jumped as the sound of gunfire, momentarily interrupted, resumed. “You shouldn’t be out here! Huayar’s men will kill you. They won’t shoot me. Get down-”
He kissed her, probably to silence her as he sank straight down to his knees, pulling her down with him. “I love you,” he murmured against her mouth.
Joy erupted in the midst of her stark terror. “I love you, too, but I don’t want you to die. Get down!”
He glanced at the carnage around them. “Bravo Squad has it about handled. I don’t see anymore of Huayar’s men incoming. I trust my comrades with my life.”
She gazed up at him, startled. “Really?”
He blinked down at her as if just registering what he’d said. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Did you mean it?” she murmured against his neck.
“Mean what?”
“That you love me.”
“Absolutely.”
“What are you planning to do about it?” she asked cautiously.
“Get you and your family out of here and then at the first opportunity ask your father for permission to marry you.”
The gunfire around them was definitely beginning to trail off. A few scattered shots were still being fired well up in the woods, but that was all. Marry her? She stared up at him in shock, afraid to believe her own ears. Hesitantly, she asked, “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack, baby.”
She stared up at him in awe, her heart in her throat. John froze, obviously listening to something over his headset, and then laughed.
“What?”
“Your forehead was pressing against my throat mike, and our last several sentences were transmitted to Bravo Squad. My boss just asked what your answer was.”
A hot flush climbed her cheeks.
John gazed down at her expectantly. “What should I tell him?”
“Tell him I said yes!” She flung her arms around his neck and all but knocked him to the ground. He staggered, absorbing her weight into him. He absorbed her heart into him, her hopes and fears, her past, her future, all of it. And she let him have all of her. After all, they’d been to hell and back together, and had nothing to hide from one another at this late date.
Concerned that he’d just been through another highly stressful firefight, she asked him with a certain caution, “How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
She studied him closely. He looked and sounded like he meant it. “No flashbacks?”
He laughed ruefully. “Oh, there were flashbacks, but I killed most of them. Turns out a little.42-caliber therapy went a long way toward making me feel human again.” As she continued to look at him skeptically, he added, “Really. I feel okay. Steady. Centered. I still want to talk to a pro when we get back home, but I think the worst of it has passed. I think maybe we just made it.”
She never, ever thought she’d hear those words from him. Had the slate really been wiped clean? For both of them?
He listened to his headset again, then murmured, “Your family has been secured. We found a rat hole and a team of our guys is clearing it right now.”
“A rat hole?”
“An escape tunnel. My boss says you and I are to sit tight right here. A team will be over to collect us once they’ve secured the remainder of the camp and the surrounding hills.”
“No more thoughts of nooses?” she asked him.
“None.”
“No more wild plans to randomly sacrifice yourself to the bad guys to punish yourself, or in order to save me?”
“Well, I’ll always be willing to lay down my life for you. But no, no random sacrifices.”
“Thank God.” She hugged him tightly, and he hugged her back just as tightly. They’d both faced down Death and managed to walk away from the experience. In finding love for one another, they’d each found a reason to live.
A future she’d hardly dared to allow herself to think about now stretched away before them, clean and fresh and unwritten. And to think. They would get to shape that future together. It was enough to choke a girl up a little.
“You’re an amazing man, John Hollister,” she whispered against his neck.
“You’re pretty amazing yourself, Melina Montez,” he murmured, his lips moving against her temple.
She snuggled into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder, content to stay right here for as long as he’d have her. Forever and beyond. After all, they’d already been to hell and back. The only place left for them to go was Paradise. Together.
CINDY DEES
started flying airplanes while sitting in her dad’s lap at the age of three and got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. At age fifteen, she dropped out of high school and left the horse farm in Michigan where she grew up to attend the University of Michigan. After earning a degree in Russian and East European Studies, she joined the U.S. Air Force and became the youngest female pilot in its history. She flew supersonic jets, VIP airlift, and the C-5 Galaxy, the world’s largest airplane. She also worked part-time gathering intelligence. During her military career, she traveled to forty countries on five continents, was detained by the KGB and East German secret police, got shot at, flew in the first Gulf War, met her husband and amassed a lifetime’s worth of war stories.
Her hobbies include professional Middle Eastern dancing, Japanese gardening and medieval reenacting. She started writing on a one dollar bet with her mother and was thrilled to win that bet with the publication of her first book in 2001. She loves to hear from readers and can be contacted at www.cindydees.com.
***
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