Freefall

by Traci Hunter Abramson

  Jim closed his eyes for a moment. His baby girl was somewhere behind enemy lines and he couldn’t do anything about it but trust some man he had never met to bring her safely home. He glanced over at Charlie, who was waiting with anticipation for any news, and then asked about his oldest son. “How is Matt holding up?”

  “He’s worried,” Doug admitted. “He’s here in Miami for his game tonight, but he has tomorrow off, so he’s going to head up to Virginia after his game ends.”

  “It will be good to have him home.”

  “There’s one more thing, Senator . . .” Doug hesitated. “You and your family have to proceed as though Amy is with the other hostages. If the press realizes she isn’t with them, they’ll start announcing to the terrorists that she’s still in Abolstan. We’re going to try to keep the story quiet until she’s safely home, which shouldn’t be too difficult since most of the hostages will be in the hospital for at least several days.”

  Jim closed his eyes as reality overwhelmed him. “I understand.”

  As soon as he hung up, he relayed the information to Katherine and Charlie. Then he did the only thing he could do: he knelt down with his wife and son and prayed for his missing daughter.

  * * *

  Brent bowed his head in prayer, silently running the words through his head for fear that if he said them out loud they might be heard by more than just Amy Whitmore. His five-man unit was the only one he knew of that was made up entirely of Latter-day Saints, and they had long ago established the practice of opening each day with a prayer. He wasn’t about to change that habit now, especially knowing that he still had to go eighty miles with a civilian in tow before he could secure transportation to safety.

  He ended his silent prayer and turned to look at Amy sleeping just a few yards away. Her color was better than it had been the night before, her hair falling loosely over the hard ground. In more ways than one, she wasn’t what he expected. From her photo, he already knew that she was beautiful and vibrant. He hadn’t realized, however, that she was six feet tall. That fact was actually helpful at this point, since she could pass for a man as long as her hair was hidden and she was wearing baggy clothes.

  Still, as the daughter of a U.S. senator, Brent had expected her to be more trouble. She hadn’t made the common complaints yet about fatigue, their sleeping arrangements, or the food. She had instinctively rationed her water intake as though she, too, was aware that what little they had would have to last. Throughout the night, despite her exhaustion, she had kept up without too much trouble. And she didn’t speak unless she was spoken to, allowing him to concentrate on their mission of getting out of here rather than worrying that she might start jabbering at an inopportune moment.

  He imagined she had spent a few weeks of her teenage years “roughing it” in girls’ camp, though he doubted she had ever expected to use any of her basic survival skills in the middle of the desert. Just about everyone in Virginia knew that the Whitmore family was LDS, and Brent hoped that Amy had a deep well of faith to rely on over the next couple of days.

  He pulled his gaze away from her and looked out over the horizon. The sun had already dropped behind the hills in the distance, and he hoped to set out in less than an hour. As the heat started to dissipate, he thought of how different this assignment was from the experience that had started him on this path.

  He had only been seventeen when he and three teammates had been on their way back from the state high school swimming championships. Suddenly a blizzard hit in southeastern Virginia. His coach, who also happened to be his mother, made the decision to stop for the night when they were at least twenty miles from any towns. Still she had managed to find them shelter, even though it ended up being the top-secret variety.

  One of her friends had been a chief of something-or-other at “The Farm,” the training facility for the Central Intelligence Agency. He hadn’t been happy to see five civilians on the doorstep of the secure location, but he had made arrangements to house them until the storm passed and the roads were cleared.

  Brent had always known that his mother had worked for the CIA before he was born, but spending those few days snowed in at the CIA’s training facility and seeing the level of security had brought home a reality he had never before considered. His mom, in her own small way, had helped keep their country safe for a time. From that point on, Brent had been headed in this direction. He wanted a chance to help protect the freedoms he had always enjoyed and often taken for granted.

  He sensed movement behind him and turned to see Amy move to the cave opening. “Did you sleep okay?” he asked.

  He expected her to complain about sleeping on solid rock, but instead she just nodded. Her eyes were somber. He sensed that she knew he was her only way out of here and it scared her. If he had to guess, he doubted Amy Whitmore was accustomed to relying on anyone but herself. She was clearly in uncharted waters and didn’t look too happy about it.

  “Are you ready to set out?”

  Amy nodded again. “Yeah.”

  Brent passed her the water bag, watching her take a drink as he dug an energy bar out of his pack. “Eat this. Just make sure you put all of the wrappers into your bag. We don’t want anyone to be able to track us.”

  “What about footprints?” She pointed down at her running shoes.

  “The wind will take care of most of that for us,” Brent told her. “Besides, we don’t know if anyone even realizes that we’re here. The terrorists that were holding you probably think we made it out on the chopper with everyone else.”

  “I would think someone would notice two people falling out of a helicopter.”

  “Not when they’re more concerned about the shooting going on right outside their windows.” He motioned to the open terrain in front of them. “Come on. The farther we get from the city, the less likely it is that anyone will be looking for us.”

  * * *

  Amy moved forward, concentrating only on following Brent. She wasn’t sure how long they had been walking, but her body told her they had traveled a good distance from where they had started. The darkness was broken up only by the stars in the sky and a sliver of the moon.

  Brent had continued at a steady pace, stopping only once for a few minutes to drink some water and eat another portion of his energy bar. Amy couldn’t say she liked the taste of hers, but it was better than nothing. Their water supply was holding so far, thanks to the water bag Brent had commandeered the day before. At the same time he had filled the water bag, he had also refilled his canteen and the water bottle that was in his backpack.

  The muscles in her legs were screaming with fatigue, but Amy had stopped listening to their complaints a few hours earlier. She couldn’t imagine how she would have been able to make this trek had she not already been in shape. As she watched Brent walk in front of her, she realized that maybe she wasn’t in as good of shape as she thought. He didn’t look like he was even winded, and they had been walking for hours.

  Shadows of what looked like mountain ranges stretched out on either side of the flat, open area they had been traveling through. They were nearing one of them as she saw the glow of lights in the distance and Brent signaled for her to stop. She wondered if he even realized that he was using hand signals to communicate with her despite the fact that she had never been told what they meant. Still, somehow she had adapted, and when the signal came to take cover, she moved silently with him against a large boulder.

  She didn’t even have to watch for the signal to stay, already anticipating that he was about to go exploring once more without her. He slipped off his backpack and set it beside her before moving off into the night. Quietly, she settled down in the sand. Ignoring the tension that was settling in her shoulders, she stretched her feet out in front of her and pulled up on her toes to stretch out the muscles in her calves.

  Already Brent was out of sight, and she wished he had told her exactly where he was going and how long he was going to be. Her next thought was that in h
is business he probably didn’t know the answers to those kinds of questions. What must it be like, she wondered, to try to have a relationship with someone who could simply vanish right in front of your eyes?

  She pushed away that thought, instead leaning back and looking up at the stars. Without the lights of the city to compete with, they dominated the sky. She couldn’t ever remember seeing so many before, and she thought of those summer nights when she would ride her horse down to the park near her house and camp by the river. It was the only time she could remember just lying on the ground and staring up into the sky. What she wouldn’t give right now to be out for a leisurely ride, galloping through the trees with her hair blowing behind her.

  When Amy heard horses in the distance, she thought perhaps she had imagined it. As the sound grew closer, she stood and settled Brent’s pack on her back. She pressed back against the rock, remembering what Brent had told her about staying still and controlling her breathing. She kept her eyes on the ground and struggled not to gasp when half a dozen horses and their riders passed within five yards of where she was standing.

  A moment later, at least ten more horses pounded over the rise, apparently in pursuit of the first group that had passed. The gunshots didn’t register at first, but the cry in the distance made them reality.

  She was afraid to move, and equally afraid not to. What if Brent had been caught in the crossfire? And what would happen if she was still here when the sun came up? There was no way she could survive the day out in the desert without some sort of shelter. Besides the obvious threat of the armed men nearby, the heat from the desert could be deadly.

  “Please let him be okay,” Amy whispered, praying Brent back to her. She tried to think positive thoughts, wondering what he would look like without his face painted with camouflage. His eyes were dark and serious, and his rugged features made her think he would look just a little dangerous, even if he wasn’t carrying a gun.

  She wondered what he did for fun when he wasn’t flying all over the world rescuing hostages. They had been together for over thirty hours straight, and she realized she knew nothing about him. She didn’t know where he was from or if he had family. Did he have a wife or a girlfriend back home worrying about him the way her family was surely worrying about her? Or would his family even know that there was something to worry about?

  Amy’s mind raced with questions as shots continued to ring out in the distance. Minutes passed slowly, and she finally took a seat once more as silence replaced chaos. Her body was shaking with fear and tension, and she was beginning to think she had no other choice but to move forward alone.

  Another fifteen minutes, she promised herself. She would wait that long before heading for the distant hills that would hopefully offer her some shelter during the day and also give her a bird’s-eye view of the terrain below. Fifteen minutes passed, and then five more. Panicked that Brent must have been one of the victims in the skirmish over an hour before, Amy stood and prepared to set out. Somehow she had to find a way to send for help.

  She heard her name whispered softly. Whirling around, she saw Brent standing behind her.

  “I was so worried!” Not thinking, she moved into his arms and held on. Warmth washed through her as one of his arms came around her waist. She shifted to look up at him, sliding her hand down onto his arm. It was only then she noticed the slick wetness on her fingers. Her eyes widened, and she tried to stem the panic attempting to surface. “You’re bleeding!”

  “We have to get you out of here,” Brent told her, leaning against the boulder for support.

  “Can you make it up to those rocks?” Amy asked warily. “I thought there might be some caves where we could hide.”

  Brent nodded. He didn’t release her, instead allowing Amy to keep her arm around him and support some of his weight. They moved slowly, barely making it to the protection of some caves as the sun rose in the east.

  Amy helped Brent sit down at the mouth of a shallow cave and immediately shed her pack to take a look at the damage. “Take off your shirt,” she told him, reaching to help him undo the buttons. He winced in pain as he shifted and let Amy help him remove his combat vest and his shirt to reveal his bulletproof vest. Beneath the vest was a T-shirt, the right sleeve red with blood.

  Brent looked down at his arm. “I can’t tell if the bullet passed through.”

  Amy took a deep breath. She moved to examine the wound, finding the small hole where the bullet had entered the fleshy part of his arm just below his sleeve. Gently, she then lifted his arm to study the underside, where a larger wound was still bleeding. “It looks like it passed through, but the exit wound doesn’t look good.”

  Brent leaned back against the wall of the cave. “Look in my combat vest. There’s a med kit in one of the pockets.”

  Amy started riffling through the pockets. That’s when she saw a hole in his vest, this one without an accompanying bloodstain.

  “Were you shot more than once?”

  “I got hit once in the vest. It just bruised a couple of ribs.”

  “I’m afraid it did more than that.” Amy held up the remains of his communications headset.

  Brent closed his eyes in frustration.

  Amy opened another pocket, this time coming across a pocket-sized Book of Mormon. “You’re Mormon?” she asked, surprised.

  “Yeah.” Brent nodded. “The med kit should be in the next pocket over.”

  Still absorbing this new information, she opened the next pocket and found the medical supplies. She pulled out a plastic bag that contained an assortment of items, including bandages. She found some antiseptic and applied it to both wounds. Brent winced in pain but said nothing as she went about cleaning the wound.

  “There’s a syringe with a local anesthetic in there. I’m going to need you to give me a shot of that, and then try to stitch up the wound,” Brent told her. She glanced up at him quickly, her eyes wide with surprise. “I’ll lose too much blood otherwise,” he explained. “And we don’t want anyone to be able to track us.”

  Amy’s heart lodged in her throat as she considered actually using a needle and thread on human skin. Skeptically, she asked, “Are you sure you trust me to do this?”

  “I’ll walk you through it,” Brent assured her. “Just give me the shot and wait a few minutes. Then you can start sewing me up.”

  “You make it sound like I’m in home ec class.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Did you ever take home ec?”

  “Would you feel better if I lied and said yes?”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Probably, but either way, you’re all I’ve got. I can’t do it myself.”

  Amy nodded, wincing as she inserted the syringe into his arm. Brent told her what she needed to do. When his arm was numb, Amy tried to imagine that she was dealing with fabric instead of human flesh. She took a deep breath, fighting back the wave of nausea that washed over her. Slowly, meticulously, she inserted the needle and started on the entry wound. It only took four stitches, though she probably could have done it in three larger ones.

  She tied off the sutures the way Brent told her to, and then she turned to the more difficult task of stitching up the exit wound. Unlike the first one, the skin was torn apart and not easy to repair. She took another deep breath and started once more. Again, she kept her stitches small, hoping that she was performing the task correctly. In the back of her mind, she wondered if he would really be able to recover enough to travel.

  When she was finally done, her fingers were cramping and her back was knotted with tension. She let out the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding, concerned that the exit wound still looked pretty ragged. “I think I’m done.”

  Brent looked down at her handiwork and then looked back at her, his eyebrows raised. “I thought you said you didn’t take home ec.”

  “I didn’t, but I do have a mother who insisted on teaching me how to sew.” Amy shrugged. “Somehow I don’t think this is quite what she
had in mind.”

  “I’ll have to make sure I thank her when we get home.”

  “Where is home for you?”

  “Same as you. Virginia.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The throbbing in his arm woke him while the sun was still high in the sky. Brent closed his eyes against the pain, willing it to go away. Realizing that willpower alone wasn’t going to work, he shifted so that he could reach for his shirt where Amy had put his med kit after she finished with it.

  “I’ll get it.” Amy moved forward and picked up his shirt. “What do you need?”

  “There should be some painkillers in there.”

  Nodding, Amy unzipped a pocket and held out his choices for him. “Maybe you should consider the prescription stuff.”

  Brent shook his head. “If I do that, we won’t be able to travel tonight.”

  “That might be the wisest decision we can make right now,” Amy told him. “It isn’t going to do us any good if you don’t heal a bit before we set out again.”

  “The longer we stay here, the more likely it is that we’ll be found.” Brent nodded at the terrain leading up to where they were. “I probably left a blood trail that just about anyone could find.”

  “I already took care of that,” Amy told him.

  Brent’s voice turned sharp. “What do you mean you took care of it?”

  “I went back down and covered up all of the bloodstains so that no one would notice it.” Amy looked at him apologetically. “I had to use up some of our water to get rid of the blood on the boulder though.”

  “You went down there? By yourself?” Brent’s eyes widened with disbelief. “You could have been seen.”

  “It had to be done.” Amy pulled out his canteen and handed it to him, along with a dose of medicine. “Besides, now we can stay here for the night and let you rest.”

  The throbbing was making it impossible to think straight. If the blood trail was really gone, they would be better off taking a day to rest. Frustrated that they were even in this position, Brent accepted the canteen and the pills she offered him. After downing the medicine, he turned back to look at her.