Short Fuse: Elite Operators, Book 2

by Rebecca Crowley

  For several seconds they didn’t have to spare he simply stared at her, slack-jawed and blinking. Then he slumped against the table leg and closed his eyes.

  “Didier gave himself too much credit. It’s not that sophisticated. Take these wire cutters. I’ll talk you through it.”

  She took the tool from his loose grasp and repositioned herself closer to the trigger, steeling herself against the wave of panic that bubbled in her throat as her hand almost brushed the outstretched fingers of Didier’s corpse.

  She swallowed hard. “Ready.”

  “Do you see the thick black wire in the middle, the one that sticks up higher than the rest?”

  Gingerly she picked up the clump of black plastic and wire. “I see it.”

  “Cut it.”

  She obeyed quickly, trying not to give herself enough time to think about what exactly she was doing, in case the incoherent terror that lurked at the fringes of her composure leapt out and overcame her.

  “Now what?”

  “The blue one. Behind the timer.” He sounded drowsy and out of breath.

  Briskly she clipped the blue wire, and suddenly the clock began ticking down at more than twice its previous speed. Seven minutes became six in a matter of seconds.

  “The countdown sped up—what do I do?”

  He didn’t reply. His face was pale and still.

  She shouted his name again, sharply, and his dark lashes fluttered. He opened his eyes to look at her from beneath heavy, sleepy lids.

  “The countdown.” She gestured to the clock. “How do I stop it?”

  “Small black wire all the way on the bottom left,” he murmured.

  She dug around the contraption with clumsy, trembling fingers until she located the one he meant. She put the blades of the wire cutter against it, held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut—and snipped.

  Silence.

  Cautiously she opened one eye, then the other.

  The digital screen was blank. The bomb was disabled.

  “We did it!” she exclaimed, tossing the wire cutter in the air. “We did it, the countdown stopped!”

  The smile slid from her face as she looked over. He was unconscious, and the black hair emerging from beneath his hard hat was in startling contrast to his ashen complexion.

  She scooted over to him and took his hands in hers. They were clammy and limp, and she fought back tears as she spoke, determined to keep her tone strong and determined.

  “Wake up now, Warren, we have to get you up to the surface.” She squeezed his hands. “The bomb is deactivated. It’s time to get you help.”

  Nothing. Not so much as a twitch.

  For the first time since she’d come upon Warren and the Matsulu leader, she wondered what happened to Dassie and Bronnik. She sent the elevator back to the surface—why hadn’t they arrived? Even if they’d gone down the wrong tunnel initially, the gunshots would’ve resonated all along the mine.

  They should’ve been here long before now.

  Unless the elevator broke, she thought with fresh panic. Unless they’re stuck in the shaft, unable to get to the top, stranding us at the bottom.

  With frenzied horror lapping at the edges of her self-control, she forced herself to focus on the present and checked for a pulse in Warren’s throat. It was weak, but it was there, and she exhaled with relief.

  Goddammit, her mines had some of the cleanest underground fatality records in the industry. She wasn’t about to let some bad-tempered policeman ruin that.

  She put her hands on Warren’s shoulders and gave him a vigorous shake.

  “Let’s go,” she ordered. “Get up.”

  When that didn’t work, she grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and tried to pull him upright. As soon as she let go he crumpled back against the table, his head lolling lifelessly.

  She flopped down to the ground beside him, momentarily giving in to her burgeoning sense of hopelessness and futility. She couldn’t carry him, and if she went up to the surface for help he’d be dead by the time she got back. If she could get up there.

  “Please, Warren,” she begged tearfully, taking his hand in both of hers. She was flooded with self-pity as she sat in the dark, hot, gritty tunnel, watching the life flow out of the first and only man she’d ever loved.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Where was her fairytale ending? She wanted to go to Cape Town, race through the choppy sea on his boat and then stumble laughingly into an expensive, trendy bar and watch the sunset over a glass of wine, horrifying the rest of the room with their windblown hair and salty clothes.

  She wanted to take him to her parents’ house in New Hampshire and watch him talk science with her dad and take a polite interest in her mom’s vegetable patch. Then she’d pull him out on to the porch after dinner and tell him how well he was doing and how much they liked him and then kiss him in a way that definitely wasn’t parent-friendly, until he pulled away wearing an embarrassed flush, whispering that her dad could walk out and find them at any minute.

  She wanted marriage, children, old age. She wanted a life with him. And it was all slipping away right in front of her.

  The thought made her sad and miserable. And then it made her angry.

  “Damn you, Copley,” she swore hotly. “I’ll get you out of this mine if it kills me.”

  She drew back her arm and willed every last shred of her fury and rage and anguish into her muscles. Then she slapped him as hard as she could.

  It worked. His eyes fluttered open and, after a few seconds, he managed to focus on her.

  “Nicola? I told you to go,” he mumbled softly, his voice thick with disorientation.

  “It’s time to stand up now,” she instructed, pulling on his shirt and swallowing the grateful lump that had formed in her throat. They weren’t out of the woods yet. She still had to bring him to the elevator. And pray it worked when she got there.

  He hauled himself to his feet with tremendous effort and a grunt of pain, clutching the wall for purchase once he was upright.

  She wedged herself between his uninjured side and the wall and slid his arm around her shoulders. “I know it hurts, but you have to walk.”

  He looked at her like he could barely see her, but he let go of the wall and began to shuffle forward.

  The hike back to the elevator felt like it took hours. She took as much of his weight as she could, but he was a big, muscular man, and he was heavy. Within minutes her back ached, and it was quickly joined by her quads, calves and feet. The underground pressure made her feel like she was trudging through mud, and as Warren drifted in and out of awareness she found herself half-dragging him for long stretches of the tunnel.

  But he was warm, and he was breathing, she reminded herself whenever she felt like she couldn’t walk another step. He was alive.

  When they turned the corner into the main entrance, the dull gleam of the elevator was a beacon so welcome, Nicola nearly sobbed with relief when she saw it.

  “We’re almost there,” she said soothingly, and guided him through the door into the metal cage. He slumped to the floor. She pulled the grate shut and slapped open the lid of the controls, fearful of what she’d find there.

  But everything looked normal—just as she’d left it. And then it all made sense.

  “That stupid little power outage,” she muttered, pressing the button to take them to the surface. Those few seconds of darkness not long after she’d started down the tunnel. That would’ve been enough to trigger the emergency protocol and divert the elevator back to the ground. With no one in the hoist house, it could only be operated manually, which meant Bronnik and Dassie couldn’t call it up from the surface. They’d been stuck aboveground this whole time.

  With an exasperated sigh she crouched in front of Warren as the elevator creaked into motion and began to hurtle up the shaft. There
was blood everywhere, collecting in a puddle on the metal floor.

  “Just a few more minutes,” she urged, pulling off his hard hat and brushing the hair from his forehead.

  When he opened his eyes they were clear, focused and the exact color of brushed steel. He reached out to cup her face with a bloodied hand, his thumb tracing her cheekbone before he let his arm drop.

  He smiled, and there was finality in it that sent an icy chill down her spine. She had to force herself to smile back. Then he laid his head back against the grate and closed his eyes.

  “Come on, we’re so close. Stay with me,” she pleaded, her voice finally cracking. They were almost to the surface, and from the light beaming overhead she knew Bronnik and Dassie must’ve turned on the floodlights in the mine head. They would be waiting when they arrived. They could help.

  The elevator clanged to a halt and she scrambled to open the door. The area around the shaft was bright with electric lamps, and she heard heavy footfalls running toward them even as she shouted for help.

  Bronnik reached her first, carrying a plastic box she hoped contained medical supplies. He pushed past her without a word and pulled Warren from the elevator, stretching him out on his back on the ground. He felt for a pulse, then ripped open Warren’s shirt.

  Dassie dropped to his knees beside Bronnik, then glanced at Nicola over his shoulder. She stood motionless, suddenly so overwhelmed by exhaustion and stress and worry that she could barely think, let alone speak.

  As Bronnik bent farther over Warren’s limp form, Dassie got to his feet and took her to one side.

  “I did the best I could,” she said told him dumbly.

  He smiled warmly. “You did great.”

  Bronnik was straddling Warren’s legs now, leaning down so far that all she could see were the soles of Warren’s boots sticking out from between Bronnik’s knees.

  “Is he going to be okay?” The words were strangled and desperate, and soon she was racked by the sobs of despair and anxiety she’d been fighting ever since Didier fired that gun.

  “Bronnik’s our field medic. He knows what to do.” Dassie put his arm around her shoulders and turned her away, guiding her toward the office. “Let’s find you a drink of water and a place to sit down.”

  She leaned heavily into his side, tears streaming down her face as she allowed herself to be led out into the beautiful, sunny day.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Nicola stifled a yawn as she reached over and dropped her fourth empty coffee cup into the trash. She’d been sitting at Warren’s bedside in the hospital in Johannesburg for hours now, and she’d gone from having no sense of time to feeling like she could stretch out on the floor and sleep for days.

  Now that she thought about it, she realized she’d probably gone about forty-eight hours without sleep. It was no wonder the last day and a half were such a blur—like an interrupted dream, or a dimly remembered movie.

  There was the seemingly interminable drive to August Town, which she mostly spent twisted around in her seat to watch Bronnik monitor Warren’s pulse and check his bandage as he lay in the back of the Land Cruiser, with Dassie ignoring all the rules of the road in the driver’s seat beside her.

  Then there was August Town, the roads clogged with military vehicles, the sidewalks overflowing with people carrying as many of their possessions as they could, men wearing three layers of suit jackets leading women carrying thick photo albums, their spare hands clutched by children toting backpacks overflowing with books and toys and stuffed animals.

  It was there, at the airfield, that Warren was laid out on the table in the staff break room and treated by a bespectacled doctor who was surprisingly unruffled given the national collapse surrounding them. It was there she found Dan, Cedric and Alex, and it was there she realized they’d completely forgotten about the gold at Hambani, which was still sitting in a locked cabinet in the office, inanimate and uncared-for. And it was there that the Copley Ventures private jet descended like an avenging eagle even before they found out their charter flight was grounded in Dar es Salaam, the imperturbable flight attendant offering their filthy, bloodstained, shell-shocked group aged whiskies and gourmet cheeses as though she was accustomed to serving refugees and their unconscious wounded in the plane’s plush interior.

  As soon as they entered South African airspace Nicola insisted on accompanying Warren to the hospital. She ignored Dan’s suggestion that she leave him in the capable hands of the medical team that met them on arrival and take a few hours to shower and sleep in a hotel. She ignored her boss’s near-constant texts and calls asking her to prepare a statement for the media, and she ignored the repetitive questions of the South African police and the immigration officials and the twenty other people who inexplicably needed her attention as soon as they set foot in the airport.

  Bronnik had gone in the ambulance with Warren, so she turned to Dassie, who was proving to be her greatest ally as he hung by her side during the onslaught of questions from medics, police and staff from Garraway’s Johannesburg office.

  Turning her back on them all, she said, “Please take me to the hospital.”

  He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Let’s go.”

  Ever since Warren had come out of surgery she’d been sitting in the same plastic chair, wearing clothes stiff with blood, getting vague updates from anyone she could convince to speak with her and watching the seconds tick up on the clock on the wall.

  She was debating whether another cup of coffee would wake her up or give her a heart attack when the rustle of sheets snapped her to attention. Warren’s eyelids fluttered. He winced, shifted, then opened his eyes, spending a second or two taking in his surroundings before focusing on her.

  “Warren,” she breathed, gratitude and relief freezing her in place as she sat bolt upright in her chair. He grunted in pain as he tried to drag himself into a sitting position, but she urged him back down with upraised palms.

  “Steady,” she soothed. “You’ve had a hard time.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Johannesburg. How do you feel?”

  “Tired. Numb.” He scrubbed his hand over his eyes. “How did we get here?”

  “We drove to August Town, then took the Copley Ventures plane to Jo’burg. It was super fancy—too bad you missed it.”

  “That’s okay, I needed the sleep.” He managed a wry smile. “What’s the situation in Latadi?”

  “‘Situation’ would be a generous term.”

  “That bad?”

  “The fighting reached August Town just as we left. From the plane we could see fires spreading across the countryside.”

  “I guess our friend Didier got the full-scale revolution he wanted.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.” Her smile was bitter. “I was supposed to have a call with the CEO, but I couldn’t get hold of him. Turns out he’s busy liaising with the Latadi rebel leaders, trying to haggle a new price for peace.” She sighed. “There was so much I wanted to do for Namaza, for Latadi as a whole. In the end I didn’t do a damn thing.”

  “You saved my life,” he reminded her softly. “You did plenty.”

  She shook her head. “You took the bullet intended for me and still disabled a bomb that could’ve killed tens of thousands of people. It’s thanks to you that I’m alive, not the other way around.”

  His expression grew serious. He leaned over and traced the biggest bloodstain on her shirt. “All mine, I hope?”

  “All yours.”

  He took her hand in his. She put her other hand on top, her thumb sweeping over his knuckles above the surgical tape that held an IV in place.

  “Maybe it’s unfair to do this now, when emotions are running high after what we’ve been through.” His grip on her hand tightened, and his gray eyes shone like liquid platinum. “But I have to say it. I love you, Nicola. And I need to kn
ow if you think you could ever love me, too.”

  His face was such a picture of nervous hopefulness that she couldn’t stop the broad, affectionate smile that stretched her cheeks.

  “Do you remember much after you were shot?” she asked gently.

  He shook his head. “Barely anything. Why, what happened?”

  “Well, I slapped you. Hard.”

  He nodded warily. “Okay.”

  “I called you stupid, and stubborn. And then I told you I loved you.”

  He blinked, eyes wide with disbelief. “You did?”

  She squeezed his hand as she bit back an unexpected lump in her throat. “Of course, and I’ll say it again. I love you. I’ve never felt like this about anyone, and I’ll do whatever it takes for us to be together.”

  “So will I,” he pledged. “Anything you want. Anything at all.”

  “I want you to lie down and rest.” She scooted forward to touch his cheek. “But first, I want you to kiss me.”

  True to his word, he did. And as his lips found hers, she realized that although she’d devoted her career to looking for precious things buried miles under the earth, the most precious one of all was right here, living and breathing.

  At last, her search was over. She’d hit pay dirt.

  Epilogue

  Warren swore under his breath as his high-end sports car bounced over another rut in the dirt road that led out to the farm near Swellendam, deep in the Western Cape.

  “I told you we should’ve taken my car,” Nicola reminded him cheerfully.

  “And I told you, I’m not turning up to Bronnik’s wedding in a hybrid,” he growled in response.

  She rolled her eyes and leaned back in her seat, basking in the brilliant summer sunshine that beamed through the open window.

  The last six months had been some of the best of her life. As soon as Warren was well enough they’d flown to Cape Town, where she’d promptly moved into his stunning, ocean-side penthouse. She declined the massive promotion Garraway offered her, but she did accept the enormous sum they called a “departure bonus”, which she knew full well was hush money to keep the true story behind the events at Hambani out of the press. Thanks to the combination of Garraway’s check, her little black book and countless meetings with Warren’s sister, Laura, she had launched her own consulting business, advising mining companies on how to incorporate ethical practices and social responsibility into their operations without sacrificing the bottom line. She still only had a few clients, but the feedback had been positive and every month was a little busier than the last.