Hung

by Holly Hart

  "We close to something?" I grunt, trying to take my mind off the pain rampaging its way through my leg. If I'd known I was going to spend my evening chasing after bad guys in the middle of the desert, I'd probably have picked up some painkillers – hell, even a bottle of water would do. In fact, painful as my leg is, water's the thing we're going to need sooner rather than later.

  Jake's ears are pinned back and narrowed to pinpricks. He's definitely got something. He raises his head to the air, cocking it to one side and taking a gusty sniff. I don't move, allowing the bike's engine to turn over – but no more, not wanting anything to get in my trusty partner's way.

  When he acts like this, we're usually close.

  He sniffs once, then twice more, and then turns his head back to me and growls almost imperceptibly, so quietly that I can barely hear the sound over the gentle chugging of the dirt bike's engine. The thought strikes me that if I can barely hear Jake over the sound of the bike, then what else might I be missing? And what if whatever I’m missing is the same thing that might end up killing me? Killing us.

  I look down at the handlebars, searching for the switch that will kill the engine, and press it without hesitating. I swing my legs over the saddle, hissing in pain as my foot jars against the ground and sends a signal of pain running through my body. I clench my teeth, ignoring it – it doesn't matter, not right now.

  I pat the rifle slung over my shoulder, running my hand over the battered metal and wood AK-47 and caressing its contours. It might not be the prettiest of weapons, but it's sure as hell reliable – and that's all I care about right now. I swing it around so that the heft is sitting neatly in the crook of my shoulder. I feel more comfortable now that whatever's on the other side of the hillock we're facing, I'll be able to handle it.

  I whistle quietly, under my breath, and Jake obediently pads over. I reach down and scratch him behind the ears, and he presses his head against my good leg, rubbing against me affectionately. "Ready, boy?" I ask, already knowing the answer. Still, I'm surprised when he growls quietly. Perhaps ‘growls’ isn't the right word – it's more of a purr, feline and comfortable.

  I pat him jovially on his side. "Well as long as you're happy…"

  I trail just behind Jake, just like we've practiced a hundred times. His haunches are low to the ground, and in fact, he does look incredibly feline right now – like he's stalking his prey. In a way, I suppose, he is.

  We creep over the small hillock in front of us, both well aware that we're about to encounter whatever Jake's smelled – and that it could be an encounter that neither of us will survive. Still, I grit my teeth and march forward, ignoring the tendrils of fear eating away at my courage and recognizing them for what they are – just weakness, and focus on my only goal, the thing that's driving me forward – saving Katie.

  I hunch over into a crouch as we reach the crest of the small hill amidst the rolling landscape of the valley, making sure that I'm as small as can be, in case I'm about to become a target. Jake does, too, though for him it looks a hell of a lot more elegant, and more natural – after all, there's a whole yoga position named after it: downward facing dog.

  He races forward like a greyhound being released from the blocks.

  "What the hell are you doing, Jake?" I hiss quietly.

  Fuck it, I think to myself – I've followed the little pooch into worse situations before, may as well do it again. Still, at least back then I didn't have a bullet wound in my leg…

  I head into the distance, following Jake in a crouching half run, half shuffle, my legs screaming out to me every step of the way, and my brain filling in for those brief moments when my leg hasn't yet hit the ground – telling me to stop, telling me it's too dangerous, telling me to go back.

  It doesn't, I notice, have the good grace to apologize to me when, slightly unexpectedly, I see Jake standing next to an abandoned dirt bike next to a bubbling stream. All of that stress, all of that turmoil – for nothing. Still, I'll take not getting shot at over the alternative any day of the week.

  "Good boy," I say with a noticeable hint of relief in my voice, "but give me some warning next time, yeah?" He looks at me happily. "Alright, alright – you did a good job. But don't give me a scare like that again, okay?"

  I close the last few yards separating the bike and me, elated that we've found a trace of Katie, but terrified – because I’m suddenly, uncomfortably aware that now the real chase begins…

  Chapter Nineteen - Katie

  Ripping the back of my hand open against the sharp, jagged metal of the dirt bike's punctured fuel tank wasn't the hard bit.

  No, the hard bit is deliberately scraping the bleeding wound against a rock every twenty minutes to reopen it and keep the blood flowing. And the hard bit is doing it over and over again in the vain hope that Mike's coming for me.

  After all, what if he's not, and all of this is for nothing? What if I'm just making my last moments on this earth more painful and more miserable than they need to be?

  I shake my head, forcing myself to snap out of that destructive spiral of negative emotion. I can't think like that. If I do, then I may as well fall to my knees and invite my kidnapper to kill me right here. No, I can't give up hope. And truthfully, I don’t believe for one second that a man like Mike wouldn’t come looking for me, not just to save me – but to protect our child.

  He promised.

  "Faster," he calls maliciously in his heavily accented English over his shoulder. I pick up the pace fractionally, deliberately dragging my feet against the ground to give off the impression that I'm exhausted and that I'm far weaker than I really am. It's believable; after all, we've been walking for two hours through the craggy, upright boulder fields of the Afghan mountains, and he might well think that I'm helpless – a woman brought over to help cook and clean for the male soldiers. That would certainly fit with ISIS's propaganda – the way captured women are sold into sex slavery as though they are somehow property.

  The thought sickens me, and I try to put it out of my mind by concentrating on the things that I can control – or if not control, then at least affect. I know that my kidnapper's wrong on at least one front. I might be a woman, but I know how fit I am. My early morning jogging around the base fencing to keep in shape for the endless sprints towards the hospital when my buzzer goes off to indicate another inbound casualty has left me as lean and as fit as I've ever been.

  Not that he needs to know.

  I pretend to trip on something and fall to the ground theatrically, wiping my bleeding hand against a small, oddly horseshoe shaped rock to my left hand side. It's low enough to the ground that Jake will have no problem smelling it.

  If he's coming, that is.

  If not, then this is all for nothing.

  "Get up," I hear him shout from behind me, forcefully grabbing me by the scruff of my neck and pulling me to my feet. I don't min, because I accomplished my goal – there's another smear of blood, another crumb for Jake to follow.

  "Keep moving," my kidnapper barks, prodding me painfully in the kidneys. I wince, quickly pull a hand to my back and sigh with pain. It did hurt, but this is all an act – all part of the illusion that's allowing me to move at only half the pace I know we could be. If Mike's going to catch up with me, then he's going to need all the help I can give him.

  I know he's coming. I don't know how I know, but I do. It's the only thing keeping me going, like a thread of strength running through my mind – not enough for me to hold on to, but enough to guide me and to keep me going.

  He's going to save me. I'm going to feel his arms close around me again, I'm going to feel him kiss me again, feel his short stubble graze my skin, raise a child with him, feel…

  I shake my head again, not allowing myself to drift off into that particular fantasy. Not now. There will be plenty of time for that when I'm back to safety.

  But at the same time, I can feel myself getting weaker. There's not enough blood coming out of my hand to significantly s
low me down, but after six long months of hard work, a crap night's sleep interrupted by a freaking kidnapping, and three hours trekking behind this lunatic, fit as I might be – I know I can't keep it up forever.

  I begin to trail behind him, losing half a yard for every ten of his paces – not quickly enough for him to get suspicious, at least I hope not. My mind's spinning in overdrive, working out all the different angles. By now, if he's coming, Mike must be close. If he's not, then I've got to take matters into my own hands either way. And either way, what I need to do ends up being the same.

  I need to make a break for it.

  We keep walking at the same pace down the rocky valley floor for another two or three minutes, my kidnapper swinging his rifle from side to side jumpily, twitching at unseen and imagined threats all over the place.

  Is this a good idea? He might shoot me before I can get away…

  If he does, then he does. It doesn't change what I need to do – and part of me hopes that his finger will hesitate on the trigger. After all, he went to a lot of trouble to take a hostage, and it's more than likely he won't want to damage his investment.

  At least, I hope it is.

  I look to my left, and then my right, looking for any tiny, fractional advantage. It's almost dawn, and the first tendrils of light are beginning to creep over the horizon, a copper colored, burnished hue eating at the clouds. It's enough light for me to make out more than just dark outlines in the sides of the valley that reach up into the sky to either side of me.

  And then I see them – cave openings speckled into the sides of the cliffs, about fifty yards away – fifty yards of hard, boulder-strewn terrain. Traversing it certainly won't be easy – or quick. It's still too dark for me to get any real sense of how deep they are, or if they really are caves, not just collapsed holes in the rock, but they might be my only chance.

  The hairs at the nape of my neck stand up of their own accord, my body preparing itself for flight. All the adrenaline my body has to spare is suddenly dumped into my bloodstream, and that makes my mind up for me – whether normal Katie would have approved or not, I'll never know.

  I stop, check that my captor hasn't noticed my sudden change of pace and direction, and then begin to creep leftwards, to the nearest cave. I keep a wary eye out for any change in my kidnapper's movements – thinking to myself that if he himself was keeping up such a vigilant watch, then my escape attempt wouldn't have been possible. Thankfully, he isn't.

  I make it ten yards, creeping along the ground so slowly and quietly that I'm barely making a sound, carefully scoping out every single footstep so that I don't dislodge a rock or send some gravel skittering down the slope. I'm well aware that any sound that I make is going to attract his attention – and once he realizes what I'm doing, then it's going to be a foot race between me and his bullets.

  It's not a race I'm likely to win.

  Eleven yards.

  Twelve.

  There's a boulder about twenty yards ahead of me, six-foot tall and three-foot wide. I make a note of it, knowing that it'll make a good hiding place if the shit hits the fan.

  Thirteen yards.

  Fourteen.

  I feel a sense of hope growing in my chest, a sense that I haven't had – not this strong, anyway, since I was snatched from the base. If I can just make it thirty more yards without him noticing, then that should buy Mike – or whoever's coming after me – every minute they need to save me. If my kidnapper, whatever his name is, has to search the whole valley cave by cave to find me, then he doesn't have a chance – the valley's littered with them.

  But hope's a fickle thing.

  Fifteen yards.

  Sixteen.

  No sooner than it starts to kindle, it can be snatched away. I set my foot down on a round, mound-like stone, and it seems so large and firmly indented into the floor of the valley that I don't feel the need to test it properly. Fatal error.

  As I put my foot down on top of it and it takes my full weight, it sinks into the ground and starts a chain reaction. For some reason, a dozen stones around it aren't properly sat into the earth, and each one settles with a quiet – and some not so quiet – click as they hit the ground. I freeze, turning my head and hoping beyond all reasonable hope that the sound hasn't attracted my lunatic kidnapper's attention.

  No such luck.

  I start sprinting, hoping that he won't turn around, hoping that he's so caught up in his own paranoia as he swings his rifle back and forth that he won't notice, but I should have known that that was too much to hope for. He freezes, and then he turns. For a brief second we hold eye contact, both as surprised as each other.

  "Stop!"

  "Come back!"

  I don't listen for any more of his shouts; my body just decides that flight's the best response. I trust in my reflexes, honed after months and months of running around the uneven terrain of Bagram Air Force Base, dodging loose chunks of concrete from abandoned building projects and soft, sandy soil in forgotten areas. Just like earlier, everything goes silent around me except the overbearing sound of blood rushing in my ears.

  I'm glad of it; it takes my mind off what's going on behind me.

  I'm running, jumping off boulders, eating up yards at a time, and I'm just beginning to think I'll make it when the first hot flakes of stone start bouncing off my bare arms.

  Shit.

  I chance a glance over my shoulder to confirm what I already know – he's shooting at me. Luckily for me, he doesn't appear to be a particularly good shot – he's doing that typical movie move of holding his rifle by his hip and spraying bullets around.

  On the other hand, unluckily for me, he doesn't seem to be holding back. Any of these bullets might end up hitting me – probably more by luck than design – and he doesn't seem to care.

  Shit.

  My eyes search desperately around me for a hiding place, and then it hits me – the boulder I noticed earlier, it's perfect. I sprint for it, more flakes of stone bouncing off rocks all around me as bullets impact them unceasingly. Suddenly they stop, and I assume he must have paused to reload, and I take the opportunity to throw myself behind the huge outcropping of rock.

  I'm safe for now, but for how much longer? If I leave the safety of the rock, then he'll shoot me, and if I stay here – he'll hunt me down.

  Dammit, Mike, I need you.

  Chapter Twenty - Katie

  I don’t want to die.

  It's in that exact moment, when I'm floundering on the very edge of total, utter, abject despair, I see something that surprises me so much that I can't help but blink.

  And then again.

  If I'm not very much mistaken, I can see Jake's dark brown, mottled fur pressed low to the ground and moving quickly through the valley floor. The only reason I can see him at all is that I'm slightly higher, following my helter-skelter attempt at escape, than my pursuer – and by now I know this dog pretty well.

  Still, the sight's so unexpected that, if there wasn't some deranged maniac shooting at me, I'd want to rub my eyes in astonishment. He's about fifty yards away and covering about a yard second – fast, but slow enough to remain stealthy. But at this rate, it won't be quick enough, or at least that's what my brain starts to convince me as the bullets keep impacting against the outcropping of rock that I'm sheltering behind.

  My assailant's gun goes quiet, and I weigh up the pros and cons of making a break for it in my head.

  Is this just a trick? Is he pretending to reload just so he can shoot me when I start running?

  I have absolutely no idea what to do. I've never been trained how to react in a scenario like this. Sure, I can spark a patient's heart back to life, or deal with any one of a hundred unbelievably stressful situations on my home turf – the hospital – but out here I'm effectively useless. Jake passes out of my line of sight, and even though it's completely irrational – after all, he can't help me if he's in the wrong place – my heart sinks as though my body is preparing for its eventual demise
.

  "Shit, help me, Mike,” I squeal, head between my knees to protect myself from the unceasing assault of bullet-propelled stone chips flying off the craggy cliff wall.

  "Did you say something?" I hear a hissed whisper reply. Just like with Jake, I can't help but stupidly blink at the unexpected sound and whip my head out from between my legs, casting around desperately for the source of the sound.

  "Who's there?" I whisper in reply, keeping my voice low – mindful of the fact that I don't want to ruin any advantage of surprise that I might now have over my kidnapper.

  "Who the hell do you think?" comes Mike's baritone, humorous whisper in reply. "Ain't no one else hiking up into these hills to save your pretty little ass…"