Hung

by Holly Hart

  Try as I might, I have absolutely no idea where his voice is coming from. It sounds like it's close, but from my limited vantage point, it’s completely unclear.

  "Where are you?" I reply, elated. For the first time, I allow myself to begin to think that I might get out of this alive. "How did you follow me, how did you find me?"

  "Later," Mike's professional voice replies, "but now I need you to do something for me…"

  "Anything," comes my confident response. It's true, I really would follow this man into the abyss. And Mike's a whole hell of a lot more experienced in this type of scenario than I could ever hope to be…

  "In about fifteen seconds, the gunman is going to be completely distracted. As soon as he is, I'll shout, and I want you to run for the hills – got it?"

  "How do you –?"

  "No questions," Mike says curtly. "Just as I say – do you understand?"

  "Yes," I agree, submitting to his superior judgement in this kind of situation.

  Still, how the hell does he know that that Taliban piece of shit is going to be distracted?

  When Mike's shouted "Now!" comes, everything slots into place, and I hear a short, sustained period of aggressive growling, followed by a loud thump, almost as though Jake has launched himself bodily into my attacker. But I don't have time to puzzle it through any further, because I know I need to do what Mike told me – so I start running.

  I reach a cave and press myself into the floor, my clothes suddenly soaking wet from the puddle of rainwater I've somehow found myself in. The valley below has gone ominously silent. My stomach begins to knot.

  What the hell is going on? Is Mike alive? Is Jake?

  A few more seconds of utter silence prevails in the valley, but I don't dare lift my head off the ground now that I've found a place of safety. And then I hear it – couldn't miss it.

  A single, solitary gunshot echoes around the valley, bouncing off the hard, rocky walls, and finally disappears into the ether. A dozen startled birds cast off from inside my cave, squawking loudly in their astonishment, but I still don't look up, too terrified to open my eyes for the fear of what unpleasant truth might be revealed.

  A dozen long seconds or maybe more passes like this, with me sticking my head in the ground like an ostrich, but finally I realize that whatever's happened, I'm going to have to face up to it – because I can't spend my whole life hiding in this cave.

  And then I hear something that changes everything.

  "Katie? Are you okay?"

  I can barely speak – my throat's all clammed up with grateful emotion as I realize that Mike's alive, and that I won't have to raise his child alone.

  "I'm up here," I call, shouting down to the lover who's just saved my life. He closes the distance in a matter of seconds, seeming to ignore the pain emanating from his leg, even though through my trained eyes, I can see precisely how much pain it's causing him.

  You stupid man. You stupid, beautiful man – you shouldn't have come after me. And I'm glad you did…

  His face is wrought with worry and strain as he reaches me, and when he does, for a few seconds he just clings to me in a huge, powerful bear hug that envelops my shoulders and squeezes me against his thick, muscular chest.

  “Are you okay?" he asks, his voice thick with concern. "I'm sorry for being brusque with you just then –"

  I cut him off. "You're sorry?" I ask in disbelief. "Mike – you just saved my life, and you're worried about whether you were a bit too rude to me in the process?"

  "I guess so…"

  "Trust me, Mike – you've got nothing to be worried about."

  I reach up with my mouth and plant a long, passionate kiss on his lips, gently teasing his with my tongue, and sliding my hands into the back pockets of his military fatigues, squeezing his ass possessively.

  "But you're okay?" he asks, returning right to the heart of his concern. "Katie, I can't believe I let them take you. Please, tell me nothing happened to you out here?"

  "You've got nothing to worry about, Mike, I'm fine," I say reassuringly.

  "And our…" Mike trails off, looking awkward.

  "Our child?" I reply, chuckling lightly. "I'm sure it's fine, too – but there's a couple of months yet before it's more than a tiny ball of cells. I'm sure it's fine."

  "We need to get you back as soon as possible," Mike decides, beginning to bustle about, "and get you checked out. I'd never forgive myself if something happens to you."

  "Trust me, Mike, I'm fine. But please, please – just take me home…”

  Chapter Twenty One - Mike

  "Can’t be far to go now," Katie says with a happy, relieved smile on her face, and I can't help but admire how calm and strong it sounds after the ordeal she's just been through. More than that, I can't help but be amazed that she's still going after everything she's experienced – and more than that, the fact that she's dragging me along with her is frankly amazing.

  I kick out at a stone, pissed that the dirt bike ran out of gas so close to safety, and immediately wish I hadn't as a whole host of damaged nerve endings squeal with displeasure.

  "What are you doing?" Katie asks, a stern look on her face. "You'll rip your stitches doing something stupid like that!"

  My lips are drawn tightly together in a hard line of pain that extends across my face, bisected by two throbbing veins popping out of my temples as my body reacts to yet another painful insult.

  "No kidding," I gasp while biting down on the side of my lip to try and hide the extent of my pain from her. "I think that happened some time ago…"

  "Want me to take a look at it?" Katie asks, getting straight to business with a concerned look chasing away the displeased expression that had so recently graced her gorgeous face. Of course, the pain in my leg doesn't just disappear – but I'd be lying if I said that it doesn't feel just a little bit better after seeing her react with such immediate concern.

  "Don't worry about it," I say, putting a brave face on the situation. "I think if I stop moving right now things are just going to go from bad to worse. Like you said, we aren't far from Bagram – reckon it'll be okay to wait?"

  The dubious, wrinkled look of doubt plastered on Katie's face indicates that she couldn't disagree with my review of the situation any more if she tried.

  "Do you know how stupid you are?" she asks me, her voice finally quavering with emotion.

  "What are you talking about?" I reply, a little bit surprised at the vehemence in her tone.

  "I'm talking about you coming after me," she says, staring me directly in the eyes. "You know how stupid that was?"

  "Stupid?" I reply with a shit eating grin on my face – exactly the kind of smile

  I learned to stick on my face when a corporal at boot camp was shouting at me for doing exactly what they asked, but half a second too late, or a second too early.

  "Yes," she replies firmly, making me realize that I'm not going to get away with things that easily. "You could have been killed, you know that? And then where would we be?"

  We?

  "I think you're being a little bit dramatic, aren't you?" I reply, ducking her gaze. "I mean – that guy couldn't shoot for shit…"

  "No, actually I don't think I am," she says. "First of all," she continues – lifting her hand and stretching out her fingers as though she’s about to start counting off a list of my failings, "how could you possibly have known how good a shot he was?"

  "I took an educated guess; the Taliban aren't exactly known for spending much time on the firing ranges –"

  "Second," she says stretching out another finger, "how stupid do you have to be to think that you – with all your injuries – were the only person who could have saved me?"

  "Well," I say – a little bit affronted after all the hard work I've been through to get her back, "I wasn't exactly wrong about that, was I?"

  She cuts me off again.

  "I don't care how right you turned out to be, how do you think I would feel if you'd gone and go
t yourself killed chasing me down?"

  I feel myself getting slightly worked up – not angry, but definitely a little bit defensive. "And how do you think I would feel if you had been killed by that, that," I reply hotly, struggling to find exactly the right word to convey exactly how terrified I'd been for her safety.

  "Monster?" she replies softly, a slight tear coming to her eye.

  Immediately, I feel all of the stress and all the tension draining from my body, only to be replaced by an overwhelming feeling of sadness and sympathy for the poor, sweet girl limping along next to me with her arm slung over my shoulder – not for her support, but mine.

  "I'm sorry," I say, squeezing her shoulders, "I didn't mean to remind you of everything you've been through – it's bad enough that it happened once. I shouldn't be putting you through those memories over and over again… But I couldn’t not have come after you, for you, and our child."

  "No," she says with a hint of stiffness creeping into her voice that makes me think that perhaps I've offended her. She quickly dissuades me from that notion. "I should apologize – I shouldn't be getting on your case for coming and saving me – even if I do think you should have waited around for the army to do their job…"

  "What are you talking about?" I say with a grin. "I am the army! Hell – I’m better, I’m Delta."

  "No, Mike," she says with a smile finally creeping onto her exhausted face, "you're in the army – there's a big difference!"

  "Tomato, tomato," I reply with a cheeky smile on my face.

  "How long do you reckon it'll take before we get back to base?" she asks. "I'm serious about your leg – if we don't get someone to look at that pretty soon, I'm worried about sepsis setting in. And believe me, you don't want that."

  "Sepsis?" I ask, pretty sure I've heard the term before – probably at some interminably long training seminar back in the States before we deployed. "What's that?"

  "Blood poisoning," she says – fixing me with a stare that leaves me in absolutely no doubt that she's serious about what she's saying, "from an infection in your leg."

  "I don't think it's infected –"

  "Who's the nurse, Mike?" she says. "Trust me – if you've been trekking around this desert after me for the last twenty-four hours, then that leg is definitely going to be infected. How long til we're back – I want to get you hooked up to an IV immediately."

  I cock my head, trying to guesstimate how far we've got to travel before we make it back, when a sound in the distance catches my attention.

  "A couple of kilometers," I say – distracted, "about a mile and a half," I clarify – remembering that Katie hasn't been through basic training and therefore been brainwashed into the military's use of the metric system like me. But I can't get my mind off the mechanical sound in the distance – my brain is working in overdrive, trying to figure out whether the sound might be a threat. Could it be the Taliban, chasing us down? I hadn't exactly been subtle when I found Katie, after all…

  "What are you looking at?" Katie says, her eyes following the direction of my gaze.

  "Quick, come with me," I begin to say, but before I get the chance to finish, two sand camouflaged vehicles speed around a rocky crag, machine guns pointing straight at us. My gun arm raises in an automatic, reflex reaction, and though my ears vaguely recognize Katie's worried squeal, my brain flicks straight back to fight or flight mode – but this time, not only is my leg cut to shreds, but I've got someone, no – two someones – to protect – so it immediately discards the ‘flight’ option.

  The rifle nestles comfortingly in my shoulder, and the hard, unyielding wood of the heavy stock feels like it was always destined to rest there. I lay my cheek against the smooth, varnished surface and a part of my brain – somehow strangely disconnected from the urgency of my situation – appreciates the fact that I managed to pick up an old AK-47, one whose wooden frame has been worn down over many years of careful handling. The wood nestling against my face is almost soft – somehow made supple by generations of hard mountain fighters gently, almost religiously, oiling the weapon of death that might one day save their life.

  Or not, as it turned out.

  I can hear shouts in the distance, but the individual words are lost in the din and ruckus of the heavy armored vehicles racing towards me, kicking up huge clouds of dust behind them.

  "Get down on the ground!" shouts a voice through a loudspeaker, and I realize in shock that the voice is, undeniably, English – and more than that, it's got an American accent.

  "What's going on, Mike?" Katie shouts into my ear. "Why are they pointing guns at us?"

  "Don't worry, just stand by me – okay?" I say tersely, keeping my hand on her shoulder so that I know where she is. If, God forbid, this descends into a gunfight – the last thing I want is for her somehow to get caught in the crossfire. I don't know if I'd be able to survive the guilt – or the grief.

  As the vehicles close the last hundred yards between us, I realize that they’re Humvees, which confirms my suspicion – it's definitely the army. What's not clear, though, is why they're pointing weapons at us. After all, Katie's in her medical scrubs, and I'm, more or less, in uniform.

  I don't let my rifle slip from my grasp, just keep staring down the iron sights, my target picked out – my aim true. I wouldn't kill an American soldier – but if it meant saving Katie's life and protecting my future child – if I was really pushed to it, pushed right up to the limit – I might fire off a warning round. Though, truthfully, I probably wouldn't – there's no better way to get cut to shreds by a hail of incoming gunfire than by shooting at an American military convoy…

  I feel Katie's body pressed against my back, hugging me from behind, and I don't know whether my brain is tricking me or whether my nerves are hypersensitive because of all the adrenaline flooding my system, but I swear that I can feel the blood rushing through her veins at a thousand miles an hour, her heart beating three times as fast as normal in fear.

  "Sergeant, put your weapon down immediately or we will open fire. I repeat, we will open fire."

  Sergeant? That means they know who I am – who we are. What the hell is going on?

  I'm just about to reply when the choice gets taken out of my hands. Not by the men pointing guns at me, who are terrifying enough, but by the beautiful woman who only moments before was cowering behind me in fear.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she says, coming out from where she was hiding and striding over towards the two armored vehicles, the anger clear in her voice as she raises it over the chugging of their engines. "Who's in charge here?" she demands.

  "Uh, Katie –" I say, not wanting her to kick the hornet's nest. Ever so slightly, she turns her head to me, and even in that small motion, I can see the anger visibly radiating from her body, which is tense and coiled with emotion. I decide, sensibly, to stay out of the way. She's like a guided missile, and the last thing I want is to become her target…

  "I said, who's in charge?"

  I can see the surprise, confusion and indecision written on the faces of the armed and helmeted men aiming their weapons out of the windows of the Humvee. I can't imagine what I would think if I was in their place – it's not often that a one hundred pound scrap of nothing like Katie stands up to the men in their position. The image of an angry Chihuahua barking at a car briefly crosses my mind, and I can't help but smile. The soldier nearest me seems to notice, and realizing how confused he must be by the whole experience, I broaden my grin.

  I'm not sure how this is going to end, but I'm more than happy for Katie to deal with it…

  Chapter Twenty Two - Katie

  "Uh, miss, I'm going to have to ask you to back away from the vehicle," a man says to me, his eyes hidden by the wraparound reflective Oakley sunglasses he's wearing. Combined with his helmet, body armor and dented black metal rifle, he looks like some kind of android.

  I don't listen to him. I can feel the blood pounding in my ears and I've never felt this outr
aged in my entire life.

  "Or what? Are you going to shoot me, soldier?" I ask, wrinkling my upper lip with distaste to convey quite how doubtful I feel that he'll choose that course of action.

  "Miss, you're going to have to back up –"

  "Are you going to shoot me?" I ask, walking even closer towards him, instead of listening to his instructions and backing away. "Where were you when I was kidnapped, hey? Shouldn't you be taking me back to base, not shoving a weapon in my face?"

  "I don't know anything about that, but I'm going to need you to step away from the vehicle," he says, his face wrought with indecision. Inside the Humvee, I can hear a radio squawking away, and it sounds like half a dozen commanders are screaming down the radio trying to get a sit-rep – information about what's going on.