by Low, Gennita
The adult said something sharply at him but the boy was obstinate, repeating his phrase.
“Sorry! We go now!” The man backed away.
Lucas frowned. “Hey, wait. What language did you just speak?”
The man just shook his head, while continuing to back away. “We mean no harm. We are from small tribe and my son, he is too friendly with soldiers.” He paused, looking behind Lucas. “But you better go fast. It’s not safe for you and the woman. Taliban behind us.”
The boy started struggling. “Taliban! Bang! Bang! Me-rikan dead!”
“Wait! Why does he keep saying Me-rikan dead?”
The man shook his head again. “He’s a boy. Nonsense, you know? Go now. We all have to go!” Then he added in Pashto, “God be with you.”
As the man hurried back to the waiting truck, the boy looked over his father’s shoulder and pointed his “gun” at him again. His green eyes were fierce.
“Bang! Bang! Taliban! Forty-mike-mike! Me-rikan dead!” He covered both his ears as if he was hearing something, then shouted back in perfect American English, as if he’d heard the phrase hundreds of times, “You tell Me-rikan, ack-ack, bang bang!”
Lucas stiffened. What the—Those were military slang words! “Hey! Hey!” He yelled.
The man turned his head and spat. His expression was just as fierce as the child. His English came out in staccato notes. “You stay away! Go back to your friends! Taliban coming, you understand? You cannot save my son. Get lost! Bastard!”
The man threw his son into the arms of a waiting woman in the back of the truck and hauled himself up. Seeing the boy starting his struggles afresh, Lucas kept coming after them. The woman was talking in a stream of urgent sentences to the child, her tone full of admonishment. The truck started rumbling off again. The little boy shook his head and looked back at Lucas, his expression obstinate and determined.
“Tell Meri-kan! Ninety-nine! Incoming! Incoming! Boom! Ack-Ack! Alpha Mike Foxtrot! Ack-ack! Seventy-Fiff!”
Unable to catch up, Lucas stood there listening as the sound of the boy’s voice became further and further away, still shouting military terms over and over at him. “Incoming! FPF! Tell Meri-kan! MIA! The Unit! Seventy-Fiff! FPF! FPF! Where in world is Raven? The Unit!”
He cursed out aloud in frustration. He should have been able to catch up with that fucking truck. That kid was trying to tell him something, he was sure of that. He impatiently wiped off the sweat dripping into his eyes with his sleeve. Fucking damn it. He couldn’t even keep up with a fucking—
“Lucas!”
He took deep breath. He’d forgotten Kit was all by herself. Cursing again, he turned around and strode back to her.
“You were supposed to be in hiding,” he said shortly.
“I was but I came out when I saw the kid,” Kit said. She frowned. “Why are you so angry?”
“Because it could have been a kid with a weapon. Or an explosive device. You have to listen to orders, Kit!”
“I was listening to orders. I only came out when I was quite sure he wasn’t going to blow you up.”
Lucas continued shouting, “That man coming over could have started shooting. Anything could have happened. The people in the vehicle—”
“I assessed the situation before I came out from behind the bush,” Kit cut in, very quietly. “And you’re still shouting at me. Stop it. Why the hell are you so angry?”
“Because the kid was trying to tell me something and I can’t…catch…a damn truck.” Lucas leaned forward, putting his hands on his thighs. “I’m fucking out of breath. What the hell—I’m fucking out. Of. Breath.”
“Lucas? Lucas!”
*
Kit ran to Lucas when he fell on his hands and knees. She watched in horror as he started retching.
“Lucas!”
“I’m okay. Turn around. Don’t loo—” The rest of his words were expurgated in a series of horrible retching noises.
She ignored his hand trying to push her away and squatted down beside him. His face had a greenish hue. He thumped a fist against his chest, as if he needed to dislodge something. Then he leaned further forward and vomited.
Ugh. Kit had to look away for a moment. She stood up to take off and unzip her back pack, pulling out a bottle of water. Unscrewing the cap, she put it in front of his face. He snatched it from her and put his lips on the mouth, sucking down the liquid like a man dying of thirst.
“Slow down! You’ll puke it all out again!” Kit punched the muscular arm to get his attention. “Slow down!”
His head was tilted back, exposing his brown throat, and she noticed for the first time he was perspiring profusely. Even his hair looked damp. Something was definitely wrong.
When he was done with the bottle, it fell to the ground. He leaned forward, putting his hands back on the ground. His eyes were closed. He was still panting, his breathing erratic.
“Lucas?” She squatted down again. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m okay,” he said again. Then determinedly, he repeated, “I’m okay.”
“Fuck your okay shit, Lucas Branson. You just vomited a pile of yellow blob in front of me. You tell me what’s wrong with you right now or I’ll kick your ass all the way down this mountain.”
Her threat brought a tiny lift to his lips. He took a few deep breaths. “Let’s get off the road first.” He slowly stood up, as if assessing his condition. “Behind that bush again, Kit. I don’t think those people were speeding away from us.”
She nodded. “Come on.” She slipped under his armpit. “You’re swaying, so don’t say you’re okay. Lean on me. Walk!”
“I’m not leaning on you,” he said firmly, unhooking his arm from around her shoulders. “I can walk to that bush. No problem.”
Frustrated, she let him do it. She had had plenty of experience with macho males who refused to admit they needed help. When her father broke his leg, he’d acted exactly the same way. She watched as he carefully made his way to the nearby shrub, his gait stiff and measured.
“Yeah, sure you can, Frankenstein,” she muttered.
She made a face at the puddle of puke on the ground before following Lucas to the small area behind the shrub. With the heat coming on, it was good to be in the shade. She was worried at how much Lucas was perspiring. At this rate, he was going to be dehydrated in no time.
“I want you to drink more water,” she told him, crisply, as she rummaged in her backpack. “Here’s some mouthwash too, if you want to gargle.”
“I don’t need—”
He stopped in mid-sentence when she spun around and glared at him. Eyes narrowing, he took the mouthwash, obediently gargled and spat to one side. When she continued to stare him down, he took the small bottle of water and took a swallow from it.
“You aren’t well. I don’t want to hear your protests. Your face tells it all, mister,” she said, keeping her voice as matter-of-fact as possible. “So, we have to come up with a plan.”
He growled something back under his breath. His face told her it was probably something with some curses and he just didn’t want her to hear the words.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Me scared of Big Baby. We’ll rest five. You tell me what you’re feeling or I won’t budge for ten minutes.”
“I’d rather talk about that boy and that truck. They’re running from someone and we need to prepare for those people coming behind them.”
She nodded. She understood what he was implying but nothing was going to matter if he couldn’t walk straight, much less defend them from any coming danger. “That too. But first things first. Come on, time’s a-wasting.”
He gave a grunt of frustration. “I must have eaten something bad this morning,” he said and gave a shrug. “When you travel as much as I do, the tummy often doesn’t agree with the food.”
Kit frowned. “If you have food poisoning, then you’re going to be weak and dehydrated. You’re also perspiring a lot.”
&nbs
p; Lucas impatiently wiped his forehead and studied the wet patch on his sleeve. “Yeah,” he said, sounding surprised. “I’ll keep drinking liquids, okay? But right now, if those people are really being chased by Taliban insurgents, we have trouble ahead. They’re going to see our van and if they stop to investigate and see any signs that we weren’t captured, they might decide to backtrack to look for us.”
“I took everything of value I could think of,” she told him. “Passports, licenses, the tablets, cash, weapons—”
Lucas shook his head. “Weapons! Why are they in the damned bag? We need them where we can easily access them.”
“Relax, babe, they’re in my backpack side pocket. See?” She showed him. “They aren’t powerful toys like yours but they’ll have to do.”
She handed the 9mm to him. He checked it and then gave it back to her. “I’m assuming you know how to use it,” he said.
She nodded. “Pretty good, but only target shooting.”
“Okay, but in a firefight, there is no controlled environment. They’re shooting back at you, so you won’t be thinking calmly about which part of your target to aim. Got that?”
She nodded again. It seemed so strange to be calmly having a conversation about shooting someone. “Are we…really…going to be in a firefight?”
He touched her lower lip with his forefinger and smiled. “In spite of your Wonder Woman status, I’m hoping to avoid that. I have my .45,” he said, “but ammo is low. If there is a firefight, we’re toast. All we can do is be prepared. The first thing is not to walk down the road until they pass us. Damn it, I wish we had some way to get hold of my team.”
“What do you think they’re doing now?” She asked.
“Hawk would take the team down to the camp once he knows there had been an altercation. There are several scenarios. If the fire was serious, Jazz, Mink and Dirk would be helping to put it out until the firefighters show up. They might leave then and come looking for us, which would be good. But there are several forks through the mountain borders. Unless he gets some help from people who saw us, he won’t have a chance guessing and will try to get Hawk to get some air support to see if they can find our vehicle or that other truck.”
“My team will come looking for me too,” Kit said. Sean would be worried about everything in the vehicle and want to retrieve them. “Surely they’ll search one route while your team goes the other.”
“Yeah. And they both might be searching the wrong routes while we’re here trapped with the Pakistani Taliban. It’s crazy in these mountains, babe. Everyone is fighting everyone. Who knows why they’re after that kid and his people, but what that kid was yelling to us was all military slang, like he had a message.”
“Lucas, he’s only a kid. Maybe he picked up the terms at camp and was just running through them because he saw a soldier in uniform.” She’d to admit the kid was scary intense with the delivery, though. “Just a thought.”
“But there was no doubt they were deathly afraid of their pursuers. Who are coming this way.” Lucas slumped against the tree, holding his stomach. “Fucking hell.”
Kit moved towards him, only to be pushed away by a big hand. He turned and disappeared into the thicker side of the bush. She shuddered at the horrible sounds of vomiting, followed by sharp, deep breaths, like a man trying to get air.
“Lucas?”
“Yeah. I’ll be out there in a sec.”
She lifted her head, listening. “I hear rumbling.”
His breathing was quieter. “I hear it too. Stay…where you…are.”
“Are you okay?” Stupid question. He obviously wasn’t and of course he was going to say he was fine.
As predicted, he said, “I’m fine.” He sounded hoarse, as if he was having difficulty moving and talking at the same time. “Stay where…you are. I can see…the road from where I am. We’ll know soon…whether it’s just another vehicle or…something else.”
Kit didn’t like way Lucas was talking so haltingly. She tried to look through the branches but the shrub was very thick. The partial gap she found gave a bird’s eye view of the road in front. The vehicle coming whooshed into view and was gone before she actually saw anything other than the fact that it was one of those huge SUV-like vehicles and there were two men hunched over the top with weapons. As soon as it went by, she made her way carefully into the darkened area Lucas had slipped into. It smelled acrid and she had to pinch her nose to stop from gagging. Then she saw him, slumped against a tree in a weird position. She suddenly realized he was unconscious and hurriedly stumbled towards him.
His face felt fiery. “Lucas!” She lightly swatted him on the cheek. “Lucas!”
No response. He was much too big for her to even attempt to move. She had to get him up and about. Uncapping the bottle of water she had in her hand, she poured it over his face and bent down.
She needed to do something. She couldn’t let her fear for Lucas win over logic. There had to be a way. Closing her eyes, she channeled her father, the drill sergeant, and shouted, “Cucumber! Get on your feet, you lazy bag of bones! Why are you lying on your back? Get up! Get up before I put my boot so far up in your ass we’ll both end up in the hospital! Cucumber! Up on your feet and attention! What fucking kind of SEAL are you, anyway?”
She almost fell on her back when Lucas flipped over and jumped to his feet. He saluted and yelled back, “Standing and ready, Sir! We are standing and ready SEALs, sir!”
She didn’t know what SEAL team he was on, so she just made it up, substituting her father’s Airborne unit, “Hey SEALs from left to right, Hey SEALs, we’re out of sight, we’re trained to fight, we’re trained to kill, if you can’t do it, we damned sure will! Motivation, dedication, graduation, teamwork! Left! Right! Left, left, right!”
To her relief, her on-the-spot cadence worked. Lucas started—she wouldn’t call it marching—putting one leg forward and then, the other. But he was following her lead back out into the open air, where she could at least check on his status.
“Come on, soldier, left, left, left, right, left! I don’t know but I’ve been told! Green grasshopper has a red asshole! One, two,” she sang, still channeling her father, “sound off, three, four, sound off, one-two, three-four!
“Who the hell taught you that?” Lucas asked.
She glanced back at him. His face was pale and his eyes were intently on her feet, as if he needed to follow her footsteps.
“No, don’t answer me,” he continued, “And don’t break out into any fucking Airborne Ranger cadences. I’ll vomit again. Violently.”
“Hey, army brat, you know. My dad’s a drill sergeant and boy, did he know how to get my brothers and me out of bed. Well, not with the bad language, of course. That came from hanging around army folks too much.” She stopped at a spot that was still shady but was a bit higher than the previous one. “You’re going to sit here and drink more liquids while I climb this tree.”
He frowned. “Why? Are you planning to hide us there if those guys decide to backtrack? Because we’re going to need a hiding place. I counted eight of them in that ATV, maybe nine. At least four were carrying machine guns.”
She swallowed and tried not to show her fear. “You saw all that and fainted from fright?” she quipped.
He grinned. Her heart did a slow somersault. He managed to look sexy-hot even though he still seemed ready to fall over any second.
“Smart-ass,” he said. “I was so unfazed by those guys, I decided to take a nap, that’s all. But some loud howling about a boot up my ass woke me up. That kind of threat usually gets a man’s attention, you know.”
Kit felt her face heating up. She did yell out some horrible threats, all courtesy of watching and listening to her brothers beating each other up.
“Did its job,” she said. “I’m climbing up the tree to see where we are. I have a tourist map in my backpack—”
“We aren’t going on a scenic tour, Cupcake,” Lucas cut in. “We need to get out of here.”
He stared at her for a moment. “There’s nothing to see up there but more trees and the main road,” he told her.
“I know, but I’ve also done research on the web. Aerial research because I enjoyed the view of the Swat Valley rivers. I bet, if I can figure out where the river is, I’ll recognize a few things I’ve looked at from those aerial views. Then I can locate them on the tourist map and we can…oh, will you just let me do this? It’s going to take them half an hour to reach our van and if they stop to search…we have just enough time. Okay?”
He sighed. “Go ahead. I’ll just lean against this tree and hold it up.”
She grinned at him. Freaking macho man wouldn’t admit it, but she wasn’t going to let him know she suspected he was having a hard time standing on his feet right now. “Don’t…take a nap while I’m up there. That’s an order, sailor,” she said.
She pulled off her skirt. His dark eyes narrowed at sight of the pair of tight boxers underneath.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured. “Those legs have my full attention.”
Chapter Twelve
‡
SNAFU. Situation all fucked up. Lucas looked at the pair of luscious legs climbing above him. Long, silky legs. Toned and tanned. Attached to a pair of pink boxer thingies that clung to hips and other female parts. SNAFU turning rapidly into FUBAR.
He banged his head against the tree. What the hell was he thinking, letting her climb up a tree, her ass all but naked, in the middle of the freaking Afghan-Pakistan disputed war zone? He must be out of his fucking mind.
He looked up again and caught a glimpse of Kit’s ass as she wriggled through a tight spot. He closed his eyes for a second. He was letting that woman get away with every hare-brained idea without even putting up a fight.
