Hot Soldier's Chase

by Cindy Dees

  A branch snapped off to her left.

  She froze like Tex had taught her instead of dropping to the ground and cowering as was her first inclination. Whatever made the noise moved off behind her. She continued creeping forward, her heart racing.

  What was she doing out here? She might be a trained predator in a congressional caucus chamber, but she had no business running around in a jungle by herself, in the dark, with armed men out there who’d kill her without hesitation. Except it was Tex’s back without cover.

  She crept forward until she thought she was past the clearing and then she turned left, heading back toward it. She approached slowly, peering ahead warily through the darkness. Someone moved. A man, moving left to right. She made out the shape of a rifle slung low by his hip. A rebel patrol.

  She waited until he passed and eased forward, peering out into the clearing.

  She was barely halfway around it!

  If she didn’t get cracking, Tex would already have fetched the gun and would bump into her on his way back to get her. What if he missed her in the dark, and when he got back to where he’d left her, she was gone? He would assume she’d headed for the road, and he would leave. She would be all alone out here! That thought panicked her worse than all the snakes and soldiers in the whole jungle.

  Tex. Focus on Tex. He needed her, whether he would admit it or not.

  She tore through the branches, shoving forward heedless of the scratches on her skin. She barely managed to stop herself in time when she abruptly stumbled across the clearing once more.

  She crouched behind a bush and stared at the backside of the White House mock-up. It resembled a giant billboard with a crude, two-story, stucco structure nestled at its base. It looked like a decrepit, old apartment building that wouldn’t have passed even the most rudimentary housing inspection.

  Where was Tex?

  He must already be inside. Should she follow him in and hope to find him creeping around among the sleeping soldiers? Her palms grew damp at even the thought of trying that by herself.

  And then a movement caught her eye. She looked underneath the last ground-floor window on the right. She didn’t see anything at first, but then a shadow separated itself from the blackness. It eased upward. Tex. He looked furtively over the window ledge into the room. He eased downward once more.

  He must be looking for the RITA rifle.

  He dropped to the ground and crawled quickly toward the left end of the building, where there was a doorless entrance. He must have already checked the other windows, for he passed them without pausing.

  She looked all around and saw no other movement. Now was her chance. Crouching low, she moved forward. The second she cleared the jungle, Tex froze. And then he gestured at her with one hand. Sharply. He wanted her to join him. Pronto. And he wasn’t happy.

  In an awkward running crouch, she sprinted over to his position beside the building.

  If looks could kill, she’d be dead a thousand times over from the glare Tex gave her when she squatted down beside him.

  She raised her eyebrows and stared back belligerently. Their gazes clashed, warring silently.

  Finally his glare faded to a scowl of resignation. She let out the breath she realized she’d been holding.

  He gestured for her to follow him and to be quiet.

  She needed no encouragement to stay right on Tex’s heels as he eased forward and plastered himself beside the doorway. The AK-47 in front of him, he whipped around the corner, low, into the opening. He moved forward in a tiger prowl and disappeared.

  Her pulse pounded until she felt light-headed. Now was a good moment for adrenaline. She let it flow through her veins, feeding on its restless energy. And then she stepped into the breach.

  A hallway stretched straight to the far end of the building with rooms opening off it on both sides. The floor was dirty and littered with beer bottles, trash, and cigarette butts. What idiot would smoke inside a firetrap like this? The same kind that would contemplate assassinating a president.

  Tex’s shadowed form paused beside the first room on the left. He gestured her to stay outside the door and keep a look out. She crouched down beside the doorway, in plain sight of anyone who happened to stick his head out a door. She was a sitting duck. This was beyond dangerous. It was nuts!

  Her nerve failed her and her hands shook violently. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t sit here and wait for someone to see her and kill her. An urge to run away as fast as she could nearly overwhelmed her. As she crouched beside that doorway, she regretted with every fiber of her being her big words about protecting Tex’s back. What in the heck had she been thinking?

  She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been feeling. She’d gotten so caught up in her concern for Tex’s safety that she’d let her panic drown her good judgment.

  She’d been panicked over Tex’s safety?

  The truth hit her like a Mac truck right there in that dingy, dark hallway while she sweated for her life. She loved Tex Monroe. Enough to act like a complete idiot. Enough to put her life at risk for him without a second thought.

  A compelling need to tell him almost drove her to her feet right then and there. In fact her leg muscles had coiled to rise when something dark abruptly loomed beside her.

  She jumped violently.

  Tex’s hand landed on her shoulder. She fought to control an overwhelming urge to pee in her pants out of sheer terror.

  He moved on to the next doorway and gestured her again to stay outside and keep watch. They repeated the maneuver on the remaining rooms on the left. Since he’d already checked out the right-hand rooms through the windows, she wasn’t surprised when he headed for the rickety stairs to the second level.

  He placed his foot on the first step and eased his weight onto it ounce by excruciating ounce. He gestured her to do the same. By the third step, she was ready to scream with impatience. But Tex continued to move at the speed of a glacier, sliding inch by inch up those stairs. It took them upward of five minutes to traverse the dozen steps.

  Tex cleared the last step and moved forward into the hallway, a duplicate of the one below. She put her weight on the last step and leapt up into the air as it squeaked loudly. Tex dropped to the floor and she dived down beside him. Her heart had to be pushing two hundred beats a minute. It all but choked her as it pounded frantically.

  They waited for several minutes, but nobody came out to see what had made the noise. Gradually her pulse slowed to something less on the verge of a stroke.

  Tex turned his head and put his lips on her ear. “Same as below. You watch.”

  She nodded her understanding and he pressed silently to his feet. Of course the question of the hour was, what in the world was she going to do if someone actually came out into the hall? It wasn’t as if she was going to shoot them with her index finger.

  She followed him to the first door on the right. He zigzagged his way down the hall checking the rooms on both sides of the hallway as he went.

  He’d been in the fourth room for just a few seconds when she heard a noise. Somebody was moving in the next room.

  The doorknob turned. Oh, Lord. Somebody was coming out into the hallway. Did she dare dart into the room Tex was in? For all she knew, someone was sleeping in front of the door and she’d trip over him and wake someone up.

  She looked around frantically. Nowhere to hide. She didn’t have time to stretch out flat on the floor.

  She snatched at the red beret tucked in her thigh pocket. She slammed it on her head and pulled it low over her blond hair. She pulled up her knees and tucked her head against them, assuming what she prayed was the pose of a drunk asleep against the wall.

  Footsteps stumbled past her, no more than a foot away. She held her breath, waiting for a hand to land on her shoulder or cold lead to slam into her flesh. She peeked under her right elbow and watched the guy retreat down the stairs.

  Oh, God, that had been close.

  Tex materialized beside her. He
gestured toward the room the man had just emerged from. Clearly he planned to check it while its occupant was out. Her knees wobbling like Jell-O, she followed him down the hall. He slipped into the room.

  Too soon, she heard a squeak. And another. The guy was coming back! He was on his way up the stairs!

  She didn’t have time to race back to her position in front of the previous door. Surely the guy would notice if the unconscious drunk had moved twenty feet down the hall.

  She slipped around the corner into the room with Tex. He whirled when she came in. Steel glinted in his right hand. She gestured frantically, praying she was relaying clearly that someone was coming.

  Tex nodded and whirled back to the two lumps on the floor that looked like sleeping men covered in blankets.

  He lifted his left hand across his body and then swung it downward hard and fast. It impacted flesh with a dull thud. The second guy stirred, and Tex jumped across the first body and chopped at the second guy, as well. He fell back to the floor with a grunt and lay motionless.

  Tex jumped to the door and waved her to the side. She complied hastily.

  The door opened.

  The man stepped into the room. He looked up and his eyes locked on hers. Surprise flashed and his mouth opened.

  Then Tex jumped.

  This guy wasn’t helpless and asleep. He also turned out to be a trained fighter. He spun and ducked as Tex’s blow glanced off the side of his head. He crouched low and jumped for Tex, the momentum of his charge knocking both men to the floor with a heavy thud. They tangled in a canvas trap, and as they rolled, it shifted to reveal a pile of weapons. The RITA rifle!

  Oh, no. The noise was going to wake someone else up. Not to mention the jerk might kill Tex! The two men rolled over and over across the floor, wrestling like bears in mortal combat.

  Tex grunted at her, “Get out of here. Now!” He ducked the fingers jabbing at his eyes and continued in short grunts between exertions. “In the confusion…pass for a hooker…slip outside. Follow rebel trails…to main road.”

  “No way!” she cried under her breath.

  He absorbed a body blow from the guy and then grunted, “Yes way. Go!”

  She stepped forward, dodging flying feet as the two fighting men rolled over yet again. She needed some sort of weapon to clobber the guy Tex was fighting with and looked around frantically. The AK-47 by the window where Tex had left it! She dived for the weapon.

  Voices sounded in the next room. Sitting on the floor by the window, she awkwardly pulled the heavy rifle up in front of her and groped for the trigger.

  The door opened. She squeezed the trigger and the gun leapt in her hands, spraying bullets into the ceiling. The noise was deafening.

  Whoever’d been in the doorway ducked back, slamming the door shut behind them. Shouts erupted up and down the hall.

  “Christ, Kimberly, did you have to let the whole damn army know we were here?” Tex panted. He knelt above the now motionless figure of the guy he’d been fighting. “Nice shot, by the way.” She’d hit a guy only inches away from Tex? Oh God.

  “They were coming in. I had to do something!” she wailed.

  “Don’t sweat it. They’d have figured out we were here regardless. You probably saved my neck,” he replied.

  He moved over to the corner and threw aside the canvas. “Come to papa, darlin’,” he crowed.

  She watched him scoop up the RITA rifle and throw its shoulder strap over his head. He pulled its proper clip out of his utility belt and slammed it into the gun.

  The door burst open behind Tex and Kimberly watched in slow-motion suspension as he spun, dropped the bulky rifle to his hip, and fired three times in quick succession.

  Whoever’d been outside wasn’t there anymore.

  Tex sprinted to the door and kicked it shut. He turned the flimsy lock on the knob and wedged a chair under the doorknob for good measure. “Well, looks like we’re cornered,” he commented quietly as he headed for the window.

  Kimberly gulped. This could not be good.

  He shook his head. “You should’ve gone when you had a chance.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry. We’re in this together to the end.”

  He sighed. “‘The end’ being the operative words.”

  Tough. No way would she have run out on Tex after all they’d been through together.

  “Have a look around and see if you can find any more ammunition,” he ordered. She checked the room fast and saw another blanket-covered pile beside where the RITA rifle had been.

  She pulled the scratchy wool back and sighed in relief. Several boxes of ammunition lay there along with two long-barreled sniper rifles.

  “Bingo!” she called.

  Tex glanced over his shoulder and grinned at her find. “That’ll help.” He ducked as somebody shot at the window from outside.

  “Get back, Kimberly. These walls are made of spit and Kleenex. If anyone out there’s got a high-powered rifle, bullets will pass right through them.”

  “What about you?” she demanded as she scooted back from the exterior wall.

  He popped up and pulled off a couple shots of return fire. “I’ll stay here and do a little fire suppression.”

  “But it’s dangerous!” she exclaimed.

  He gaped over his shoulder at her in mock surprise. “Ya think?”

  She scowled at his sarcasm. And then she hit the floor as bullets raked through the window. “What’s to keep them from shooting at us through the walls of the other rooms?” she asked frantically, visions of being pummeled by lead from all sides dancing in her brain.

  Tex glanced back over his shoulder. “The interior walls are so crappy bullets could pass right on through this room and hit folks on the other side. They won’t risk the cross-fire killing their own.” He added, “I hope.”

  Great.

  Tex grabbed one of the other rifles and returned a barrage of fire outside. At the rate he was shooting, the pile of ammunition in the corner wasn’t going to last long. They had to do something. They were going to die if they just sat in here and waited for the whole rebel army to descend upon them.

  There was a lull in the firing and Tex risked peering outside twice, from both sides of the window. “Darlin’, I’ve got an idea.”

  Why did that give her a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach?

  “I need you to come over here and lay down a line of suppression fire for me.”

  “What in the heck does that mean?”

  “Shoot out the window and make all the people out there duck so they can’t shoot back.”

  “And what will you be doing in the meantime?”

  “Climbing out the window onto the roof.”

  When he didn’t continue, she said, “I assume you’re not doing that because you plan to admire the view. What will you be doing on the roof?”

  “Cutting guy wires.”

  Huh? She looked at him questioningly.

  “The whole damn camp’s going to be coming over here in the next two or three minutes, armed to the teeth. I’ve got to slow them down. If I cut the wires holding up the White House facade, I think I can push it over onto a bunch of the soldiers.”

  She blinked at the audacity of it. If he timed it right, he could take out a big chunk of the rebel force. If nothing else, he’d cause plenty of chaos and maybe buy them some time.

  She moved over to the window beside Tex.

  “Put the barrel of the rifle on the windowsill. Pulse the trigger in short bursts. The shorter the better. We’ve got to conserve ammo. Move the barrel back and forth across the field of fire as you shoot. Got it?”

  She nodded.

  “Once I’m up on the roof, fire a few seconds more to give me time to get beyond the roof peak, and then you can stop. Whenever anyone fires at you, fire back. Then randomly fire a couple bursts now and then to keep them off balance. Okay?”

  “Okay. Tex?”

  He paused, crouched beside her. “Yeah?”

&n
bsp; “Be careful.”

  He grinned. “Count on it. You, too.”

  She smiled back, her fear so thick it made her light-headed.

  He said briskly, “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kimberly watched as Tex shimmied out of the RITA rifle sling and took off the web belt. He nodded and she began to fire out the window. The AK-47 bucked and jumped in her hands, heavy and ungainly. Its cold steel felt foreign in her hands.

  This was why she’d insisted on coming along. To protect Tex’s back. She bit her lip and concentrated on controlling the rifle as she squeezed the trigger again and again. Tex climbed on to the windowsill and reached up high overhead. While she fired past his feet, he hoisted himself up onto the roof.

  She laid down another ten seconds of continuous bursts and then stopped firing. Conserve ammo, he’d said.

  She’d been firing in bits and spurts for maybe two minutes when she began to hear noise. Lots of it. The kind of noise a hundred angry men would make as they rushed across a clearing.

  Oh, God.

  A new burst of gunfire caught her attention and she fired back in the general direction of the muzzle flashes. She prayed she wasn’t killing anybody with her random fire. She didn’t want to think about widowing young wives or making Gavronese children fatherless.

  And then she heard another noise. Metallic. Like someone sawing on a piano wire.

  Another burst of gunfire and she heard the piano wire noise again. And yet again. That must be Tex hacking through the guy wires that held up the tall facade.

  She responded to a big burst of gunfire by holding down the trigger of the AK-47 and raking it across the line of fire. The shots ceased.

  Her forehead burned and she felt warm blood trickle down her cheek. Had she been shot? She put her hand up and felt a splinter of wood in her hair. It must have flown off the windowsill and cut her face. She pulled it free and flung it aside.

  A bullet had come close enough to knock a piece of wood loose only inches from her face? Suddenly she felt downright faint. She was not cut out for this sort of fun.