by Cindy Dees
And then a new noise intruded upon her senses.
A tearing noise. Like wood cracking. The sound got louder and louder until it rumbled like a whole forest of trees toppling over. The building shook as the mock-up tore away from it and crashed with a thundering noise to the ground. Screams and shouts mingled with gunshots in what sounded like utter chaos.
Tex’s terse voice came from outside the window. “Pass me the RITA, Kimberly.”
She ran over to the weapon and picked it up. Lord, it was heavy. How in the world had Tex hiked all over the jungle with the darn thing? She stuck its muzzle out the window, grateful when its weight abruptly left her hands as Tex hauled it up on to the roof. In a few seconds she heard the distinctive whining of the RITA overhead. More screaming and more gunshots joined the general chaos outside.
Tex had bought them some time. But then what? How in the world were they supposed to get out of here? The other hundred rebels from the main camp had no doubt been notified by radio and would be on their way soon. Then she and Tex were toast.
Radio.
She looked back at the two bodies behind her.
Quickly she moved to their sides. With distaste, she reached for the first one and searched him. She took a pistol out of a holster on his thigh but found nothing else useful.
She moved to the second guy. As she groped in his pants’ pockets, he stirred. He wasn’t dead? She jerked her hands back in horror. He couldn’t wake up! He rolled over, his eyelids fluttering. He groaned.
Frantically she lifted the pistol and brought it down against the side of the guy’s head. The sickening impact of steel on flesh nearly made her gag.
The guy sagged, out cold once more.
Quickly she felt his chest pockets. There was a hard lump in one. She unbuttoned the flap and her fingers encountered warm plastic inside. She gripped the object and pulled it out.
She nearly cried in her relief. It was a cell phone. A recent model. She mashed the unconscious man’s index finger against it, and the phone unlocked.
A burst of gunfire came out of the jungle. She jumped over to the window and snatched up the AK-47 again. Her bullets joined Tex’s. With the rebels momentarily subdued, she dialed the same number she’d called before.
“Go ahead,” a man’s voice barked.
This time the abrupt greeting didn’t surprise her. “This is Kimberly Stanton. Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, ma’am.”
She ducked as a volley of gunshots peppered the side of the building.
“Tex and I are in trouble. We need help, now.”
“Standby. We’re triangulating your position off your phone. It may take a minute. Stay on the line.”
“Okay,” she shouted over another loud burst of fire.
“I need a little help,” Tex shouted from the roof.
She laid the phone down and looked out the window. And stared in dismay. Dear God. At least two dozen men were advancing out of the jungle toward the building, their rifles blazing in a fireworks display of white-and-yellow flashes.
She snatched up the AK-47 and pressed down the trigger, raking it back and forth across the line of men. Easily half of them dropped, and the rest turned and ran. A few of the downed men crawled or dragged themselves back toward the jungle, their moans and groans ripping at her sanity.
“…still there? What the hell’s going on?” somebody shouted through the phone.
She picked it up. “I’m still here,” she half sobbed. “You’ve got to help us!”
“Miss Stanton,” a deep voice said firmly. “This is Colonel Foley. We’ve got a position fix on you. We’ll be there in thirty minutes. Are you or Tex hurt?”
She ducked as a spray of bullets flew into the ceiling of the room. “Not yet,” she answered, half out of her mind with fear.
“How many hostiles are at your position?” the colonel asked urgently.
“A couple of hundred.”
The colonel swore under his breath. “Can you tell me exactly where you are? The more detail the better.”
“We’re trapped in a two-story stucco building on the north side of a big clearing in the jungle. The top of the whole clearing is covered in camouflage netting. Tex is on the roof and I’m in a second-story room.”
“Which room?” the colonel asked, static half obscuring his question.
“North side. Second floor, the second room from the easternmost end!” she shouted as the static got louder and louder.
“Hang on!” she heard the colonel shout back to her. And then she couldn’t hear him anymore.
She picked up the AK-47 and fired it again as yet another wave of soldiers charged the building. It rattled ominously, laying down a curtain of lead.
Abruptly it stopped firing.
She pulled the trigger again. It clicked. Out of ammunition.
“Tex,” she called desperately. “I’m out of ammunition. I don’t know how to reload this thing.”
“I’ll be right there,” came his immediate reply from nearby. He must have been lying on the roof right over her window. What was he doing there? That was far too exposed a position!
And then a big black shadow swung through the window.
She flung herself at Tex, overwhelmed by her relief at seeing him alive. He wrapped her in a crushing embrace. “I’ve got you,” he murmured into her hair.
He yanked her down to the floor as a barrage of bullets splattered against the walls.
“I found a cell phone,” she panted. “I called Colonel Foley. He got a position fix on us and said he’d be here in thirty minutes.”
“Thank God,” Tex exhaled. The stark relief that flashed across his face for just a second frightened her. She knew they were in huge trouble, but she hadn’t realized how huge until Tex’s brave front slipped for that brief moment.
He moved to the pile of ammunition in the corner and tossed a handful of banana-shaped clips toward the window. He came back to her side and slammed one of them into the base of the AK-47.
He pointed it out the window and swore under his breath. “These bastards don’t give up easy,” he mumbled.
Kimberly watched as Tex fired methodically out the window.
“We’re gonna run out of this type of ammo in a whole lot less than a half hour, Princess,” he said over his shoulder during a lull. “Pull out the other clips over there and see if any of them fit the other weapons.”
While she fished through the pile, she asked, “How’s the RITA holding up?”
“Just about out of ammo.”
She matched up several clips of bullets to the other guns, but it was a pitifully small pile. She risked a glance out the window and saw dozens of muzzle flashes. They were severely outnumbered. How could they possibly hold out for a half hour?
Tex switched to firing single shots, aiming each one carefully before he pulled the trigger. She kept a morbid count in her head. She had no doubt Tex was killing, or at least hitting, someone with every shot.
Forty-two. Forty-three. She shuddered at the carnage, almost too appalled to function as Tex called out for more ammo periodically.
She was heading back toward the window with the last clip for one of the rebel’s rifles when an arm abruptly went around her neck.
She screamed for a second before her air was cut off. She struggled, but the man behind her was big and powerful. And mad. He was going to choke her to death! Tex whirled around and her terrified gaze locked on him as spots began to dance in front of her eyes.
Tex went still. Utterly calm. He moved forward slowly, a knife held low and in front of him in his right hand. She looked into his eyes as he advanced and Death looked back at her.
The man she loved was gone, replaced by the coldest, cruelest, most focused killer she’d ever seen. He snarled something in Spanish.
The man behind her snarled something back, his spit spraying her ear. Faint from terror and lack of oxygen, she felt her limbs going slack. She clawed at the arm around her neck,
feeling rolls of torn skin underneath her fingernails. The man’s arm grew slippery with blood and her fingers slid uselessly over the flesh that was inexorably killing her.
And then Tex lunged. The knife flashed past her face. A squishing sound and the arm around her neck abruptly fell away.
The rebel staggered back, screaming.
As she fell to the floor and rolled out of the way of the two men’s feet, Kimberly stared up in dazed horror at the knife protruding from the man’s left eye.
Tex yanked it out and slashed hard to the right across the man’s throat. A fountain of blood sprayed her, warm and black.
And then she passed out.
TEX LEAPT to Kimberly’s slumped form. There was blood all over her. He couldn’t tell if it was hers or the rebel’s. Frantically he passed his hands over her, searching for wounds.
“Come on, honey,” he urged. “Wake up. Talk to me, Princess.”
She lay there, limp and still.
For the first time in his career his life flashed before him. He thought about the heartache of losing his mother. About Emily, his first lost love. He thought about the lonely nights at home, working out because there was nothing else to do. He thought of the years of volunteering for missions, one right after another, because there was nobody for him to go home to, nobody who loved him. And he thought about the past few days with Kimberly. The laughter and loving. How alive she made him feel.
She couldn’t fucking die. Not now, when he’d just found her.
“Kimberly, wake up!” he called urgently.
Her eyes fluttered open. Thank God.
“Are you hurt? Did that bastard cut you?”
“Uh, no. I don’t think so,” she mumbled.
He sagged beside her, too relieved to lift a finger. If he’d lost her… Hell, he couldn’t even think about it.
“What’s that smell?” she murmured groggily.
He took a sniff.
And leapt to the window.
Dammit.
While he’d been fighting off Kimberly’s attacker, the rebels had sent another wave of soldiers toward the building. One of them was just disappearing around the corner with a large, metal container. Kimberly had smelled gasoline fumes.
The rebels were going to burn them out.
Not good. His brain went into overdrive. This building would go up like a box of matches.
He looked at his watch. Twenty more minutes until the Blackjacks got here.
Grimly Tex picked up the nearest rifle and fired at the two guys who were leaning down with a lighter toward the ground. He dropped them both, but the guy with the gas can had gotten away. It was only a matter of time now.
With their success in getting near the building, the rebels became bolder. They came at him in waves and he had trouble holding them off with the single-shot sniper rifles. Everyone he shot at went down, but there were just too many of them.
He didn’t know which was going to be worse. Getting shot by these bastards and bleeding to death, or burning to death when the building went up in flames.
And then another rifle fired beside him. Kimberly had crawled over to the window and picked up the second rifle.
“Take your time,” he instructed. “Aim carefully, hold your breath, and then fire. Every bullet’s got to count now.”
She nodded grimly and did as he said. With the two of them firing together, they were able to back off the next couple waves of soldiers.
And then a wisp of smoke wafted up toward them from below.
“Tex, where’s that smoke coming from?” Kimberly asked in confusion.
“The building’s on fire. While I was taking care of that bastard who jumped you, a couple guys got to the building with a gas can.”
She stared at him, stark terror in her eyes. “This place will go up in flames in no time,” she breathed. “We’re not going to make it, are we?”
“Yes, we are! We are going to make it, and that’s all there is to it!” he declared fiercely.
She smiled at him bravely.
The smoke grew thicker and a gust of it came through the window. He coughed and fired at the next wave of soldiers that came at them. He and Kimberly repulsed the attack. And the next.
But with every passing moment, the smoke was growing thicker. The air grew noticeably warmer around them. He checked his watch for the thousandth time. Twelve minutes to go.
And then Kimberly called out urgently. “Tex! There’s smoke coming under the door!”
“Watch outside,” he ordered tersely. “Let me know if another wave comes at us.” He jumped away from the window and stripped a shirt off one of the unconscious rebels on the floor. He stuffed it into the crack under the flimsy door and soaked it with all the water in the guy’s canteen. He laid his hand on the door. It was almost too hot to touch.
“Here they come,” Kimberly called.
He jumped back to the window and took up his position again. In the next lull he heard it. An insidious crackling noise. Fire feeding voraciously on wood. The floor was getting hot and smoke was pouring around the entire doorframe behind them now. Any second, the flames were going to burn through the flimsy door. The backdraft would incinerate them both.
They had to get out of here. But where? The entire jungle before them was full of armed rebels. “Come on, honey. We need to get up on the roof.”
Kimberly frowned at him. “Why?”
“The Blackjacks will come in by helicopter. It’ll be easier for them to lift us off the roof than for them to land and make us run out to them.”
She nodded trustingly at him. It was a hell of a choice. Burn to cinders or face the bullets of an entire army. “I’ll go first,” he said. “You lay down suppression fire while I climb up on the roof. Then, I’ll lay down a line of fire. As soon as I do that, I’ll reach down for you and pull you up. We gotta do this fast. Okay?”
She nodded, clearly understanding their vulnerability while they climbed onto the roof.
It went off without a hitch. And then they were stretched out side-by-side on the roof. Smoke swirled all around them and a hail of bullets rained around them.
“Don’t hold back on your fire,” he shouted to her over the roar of the flames below them. “We’ll run out of time before we run out of bullets!”
Doubt that they weren’t going to make it flickered in her gaze, but she nodded resolutely. Pride surged through him. She was a fighter. She wasn’t going to give up if he didn’t.
He checked his watch. Ten minutes.
They fired down on the rebels for a couple of minutes. And then a tremendous crash sounded behind them. A wave of intense heat rolled over them. He glanced over his shoulder. A wall of flame leapt into the sky, lighting up the night.
“The fire’s broken through the roof,” Kimberly cried.
He looked at his watch. Seven minutes. No way was the remainder of the building going to stand up that long. He abandoned his rifle and threw an arm over Kimberly’s shoulders. “Stay down. Our silhouettes will show up against the fire and make us easy targets.”
She huddled against him, shaking like a leaf.
A few bullets sailed up at them, but he ignored them. At this point it might be a blessing if the rebels shot them. All he could hope for was that the smoke would knock Kimberly unconscious before the roof collapsed and flung her down into the inferno. The thought of her burning to death, of her suffering, was almost more than he could bear.
The roof shifted ominously beneath them and it was growing hot.
Kimberly rolled onto her side and wrapped her arms around him, hanging on tight. She, too, had abandoned her rifle. “Tex,” she said calmly. “If I have to go, I’m glad I’m going to die with you.”
“Hey, we’re not done for yet, darlin’,” he objected.
She looked up into his eyes, her gaze soft and wise. “You don’t have to put on a good front for me anymore. I know we’re not going to make it. I just wanted to tell you before—” her voice broke briefly �
�—before the end, that I love you.”
He stared down at her, his heart expanding until his entire chest was tight. “I love you, too,” he whispered back.
She smiled. “You’re nice to say that. You always were a gentleman.”
He shook her lightly. “I mean it. I love you. I’m not saying this to be nice. Hell, we’re about to go face our Maker. I’m not gonna lie now!”
She stared back at him. And then an angelic smile broke across her face. She reached up with both hands and took his cheeks in her palms. “Kiss me, Tex. That’s what I want to feel when I go. I want that to be the last thing I remember.”
He swept her close and did as she asked, kissing her with all the passion and fury and love in his heart. The flames roared around them and the building gave a great warning heave. An entire end of the building collapsed and the roof tilted dangerously in that direction.
And still they kissed, wrapping each other in the protection of their love, giving their very souls to one another in their last few moments on earth.
A thwocking noise startled Tex out of his absorption in the woman he loved. He looked up and saw the dark silhouette of a Huey helicopter race into view above the trees.
It slammed to a hover directly overhead and a cable snaked down out of it. Two men leaned out the door, one guiding the cable and the other firing a submachine gun in a continuous and deadly rain of lead.
A heavy metal object tore through the layer of camouflage netting over the clearing and thunked to the roof less than ten feet away from them.
Tex jumped up, hauling Kimberly to her feet with him. “Let’s go!” he shouted.
He raced to the missile-shaped extractor, yanked down on its folding seats and pushed Kimberly onto one of them. He jumped on the other seat, wrapped his legs around hers and hugged both her and the steel extractor. Before he’d barely climbed on, the winch above them whirred.
The helicopter drifted to the right, away from the burning roof as they rode the metal cable upward.
Tex looked down and the entire roof of the building was engulfed in flame. Only a tiny portion of the roof wasn’t ablaze—the spot they’d been lying on seconds before.
