“They’re soldiers?” He heard the question but knew there was no debating this.
“Or private contract. Certainly professionals.” Mac lifted her chin in the general direction of the party. “What else?”
“What is this, twenty questions?” Irritated, he turned his attention back to the view through the scope. It took him another few seconds, but then, when the girls, in unison, shucked out of their packs, he got it. “The guys have vests and small waist packs, but the girls are carrying most of the gear.” Then: “Hey, a couple of them . . . no, three of the girls have two sleeping bags apiece. That makes no sense.”
“Unless they’re packing the guy’s gear and there’s at least one girl who’s missing.” She fired a forefinger. “Bingo. Think about it. The guys need to be nimble and quick, but the girls don’t. In fact, load them down, and they can’t run. Even if they tried—”
“These guys would shoot?” He thought of that distinctive crack only an hour or so before. And Mac said she woke up because of gunfire. There was his shot and at least five or six more. Since he’d been essentially deaf after not blowing his head off, he couldn’t argue the point.
“Or send the dog. Gabriel, those guys are guards, not dads. Hell, the guy in the lead is talking to someone, and that can only mean they’re either reporting in or checking on a rendezvous, or both.”
“That’s kind of a leap.” There was also something in what she’d just said that niggled. What? Missing something important. He chased after that for only a second then shook his head, frustrated. If it was important, the thought would re-surface. “But, why, Mac?”
“Jesus, Gabriel, they’re marching kids through the backcountry from Canada. Those girls can’t be any older than fifteen, sixteen. What, you need me to draw you a picture?”
She didn’t. There were only a few reasons anyone would smuggle girls that age over the border from Canada. They were either drug mules—because who knew what was in those packs—or destined for the sex trade. Maybe both.
“Fine,” he said. “But what are we supposed to do about it?”
“Do?” A grim note, now. “We stop them.”
“We stop . . .” He goggled. “Mac, even if we could somehow ambush them, we’ve got a revolver, a shotgun, and your Glock. They’ve got handguns, M-4s, probably tons of extra ammo, and that dog. What are you going to throw at these guys?”
“Yeah, okay.” She hacked air with a hand. “We’re outgunned, I get that. But, first off, they don’t know we’re here. Second, we know where they’re headed. There’s only one place that trail empties out, and that’s Dead Man.”
“Which, if you believe the news, is a good place to end up dead ourselves. Even more reason for us to get off the mountain and tell somebody.”
“And then for whomever we tell to do what?”
“Do?” He fumbled. “Well . . . for God’s sake, they can send up a drone, they can send a plane, a helicopter. They send guys in on foot.”
“Really. You just said Dead Man’s supposed to be inaccessible, although obviously not if these guys are making a beeline for the place, but okay, I’ll give that to you. So, someone sends a plane. And then what? Those guys will hear a plane or helicopter coming a mile off. They’ll have plenty of time to get themselves under cover, and they can probably stay there a good long while. You know that.”
He did. Finding Taliban and insurgents in their various hidey-holes and caves that riddled the Afghan mountains was a largely futile exercise. Even when the military had a good idea of the routes insurgents took and used sophisticated thermal imaging, insurgents managed to vanish fast. Drone strikes took out a lot of guys, but you couldn’t blow up an entire country.
As if reading his thoughts, she said, “Unless they’re going to call in a strike, the only good a drone will do is give a position and, maybe, who meets them. You’re not going to fire missiles at them, for God’s sake. Even if a whole bunch of law enforcement try to go in on foot, I wouldn’t put it past those guys to lose the girls but maybe keep one as a bargaining chip, just in case.”
“Hold on, hold on. Let’s take a breath here. Forget the guns, the dog, the gear, blah, blah. Did you ever consider they could be lost?”
She gave him a withering look. “Now, who’s stretching?”
“But they’re heading to Dead Man. Every guidebook says there’s no good way in or out.”
“Unless they found one. You were going to try, so you must have an idea.”
She had him there. “Some. A pretty good idea. I did a bunch of research, found these old prospecting and surveying maps from back when the town was first built. There are a couple ways none of the boards . . . you know, where people trade notes and stuff . . . mention at all. Mac, that still doesn’t mean we have to go after them.”
“Gabriel, by the time we could possibly get word to anyone, they’ll be long gone.” Mac’s jaw set. “Look, you don’t have to come, but I can’t let this go again. I can’t just do nothing.”
She was so intent, so focused, he doubted she heard the slip, that again. What had happened to Mac before now? All he knew was she’d been a combat medic in Afghanistan. Now, he wondered if she felt something from the past was left unfinished, undone.
Or maybe Mac thought she’d made a mistake and, now, rescuing these girls, was a chance to make things right?
And what about him? What had he said to Mac just a few days ago? I miss who I was. He didn’t yearn for the war. He missed the man who had belonged to something more and greater than himself. Well, maybe this was his chance, too.
Wait a minute, what are you saying, you moron? Not three days ago, he had been bound and determined to make oatmeal out of his brain. Was he okay with being alive? Yes, though that solved absolutely zero of the many problems about which he had yet to think of a solution. I’m AWOL. I’ll end up in jail or, at the very least, have to figure a way to pay back all that money.
He also had another huge problem, one that just happened to be sitting on his left.
Mac had to know he’d followed and spied, which meant, at some level, he didn’t trust her. Yet she’d not said word one when she got back to camp. Instead, they’d talked over the rifle shot, what it might mean, and then agreed to check it out. Now, they had, and there was trouble here, no doubt about it. If Mac had her way, they were about to get into the shit.
Every soldier had to believe his brothers and sisters were competent. Just how much so was something that could only be tested in battle. One thing all soldiers tried hard to do, though, was know who their buddies were, get a read. It was the reason guys talked smack or drew blood in fistfights that always stopped just short of true violence.
“Who are you, Mac?” he asked. “I’ve told you all about me and what’s going on, what kind of trouble I’m in. What you see is pretty much what you get.”
“Not really, not everything.” Her eyes, so bright and green, never wavered. “You walked off to die, Gabriel. You decided to kill yourself even after we agreed that we would try to think of a way you could make this all square. So, no, you are not transparent.”
“But you knew or guessed. You’d never have come after me, otherwise.”
Her head moved in a fractional nod. “I’ll give you that. But you followed me. You hid and then you watched me.” When he opened his mouth, she held up a hand. “Shut up. Let me finish. I don’t think you’re being honest, Gabriel. You don’t want to know who I am. That’s not the right question, and you know it.”
Okay, she was frank, more honest than he, if not exactly open.
“You’re right.” And then he asked what he’d barely dared to think. “Mac, what are you?”
8
“You’re sure about this, Kate?” Jack didn’t sound skeptical, only resigned. Considering what he was (or was becoming because she just wasn’t clear about that), he already must know she had to tell Gabriel the truth, or as much as she dared. Gabriel had seen her rip out the guts of a tree with her bare hands, aft
er all. She knew because the wind changed, and his scent—that black brooding thundercloud—teased the air.
One thing she still puzzled over, though. Had Jack mentioned Gabriel a split second before or after she sensed that? She couldn’t recall. Probably wasn’t important.
I’m as sure about this as I can be of anything. Time to stop being so afraid, Jack.
“Most people live longer if they cultivate a healthy sense of caution. So, don’t be stupid about this. I know you want to help him. I know you feel you have a duty and a mission.”
I did. What she couldn’t tell was whether moving forward wasn’t also a journey into her past. I still do.
“I understand that. But Gabriel’s driven by a different imperative. As wounded as he is, he is not like you, Kate. He may not understand. He might even decide you’re the threat.”
She knew that, too. In a way, she was. People always feared what they didn’t understand.
So, she had to help Gabriel do just that. She ran her gaze over the ruin Gabriel had made of his face. He would heal, though there would be scars. She wondered if he would leave them or see a surgeon. Most people would assume he’d been wounded—and, in a way, he was. They both were. All soldiers carried wounds and the scars of their battles, visible or not.
“You sort of need to see it to believe it,” she said.
“See it.” Gabriel’s expression was a careful, watchful neutral, his unblemished left eye as black as coal. He still crouched alongside, but his thighs tensed when she stood, and the small muscles along his left jaw danced. Pushing up, he sidestepped away from the rocks and put some distance between them. His right hand automatically moved to his holstered revolver. His left closed into a loose fist. “You mean a demonstration?”
“In a manner of speaking.” If she were a normal person, Gabriel would have at least two seconds. What he didn’t know was she could erase those twenty feet in about a tenth the time. As Jack had observed, not Usain Bolt fast but quick enough. That wasn’t the kind of demonstration she had in mind, though. “Relax. There’s no need for your weapon. I’m on your side, remember?”
He did her the favor of honesty. “Would I have time if I tried?”
“Probably not, but it would really be okay with me not to test that.” Then, perching on a boulder, she rolled up her pant legs.
He made a sound then, deep in his throat, something between a gasp and a groan, but she didn’t look up. Time enough for explanations later.
Instead, she touched a sensor implanted on her right thigh, an inch or so above her knee. Her right arm controlled a lot, although the DARPA boys had slipped additional transmitters into the fingers of her left hand because a girl just never knew. There was the whisper of a vibration in her fingers, a slight haptic brrr as the sensor registered her authentication code. Then there was a faint but audible snick followed by a tiny whirr.
A thin seam opened, unzipping her skin all the way around her thigh.
“Gabriel,” she said, wrapping both hands just below the seam, “do you know Star Trek?”
Without waiting for his reply, she moved her hands in a sharp, counterclockwise twist, as if unscrewing a tight cap—and took off her leg.
About the Author
Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major—and an award-winning, best-selling author of dozens of short stories and novels. Her work spans established universes such as Star Trek, Battletech, Battlecorps, Mechwarrior Dark Age, and Shadowrun while her original novels include such critically acclaimed and award-winning books as The ASHES Trilogy, Drowning Instinct, The Sin-Eater’s Confession, and Draw the Dark. The first novel in her DARK PASSAGES series, White Space, was long-listed for the Stoker, and the concluding volume of the series, The Dickens Mirror, is now out in paperback.
Most recently, Ilsa’s proud to be included in the launch of New York Times best-selling author Elle James’s BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS Amazon Kindle Worlds Series with SOLDIER’S HEART: PART ONE debuting June 8, 2017. PART TWO launches on September 7, 2017 and PART THREE follows on January 11, 2018 with two additional BroPro titles in June and October, 2018.
Ilsa will also be debuting in New York Times best-selling author Susan Stoker’s SPECIAL FORCES: OPERATION ALPHA in March, 2018.
Currently a cheesehead-in-exile, Ilsa lives in Alabama with the husband and several furry creatures. On occasion, she even feeds them.
Drop by for a visit at www.ilsajbick.com or and check out her Friday’s Cocktails and Sunday’s Cakes and other assorted effluvia on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ilsa.j.bick and https://www.facebook.com/ilsajbickauthor/ ), Twitter (@ilsajbick), and Instagram (@ilsajbick).
Other Books by Ilsa J. Bick
Coming Soon!
BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS Amazon Kindle World Series:
SOLDIER’S HEART: PART THREE (January 11, 2018)
TBA (June, 2018)
TBA (October, 2018)
SPECIAL FORCES: OPERATION ALPHA Amazon Kindle World Series:
TBA (March, 2018)
Other Books by Ilsa J. Bick
BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS Amazon Kindle World Series:
SOLDIER’S HEART: PART ONE
SOLDIER’S HEART: PART TWO
THE ASHES TRILOGY
ASHES
SHADOWS
MONSTERS
THE DARK PASSAGES SERIES
WHITE SPACE
THE DICKENS MIRROR
THE SIN-EATER’S CONFESSION
DROWNING INSTINCT
DRAW THE DARK
Brotherhood Protectors: Soldier's Heart Part 2 (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 14
