“So there’s a village located near this supposed cave complex, but it’s on a steep hillside, and I mean steep. We’re talking accessible by goats and locals, not outsiders. So they get out the maps and determine that the best way to get to this area is to hike down to it, and that’s what we did. Our four-man element dropped in high about 0400 hours. It was a straight SR mission, search and recon. Depending on what we found in terms of forces and weapons, we were planning to bring a bigger team in to finish the job.
“We start making our way down, and like I said, it’s steep. So we’re traveling combat light, which means we’ve left a lot of our armor on base. Even without it, each of us is carrying forty to fifty pounds of gear—water, radios, ammo. It’s only a twenty-four-hour op, but you never go anywhere without at least five pounds of water and an MRE in case things go off the rails.”
She watched him talk, deeply disturbed by the image of him behind enemy lines, moving around without body armor.
“We spend the better part of the day getting down through this forest, making sure to stay invisible among the spruce. By the time we near the destination the sun’s getting low, which is what we want, and we check our coordinates, and there’s the village out to our east. And then we start looking around and spot this cave right where the terp said it would be. It’s on the side of a cliff, this big, dark mouth, with some goat trails leading up to it. So we huddle together and go over the plan. After nightfall we’re going to slip up there, check it out, see what’s what. But then I start looking around. I’m on glass—binoculars—looking down at the village, and I start getting antsy. Something’s off with the setup, and I can feel it.”
She watched him, waiting.
“And that’s when it hits me. It’s too quiet. The village is too calm, too empty. Not nearly the kind of activity you’d expect in the evening when people are preparing meals and everything. And I turn to Gage to tell him, and that’s when all hell breaks loose. Bullets start smacking into the trees right above our heads, branches snapping off, bark spitting everywhere.”
“An ambush,” she said.
“Yeah, we were getting pummeled from all directions. Except down, so that’s where we went—we just started running down this mountain. And I’m talking ten-and twenty-foot drops, sheer cliffs, but there was nowhere else to go. We’re running full speed, sliding, jumping, trying to take cover behind rocks whenever we could, and the bullets are slapping around everywhere, and I hear one of my teammates scream, and I know he’s been hit. And I start running in that direction, but the bullets are flying, and it’s hard to stay oriented. Basically, I knew up and down, but every other direction didn’t exist in the chaos of it all. I end up behind this boulder with Luke, and his weapon’s jammed, and he’s trying to clear it, and I’m damn near out of ammo, so I’m starting to get worried, and then suddenly, that was it. Nothing.”
She stared at him. He’s under attack with no armor and scarce ammo, and he’s starting to get worried? “What do you mean, nothing?”
“Silence.” He sliced the air with his hand. “Zilch. No more shooting. For a while, Luke and I just wait. We don’t know whether they’ve run out of bullets, which had been known to happen, or whether they’re trying to wait us out. Finally, after a while, our daylight’s totally gone, and we figure it’s real, the shooting’s actually stopped. So we start maneuvering around the mountain in NVGs looking for Gage and Hill. We find Gage pretty quick, but Hill isn’t anywhere. At last, I pick up a heat signature and manage to spot him under this holly bush behind some rocks, and he’s injured. His whole foot is twisted around, about a hundred eighty degrees off.”
She cringed.
“It was ironic, really. We’d had all this parachute training, where they teach you how to land, but he’s injured from a fall, not a bullet. Meanwhile, Gage is on the radio, trying to get us some air support, but the timing’s bad, and all our Apaches are in a neighboring valley involved in a firefight. Our guys over there are really getting rocked, and there’re no spare choppers. Our CO manages to track down a Pave Hawk that can help us. We just have to get up to the top of this mountain where there’s a plateau. It’s the only viable landing zone for miles.”
“But Hill can’t walk.”
“His leg is broken in three places, so we carry him. Fireman’s carry, taking turns. And I’m not gonna lie to you—he was heavy. Luke had managed to get a needle in him and give him some morphine, which helped his pain but made him more like dead weight. We’re carrying him, and he keeps telling us to put him down, leave him there, come back later, but that wasn’t going to happen, so we take turns. At one point, we get to this very steep part, and Luke—you remember him?”
“From the meeting, yes.”
“He grew up kind of backwoods Tennessee, but he’s smart as hell. Innovative, too. He gets out his Ka-Bar knife and starts sawing branches off these trees, and we rig up this thing that’s kind of a sled. We strap Hill to it with some bungee cords and drag him up that rock face. We get to the top of the LZ, and then it’s a waiting game. Our helo’s on the way, but we’re jumpy, because there’s only one place to land for miles around, one extraction point, so everyone on the mountain knows where we’d go, and we’re feeling like sitting ducks. We’re stuck there waiting and wondering, were they really out of ammo, or was that just a mindfuck to get us into another ambush?”
Elizabeth held her breath, waiting.
“And then I hear it. The helo’s coming, and we’ve got our infrared lights there to guide her down, and I still can’t believe we’re getting out of there. We load Hill into the bird, and I glance into the trees, and I see this green figure—that’s what it looks like through my goggles. It’s a TAQ fighter, and he’s got an RPG on his shoulder. Gage starts yelling and pushing me, and the three of us jump in and get the hell out of there.”
“What about the RPG?”
“He missed. Firing at night from a distance, it was literally a shot in the dark, but it rattled our cage anyway.”
She tried to digest the words. He never talked about his missions, not in any detail. She looked out over the landscape. Just listening to his story left her feeling dizzy. She looked at him. “Why did you tell me that?”
“I want you to know what it’s like.” His face was deadly serious. “We have each other’s backs. That’s ironclad. We move mountains for each other.”
The brotherhood thing again.
“Will you miss it when it’s over?” she asked quietly.
“When what’s over?”
“The war. Everything’s winding down.”
“Yeah, well. It’s never really over for us.”
She’d known that, but she wanted to hear it from him. What he did was too important to ever actually stop. The war on terror would continue in the shadows, and spec ops forces would continue to fight it.
He wouldn’t quit, anyway. He believed in the fight, and he didn’t want to leave his brothers.
And she wouldn’t ask him to.
Which brought them right back to the same dilemma she’d predicted when she’d first met him, when he’d burst into her life and turned everything upside-down. She looked at his strong profile now, at his muscular arm resting on his knee. She couldn’t remember ever being so drawn to a man, so hopelessly attracted. She respected him, and he made her laugh, and he made her pulse pound whenever she got near him, but that was chemistry, and it didn’t get rid of the very real obstacles. He was gone all the time, putting his life on the line. And he was so committed to his team she didn’t believe he had room for anything else. She looked at him, and he was watching her with that steady gaze that made her nerves hum. Slowly, carefully, he was dismantling all the fences she’d built around her emotions. And she was letting him.
A distant buzz of a phone, and Elizabeth scrambled to her feet. They rushed to the truck, and Derek reached through the open window and plucked his cell from the console.
“Vaughn.” He listened for a moment and held the phone out. “It’s Torres.”
She snatched it up. “What is it?”
Chapter Twenty-one
“She’s stable,” he told her. “They’ve upgraded her condition, and they’re moving her into a room.”