Danger Close (5 page)

Wade swore under his breath in Pashto. There was no way they could make a run for it and escape now. They’d have to stay and fight.

Erin was focused solely on getting Thompson behind cover. He was bleeding badly from the wound in his lower belly. She had to get them both to safety before they had more GSWs to deal with. She gritted her teeth and hauled him along the path, the muscles in her arms, legs and back burning. Rounds pinged off the rocks below them. Sweat trickled down her face and under her arms.

Thompson let out a throttled growl as she towed him behind the nearby hip-high boulders. She squeezed behind the pitiful shelter with him and dropped her ruck to rummage through it.

“Why the fuck are they attacking us?” Thompson muttered, already shaking from shock.

“No idea.” Though she was fairly certain it had something to do with Sandberg. He’d picked up on the threat before she and Thompson had even realized what was happening. Before that he’d seemed on edge, like he’d been expecting trouble.

Sandberg hurried over, lowered his rifle slightly and spoke to her without turning around. “Let’s go.”

He bent to put Thompson across his shoulders, his grunt drowned out by the wounded man’s raw cry of pain as he hoisted him into the air and set off. Erin grabbed what ammo and water she could find in Thompson’s ruck, stuffed it into her own, and tipped it onto her back before rushing to catch up with Sandberg. He moved at a steady pace despite the heavy burden he carried. Erin cast a nervous glance back down the hill, the quiet unnerving after the initial firefight. The wounded were being evacuated in the one functional truck, but she knew they’d bring more reinforcements at any time, and who knew when the backup Thompson had requested would arrive. Or if they even would.

“What’s the plan?” she panted as she caught up to Sandberg.

“Get to the village.”

“That’s the first place they’ll look for us!”

He just grunted and kept going.

There had to be something better. She glimpsed a trail winding up the hillside from the village, leading God knew where, but surely heading up that was better than sitting in a potentially hostile village when the enemy came hunting again. “What about there?” she asked, pointing at it. “We could—”

“The village,” he snapped and she glowered at him. He wasn’t her CO—he wasn’t even freaking military—so who the hell did he think he was, deciding their fate for them?

“Why are they after us?”

He didn’t respond and his silence put the match to her temper.

“Hey.” She quickened her stride to come abreast of him, would have grabbed his arm to force him to look at her except he was clearly struggling under Thompson’s weight and the grade of the incline. “What happened at the checkpoint? Were they looking for you?”

“Stop talking and walk faster,” he growled without looking at her.

Thinning her lips, she shut up and picked up the pace, expecting to hear another engine or volley of shots at any moment. They covered the remaining distance to the village in about fifteen minutes, but by the time they arrived she and Sandberg were out of breath and sweating heavily. She was about to insist they keep going on the trail she’d seen fifteen minutes ago when a group of male villagers crested the rise. They were all armed with rifles, their expressions hard and distrusting. She faltered and reached for her weapon but Sandberg stayed her with another grunt and a terse shake of his head. Her whole body tense, she dropped her hand and waited. She never could have predicted what happened next.

Sandberg shocked her by calling out to the men in what had to be Pashto. They blinked at him in astonishment for a moment, then urged him forward. Erin followed closely in his wake, aware of her pulse thudding in her ears and a sick feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. She watched the men’s hands carefully, afraid to take her eyes off them.

They passed several mud brick homes and were approaching a slightly larger one in the center of the village when a man stepped out of the doorway. He was in late middle age, his thick beard liberally streaked with gray. His gaze swept over them with a cursory glance before he spoke to his men. One of them replied and the old man’s eyes snapped to Sandberg in surprise. He said something, and Sandberg replied in turn. The hint of a smile warmed the old man’s face, then he nodded and motioned for them to enter his home. Erin was right at Sandberg’s back, all too aware of the curious and disdainful looks she was receiving. There were no other women in sight, all probably having been sequestered into their homes at the first sign of visitors approaching, as custom dictated.

Sandberg walked into the center of the dwelling and lowered Thompson to the hard-packed dirt floor. Even in the dim illumination from the lantern in the corner, she could see how pasty his skin was. She put on surgical gloves from the med kit, took his pulse and got to work assessing the wound more thoroughly, darting glances at Sandberg as he spoke to the elder. Thompson groaned when she revealed the bullet wound. She pushed his hands away and whispered for him to lie still while she worked.

The round had gone through his abdomen and out the side of his waist. Too low to have hit his kidneys, and too far to the side to have hit his bladder. With any luck it’d torn right through muscle and not much else. She poured in clotting powder and bandaged him up, wondering what the hell Sandberg was saying and how he’d learned to speak the language like a native. Had to be former Spec Ops. Who was he working for now?

By the time she finished and stripped her bloody surgical gloves off, Sandberg came over. “Bleeding slowed?”

“Nearly stopped. Hoping it’s just a really bad flesh wound, but without further assessment and better lighting I can’t tell.”

“We need to move again, fast. Sorry, but has to be done,” he said to Thompson as he reached down to haul him back atop his shoulders. Thompson gritted his teeth and let out a throttled sound, eyes squeezed shut.

Once again, Erin scrambled to get her gear together and rush after him. “Where are we going?” she demanded as they stepped out into the bright sunshine.

“Up the access trail.”

She resisted the urge to snap at him at his clipped responses and followed him and three of the younger men up the trail. It snaked up the hillside in a winding route, but this time following wadis and dry streambeds that concealed them from anyone looking up from the bottom of the hill. Almost twenty minutes later another, smaller village came into view near the crest of a ridge. The faint sound of truck engines below in the valley floor reached them.

“Quick.” Sandberg motioned for her to run ahead of him. She followed one of the villagers down a slight incline and into a shallow ravine, struggling to keep her balance with the added weight of her ruck. A minute later the first dwelling came into view. One of the men ushered them into the fourth house on the right, set against the hillside, and motioned them toward the back wall where a heavy carpet hung. He pulled it aside to reveal a passageway. Sandberg said something to him, received a reply, and motioned for her to enter what appeared to be a long tunnel. The carpet dropped over the opening, plunging them into blackness. In the sudden silence their breathing sounded magnified.

“What’s going on?” Thompson rasped.

“Passage leads into a cave in the mountain,” Sandberg answered. “Got a light?” he asked Erin.

She fished a slim flashlight out of her ruck and switched it on. The tunnel they stood in was narrow and small enough that even she would have to crouch to get through it. Staring ahead into the blackness beyond the beam of light, a sickening sense of dread filled her. The walls seemed to squeeze closer together even more, making the old panic rise up. She swallowed and forced herself to take a slow inhalation as she fought the old fear.

“I can’t carry Thompson through here. You’ll have to take point,” Sandberg said to her in a low voice.

She nodded, doing everything she could to mask the terror trying to wind its tendrils up her spine. Keeping the light steady, she carefully picked her way down the tunnel.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it
, she repeated to herself. “How far?”

“Until we get to the cave on the other end. Few hundred feet or so.”

Great
, she thought sourly. She pushed away the panicky sensation in her chest and kept going, reminding herself that she wasn’t trapped in here.
Yet.
“You trust that guy?” she made herself ask.

“No reason not to. They’ll keep us hidden and come for us once the soldiers leave the area.”

No reason not to?
“How do you know?”

“Pashtun tribal code. It’s an honor thing.”

“You believe him enough to risk our lives, waiting in here?” Being
trapped
in this tunnel with only two possible exits, in what could be a hostile village.

“Yes.”

His immediate response surprised her. Since she didn’t have a choice but to go forward now, she made herself walk on. The air in here was chilly, the stygian darkness ahead making her heart pound. Knowing Sandberg’s and Thompson’s big frames blocked the exit behind her intensified the fear. She was all too aware of the seconds ticking past, of the rock squeezing in from all sides, making her throat tighten more and more. Only she must not have masked her fear very well, because Sandberg’s low voice broke the silence.

“You okay?”

Not even close.
“Yeah.” There was no help for it; she’d have to keep going until they reached the cave.

It seemed to take forever for her to inch her way through the rock tunnel, her heart pounding a painful rhythm against her ribs with every step, but finally she noticed a lightening up ahead. She picked her way over the uneven ground and the crushing fear began to recede as the tunnel finally widened a bit. The light ahead grew stronger and stronger until she was able to see well enough to turn off her flashlight. At last the tunnel took a slight turn. Their footsteps began to echo slightly, alerting her that a larger chamber lay ahead.

“Stop here,” Sandberg whispered.

Without feeling like she was entombed in a rock sarcophagus, Erin was at last able to draw a full breath as she hunkered down and pulled off her ruck. “You hanging in there, Thompson?” she whispered.

“Trying to,” he answered, his voice strained.

Sandberg shifted behind her and lowered the other man to the ground. “Aim your flashlight on him and let’s check the wound.”

She did, liking that he wasn’t pulling alpha male bullshit and actually treating her like an equal in the process. In the beam of light, Thompson’s bandages were soaked through with blood. Sandberg peeled the tape away from the edges to pull it back. The clotting agent was still doing its job, because the wound was only bleeding sluggishly despite all the stress just placed on it. Thompson was shivering as she added more Quick Clot gauze and re-bandaged the wound.

Once she was done she switched off the light, reassured by the faint natural light seeping in from ahead. “Now what?” she whispered to Sandberg.

“We wait for them to come get us.”

Though she understood the basic tribal code and the sense of honor that ran deep among these people, she still thought it was a huge mistake to trust them with their lives. Honor was one thing, but she’d been over here long enough to know that allegiances here shifted as quickly as the weather. But if they left the cave now, they’d be exposed to the men now combing the hills for them. In the expanding silence she was aware of the thud of her pulse in her ears. “What happened at that checkpoint?”

He shifted but didn’t answer.

“It was you they were after, wasn’t it?” It was the only thing that made sense.

He grunted.

“Why?” she pressed, growing frustrated. After what they’d been through, she and Thompson deserved to know the truth.

A deep sigh filled the space. “Long story.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve now got a captive audience with the two of us here. So what the hell’s going on?”

He hesitated a long moment before answering. “Has to do with a job I was recently on.”

She could just imagine what sort of “job” he referred to. “And?”

Another grunt and the sound of material shifting, as if he’d just shrugged. She opened her mouth to say something else but the distant sound of voices made her whirl to face the cave entrance. She could feel the tension radiating off Sandberg as he squeezed past her. Crouching in front of her, he reached back and put a hand on her shoulder, whether to reassure her or order her to stay put, she couldn’t tell. Instinctively she backed up toward Thompson and withdrew her weapon from its holster.

Sandberg’s wide shoulders all but blocked the trickle of light coming down the tunnel. The male voices grew louder, then came the sound of footsteps in the cave. Voices echoed off its walls, carrying to them. Erin couldn’t understand what was being said, but the angry tones told her all she needed to know. Someone from the enemy security force was there, arguing with at least one of the villagers.

Her fingers tightened around the grip of the pistol as she waited, barely daring to breathe. Sandberg was still-as-stone in front of her. One man snarled a string of what sounded like curses at someone else, then the crash of what sounded like crates or boxes filled the air. Tension rolled off Sandberg at whatever they said, pulsing from him in tangible waves. Erin swallowed, fought to calm her racing heart as she strained to hear if anything was happening behind them in the tunnel. Were they being cut off? Surrounded?

The arguing continued for long minutes as the soldiers searched the cave. Then, finally, one man gave a terse command and everything got quiet. Real quiet.

Sandberg stayed poised ahead of her. After an unknown amount of time passed he began inching his way toward the cave opening. She stayed where she was, ready to grab Thompson and start dragging him back the way they’d come, or rush out shooting to defend Sandberg. He paused just out of view and remained there for a few minutes. Not long after that, a man called out softly. She was shocked to hear Sandberg answer him a moment later. Why had he just given away their position?