Down Range (Shadow Warriors - Book 2) (10 page)

“You feel Khogani around, too?”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, the last two days.” Morgan grimaced. “I think Khogani is up there. We might not see him, but he’s there. Watching.”

Releasing a breath, Jake dug the toe of his boot into the dirt. “Good to know.”

“It’s our sixth sense that keeps us alive out here.”

Jake scowled at the mountain, now turning dark and shadowed. The cape of the night drew silently across the sky. “We’ve got a request for a drone to monitor that mountain in the night hours with infrared capability, but they can’t spare us one.”

Just as frustrated as he was, Morgan nodded. “Drones are great, when they work. Vero was saying that the CIA drones out of Camp Bravo were broken. Both of them. He said it was a software problem. They’ve got an Air Force team flying in from Bagram to fix them and get them back into the air to provide us support.”

Jake whispered a curse. “That doesn’t help us now.”

“I wish we had a Raven.”

Ravens were very small, handheld drones. Jake had his team carry one in their third-line gear. They could fly the drone, the size of a real raven, and it would give them real-time camera intel into his laptop that he carried with him. The small drone was able to fly above an area where they were hunting the enemy and locate them. “Yeah, well, they’re in short supply, too,” he grumbled. American drone makers were building drones as fast as humanly possible. All black-ops groups used them. But so did the rest of the military. It had become critical when an adequate supply of drones couldn’t be produced fast enough to help the troops out in the field. It left teams like his open to attack.

“What do you want to do?” Morgan asked, feeling Jake’s energy change. She sensed his worry and was concerned, too. A five-foot wall was no match for an enemy who wanted to infiltrate a village like this one.

“Nothing. Stay alert is all.” His brows drew down as he almost said that he wanted them together in an abandoned house somewhere else in the village. Jake didn’t like being separated at a time like this, yet he knew Morgan wanted to see the child and mother. She had powerful ties in this village with the people, and he wasn’t at all surprised. There was a strong maternal side to Morgan he’d always been aware of. Now he was seeing it in action.

“We’ll have one more day here tomorrow,” she said, speaking in a quiet tone. Voices carried. It was darkening now, and she saw most of the villagers were inside their homes for the night. Even the few stray dogs were sitting or lying on the doorsteps, hoping for a scrap of food being handed out to them later after the family ate dinner.

“Yeah, I want to get going, but there’s no sense making a move unless we can pick up Khogani’s trail.”

Morgan heard the frustration in his deep timbre. Her arm still tingled warmly from his brief touch. “We’ll dig ditches tomorrow and get that done for the village. Service work by U.S. forces always makes for friendly villagers.”

Jake laughed a little as he pushed the toe of his boot through the dry soil. “Yeah, we’ve converted to ditchdiggers. I’m sure that will look good on my résumé. Someone will be impressed by it.”

Morgan knew he’d rather be on the hunt, have a focus and be on the mission. So would she. But it would do no good to start climbing that mountain in search of Khogani unless they had a trail to follow. If they had one, then all bets were off. Like a bomb-detection dog and handler, they’d be on the scent. Both of them knew how to track and find their enemy. And she lived to find Khogani. “Patience, Ramsey.”

“Normally, I have plenty of it,” he griped, giving her a good-natured smile.

The corners of her mouth tipped upward. In the dusk, her wide beautiful eyes were accentuated. Though aching to touch Morgan, to love her, Jake pushed all those selfish desires deep down within him. They had no real trust. He’d destroyed it. And this mission was their focus, not their broken relationship. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow at 0530,” he said, lifting his hand and placing it briefly on her shoulder. “Good night.”

His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Turning, she whispered, “Good night…” before heading toward the wall where there was a well-worn path.

Chapter Ten

Jake picked up
his shovel. The morning sun was just crawling over the Hindu Kush as he and his five-man Afghan team went to the opposite end of the field where the ditch needed to be dug. Morgan was at the other end with her five volunteers. The morning was cool, and he was glad to have his Kevlar and cammies on. They carried so much gear usually that jackets weren’t worn unless it snowed or rained.

Children began to gather along the ditch after breakfast, helping Jake and his men. They threw out large clods of dirt and rocks, removing them from the growing ditch. Jake liked the kids’ laughter; it raised his spirits. The stray dogs came and ran after the clods of dirt the children threw for them to fetch. Every now and again, he’d looked up to catch sight of Morgan working. If her team of men found it odd a woman would be digging a ditch, it didn’t show. Every now and again, he could hear her laughter. That made him feel good, too.

As he dug, watching Morgan, his mind revolved back to his chronically ill mother. She couldn’t lift a glass of water, much less do what Morgan was presently doing. Mouth quirking, Jake thought maybe he needed to stop seeing her and his mother in the same light. They were direct opposites. And Morgan’s impassioned plea to him in Hawaii to see her differently was sinking in.

Sweat ran freely down his face as he worked with his Afghan crew. A pang of intense emotion moved through his chest. Jake thought about Amanda, his late wife. She had not been helpless like his mother, but she had relied on him emotionally for strength. Jake hadn’t felt imprisoned by Amanda’s need to be protected; rather, he’d expected that from a spouse. His wife had willingly accepted him being the strong one in the family. From the time they’d met in a bar in Coronado, he’d known Amanda was enamored with him because he was a SEAL. To her, he’d been a hero. Jake realized she’d seen life through rose-colored glasses. And she’d loved him with everything she had. All Amanda had wanted was a family and to be a mother. He had been ready to settle down and take responsibility for a family. Jake swallowed the sadness from his past.

On a break near 1000, Jake walked up the half-finished ditch toward Morgan. She was sitting down on the ground, sucking water out of the CamelBak that she carried. He came and sat down inches away from her. Morgan’s red hair was dusty, and strands clung damply against her perspiring skin. Her eyes were shining with happiness. She’d been an incredible athlete at Annapolis, reveling in her physical strength and endurance.

“Looks like we’re making good progress,” he said before taking a drink of water.

Morgan removed her boonie hat and pushed the dusty strands away from her face. “I figure by evening, we’ll be done.”

Jake studied the sunlit slope of the mountain. Early this morning, five boys had herded their goats up across the boulder-strewn slope. None was visible now, each herd having taken a different trail along the nine-thousand-foot level for their goats to find sparse grass or brush to eat. The children had been told to keep alert for Khogani. If any of them spotted him or his men, they were to drive their flock back down the mountain to the village and tell Hamid.

“I don’t see any kid coming back with his goats yet,” Morgan said, watching as Jake stared darkly at the mountain. Earlier, she’d contacted Vero at J-bad and found out the drones were still unavailable.

“This is something I never knew about you,” he teased. “Being a ditchdigger. Or is that your civil-engineer passion to artfully push dirt around expressing itself?”

Grinning a little, Morgan silently absorbed Jake’s nearness. They sat on a raised dirt dike between the fields and their ditch. The other workers and children were taking a break, as well, the wives coming out with jars of water to refresh them. “My parents work with a Catholic mission down in Sonora, Mexico. From the time I could remember, we would drive down once a year and stay at a village for two weeks and help dig rows in the fields to help them out.” She dusted off her hands. “My dad is a civil engineer, and I used to follow him around and he showed me how irrigation was important to farmers. By the time I was ten, I was digging ditches alongside my parents.”

Jake considered her information. “Your parents are good people. Not many families would drive down to Mexico to help dig ditches in fields.” Tractors weren’t available down in the poor parts of that country, Jake knew. It was shovels, pickaxes, rakes and hoes to create the long rows and then plant the seeds for the coming year.

Morgan nodded. “My folks have always believed in helping the poor. My mother was abandoned at birth, handed over to a priest at a Catholic church. She never forgot the church’s generosity to her.”

“Your mother is a strong woman to come out of that kind of adversity.” Jake thought about his own life. He’d had a mother and father. Both had been absent. He’d been abandoned in a different way, although growing up, he’d never seen himself like that. Only later, as an adult, did he understand the feelings he’d had as a kid.

“My mom went through five or six foster homes by the time she was eighteen,” Morgan said. “It was really hard on her. I don’t think I could have survived something like that.”

“What did she do at eighteen?”

“Got two jobs and went to college. She wanted to be a registered nurse to help others. Only, she didn’t have enough money to finish college, so she joined the Marine Corps to save money. And when the WLF got formed, she volunteered because her best friend, Lisa, enlisted. Her original plan was to sock the money away for three years, finish her commitment to the WLF and then go back and get her degree.”

Jake wrapped his hands around his drawn-up legs, hearing pain in Morgan’s tone. “After the WLF was disbanded, did she get her degree?”

“Yes, eventually she did. My dad got a dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps because he fraternized with my mother, who was enlisted.”

“Ouch.”

“Really.” Her mouth puckered. “My dad was philosophical about it. He said love didn’t recognize officer rank or enlisted ratings. He started an engineering and construction business, which became highly successful. It enabled my mom to go back to school and get her degree as an RN. By the time I came along, she worked at a Gunnison, Colorado, mission helping the poor at a medical clinic.”

“So, you’re driven to help the underdogs of life?”

Meeting his gaze, his eyes contemplative, Morgan said, “Yes.”

“And you’re doing the same over here.” Jake gestured toward the village. “You’re using your paramedic skills whenever you can to help the Afghans?”

“Always. I don’t believe we have to be regarded as killers just because we’re in black ops.” Morgan sat up and moved her shoulders as if to relieve the tension in them. “Nation building and education are the only way to get the poor lifted out of this hellish abject poverty. I love working with the black-ops groups, no matter what branch of the military they come from. When they come into a village, they bring medicine, food and money, and it makes everyone feel good. I haven’t met one guy from any team that doesn’t want to help these poor people.”

“You’re right.” Jake felt his way through her background. He found himself wishing he’d been a helluva lot more interested in Morgan’s history when they’d been twenty years old or even later when they’d reconnected briefly. He’d had a year to explore her family story at Annapolis and get to know her, and he hadn’t. They’d shared sex. Great sex, really, but he hadn’t been mature enough to look beyond his own self-gratification. Morgan was so much more than Jake had ever realized. He was beginning to understand her commitment to the military and to the struggling Afghan people who were trying to survive. She realized she could be a positive role model to the Afghans in many ways.

“You always put your money where your mouth is, Boland?”

Morgan met his glinting gaze. “Does it show, Ramsey?” Her heart expanded as she saw something else in his eyes. It felt good to Morgan, but she couldn’t interpret it. Jake’s mouth softened, the corners pulling up. A powerful emotion, an intense yearning for him, tunneled through her. If only…oh, God, if only they could go back and rewrite the script of their moments together….

Chapter Eleven

The sun was
setting low in the west as Morgan sat with Jake on the first floor of Hamid’s home. Earlier, she’d laid out a cloth and field-stripped her AW Mag. It was something she did every evening. All the working parts would get dusty, and when in the field, it was imperative that the rifle be kept as clean as possible.

Jake was sitting cross-legged nearby, helping to clean each moving mechanism, the parts spread between them on the protective canvas.

“Did you get local oil?” Jake asked, picking up the 32X Night Force scope.

Morgan nodded, drying her hands on another cloth she kept in a plastic bag in her third-line gear. “Reza gave me some.”

“Good.” SEAL snipers had learned long ago to use local oil to clean their rifles. Taliban, if they came across the odor on the air, would smell it. If it was a foreign oil, they knew the difference. And then they would know an American or another foreign sniper was nearby and take action. Something as simple as this could make the difference between life and death for a SEAL sniper remaining hidden or being found.

Jake tried to ignore Morgan’s nearness. This turned out to be his favorite time of day with her. Hamid’s wife was gracious enough to give them the large room on the first floor to clean their equipment. He glanced over as she dried her hands, making sure they were not damp before picking up the Night Force scope. She pulled out a baby wipe to gently clean the light film of dust off the body of the scope.

Jake would occasionally glance over at her, noticing how relaxed she was when cleaning her rifle. The warmth of the sun through the windows made the room stuffy, but he didn’t mind. His heart moved with a lot of mixed emotions. The more he found out about her background, the more he chastised himself for his past behavior. If he’d known about Morgan’s history, would that have drawn him even closer to her? Hell, yes, it would have. Jake respected people who helped others who were less well-off than himself. The SEAL community had it in their bones, too. The first aid, the medicine, food and anything else they could give to the villagers were always priorities. SEALs were human. They didn’t like to see people suffer, either.

He cleared his throat as he reached for another baby wipe. “How did you survive SEAL sniper school?”

Morgan lifted her chin. She studied Jake’s expression and saw real curiosity there. “It was the hardest school I’ve ever attended. But the instructors were incredible.”

“In your childhood, did your parents hunt?” Often, Jake found men who became snipers had been hunters in their youth. With Morgan having a set of military parents, it was a real possibility. He was fascinated to see how her unusual childhood had molded her into the woman she was today.

Morgan’s mouth quirked. “My mother, in the last foster family who took her in at twelve years old, had a father who hunted. They had six foster kids and he hunted nearly every day to put meat on the table for them. My mother was the oldest, so he taught her at age twelve how to use a 30.06 to drop a buck.”

Surprised, Jake muttered, “A 30.06? For a twelve-year-old? That would knock any kid on their ass from the recoil.”

“It did, and often. My mother hated killing anything. Especially animals. But the family was poor and couldn’t feed the six children properly, so the foster father pushed her into hunting with him.”

Shaking his head, Jake muttered, “Your mother had a hell of a childhood.”

“You didn’t exactly have a good one, either,” Morgan noted drily, running the baby wipe down the long length of the scope cradled between her fingers. She looked up and saw the corners of his mouth tuck inward, a sign Jake was feeling emotional pain. She was glad she knew him so well because he always hid how he really felt from everyone. A SEAL trait.

“I’m beginning to think my childhood was a piece of cake compared to your mother’s. That must have been hell for her.”

“It was, but that’s why she stood out in the WLF. She was a sniper-quality shooter.”

“Did she teach you, then?”

“No, my dad did. He was the hunter, and I grew up in the Rocky Mountains, nine thousand feet, and he’d take me out with him.” Morgan smiled softly. “I loved learning how to track. My father had been a Recon Marine and had gone through Marine sniper school. He was a natural for it, and he taught me to track an animal even on scree, across rocky slopes. I was really good at it.” Her brows fell. “I didn’t like shooting a deer or elk, though. My mother had a soft spot for animals, and so do I.”

“But you did it anyway?”

“Yes. My dad explained that we’d use the meat. It wouldn’t be wasted. He has some Cherokee blood in him, and he taught me to pray for the release of the spirit of whatever I shot. There was a respect for the animal and its spirit. That made me feel better about it.”

“So, when you were sent to SEAL sniper school, that background probably served you very well.”

“It did. The SEAL instructors were tough, but they really wanted us to graduate. Five women didn’t make it. In the end, they just didn’t have the kind of patience it took. There were times I lay eight to ten hours out in a field, with the instructors watching through binos, binoculars, to try and locate us. I remember waiting five or six hours for a buck to pass by close enough to take him down as a kid. For me, it was easy to remain unseen.”

“You’ve always been a patient person,” Jake noted. And then he grinned. “Even with your red hair.”

Snorting softly, Morgan appreciated his praise. These quiet times with Jake were going to end shortly, and she would miss them. “My red hair symbolizes my passion for life, for what I feel is worth fighting for.”

“A banner for sure. What’s the longest sniper shot you’ve ever taken out in the field?” Jake knew everyone graduating from SEAL sniper school was expected to hit a target at a thousand yards and nail it. However, school shooting and then taking those skills out into the real world were markedly different. Wind direction, weather, the barometric pressure and so many other variables all fell into whether a sniper could hit his or her target. One shot, one kill, was the maxim, although it might take two shots. Or even three.

“I nailed an al Qaeda regional leader at eleven hundred yards.” She lifted her chin and held his gaze. “What about you? What’s your longest shot?”

“I took out a Taliban leader at twelve hundred yards. The wind was a key player. I missed the first shot but dropped him on the second round.”

“The wind,” she muttered. “God, how I hate the wind. It’s the worst variable of all. And in these mountains, it makes getting a shot ten times tougher.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth. Mountains make their own weather, and wind patterns change in a heartbeat. In school, what was your final graduation score?” There was a possible one thousand points a student sniper could earn. In Jake’s class, no one got close to that number. He was curious about the women going through the training. Had they been better or worse scores than the men?

“I made nine hundred. The other women were in the high eight hundreds.”

“That’s a damn fine score, Morgan.” And it was. Very few male students made the nine-hundred range. It spoke of her abilities and Jake began to understand why she’d been picked for this op.

“What was your graduation score, Ramsey?”

“Eight seventy-five. Nowhere near yours.”

“That’s a good score.”

Jake shrugged. “I wanted it to be better, but things happened in the class. I had one sniper student on a stalk move suddenly in front of me. The instructor watching the field where we were hiding and stalking. He caught movement of the taller grass. He didn’t sight the student, but he found me instead. I was so pissed.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Morgan said, feeling for him. She knew how important those scores were. The best snipers got the best assignments. And Jake was a relentless type A who always strove to be the best. It was simply in his genes.

“It wasn’t,” Jake growled. “After the stalk, I cornered the guy, a Marine, and I told him if he ever tried anything like that again on me, I was going to field-strip him like a sniper rifle.”

“And?”

“He took my threat to heart. By the end of the schooling, we were good friends. We are to this day.”

“So, you must have picked it up out in the field? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been chosen for this op.”

“Yeah, once I got out in the field, I excelled.”

“Does it bother you to shoot a human?”

Hearing the guarded emotion in her tone, Jake held her serious expression. “No. I’m taking out a bad guy who’s killing a lot of innocent people, not to mention, our military people. You?”

Shrugging, Morgan put the finishing touches on the scope, satisfied it was as clear as it was going to get. “I’ve always looked at it this way, Jake. If I take a bad guy down, that means he’s not going to threaten another village, kill the men and bury IEDs for the children to step on.” Her mouth compressed as she thought about the next words. “Like you, if I take out one of these monsters, it means American soldiers may get to go home to their wives and children. I’m the fulcrum point between the bad guys and the good guys.”

Nodding, Jake rasped, “It’s the same for me.”

Morgan laid the scope aside after putting it back into the protective pouch that was padded as well as rainproof. “I want Khogani. I want to take the shot that kills that murdering son of a bitch.” She stood up, slid her hands against her thighs and looked out the window. “I’m going to stay with Roya again. You okay with that?” The sun had set and darkness was nearly complete.

Jake nodded. “Go ahead, but wear your helmet and NVG gear? It’s dark outside.”

“I will. Too bad the boys coming back earlier with the goat herds didn’t spot Khogani.”

Jake grimaced. “Yeah, but I can feel the bastard is nearby. Watching.”

“I’ll get my gear and leave. My radio will be on. Have a good night,” she said, rubbing her neck.

Jake would reassemble the rifle shortly. Everything was clean. He knew that Roya and Morgan were very close, and he wanted her to be able to spend one more night with the woman and her sickly daughter. “Stay safe out there….”

Night had fallen
. If not for the grainy green that Morgan could see through her NVGs, night-vision goggles, after turning them on, she wouldn’t be able to see her hand in front of her face. The problem with NVGs was that there was no depth of perception, so when she saw a deep rut, she knew it was deeper or wider than it appeared and would slow her stride. As she walked quietly down the center of the street, heading for the wall where there was a path to cut quickly across two streets to Roya’s house, Morgan keyed all her senses.

The night air was cold and humid. She wore her cammies but not a jacket. Maybe she should have. Far off in the distance, she heard the hoot of an owl, the sound carrying from the fields. What she didn’t hear were crickets. They always sang at night around the village. Slowing as she made a left turn between the last mud house and the wall, Morgan wished she had better hearing. She stood and waited. It was her sniper’s patience coming forward to serve her.

No cricket sounds.

Morgan barely turned her head, listening for the three feral dogs that lived in the village. If someone was sneaking around outside the walls, the dogs would hear them first, and they’d start barking. They were a first line of defense.

Nothing.

The palm of her hand came to rest on the butt of her pistol. No dogs barking meant all was well. Or, as her lips thinned, considering the odd lack of night noises, the enemy slit the dogs’ throats before they could bark and give away their position. All of that ran through Morgan’s mind. She wasn’t going to take chances and spoke in a quiet tone into the mic near her lips.

“North wall, end of Hamid’s street. No night sounds. Going two streets over. Out.” It was a precaution, one that always paid off to let Jake know her location. Just in case.

“Roger.”

His voice was equally quiet in responding. Voices carried a hell of a long ways, and a short few words. A whisper could be heard more easily by the enemy than speaking in a low tone. Without thinking, Morgan unsnapped the retaining strap across the SIG, in case she needed to draw the weapon. There was never a time that the pistol wasn’t unsafed. It didn’t have a safety on it. Morgan made sure a bullet was always in the chamber. She would not have time for those two actions in a firefight as it would slow her down. And it could get her killed. Her fingers automatically closed around the butt of the pistol as she walked very quietly down the well-trodden dirt path parallel to the wall.

She had just reached the second road, where Roya lived, when she heard a sound. Morgan turned on her heel, her heart suddenly banging in her throat. Her eyes widened as she saw three men leap up onto the wall, rifles in hand, dressed with bullet belts across their chests.

They saw her, and all hell broke loose.

Morgan’s hand went to pull the SIG swiftly out of the holster. Everything slowed down. Her breath caught as she saw the one man stand up on the wall, aim his AK-47 at her and fire.

She fired simultaneously.

The bullet struck her Kevlar, high and to her right shoulder, spinning her backward, knocking her off her feet. Stunned, Morgan slammed into the ground. She rolled, hearing the snarls of the men scrambling over the wall. She knew they were Khogani’s men. They dressed differently than the Shinwari men at the village.

As she rolled and leaped to her feet, two more bullets snapped and popped close to her head. She crouched, hands on the SIG, firing as one more man struggled over the wall. He cried out once, toppled forward, landing in a heap on the path inside the wall.

The third man lifted his weapon. Morgan shot first, the bullet finding his head.

Gasping for breath, her heart thundering in her chest, she managed to rasp out her position to Jake. Her chest hurt like hell. With one hand, Morgan frantically felt and touched her upper right chest.
No blood.
The thick Level 4 ceramic plate in her vest had done its job. Damn, it hurt to breathe! How many more Taliban were outside that wall?