Pushing the Limit (19 page)

Matt’s heart stopped when he saw the gun to Harry’s head. His thoughts immediately turned to the images of the hostage videos sometimes seen on news bulletins. Never before had it been someone he loved wincing away from the weapon.

Loved.
Hell yeah
.

“I’m sorry, Matt, but I have my orders,” Maggie said in an emotionless voice. “I have to get the information from the laptop and deliver it to my bosses, who are arriving in”—she checked her watch—“ten hours.”

Matt checked his own watch. Twenty minutes until they had to be ready. Maggie was also a loose end.

“Harry, just give Maggie the laptop,” Matt said in the calmest voice he could muster. He hoped that by getting Harry to get the laptop, Maggie would at least take the gun from her head. But belying his voice was a fury that burned in his heart.
How dare she endanger Harry’s life?

“I th-thought her name was Katherine?” Jason said.

Harry ignored him and gave Maggie the computer.

“I’m not stupid. What’s the password? He didn’t know.” She nodded toward the cowering Jason.

Harry hesitated, and then said, “Danny forever—four as in the number, all one word.” Her eyes sought Matt’s, but he looked away. Fuck. He couldn’t believe he’d been this stupid. She was in love with Danny still, and nothing was going to drag her from the past. Even with a gun at her head. Enough.
Enough
. He was drawing a line under this whole trip. He was leaving her in
his
past.

“Thank you. Now, I’m sorry, but I have orders to kill you all.” She raised her gun, and Matt lunged for her. As he made contact with her, a shot rang out, and a warm spray hit his face. Was it him? Had he been shot? He’d never been shot before but was pretty sure it would involve more pain.

He fell to the floor on top of Maggie, and took a second to assess. Had she killed someone in the trailer? He scrambled onto his knees. “Harry?”

“We’re all fine.” Her voice came softly as the echo of the gun died away.

He looked around. Maggie’d been shot in the head. He looked in the doorway. David was standing on one leg, aiming into the trailer with the gun Matt had dropped outside when he’d seen Harry in danger. He nodded at him. David nodded back.

“Mom, Dad? Can I keep him?” Molly had caught sight of David through the window. Matt thought she was probably in shock. Hoped. Hoped she was in shock.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Harry stood still, hands over her mouth in horror. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the extent of the devastation. But then she peeked. Next to the huge burning crater were two men, sprawled out pools of blood beneath them. They looked as if they had been blown up and out by an explosion.

Embers glowed in the dark crater, and a few hundred-dollar bills were shredded and burning around the hole.

Matt was to her right, flat on his back, blood seeping from his eyes, nose, and mouth. It was a horror movie. Molly was at her feet, kneeling and bowing over as if she couldn’t bear the smell of charred flesh.

In the moments that followed, she allowed herself to think of returning to her life without Matt. Spending her days and nights alone, or with some guy she’d picked up for fun. Trying to restore her name in her professional field. Was that all she wanted from life? Or would she risk something different?

“Hold it a minute more.” Matt’s voice came from the side of his mouth where the blood hadn’t congealed.

“My knees hurt,” complained Molly.

David sniggered, and then coughed as he inhaled sand.

“Everyone shut up!” Harry said through her hands. One thing was for sure. She was going to change all her passwords.

“You know, if I have to lie here in the sun for another minute pretending to be dead, I will, actually, be dead,” David said.

“I won’t let you die,” Molly cooed, head still bowed.

Harry shook her head. This was the craziest thing she’d ever done. And she wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to tell anyone about it.

“And… we’re done,” Matt said, sitting up.

David pulled himself wincing into a semi-upright position and Molly shuffled over to him. “I can’t believe this will work. How did it even occur to you?” he asked Matt.

“They did this in Europe in World War II to confuse the German surveillance aircraft. Their camouflage was a little more elaborate, though. They had stage backdrops painted as bomb craters and placed them over buildings that the Luftwaffe had targeted. When the surveillance planes flew over to assess the damage they’d inflicted, they took photos of what looked like a direct hit, and the bombers went on to different targets. Let’s just hope it works the same way with high-resolution, low-orbiting satellite imagery.”

“We still have to liberate the money before MGL sends more people,” Harry said, hoping that Matt would at least look at her. But he instead looked back toward where they were going to dig. They’d set up the decoy a hundred feet or so away, just in case they couldn’t extract the money in time.

Matt avoided Harry’s eyes and turned to David. “You up for this?”

David held up his hand to show how steady it was. It was shaking. “Hell yeah. We are the Master Blasters,” he said with a grin.

Matt held his hand out to David and helped him up. Mueen had already gotten five workers started on the digging. They hit the container pretty quickly. Molly and Harry had cut the sheets that had the bomb crater crudely painted on them and placed them around the container. On one side, the pallet had been damaged by the blast that Mueen had told them had brought down the aircraft. “You guys need to get away. Start putting the gear we brought into the Suburban, but keep it over there by the trailer,” Matt told them all. God, she wished he’d just look at her.

“Be careful,” Harry said.

He stared at her with an inscrutable expression. “We will.” He stuck his fist out to David, still with his eyes on Harry. David knocked his fist on Matt’s, and they both lay down on their stomachs facing the bomb.

As she walked away, Harry could hear them laughing together and trash-talking each other as they got to work on the device.

* * *

Twenty minutes and seven years’ worth of trash talk later, the bomb was defused and the money was being loaded into the truck. David was sitting in the sand, rerigging the explosives with his watch as timer so that they could really blow up the hole they pretended they had earlier.

“I’m going to go make a call when we get back and get that sorted out,” Matt said without elaborating.

“Can we talk?” Harry asked quietly. She needed to make this right.

“Yup.”

“About the password. Both of them, actually. They’ve been that way for years…”

“You don’t have to explain. You’ve been nothing but clear. Danny was…
is
the love of your life. It’s okay. He’s important to me, too. But there is no way I’m playing second fiddle to a dead man. Not that you ever asked me to. But I think it’s best we just keep it professional from now on. All the”—he waved his hands around as if he didn’t know what to say—“all the other stuff… well, we’ll just pretend that didn’t happen.”

“But that’s not what I want,” she whispered, painfully aware that people were moving things around them.

“Harry. It’s what
I
want. What I
need
.” He stared at her for a second, and then picked up some shovels and slung them in the back of the truck on top of the money. “Mueen, we’ll need these shovels tonight.”

Mueen looked between them both and nodded, frowning.

His attitude had changed on a dime. His eyes no longer held the warmth they did when he’d looked at her before. He no longer jumped to get her things, to make her comfortable. Although she’d never asked him to do those things, she felt their absence. It was like the chill of fall after a hot summer.

She would make this right. She would explain how she felt later. When they were really alone. When this was all behind them.

Matt made absolutely sure they weren’t alone. As soon as they went back to the sheik’s compound, he and Mueen made themselves at home in the sheik’s office and made some phone calls.

Mueen alerted the police to the fact that there were two suspected assassins tied up at the dead professor’s site, and got someone to pick up Matt, Molly, and Harry’s belongings from the hotel. Matt also asked him to arrange flights for the next day for Molly. Jason had escaped back to the Majestic hotel and seemed too embarrassed to face any of them again. He needed Harry for the most important part of their mission.

Matt made one call to Jenks, and felt confident that everything he needed would be taken care of. His commander had seen the satellite feed and swore up and down that he’d been terrified that they were all dead. Jenks would file a report saying that they tripped the explosives and destroyed the container. Matt couldn’t believe his ruse had worked. Now there was just one thing left to take care of.

* * *

Two hours later, Molly, Harry, Ain, David, and Mueen were at the couple’s house, in the yard. David, Mueen, and Matt were saluting as four members of Ain’s family, under Harry’s careful supervision, lifted the crude wooden casket from the flower bed at the bottom of the garden.

They placed it on a little wheeled desk and rolled it out to a large truck. Harry asked them all to step back as she eased the lid partially off the coffin. Her whole body became heavy as she took in the contents. Lieutenant Grant Mather lay at peace. His uniform intact, his name tag still attached to his shirt, and dried flowers lying on his body. She turned slowly and nodded at Matt, her own grief reflected in his eyes. She replaced the lid and stepped back so that straps could be put around to secure everything in place for transport. It was carefully lifted into a large cargo box and put in the rear of the truck.

The truck took off, and the rest followed in David’s Suburban. Harry became more and more aware that she was losing, if not already lost, Matt. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to see her, and she understood that it wasn’t him being vindictive, just that she had made it impossible for him to believe that she could, maybe be, in love with him. Their bags had been packed by one of the sheik’s men, and they were heading to the airport for good. All she had now was one day… one day in transit back to the States to persuade him. Persuade him of what, exactly, she still hadn’t put into words in her own head.

Matt’s head was quite rightly on his duties repatriating Mueen’s copilot. She didn’t think that he’d implicitly said so, but everyone’s feeling was that he wasn’t going to mention Mueen in his report. A report he’d admitted would go no further than his own commander.

She wasn’t giving up on Matt entirely, though. When he’d been out of the truck, she swiped the address label tied on his backpack. It didn’t have his home address, just his unit name and location. It was her Hail Mary if she couldn’t get him to talk to her on the way home.

Harry was accompanying the Colonel’s remains back to Dover, Delaware, as the acting anthropologist, and Matt was there as the recovery team leader. Commander Jenks had alerted the notification team, and she understood that his parents would be meeting them at Dover Air Force Base.

When they arrived at Baghdad Airport, Harry and Molly followed Matt and David through the doors of the terminal. The usual throng of people were there to meet each aircraft: families, friends, taxi drivers, and others looking for an opportunity to be of service to a weary traveler. Matt stopped abruptly and after a second, pulled her around front so she could see. The crowd in the terminal was parting like the Red Sea. Coming through were four men. Walking with the same confidence as Matt. Chins up, eyeing the crowd. Her breath caught.

None of them was in uniform, but they all carried the same military rucks; sand-colored backpacks that bulged in different directions. The leader of the group was in cargo pants and a Hawaiian shirt.

The last time she had seen them together was at Danny’s funeral. She flashed back to them in their dress blues, presenting her with the flag that had been draped over Danny’s coffin. Matt’s old unit. The four remaining men from the EOD squad. They’d come to help.

Her heart filled. Like her whole body was filled with love for these men, who put honor and family above everything. Both hands flew to her mouth, as if covering it would force back in all the emotion that was too big for her body. Overflowing from every pore, and every tear duct. They’d told her that they would come if she ever needed anything. She’d never thought to call them for anything. But they’d come anyway.

When their eyes lit upon Matt and her, their faces broke into smiles. Backpacks were dropped, man hugs and backslaps were exchanged. The tallest of them took the measure of her in a second. It was Liam… something. He’d been the one to actually hand her the flag. He’d cried as he’d done it. He stood for a second in front of her, making her embarrassed for the tears and snot.

“Hell, Marko, I know we look bad, there’s no need to cry. Don’t get too close to Justin, either. He smells like hell, and that
will
make you cry.”

Harry laughed, hiccuped, and held out her hand to Liam.

“Screw that,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her, lifting her from the floor. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, putting her back on terra firma. He stepped back and reintroduced Mark, Bill, and Justin, who had a red stain down the front of his shirt.

“Bloody Mary and turbulence,” he explained ruefully.

“Thank you so much for coming to help us get the… cargo… to the right places. I don’t know what to say,” she said.

Liam frowned. “You don’t have to say anything. Ever.” He bent to pick up his rucksack and launched it across his shoulders.

“You,” Liam said, pointing at David. “You went to the dark side. You are Darth Vader to me.” He eyed him with a squint.

“Yeah, I know,” David said, eyes cast down.

“And you got shot by a chick. Anyone else here been shot by a chick?” He looked around.

Everyone shook their heads.

Matt let David off the hook by saying, “This is Mueen, and he will be your tour director while you’re here. Do good. I’ve got to take a friend home.”

All four of their faces fell into solemnity. “Fly safe, man,” Liam said, sticking his hand out. Matt shook all their hands and watched them go with Mueen. David grabbed Molly and said a few fierce words to her before limping out with the guys.

After hugs, Molly headed off to the charter airline that would fly her and all their equipment back to the U.S. via Paris.

Matt led Harry to a desk at the other side of the terminal, where after showing their IDs at the counter, they were allowed through to the tarmac. Army personnel were carefully putting the casket into the belly of the large military aircraft.

Harry shielded her eyes from the dying sun and took a moment to watch their precise movements. They marched slowly from the truck to the aircraft, holding the box on their shoulders. She wondered if this was how they’d brought Danny home to her. The question didn’t stab her with pain, like the thought of him used to. He was a part of her. His loss didn’t hurt like before, but he was always there. How had she not noticed that it didn’t ache anymore? When had she stopped waking up thinking of Danny? When had she started considering a future that didn’t involve living alone?

Matt stood at attention next to her, watching Lieutenant Colonel Mather’s progress. It was their job to get him home and hand him over to his family. Tears seeped out of her eyes as she imagined how his parents would feel, having him home at last. She glanced sideways at Matt. This was a good job he had. Honorable.

As the casket disappeared from view, the distinctive ring of the sat phone Matt had commandeered sounded. Harry put her bag down and waited for him to take the call. A few other passengers got on the plane using the rear ramp. There was going to be no beverage or food service on this flight—just whatever food Ain had put into a cooler for them. There were no passenger seats, just benches along the sides of the fuselage with seat belts attached.

As Matt paced, taking his call, she tried to figure out the time she had to… urgh, she didn’t know exactly what she was going to do. Convince Matt that she wasn’t still holding a torch for Danny? And then she heard the tail end of his conversation and went cold.

“EOD? Yes, commander. I’d be all over that. I was just thinking that I wanted to go back… Yes, sir. Absolutely. I understand.”

Harry’s breath caught in her throat. EOD? He was going back to EOD? How could he? Streams of ice ran through her veins. She couldn’t make sense of what was happening to her. Was she being punished for considering a future with someone else?

When he hung up and picked up both their bags, she laid a hand on his arm. “Are you leaving JPAC?”

His expression closed. “That’s need to know. And you don’t need to know.”