Authors: Kaylea Cross
When they'd all gathered around him, Luke stared at the operations area map he'd prepared. “Okay, y'all, let's get down to business,” he announced. “First things first, I'm gonna have to sit this one out.”
Total silence met his words. They all gawked at him. Unease rippled over Sam's skin. Something had to be very, very wrong for him to stay behind. She looked at Ben, but he seemed as surprised as she was.
Luke tapped his thumb against the LZ he'd marked on a small plateau east of the hostage location and pointedly avoided everyone's gaze. “I think it's best for all of us if I stay here and help Sam with the coms.”
A cold knot twisted in her belly. Was it his health, or was he staying because he didn't trust her on her own? Did he suspect something?
“Everyone else will execute the operation as discussed, with Rhys as leader since he has the most experience with hostage extractions.” Without pausing, he outlined the logistics for the raid, established contingency plans, alternative LZs and extraction points. He went over entry points and what level of resistance to expect. “Could be as many as two dozen militants guarding the location,” he finished, then raised his eyes and gazed around their circle. “Questions?”
Yes, she had a few. “I don't need you to stay behind. I can take care of this myself.” She knew what she was doing, and didn't need a babysitter. If having Luke at the hostage site guaranteed Nev's safety, then she wanted him to be there.
“I know, but that's how it's going to be.”
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something she might regret later. When no one else had anything further to add, the boys geared up and got ready to move.
Outside, the sky was nearly dark now. The snow was already a few inches deep and the battery-powered lamp inside the cave showed the large flakes falling thick and fast. Sam wrapped her arms around herself and suppressed a shiver. When they inserted from the chopper, they'd leave tracks a blind man could follow.
Following her gaze, Ben walked up and slid his arms around her waist from behind, gazing out into the night over her shoulder. “Come outside with me for a minute.”
Dread settled heavy in her stomach. This was it. He'd be leaving any minute, and she might not ever see him again.
Holding her hand tight, Ben led her behind a rock outcrop and turned back to her. He set his hands on her shoulders. “You gonna be all right?”
“Sure. I've even got a babysitter to look after me.”
“You know that's not why he's staying.”
Yes, she did. In fact, she'd bet her last dollar it was because he didn't fully trust her more than it was about his injury.
“Well,
I
feel a hell of a lot better knowing he'll be with you. At least now I can focus on what I'm doing instead of worrying about you being alone here.”
Rubbing a thumb over his cheek above the soft ebony beard, she gazed deep into his eyes. “No matter what happens, remember that I love you.”
A frown pulled at his brows. “That sounds a lot like a goodbye.”
Praying it wasn't, she shook her head. “Just in case.”
He cradled her face between his hands and lowered his mouth to hers, brushing softly. Not nearly enough. She took over and grabbed the back of his head, opening her lips so she could slide her tongue into him, gliding and caressing, pressing her body as close to his as she could. He responded with a low moan and matched her urgency, holding her with bruising force for a few moments, then easing the pressure and making love to her mouth until she wanted to weep. He was a living, breathing miracle to her. So big and overwhelming but so skilled and tender, bringing her body to blazing wakefulness and taking up space in all the secret corners of her heart. Still clinging to him when he broke away, she flung her arms around his neck.
“Ben,” Rhys called out, “let's go.”
He squeezed her hard one last time and stepped back. “It'll be all right. See you in a few.”
Unable to speak, Sam laid a trembling hand over her lips to stifle a sob and watched him walk away to meet the others. From her vantage point near the cave entrance, she kept her eyes on him until he disappeared from view, but not once did he look back. “Goodbye, Ben,” she whispered.
Insertion site, near hostage location
The whir of the MH-60 Pave Hawk's rotors tore across the silent hillside as the pilots went into an in-ground hover and held their position. At the door, the crew chief tossed out the rope and checked the altitude, then gave the thumbs-up for them to fast rope in while the gunner stood ready to open up with his fifty cal. Rhys went first, then Davis, dropping out of sight from the aircraft and into the inky darkness. With his NVGs on, Ben grabbed the rope with his left hand and swung out, gripping below him with his right to let the rope slide between his gloved hands in a quick but controlled descent. The instant his boots hit the snowy ground he swung his rifle off his back and ran for cover where the others waited. The helo lifted off and gained altitude, steadily climbing into the black sky. Within minutes, the throb of the rotors had disappeared, leaving them in a vacuum of silence.
Nothing moved in the stillness. The only disturbance was a light wind rushing down the hillside from the peaks of the Hindu Kush rising above them. The green wash from the NVGs outlined their craggy peaks in the snowy air like the spires of a great city. Ben glanced at his watch. Just under twenty minutes until the satellite moved out of range. Then they'd have another blackout until the next one came on line.
Rhys spoke into his mike. “What's our status, Luke?”
“All clear,” the report came back. “You're good to go.”
Ben had an image of Sam at her work station next to Luke, peering at the laptop screen as she monitored the com links to the satellite and radios. For some reason it comforted him to know she could see and hear him. She could concentrate harder than anyone he'd ever met, and he'd seen it time and again when he'd worked with her in Baghdad. Rhys had commented on it when he'd told Ben about the op they'd worked in Paris together. Her gaze never wavered from the screen, constantly maintaining vigilance to protect her teammates from unseen threats. Plus, she was steady under pressure. That alone made her a natural communications operator. Her voice never betrayed any signs of stress or nerves, stayed calm and collected even when the bullets started flying.
Except a whisper of doubt slid into his mind. That last e-mail from Tehrazzi bothered him. And he'd heard what she'd said to Miller on the phone. Would she really choose her cousin over the rest of them if it came down to it? He shoved that mental baggage into a vault and slammed the door shut. He had more important things to worry about right now, and he had no control over her decisions on the other end of the radio.
He glanced at his brother, six and a half feet of lethal menace, dressed like the rest of them in desert BDUs, face covered in a black balaclava, black Nomex gloves on his hands and NVGs attached to the mount on his helmet. Ready to rock. A tingle of anticipation spread through Ben's bloodstream, like it had back in the day when he'd served with his Ranger battalion. He had absolute confidence in his twin, both as a leader and a soldier. When it came to getting hostages out, you didn't get any better than Rhys Sinclair. Those terrorist mother fuckers up the mountain were uttering their last prayers right about now, and they didn't even realize it.
“Ready?” Rhys asked him and Davis.
“Hell yeah.”
“Okay, let's do this.”
Rhys took point, running up the trail with surefooted stealth. Ben covered him with his M4 while Davis brought up the rear. They moved as a unit up the steep slope, hunkering down behind cover at regular intervals to scan in all directions, but everything was still. They resumed their climb and soon hit the main road where the kidnappers had driven up.
“You're coming up on their vehicles, seventy-five meters at your two o'clock,” Sam said over the radio.
Sure enough, three dilapidated pickups sat at the bottom of a sharp rise where the road petered out. They slipped past them, taking the hillside as fast as stealth would allow. Nearing the top where the land flattened out into a rocky plain, they slipped behind cover to reconnoiter their objective.
“We have a visual of the target,” Rhys said in a low whisper.
A series of crumbling huts lay before them, probably once used by goat herders, but all the other surrounding buildings lay in piles of stone across the plateau. Intel placed the hostages in the largest one, sandwiched in the middle of the ruins. Two sentries sat on boulders near the entrance, speaking quietly to each other. Where were the others? Their team had been told to expect moderate to heavy resistance in the area, but so far these guys were the only ones they'd come across.
Ben concurred with hand signals that he'd only spotted the two sentries.
“Confirm two targets outside the first hut.”
“Roger that,” Sam answered. “Infra red imaging confirms two guards outside, and two hostages in the center building with three more hostiles.”
“Copy that.”
Only five? That couldn't be right. Tehrazzi was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them. Why the hell would he have gone to the trouble to kidnap Neveah and lure Sam out here if he wasn't going to bother protecting his hostages adequately? It didn't feel right. The acid churning in Ben's stomach confirmed it. What the hell did that slippery bastard have up his sleeve that they didn't know about? When they went in, they were going in hard and fast. They had to expect anything, and everything from booby traps to explosives.
Rhys motioned to him, signaled he wanted him and Davis to take out the guards without firing their weapons. Ben gave him a thumbs up, then he and Davis split up and circled around the enemy position behind cover. Coming up from the rear, they gave another signal once they were in position.
Palming his knife, Ben charged up behind his unsuspecting victim and clapped a hand over his mouth, wrenching his head back hard and driving the blade deep, severing his vocal cords and his major blood vessels with one slice. A gurgle of air escaped from beneath Ben's hand, but the man went down silently. Ben lowered the body to the ground and glanced at Davis, who'd dispatched the other sentry to Allah and was wiping his knife on his pants.
“Sentries down,” Ben whispered.
Covering Rhys as he dashed over, they got in position to take the main building. Ben and Davis were going in first. They'd take out the tangos while Rhys covered their six and then went in to extract the hostages.
Sam's clear voice reached him again. “Three remaining targets in the exterior room closest to the entry. Hostages are in the room to the rear.”
Ben hunkered in position. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. There had to be more out there somewhere. Rhys tapped him.
Ready?
Ben nodded. On the three count, he stood up and smashed his boot into the flimsy wooden door, sending it crashing inward.
Three men scrambled to their feet, shouting, grabbing for their weapons as he fired double taps into two of them. Davis plugged the third. All three were dead before they hit the rug-covered floor. “All targets down.”
Rhys tore past them to the interior door and crouched to check for detonators or tripwires while Davis guarded their perimeter and Ben rolled each dead man over with his boot to ID them.
Ben's jaw clenched. “Assoud's not here.” Shit. If he wasn't here, he had to be somewhere nearby. Did he have an army of tribesman waiting to ambush them just out of satellite range? And where the hell was Tehrazzi?
“Copy that,” Sam replied.
Ben stepped over the bodies to join Davis and peered out into the night. Nothing but empty space met his eyes.
He shook his head, every muscle keyed up as the adrenaline raced through him. “Doesn't feel right, man.”
Davis grunted. “Tell me about it.”
Going back to guard his brother, Ben stayed by the back door as Rhys burst through it. When his brother froze and lowered his weapon, Ben couldn't help but peer past him into the dimness. The reek of the place hit him hard, but the sight of Neveah seized his muscles.
She was crouched on the dirt floor staring up at Rhys with wild eyes, hair matted, teeth bared through lips peeled back as she let out a feral snarl of warning. She held a chunk of stone she'd pried from the wall in one hand, her arm raised threateningly. Her fingers were bloody. Her other hand pressed the only remaining male captive behind her.
She had placed herself in front of the other doctor to protect him, and was squaring off against Rhys with nothing but a stone in her scraped, bleeding hand, prepared to kill to save her friend.
Ben's heart twisted. Rhys removed his helmet and peeled off his balaclava, then backed up a step to give her some room while Ben fought not to gag at the smell.
“Neveah,” he said softly, “it's Rhys.” He crouched, as though trying to make his size seem less threatening.
She went still. The snarling stopped.
“It's Rhys,” he repeated in a low tone, as though calming a wild animal. “Sam's friend. Do you remember me?”
The hand clutching the rock slowly dropped to her lap, but she didn't relinquish her grip on her weapon. Her lips closed over her teeth. She was shaking.
“I'm here to get you out.”
Her eyes flooded with tears, but she nodded. “Rhys.” Her voice sounded hoarse from crying. Or maybe from screaming.
“Yes.” He hunkered down and set his gun aside.
Ben exchanged a glance with him. Jesus, she looked feral. “Can we come in?”
She swallowed convulsively and nodded, her eyes losing some of their wild gleam.
Rhys edged in slowly, so as not to startle her, and reached out a hand, palm up. The rock tumbled from her grip. She hesitated, but finally laid her trembling fingers in his. “You're going to be okay, Neveah. I'm going to take you away from here.”
Her fingers clamped around Rhys’ hand in a desperate grip. “I w-want to g-go home.”
Ben's heart twisted. He hated knowing Sam was hearing this.