WARRIOR (CROSSFIRE SEALS, #5) (13 page)

***

B
y the time Lucas reached the entrance, the small explosion had scattered the fight. One man was still valiantly struggling to get through two others who were brandishing their weapons at him. Tall and tan, he didn’t look Pakistani or local. Why weren’t they firing their weapons?

Perhaps because there were too many women and children cowering behind overturned furniture and carts. Or perhaps they had a specific target. One of the attackers appeared to grow tired of just pushing back and went for his weapon slung over his shoulder. No time to figure things out too much. Lucas jumped into the fray.

Fighting hand-to-hand wasn’t a problem for three SEALs but there was a disadvantage with the other party having the bigger weapons. This wasn’t an ambush, though, and these men weren’t acting as if they were here for battle. In fact, a few of them were just leaning against the truck, smoking cigarettes and watching the whole thing and not taking part in the melee. They seemed to be waiting.

Lucas couldn’t worry about that. An explosion meant a fire and more explosions. He could put two and two together quickly enough. Obviously, they were after the runaway girl from last night, the one whom Vivi was intending to save, and—he winced as a punch connected with his stab wound. He turned and smashed a fist into his opponent’s face.

Everything was happening very fast but in his mind’s eye, he could see everything in slow motion. He caught glimpses of Mink and Dirk fighting back to back, punching and kicking. He knew they were running out of time because sooner or later these guys would change their minds about using their weapons and things would turn violent in a bad way.

Another small explosion rocked the building and the ground beneath their feet roiled like they were on deck in a bad storm, causing all of them to stumble about for a few seconds. Lucas fell against a pillar, his head making contact with something hard. He shook away the pain, looking about.

The whole place was a mess. He could see a pile of burnt paper in the smoldering fire that had first caught their attention. So that was what these fuckers were burning. Doors and planks lay around him, along with guys who had been thrown off their feet. The windows spat out smoke and dust. The men who had been throwing buckets of water through them had fallen onto their backs.

The small pause of inaction lasted only long enough before another set of loud female voices—he recognized English being spoken and Pashto—punctuated the air as well as sounds of some kind of struggle coming from within the building near the blown-out doors. Lucas steadied himself against the pillar.

He squinted his eyes as a group of people, all tangled together—arms, legs, hair—appeared. What the fuck—is that Kit?

––––––––

L
ucas gave himself a mental shake. If that wasn’t Kit yelling and kicking at a Pakistani punk over there, he would eat his boot. There seemed to be a tug of war contest going on—a young girl in between Kit and the man.

“Kit!” Someone yelled, running into the fight. It was the man who had been trying to get by the two guarding the entrance.

“Sean! Help, don’t let him take her!”

Everything happened at once. Lucas took a step forward. The punk hanging on to the young girl kicked out at Kit. The men who had been standing by the truck started spraying bullets. Everyone around dived for cover. Panicked screams. Running feet. Confusion everywhere.

Kit!

Uncaring about his safety, Lucas ran towards where the struggle had been, his eyes looking for Kit. She was on her knees, trying to get up, still yelling at the top of her voice.

“Stop those men! Stop! Sean, get off my legs!”

“Stay down, you idiot!” The man holding her down ordered angrily. “They’re shooting at us.”

“Let go! They’re taking Minah away!”

Intent on getting to Kit, Lucas pushed some bodies standing in his way, watching as she got on her feet to run down the steps after the assailants. By the time he closed in on the half-toppled porch, she was fifteen feet away, running hard after the truck which had already begun to rumble off.

“Stop! Stop!”

Her voice, with that edge of desperation, cut at Lucas. “Kit!” he called out.

But she either didn’t hear or she chose to ignore him. His heart dropped into his stomach when the sound of gunfire came from the departing vehicle. His idiot girl kept going, ignoring the splattering dust from the bullets hitting the ground. Apparently, these guys didn’t want to kill anybody here, shooting at the dirt instead of people. But still, stray bullets could ricochet off anything and hit somebody. Kit didn’t seem to care about that.

He had no choice. He had to run after her.

He took off without a backward glance. If Mink and Dirk were close by, they would have his back, taking charge until Jazz and Vivi arrived. He didn’t think there was anyone to rescue back there. Whoever had started the fire—and he had a fair idea about their identities—had whom they were after and were getting out of the camp. Mink and Dirk just needed to get everyone to a safe distance from the school.

Ahead, Kit was yanking open the door to a van and sliding inside. Lucas sped up even more. The few seconds it took for her to turn on the engine gave him just enough time to reach the other side, pull the passenger door open, and jump in. She stepped on the accelerator and turned to him.

“Sean, we have to—” Her eyes rounded at the sight of him, her jaw dropping.

“Cupcake,” Lucas said. He reached out and turned her face toward the windshield. “Keep your eyes on the road or you’ll hit some kid.”

There was a slight pause as she adjusted her speed. “Lucas? What are you doing here?”

“I can ask you the same thing but obviously you’re in fucking disguise as Wonder Woman.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

The truck ahead was heedlessly speeding off, not even honking at anyone in its way. People were jumping to the left and right to avoid being hit. At least that gave their vehicle some leeway to speed up too.

“Wonder Woman?” Kit repeated.

“Yeah, you think you can deflect bullets with your wrist bands? What the fuck were you thinking, running after that truck? Those guys have weapons, or haven’t you noticed?”

The van bounced violently as it ran over a big rut in the road. Lucas put a hand on the dashboard to prevent his head from hitting the windshield.

“I don’t know. They weren’t shooting at me, anyhow. Just at the ground or in the air so people wouldn’t interfere.”

Lucas shook his head. “How do you know that? And what are you doing now?”

Kit gave him a brief glance. “Can’t you tell? I’m chasing after the truck!”

“You have no plan!” Lucas yelled back. “What are you going to do, follow them home?”

In reply, Kit sped up, closing in on the truck ahead. They were out of the camp site and Lucas could see they were heading towards the mountain trails.

“If they’re going into the mountains, they have to stop somewhere for horses,” she told him stubbornly.

They were indeed making their way very quickly up the trails into the mountains.

“And then what? Are you going to ask them nicely for the girl and they would nicely hand her over to you?’ Lucas asked.

“I don’t know! I needed to do something! What would you have done? Let them take her?”

“That’s different.”

“How’s that?”

“I’m a man and I have weapons.”

“Yeah, I’m a woman and I have weapons too. Big deal.”

He felt like pulling his hair out. The woman had no concept of danger. She sped up even more as the truck ahead kept going at breakneck speed. Higher and higher they climbed. He had to stop her or they were really going to be out of reach, two against a truck of angry men. He was about to yell something caustic at her when something caught his attention. The flap at the back of the truck opened up and a figure appeared. He steadied himself in the speeding vehicle as he adjusted something held high against his body.

“Oh, fuck,” he said quietly.

It was unmistakable what it was. Lucas had carried it numerous times. A lightweight grenade launcher.

“RPG! RPG ahead!” Conditioned by his training, he yelled out. It was reflexive—usually, he had his team or a bunch of men around him who would be expecting shouts alerting them of danger ahead. He realized his mistake instantly, how useless his grim warning was. He was all alone with a civilian female. Kit wouldn’t understand what to do next.

He reached out to grab the steering wheel, but found her shoulder instead. He turned his attention from the guy in the truck. Kit was leaning all the way forward, eyes staring straight ahead. The van’s engine revved as she floored the accelerator.

“HOO-YAHHHhhhh!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Lucas stared at her, then grinned. Love sure had lousy timing. He turned back to face death instead.

They were so close he could see the tribal man’s face broke out into a sneer as he took aim. Another stupid thought whooshed by in his head.
Death was coming fast and furious, baby.

Smoke from the grenade leaving the launcher.

The longest second in his life went by.

Then, a horrendous crunch as metal met metal, a high-pitched grind as their speeding vehicle took the hit and their bodies absorbed the shock of the impact. He could hear the tires and brakes squealing as the vehicle swerved out of control. Kit swore a blue streak as she tried to get it back in control. They swayed one side and then the other, and he could have sworn the damn van was on two wheels at one point.

He gritted his teeth as they went mid-air, then landed like a pile of junkyard metal back onto the road. The acrid smell of wires burning filled the air. The van finally slid to a dull stop, facing the opposite side of where they were going.

Silence.

Lucas found his hand still gripping Kit’s shoulder. Hers were still clutching the wheel for dear life, her knuckles showing white. They were both panting hard, as if they had been running a marathon. His own heart thumped painfully against his chest and it took an effort for him to unclench his hand that was holding her so tightly.

He slowly, deliberately, wiped off the bead of sweat trickling down the side of his cheek with the back of his hand. “I’m thinking we didn’t get killed with that hare-brained move.”

The grenade did hit them. He
felt
it. Which made them sitting here, still in one piece, an impossibility.

“It worked.” She turned. Her big smile would have lightened up a dark night. She put her arms around his neck. “It worked! It worked, it worked, it worked!”

“Stop bouncing the damn vehicle, babe. It’s likely to explode,” he said. Much as he wanted to celebrate, there was still a grenade embedded in the van. “Let’s get out...slowly.”

When they stepped out to the front of the car, Lucas whistled. Half the small grenade was stuck right into the front grill.

“Fuck,” was all he could say.

“It was a gamble,” Kit breathed out. “He was high on a speeding truck and aiming down at us. If I drove the car near enough, the grenade wouldn’t have the necessary rotations in the air to achieve its velocity. It would either bounce off us or...”

She waved at the sight of the grenade sticking out.

“How did you know what to do?” Lucas asked, a little awed at how calm she was.

“My brother is a fucking Airborne Ranger, that’s how,” she said, then broke into a laugh. “Listening to his buddies and him telling war stories paid off!”

Right in the middle of nowhere at the Pakistani-Afghan border, arms crossed, Lucas watched as Kit started to do a victory war dance, as if she just made a touch down in a game of football. She was covered in dirt from head to toe. There was a backpack half-hanging off her back. One shoe was gone, so the dance was actually sort of a limpy jiggle.

He was so going to marry this woman some day.

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H
e looked yummy in uniform.

What a stupid thing to think about at this moment
.

Kit couldn’t help it. He looked so damn good—all big and tough, dirty and savage. That glint in his eyes that always made her imagine doing naughty things to his body. He was larger than live and she wanted to kiss him so badly.

She looked away, trying to gather her wayward thoughts. They had just witnessed a miracle. She shouldn’t tempt fate twice and get distracted by her hormones. Hopefully, there would be time to do all that later. But right now, they had a problem.

“This thing is dead,” she said, as they circled the damaged van. “I don’t have my cell phone any more. You?”

“Nope. But what I want to know is, how come you’re here? I thought you were back home.”

She still couldn’t believe they had been texting each other in the same country. He must have some sort of secret program that gave a default location because whenever she tried to find out where he was texting from, it always gave the location as Langley. Yeah, right. She had so believed that. But still, she hadn’t suspected he would be so close.

“I told you I was at work,” she told him.

“As a public info officer, starting a new project.”

“Yeah, well, this is the new project. I’m with a team interviewing female victims of the tribal warfare in this area.” She stopped pacing and turned to look up the road. “We have to find a way to go after Minah. She’s only thirteen and is being forced to marry some stupid warlord. Those men are from her tribe. The one who pulled her away from my arms was her brother. She told me when she caught sight of him.”

It had been scary inside the smoke-filled building. She had been a lot more frightened in there than just now, in the truck. The smoke and ensuing panic were disorienting and it didn’t help she was unfamiliar with her surroundings. And then Minah’s relatives had shown up and went for them—well, Minah, really, but she wasn’t going to give her up without a fight. That was a losing battle, though, with her holding on to a mere child while fighting off two big thugs. Joanna helped by smashing one of the guys on the head with a picture from the wall but Hamidah and Minah were just too frightened to do anything.