Dark Escape (DARC Ops Book 10) Page 11

  “Lie down and stay still,” Declan said, removing the last handful of sand and dirt from her shallow, impromptu grave. “In here,” he said. “Get in here and lie still, and I’ll cover you.”

  She did as he said, rolling into the little hole and pulling the dirt over her legs. He pressed her shoulders down and finished the job until she had a thin blanket of earth over her.

  “I mean it this time, Sophia, lie still. Right now.”

  “I am.”

  “And stay that way,” he said. “Not one single move, no matter what.”

  “Okay,” she whispered, her heart pounding against her rib cage. She said it again, “Okay,” and she obeyed.

  18

  Declan

  The men were approaching, and he had little time for the details, but his military training took over. The smallest little things could save your life, like checking back around you on the sandy surface, seeing the footprints, then knowing exactly how to get rid of them without making even more of an obvious trail.

  Declan pulled the knife from his pocket and sliced away several dried-up branches from the base of the back of a nearby shrub. He used it like a brush, painting away the marks they’d left. That’s how he liked to think about it, a calm activity like painting. Clearing away. Smoothening out, surviving. In order to survive these next few minutes, he knew he’d have to hide just like Sophia.

  He made sure he erased any trace of their passing from the moment they’d stepped from the rocks lining the riverbed, staying low. There was very little brush nearby, and he didn’t want to hide himself too close to Sophia. If they caught him, then he’d deal with it, but he didn’t want to risk her safety at any cost. He quickly glanced around and saw the slight bulge of what looked to be an overflow runoff from the dry riverbed. There was no telling how long it had been since this area had gotten enough rain to cause flooding, but he’d take anything he could get at this point.

  Flattening himself to the ground, he lay in the slight indentation, quickly grabbing some rocks and placing them nearby. One between his ankles, one next to his waist, another near his head. Taking the branches he’d used to erase their tracks, he laid one near his knees, repeating the process with another clump by his side, the other shielding his face. Without causing too much disruption to the ground around him, he swept sand over his clothing. If he were lucky, and they came this close, their gaze would merely skim over him. It helped that the sun would be in their eyes, the brush and river rocks behind him catching their eyes more than he might . . .

  He resisted the urge to lift his head, to watch the direction from where he heard the motors, the sound of squeaking chassis metal and sliding tires approaching, moving fast. They’d be kicking up a plume of dirt and dust behind them. They’d likely lose the trail in the riverbed rocks, but would they get out to search more carefully?

  The vehicles grew closer . . . two of them. The sound of rocks crashing together. They had entered the river bed, but it sounded like they would cross . . . voices filled with tension. Orders being shouted. Confusion. He closed his eyes and tried to still the pounding of his heart. He prayed that Sophia wouldn’t move, wouldn’t twitch. Wouldn’t let her fear overcome common sense. He felt it as well; the desperate urge to leap up and run. To get away. His training held him in good stead, but Sophia?

  The vehicles stopped. How far away? They sounded close. Too close. He didn’t dare look, hardly dared to breathe. Don’t move . . . don’t move . . . don’t move!

  The voices and the shouts undulated, some closer, some farther away. He heard boots crunching on rocks, but not too close. Voices again, no more shouting. He tried to make out what they said. His Farsi was far from fluent. He caught a few words . . . “look” . . . “west” . . . he heard someone say “woman.” They started to move away, further from their hiding place, and just as he was about to succumb to a sense of relief, he heard another word. A name. His heart jumped.

  “General Ironside.”

  What the hell? How did any of them know of General Ironside? They couldn’t mean him, could they? No, he wore civvies, had no identification on him. Maybe . . . it made no sense.

  He wondered if Sophia could hear it, too. She might not understand Farsi, but she would understand the name. What was she thinking? Did her heart pound as hard as his? Was she struggling to keep her breathing under control, to resist the urge to move even a fraction of an inch? He wanted to reach over and touch her, but she was too far away. He prayed that she kept her focus on what was at stake. Of course she did. She’d be a fool not to. He longed to hold her, but there was too much dirt between them. Moving dirt would be a dead giveaway. He hoped the two unmoving lumps would go unnoticed. He hoped he did a good-enough job hiding both of them. He hoped that he made the right decision to even hide in the first place.

  All these decisions had been made quickly in reactions, ones he usually trusted. Making choices at the knife’s edge was the way he’d survived so many campaigns. But in one day with Sophia, he felt like he’d made more decisions than in all of them combined.

  And now this single minute of hiding, waiting for the trucks to pass, felt like the equivalent of that whole terrible day with her.

  Or was it two minutes? It must have been two or three impossibly long minutes before the sound of the trucks picked up again. No more voices, just driving, and on past him and Sophia they went, missing them by less than fifteen yards. Declan could almost feel the heat radiating off the vehicle as it passed. So close again to death.

  When he heard the trucks gain enough distance, Declan slowly emerged from his hiding place. He spoke softly to Sophia. “Stay down,” he cautioned, heading immediately to where he’d hidden the radio.

  One eye on her, he reached for the radio. She didn’t move. Good girl.

  “They’ve gone, haven’t they?”

  He turned toward the lump of dirt. “For now. Just stay where you are, just in case they decide to double back.”

  There was no sense in her risking her, too. He had to get that radio fixed.

  Declan pried open the back panel with the blade of his knife, hoping that would be all the knife had to do this mission. Now in the light and close up, he could see what was wrong. A wire had been knocked loose. He wasn’t a radio expert, or even a tech expert, compared to others in his team, but he knew enough to thread the wire back in its place, using the knife’s edge to tighten the screws to secure it. Then he moved back to the front to turn it on and heard an immediate blast of static. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

  Sophia spoke to him again. “It’s working!”And then his name was called.

  “I got it fixed,” he said. “I’m calling in.”

  She didn’t say anything, just waited there for the ordeal to be finished. It was almost over. All he’d needed was to call in for an extraction.

  “Desert Fox to Howz-E-Madad,” Declan said, using the name for the forward operating base in the Zhari district.

  Nothing. He tried again. More static.

  “Dammit . . . come on . . . come on,” he urged. “Desert Fox to Howz-E-Madad,” he repeated.

  Two seconds . . . five . . . he was about to try again when he heard the muffled voice.

  “Come in, Fox.”

  Finally, signs of life.

  Declan uttered the verbal passcode without batting an eye. Twice. He’d been ready for this call since his adventure had begun. They came back to him asking immediately if he needed extraction. It was no surprise; his and Sophia’s disappearance must have been the hot topic at every FOB in Afghanistan. He imagined Jackson and his crew had been scouring the desert without rest. No one probably imagined he’d be calling in with an iffy radio from an old army backpack at some unknown location off a riverbed several kilometers from a mountain riddled with abandoned mine shafts.

  “Is everything okay?” Sophia asked after his transmission ended.

  “Well,” he said, turning to her. She still hadn’t moved. “That depends. B
ut we’ll have to do a lot of walking to find out.”

  19

  Sophia

  “Depends on what?” she said, not caring anymore about keeping her voice down. “Can I come out now?” She didn’t wait for his reply before digging herself out of the dirt. This time she sprung out, barking. “Declan, what are you talking about?”

  “We’ll have to do a lot of walking,” Declan said. “So it depends on how far and how fast you can move on that ankle of yours.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Fine for an all-day hike?”

  Sophia was brushing the dirt off her clothes but gave up halfway. It was pointless. She was as dirty as the bits of makeshift almost gravesite she was flinging off her. “My ankle’s fine.”

  Declan raised an eyebrow, the only change in his expression. It still pissed her off. “Fine for thirty miles in the next twenty-four hours?”

  She got up to her feet, slowly, put careful weight on her foot. Fine . . . well, it twinged a bit, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. She wanted out of here . . . out of this desert, out of this province, out of this country. She forced her body to cooperate. She placed more weight on the foot. On a scale of one to ten now, it was about a five. But it bore her weight without buckling. That was good enough for her. She could baby it later if she had to. Fine . . . Then a full step, rotating a little, flexing.

  She looked at him, voice full of bravado, and said. “I’ll match you, mile for mile.”

  “Well, I hope so,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s the point, or else we might not ever leave this fucking place.”

  “Yeah, I think I want to leave it.”

  It was amazing, for some reason, the smile that inched across his face. The way he could make her feel better and stronger even in the worst situations. It was amazing that she somehow felt good enough to crack a joke with him.

  Were they really that close to finishing this? With one look at his smile, thirty miles felt like thirty feet. She could do it. Of course she could, with him.

  Declan had been watching her, noting the change. “What are you smiling at?”

  She was almost ready to do more than smile. She could feel it, a laugh deep inside boiling up and ready to burst through her throat and her face. An insane, love-drunk, cackling laugh that felt so good to release. The laughter of survival. Of escaping danger. Of life. The laughter bubbled out into the air as she took a step backward with it, back into the hole she’d just been hiding in, stumbling back until a sharp pain brought her straight to the ground.

  It happened so much faster than the last time, the pain that much stronger. It was a sharp piercing pain that took her breath away. Sophia landed flat on her back, the breath knocked from her lungs while hot tears burned her eyes. No! No, no, no, no! This couldn’t happen! Not now, not so close to their getting out of this hellhole! She sat up and grabbed for her ankle, now burning with pain. She looked at Declan, staring wide eyed at her, and then the scowl formed on his brow, followed by a muttered curse.

  No, this couldn’t be happening . . . she rotated her ankle, proving to herself that it was nothing, that she could—it throbbed, and she could barely move without another sear of pain.

  This time, she couldn’t hold back the cry.

  No one was laughing anymore.

  Declan rushed over, knelt beside her, saying something sweetly that she couldn’t hear. He had come blindingly fast, but his hands, and his arms, and the soft concern on his face could do nothing to take the pain away. No, perhaps not soft concern. More like disbelief. Shock. He briefly closed his eyes, shook his head, and sighed, low in his throat. That made her feel worse than if he had shouted at her.

  Now it was time to panic. Now she definitely knew that the chances of their survival, or at least hers, had just dwindled to a sad, paltry reality.

  Could she muster up the will to tell him through the pain: “Go on without me . . .”?

  Would he even listen to that?

  “How bad is it?” he said, finally, after allowing her little time to wail out the pain. “Think you can still walk?” He wasn’t smiling at all now. No hint of boyish joviality in his voice or his eyes. He looked almost scared. He crouched down in front of her, muscles tense, his jaw working, his gaze taking in their surroundings before glancing back at her. Then up again, constantly searching . . . no doubt for the men looking for them could come back any minute.

  What had she done?

  “Can you?” he asked again.

  She didn’t even want to try. Just rotating her foot gave her enough pain to think about. She couldn’t imagine actually trying to move anywhere on it, let alone thirty miles.

  “Okay,” he said, without her even answering.

  “What?” she said, her voice rising. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

  “Just like we did last time,” he said, nodding. The fear had already left his face. He looked hardened gain, desert-hardened. Battle hardened. He seemed ready.

  She was ready, too, to believe in him.

  “All the way?” she said, nodding, too.

  “Mile for mile, over my shoulders.”

  “Okay,” she said. And then something in her brain clicked. A sudden clear-minded view of what was or wasn’t physically possible. How could he really carry her that far?

  “Wait,” she said. “No.”

  “No what?”

  “You can’t do the carry for that far. It’s insane.” It was. It was totally truly insane, even for a trained soldier like Declan.

  “All I can do is try,” he said.

  “But I can try harder. I need to.”

  “You don’t,” Declan said.

  “All this time, I’ve just been letting you save me. And now I might get us both killed.” She slowly rose to her feet, onto knees first, then the weak foot last. “I need to step up for us.”

  Declan said nothing as she shifted weight on the bad foot.

  She said nothing, either. Certainly no more screaming.

  She willed herself silent, and willed the pain away, and suddenly there was the faintest wash of relief. She could this. She could stand. She could walk. Thirty miles could come later. For now, her baby steps meant the world, and she could see the relief in Declan, too. Of course, he didn’t want to lug her across the dunes.

  “Good,” Declan said. “I’m glad you’re moving, but you still need help.”

  “No,” she said. “I got this.”

  “No, I got this. Hold on.” He turned back to the shrubs, and Sophia stood in place, with her weight on her good foot while she watched him start yanking branches off a deadened shrub.

  Then he dropped those and found stiffer branches.

  Sophia, feeling the need to do something, began pacing, practicing for her walk. She did her best to hide grimaces of pain. Every time she placed weight on her foot, it felt like she’d been electrocuted, a shaft of pain racing up her leg and into her spine, emblazoned in her brain. But it was really just to make sure that she could do it at all.

  She could, slowly.

  “Aha,” Declan said.

  Sophia thought for a second that he was talking about her. When she turned, she saw that he had ripped a strip of fabric off his shirt. He used it to tie the branches together. Then another strip ripped off and tied around, tightening, strengthening. She liked watching how his arms flexed when he tightened them, her bundle-of-sticks-turned crutch.

  When he finished, he walked over to her and fit it under her arm. “Try it out,” he said, deadly serious.

  She tried it out, allowing her weight to go onto the crutch instead of through her ankle. She did as he ordered. She had to. It had to work. One tentative step, then another. The makeshift crutch might not last thirty miles, but it was a start. “Yeah,” she said.

  “Yeah? It works?”

  She sped up her pace, feeling a little more confident in both her crutch and her ankle. “Yeah, it works. It works great.”

  “Great,” he said, grinning. “Anythin
g to get you off my shoulders.”

  “For now,” she said, “let’s stick to me being under them.”

  He made a sound, almost like a laugh. Despite everything, the sound nearly melted her on the spot. It was the best thing she’d heard all day.

  Now she was serious. “You’re amazing, Declan.” She said it while looking down at her crutch. It worked perfectly, as if made just for her. Well it was made just for her.

  More confidence now, that he would be with her forever. Not as a crutch. But as the strip of fabric that tied her loose ends together. A tie that held both rigid and strong. A bond, forever.

  His arm had slipped around her again, another tie to keep her close. They moved together at first, matching step for step. Declan adjusted his stride to match hers, while still moving as quickly as possible. He took much of her weight, Declan saying he wanted to make sure she could do it. But Sophia didn’t say anything. Instead, she just showed him as they moved in stride, together, and with actual pace.

  “Good going,” Declan. “But it’s not a race.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  He chuckled and said, “Okay. But we have to have a pace that we can maintain, especially with your injury.”

  “I’m fine,” Sophia said, the words coming out cold and focused. She was fine. She was rolling, not wanting to stop something good that had just begun.

  “You’re damn right you’re fine,” Declan said in a mock sleazy voice. It got a little chuckle out of her. Anything at this point would make her laugh. Life itself, as insane as it had turned out to be, had given her no other option.

  “I’m glad you can still laugh a little,” he said.

  “You, too. I heard you a few times.”

  “Just living in the moment,” Declan said. “One step at a time, right?”

  “Right,” she said, taking her steps.

  When they clambered out of the riverbed and up into the steeper terrain, her steps became a little more difficult. The change in elevation and pitch challenged her ankle, made it work a little harder and ache a little worse.