Dark Escape (DARC Ops Book 10) Page 12

  “You okay?” Declan said. He must have heard her quiet grunts.

  She said, “Yeah,” under her breath, keeping focused on the movement, on the pace. Anything but the pain. But the changing terrain had made it difficult to even use the crutch. It would slide out from the sandy surface. She cursed under her breath, and Declan definitely heard that, pressing himself more firmly against her. He wrapped his arm around her again, this time lifting up and taking even more weight away from her.

  “I could lift more if you’d like,” he said, walking her like an injured athlete helped off the field.

  “Can you lift me off the ground, up in air and floating away in the atmosphere?”

  “Like Superman?” Declan said.

  “I guess,” she said. “Did Superman ever fly into space?”

  “Is that where you want to go? Space?”

  She knew he was trying to distract her from the pain, to keep her moving, to prevent her from giving up and sinking back to the ground as she longed to do. She played along.

  “I’ll go anywhere, as long as it’s with you.”

  Declan laughed at her and said, “Corn-dog.”

  “A horn-dog, too.”

  “Well, we won’t be having much fun in space. Unless we’re in space suits. And that sure as hell wouldn’t be very fun.”

  “But it would be fun to not have all this gravity to worry about,” Sophia said, her ankle struggling again, the pain beginning to throb up through her leg. “Gravity is a bitch right now.”

  “It could be worse,” Declan said.

  She had no comeback to that. The last few days had made Sophia aware of exactly how much worse things could be. She put her head down and kept moving.

  The afternoon brought with it the heat of the Afghan desert, shimmering along the horizon, making the ground appear to undulate. The heat soaked into her now threadbare pajamas, prompting a stream of sweat to run down from her neck and between her shoulder blades. Her legs felt rubbery, but she forced herself to keep putting one foot ahead of the other. She felt tired, dead tired, and thirsty, and hungry, and . . . they had to keep moving. Declan swept his gaze around them constantly, seeking signs of movement. No dust trails, no signs of life in any direction. The hours dragged by to the point where every minute dragged on endlessly. Every second. She began counting steps, then gave up when she reached two thousand thirty-eight. What did it matter?

  They stopped to rest only a few times. A sip of water. No more MREs, so she didn’t even have that to look forward to. Finally, the sun hung low over the western horizon, bringing with it cooler air. She marveled at how fast the desert cooled off at night. Nothing to hold the heat in.

  The sun had disappeared quickly. It darkened and slunk below a distant mountain ridge. Directly in front of them, Declan and Sophia had their own peaks and valleys. And they were getting more extreme with each step they took closer to the extraction point. As they crested their latest, Declan had to offer the warning.

  “We’ve got to be careful not to be spotted up here, at every ridge top. Especially at dusk.”

  “What do you mean?” Sophia said, looking off into the distance.

  “I mean try hunching down a bit, like you’re hiding.” He showed her, squatting low and hunching his shoulders as he walked. He checked her out of his peripheral vision and saw that she had followed suit. “In the business,” he said, “we call it silhouetting. That’s what happens when you stand up and stick out. Especially if we’re standing between them and the sun, we’d stick out pretty easily. They’re probably even watching for it.”

  “I wish I could flip those fuckers off,” Sophia said, grunting the words as she hunched low over the crest of the ridge. “Or I’ll moon them and really give them something to see.”

  Declan laughed. “Maybe you could just show me in private where it’s safe?”

  “That won’t be safe around you,” Sophia said, getting some ideas about it now that they’d crossed over the ridge. But this downslope had been steeper than the rest, giving her ankle another reason to cut her jokes short. Taller and steeper, which meant an increased time putting a little too much pressure on her ankle. She tried to fight the natural urge to speed up, the force of gravity tugging her down and faster. The crutch came in handy for that, digging into the rocks and dirt in front of them. Now with the added pressure, she just hoped that it wouldn’t snap in half. She hoped her ankle wouldn’t do the same, though it felt even more likely. Too bad Declan couldn’t wrap his shirt bands around it and make it all better. Though, she supposed, he had certainly made it more than a little better.

  “Going down sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes.”

  “This time’s the worst.”

  She evened out her pace, taking on the downslope on her terms. But it still hurt like hell.

  “Damn,” Declan said, “you’re one tough woman.”

  “You keep finding that out.” She was having two different conversations at once. One was talking toughness and putting on a brave face for Declan. The other, a tiny little voice in her head telling her to relax, imagine away the pain, put one foot in front of the other. Lean on the crutch. Lean on Declan. Crouch at the hilltops in case of what men in Declan’s business called silhouetting.

  “Sophia.”

  She turned to him. He’d stopped walking. Silence now with a cool breeze kicking up her hair. Out the corner of her eye, she saw that the sun was setting below the biggest ridge of all. Ideally, thirty miles wouldn’t take them beyond that.

  “Sophia, you’re damn tough. And I’m so proud of you. So please forgive me.”

  “Forgive you for what?”

  Without another word, Declan crouched down in front of her, taking her arms and forcing them over his shoulders while he backed up into her. With an involuntary uumph from Sophia, she fell forward onto his back, around him, grabbing hold of shoulders when she almost fell backward. He had stood with so much power, like he’d merely done a squat at the gym, Sophia lifting in the air high above her old line of sight but still seeing nothing but mountains and increasing darkness.

  “Wanna carry the backpack?” Declan reached up with it, offering her the radio backpack. She threaded her arms through and slid it on her back very carefully, feeling scared at times that she’d fall off and injure the other ankle. Or break her neck.

  “Piggyback,” Declan said.

  “Hey, watch it.”

  “Why, you thought I was calling you a pig?”

  She just couldn’t respond to that.

  Declan said, “I’m the pig. My back. It’s . . . a pig’s back.”

  “Babyback?”

  “Yeah,” Declan said. “You want your baby back?”

  Sophia couldn’t decide if he was talking about the song on some chain restaurant’s commercial, or something obscure about getting back in the cave with him and having him again. Although it seemed delicious either way, she could feel that side of her spirit, the lightheartedness, slowly begin to fade. It had been such a grind.

  20

  Declan

  “How you doing up there?” Declan asked over his shoulder. He’d been carrying Sophia for the last few miles piggyback and needed to rest, but he didn’t dare stop. Stopping just made it harder to keep going. His back burned with fatigue. His leg muscles trembled with every step he took. But he couldn’t stop. They needed to keep moving. They couldn’t expect the team up ahead to wait on them forever.

  “Falling asleep,” she mumbled. Declan could feel her voice through his body, vibrating down past his shoulders. “Wake me up when we get there.”

  “Better me than someone else waking you,” he said, fighting to keep the strain out of his voice. His legs had been burning for the last hour. Arms and shoulders sore. She was light enough, but after a while, the weight had begun to gnaw at him.

  He so badly wanted to slide her off his shoulders for a minute, lean over, and kiss her face. Or drop her to the sand to fina
lly ease his back. He was almost that desperate. Desperate for a break, too. But there was no time. A break would be suicide. They’d likely not reach their rendezvous point. Or worse, the troops from the mine would reach their target. Then her weight would be gone. Everything would be gone.

  “Declan . . .” Her voice had broken through his meditation. It was a firm voice. “I got this. You can put me down.”

  It was like she’d just read his mind. But the truth of it was that he didn’t want to let her down.

  “We’re back on even ground, off the hill. I can do even ground.”

  He slowed to a stop. Yes, she could do even ground.

  Sophia seemed almost relieved to have her feet back in the sand, even with the bad ankle. Declan gave her a pat on the ass and on they went into the night toward freedom. She limped, but she put one foot in front of the other and kept on going.

  Aided by the rest, she seemed now to be going faster than he was, pushing the pace with her crutch. Declan sped up when he saw faint lights in the distance.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  He’d already registered them as headlights. “Get down,” he said.

  They hunkered low, as if cresting the top of a ridge. Only now they were on flat land, no man’s land with nowhere to hide. Sophia tried to move like that, hunched down. But Declan just said, “Hold it. Let’s just let him pass, and we’ll continue on.”

  Finally, he could get his break.

  When their breathing died down, Declan heard a quiet, faraway rattling sound. Low and ominous, carrying in the breeze and off the rocky slopes, the sound of distant gunfire echoing through the valley.

  “Shit,” was all he could say while his brain worked to figure it out.

  “Think those are our guys?” Sophia said. “The good guys?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s one or the other. Good guys or bad guys, and all I have is a friggin’ old rusty knife.”

  “And I’ve got a crutch,” she said.

  Declan walked behind her and helped slide the backpack down off her arms. He plopped it on the ground and knelt next to it.

  Sophia said, “I guess now’s as good a time as any.”

  He started playing with the dials. “I’m trying to call a special ops unit, or a FOB patrol, or a pizza place that delivers.”

  “Let me know how it goes,” Sophia said, sounding mildly interested. Declan could hear her stretching out on the desert floor. A big long sigh came as she lay splayed next to him and his radio.

  He was glad she wasn’t watching. His progress with the radio was going maddeningly slow. For some reason, that good connection he found earlier had drifted off somewhere. Maybe to another valley. It had been a constant fear in the back of his mind that some of the hills and ridges they’d been crossing would eventually cause a little trouble with the radio. Also, it was quite possible the thing just finally crapped out.

  She wasn’t watching him, nor saying anything . . .

  Thank God.

  Armed with his trusty rusty knife, Declan tried unscrewing and retightening the plate in the back, trying to get a better connection for the wire. When he tried the second time, and tried to fire up the radio, all he got was desert silence. Not even static. Not even gunshots. Just wind.

  With a “Fuck it,” Declan began digging another hole. This one not for either of them, but for the final resting place of the radio. It was more of a liability now than anything else. It would send a clearer message broken if the wrong guys stumbled across it.

  Declan stomped the backpack into its hole, patted the top with fresh cover, and then threw another few handfuls of sand across it for good measure. Then he looked at Sophia. She hadn’t said a word the whole time. She hadn’t even moved from her spot, lying splayed out on her back, looking up into the brilliant stars of the desert night. Declan was desperate for something to say that wasn’t tragic. He kept looking up at the stars with her. They were indeed beautiful. He took a deep breath and tried, “They’re pretty out here, huh?”

  “How fucked are we?”

  “We’re not fucked,” Declan said.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not; it’s a sincere observation.” He was still looking up. He just had to keep her gaze up. Keep her head up. Those damn stars were all they had right now.

  “I can think of another sincere observation,” Sophia said.

  God, just the thought made his blood surge. But as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk her. “We better get a move on.” He stretched out his shoulders, his back, rotating his torso, then slapping his thighs. He could already feel the urge to move and move damn quick, radio tragedy or not. Twisted ankle or not. Whether or not they’d survive the night remained to be seen, but they had to move. He walked over to Sophia, still lying on her back, and reached down his hand. He didn’t want to say anything more. He also didn’t want to grab her and force her up off the ground on her bad ankle. He wanted to believe in that fighting spirit he’d seen so many glimpses of.

  She reached up and grabbed his hand, her grasp firmer than he’d anticipated. And he loved it. “Okay,” Declan said, “you got your rest.”

  “No,” she said, “you got yours.”

  He smiled and tugged her up to her feet. And they continued.

  21

  Sophia

  Time, at least for her, had eventually lost all meaning. For Declan, who kept checking his oversized military wristwatch, time had all the meaning in the world. She supposed he had a right to be obsessed with it, checking and rechecking. But Sophia measured out her time in footsteps, one a little more painful than the other. Right, ouch. Left, not so ouch. But even the left, the untwisted left ankle, had begun to ache. Likely a result of her putting the extra weight on it, making the left do the work the right should have been doing for the last twenty miles.

  Twenty miles?

  “Declan?” she said.

  “Fifteen miles,” Declan said, already knowing the request. She had made it quite clear where her mind was. Not on time, but on steps, feet, miles. Walk, rest. Walk, rest. Through the night. The following morning . . . would they make it to the pickup point, the rendezvous, or whatever they called it in time? Were the people who’d been on the other end of the radio waiting, or were they long gone?

  She felt . . . nothing, at least at the moment. Tired. No, way beyond tired. She felt mechanical, as if her brain had disconnected from her body. Numb.

  “I was hoping—”

  “Twenty? Me, too.” By now he was walking as slowly as she was. “But at least we’re making good time.”

  “I just wish we were making better distance,” she said.

  “That’ll come.”

  “With more time,” she said. “More pain. I’m not sure if my ankle can stand it.”

  “But how about you, Sophia? Can you stand it? That’s all that counts.”

  It sounded like some desperate pseudo-intellectualism. But at this point, she might as well listen to him and try to believe in his military jingoisms. It got them this far, at least. And they must have gotten Declan out of some major trouble at some point. But suddenly her feet felt as if they couldn’t walk another step.

  “You know,” she said, “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve got a pretty nasty scar.”

  “The one on my back?”

  “Where else? Have you been in that much action?”

  “You can get the kind of scars I have in two days, driving around Iraq. It’s not the number of scars, or how deep they are. All that counts is that you live to tell about them.”

  “Show them off?” she said, “like tattoos? Er, I guess, battle scars?”

  “Or live to have some cute redhead ask about them,” Declan said, giving her a little poke in the side.

  “Oh? You had some cute redhead ask about your scars?”

  “I had a redhead feeling them with her hands last night,” Declan said. “That’s a little better than asking.”

 
; “See, I know it’s me when you drop the ‘cute’.”

  “How about gorgeous?” he said. “Drop-dead gorgeous.”

  “How about you pick me up and again and carry me until we’re at mile twenty?”

  “Really?” His voice sounded almost grave. Definitely not joking anymore. Then he grabbed her arm and said, “Just kidding. Hop on.” Sophia hopped on, with his help.

  “I really don’t mind,” he said, his voice strained again.

  “How about your back? Does that mind?”

  “My legs are a bit sore, to be honest.”

  “Just another five miles to twenty,” Sophia said, in a singsong kind of way, hoping to tease some energy into him.

  “So, you were just doing some favors?” he said, his voice having changed to a deeper register, something serious sliding up to the surface.

  “What do you mean?” She glanced at him, saw the serious expression. The frown. The questions.

  “For that general? Have you been thinking about him very much while we’ve been out here, trekking the desert, sleeping in caves?”

  “Fucking in caves,” Sophia said, hoping to lighten the conversation. She couldn’t deal with getting too real about the context of her nightmare. She just needed one foot at a time—well, Declan’s feet. Left and right. Isn’t that the sort of mentality that he’d taught her? “No . . . I haven’t thought about him.” A lie? Sort of. She hadn’t thought as much about him as she did her own stupidity for agreeing to this mission. She wanted to act the spy. Well, look where that had gotten her. And Declan. She was a fool to have thought of the mission as nothing more than a lark. It had gotten serious, fast. Deadly serious.

  “Just curious,” he said, “if you’ve come to any conclusions about him.”

  “I’m curious, too. But I just . . .”

  “You just what?”

  “I just want to live,” Sophia said, fighting the tears, ashamed already that she’d let the emotion creep back in. Declan’s questions about the general were fair and by now even she sensed there was something rotten with some of her father’s friends. Sophia tried to stop thinking, and instead rested her head against the side of his neck, feeling the sway of his walk. She tried to listen for his pulse.