Dangerous Territory: An Alpha Ops novella (6 page)

“And into anything.” She smiled at him and winked, breaking through his own armor and making him grin despite himself.

“Yeah. I already got that about you.”

“Well, come on, airman. It’s time you got me home. It’s past my curfew, and I don’t want to get into trouble this close to Christmas.”

He stepped toward her. “You’re worried Santa won’t visit?”

She smiled, almost shyly. “Maybe he did already.” She turned away to the mouth of the cave, but he held her arm. When she met his eyes, he said, “I want you to know, I will get you home. I promise. This is what I do. I won’t let you die out there, okay?”

“I trust you.” She looked so serious, she must be telling the truth. Although, she was a reporter. He wanted to pull her into his arms and spend a day, week, or year reassuring her, smoothing the worry from her face.

“Rules: You don’t step anywhere I haven’t stepped before, you stay wherever I put you, in front of me or behind me, and if I say stop, you stop.”

“I can do that. Let’s get moving.”

Constantly scoping the area, he led her away from their overnight sanctuary and headed toward the ridge of the valley. He planned that they would walk out of the previous night’s kill zone by hiking about ten feet down from the ridge, making them less conspicuous and a less easy target. Although to his trained eye, the place seemed deserted. Maybe this was a night camp for the insurgents and during the day it was left in peace.

As she followed him without hesitation, he couldn’t help but admire how sure-footed she was. This hack was no hothouse flower.

It felt like an hour, but Grace was sure they had been walking only ten minutes or so when Josh stopped dead on the trail. He held up his fist, and she’d seen enough movies to know he wanted her to stop.

He pointed at his eyes with two fingers and extended them to their eleven o’clock. She followed his line of sight and her heart dropped. There was a man with a rifle slung across his back, making his way slowly toward them. He was so far away, it didn’t look like they had been spotted.

Josh motioned her down, and as she crouched, he brought out his weapon and positioned himself directly between her and the man. He unlocked a piece of the gun and rested it on his shoulder as he took aim.

Oh my God. Please don’t kill him.

She had no idea where the thought had come from. He had a gun, and there was a very good chance he was a Taliban, or maybe a warlord’s drug runner. Not every person here had a gun, and those who did knew they might have to use it. But still, she hoped Josh wouldn’t just kill him on the spot. She kept silent, though.

Josh watched him through his scope and started cursing. He pulled the gun down and flopped on his back. “Shit.”

“What is it? How many of them are there?” she whispered, concerned that he’d just seen a platoon of insurgents looking for them.

He snapped off his gun’s scope and handed it to her. She lay down in the dirt and tried to find the man in the scope. It took her a few seconds, but she found him. And the kid from the cave. The kid was tugging at his sleeve and pointing away from where Josh and Grace were.

Oh my God. Please don’t let him hurt the kid.
Her heart clenched. The kid was pointing away from them, like she’d told him to, but the man grabbed the boy and shook him by the shoulders. If the boy got hurt because of what she’d asked him to do, it would be her fault. She closed her eyes for a second and opened them again, not wanting to lose sight of them.
Go home
, she silently pleaded.
Go home
. The little boy was now shouting at the man, but with the slight breeze running in the opposite direction, she could hear only snatches and not enough to translate.

“What are we going to do? We can’t leave him with that man.”

Josh put his sunglasses back on. “We have to. My job is to rescue you, not every Afghan kid we come across.”

“I know. I really do. But please don’t do anything to endanger him. Don’t kill that man in front of him. Just… He’s probably seen enough already. Just… do no harm.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the scope.

“I’m an airman, not a doctor.” He gestured to the eyepiece. “I need it back.”

Reluctantly, she passed it back. “What’s the plan?” she asked.

“Unless you
do
want me to shoot him, we stay here, stay down, and stay quiet until he leaves. Then we stay down a little more, and if it’s clear, we move on.” He shifted down a little so he was lying flat out on his stomach. She followed suit.

She tried to concentrate on relaxing all her muscles one by one as she was so tense even her fingers felt stiff and achy. Josh seemed relaxed, even in his element. But maybe that was his talent. And being this calm while being stranded in a war zone was a talent she wished she had. She tried to breathe deeply to help herself relax, but still her breaths came in jagged pants.

And then she felt her hand being taken silently in his. It was warm and dry, and with each stroke of his thumb on top of hers came a steadying of her nerves. She squeezed it back, hoping her silent “thank you” would be understood. Warmth and calm slowly made their way around her body.

They lay, fingers intertwined, for a long time. The valley became silent, and still Josh didn’t move. She glanced at him, trying to see if he was asleep, but he wasn’t. He was surveilling the terrain around them, eyes searching one way, then the other.

“I think he’s gone,” Josh said, rolling quietly onto his side. “I’m going to get up and take a better look around. I want you to stay put, okay?”

She nodded and felt an absurd rush of happiness when he smiled at her, lifted her hand to his lips, and gave it a fast kiss. Like he was getting up to pick up the newspaper from the driveway. She shook it off as soon as she realized the direction her thoughts were headed and disentangled her fingers from his so he could get up.

She watched him crawl up to the ridge and peek over. He ducked back down and pulled out his scope, then used that to get a better look across the top of the hill. “All clear,” he said.

Grace jumped up and took a step away from their hiding place. She felt her foot catch on something and fell, the forward momentum dropping her painfully on a pointed rock.

Her left leg burned with pain as she shook her foot free of her backpack straps. Crap.

Josh was beside her in seconds. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low voice.

“I’ll live, but…” She virtually growled through her teeth at the pain in her thigh.

He picked her up effortlessly and placed her back on the ground where they’d lain a few minutes before. “Let me see.” He swung his own pack from his shoulders and unzipped the front panel of it. “Are you bleeding?”

“No, no. No, really. I’m fine. I just fell on a sharp stone. I’ll be fine. I’m sure it’ll just be bruised,” Grace said.

“Do you feel any tingling? Any kind of nerve pain?” His brow was furrowed as he unlaced her boot.

“What are you doing? I swear I’m fine,” she insisted.

He hesitated and laid both hands on her ankle. “I want to be sure you can feel all your toes. If you have any possibility of nerve damage, you won’t be able to make the walk. We’ll have to move on to plan B.” As much as she relished him touching her, she held out her hand for him to help her up. He did.

“See? Good as new.” She did a little jig, so he could see both her legs were working perfectly.

His eyes lit up, but he pressed his lips together as he watched her. “Hm. I’m not sure. Can you do that again for me?”

She was just about to when she realized he was making fun of her. She giggled. “You’re bad.”

He stepped closer to her and slowly raised his hand to her face, as if he were about to stroke it. But he pulled it away, as if he’d thought better of it. As if he’d suddenly remembered she was a reporter. Instead he just asked, “Are you sure you’re fit to walk?”

Grace reined in her disappointment and tried to ignore the trickle of coldness flickering at her heart. “I’m fine. Really. Could run a marathon.”

He gave her a disbelieving look.

“Okay, maybe not a marathon, exactly…”

He laughed, and for some stupid reason, warmth flooded through her. As if making him laugh was the biggest turn-on. She had to keep a lid on this. She didn’t do this crap. No emotions. No connections. Because the alternative was Sarah. She never wanted her happiness and security so dependent on the well-being of someone else.

Ever. She had to be strong.

She wrapped those crazy stray feelings up in a ball and shut them in her storage locker back in D.C. There wasn’t much in there, just a bed and five boxes… and the box of feelings that she’d banished. Feelings about Sarah, Josh, Beth, and now effing Josh again. She was going to have to start a three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule. If she has to put away feelings for one person three times, she’ll strike them out of her life. Life was too damn short.

She was just about to crack some breezy joke to defuse the weird tension between them when a shadow fell on them. Fear shot through her bones, making her cold all over, despite the layers of clothes she had on.

Josh made a show of putting down his weapon and showing his hands. The man spoke, and Josh looked at her for translation. She ignored him, trying to concentrate on what he was saying. Stopping to translate would be horribly rude, especially since she was a woman.

She nodded at him, hands out at her sides, to show she posed no threat. “He wants us to go with him,” she said.

Josh completely surprised her by agreeing. The boy peeked out from behind the man’s kaffiyeh head covering and smiled.

“
Teek de
,” she said.
It’s all right.

The man took Josh’s rifle and slung it on his back with the older rifle that he already had. He then held his hand out for Josh’s sidearm. Josh’s fists clenched momentarily, but he handed it over.

The man turned his back to them and started walking. Josh and Grace hesitated, looking at each other quizzically. Why in the world wouldn’t he keep them at gunpoint? She shrugged at him and followed in the man’s wake. Josh put himself between the man and her, for which she was grateful. She looked back to the kid and held out her hand. The boy grinned, took her hand, and skipped alongside her.

He chatted to her all the way. His name was Atti, and he lived in a farming village nearby. Grace looked at Josh, but his face was inscrutable behind his sunglasses. She continued to talk to Atti about his family and soccer. He liked to play with the older boys in the village. He had a sister, Fallam, who was five. He talked nonstop, and mostly all she had to do was keep up with his train of thought.

When they arrived at the village, three men came out to see what was happening. Atti ran to one and started talking at a hundred miles an hour. The first man nodded and turned Atti by his shoulders and pointed him in the direction of a beige-colored house that looked like it was made of a crude adobe. Atti pouted but left them and went inside.

Grace wanted to find out as soon as possible whether they were friend or foe. Many Afghans had no part in the war and just tried to do the best they could with what little they had. She hoped these people were not warlords or Taliban. She suspected not, but appearances, especially in this part of the world, were deceptive.

Josh carefully placed his body in front of hers, between Grace and the men, and she felt protected, even in a situation that was far out of their control. Protecting her seemed to be instinctive to him.
Shake it off, cupcake.
He was just a man of duty. And she was just a duty to him right now.

“De zama merra de; ze da de tarjumaan yam. Kawalai shi chi or moonzh sara kor ta rasaido ke kumak ookrrai?”
She held her hand out to Josh, the same way she had for Atti. He didn’t take it, but she moved forward to stand next to him.

The men talked between themselves, and Grace used the opportunity to fill Josh in. “I told them we were married and that I was translating for you. I said we needed help getting back to our base.”

“What? Why did you say that?” Josh said almost comically out of the corner of his mouth.

“If they thought I was single, they would put me in one of those far houses with the other women, and they would keep us apart. And I’ve appealed to their innate sense of hospitality. I’ve asked for their help, and it would be a grave matter if they refused us. Trust me.”

Josh remained silent as if trusting her were last on his list of things to do.

“Come,” the oldest man said in English, pointing to a house with a chalk mark on the door.

Grace and Josh looked at each other and followed the elder into the dwelling. A little boy was in bed, moaning, tearstains on his chubby cheeks. He looked to be about eight or nine. A woman sat next to the bed in a light blue burka. Josh knelt down and asked Grace what was wrong.

She translated, and the woman flipped a corner of the sheet back. The boy’s leg was swollen and bruised. The lower part of the leg was slightly misshapen.

“Oh, boy,” Josh said, pulling his pack from his shoulder. He unzipped it fully and laid it on the ground.

*     *     *

He had seen plenty of injuries like this, but none on one so small. All his splints were for adult men. Warriors, and the size that implied.

He pulled out a syringe of morphine and tapped it to load it with the right measure of drug. Shouting erupted.

Josh sprang to his feet and instinctively put himself in front of Grace. Two men started arguing, and as he watched, Grace spoke softly to them until they had to stop shouting to hear her.

Her slender hands worked as hard as her voice, pleading and cajoling. He had no idea what she was saying, and that terrified him. He’d done plenty of “hearts and minds” training before shipping out, and he knew that the wrong thing said could make things very difficult for them. He still didn’t know if he could trust her not to sacrifice him for her story.

In some ways he already felt cheated. His memory of that perfect night had been spoiled by finding out she was a journalist, and now she was a native-speaking one? A tiny part of his mind wondered if he had been her mark all along. Shit. Being downrange made you paranoid, he knew. But sometimes paranoia saved your life.

As he watched, the expressions on the men’s faces smoothed out. Good. She had either convinced them, or told them they could kill him if things didn’t work out with the boy.

The elder gave him a half nod.

Keeping one eye on the standing adults in the room, he felt the kid’s head for fever as well as to soothe him. It was a gesture of trust that he’d never had to give to a soldier, that was for sure. To wounded, or stranded, or captured troops, he was the angel fucking Gabriel. They knew their chances of getting home alive increased exponentially when a PJ turned up.

The boy stopped moaning as soon as the morphine hit his bloodstream. Josh propped up his head and torso with pillows to help with his breathing while under the influence of the morphine. His eyes flickered shut and Josh went to work.

He touched the obviously broken leg in several places to ascertain that the break hadn’t cut off blood flow to any part of his leg. It hadn’t. This should be a fairly easy align and splint job. If he could MacGyver an adult-sized arm splint to fit the little guy’s leg.

“Can I help with anything?” Grace asked, squatting down next to him.

“Actually, no. This should be easy. I’m just going to splint it. Ask them if there is a hospital they can take him to in a few days.”

She asked the men the simple question, which made them start to discuss between the three of them, again pretty loudly. Maybe they were like his Italian relatives. Everything, even the simplest question, would make the room erupt in differing opinions, arms waving and shouting.