Deadly Strain (Biological Response Team) (22 page)

For a moment, anger and grief blinded her. So tired of seeing men she liked and respected dying. So tired of all the killing. And for what? Power? Control? Terror?

If she could get her hands on the idiot who’d started all this, she’d show him terror. She’d make sure he knew more about it than anyone should.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Rage gripped Sharp by the throat and threatened to shake him out of his normal calm, professional persona while waiting for his quarry to make a mistake and show himself. Patience had always come easy. Until now. Until Grace decided to do exactly what she’d promised not to do.

It had been impossible to miss. She’d been all too visible standing on the outcropping of stone. He hadn’t seen who she was stalking, but he recognized her body language and movements. They’d come straight out of the
how to sneak up on the enemy
US Army handbook. She’d fired twice, then someone began shooting the assholes who thought they were sneaking up on him.

There was no way he could let a woman this perfect for him slip out of his life. There had to be a way for them to be together without it destroying their careers.

If they survived this shit, he was going to find it.

A head popped up, the one he’d been waiting for, and he fired. A hit. There was some frantic movement as the last target moved, but he didn’t have a clear shot at this one.

Two shots were fired by someone else from a different direction and the movement stopped.

Smoke’s voice whispered over the radio, “Clear.”

“Return to Beta position,” Sharp said, then started moving himself. He had a doctor to discipline.

On the way back to the cave entrance, he checked on the men Grace had shot. One dead, one wounded. The wounded man lifted his weapon. Sharp shot him before he could fire, but he wasn’t happy about that either. He wanted answers and wouldn’t get any from a corpse.

He arrived at the cave before Smoke. As he slipped inside, he came face-to-face with Grace lowering her Beretta.

Good. At least she’d been prepared to shoot if he hadn’t been friendly.

She ducked her head and walked away, her shoulders hunched like a woman who’d been hit by someone she loved.

Was she hurt?

He lunged after her and pulled her to a stop. “Are you injured?”

Her face was solemn. “Not really.” She glanced into the dark interior of the cave. “March...died.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck
.

His anger flared again and he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, wrapping up the rage, frustration and sadness with steel bands of control. He couldn’t afford to let his emotions rule him until they were in a safe place.

But he could offer her support. “Come here,” he whispered. “Let me hold you.”

Yeah, he was an ass, because he was totally taking advantage of her kindness and empathy for him, so he could comfort her.

She came to him without hesitation, without question, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder. She didn’t cry, but she held on tight. So tight her arms shook.

A crunch on the rocks behind him accompanied by a whisper of sound.

Sharp glanced over his shoulder to find Smoke there, his face set in cold lines.

“March is gone,” Sharp told him.

Smoke only nodded, then turned away to stand guard on the entrance.

“I’m so tired of my friends dying,” Grace said to him, her voice rough with tears. “So tired of killing people.” She pulled away and wiped her face with her sleeve. “No one is going to win. There is
no
win.”

He didn’t say anything. What was there to say? She was right.

“When did he pass?”

“A few minutes before you got back. I held his hand. I told him he could go, and he went.”

He buried his face in her hair and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you for being there for him.”

“If it had been you, I’d have yelled and screamed at you to stay.” She pulled back far enough to meet his gaze. “I wouldn’t have let you go.”

A glad sort of fierceness filled him at knowing she would have fought for him. He smiled savagely. “Good.”

He hugged for another moment, then pulled away to frown at her. “You promised not to take risks.”

“I didn’t.”

“You climbed a couple stories and anyone looking in your direction would have seen you.”

“There was a sniper up there taking shots at you.”

“I knew he was there.”

“He was trying to flush you out so his friends could kill you.”

“I knew that too.”

She growled at him. “So, I’m just supposed to stay out of sight, stay safe, while you play hide-and-seek with a bunch of men who are trying their best to kill you?” She poked him in the chest. “Fuck that.”

Her growl and willingness to have his back had his cock at fucking attention. If they survived, he wasn’t going to let her out of bed for a week. “You promised you’d take no unnecessary risks. That risk was unnecessary.”

“I can’t read your mind, Sharp. I saw a situation and knew I had to do something. The least you could do is trust me enough to know what I’m doing.”

“I do trust you.”

“Oh yeah? Then what’s with the I’m-the-soldier-you’re-the-asset routine?”

“Grace—” He cut himself off. They didn’t have time to argue. “Just leave it for now. We’ve got to get back to the base.”

She scowled at him for a second, then nodded her head once in agreement. “I thought a helicopter was going to pick us up?”

“The base came under fire about ten minutes ago. No one can land or take off. We’re on our own for now.”

“Our friends,” Smoke said, “left a couple of trucks.”

She stared at him, then at Sharp. “But we didn’t accomplish anything here.”

“We know this was a trap that almost worked.”

“It did work. Clark, Runnel and March are dead.”

“Grace. We expected to find a lab here. We didn’t. I think this whole place was intended as a distraction at the least or a deadly trap at best.”

“So, if we didn’t find the lab here,” she said slowly. “Where is it?”

“Exactly.”

She looked at him, tilted her head to one side and asked, “If it were you planning this attack with anthrax spores inside grenades, how would you do it?”

Both men froze, their gazes unfocused, considering her question.

Sharp answered first. “The boy who cried wolf.”

“Yes,” Smoke agreed.

“Distraction. Distraction. Distraction. Direct attack,” Sharp explained.

A simple plan.

Simple plans work more often than complicated plans.

“Where are we in the pattern?” Grace asked.

Sharp ticked one finger off. “The attack on the village.”

Smoke ticked off the next one. “The deaths of Cutter and the two marines at the base.”

Grace ticked off the last one. “This decoy slash trap.”

“The direct attack is happening now,” Sharp said.

They stared at each other for three long seconds.

Grace swallowed. “Where did you say those trucks are?”

* * *

Sharp hung on to the door as Smoke yanked the steering wheel of the ancient half-ton he drove to the right then the left in order to miss a rock that would have hung them up. He followed no road, drove straight across country in a direct line, or as direct as he could manage, toward the base at the fastest speed he dared.

All three of them would be lucky to arrive with their bones intact and their insides not upside down.

Sharp was ready to rearrange the insides of the enlisted moron on the radio. He’d explained that the base was in danger of attack, a second anthrax attack, but the moron kept trying to tell him they had it handled.

“You will do your fucking job,” he said into the radio in a tone promising bad, nasty things if his orders weren’t followed. “You will inform General Stone of my report and you will do it now.”

The moron finally said he’d find someone to report it to and requested Sharp keep the channel open.

“Wow,” Grace said to Smoke. She sat between him and Smoke on the torn-up bench seat. “It sounds like Sharp’s ready to carve that kid up.”

Smoke grunted his agreement, then frowned at the dip in the terrain coming at them and growled, “Hang on.”

Grace, unable to reach anything bolted down, grabbed Sharp around the waist. After a couple of hard bounces and a jerk resulting in a metallic
clang
, they headed down into a small valley.

“What was that?” Grace asked.

“Probably the suspension,” Sharp said. “Or the muffler.” He thought about it some more. “Or it could have been the brakes.”

Smoke pumped them and nothing happened. “Brakes.”

“No brakes?” Grace yelled.

“Don’t need ‘em,” Sharp said. “We’ll be going uphill in a couple seconds.”

The truck gave an almighty shake as they started up the other side of the valley. Three seconds up the slope, the drive shaft dropped out like it had only been attached to the vehicle with Silly String.

The engine gave a cough, a wheeze and died altogether.

The truck came to a stop then rolled backward.

“Abandon ship,” Sharp said, grabbing his weapon and leaping out the passenger’s side. Grace followed him while Smoke went out the driver’s side.

His radio squawked.

“Who the fuck am I talking to now?” Sharp snarled into it as if he hadn’t just jumped out of a moving vehicle.

“General Stone.”

“My apologies, General, I have no patience for stupidity or assholes. The cave was in use by Akbar, but not as his lab. It was a trap. We lost three men inside and had to fight our way out.”

“Major Samuels?”

“She’s good and keeping up with Smoke and me just fine. Sir, we think Akbar is going to attack the base with grenades containing spores.”

“We came under attack, small arms, about thirty minutes ago. I’m preparing to send out units. One to you and one to deal with whoever is shooting at us.”

“Don’t. I think this is all a distraction to make it easier for Akbar to get his anthrax grenade where he wants it.”

There was a two-second pause. “Your dead?”

“Inside the cave. I don’t think anyone is going to bother them while we find the fucker responsible for killing them.”

“Agreed. Get your asses back here.”

“Yes, sir.”

With Smoke on his right and Grace behind him, Sharp crested the hill. He took a good look around with binoculars. The base was visible to the northwest, about two miles away, and nothing much between them and it but rocks, brush and a landscape that could easily hide a few men with a grenade launcher.

“What are we doing?” Grace asked.

“Going back to the base. Up for a run?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Nope.”

She shook her head, the picture of female exasperation, but followed him readily enough when he started out.

Smoke took rear guard.

Sharp kept the pace steady as he watched for anything out of place.

A weakly waving arm qualified.

Sharp brought Grace and Smoke to a stop and a crouch with a hand signal. He pulled out his binoculars and scanned the area. The hand wavered like the owner of it didn’t have enough strength to keep waving all the time. He could see little else, his view blocked by brush and terrain.

“There’s someone ahead with a hand in the air, like they’ve been wounded,” Sharp reported.

“What are the chances they’re American?”

“Not very good.”

“Another distraction?” Grace asked.

“Or a decoy.” Sharp scanned the area again with his binoculars, then went out wider. Could this be another attempt to draw help away from the base or remove defenders from it?

“We can’t leave him like that,” Grace hissed.

She was right, but probably not for the reason she was thinking.

They couldn’t leave a possible hostile in a position where he could approach from behind.

“Smoke,” Sharp said. He didn’t have to say anything else. The big man moved out, fast and quiet.

“How does he do that?” Grace muttered.

“What?”

“Disappear. I didn’t even hear him move.”

Sharp shrugged. “We don’t call him Smoke just because it’s his name.”

It took a couple of minutes before Smoke broke radio silence with a single word, “Doc.”

Sharp nodded at her and they both headed Smoke’s way. What they found chilled Sharp’s blood down to the bone.

An Afghan man lay curled up on the ground. The visible parts of his body, hands, face and neck were covered with bloody sores. He was breathing, but it sounded like he was doing it through an old-fashioned coffee percolator. The kind his grandfather used on the stove. The man coughed, and blood droplets appeared on the ground in front of his face.

Grace knelt next to the man, but didn’t touch him in any way.

“Anthrax?” Sharp asked.

“Yes.” She looked up, glanced at the man on the ground and shook her head.

He wasn’t going to make it.

“He was left behind,” Smoke said. “Fresh tracks, two men, continue toward the base.”

“Shit.” A high point in the terrain wasn’t far. He jogged over with Smoke beside him and looked around using his scope.

Two men carrying something in a long sack were within five hundred feet of the base. They didn’t need to be close. Anywhere inside four hundred feet would work for what they wanted to do. Including introducing a deadly spore to everyone inside.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Grace wanted to ease the Afghan man’s suffering, but she didn’t dare touch him. He could have spores on his skin and clothing.

His face told her more eloquently than words that he was in agony. The coughs racking his body only made things worse. She sighed and was about to move back when his hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist.

She tugged out of his grip fairly easily and crab-crawled backward, until she saw what was in his other hand.

A grenade.

A grenade with its safety pin removed. She had no idea if this grenade had spores in it, but given the condition of the dead man in front of her, the possibility was high.

The man’s hand shook and he almost dropped it on the ground. She lunged forward and grabbed it before he could release the safety lever.

No gloves on.

Damn it, wasn’t this just lovely.

The man coughed again, then fell silent.

Now, what the hell was she supposed to do? She was holding the worst sort of bomb. The kind that killed slowly.

Sharp and Smoke weren’t far away, looking for the men who’d left this poor man behind. Men with more grenades.

She couldn’t ask Sharp and Smoke for help. It would put them at risk, and she wasn’t about to endanger them any more than they already managed to do for themselves. Damn Special Forces soldiers thought they were indestructible, until they weren’t. Sharp would take the grenade from her and sacrifice himself. It was the way he was built, to protect, to give and give until he had nothing left.

Her body shook with the rejection of that possibility.
No.
This was one sacrifice she couldn’t allow him to make.

On the heels of that thought came another. Like a freight train, it smashed through every barrier and fortress she’d ever built around her heart, and for a moment everything stopped. Her breathing, her heartbeat and her perception of the world around her.

She loved him.

Moments of them together flickered through her mind. Sharp smiling and laughing, playing chess and poker, kissing her, touching her, his hands and lips making her feel like she was the only woman in his world.

All of it solidified into one thought, one unalterable truth.

The biological weapon in her fist wasn’t going to eat him alive. She couldn’t permit it.

She had enough cuts on her hands to make infection likely, and Sharp had lost too much already, too many of the people he cared about. She wasn’t going to make him watch her die too.

“I’m so dead.” There was no hope. None. Not a single move left open to her.

Except for one. She had to go somewhere where she could throw this death trap away without risk of infecting anyone else.

Anthrax spores were hardy and could survive with all their lethal capabilities intact for decades in some environments.

She couldn’t think of a single safe place.

If she threw it down a well, the spores would contaminate the water.

If she threw it into a ravine, the spores would get spread around and picked up by people and wildlife alike.

She needed somewhere isolated. Somewhere people were unlikely to go. Somewhere a sustained, controlled fire could destroy all the spores without spreading them around.

The cave?

It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best option she could think of that she could reach on her own without help.

Sharp and Smoke were out of sight behind the brush, but she could hear them speaking softly to each other. Distances. Wind speed. Smoke was acting as Sharp’s spotter.

She crept around the plants, kept the hand holding the grenade at her side and out of sight, and waited until Smoke noticed her. It didn’t take long.

“He’s dead,” she said, jerking her head toward the deceased Afghan. “Do you have a target?”

“Yeah.”

“You do what you’ve got to do. I’m going to move back a little ways and keep watch to be sure no one tries to sneak up on us.”

“Stay safe,” Sharp said in a tone that told her if she didn’t, there’d be hell to pay.

She was already paying. Knowing she wasn’t going to be able to tell him how she felt about him, how much his trust, respect and desire for her meant to her, was an open, festering wound.

Better than watching him die next to her.

She’d go to the cave and let the grenade destroy its deadly payload and herself quickly.

With one last admiring look at his fabulous ass, she turned and broke into Sharp’s ground-eating run.

* * *

Sharp’s target wasn’t cooperating. “Come on, you fucker. A little to the right.” He could see a scrap of cloth from the top of the Afghan’s
pakol
, or hat.

Smoke’s whisper was little more than a wisp of fog on a cold day in his ears. “Wind speed steady. Range six hundred yards. Two targets.”

Through the scope, Sharp could see the spotter for the shooter clearly, but he wanted them both. Leaving one alive wasn’t an option.

A moment later, the tip of the grenade launcher rose into the air.
Come on
,
fucker
,
come on.

The shooter’s head rose.

Sharp took the shot. He repositioned for the second target, and fired.

“Both targets down,” Smoke reported.

“Look for movement or a secondary team,” Sharp ordered.

Smoke was already on it, already scanning the area with his binoculars. “No contact.”

Sharp radioed the base. “Targets are down,” he said, then repeated it. “Targets are down.”

“Can you confirm the kill?” the base radio operator asked. Not the same guy as the moron.

“Not without a bio-suit,” Sharp told him. “Advise a one-hundred-yard safe zone around the targets.”

“Understood. Return to base, Sergeant.”

“Roger.” Sharp pulled out of his shooting position. “Fuck, I’m tired.”

“The doc is quiet,” Smoke observed. “Sleeping?”

“She’s been tough to keep up with us this long,” Sharp replied. He wasn’t going to say a word to anyone if they found her sacked out in a hole.

They walked to their rear, looking for her, but she didn’t seem to be about. “You see her, Smoke?” Sharp asked the other man.

“I see her tracks,” Smoke answered.

Sharp joined him.

“She walked this far,” the big man said. “Then she started running.” He pointed in the direction of the route they’d taken from the cave.

“What the
fuck
?” Sharp stared at the deserted landscape between them and the cave. Nothing.
What the hell could she be thinking?

“Only one reason to go back,” Smoke said.

“Fuck me, Smoke, I can’t come up with
any
.”

“To protect us.”

She would too, do anything to protect
her
team. She’d shown her loyalty to them, to
him
, in a thousand ways. She wouldn’t think twice.

Frustrated fury made his words come out sounding like they’d been mixed with gravel. “You think that Afghan got her sick?”

“Or had something that could get us sick.”

The goddamn woman was doing it again. Taking care of him by putting herself in harm’s way. When he caught up to her, he was going to spank her sweet ass until it was red and she was begging him to fuck her. Sharp radioed the base. “Base, we’ve lost contact with Major Samuels. We’re beginning our search for her.”

There was a long pause while Sharp and Smoke began their run to chase down their doctor.

“Say again, Sergeant?”

“We’ve lost contact with Major Samuels.”

This time it was General Stone’s voice over the radio. “Explain that to me, soldier.”

Smoke had the balls to grunt a laugh.

“Sir, we think she’s headed back to the cave.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, sir. We’re following her trail.”

“You sonsabitches don’t come back without her. Got that?”

“Understood.” It was an order he was happy to comply with. After a few minutes Smoke said, “She’s a good runner.”

“She found her stride the night we crashed,” Sharp said. “Kept up with me and stayed on my six like a tick on a hound.”

“When’s the wedding?”

Sharp couldn’t stop the grin. “Shit, am I that obvious?”

“Yeah.”

Sharp let his words rattle around his head for a minute. “She’d better be okay.”

* * *

Grace almost stepped on one of the men she’d killed earlier, and had to stuff her sleeve in her mouth to keep from screaming. Now that she’d stopped, her legs felt like noodles and her knees were telling her enough was enough. But she wasn’t
quite
done.

She still had to dispose of the grenade in her hand. At least the cave was only a little farther. She could even see the narrow entrance from this angle.

If she didn’t do this quick, she might lose her nerve and not do it at all.

The climb up to the entrance was almost more than she could manage, but she got there, glanced over her shoulder and saw the last thing she wanted to see.

Sharp and Smoke running toward her, only a couple hundred yards away.

“No!” She turned and showed them what was in her hand. “It’s got no pin.”

Did that stop them? No, of course not, not big, bad
extra
Special Forces soldiers. They didn’t hesitate as they climbed up to stop only a few feet away.

She stared at them, utterly defeated. “You two are the stupidest people I know.”

Sharp looked at the grenade. “I wouldn’t throw stones if I were you, princess.”

“I didn’t pick this up for fun, asshole. That Afghan handed it to me right before he died. It’s got no pin, so it’s going to go off. I was trying to do it somewhere safe for everyone, but no,” she said, trying and failing to stuff the fear and horror overtaking her back inside. “You morons have to run to my rescue.” She barely got the last word out around the choke point in her throat.

She wasn’t going to make it, wasn’t going to be able to stop the tears or the howls of pain for much longer. If she didn’t get rid of them, they were going to see everything,
he
was going to see every nightmare and hopeless fantasy she had. She pointed in the general direction of the base. “Not this time. Get lost. Go home, or whatever.”

“Either you have a fever again or you’re so exhausted you don’t know what you’re saying,” Sharp told her with a shake of his head. “Because we’re not leaving without you.”

Goddamn stubborn man.

Despair pulled all the starch from her bones and she sagged against the rocks lining one side of the mouth of the cave. A sob escaped its captivity deep in her chest and she hastily slammed the door on the rest. Nothing could stop the tears from coursing down her face.

Sharp took a step toward her and she pushed away. “No, I could be contaminated with spores. Don’t touch me.”

He froze for a moment, then let his hand drop as he growled, “I’m not leaving you to do this alone.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I outrank you. I order you to
leave
,” she yelled, desperate, willing to do anything to convince him to go.

He snarled at her. “You promised to follow my commands in situations where I’m the expert.”

He wasn’t going to go. She could see it in his eyes, in the set of his face. He smiled, a long, sad upturn of his lips, and turned to Smoke. “Get us some support here.”

“You sure, boss?”

“Never more sure in my life.”

Smoke left.

“Okay, sweetheart,” Sharp said to her as if they were discussing a plumbing problem and not the instrument of their death. “Let’s have a look at this grenade.”

She wanted to smack his face. She wanted to kiss the living daylights out of him. She settled for holding out the grenade and wiping cold tears off her face. “You are so stupid.”

“Nope,” he said, giving the device a thorough examination, though it was still in her hand. “Just a schmuck in love.”

“What?” He couldn’t have said what she thought he’d said.

He smiled again. “Speaking of which, will you marry me?”

Speechless, her jaw opened and closed a couple of times, before she managed to snap it closed and say from between her teeth, “Not funny.”

“Not joking.”

“Ha. We’re both going to
die
.”

His expression turned serious. “How sure are you of that?”

She lost her righteous anger in a heartbeat. “The possibility is good.” She swallowed hard and begged, “Please, I...I love you.” The last two words came out as a whisper. She cleared her throat. “Let me finish this alone.”

He put his hand over hers on the grenade. “Could you let me do it alone?”

Bastard.
Smart, stubborn bastard, he had to know how she felt or he wouldn’t have asked the question. “No.” Her shoulders sank. “This is going to kill us both.”

He didn’t respond to her prediction, but asked, “Do you have a plan?”

“Nothing past getting here, throwing the grenade inside and running for my life.”

“That’s not bad. Let’s see if it would work.” He moved past her and into the cave. A flashlight came on and he led her inside a few feet until the walls of the cave expanded a bit.

“If we throw it up against that side,” he said, pointing to the right. “The blast might deflect off this side and back in on itself rather than funneling outside.”

“Okay.”

He pointed the light at her, just below her neck, and watched her for a moment. “You look tired, sweetheart.”

She was so tired. “Yeah, I’m going to crash soon.”

“It’s almost over, darlin’.”

He made it sound like something was going to change, but they were both inside the nightmare now. “I don’t even know what that would feel like.”

“We’ll both be able to rest soon,” he said, coming close and tucking a stray hair behind her ear.

“I’ve killed you,” she whispered, leaning into his hand. “Rest isn’t something I’m ever going to have again.”

“Won’t know until we get there.” Sharp took the grenade out of her hand. One second she had it, the next he did. “Out. I’m going to throw this thing in ten, nine, eight...”

She ran.

Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one...

Sharp flew out of the cave and flattened himself over her, huddled against the exterior wall of rock just as an explosion blasted sound, rocks and dirt around them.