Edge of the Heat 6 (16 page)

He opened his mouth, but never got to speak. They both heard running and looked forward into the deepening gloom. It was Sara, had to be, but even so, Dani dropped JT’s hand and placed her hand on the gun at her hip. JT crouched and did the same. As the figure got closer, they could see it was indeed Sara. Dani dropped her hand, watching dust puff up around Sara’s boots as she ran.

She stopped a few feet from them to catch her breath. “I found a cave, this way.” Sara motioned for them to follow and walked back the way she had come.

Dani's mind saw a cave full of snakes and spiders and God knew what else. She shuddered involuntarily, but kept walking.

As they approached the cave in the side of the massive mountain Dani looked at it curiously. "Someone built this!" she exclaimed, pleased with the carved look of the doorway.

“Yes, it was probably a home for some Bedouin for a little while,” Sara said.

Dani examined the curved doorway closely. It was only about 4 feet high, and a few feet wide. They would all have to stoop to go in. It even had a step to keep small animals out, she presumed. And just inside the doorway, she could see wood boards that had been lashed together to make a kind of door. But what did it look like inside? Was it full of cobwebs and animal bones?

"I've got a flashlight," Sara said. "Hold on."

Sara untied the bag from around her waist and shoulders and rummaged in it. She pulled out the multi tool that Dani had seen earlier and took a cover off of one end. She pressed the button and a bright blue light flashed on. Sara crouched and stepped into the doorway. JT gave her a look, eyebrows raised, then followed.
No spiders, please no spiders
, Dani chanted in her head, then stepped inside to see for herself.

Sara flashed the light around and revealed a hollowed out room, about the size of an average bedroom, but with curved walls and a sloped ceiling. The inside was all one color, completely tan — the color of sand. There was no dirt, no animals, and no spiders or snakes. It looked pristinely clean. She breathed a sigh of relief. She could stay in here.

"Wow, it's perfect," JT said.

"It is, isn't it?" Sara said. "There's a bunch of them, but this is the one I like the best. We are going to settle in here for the night and get you guys some rest."

Rest. Dani liked the sound of the word. She hadn't slept more than two hours at a time for five days. And all of that had been sitting up tied to a chair. She couldn't wait to actually lay down and get some sleep.

Sara motioned for them to leave the cave. "But first, let's get you guys cleaned up. No offense, but you smell."

Dani stood still, horrified, but JT just laughed. “What do you expect? You’d smell too if it had been you back there.”

Cleaned up
, Dani thought. It sounded wonderful, but how?

Just outside the doorway, Sara had dropped her load of plants in a pile. Dani looked closely and saw there were actually three different types, all of them with thick, spiny leaves that looked like they might be holding water. Sara stripped the flowers off a handful of plants and wrapped them in a piece of cloth. She smashed it with a rock until Dani could see the moisture soaking through.

She handed it to Dani. “Wipe your arm with it and give it to JT. If you don’t have any sort of a reaction you two can take a sort of sponge bath with these, and even get your clothes cleaned up a bit. Your clothes will dry in about 20 minutes out here, but we’ll have to work quickly. It will get cold faster than you think. And don’t drink the water. It will make you sick.”

Dani held the cloth to her nose and sniffed. It smelled sweet.
Like maple syrup
, she thought. She wiped it aggressively on her arm and handed it over to JT. In a few minutes Sara inspected their arms and declared them to be reaction free.

Dani, joy filling her heart at the prospect of feeling clean, gathered her own handful of plants, walked around to a semi private area behind some larger rocks, and got to work under the light of the rising moon. She smashed the plants until moisture saturated her cloth, then cheerfully wiped herself down from head to toe, even soaking her hair.

As she worked, she thought she heard whistling coming from where she had left JT and Sara. She peeked around her rock. She didn’t see Sara, but JT stood off a little ways from the entrance to the cave, one of Sara’s larger cloths wrapped around his waist, wearing seemingly nothing but the cloth and his boots. Dani’s breath caught in her throat.
Had she thought he was simply handsome before?
Under the new moon, he looked like a young god, carved from hard stone to be perfectly appealing to the female point of view. Enthralled, her eye traced the masculine planes of his broad shoulders and thick arms, down the V of his torso, to his muscular thighs and calves.

Even as her eyes swept his body, Dani’s mind started screaming at her. The muscles that made her breath catch in her throat also made her heart pound in fear. She felt it, and recognized it immediately for what it was. Sure he was handsome, but Tim had been handsome too. Sure he had an easy smile, but so did Tim. Sure he was charming and seemed sweet. But … well she knew this line already. As these thoughts quick-flashed through her mind, another voice, this one small and dry, said
this one is different
. Dani cocked her head. He was different. She knew he was. He had obviously tried to protect her in the coffee shop. And he seemed to respect women like no other man she’d ever met. 
But I barely know him
, she told herself, her eyes still drinking in the strong muscles of his back greedily.

A crunch behind her startled her out of her musings. She pulled back quickly, heart beating heavily, and scanned the desert floor. It was Sara, about a quarter mile away, examining rocks and tossing them back down to the ground.
What was she doing?
Dani looked at the wet cloth in her hand and realization crashed in on her. She hadn’t given Sara enough credit. Obviously Sara knew what she was doing out here in the desert. Dani would do well to quit questioning her and start listening to her.
OK, from now on, Sara gets my full support,
she decided.
No more anxiety, no more second guessing. And no more lusting over yonder hot marine. I just don’t need that kind of a complication in my life right now.

Dani heard JT whistling behind her again. She looked up at the desert moon and prayed that tomorrow she would be seeing it from a hotel room.

Emma peeked into Chief Warrant Officer Ames’ room and was happy to see he seemed to be sleeping peacefully in his private hospital room at Camp Patriot. All four of the helicopter crew members had made it out alive, but all were here in the hospital beds getting treatment. Emma continued her rounds between the four rooms, her mind relentlessly playing back the events of six hours ago when she and Jerry had treated the four men after they fled from the burning wreckage of their black hawk helicopter.

Captain Johansen, the pilot who had flown she and Jerry to the scene, had proved to be an excellent pilot, even if Emma thought he was a bit daring and risky. Not that she knew really - maybe that’s how helicopter pilots had to be.

She had stared out the window of the helicopter as they had lifted off from the Al-Goraam base and flown over the desert, but she barely remembered seeing the scenery around them. Her eyes scanned the ground relentlessly, looking for both the black hawk helicopter and people. She had been terrified that their own helicopter would be shot down the way the first one was, but she had been more terrified that she would arrive at the crash to find Hawk dead. She couldn’t imagine her life, and Vivian’s life, and Craig’s life, if Hawk were gone.

When they came within 5 miles of the crash site, Capt. Johansen had called off the suppressing fire from the Navy. It was too dangerous for the missiles to keep blasting the desert from so far away while they were trying to get close.

As they got close, Emma saw the wreckage in the distance. She thought it looked pretty good for a crash — it was still recognizable as a helicopter for sure. It had mostly held together with only the back part seeming to break off apart and crumble. The passenger area of the helicopter had held together, although it looked to be up on its side. Emma could see smoke drifting from the back and a fire blazing merrily up front, near the pilot’s compartment.

"How did it hold together like that?" Emma asked into her headset.

Johansen’s voice came back in her ears, tinny and seeming a 100 miles away. “He auto rotated in. It's a technique to keep the helicopter from falling out of the sky like a rock when there's no engine power. Under perfect circumstances the helicopter can be landed safely that way, but it doesn’t look like his circumstances were … sonofabitch.”

Emma’s scanned the ground at Johansen’s curse and saw something that chilled her heart. 12 or 15 men running across the desert with guns in their hands, headed towards the helicopter. Some were wearing white and brown robes but most were dressed in simple shirts and slacks. To Emma, the scene look like a thousand images of rebels she had seen on the news for the past 10 years. And they were running straight for the downed helicopter. She saw Jerry pointing and heard him yelling in her headset.

"I've got them," Capt. Johansen said, his voice eerily calm. He flew in a circle and maneuvered his helicopter so he was facing the men. As he got closer, one of the men lifted his gun to the sky and fired at the helicopter.

"Can they bring down the helicopter with those guns?" Jerry asked, his voice tight.

"They sure can," Johansen replied. "But we are not going to let them." He slung the nose of the helicopter around just a little bit more and stuttering sounds rang from the cockpit. Emma saw dust fly up from the ground below and all of the men drop to the desert floor, most of their hands over their head. Johansen whirled the helicopter again and let loose more gunfire.

"Looks like somebody's doing okay in the helicopter," Johansen said.

Emma remembered her breath stalling in her throat. She forced a breath and looked down at the wreckage on the ground. One of the big guns from the side door of the crippled black hawk spit fire. So at least somebody down there was alive.
Please let it be Hawk
, she thought and was immediately ashamed.

"We’re landing," Johansen yelled, sounding almost happy, and definitely excited. He shot at the men on the ground a few more times and then dropped the helicopter slowly behind the black hawk.

"Stay here, let's see if anybody can walk this way,” he’d told Emma and Jerry.

And they had. Two of them carried a third while someone fired a gun in the general direction of the men on the ground.

The next twenty minutes or so were still a confused jumble in Emma's mind but the next thing she knew they were taking off again into the air and Emma was working frantically on two people’s wounds at the same time.

Capt. Ames had a broken leg and a broken arm, his copilot had bad burns to most of his torso and some of his lower body with a broken arm, the crew chief was unconscious with blood coming out of his nose and ears, and Hawk had four crushed ribs on his right side with a probable collapsed lung. He was still breathing okay though so they just had him sit still and worked on the other men. Within 10 minutes they had flown over Al-Goraam and were heading straight for Camp Patriot. By the time they got there, Emma had completely forgotten her fear of the helicopter.

Emma finished her rounds. All of the patients were doing well. She stopped by the door to Hawks room and peeked in. Vivian was seated at the side of the bed holding Hawk’s hand and bringing it to her lips every few seconds, like she couldn't believe he was still alive. Emma heard heavy steps behind her and turned. Craig came down the corridor quickly.

He slipped his hands around her waist and gave her a long, lingering kiss. "Good news babe, we found a unit to pick up Sara and your brother and the reporter."

"Thank God, when are they going?"

“They are in the air already. It's a Marine helicopter. I talked to a Colonel Clarkson who says he will personally guarantee their safety. We could have them back here in a few hours.”

Emma gave him a tired smile. “Maybe we can get a few hours of sleep before they get here?”

Craig kissed her on the forehead. “That sounds like a great idea.” He gathered her in his arms and led her towards the barracks to their assigned room.

Dani finished washing and sat in the moon shade of the largest rock next to her, enjoying the feeling of her freshly-scrubbed skin, and the new smell coming off of her. She liked the maple syrup smell, and didn’t even mind that her skin had the tiniest bit of stickiness to it in places. It wasn’t a shower, but at least she didn't smell like fear anymore. She had even saved the toothbrush and toothpaste from her MRE for her mouth, and the wet towelette from the MRE for the places on her that seemed the dirtiest. She thought she’d done pretty good for the middle of the desert.

The first chill in the air breezed past her and she shivered slightly. Sara wasn't kidding, the desert got cold quickly after the sun went down. She plucked at her shirt, trying to get it to dry faster. Footsteps told her someone was coming close. She looked up and saw Sara cutting through her circle of rocks.