Line of Fire (15 page)

She nodded, listening intently.

“You’re going to sit in the back of the cave where he can see you if he points a flashlight through the entrance. You’re going to act scared and indicate that I’ve left you here and climbed on up the cliff. You’re alone.”

Kimberly frowned.

“You’ve got to make it look convincing. Play the helpless female to the hilt. Make him think all he has to do is waltz in here and tie you up. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes,” she answered crisply, all business.

Thank God, she apparently wasn’t one of those women who fell apart in stressful situations. Snakes excepted, of course.

He continued. “I’m going to hide over here by the entrance. When the scout comes in, I’m going to jump him and take him down. I’ll search him for his radio. When I find it, I’ll toss it to you. In a minute I’m going to give you a series of radio frequencies to memorize. Whichever one works on his radio, you dial it up and start shouting for help to whoever answers you. With me so far?”

She nodded.

“Once we’ve got a radio, I’m going to take the gun back from you and hold the doorway. I’ll pick off whoever pokes their head up over that ledge with the AK-47.”

“Until when?” Kimberly asked innocently.

“Until I either run out of ammo or somebody answers your radio call and comes to rescue us.”

“What if—” she started to ask.

He cut her off. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.” She frowned in consternation and he added, “I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat and I’ve got a knife. Any guy topping that granite face is going to be easy to push off the cliff. We can hold out here for a good, long while.”

She nodded, her expression uncertain.

He rattled off a series of emergency radio frequencies, all monitored by satellite around the world, all fed directly into Charlie Squad’s headquarters. He made Kimberly repeat them back to him until he was sure she had them down cold.

He gave her the final instructions. “If I go down before I find a radio, fire the gun at anyone who steps through that opening. Work your way over to the corpse and search for a radio. Got it?”

She stared at him, her eyes wide as he shoved the AK-47 into her hands. “Don’t go down, Tex,” she murmured.

He moved into position by the door and grinned back at her briefly. “I’m not planning on it, darlin’.”

She took her place on the floor directly across from the door. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see her seated there bravely, the rifle hidden out of sight beside her.

He took his place on top of a boulder just inside the entrance. From there he could jump down on top of anybody who stepped through that opening.

“Kimberly,” he called low across the space.

She looked up nervously.

“In case I don’t get another chance…well, just in case, I wanted to tell you how well you’ve done the last couple days. Not too many women could’ve rolled with the punches the way you have. You did good.”

Her smile warmed him all the way across the cave.

“Thanks,” she replied simply. “I couldn’t have made it without you. I owe you my life.”

The sound of voices drifted up from below. It sounded like an argument of some kind, but the acoustics of the cave distorted the sound so much he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He glanced at his watch. About two minutes and somebody’d be climbing through that opening.

Four minutes passed. He strained to hear the telltale scrabbling sounds of people scaling the cliff.

Nothing yet.

His watch hit the six-minute mark.

Still nothing.

He glanced over at Kimberly, who was alternating between staring at the door and glancing fearfully at him. He saw her lips moving periodically, reciting the radio frequencies to herself. Or maybe she was praying, too.

He didn’t have the time for prayer on most missions, and he preferred to put his stock in being better prepared and trained than the other guy. But as long minutes of waiting ticked by, he found himself offering up a plea for their safety to whatever higher powers that were.

Ten minutes passed.
Still nothing.
What the hell was going on? He didn’t hear any voices at all now.

He waited another five minutes. No army was dead silent for that long. Kimberly was starting to fidget on her side of the cave. He gestured her to stay put and risked moving into the opening to see if he could hear something from there.

Silence.

In fact, a few birds were starting to call out again.

What the…

He moved over to Kimberly’s side. “Give me the gun,” he murmured.

She handed the weapon to him.

He gritted his teeth and faced the cave opening again. He really hated tight spaces. He steeled himself and squeezed out through the narrow gap. He felt like dough squeezed through a pasta maker. An angel hair spaghetti-maker. He dropped flat and inched over toward the edge of the cliff.

Very carefully he peered over the drop-off.

The soldiers were gone. All of them. Except the one he’d shot, who still lay sprawled where he’d fallen.

Cold bastards. Didn’t take their dead with them. Charlie Squad never left one of its own behind, dead or alive.

He scanned the jungle below. There wasn’t a single glimpse of a soldier anywhere at all.

That was completely bizarre. Why would they just give up and go away all of a sudden? They had their quarry trapped. All they had to do was come up and get her. It made no sense whatsoever.

He stared down at the dead guy speculatively. Was this another trap of some kind?

And then something struck him.

Something that made him sick to his stomach.

He scanned the ground around the base of the cliff quickly, not finding what he was looking for. He searched again, slowly and with careful thoroughness.

He pushed back from the edge of the cliff in complete and utter disgust.

Sonofabitch.

Chapter 10

K
imberly waited in an agony of suspense in the dark cave. What in the world was going on out there? She had visions of a sniper picking Tex off as he peeked over the edge, stranding them both up here with no chance at all of getting down that cliff alive.

He’d die horribly from his injuries, suffering greatly as he gave up life inch by inch. She couldn’t bear the idea of not being able to help him if, God forbid, he got hurt. Not to mention she’d die of dehydration and starvation and her corpse would wither away into a dried-out mummy long before anybody found her in this remote spot.

Tex’s voice interrupted her morbid thoughts. He sounded totally disgusted. “You can come out now.”

She frowned confused. The soldiers were gone? Why would they walk away at the very moment they had her trapped and within their reach?

She wiggled out through the narrow cave opening. It was a tight fit for her. How Tex mashed through that gap with his size and muscle was a mystery to her.

She crawled over to Tex on her hands and knees and stretched out on her stomach beside him to look down. Her insides lurched at how high up in the air they were.

He was staring at the ground below in utter chagrin.

“Where’d everybody go?” she asked in confusion.

“They left. They got what they were after,” he bit out.

“I don’t understand…”

He turned his head to stare grimly at her. “They weren’t after you at all. They never cared about kidnapping you. They were after
me
when they landed that helicopter at Quantico. Me and the RITA rifle.”

She frowned. They weren’t after her? She wasn’t the target? Confusion swirled in her head until she was almost dizzy. She pressed herself flat against the solid rock until the sickening feeling that she was about to fall over the edge passed. “The sniper rifle? Why would they go to all this trouble over a gun?”

He snorted. “Weren’t you paying attention to the briefing I gave you and all your reporter flunkies?”

She answered him honestly. “Not really.”

He laughed shortly, without humor. “Figures.”

He rolled on his side to face her. “The RITA rifle has a smart targeting system that locks on to a target and then tracks the target all by itself. RITA’s computer makes corrections hundreds of times a second for movement of both the target and the gun, weather conditions, the wind, you name it.”

She gave him a blank look.

He translated into plain English. “Once you point the RITA rifle at a target and its computer locks on to that person, the gun doesn’t miss. Ever.”

“That’s impressive and all, but can’t a good sniper do pretty much the same thing?”

Tex scowled. “There’s something else about the RITA rifle I didn’t tell your journalist buddies about because it’s classified. Highly classified, in fact.”

Her gaze swiveled to his. What could be so special about a rifle that it merited its own security rating?

“When we get back home, you’re going to have to sign a bunch of documents promising not to reveal what I’m about to tell you.”

She nodded impatiently. “I know the routine. I’ve sat in on classified sessions of Congress before.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Daddy pulls strings for you, too, doesn’t he?”

“My father doesn’t lift a finger to help me,” she retorted, stung. “Truth be told, he’d be happy to see me crash and burn.”

Tex looked at her a long time, his mental wheels clearly turning over that tidbit of information. Eventually he shrugged. He was close enough for her to feel the heat from his body. As always, it lured her near with its sexual promise.

She blinked and tried to refocus on the discussion at hand. “So. What’s so special about this gun?”

“It can fire through bulletproof glass.”

“And?” she asked, waiting for the big revelation.

“And?” he asked incredulously. “If that technology falls into the wrong hands, nobody in the world will be safe anymore! No bank teller will be safe from robbers, no head of state will be safe in his limousine. Hell, the Pope will be at risk in the Popemobile.

“The whole nature of personal security will have to change. Any terrorist group or rich bastard with a grudge could hire a sniper with a RITA rifle, and anybody, absolutely anybody, could be killed pretty much at will. The chaos that would ensue…I don’t even want to think about it. Some terrorist group with one of those rifles could knock out every key world leader and then sit back and enjoy the fun while countries scramble to secure the reins of power. Not to mention the armies and nuclear warheads at stake…. And then there are the little guys. What about DEA or FBI agents who rely on armored cars and bullet-proof vests to do their jobs day in and day out? Or congressmen like your father, whose desks sit in front of bulletproof windows and who ride in bulletproof cars? Jewelry stores, security guards in office buildings, cops who rely on Kevlar vests in a firefight…. Do you have any idea how many people’s lives would be put at risk if that gun’s technology got out?”

“Okay, I get the point. A lot of people would be put in danger.”

He stared darkly at her. His next words, spoken flatly, without any emotional inflection at all, made her flinch.

“And I just handed that rifle over to the Gavronese rebels.”

She stared at him as comprehension dawned. While she’d been clinging for her life to the cliff, he’d thrown one of the rifles down the rock face to get rid of its weight. It had been the big sniper rifle he’d tossed.

She glanced over the edge of the cliff in reflex.

“It’s gone,” he assured her. “Believe me, I’ve looked hard. They got it.”

That was bad. But there wasn’t a darn thing they could do about it up here. In a perfect world, they’d walk out of the jungle and call in a small army to retrieve the rifle, walk out…

The secondary implications of what he’d said began to hit her. She gazed hopefully at Tex.

“Then, if they were really after the rifle and not me, that means they won’t chase us if we get out of here. We can walk out to the nearest road and get out of this bloody jungle! Then we can call in some help and get the gun back.”

Jubilation coursed through her. Thank God. Their nightmare was over! Tex’s jaw looked tight, the expression in his eyes harsh. Why wasn’t he as thrilled as she was?

“Let’s go home!” she cried.

“It’s not that simple.”

She stared at him, surprised. What was so hard about going home? Okay, so maybe they’d have to avoid towns and people sympathetic to the rebels. There was probably some risk to that, but nothing like what they’d been up against.

“Why not?” she finally asked. “What’s so hard about getting out of here? All we need to do is get to a telephone. A couple phone calls and it’ll all be over.”

“I can’t leave yet,” he said heavily.

“What do you mean, you can’t leave?” She pushed herself up on to an elbow to stare at him.

“I mean, I can’t take you home yet. My job’s not over, here.”

A horrible sinking feeling rumbled warningly in the pit of her stomach. “What are you talking about, Tex?”

“I have to get that rifle back.”

She stared in shock. “You’re one man. An army just grabbed that thing. Are you nuts?”

“Maybe. But I have to try. I lost it, I have to recover it.”

No. No, no, no. He couldn’t detour to chase after a gun. He had to get her out of this mess first. She tried to reason with him. “That’s crazy, Tex. Let’s walk out to the nearest town. You can call in the Marines, and they can go get the darned thing back.”

He shook his head. “The United States has a strictly hands-off policy down here. If we brought in Marines, both sides in the Civil War would accuse us of interfering and they’d both turn on us. It’d be another Somalia all over again.”

Panic shortened her breath. But they had to get out of here! “So, call in the rest of Charlie Squad. Don’t you guys sneak around in war zones all the time? Don’t you specialize in doing stuff like taking on entire armies?” Desperation pulled the muscles across the back of her neck tight. She wanted to go home. To safety. Now!

“It’ll take Charlie Squad a while to get down here. For all we know, the rebels will ship RITA out of here the second they get back to civilization. Some off-continent manufacturer could take it apart and learn its secrets in a matter of days.”