Next to Die (2 page)

Driven into retreat, Joe’s squad had only one option remaining: to call for extraction. If the insurgents didn’t leave before the helicopter’s arrival, and if—God forbid—they were carrying rocket-propelled grenades in their arsenal, then this cursed mission would officially be classified a goatfuck.

At the bottom of the ravine, Joe checked his watch. The window was open, the satellite in position, for Curry to get on the SATCOM radio and request a hot extract.

“Bravo, report,” Joe said into his mouthpiece.

“Curry here,” whispered the corpsman.

“Smiley,” acknowledged their sniper.

“Nikko,” said their gunner. “Shit!”

Joe hesitated at the swear word. “What is it?”

“I wondered what the fuck was running down my leg. Oh, shit!”

That didn’t sound good. “Rally up,” Joe instructed, bringing the squad into a tight perimeter.

Four shadows drifted together. Nikko was breathing hard. He collapsed next to Curry the corpsman, who kneeled to assess his wound. Joe did the same, taking in the severity of the hit that was illuminated by Curry’s penlight. “Shit” was not the expletive that leaped into Joe’s mind. Nikko’d taken a bullet in the thigh, close to the femoral artery. Given the gunner’s pallor, he’d lost a lot of blood already. Didn’t it figure, since they would have to climb with the agility of mountain goats to make it up to the LZ?

They needed to call for extraction immediately, or Nikko was a goner.

With Curry frantically stanching the gunner’s wound, Joe took the radio from him, set it up a short distance to one side, and made the call to their task force commander, Captain Lucas.

“Helo’s on the way,” Lucas assured him.

“Blackhawk?” Joe requested, praying for a sleek and stealthy craft.

“Can’t get one in the air,” Lucas admitted grimly. “We’re sending in a Chinook.”

With a sinking sensation in his gut, Joe dismantled the SATCOM. The thunderous arrival of the Chinook helicopter would not be overlooked by the insurgents they’d left on the trail, who—given the way this mission was going—most certainly carried missiles.

“Let’s go,” said Joe, infusing his tone with optimism. As the officer in charge, his most important job was to keep the squad motivated and functioning smoothly.

The men scurried to obey him. Curry pulled Nikko to his feet and propped him under one arm. Smiley stepped forward and relieved the gunner of his M60, which would lighten Curry’s load, but the corpsman still faced the daunting task of getting both him and Nikko up to the LZ.

Armed with Nikko’s gun, Smiley took point. Lean and agile, the twenty-year-old darted out of the cover of trees to tackle the near-vertical incline. Ascending fifty meters, he ducked behind a boulder and shouldered his rifle, covering Nikko and Curry, who hobbled painstakingly after him, leapfrogging his position and pausing farther up the ridge.

Then it was Joe’s turn. Physically, he was as fit and robust as the younger men, but the soil slipped beneath his boots. His raw-boned body strained for speed as he dug his toes in, scrambling hand over hand to reach his destination, an outcropping of stone that resembled a Tyrannosaurus rex. Over the pounding of his heart, he heard the
whop-whop
of the approaching helo.

No doubt the insurgents could hear it, too.
Come on,
he urged both the helo and his men. It wouldn’t take the enemy long to spy the four SEALs clambering up the opposite mountain, not with a four-ton helicopter landing at its height. To make matters worse, the first hint of dawn was silvering the sky.

It was Smiley’s turn to take off. He pushed to his feet and bounded up the incline, seemingly unhindered by the weight of Nikko’s M60. At the same time, the Chinook surged closer, its blades chopping the air like the wings of a thousand angels. Any minute now its shape would materialize out of the charcoal canopy above.

Yet Nikko and Curry struggled now to make their ascent. Joe was about to abandon his position to give Curry a hand, when both men slipped and took a tumble that had Joe scrambling after them in consternation.

The Chinook thundered into view, yet they were nowhere near the LZ yet.

“Curry, Nikko!” Joe called, reaching them at last.

“I couldn’t hold him, sir,” Curry explained. Nikko had passed out.

“Get his feet,” Joe urged. Together they heaved and struggled to carry Nikko uphill.

But then a half-dozen missiles streaked overhead. “Son of a bitch!” He and Curry threw themselves on top of Nikko. Grenades punctured the very earth around them, sending up spumes of rock that peppered their backsides as they succumbed to gravity.

Finding himself intact, Joe peeked up at the helo. It still awaited them, rotors whirring impatiently. “Let’s go!” he yelled, preparing to haul Nikko, without stop, to the ridge.

Neither Nikko nor Curry made reply. Joe nudged aside his NVGs. “Curry!” he cried in disbelief. Curry’s skull had been crushed, presumably by falling rock.

He thumbed his mike. “Smiley, get down here. Both men are down.”

He glanced up again, praying the Chinook would linger. Smiley’s shadow made a quick and steady descent as four more missiles sizzled across the ravine at them.

Joe gritted his teeth and ducked, bracing himself.
Boom, boom, boom, boom!
The mountainside trembled. It vomited rock and dirt, all of which fell in a merciless rain on Joe’s back. When he looked up, Smiley was gone. Joe groped for his NVGs, but they were gone, too.

His last hope was the Chinook. Its ramp was down, with reinforcements pouring out, bearing grenade launchers. Joe pushed to his knees and waved them down. He needed hands to pull his men up, get them into the belly of the Chinook, and bear them home again—dead or alive.

But it wasn’t to be.

Another missile shot across the ravine like a falling star. And there wasn’t even time to make a wish.

In the next instant, the helicopter exploded into a giant fireball that mushroomed outward, blasting Joe with heat and flaming shrapnel. The force of the explosion thrust him backward, tearing him away from Nikko and Curry.

He felt himself falling.

He hit the ground and rolled. The earth beneath him was vertical. He grappled to slow his descent, but he was moving too quickly, glancing over rock and shrub. He tucked and rolled, protecting his head and extremities. He crashed through the boughs of an evergreen, struck the base of a tree, bounced off it, and rolled again.

He dropped, hit the ground, and spun around, sliding on a carpet of foliage.

At last, he skidded to a stop.

Cracking open an eyelid, he found himself peering through cedar limbs to see flames dancing from the remains of the Chinook. Spumes of smoke darkened the brightening sky. Joe sucked a slow and painful breath into his lungs. The stench of burned flesh made him cringe.

Jubilant cheers floated over the ravine, followed by volleys of gunfire as the guerillas sounded their victory.

Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.

Not a soul aboard or near the Chinook could have survived that explosion. His men were either dead or dying.

So this is defeat
, Joe thought, losing consciousness. It was worse than anything he’d imagined.

Chapter One

The chiming of Lieutenant Penelope Price’s doorbell elicited a groan. She had just sunk onto her overstuffed couch to watch the six o’clock news while indulging in a slice of cheesecake. Penny’s hands and feet ached. She deserved a little downtime, having worked extra hours at the naval hospital, seeing to her own patients plus those of the physical therapist on maternity leave.

“It better not be a salesman,” she muttered, leaving the cheesecake on the coffee table. As she crossed her two-story foyer toward the front door, she tightened the sash on her velour bathrobe. Perhaps it was her neighbor, the Navy SEAL, back from his assignment and looking for his cat.

But the face peering through the door’s glass oval wasn’t that of the too-hot-to-handle Commander Joe Montgomery. It was Penny’s twenty-four-year-old drama queen of a little sister, Ophelia.

“Hi,” said Penny, braced for trouble. “What’s up?” Crisp October air surged inside, bearing the scent of dried leaves.

“Um, I need to stay here a while,” Ophelia answered, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Can I park my car in your garage?”

Penny tucked a strand of copper hair behind one ear, deliberating. “You can’t keep running to me every time you break up with a boyfriend, Lia,” she chided.

“I’m not,” Ophelia reassured her. “But I need to put my car in your garage, now. Please,” she added.

It was the lack of theatrics that persuaded Penny to cooperate. “Okay,” she agreed, flicking a glance at Lia’s rustbucket of a ride. “Hold on a sec. I’ll need to move some stuff first.”

Moments later, the ’91 Oldsmobile was parked snugly in the single-car garage and Ophelia stepped out of it, dragging a suitcase with her.

Penny eyed the suitcase with dismay, a sure sign that Lia had failed to pay her rent—again. “How long are you planning to stay?” she asked as the garage door rumbled shut behind them, leaving the sisters in darkness.

“I don’t know,” Ophelia admitted. “Let me tell you what happened, and you can decide for yourself.”

Oh, dear, that didn’t sound too promising. With concern pooling in her belly, Penny led the way through the laundry room into her hard-earned three-bedroom single-family home. It was supposed to be the house she would live in with her husband and babies, but, at twenty-nine, she still wasn’t married, and if her sister kept landing on her doorstep, she might never lead a normal life again.

Ophelia dropped her suitcase in the foyer and headed toward the kitchen, wringing her hands as she went.

“I have leftovers if you’re hungry,” Penny offered, taking note of Lia’s longer locks. Her hair was like Penny’s, only layered, with a hint of whimsical bangs. While the elder sister dressed comfortably and sensibly, Ophelia liked to test the limits of fashion using sequins, tie-dye, lace, and beads.

“That’s okay, I’m not hungry.” But spying the opened box of cheesecake, she pounced on it, serving herself a giant slice.

“So what happened?” Penny prompted.

Ophelia ignored the question. “Hey, I didn’t know you had a cat,” she said, pointing her fork toward the family room.

Commander Montgomery’s tomcat was crouched over Penny’s dessert. “Felix!” she scolded, rushing over to scoop him up. “He’s not mine. He belongs to my next-door neighbor.”

“The Navy SEAL?” Lia’s slender eyebrows shot up as she stuffed her mouth with another huge bite. “Are you sleeping with him?”

“Of course not,” Penny answered, seeing through her sister’s delay tactics. “He’s on assignment somewhere. One of his girlfriends is supposed to be pet-sitting, but she’s unpredictable and Felix likes to eat—don’t you, big boy?” She scratched the cat’s broad head. “Now can we get to the point of your visit?” she demanded.

Ophelia’s shoulders drooped. She put her plate abruptly on the counter, pushing it away. “Well, first of all, the tourists have gone home, and I’m not making much money waitressing.”

“Right,” said Penny, who had advised Lia to get a real job when this same thing happened last year.

“But that’s not the only thing,” her little sister added with a miserable sigh.

Penny thought of the worst possible scenario. “I hope this has nothing to do with Daddy’s journal,” she pleaded.

“I’m afraid it does,” Ophelia admitted in a small voice.

“Oh, no. What did you do?”

“I called Eric,” Lia admitted, begging Penny with her pretty turquoise eyes to understand. “I was pissed. I wanted answers.”

“What did you say to him?” Penny asked, clasping the cat more firmly, furious that her sister might have blown their chance to seek justice.

“I asked him how he slept at night, okay? I didn’t accuse him of stealing the ricin or murdering Dad.”

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing. He couldn’t say anything. You know how he talks. He started stuttering and stammering, and—believe me—his stutter is even worse when he’s nervous, and he wouldn’t be that nervous unless he was scared.”

Penny regarded her sister over Felix’s twitching ears. “Did he threaten you?” She didn’t know whether to slap her sister or comfort her. “Is that why you hid your car in my garage?”

“I told you. He can’t even talk. He just breathes into the phone.”

“Breathes? You make it sound like you’ve talked more than once.”

Lia swallowed visibly. “He’s called a few times since then. But like I said, he doesn’t say anything.”

Penny shivered as she caught a whiff of Ophelia’s apprehension. “Oh, boy,” she murmured. Lia had taken their discovery to a whole new level, and now she was paying for it.

“I’m sorry,” her little sister added, with uncharacteristic humility. “I don’t know what made me call him. I was just so upset.”

Penny’s worry subsided into pity. “I understand, honey. I was upset, too.” She considered their options. “Well, I guess it’s not going to change anything for Eric to know that we’re onto him. Unless he disappears between now and then, the FBI will still be able to arrest him.”