Running Fire (19 page)

“Right. My ma thinks we're telling her a big windy about it, but we're not. She saw my marriage self-destruct. There's a ninety-percent divorce rate among my kind, so that sort of says it all.”

Leah roused herself. “Are your brothers as good-looking as you are?” She saw his cheeks turn a ruddy color. Kell was blushing! And her heart opened fiercely to him. He didn't see himself in that way.

“Actually, to hear my brothers talk, you'd think I was the underside of a lily pad.” He laughed.

“And that's Kentucky-ese for what?”

“They consider me plain looking in comparison to them,” he said, his smile broadening. “When you meet my brothers, you can make up your own mind. My ma always said Cody and Ty are heartbreakers. And they are. Women flock to them like bees to the flowers.”

“Well,” Leah said, turning and kissing him lightly, “you are eye candy in my book.”

He held her close, took her mouth more surely against his, kissing her deeply. As he eased away, Kell rasped, “Your opinion is the only one that counts with me, Leah.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

K
ELL
SCOWLED
AND
punched his sat phone off. He stood near the entrance to the cave, the noontime sun overhead. Things were going to hell in a handbasket according to Ax.

Pushing his fingers through his hair, he leaned against the opening, thinking about strategies and alternatives.
Damn.
His heart was in the mix even though it shouldn't be there. He worried for Leah and didn't want her in jeopardy—again. What the hell was he going to do? This wasn't a situation where he could call in his team and they'd be there for them. Camp Bravo was between fifteen to twenty-five miles away, depending upon avoiding Taliban riders. Taking a deep breath, he pushed off from the wall and walked silently back to where Leah and the horses were resting.

Leah looked up, sensing Kell's presence before she saw him. They had an invisible connection to one another. She felt it in her heart. His face was set and his gray eyes dark. Something was wrong. She watched as he came and crouched opposite her, the sat phone dangled between his long, spare fingers.

“What's wrong?”

Kell saw the sudden wariness come to her eyes. Leah could read him like a book, but he wasn't surprised. Their time with one another had been short, but intense and concentrated. And he'd allowed himself to become vulnerable with her, something he'd never done with another woman this soon after knowing her. “We got some strategy to figure out,” he said, keeping his voice calm and unemotional. “We've lost the drone overhead due to a higher-priority order. It got called to a firefight north of here. And we won't be getting it back soon enough to help us. The last streaming video from the drone showed there's three major groups of Taliban on horseback between us and Bravo.”

“Can we stay here and wait until we get the drone back?” Leah saw him frown. He sat down, crossed his legs after pulling out the map he'd taken from Sergeant Khat Shinwari's cave, studying it.

“No. We have a group of Taliban on the path I was going to take to get down to that other cave,” he murmured, having committed part of the map to memory. “They're on their way right now, and we're going to have to get out of here in the next thirty minutes. I'm trying to figure out where best to go now in order to avoid them.”

“How many?”

“Forty men.”

She swallowed against a dry throat, her pulse beating a little harder. “Can't we get help from Bravo?”

“No,” Kell said quietly, intently studying the map. “All the Apaches are out on other missions. It's the spring assault and every piece of equipment that will fly is assigned elsewhere to firefight missions. The Taliban, according to Ax, is ramping up, and they've got three major assaults underway within thirty miles of the border. We're right in the middle of that area.”

He didn't want to upset Leah, but he wasn't going to lie to her, either. Just not tell her the whole truth. Being a pilot, she never had to concern herself with ground combat. Kell glanced up. Her eyes were filled with concern, her mouth set. She was a warrior and he saw her moving that side of her to the forefront.

“Then we're on our own.”

“Yes.”

Leah felt her stomach clench. She lamented that their intimacy, their time with one another, was gone. It would be a race to get to Bravo without getting killed or captured. And without air assets available, no drone eyes in the sky, everything was landing on Kell's broad shoulders and years of experience as an operator to get them home. She said nothing, watching him stare at the map in his hands. If anyone could get them out of this situation, he could.

“How can I help?”

Lifting his chin, Kell stared at her serious demeanor. Gone was the soft, vulnerable woman he'd made love to and had cared for. He got up, moved to her side and spread the map out before her. “This small path is a very steep descent, but it can get us down to a lower elevation and we can avoid this Taliban party coming our way by taking it.”

“The lower we go, the more trees and brush are around,” Leah said. “It could provide us cover.”

He gave her a proud look. “Now you're thinking like us ground pounders.”

She smiled a little, inwardly anxious and not wanting to let Kell know about it. He had enough on his shoulders to contend with right now. “I'm trying. Tough for a pilot who is used to flying in the sky, not surviving combat on the ground, believe me.”

He moved his arm about her shoulders, pulling her close for just a moment. It was a selfish act. Kell knew things were going to get tense very soon. And when, not if, they made it to Bravo, their time together there was going to be severely limited. He also worried about Major Grant flying into Bravo to meet Leah. “We need to stay in our hajji gear for now. I don't like riding in broad daylight. SEALs operate better at night, but we don't have a choice right now.”

“When Ax gave you the positions of those three Taliban groups...?”

“Yes?”

“That doesn't mean he knows where they're heading, right? That they can change course? We could possibly intercept them by accident?”

He moved his fingers across her nape, feeling the tension in it. Massaging the area, he said, “All that is possible.”

Leah wanted to melt beneath his hand, groaning as he loosened those tightly corded muscles. All she wanted was to fall into his arms and forget everything else. A purely selfish and dangerous wish. “Okay, let's mount up.”

He gave her a nod and stood up. Holding out his hand to her, Leah took it and he pulled her to her feet. She stood inches away from him. Kell was in complete SEAL mode right now. His game face was in place and she could feel him thinking, strategizing and preparing for all kinds of what-ifs they might be challenged with during their journey.

She moved over to her horse, tightened the loose cinch and saw him do the same with his bay gelding.

They gave their mounts water and then led their animals out beyond the cave, the sunlight hot and bearing down on them. Kell helped Leah mount up and then he threw a leg over his larger, taller horse. He turned, checking the packhorse rope, making sure it was tied. Their rucks and their weapons were on that horse and he wanted to make sure it couldn't get loose and run away. That would be a disaster for them.

Kell squinted and found that smaller, less used goat path. It led almost to a 7 percent grade down through brush. The trail had a lot of loose rocks on it, telling him it was rarely used but making it impossible to move quickly. He pushed his horse forward and then began the very steep descent.

Leah felt the sweat running down between her breasts and her shoulder blades. Kell kept up a fast walk, pushing the horses on the narrow, slippery path. The rocks were a pain in the ass and Leah kept looking back up the long sloping hill. The air was hot, the wind sporadic. It would climb to over a hundred degrees down on the valley floor far below them.

Off in the distance, she saw a Shinwari village. She wondered if they could reach it, because that tribe had a peace pact with the States. Was Kell planning on going there? The village was barely visible through the rippling heat waves dancing like floating, transparent horizontal ribbons across the desert landscape. She adjusted her mic near her mouth.

“Are we going to that Shinwari village in the valley?”

“No. The area is crawling with Taliban. If they see us and suspect we're military and not one of their kind, it would be dragging the war to their doorstep. Those people are farmers. They have a few antique firearms, but if we led the Taliban into their village, a lot of innocent people would die. We're going to avoid going anywhere near it.”

Made sense to her. As they moved down, the path became less steep, the brush now growing six to ten feet tall around them. Leah felt a little safer simply because it gave them some cover from prying, alert Taliban eyes. They'd been moving for three hours on switchbacks, the horses stumbling sometimes due to the rocks. This land, Leah thought, was incredibly barren and lifeless. She didn't know how the people managed to survive in this harsh climate.

She saw Kell hold up his right hand into a fist, which meant “stop.” She pulled her horse to a halt, its nose almost resting on the packhorse's rump. They were hidden by tall brush on one side. Her pulse leaped as she saw Kell stand up in the stirrups, looking intently at something up to their left. Up where they'd been hours ago. Leah turned, looking, trying to see what he saw. And then, she froze. A large group of Taliban was riding on the trail. Feeling adrenaline beginning to pump into her bloodstream, Leah automatically pulled the robe she wore aside, unstrapping the .45 in case she needed to grab it in a hurry.

“We'll just stay quiet here,” Kell told her in a low tone. “If we don't move, they won't see us.”

“Roger.” Her voice sound tense. Hoarse. It would take them hours to reach them but that wasn't the point. Leah knew these different Taliban groups could be in radio contact with one another. They might spot them from above and radio another group somewhere else, unseen, and they could swoop down upon them instead. She leaned down, rubbing her horse's sweaty neck.

Kell dismounted and moved to the packhorse, opening up one side of the tarp. Her heart raced as he pulled out his M-4 with a grenade launcher attached to it beneath the barrel. Was he expecting trouble? She watched as he took off the AK-47 and replaced it with the M-4 rifle. The look on his face was intense. It scared her. It was one thing to be in an MH-47 helicopter with all kinds of capability, with the ability to defend herself and shoot back. Here, on a horse, not so much.

She glanced up, watching the forty men walking their horses along the path. It was a large group.

Kell looked up to see Leah's glistening face, her eyes watching the Taliban group. He tied down the tarp, gave the horse a pat on the rump and walked over to her. She came close so they could talk in low voices.

“I just spotted a second Taliban group down there.” He pointed below them. “Maybe fifteen riders. We're staying put for right now because we've got good cover.”

“Are they on the same path we are?”

Shaking his head, Kell said, “I don't think so. They're coming up out of the valley where we want to go.” He put the rifle on his back, barrel down, and opened his cammie pocket to pull out the map to study it. He felt the tension in Leah and knew she was worried. Looking up, Kell pulled a compass out of his H-gear, opened it and studied their position. And then he studied the map some more, not liking what he'd realized. He pulled the sat phone out of his gear and made a call to Ax at Bravo.

Leah listened to the quiet conversation. Kell set the map on the ground, kneeling over it, speaking to Ax about alternative routes. She had a terrible feeling the Taliban coming up from the valley were utilizing the same path they were on. Leah held the leather reins a little tighter. They were trapped.

Finally, Kell finished the call and tucked the sat phone away in his waist gear. He turned to Leah, who was frowning and looking worried. Placing his hand on her thigh he said, “As soon as that group above us disappears, we're going to turn around and go back about five hundred feet. There's a smaller path we'll take.” He pointed across her saddle toward the northwest. “It goes off in a direction that will avoid this group coming up from the valley.”

She wiped the sweat off her brow, hating the wool clothes she had to wear. “Will it take us down to the valley?”

Kell nodded, his eyes narrowing. “Yes.”

“Couldn't we get a Night Stalker in here?”

“No. Way too active. I asked and Ax said it's a no-go.”

“At least you asked.” Leah managed a tight smile, placing her hand over his.

“Never hurts,” Kell said. And then he grinned slightly. “All they can do is say no.” He patted her thigh and said, “I'm going to turn the horses around. I don't see the Taliban up on that upper path. Time for us to make our move.”

They found the barely used path. Leah wondered how Kell could even follow it through the scrub and rocks—it was almost invisible to her eyes. She reminded herself he knew how to track, how to see things most people wouldn't. Right now, she was blessing his Kentucky background, the fact he'd been an untamed little boy hunting and growing up in the wild mountains near his home.

By the time they reached the valley floor, the sun had shifted near the western horizon. Kell found them a small cave and Leah breathed a sigh of relief. They never ran into the other group of Taliban and little by little, relief replaced her tension. The cave was hidden, like so many were, by tall, thick vegetation in front of it. Kell dismounted and handed her the reins to his horse as he went to clear the cave with his M-4.

Leah felt more relief as he came back, took the reins of his horse and led her through the brush and into the opening. Every cave was different. This one was barely eight feet high and she had to dismount to lead her horse into it. Once inside, Kell joined her.

“We got lucky. There's water down off to that tunnel on the right. Follow me.”

Water
. Leah's spirits rose swiftly. She could tell the horses could smell it because they started walking faster down the tunnel, wanting to reach it. Kell turned on his penlight as the darkness grew. Always worried about the horses and the inability to find them water often enough, Leah stepped aside as the tunnel opened up into a much larger cavern. She saw the water dripping off the walls, a trough of liquid below it. The horses swiftly covered the distance, thrusting their muzzles deep beneath the water's surface, gulping in great draughts.

Kell kept the penlight on. He saw Leah looking tired. The heat of the day bled everyone of their energy. The horses sucked noisily, their muzzles dripping with water as they finally raised their heads, sated for now.

“Let's go back where there's some light,” he told Leah, pulling on the reins and leading his horse out toward the tunnel.