Zack (In the Company of Snipers Book 3) (17 page)

Something smelled bad. Real bad.

Zack squinted through murky vision. He would’ve opened both eyes, but one was stuck shut. Swollen shut. A man shouldn’t feel so damned bad. His whole head seemed swollen shut. Nose. Ears. Mouth. Darkness parted only to reveal more rolling darkness that made him dizzy. Like he wasn’t dizzy enough.

She hit me. Oh hell, did she hit me.

It was hard to make out anything in the cold dark place where he lay. A thin layer of slimy mud cushioned his cheek, offering relief. Breathing would’ve felt better without the burning stone in his chest.

The fog in his head lifted. Both arms were pulled tightly behind his back, making breathing constrained and difficult, but he was alive. Maybe alive was a good thing? Stiff and cold, his bandaged fingertips slid along the plastic zip ties strapped around both wrists. His feet were bound together the same way. Tight.

Details surfaced slowly through the haze in his brain. Jun. That damned mean Jun. The 4
^th
Street Tigers. Even the blue van showed up for roll call. Mei was in there somewhere, lost in his head. Alex, too. Nothing made sense. The cold felt good on his cheek. Sleep beckoned. If only he could breathe.

He lay there gasping like a fish out of water. The ground moved and swelled. Breathing became all-important. Thinking, too. That’s what Alex always railed on. He expected his agents to think.
Once in a while, just think.
But Zack’s brain pounded inside his skull and thinking hurt. If that wasn’t bad enough, just trying to breathe felt like it was killing him, too.

His needs became more primal the longer he lay there.

Air. I need air.

Someone groaned nearby.

“Mei?” Zack grimaced. He’d have thought of her eventually. And then he knew his mouth was full of blood, maybe a couple broken teeth, too. He spat the clot out and called again, but his voice carried no impact or volume. He croaked anyway, “Mei.”

There was no answer, and the feeble attempt had taken all his strength. He lay listening and shivering. Something at the back of his mind recalled that shivering was a good thing. It was only when a man stopped shivering he had something to worry about. Of course, he probably didn’t care much by then.

Think!
Alex’s voice screeched at him from out of nowhere.

“Damn it, Boss,” Zack rasped. “Leave me...alone.”

Think, Zack. Think.

“You’re bugging me. ’Sides...I’m trying...to die here.”

Think.

“Think I’m...losing my mind.”

He stilled. Alex wasn’t really here. Good. A man deserved peace and quiet when he’s trying to draw his last breath.

“Mei?” he asked the darkness. She was here a minute ago, wasn’t she?

He rolled to his back and pushed his hands into the mud. Every muscle screamed to lie back down. Somehow, he managed a sitting position, but that only made him dizzier, like it was possible. The ground moved in a circular wave, up and then down, around and around.

The darkness whispered a word he dreaded.
Concussion.

“Yeah. Yeah. Maybe...if I live.” His hoarse voice echoed. Echoed...Echoed....

“Ah, hell.”

Pain slammed his ribcage. Inhaling fire, the blackness took what little breath he’d drawn. Barely able to squeeze a breath in, he tried to think and think fast. Mei had to be here. Maybe between the two of them, they could figure something out.

“Mei.” He groaned like an old man and then he rested and listened. There was no answer. All he heard was wheezing and coughing, choking and spitting. His. Breathing shouldn’t be so noisy.

Another sinister thought joined the last.
Punctured lungs. A man could die from that.

He pushed the warning out of his head.

“Mei?” he croaked again.

She whimpered. Finally.

“Can you...hear me?” Nausea and vertigo buffeted his meager hold on gravity. His mangled gauze-covered fingers pressed into the mud behind him. They still hurt from when he’d pounded his car. A little more pain hardly mattered.

Why was it so important to sit up in the first place?

“Agent Lennox?” She sounded as bad as he did.

“It’s...me,” he hissed. For awhile, neither said anything. It was all he could do to maintain the tripod thing he had going between his butt and his hands behind his back. He listened to mud squishing as Mei moved toward him.

“I’m tied up.”

“You...hurt?”

“I feel funny, like I’ve been drugged.” Again more squishing, scraping noises until she bumped into his legs. “Are you hurt?”

He laughed, a strangled coughing sound that didn’t sound like a laugh at all. “Hell...no. I’m...fine.”

Her body pressed against his thigh. Another good thing. Now he knew her exact position. And she was warm. He had to make the best use of the time he had left. She had to live.

“Lis...ten.” Breathing was harder now, his lungs thick and sluggish like they breathed soup instead of air. “Boot. Knife.”

“Are you telling me you have a knife in your boot? Left or right?”

“R-right.”

She fumbled, but eventually pulled the knife from his inside boot sheath. He winced, gagging back bile at the nauseating sawing motion when she cut the tie at his ankles. Every little movement created swells he could not control. He willed himself not to throw up.

She scooted along his thigh, grunting funny little sounds until they were sitting back to back. Her fingers searched his wrist for enough space to slide the knife. He gulped. Shaking more than helping, he stretched his arms as far apart as his strength would allow. Fire filled his lungs at the simple movement. Mei needed room to work, but the knife she was working with was razor sharp. Maybe those bandages would protect him if she slipped. Maybe not.

“C-cold?” he asked between bone rattling shivers.

“Same as you,” she muttered. “I need to get you out of here.”

“’Kay,” he rasped. “That...be nice.”

A flush of something warm trickled over his cold skin. Instantly, it chilled. Damn. She’d sliced him. It wouldn’t take long now. Maybe it was just as well. Now he’d die quickly. He sagged onto his side.

“Hey,” she muttered. “Your turn. Cut me free.”

Oh, yeah. That was the least he could do before he died.

“Gimme...knife.” He reached for her in the dark, feeling down her arms until he came to where her hands were tied together. She held the blade down, a real good safety precaution considering how little control he had over his shaking fingers, and the fact he couldn’t see. Dark walls closed in. Lack of blood will do that.

“Be careful. It’s sharp,” she cautioned, like he didn’t already know how much he honed his own knife.

“Uh huh,” he grunted, taking the slippery tool carefully out of her grasp. And then he felt it on his wrist. It wasn’t him. It was her. “You’re...bleeding?”

“No,” she lied. “I’m not.”

“Are too,” he muttered. “You’re cut. So...sorry.”

He fumbled the knife, nearly losing it. Multitasking was impossible with clumsy, fat fingers. Talking, cutting, breathing, and trying not to die all at the same time was hard. He focused. One thing at a time. His fingers searched between her slender wrists for the width of a razor sharp knife. She was a smart woman, stretching her arms apart to help the blade maneuver.

After one sharp slice and one painful grunt, she was free. He leaned into her solid back, both hands to the ground for support.

“Give me the knife. I can cut my feet apart now.”

He complied, handing the knife in a wide arc around her, handle first so he didn’t hurt her by mistake. As soon as she was free, she turned and cradled him, tipping him backward onto the muddy ground, his head in the crook of her arm. At last. He could breathe again.

“Lis...ten,” he rasped.

“I’m listening, Agent Lennox. What do you want me to do?”

“Get...help.”

Mei looked at Agent Lennox’s battered face through the dim, dark light where they’d been dumped. It looked like some kind of a warehouse. The floor was definitely cold concrete with a layer of mud that had no doubt been frozen before their bodies thawed the upper crust. A square opening high overhead allowed the only light, a scant beam of the late afternoon sun. But it was enough to scare her. The big strapping agent who’d helped her so much now lay struggling to breathe, and there was nothing she could do to help. His jacket was gone. Hers too. The left side of his head was swollen and blackened with blood. Plus, he was going into shock. He wheezed, every word a struggle. She had no way to keep him warm.

“Mei...” He choked and spit. “Must...go.”

She hugged him one last time. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Got to.”

With her forehead to his cheek, she felt him shiver. Agent Lennox was twice her size, maybe more. As usual, he was right. She had to go. Easing her body from beneath his, Mei lowered him onto the damp, dirty ground. “You have to hang on. I don’t have LiLi yet, and you promised you’d help me find her. You hear me?”

One side of his mouth lifted in a sad attempt at a smile. “Yeah...promised.”

“You don’t have your baby girl, either.” She smoothed both hands over his chest, scared this might be her last moment with him. “I’ll be right back.”

“Hey,” he groaned, his hands searching in the dark for her. She clasped them both to her lips. “Should’ve told you...sooner. You’re...really...something.”

She kissed his fingers. “Please, don’t die. I should have told you. I love you, Agent Lennox.”

He groaned again.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so rude to you.” All her sins spilled out of her mouth. “You’ve only tried to help. Don’t die, Agent Lennox. Please. I love you so much.”

“Mei.” He gasped for air.

“Yes?” She guided his hand to her mouth for one last kiss.

“Zack. Call me...Zack.”

Alone never felt so cold.

Zack listened to Mei’s tentative footsteps squish through the mud as she walked into darkness, and then he was alone. It was okay. Time she left anyway. The cold was colder now, but he’d stopped shivering. It didn’t matter. Slumber beckoned, and he was tired. The pain in his chest commanded what little concentration he had left, and sent him writhing for any position that offered a chance to breathe easier. There was none.

Can’t breathe. I’m drowning in my own blood.

At last, it got the best of him. With gritted teeth, he let it have its way, and collapsed into the slimy mud. Darkness swarmed his thin hold on reality. The war came back to him. So much injustice in the world. Damned Taliban. Damned child murderers. Poor, poor children everywhere. He drifted. Poor Mei. He’d failed. Still didn’t find LiLi like he’d promised. Poor, poor Mei.

Alex?

Zack opened his one good eye. His damned boss was peering down at him through a long foggy tunnel.
How’d he get into the war?

The man had a blinding bright light that, well, blinded. Zack squinted, shifting his head to avoid the sharp poke in the eye the light offered.
My hell. Can’t a man die in peace?

“I’ve got you, son.”

Two strong hands eased him out of the mud, cradled him, searched his neck and chest. Being handled hurt. He couldn’t breathe again. Neither could he talk.

“I’ve got you, son.”

Yeah, well, let me go. You’re killing me.

Alex covered Zack with a blanket that felt like heaven it was so warm, but he still couldn’t breathe. Hands lifted him onto a board, but Jun was back. She stabbed him in the side this time–with a knife. Damned, mean Jun. The knife felt long and sharp, but oddly, he could breathe better. Maybe she was good for something, after all. Or maybe she’d turned into a medic with a scalpel? He groaned the illusion away.

Doom whirled on the cold November breeze. Fractured skull. Punctured lungs. Hypothermia.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m dying here. Let me be.

“You’ve got him now?”

Alex just would not shut up.

“Yes, sir. We’re taking him to Washington Central.”

“Boss?” Zack gasped. If the nightmare really was real, if that one guy really was Alex, he needed to ask him something.

“Yes?” Alex leaned over him.

Zack blinked. Alex looked bad. Really bad. Kinda sad. Kinda mad. Awful dirty. He didn’t usually look so bad. Maybe it wasn’t him.