CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I can walk.” Indy wriggled against him. “Put me down.”
“Not a chance in hell.” He’d just found her, and she expected him to be okay with not having her in his arms for the next dozen lifetimes. She was crazy? Well, maybe he was the one who’d lost his mind as he had no business insisting on holding her, he admitted silently to himself. “I’m not putting you down until we know how badly you are hurt.”
“The only thing hurt is my knuckles and my pride,” she muttered. “They walloped me on the hands good, like an old-fashioned school mistress.”
With Braddock and Lucian on his six, he made his way out the open gate and toward the Humvees. “Bastards.”
“Yeah.” She sighed heavily, but stopped struggling, which made it easier to move her. “I’m not hurt, I swear,” she whispered softly. “I’m just mad at myself that I got caught off guard twice in one week. That has to be a record, even for me.”
He stood to one side as Braddock opened the rear door of the first Humvee, then leaned in to place her on the seat. “Stop that. It’s not your fault.”
They all ducked when a sound which haunted the dreams of every soldier who’d ever deployed knew, better than the sound of his momma’s voice swept over them.
“RPG,” Braddock called.
“No shit.” They stared in horror as the flying bomb raced toward the house they’d just been in. “Wolf, you got incoming,” he called over comms, giving the guys in the house as much warning as he could. He could hear both Braddock and Lucian doing the same for Charlie team. Before he’d finished speaking, the RPG struck a building on the back wall of the compound. “Fuck. TOC, Bravo Three. TARFU. I need eyes, stat.”
“Bravo Three, TOC, what’s happening?” a voice he didn’t recognize asked. He knew from having worked in this area while he was military that this was possibly someone in the Navy based out of Naples, most likely U.S. Naval Forces Africa (NAVAF), the forward-deployed naval component of U.S. Africa Command who had led on the mission Wolf and his team were on. Or if it was totally a wholly spec ops mission, then possibly command had their own tactical operations center (TOC) in place, with a liaison from the other alphabet agencies.
“RPG just struck the compound.”
“I got a target,” Braddock said from where he had taken between the Humvees.
“You are engaging?” TOC asked. “You aren’t supposed to be engaging right now.”
What the fuck did he want them to do? Wave hello at the tangos and ask them if they wanted freaking tea? “No, sir.” Draven scanned into the dark with his lasers. “Wolf, his team, and some of my guys are still in that building. I need to know how many tangos we have incoming. But I’m picking up a bunch and they just sent an RPG toward our guys.”
“Drone footage shows approx fifteen tangos maybe one hundred meters out.” Clearly TOC had got their act together and were pulling up drone footage.
Fif—fucking-teen. Jeez.
“Hey, you see this guy?” Lucian called.
“Yeah, got him,” Braddock called back as he too hit a target with his laser. “Have you got this one?”
“Yup, got him.”
“Bravo Three, TOC, confirm you are just lasing targets?” TOC demanded.
“Confirmed, TOC, we’re lasing and watching them move up,” Draven confirmed they were identifying targets by shining their lasers on the people approaching from the open field across from them. Lasing ensured everyone got visibility. Thankfully the bad guys wouldn’t realize they were being lased, because one needed night vision to see the laser.
TOC was either reading his mind or a script as he asked, “Those tangos don’t have night vision?”
“Confirmed, no night vision, TOC.”
“Roger,” the voice replied. “Our guys are headed to exfil with their packages. The women and children have been escorted out the back of the property,” he said. “Cover the guys.”
“On it.” Draven kept his scope moving. With his night vision, he could make out a group of people coming through the front gate. By how they were moving, he recognized their guys; they were pushing two captives ahead of them. Rapid gunfire made them all duck and one of the captives bolted for the jungle as fast as his legs could take him.
“I’ve got a captive squirting off target without a weapon,” Draven called. “He’s running right toward us.”
“Got my weapon on him,” Braddock confirmed. “He’s coming right for us.”
Draven knew without being asked that Wolf would be pissed to lose one of his captives. But they didn’t have time to lose their shit about it right now. He tracked the tango as he took off to the left. Clearly, he didn’t even know the rest of them were there. But as he didn’t have a weapon, Draven wouldn’t shoot him. The tango dived into the jungle and kept moving toward them until he was scrambling through the bushes behind the Humvees.
“I’m going to creep up on him,” Lucian whispered.
“Copy.” They had to deal with the cat, aka the tango, so they could get on with their exfil and try not to draw the attention of the people who still beelined for the compound.
Braddock and Lucian turned to go creeping up on the tango. Through night vision, Draven saw when he spotted them as he turned and took off running toward the teams. He kept on tracking him with the scope.
“Arrrgh, I can’t shoot him as he’s not armed.”
He got on comms and advised, “There’s a squirter coming onto the target. There’s a squirter coming onto the target.”
“What?”
But clearly TOC didn’t need an answer to that question and must have passed on the intel, because the next thing Draven knew was he could see lasers from the teams coming toward them.
The tango stopped, backtracked, and moved off to the right before crouching down and flipping up what looked like a blanket. At this point he had what resembled a flower petal of lasers. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what would happen as soon as he stood with a weapon in his hands.
“Strap yourself in, we’re gonna be peeling out of here like our asses are on fire,” Draven ordered Indy. He leaned into the first Humvee and switched on the engine as Braddock and Lucian did the same with the other two. Within minutes the guys arrived, and they piled into the Humvees. The tangos who’d been targeting the compound came racing toward them, attracted by the gunfire.
Draven dived into the back seat next to Indy and slammed the door behind them. “Go. Go.”
“I knew we should have parked Fallujah style,” Wolf growled as he slammed the gear into reverse and followed the other vehicle down the track. “Driving out of here would be a hell of a lot easier than fucking reversing.”
Draven agreed, but taking the time to maneuver the vehicles before they’d gone in would have given the people in the house more time to know they were coming. They hadn’t wanted to risk that happening, and had agreed the risk of parking facing the property was an acceptable risk.
As Wolf reversed out onto the main track, switched gears, and hit the gas, making them all lurch forward at the change of direction, Draven was regretting that decision now. He glanced out the rear window. “They’re running after us.”
“Won’t be long before someone finds the vehicles in the compound and uses them.” Abe checked his weapons and ducked his head to look out the side mirrors. “If my head is in your way, Wolf, just shout, ‘kay?”
“Yeah, you’re good,” Wolf replied. “I’ll worry about what’s in front of us, you watch our six.”
“All is see on our six right now is the nose of Charlie Team’s wheels.”
“Bravo Three, Charlie Four,” Braddock called over comms. “I’ve got a white pick-up on my ass.” As he finished speaking the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire filled the night. “Tell Wolf to floor it, our asses are taking lead.”
“Hit the gas, Wolf. Charlie Three is getting their asses whooped.”
“This thing doesn’t have any more power to give.” The engine growled in response when Wolf dropped a gear and hit the gas. “Raptor skimped on all the bells and whistles on this shit.”
“I heard that, Wolf man,” a voice crackled over the radio on the front dash. “Keep going straight on the four crossroads and you’ll see me coming in on your three o’clock.”
“All Stations, TOC, your ride out is on its way,” TOC advised over comms. His advisory competed with the voice on the radio for air space.
“That’s me,” the voice on the radio confirmed. “I’m your expediated exfil. Move your asses, because chatter says there is a mob on the way and they’re pissy as fuck over someone taking their paydirt captive.”
“Paydirt captive, my butt.” Indy’s nose winkled up, just like it had when something had pissed her off when they were kids.
“Is that our ride?” Abe pointed to the right. “That’s a damn helo. Does command have—”
“I told you, I’m your ride out,” the voice on the radio cut him off. “Watch for the tracks to turn in,” he ordered. “If you miss it, you’re gonna get stuck in the dyke and then you’re hotfooting it across the grass, because I can’t come any closer with the electrical wires.”
“Roger that.” Clearly Wolf was taking him at his word. He dropped gears again and whipped the Humvee into a narrow opening with a post on either side of it, making a beeline for the helo which hovered on the far side of the clearing.
Draven glanced over his shoulder to make sure the other Humvees made the turn. Because he wasn’t paying attention when Wolf slammed on the brakes, he went flying forward. Only Indy’s arm shooting out to press against his chest prevented him from breaking his nose on the seat in front of him. “Shit.”
“Move, move!” Wolf yelled. “Bail out, now.”
They scrambled out of the Humvees, hauling their captive with them. By the time they were all on the helo and rose into the air, the Humvees were surrounded by the tangos. Once Draven was sure they were high enough not to be hit by any stray bullets, he tugged Indy close to him and buried his nose into her hair.
She’s okay. She’s safe.
She’s okay. She’s safe.
She’s okay. She’s safe.
She’s okay. She’s safe.
He chanted it in his head like a mantra, over and over. Maybe if he said it enough he might actually believe it.