Page 8 of Tate (The Montana Marshalls #2)

Not the voice he wanted to hear, but Scarlett—or rather, Petty Officer Second Class Hathaway, assigned as combat services support to their unit—was monitoring the drone that scoped the area, as well as keeping the Black Hawk waiting to swoop in for exfil updated.

And now he had her in his brain, thanks.

The last thing he should be thinking about was Scarlett’s short brown hair with those red highlights gleaming like copper when the hot Middle Eastern sun hit it, and those big brown eyes that never missed anything, including tangos—terrorists—who might creep up and kill him or any of the other operators on his team.

No, not the kind of thoughts he should be having anytime about a fellow sailor. Especially one who he outranked.

His eyes burned, so dry his eyelids were nearly glued open, although that could also be from fatigue.

And the frustration of watching Martha Garrety, American nurse and current kidnap victim, being dragged from the main house by the three young Yemeni men who’d decided not to kill the missionary nurse but take her captive and do—yeah, he couldn’t let his brain go there.

He watched them emerge into the compound through his helmet-mounted NVGs—night vision goggles—and with everything inside him wanted to squeeze off a round into their black-and-white keffiyehs. But orders were to not awaken the entire compound.

Not start an international incident.

Just to extract Martha alive.

Apparently, it didn’t matter that the militant group AQAP, an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, was headed by Nasir al-Rimi.

Whoever had taken her had also gunned down her husband—probably right in front of her eyes—and another nurse serving with Medical Mission International.

This was the second attack on the MMI organization—the first had been a Lebanese militant who carried a gun into a Baptist hospital like it might be an infant and opened fire.

Every other mission organization in this part of the world—and especially Yemen—had bugged out when the US government issued a warning.

Not Martha and her cohorts.

Now Martha was paying the price for her dedication. Helpless, probably violated—although he’d heard that the ultrazealous left the infidel women alone—and definitely terrified.

The team went quiet around him as Martha was dragged into the open, fell, and was kicked.

Ford heard a curse from Nez, their master chief. “Give me a good word here, Marsh.”

“Still waiting on the order, boss.”

“Please,” Cruz said.

“Anytime,” hissed Sonny, their explosives expert from Chicago, in position outside the back wall of the compound with Kenny C, their weapons specialist, poised to scale the wall for the snatch and grab.

Twenty feet above Ford to the west, Levi—from Minnesota—made a strangled, odd sound as one of the men hauled Martha up and slapped her.

“Operations, we need something, now,” Ford said softly into his mic.

Yeah, time to finish this, bring Martha home.

Bring him home. Because he was so close to the end of his deployment, he could nearly taste the chalupa that Cruz had promised them from his backyard smoker in Coronado.

Ford had one of the tangos between the grids of his MK11, Leupold Vari-X Mil Dot rifle scope.

“Hold, Charlie Three,” Scarlett said.

Only her voice kept him from lining up his MK11 for a head shot.

“According to our drone, they’re leading her to an outside hut near the compound wall.”

“We don’t need a drone to see that,” he whispered.

Maybe Scarlett heard him because she responded with, “Just relaying information, Marsh.”

“They probably don’t want her inside with the family,” Trini—maps and logistics—said.

“Yeah or maybe they simply didn’t want to hear her cry,” Nez growled.

Ford didn’t relay any of the team’s ire to Scarlett. It simply settled in his gut.

Later, he might find her at their FOB, sit outside under the stars as the massive ship parted the black water, and let out his frustration.

Like the fact that every time they chopped off one snake head in this militant-infested world, another popped up.

And it was women and children who paid the price.

Scarlett would just sit, drinking a bottle of lemonade, and listen.

She’d almost become the closest thing to a best friend that a logistical teammate could get in the Navy.

Any closer and he’d be breaking the kind of rules that could get him kicked out.

Off SEAL Team Three and back to Montana to herd cattle.

Yippee ki yay. No thank you.

Down in the compound, they’d dragged Martha to a hut ten feet from the wall. He didn’t want to imagine the smells, the heat, or what it might feel like to be Martha, alone, bruised, grief-stricken, terrified.

Frankly, he already knew.

“You’re a go, Team Three.” Precious words, spoken with verve, the slightest hint of caution.

“Roger.” Ford relayed the info to the team.

It happened fast, just as they’d planned, practiced, and run over in their minds.

Sonny and Kenny C threw a Yates climbing hook over the wide wall, yanked down on the folding hook to extend the ladder, and were up and over the wall so fast they could have bounced.

Cruz took out Tango one with a quiet shot to the head, silenced by his QD sound suppressor.

Leviticus ghosted the second man, but the third took off running.

Meanwhile, Nez headed for the entrance of the compound, where they’d extract Martha.

“Do you have her?” Ford asked as he headed toward the back entrance, just in case their plan went south and Sonny and Kenny C needed support.

“We have the package. Headed toward the entrance.”

Tango three—where had the bugger gone? Ford hadn’t heard shouts rising from the compound where Nasir al-Rimi probably slept, armed to the teeth with militants.

He stood in the darkness outside the back entrance, watching the gate when Nez came over the headset. “We have the package. Exfil, exfil.”

“Roger.” Ford toggled the mic. “Operations, we have the package. Exfiling to the extraction point.”

“Roger.”

He turned, but Scarlett’s voice came back through the pipe. “We have movement. Three—no, maybe four—bodies headed out the back.”

He hunkered down, his heart thundering hard.

Their extraction point was a half mile back into the hills, the closest they could get without alerting the village.

Apparently, HQ didn’t want a full-out war with these guys, yet.

Carrying Martha would slow them down. A little.

Shouts, and although he could speak Arabic, he couldn’t make it out. If he were to hazard a guess, he would bet it was something along the lines of “Run faster, kill them before they get away with the goods.” That was his G-rated, simplified version.

Because Martha was young, pretty, and these guys weren’t above a little slave trade.

He could break away, exfil through a contingency route, and meet his team at the chopper. Follow the plan.

Or…

He stood up. Squeezed off a shot, and the leader dropped.

Ford dusted the one behind him, too, before the two in back littered him with shots.

He leaped into a wadi, rolled, and came up with his HK45 and pumped two shots into the chest of the man lipping his foxhole.

The man dropped like an anvil on top of him.

The action screwed with his NVGs and he went blind, the glasses breaking free from his helmet.

Shoot!

He wrenched them up, but he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

He pushed the assailant off him and rounded up to his knees, blinking.

C’mon, adjust. Shooter four was out here, somewhere?—

Scarlett’s unsanctioned scream shrilled through his comms headset. Piercing, bright, and he scrambled to his feet, every nerve on alert.

“Behind you!”

He whirled and shot, still blind.

An explosion slammed into his armor, a punch that caught him center mass, right in his chest plate, blowing him back, the air whooshing out of his lungs.

He landed hard into a pile of sandstone and rubble, the world gray and formless.

“Get up!”

Scarlett.

Yes. Get up! But the shot had shaken his .45 from his grip.

“He’s on top of you!”

He brought his knees up, ready to defend, his hand on the straight blade Winkler on his war belt.

A shot sounded, but the shadowy form in front of him kept coming.

Ford’s chest was on fire, but he shouted it away, rolled to his feet, yanked out his blade, and leaped for the target.

Moments later, Cruz ran up, breathing hard. “I missed him. Sorry.”

“I didn’t.” Ford cleaned his knife, his eyesight adjusting, finally, and resheathed it. “Let’s go.”

Shouts now from the compound, thanks to his unsuppressed shots, but he didn’t turn around, just hoofed it behind Cruz up the hillside.

They ran silently, Nez checking in when they reached the Black Hawk, now cycling up. The sound thundered across the canyon and the helicopter lifted.

“We’re picking you up,” Nez said.

Scarlett’s voice came again, calmer. “You have two trucks on your six, gaining fast.”

Ford affirmed and conveyed her sit-rep to Nez, but he didn’t slow, and next to him, despite nearly a decade of wear on him, Cruz was outrunning him.

Yeah, well, Cruz didn’t nearly have a hole blown through him.

The beautiful black bird rose just ahead of them, and in moments it hovered low enough for Cruz to throw himself onto the deck. Nez raked him in.

Shots dinged off the wheel struts.

Nez held out his hand and Ford leaped for it. Sonny grabbed his body wrap, and even Kenny gave him a hand as they lugged him aboard.

The chopper lifted, the desert dropping under them.

More shots, and Levi returned fire as Ford strapped himself onto a bench.

“What happened back there?” Nez shouted over the engine, his dark eyes blazing. More shots arced into the night, like fireflies. “You don’t usually go Lone Ranger on us. That’s going to get you killed. Stick to the mission specs—you had orders to exfil!”

“Marsh got ambushed,” Cruz said.

That wasn’t—except, it might have looked that way, especially since only he had direct communication with Scarlett.

“I’m sorry, Chief. Squirters came out the back, in hard pursuit,” he said, still catching his breath. His entire chest felt aflame, and suddenly he was having a hard time breathing.

His master chief must have seen him grab for the collar of his body wrap because he leaned over and examined the hole in his armor. “You’ve been shot.”

“No lie.” He closed his eyes. “But I’d be dead if Scarlett—Petty Officer Hathaway hadn’t warned me.”

Nez gave him a hard, dark look. “No more rogue ops. Good thing Cruz saw you, or we’d be circling back.” He glanced over at Martha. “With a possible negative outcome.”

The young woman hugged herself, her arms tight, her face bruised. She looked out onto the Yemen hillsides, the villages tucked into the crannies of bald, dusty mountains, lit here and there with courtyard fires and in some places, lights.

She appeared utterly stripped. As if she hadn’t a clue where she was or what had happened.

Yeah, he got that.

He pressed his hand to his chest, aware that he’d started to feel woozy, every breath a blinding shot of agony.

He might have broken a rib.

Weirdly, Martha turned and looked straight at him, her jaw tight, her eyes hard. Almost angry. The sudden change drew in his breath past his aching chest.

But he got that too.

He could almost see the personal, emotional armor forming. After a trauma like this, it would take her years to break it down, to feel safe enough to let someone inside, to not feel as if she had to control every moment, wrestle her fears into a hard, forbidding ball.

It would also take years before someone might come along who could earn her trust, help her open her heart to hope and maybe even love.

Years before she’d be able to silence the voices of fear. Maybe even guilt and shame.

But when she did, maybe she’d find another voice. The kind of voice that told her she wasn’t broken. Not wounded, but strong.

Even brave.

And someday that voice would tell her it was okay to take a chance and live again.

That voice just might save her life.

He looked out the window. They’d crossed the jagged mountains, were heading toward the coastline, and beyond was their transport ship.

The moonlight dragged a golden trail across the ocean to the deep blue horizon.

Ford put his hand on his chest, felt the hole, the ache. But underneath his palm, his heart was still beating.

Thank you, Scarlett.