Taking Fire Read online

  “We need to secure the camp in case our rebel friends come back.”

  “We can’t possibly fight them. In case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t exactly soldiers. Shouldn’t we try to…I don’t know, walk out of here on our own?”

  “I’m assuming you know where you are,” Max said, impressed with Rachel’s spirit if not her stubbornness. Her reluctance to give up control could be a problem.

  “Of course I know,” Rachel said, her lustrous green eyes flashing. “I wasn’t suggesting we walk the entire way, but we can hardly sit here in this tent waiting for someone to come back and shoot at us again.”

  “It’s a couple hundred miles to Mog, and the jungle is peppered with mines. We’d never make it. Besides, when the birds come back for us, we need to be here.” Max glanced back at Grif. He wasn’t ambulatory and moving him at all might be dangerous. He wasn’t going anywhere, and if he wasn’t going anywhere, neither was she.

  “There are villages not that far from here—that’s where our supplies come through. They would help us.”

  Max shook her head. “You don’t know that—and you can be sure the rebels know about the villages too. We don’t want to stumble into a patrol out there, even if we could manage to find our way around the mines.” With an injured man and two women who have no combat skills. Max shook her head. “We’re staying.”

  Her dismissive tone sounded a lot like the one Rachel’s father used with everyone, and her response was knee-jerk. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re not soldiers. We don’t just mindlessly follow orders.”

  “Believe me, I’m aware,” Max said. “But I plan on keeping you alive, so you’ll just have to learn to take orders.”

  Rachel bit back another retort. She didn’t even know why she was fighting what obviously made sense. She sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  Her apology caught Max by surprise. Stubborn and proud, but not so proud she couldn’t admit being on the wrong side of an argument. “Forget it.”

  “I still don’t see how you expect us to deal with another attack.” Rachel scanned the jungle. She hadn’t been more than a few feet beyond the camp perimeter since she’d arrived. “Shouldn’t we hide or something?”

  “I’m not planning a counteroffensive. If there’s something here the rebels want, they’ll be back after dark when they don’t make easy targets. By then, we’ll be in a bunker, better protected, and even a poor shot can hit something with an automatic weapon.”

  “A bunker.” Rachel took in the tattered tents, the smoldering fires, and the pallets of food and other relief supplies they’d stockpiled for the Somali natives. This wasn’t a military base. Was the woman crazy? “A bunker. I don’t see a bunker.”

  “That’s because we haven’t dug it yet.”

  “Dug it.” Rachel’s head spun. Obviously Max felt no fear. Maybe she had stopped feeling anything at all. Rachel fought her instinct to object, to point out the insanity of the plan. Giving over control to a stranger would have been impossible even a day earlier, but now she had no choice. After all, as had been made perfectly clear, Max was the professional. “I’ll do what you say…but I’m not a robot. I need to understand.”

  Max’s gaze narrowed. “It’s not enough to trust that I know what I’m doing?”

  “Should it be?”

  “We don’t have time for a long engagement.”

  “Well, I’m not ready to elope,” Rachel said flatly. “Tell me what you want me to do and why, and we’ll get along.” She paused. Had it always been this hard to let someone else help her? When had independence become a wall? No time to worry about that now. “I’m grateful that you’re here—for all you’ve done. I know Amina and I probably wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you and the others.”

  “I don’t want your gratitude,” Max said gruffly. Her mouth thinned. The smile was long gone. “That’s not what I want.”

  Rachel wondered what she did want. If she even knew. “Well, I want you to know that you have it anyway.”

  “Let’s give off worrying about who did or didn’t do what. We’ve got other things to worry about.”

  “Is the past so easy to set aside for you?” Rachel mused aloud, wondering more about herself than Max. Maybe if she could let go and just be in the moment. She almost laughed—just not these moments.

  “No.” Max turned away. “Amina, will you take care of Grif? Check his vital signs every thirty minutes, let me know if you see anything that changes?”

  “Yes.” Amina had already pulled over another chair and was sitting by Grif’s side.

  “When the IV runs low, I’ll show you how to change it.”

  “I can do that. I’ve assisted in the hospital here many times.”

  “Good, thank you.”

  “And me?” Rachel asked.

  “We need someone to stand guard.”

  “Shouldn’t that be you? You’re the soldier—”

  “Sailor.”

  Rachel frowned. “That doesn’t seem right, out here in the middle of the jungle.”

  “Most Navy personnel spend very little time on a ship. Navy pilots, Navy medics, Navy SEALs—we’re all over out here.”

  “All right. You’re the sailor—shouldn’t you be the one with the gun on guard duty?”

  “I will be, later.” Max blanked her expression. “But first I need to take care of the bodies. They’re going to decompose rapidly in this heat, and we don’t need them drawing predators into camp on top of everything else.”

  “Oh God,” Rachel said softly, “how could I forget already? How are you going to bury them by yourself?”

  “I’m not. I’m going to take them out and cover them enough to keep the predators away. We’ll come back for the bodies later.”

  Rachel’s chin came up. “I’ll help you.”

  Tough woman. Max couldn’t help but be a little impressed. “I appreciate the offer, but I’d rather not get shot while I’m working. I need you to watch my back.”

  Rachel studied her for a long moment. “All right. I can do that.”

  “Good,” Max said abruptly, uncomfortable under Rachel’s scrutiny, as if something she meant to keep hidden, something she no longer recognized, was suddenly exposed. She didn’t like the feeling. Or worse, maybe she did. “Let’s get started.”

  Chapter Eight

  Max covered her nose and mouth with a strip of cloth she’d torn from one of the tattered tents. Breathing through the stiff fabric was like straining air through sand, but it cut down on the cloying odor of blood and death. She dragged the third body a dozen yards or so into the bush, checking every few feet to be sure she hadn’t drawn the attention of the rebels, or a cat. She’d stationed Rachel at the edge of the jungle. If they were attacked, she could hold off the attackers long enough for Rachel to get back to the main tent, but once she was dead, there would be nothing to stand between the insurgents and the camp. If the rebels got past her, they might not fire on the tent, and Rachel and Amina would have a chance to survive. The rebels would execute Grif. Best-case scenario, the rebels would loot the camp and leave the women alive. Hoping they would also leave them unharmed was wishful thinking.

  Max gritted her teeth and swiped sweat from her eyes. She wasn’t going to waste time and energy she didn’t have envisioning Amina and Rachel at the hands of men who thought nothing of taking what they wanted from any woman. She wouldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t let Grif be shot while he lay helpless, or Amina and Rachel be taken as if they were spoils of war. Not while she breathed. She laid the bodies of the three men side by side in a patch of thick underbrush. She couldn’t find any rocks, but the rounds the Black Hawks had poured into the jungle had cut down tree trunks like matchsticks. She dragged and rolled half a dozen logs over the bodies. It wasn’t a proper burial, but it might protect their remains from being carried off and strewn about by predators. She’d make sure someone from Mog or the base came back for them as soon as they could.

  Dr
ipping sweat, light-headed from hunger and fatigue, she slashed at a tangle of vines with her knife to cover the burial mound. Behind her, branches rustled. She swung around in a crouch, making herself a smaller target, and swung her rifle onto her shoulder. Rachel stumbled to a halt, her lips parted on a gasp.

  “Fuck!” Max’s pulse hammered in her ears. “I told you to stay put!”

  “I couldn’t see you,” Rachel whispered, “and you’ve been in here a long time. I thought—”

  “I don’t want you to think.” Max lowered her rifle and retrieved her knife. Jamming the KA-BAR into the sheath on her thigh, she straightened, stepping between Rachel and the mound of log-covered bodies. “I need you to do what I say.” She gripped Rachel’s arm and propelled her toward camp. “What part of that don’t you get?”

  “The part where my brain suddenly stops functioning.” Rachel jerked her arm loose. “And in case it hasn’t occurred to you, if you go and get yourself killed, the rest of us don’t have much chance of getting out of here.”

  Max swore under her breath. Images of bullets tearing into Rachel’s unprotected body, of laughing men with their hands on her, of her victimized and broken made her head pound. Her vision wavered as she tried to rein in her fury. “This is the way it has to work—I make the rules. I give the orders. You don’t argue, you don’t question, you just do. And then maybe, just maybe, we’ll all get out of here in one piece.”

  Rachel’s fear and anger drained away as quickly as it had come, leaving her more tired than she’d ever been in her life. She couldn’t imagine how Max was still functioning—still doing what had to be done. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Again.”

  “Forget it. Again.” Max held out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”

  Rachel grasped Max’s hand almost automatically, as if she weren’t really aware of doing it. “I’ll do my best. If you promise to stop pointing your gun at me.”

  Max smiled, caught off guard by the teasing note in Rachel’s voice. They were nearly eye-to-eye. She was a shade over five-eleven and used to looking down at most women, but Rachel’s eyes were on a level with hers, and this close she could pick out the tiny gold flecks dancing through the heather green. The hand that gripped hers was as strong as she would’ve expected from a woman like Rachel, but surprisingly softer than she anticipated. She hadn’t touched any part of a woman in a long time and had forgotten what a contrast in strength and tenderness a woman’s body could be. She glanced down at her own fingers curled around Rachel’s. Her hands were covered in dirt and blood and, feeling oddly unworthy, she loosened her grip. Rachel’s hand fell away at the same time as hers.

  As she looked into Rachel’s eyes, the silence in the clearing was as loud as gunfire. “Come on, I want to take a look at that cut.”

  Rachel swallowed, her gaze searching, as if she was trying to find some secret Max had hidden deep inside. “What cut?”

  “The one on your cheek.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Rachel said.

  Approaching midday, the clearing was an oven. Sweat tricked down the back of Max’s neck. A film of moisture coated Rachel’s upper lip, and Max had a sudden crazy urge to brush it away with her thumb. She clenched her fist. “It’s not nothing. We’re out in the middle of the jungle. If we don’t get it cleaned up and it gets infected, you could be in trouble. Besides, this way the scarring will be less.”

  Rachel laughed, a choking sound devoid of humor. “A scar? From a tiny cut? And you really think I care?”

  “Maybe not now. But when you’re back in your normal life, you probably will.”

  “My normal life.” Rachel said the words as if they were foreign to her. The intensity of her gaze heightened. “And what do you imagine that to be?”

  Max had no idea. Rachel wasn’t anything like the privileged, probably slightly pampered and entitled woman she’d imagined when she’d learned they were going on a mission to extract her. What she knew of her was born of death and horror, unimaginable to most people. But Rachel hadn’t broken, not yet. She was fighting back. Hell, she was fighting Max when she had nowhere else to vent her anger. The answer to Rachel’s question suddenly seemed important.

  Staring around the stark empty encampment that had until then just been a battlefield in her mind, Max tried to imagine the place bustling with aid workers rendering emergency care and simple human kindness to people whose language they couldn’t understand and whose lives and history must be foreign to their own. In order to do that in the midst of personal danger and unrelenting despair, they must have shared a common goal, a common passion. This had been a community, not just a group of strangers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “What?” Rachel asked, sounding breathless, almost stunned.

  “Your friends. Everything you had here. I’m sorry.”

  “I…thank you.” Rachel’s throat tightened, and to her horror, tears filled her eyes. After all the fear and terror she’d been battling to keep at bay, this simple bit of sympathy, of understanding, cut the legs out from under her. The horror of the morning rushed back to her. The gunfire, the hideous stench, the panic, the death. She closed her eyes, her head swimming. An arm came around her waist, and she was pulled close to a hard body.

  “Easy,” Max murmured. “Come on. It’s a hundred and fifteen out here. You need something to drink. Some food.”

  Rachel opened her eyes, feeling foolish and weak. Max’s face was an inch away, those impossibly blue eyes immeasurably kind. Her eyes were so fascinating, shifting from cold, hard calculation to unexpected compassion like the wind. Rachel’s heart beat hard beneath her breast, and she flushed, embarrassed at what it revealed. She wanted to pretend she didn’t need the comfort, but she did. Deep inside, in her primitive core where her instincts were to survive by any means possible, she was terrified, ready to claw and scratch and kill to stay alive. Terrified that the gunmen would return, terrified that she would be taken. Terrified of placing her trust in anyone, especially this woman whose embrace felt too natural, too welcome. Max de Milles might be a savior, but she was also a stranger, and anything Rachel was feeling right now was a product of the unreal world she’d been thrust into. Gratitude, comfort. That didn’t frighten her. But the desire kindling in the pit of her stomach did.

  The hand pressed in the center of her back was warm and firm. Max’s chest armor, some kind of hard plastic shell, pressed against Rachel’s breasts. She was exposed, vulnerable, and Max was like a mountain shielded in rock. Rachel thrust a hand between them, pressed her palm against the armor. Pushed away.

  “I’m all right.” I don’t need you to lean on.

  “Come on.” A curtain dropped over Max’s eyes, her hand fell away, and she stepped back. “We’re sitting ducks out here. And we’ve still got a lot of work yet to do today.”

  Rachel swallowed around the dust in her throat. “Yes. Right. What’s next?”

  “First the cut, then some food.”

  Max turned and walked away, leaving Rachel to follow. Rachel paced herself to Max’s long strides, her heart still beating way too fast. The center of her back tingled where Max’s hand had rested, and the heaviness in her pelvis throbbed. Her life was not her own, her fate was not her own, and now, even her body was betraying her. All she could do was pray this ended before she no longer recognized herself.

  *

  Max pulled back the edge of the tent, ducked under the flap, and slipped into the semidarkness. She heard Rachel come in behind her, sensing her presence as if they were still touching. Still connected. Even as she knelt by Grif’s side, she was aware of Rachel slumping down onto a cot that Amina must have brought out from the back. She needed to check Grif’s vital signs, see if the bleeding had stopped, but she kept remembering the color fading from Rachel’s face as she swayed outside in the heat, about to faint. Her instinct had been to pick her up into her arms, to keep her from falling. To keep her from harm. Nothing unusual about that. That was her job, to keep others from harm
, to take care of them when they were injured. But she’d never experienced the wild sense of protectiveness she’d felt while holding Rachel.

  Rachel’s eyes sent so many messages—anger, defiance, grief, need—that called up feelings in her she couldn’t afford to have out here if she wanted them all to survive. She’d wanted to keep standing there with Rachel, immersed in those shifting sensations, and that kind of distraction could be deadly. She didn’t have time for tenderness, couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by sympathy. Or the other tangle of emotions simmering in her belly. She kept her back to Rachel. Grif needed her now.

  “How’s he doing?” she asked Amina.

  “His pulse is up a little bit,” Amina said. “I found one of our first aid kits in the back and took his temperature. He has a fever.”

  Max’s stomach clenched. Not good. Not a damn thing she could do about it. She checked her watch. Headed for twelve hundred hours. “In another two hours we’ll dose him again with antibiotics. Have you had anything to eat?”

  Amina shook her head, dark circles making her dark eyes appear larger, wounded.

  “You think you can find something for us? Everyone needs to keep their strength up. And water?”

  “We have food packs prepared to give to the displaced,” Amina said. “They’re stored on the supply platform out behind this tent. I’ll get them.”

  “How far is it?”

  “Just a few steps.”

  Max picked up her rifle. She couldn’t let Amina walk around alone, even though she doubted a daylight attack. “I’ll walk out with you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Once satisfied the field was clear, Max left Amina in charge of supplies and came back inside. She checked Grif’s vitals, regulated the IV rate, and prepared another dose of antibiotics. After he was settled, she sorted through the supplies for what she needed to take care of Rachel and carried it to the cot where Rachel sat watching her with an unreadable expression.