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Daria Hill's eyes flew open as her bedroom door heaved and crashed open. She bolted upright, a scream dead in her throat as she recognized the dark soldier in her doorway.
"Mercury?" Thank God it was him, and not the rebels making good on their threat to drive out Canadian nationals who remained in the embassy. "What—?"
"Get down! Get down! Now!" Mercury turned and unleashed a thunderous round of bullets from his HK-MP5 down the hallway.
Daria scrambled from within her duvet and darted to the bulletproof closet beside the dresser, her designated place of security while she was a guest. Gunfire blasted on the other side of the wall before a horrible cracking explosion rumbled over the ground. She gripped the doorjamb as her heart smashed against her chest.
What the hell was—
Mercury ripped open the closet door. "Move! Move! Move!" He leaned down and yanked her out with one hand.
She had a single moment to inhale his familiar scent, indulge the brief sense of security his presence always brought before he kicked through the locked patio doors.
"Go! Go!" He pushed her into the inky black night. Pandemonium raged everywhere. Terrified embassy staff shoved and screamed as multiple rounds of gunfire blasted into the darkness. Bodies fell down in screams of pain while other horrified people tripped and stumbled over the writhing and sometimes still forms, unable to stop in the panic stampede.
Daria froze, transfixed, her mind overloaded with the rush of bleak stimuli, until gunshots shattered behind her.
"Go!" Mercury ordered, his big hand suddenly around her bare upper arm, the impact snapping her mind into emergency evacuation mode. She jolted forward as a deafening boom and hurricane force threw her against the patio flagstones. Her view of the yard twisted into a horrific kaleidoscope of bloody colors as pain ripped down her legs and something heavy surrounded her body and anchored her to the ground.
Mercury. The edges of his equipment and gear dug into her sides as he rolled them both to stand. She shook her head, trying to straighten the world as he pulled her around his back.
"Stay behind me. Right behind me!"
Disoriented, she took off behind him, staying at his booted heels, her right hand within reach of his shoulder, her left clutched into the hem of her nightgown, her bare feet pounding across the wide expanse of the manicured lawn. Explosions of dirt pelted her skin as flashes of orange and yellow light streaked out of the darkness with the continuous machine-gun fire. There was no time to scream or even react as people smashed into her or fell down beside her. Mercury reached back and grabbed her upper arm again, forced her forward, up and over bodies until she flat out ran beside him through the mayhem of the yelling and screaming and death fall cries.
The entrance gate and security house came into view and Mercury slammed shoulder first into the wall. She stopped short against his body, before tucking herself behind his back and against the side of the house. Holding onto his muscled shoulder kept him aware everything was OK with her and she was good to go. She squinted against the stinging smoke that hung in the air, the acrid substance choking down her throat and into her lungs. She leaned over and coughed.
"Don't look down there." Mercury yanked her away from a dead body on the ground.
Vomit pushed into her throat as her mind registered that what she had seen was not a body, only parts, blown from the person who lay beyond her feet. A horrible rush of white noise crashed into her ears.
"Daria." Mercury's hands were on her face, his stony features suddenly blocking the view of the twisted figures at her bare toes. "Eyes here. On me." He forced her eyes to his. "Focus, D. Stay with me." His dark eyes were steady, strangely calm against the nauseating swirl in her mind. "Remember the drill. You're fine." He gave her a once-over before he turned back to the corner of the security house.
"She was fine." She repeated his words in her head and blocked her mind’s registration against the outline of other still forms in the grass. To think just yesterday she was out here with her notebook and coffee, typing up her latest ideas for the humanitarian work she did for her mother's international corporation. It was obscene that this idyllic space, once beautiful and plush green, was now an above-ground graveyard.
She pulled in a breath that shuddered down her throat, the acrid smoke still heavy in the air. It set her airways on fire all over again. Remember the drill. Treat this like a drill. She repeated the mantra until the sounds of panic, shouts, screams and machine-gun fire faded. She centered her mind and concentrated on Mercury's back, his arrow-straight hairline, and the slight bend to his broad shoulders beneath his gear. When he turned, she focused on the stress lines that slashed across his brow, the way his short black hair dripped with sweat, and the permanent scar on his right temple pulled tight as he assessed her.
This was Mercury. He must have fought hard to get to her bedroom. There was so much gunfire and panic. Embassy staff, soldiers, rebels, civilians shrieking when caught in the deadly crossfire—and the ground kept shaking with volatile eruptions. Everywhere she looked, something was on fire. What the hell had happened? This evening had been so calm after the week-long parliamentary discussions. Military groups, protestors, and politicians had shaken hands and come to well fought for agreements. Her mother had been ecstatic. No more infighting meant she could restart production in her factories.
Daria kept her eyes on Mercury, inhaled and exhaled through her nose as she grit her teeth. She would get through this without becoming a victim or holding him back. She stared at the locked gates and the streets beyond, ominous as they emptied of frantic people chased by rebel warriors with machine guns repeating in the night air.
"Where's my mother?" She looked back at Mercury, her thoughts falling hard over a load of dismal possibilities. Her mother was always a target: the foreign woman without a husband. She had too much power and position, and they hated her for owing the biggest local factory.
"Townsend's got her. He'll get her to the rendezvous. The rest of my team are already on exfil." He pulled a pair of night-vision goggles from his cargo pants and scanned the smoke-filled grounds and dying street. The gunfire faded, but still echoed in the distance.
Daria rubbed her arms and looked at the fires that burned around the embassy. "How are we getting out?" She looked up, hoping to see a helicopter even though she realized one could never chance landing in the middle of this mayhem, or on the burning roof. The rebels would undoubtedly storm it or use an RPG to bring it down.
Mercury shoved the goggles back into his pants leg pocket. "Helo at the north end of the city. We go underground if they haven't closed it off yet." He looked at her nightgown-clad body and tightened his lips. "Get ready. Up and over." He gripped her upper arm and knee and tossed her up against the compound's seven-foot stone wall. "Grab the rung!"
She clawed and grappled for the metal pegs he had installed and made her practice on for this purpose. Her braided ponytail swung across her face as she gripped, and Spider-Man climbed up the posts embedded between the stones. In seconds, he slid up beside her. "Stay flat and—" He threw his knife into the shadows. A machine gun fired before a body hit the ground. "Go—No, wait!"
An incoming sound buzzed through the air and Daria's heartbeat ascended to her throat as the wall beneath her exploded and gave way in a clap of thunder. The world let go and her torso flailed before she landed hard on the street with Mercury.
"Christ." He looked down at her.
She tried to move, but she couldn't feel anything. She opened her mouth and choked on a pile of dirt. "My... arm..." Was that her arm? On fire? She turned her head. There were no flames, but she'd ripped her skin against the road.
Mercury looked at the crumbled compound wall as men's shouts and heavy footsteps pounded on the pavement. "Hold." He slid their bodies beneath a nearby truck, tucking them in close to the double set of wheels at the rear. She bit her lip until she tasted blood against the searing pain in her upper right arm. He clapped a hand over her mouth as the sound of running feet grew louder and the voices came closer. Tears gathered in her view then dripped down her face, but she didn't dare breathe. She squeezed her eyes together as an intense wave of pain gripped her arm, her ribs, then reluctantly passed.
The footsteps stopped. Voices growled close by before they started yelling again and the feet ran off. Mercury rolled over and looked at her before he gripped her arm. "This'll hurt." She bit back a yell as he pulled something sharp from her shoulder. Aftershocks of pain raced down her limb and into her chest before a maelstrom of intense heat shot through her ribs—this time in her side when he picked out what looked like a shard of glass.
"You're lucky." He squeezed his hand against her bleeding skin.
"Lucky?" "Missed your pretty face." He used his knuckle to lift her chin and gave her a half smile.
Slivers of light and dots of black quivered across her vision. She was going to pass out. Unbelievable because she had just gotten an actual nod of approval from Mercury. Was this the way she would prove herself worthy of the rare moment? She pressed her eyes shut as he tore a piece of material from the bottom of her nightgown into. He wound the material around her arm as best he could in the narrow space.
"It's not much, but you won't bleed out." He grabbed his weapon. "Let's go. Head toward—"
Machine gun fire ripped into the truck above them. Glass crashed down over her back as she slid from beneath the muffler.
Mercury moved past her and fired down the street. "Jerome Alley—Go!"
Shit! She jumped away from the hot bullet casings that rained onto the pavement before she sprinted down the dark pavement. She remembered to stay low and focus on a target as she rounded into the abandoned alley. The door straight ahead. That was her focus. She darted for the uneven stone stairs that led to the doorway before she looked back for Mercury—a forbidden thing to do he had drilled into her—but she needed assurance he was OK.
She held her breath when he came around the corner and slammed backward into the alley's brick wall before he fired down the street. He pulled an ammunition cartridge from his pocket and looked at her. "Go!" He jabbed a finger down the stairs as he braced a foot against the side wall and shot into the darkness. She grasped the metal handrail, flew down the steps, and forced her way through the door in the wall.
Silence. She stood in the tomb-like space with its pitch-black darkness for a long moment before machine gun blasts came from above, the sound deep and hollow inside the cavern. This tunnel was part of the city's ancient sewer system, loved in the old days by bandits for smuggling contraband and criminals out of the city. Now, it was a series of dead-end concrete blocks. Years ago, as a deterrent, the government had blasted the channels, leaving the fallen rocks to block off major arteries, thus forcing any interlopers into the jungle and toward certain death.
The door burst open, and she jumped, glimpsing Mercury's face, full of fresh cuts and blood, before the door slammed back closed.
"Clear?" His voice was rough as it came through the darkness.
"I think so." She couldn't see him, but his vibe roared pissed off, even before he lit up the space with a penlight.
"You hesitated."
"I know, I'm sorry."
"Sorry is the fastest way to wake up dead."
She could barely see him but felt his eyes hard on her.
"Don't do it again."
Shit. She exhaled and slid down the wall, willing herself to compose by wrapping her arms around her legs and putting her head against her knees. She breathed through the throbbing in her arm. Her mother, wherever she was, and under whatever conditions, was undoubtedly calm, and completely in control of herself.
Daria spent half her life trying to be her mother, or at least her mother's daughter, and a good little soldier to her military father. She inhaled and used Mercury's emergency drill technique of centering her thoughts on something or some place else other than her current situation. Think, Daria. Count backwards or something and breathe. Always breathe. She drew in a long silent breath, but when she released it, her thoughts rolled over the events from last night.
Shit. Not a good place to go.
Nigel's proposal. Her and Mercury's intense confrontation. Heat threaded through her stomach and down her thighs. He'd come to her bedroom last night and demanded absolute surrender in her bed. He'd barely said a word, though his hands and body spoke essays. Bold and determined, he'd completely overwhelmed her with his strong calloused palms, gentling her thighs apart to make space for his powerful hips.
Sexual vibration threaded through Daria's system as the memory crested and retreated into her mind. She opened her eyes and heaved a deep breath. Maybe she should think of something else if she wanted to calm herself down. Last night had been tumultuous and changed everything between them, though now that she thought about it, nothing had changed at all. They made no promises. No deep revelations. Mercury was still a soldier, and she was still his duty. They had spent hours together, but the past two years mostly apart. He left on operations and came back when done. She soldiered on. A soldier's daughter knew better than to ask questions. He came back rough, and bleak, and distant to the point of remote. Whatever he did out there was darker than combat. Her father had been a combat soldier. Mercury was something else.
What did she really know about this man, except that he made love like a demon possessed? His body had completely claimed hers. He had caged her and spread her, and taken her so long and hard, he left her marked and exhausted, without question, his. It was what she had always wanted, and more than she ever could have asked for.
"D, ya with me?"
She blinked at him through the darkness. "Sorry, zoned out for a minute."
He leaned over and fixed his eyes on her. "Just stay with me. Stick to the drill and you'll be fine."
She grit her teeth when he checked her bandages.
"Suck in—" He made quick work of securing the knots. "And breathe."
She forced her mind away from the dull pain that spread over her ribcage and arm. She could do this. Mercury was at her back and she was not a victim. He had saved her once from kidnappers, then trained her in self-defense. She would not fall down this first time out of the gate. She would manage this if it killed her.
She breathed through more pulses of pain and averted her eyes from Mercury's intent stare. This rebellion would force them apart. Even after last night's long awaited intimate connection, he'd be gone by morning. He didn't say it, but she knew it. The army took him and only returned him at their leisure. That would never change, not even with the way he had held her so gently between his hands last night. Reality would be cruel.
And here she had thought Nigel King, the British ambassador and business executive's son, would be the ultimate wedge between them. He and her mother had such designs for her future life as Mrs. King, she'd spend the past six months counteracting their schemes.
Last night, when Nigel proposed, like a true protégé of his career in international trade, he had reacted to her blunt refusal as he did in all his business deals. He snapped the ring box shut, pulled out his cell phone to run his thumbs over the screen while murmuring something about sweetening the deal before they met in London to discuss it again. Maybe France would be a better setting? She had always liked Paris, correct? He had left the embassy conference room mumbling and shaking his head, giving a brief nod to her mother as his entourage trailed after him.
Her mother had received the news with her usual stoic grace. She remained quiet until they left, then screamed like a scalded dragon before hollering at her aides to begin damage control. Her daughter, with a careless and selfish "no," had screwed up an international financial empire match, five years in the making. This was all before she unleashed another icy lecture about family duty, levelheaded business sense, and an obedient daughter's responsibility to suck up personal feelings and remember her pedigree.
Wearily, Daria had turned from her mother's furious tirade and screeching incensed exit to find Mercury propped in the north entrance doorway. His hair had been wet, glittering black and in need of a cut, and his jaw stubbled with a rare five-o'clock shadow. His off-duty clothes, fatigue pants and standard green t-shirt, looked like he had just pulled them on, along with his gun shoulder holster. He was barefoot and armed, his wrists crossed but ready near his waist, his dark eyes fixed upon her.
He nodded at the spot her mother had vacated. "She's pissed."
"How long have you been there?"
"Long enough to know that Mr. England's been rejected, and your mother needs a fire extinguisher." He studied her before he uncrossed his arms and tucked the gun into the holster. He looked at the security panel beside him. "I don't like breaches, Daria. Why didn't you reset the alarm in here?"
She studied the telltale red light until he punched in a series of numbers into the keyboard. The indicator lights went out.
"What did you do?"
"Shut down the live feed."
"Great." She leaned her head against the fire and bulletproof door behind her. "No witnesses while you rip me another one, is that it?" She held up her hand. "FYI. I don't need another lecture tonight. I’m already painfully aware I'm a reckless, selfish, and undeserving daughter."
He didn't blink. "We have a rule, you and me.”
"I know."
"I always know where you are, and you know if a red light stays on in your location, I'm there in seconds."
"I—know."
His jaw tightened. "This is not a game. I can still hear you crying—choking on that bastard's—"
Her stomach tensed, but she remained resolute. "You're going to keep this all about security, aren't you?"
"It's always about your security."
"Duty and obligation. How romantic. I feel so special tonight."
"I take your protection very seriously."
She rubbed the heel of her palm against her forehead. This was bullshit. The whole evening, pure bullshit. She had lost her heart to Mercury ages ago, after she'd woken up to him untying her bound arms and carrying her away from the captors that lay dead or dying around the room. She couldn't speak, her throat had been so raw from the gun shoved down her windpipe. He stayed with her after that, every moment and minute until she felt safe again. After she recovered, he'd trained her in self-defense and personal security until she built enough confidence to feel secure even when alone.
Now, she inhaled at the iron set to his face. He was ticked. She got that, but she hadn't reset the system on purpose. She knew that red light would bring him here, and she needed him to hear her refuse Nigel's proposal. Maybe then he'd finally get it, realize he was what she wanted. The only one. There wasn't anyone else for her, and she’d never let anyone else inside her bed.
She returned his steady gaze. "I'll never be more than your duty, will I?"
He narrowed his eyes but remained frustratingly silent.
Gawd. Why did she even bother? He was impossible. Freakin' bloody impossible. Gentle when making love to her, a complete bastard when training her, and a goddamned unfeeling soldier right now. She may as well go after Nigel, tell him she'd made a mistake, and assure him she could be the perfect hostess and partner he needed to advance his career. How different would that empty life be to the one breaking her heart right now?
Her gaze flicked toward the south exit doors Nigel recently left from. She could play the ideal trophy wife. Finishing school had groomed her for the role she begun learning at her mother's knee. From preschool to etiquette school, the teaching was always the same. How to be some wealthy man's quintessential spouse. Why not embrace it instead of fighting this uphill battle? "I should have just let him take me away to London."
"I'd have put two in his head for trying."
She blinked as he uncrossed his arms. "What?"
"It's a dangerous game you're playing right now, Daria."
"I am not playing games."
Mercury pushed away from the doorjamb and stood tall and looming. "I see you. All of what's going on in that head of yours. Weighing. Manipulating. Working things out. So determined to be nothing like your mother and hating it when life forces you to be exactly like her."
Daria's stomach dropped. "You're crazy."
"And you have no idea how to handle that wild heart." He nodded toward her chest.
"So, you're a philosopher now? Seems your talents are endless."
"I don’t need philosophy to understand you."
She folded her arms and raised her chin to look up at him. "I am not my mother's daughter."
He lifted the corner of his mouth. "You want out from behind that glass wall she has you in."
She parted her lips then closed them. Did she just open Pandora's box?
"You don't know what you're asking for—or what you'll get if you keep pushing me."
"I'm a big girl, Mercury. I know exactly what I want."
He put his finger under her chin. "We'll see."
Then he was in her bedroom, beneath her silk sheets, and she was surrendering unto him everything he demanded throughout the night. She had finally made it past his defenses and now had every hard inch of him, every delicious sliver taking them both to a whole new forbidden level.
And he was absolutely right. He knew her. Where to touch her, kiss her, how to do things she didn’t even know she craved. This man knew exactly how to rouse her inexperienced body to beg.
"Spread your legs for me," he'd whispered against her mouth.
And she did. "Mercury..." She couldn't catch her breath as he moved to his knees and had his hands around her waist before he dragged her closer. His thumbs stroked across her thatch and rubbed in gentle circles, making her moan and lift her naked mound in offering.
She had never done this before but was learning fast under his tutelage. She trusted him completely. This was Mercury, her protector. He would take care of her or die trying. He'd look after her secrets and fulfill her every yearning. So, when he said, "Relax, honey, and give it to me," she did as he asked, catching her breath when he slid his tongue inside the most intimate part of her body. Slowly, he licked and stroked his tongue along her soft skin. Her heart raced and she grabbed at his hair as he built her into a squeeling frenzied mess, and when on the verge of losing her mind, she burst into her first climax, pressing her heels into the mattress and calling his name. Her intimate muscles pulsed around his tongue while he stroked and tamed her clit.
"He will never fucking have you." His eyes turned dark with intensity as he crawled over her and settled himself between her legs, his hips, and abs hard against her suppleness, his forearms engaged and pressed down on either side of her head.
She treasured those words, growled from deep within his throat. "Mercury..." She had one hand in his hair, the other dug into his upper arm, her body still reeling and thrumming. She should have been winding down, but the raw power that radiated off him kept her unsettled and wanting more. Her every fiber ached to have him inside of her. She closed her eyes and savored his closeness before she lifted her shaking hips to him again.
"Eyes on me, honey." His fingers were strong but gentle against her face. "I want you to see exactly who's fucking you." His voice was so rough, his entire body restrained and waiting above hers until she opened her eyes. He leaned down to her mouth and chased her tongue with his own while his knee stretched her legs farther and his warm, steely length slid through her folds. "Never forget this. Never fucking forget that you belong right here, spread out on your back with me hard and deep inside of you." His eyes darkened into fierce possession as his hips jerked in determined strokes until he was hot and throbbing inside of her.
"I won't."
He buried himself to the root, his elbows dug in and his mouth hot in the hollow of her neck. His body paused within hers. She quivered beneath him. He pressed and circled his hips, making her contract around him. "Fuck, Daria."
She'd never heard him say her name like that, rumbled from deep in his chest, before he pulled back then slid in deep, a long powerful stroke that only ended when he rotated his groin and forced her further into the bed. He started a rhythm, slowly at first, in and out, undulating in circles until she moved in time with him, learned his growing pace, and matched each one of his thrusts as a pleasure race grew inside of her. She held onto his shoulders and raised her hips, chased the wanton feelings, and when he reached between their bodies and fingered her tight knot, she became something beyond her own control.
"I want it again, Daria. Squeeze my dick like you did my tongue."
His demand sent her over the edge, calling his name and sinking her nails into his skin as he thrusted harder, pushed her up toward the headboard before he tensed and released himself, jerking into her with animalistic growls. He’d seemingly let himself go and allowed his body to twitch and push on instinct until he marked her most intimate passage.
"You are mine. Only. Fucking. Mine."
She wrapped her leg around his hip and accepted every drop of him inside of her. This was what she had waited for with her whole heart. She pushed all thought of consequence out of her head.
"D. You with me?"
Daria looked at Mercury through the tunnel's darkness.
He frowned. "You good?"
"Yes." She jerked her mind away from last night. "I think I just need to go home wherever home is anymore."
"Home is wherever you drop your shit and sleep."
She sighed. "I remember."
He turned off his flashlight, and she listened to him pick up his weapon before he sat completely still, and for a long moment it was like he was alone. He was in that zone where no one could reach him, least of all her. He'd been the same after the kidnapping. She'd wake up to find him in a chair, sitting completely still, silently staring at a distant point. Then one morning, he left for over a week. When he returned, he was different. Relaxed. And ready to start her personal training, self-defense, and security. It wasn't until days later she read that three men, known for political hostage and kidnapping were found dead in the Southern part of the country, their severed penises lodged in their slit throats.
Daria pressed her lips together. "I can handle this, you know."
"I have no doubt. I trained you."
"No. Not this extraction. I mean—"
His body tensed.
"And?"
"And nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing, Daria. Leave it alone."
Leave it alone? She frowned. "After last night, you want me to just leave this alone?"
"We didn’t use anything, I get it. I was jealous and possessive and came inside of you without fucking thinking, but I promise you I'm clean, and I know you’re on the pill."
"You're a bastard," she snapped.
"Been called worse, and I have parents."
"What?"
"My old man's in jail for murder one. My mother OD'd after they locked him up."
She blinked, trying to process his words with her heart beating into her throat. "You never told me that before."
"You never called me a bastard before."
She pushed onto her knees and put her hand on his weapon. She simply intended to move it, but he transferred it to his other side before she could touch it. Though his fingers were soft on her skin, his hand stayed firm on his weapon. That was Mercury, one hand on her, the other on the military. The man served two masters. She looked at him through the darkness, but he spoke before she did.
"We come in from the field wrecked. We cannot be fixed."
"I've seen you back from the field. I know what to expect."
"You've seen me only after I've defraged and dried out for a long while. That isn't always possible, and you do not understand about—" He looked up and set her aside.
"What? What is it?"
He sprang to his feet. "They're coming." He gripped her arm and pushed her to run as the tunnel door slammed open and a battery of shots ricocheted off the walls.
She ducked and grabbed her head as bullets sliced by her ear. "Where? Where's the—"
More bullets forced her against the wall. She spun and stumbled into a run. Heavy footsteps gained on her. She couldn't see anything, so she concentrated on running straight ahead, as if this were the drill she had completed a dozen times before.
Routine. Routine. Don't think. Just do it.
Water splashed beneath her feet. Damn. There shouldn't be water yet. She'd made a wrong turn back when she had thrown herself against the tunnel's side.
"Daria!" She looked up just as the ground dropped out from beneath her.
A gush of liquid forced her down a slope, her body uncooperative as it twisted and slid in too many unmanageable directions. She tried to grasp onto something, anything, until she flew over an edge and landed on her stomach. Water rushed over her head as she floundered in a churning liquid while trying to push herself onto her knees.
"What the hell are you doing?" Mercury's voice was suddenly there.
"Drowning," she coughed as he pulled her up to a standing position. She spit out a mouthful of rusty tasting water. "What happened? I — Are they up there?" She turned to see that she had fallen through some old railing and down into Bakarat's idea of a sewage drain.
Vomit pushed into her throat for what seemed like the tenth time that night.
"They're dead." He tugged her upper arm until she ran beside him. "Stay with me this time."
Stay with him, her mind echoed.
She pushed herself to keep up until her lungs protested and her stomach heaved against the pace they maintained through several passages. Mercury, flashlight and compass at hand, shouldered his way around a last corner. "The end grate is right there."
She rounded the corner to the most blessed sight and sound. The steady whoop whoop whoop of the extraction helicopter lowering beyond the tunnel's metal grate. Mercury kicked it open. "Stork will set it down beyond the ravine and — Fuck!" He turned and tackled her as an explosion blew the tunnel exit apart. Rocks, metal, and flying chunks of cement fired past her eyes. Most of the fragments landed on Mercury, who grunted and heaved above her.
She tried to get up when the debris stopped falling.
"Don't move ye—" Another explosion blasted from behind. She buried her head between the ground and Mercury's chest, trying to curl into a ball beneath him.
Her ears rang to the point she was sure her skull would shatter. Muffled machine-gun fire rattled through her head. Mercury rolled away from her and hauled her to a standing position. He held her upper arm and half ran, half dragged her out of the tunnel and into the ravine. She caught glimpses of other soldiers, crouched low and firing into the nearby bushes or outward from the chopper. Flashes of more gunfire streaked up and out of the gully.
"Stay down! Keep your head down." Mercury kept his hand on her head as they ran to the helicopter, the gale-force wind unbearable in strength as they got closer. Everything was so loud she couldn't hear anyone thing beyond the constant deafening noise that overwhelmed her senses.
Mercury suddenly swung her around and held her steady against the chopper while he shouldered his weapon. "We go wheels up after this. Our extraction will be here in three minutes."
She could barely hear him, even though he was yelling. The ground beneath them shook so hard she had to grab his upper arms to keep from falling. He forced his hand against the chopper to anchor them as he grabbed his dog tags and popped off one of the rubber tag silencers.
"Captain—" The soldier beside them jumped up into the helicopter.
Mercury leaned into her and cross folded the little piece of rubber onto her ring finger. "Do not go to London." His eyes held that same extreme intensity from last night before he gripped her waist and lifted her into another pair of hands that pulled her into the safety of the helicopter.
"Go!" Mercury banged on the side; his eyes steady on hers as the helicopter lifted into the Bakarat night sky.
*****
