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THE WOMAN WAS IN SHOCK—I could see it in her eyes and face. Her pupils were wide and dilated, her skin pale, her shoulders jumping with rapid breaths. More than that, she was just staring at me, and I could tell she hadn’t understood a word I’d said.
What in the world was she doing here? A lone woman in an isolated building on the unpopulated side of a disputed island. Was she Russian? She was certainly not Japanese. Maybe that was why she didn’t understand what I was saying.
I took a moment to look around the building—it was a single room, with cots on one side, a small, portable stove on one wall, some cabinets, and the table she’d hidden under. Papers that looked like reports and charts littered the top along with equipment—it looked like the equipment I’d glanced near the bodies of the other scientists. Test tubes rested in containers, each filled with what looked like brackish water, while empty ones lay scattered across the tabletop and on the floor.
It looked like some kind of lab.
The question was whether this lab belonged to the men I’d been fighting or someone else. And what kind of lab was it? Something to help the terrorists dig up and destroy the cables, or something else that had nothing to do with the soldiers who now lay dead? It certainly looked like the men in black had been attacking the building, but maybe they’d been defending it and their work inside from my team. And when that looked like it wasn’t working, they were going to destroy the evidence and the woman working on it.
Intelligence hadn’t been able to ascertain the whereabouts of the terrorist organization’s headquarters—was this it? But I saw no cache of weapons, no tools for digging up the cables, and certainly not enough space to house and feed all those soldiers.
Besides, this was so out in the open, intelligence would have to have a complete lack of brains to have missed it.
From outside, a spray of gunfire echoed off the metal walls, and the woman flinched, drawing back from me towards the table.
“We have to get out of here.”
She blinked, her gaze and expression showing that she still hadn’t heard me, blood oozing down the side of her face. It was a nasty cut, but I didn’t think it was dangerous—only bleeding heavily, as did most head wounds.
I hesitated for a moment more, wondering if I should even take her with me. If she was Russian, that could present several issues, not the least of which was a security breach. But if she had been working with the terrorists, either by her own choice or under duress, it was an opportunity to learn more.
And if I left her here, I had no doubt she would end up dead. The terrorist hadn’t been trying to kill the laptop whose pieces lay scattered across the floor. For whatever reason, they wanted her dead, too, and I had no doubt they would come back to kill her.
I tightened my hold on her wrist and dragged her towards the door but stopped us both just beside it. The gunfire had stopped, but I couldn’t see the results very well. Who was dead, and who was alive? Who and what was waiting for me out in the light?
The door swung in slightly, creaking on its single hinge, and I caught sight of bodies on the ground. But it was a poor angle, and I couldn’t see anything else.
“Stay here,” I said, spreading what fingers I could around the butt of my gun as a hand signal in case she didn’t understand what I was saying. And if she was still too in shock to listen and got hurt? Well, nothing I could do about that.
With my gun in my hand, my other still wrapped around her wrist, I eased myself around the frame as it swung outwards again in a breeze. I heard the report of a gun a second before the bullet hit the door, exploding even more of the metal into tiny shards. I felt the jerk of the woman trying to pull away from me in panic, but I only held on tighter as I leaned out at an angle, gun aimed in the direction from which I’d heard the shots.
Three reports, and I heard the thump and crunch of a body hitting the ground.
I waited to hear more, either guns going off or footsteps or shouts, but everything was suddenly quiet, and my ears rang in the silence left behind by the cessation of the gunfire. A breeze came through the windows, and the door swung in once more with a low squeal.
Easing around the side again brought no new gunfire nor the sound of advance. I tightened my hold on the woman’s wrist and pulled her with me.
“Run,” I said, and we did.
We shot down the path from the building, darting through the field of dead terrorists and my teammates. I would remember their faces and their names, my fallen comrades. I would come back for them and make sure they got home when there was time for grieving, time to understand what had happened and what had gone wrong. But that was later—for now, we had to get out from the open. Our position was too exposed, and I didn’t know how many enemies there were still alive or whether they had backup coming.
I felt the woman stumble on the uneven ground, but she seemed to regain her feet before I could stop and turn around to steady her. But my own steps faltered as I realized who was lying in the dirt just beyond the tree line. The track of blood told me Carter had dragged himself from the rock he had been hiding behind to the trees where he wouldn’t be seen. Now, he lay half-propped against a tree trunk.
As I stopped and stood over him, Carter looked up at me, eyes wide, his throat working to move words and breath past the blood bubbling into his mouth. A dark discoloration spread beneath his tactical vest, the tree trunk and dirt beneath his back stained red.
Letting go of the woman’s hand, I knelt on one knee, my hand moving to the tactical vest.
“Can you make it?”
Carter’s throat worked again, but no sound came instead. Instead, he shook his head.
I grit my teeth and set my jaw. “I’ll carry you if I have to. I’m not going to leave a man behind.”
Before today, I hadn’t met the dying man in front of me. We’d never worked together, never been on a base together. But he was a Navy SEAL just like I was, a member of the armed forces, a brother who had given me cover so I could get inside the building. I wasn’t going to leave him here to die alone, not if I could help it.
Carter seemed to know what I was thinking, though, because he shook his head again, this time with more strength. His lips formed the word “no.” I could read it clearly even though no sound came with it.
The man’s labored breathing was rapid, forced, gasping now, the blood welling in fresh spurts beneath him, and he held out his hand to me. I grasped it, brother to brother, watching him fight until the end. I heard the rattle, the blood bubbling, his eyes opening wide in panic.
Then Carter sighed, barely a breath. His hand went limp, his arm slackening as his head fell back and his eyes closed. I hung my head for just a moment, not sure whether I was praying or taking a moment of silence. Maybe I was just letting the moment be.
I heard a sob behind me and looked up to find the woman with her hand over her mouth again, her eyes glimmering. Had she ever seen someone die before? Now her count was up to two.
“I’m going to come back for you. For all of you,” I swore to Carter in a murmur. I didn’t leave men behind.
Climbing to my feet, I pointed the way I had come when I’d first heard the shooting. “We need to run.”
The woman nodded and didn’t struggle when I retook her arm.
I rushed us through the thick undergrowth, following the path I had taken, apparent to my tracker’s eye but hopefully no one else. Or, if someone did find it, hopefully, we’d be long gone. Thickets and branches tore as us, and I felt the woman stumble again as I ducked a shallow branch, her breath coming in gasps.
In the rush to get us back to that boat, I had entirely forgotten about the dead scientists, and I didn’t remember again until the woman shrieked. She pulled her hand from mine, and I turned to find her stumbling towards the bodies I’d blundered across earlier. The woman sank to her knees, her hands pressed over her mouth as she let out a wail.
“Doctor Erdogan.”
The words were in perfect, unaccented American English. So, she was American—or an exceptionally trained spy. But from the simple fact that she seemed to know this scientist, the one from the Oceanic Institute, my suspicion that she was Russian or working for the terrorists began to seem like less of a reality.
The woman’s gaze was trained on the man’s face, his frozen in his last gasp of fear, the eyes staring in terror up the sky. She reached out but stopped the forward motion just before it reached his hand, some sadness flashing across her face.
“His daughter is starting college,” she said suddenly, her voice rough and nearly inaudible. “This fall. At Berkley. And Jones is—was—” she corrected herself with an audible jerk and twitch of her head “—going to get married in September. Sophie has a cat—”
The woman’s words trailed off, but her lips still moved like she was going down the list in her head of the lives, families, and futures the bodies in front of her were leaving behind.
And despite our exertion, I could see her going pale again, the glassy, lost look returning to her eyes.
“Your team?” I asked.
The words seemed to penetrate her spiraling thoughts and pull her back down into shock. She shook her head and looked up at me, blinking as though she had forgotten I was there and was surprised to find someone else alive beside herself.
Then she nodded. “They were only here for research. That’s it. Why did they have to kill them?”
I reached down and pulled her back up, but her attention remained on the bodies as though she couldn’t look away. “There isn’t anything we can do for them right now. We need to get out of here before anyone else shows up.”
The woman’s head whipped towards me, her eyes round and terrified with the prospect that hadn’t seemed to occur to her before. She was following me the next instant, my hand around her wrist again as I propelled her through the trees.
I heard the waves on the shore before I could see it and ducked down behind a boulder at the tree line. I couldn’t see anyone on the rocky beach, and I couldn’t hear anyone behind us—it seemed like no one was coming after us.
For now.
Taking long, deep breaths, I worked to settle my adrenaline back down, down to my center, because I had to think. Drawing momentary calm over me like I would a blanket, I flipped through our next steps. The boat bobbed out in the water, anchored about half a mile out from the shore, which was a good swim. I did a mental body scan—I was sore, my limbs heavy, and I was tired, but I could make it to the boat at least. And I was sure we had enough fuel to get us back into Japanese territory. The problem was the boat itself, because it was large, possibly too large, and visible.
We knew the terrorists had boats; small, fast ships that could easily overtake the rusty old fishing trawler. And for our continued survival, I had to believe more were on the way to back up their comrades. I knew if it came to that, there would be no way I could fight them all off. It was only myself with two guns that were nearly out of bullets, without backup or a cache of extra rounds. I doubted the woman would be much help in a firefight. So, if the boat was too loud and too visible to be stealthy, how were we going to get away from this island?
Intensely aware of the time ticking by, my mind worked feverishly. We’d spent precious time waiting with Carter and taking those few moments in the forest for the woman to grieve her fallen colleagues. The map of the area I’d committed to memory flickered into my thoughts, and as I scanned it, a plan fell into place. It wasn’t a great plan, and I only had part A, which without a part B would still be as deadly, but it was the only option we had right now.
I looked back at the woman, trying to decide how she fit into the plans. She was still frightened, her eyes darting at every sound, her hands clenched tightly before her. Was I going to have to carry her? Force her to move? Swim the two of us out to the boat?
But as I surveyed her face, I didn’t see the signs of shock I had seen before—her color had returned, her cheeks ruddy with our mad dash through the forest, her pupils small against the light coming off the water. And I even saw her take a breath of relief when she saw the trawler.
My mind was working in overdrive to come up with a plan to escape. I knew what we had to do, and the pieces were clicking into place. But I was a Navy SEAL, and it was going to be rough after everything we’d already been through today.
Could the woman do it? There was only one way to find out.
But first, I had to make sure the terrorists wouldn’t find our trail. I had to try to throw them off, at least.
“Stay here. I’ll be back.
From the corner of my eye before I dashed off, I saw the woman open her mouth to say something. But I didn’t have the time to listen. Instead, I crashed back into the forest, but opposite the way we had come.
I ran through the thick brush, not caring that I was making a path that a blind man could see, breaking branches, crushing leaves, my bootsteps pounding the ground. I hoped I was creating enough of a disturbance that if someone ended up tracking us, they wouldn’t notice that there was only one set of footprints, not two.
Not right away, anyway.
I ran until I reached a small stream and crashed through it. But instead of continuing up the opposite bank, I followed the water back in the rough direction I had come.
The plan to throw the terrorists off wasn’t perfect—if they went far enough, looked carefully enough, or they had a good tracker with them, whoever it was would know instantly I had created a false trail. But it was the only thing I could do, the only thing that would give us some extra time to get away.
With water splashing around my legs, sucking down my feet and slowing my running footsteps, I sprinted down the stream, then scrambled over the wet rocks, nearly losing my footing as I raced up the bank.
I came out close to the point where I’d started. The woman jerked up as I crashed back through the trees, her eyes widening and her body tensing until she realized it was me. I gestured towards the beach.
“Let’s go.”
It was time for the rest of the plan. It was time to see if she could handle what was coming next.
