Читать книгу Edge Of Truth - Brynn Kelly, Brynn Kelly - Страница 11
ОглавлениеTess’s instincts ping-ponged with red alerts. She focused on following Flynn’s boots, trying to ignore the pressure in her toes and the hyperawareness of every noise. Not that there was much sound, bar her panting and the distant drone of vehicles.
Maybe a mile away, maybe five, three sets of headlights crept parallel to them, casing the road. Flynn’s head was skewed in that direction, his hands cradling his rifle. He’d better be looking out for shiny things, too—she’d met too many people in this part of the world with missing limbs.
Her chest tightened at the thought of putting her fate in the hands of a stranger, even one who made her stomach do flippy things. Especially one who made her stomach do flippy things. Rule number one in Africa: beware of the strangers who approached you, who tried to befriend you, to offer directions or some other “help.” They were the ones with an agenda—invariably involving relieving you of money. If you needed help, you sought out the ordinary people keeping to themselves, plying honest trades. Which category did Flynn fall into? Maybe falling drugged from the sky wasn’t the same as sidling up to her at a bus station, but he was hiding something. He wasn’t bothering with the French accent anymore. He had to be Australian.
A stone flicked off his boot and rocketed onto her exposed left sock, shooting fire up to her shin. She stumbled to a halt, scooching in a breath.
Flynn spun. “You okay?” She bent double, her eyes watering. He crouched and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Your toes?”
“Stone,” she gasped. Wow, she was such a princess. It was only a freaking toe. Who knew they could hurt so much? Flynn had a gaping head wound.
“You want me to carry you?”
“Hell, no.” She managed an expansive breath. The pain would settle—she just had to wait it out. “I’m good. Keep going.”
“If you need a break, I’m serious about carrying you. You probably weigh less than the backpack.”
She straightened. He kept his hand on her shoulder. He could be right. She hadn’t been eating well since she started chasing this story. The stress diet. Maybe she should quit journalism, write a diet book, make millions.
In the distance a pair of headlights flared—too far off for the beam to reach her and Flynn, but resolutely aimed their way.
“Flynn, the car’s turning.”
“I see it.”
“What do we do?”
“We hope. They get too close, we hit the deck, make like rocks and hope some more. It’s a massive patch of land and a dark night, so if their lights don’t get a direct hit we might be okay. Even then we might get lucky if our camouflage works. You sure you’re good to move?”
“Yes. Go.”
He released her. She swayed. She hadn’t realized how much she was letting him prop her up—in all sorts of ways.
It had to be healthy that she recognized she was in danger of falling for him—out of some sense of fear or gratitude, perhaps, some outdated feminine impulse to secure protection. And if she was aware of it, she could damn well make a conscious decision to resist it.
She settled back into his stride, faster now, the rifle bouncing against her back. Maybe that was why her instinct was going mental, like the mouse mom’s. Not because there was something familiar in his face, but because her brain was intent on protecting her from another Kurt-esque debacle. Clever brain. She should let it take charge more often.
The closest headlights grew bigger and brighter. Another light swept from the side of the vehicle—someone hanging out the passenger seat with a flashlight. The village lights weren’t getting any closer. Flynn was near sprinting, Tess stumbling along behind as if he were dragging her on a tow rope. Her breath was getting shallower, her toes jarring with the shock of each step. Tough it out. A good run wouldn’t kill her. Plenty else around here would.
Flynn glanced back.
“I’m fi—” she began.
But he wasn’t looking at her—he was looking over her shoulder, frowning. She followed his gaze. Another set of headlights was barreling straight for them. Oh God.
“Could we hide in those trees?” she gasped.
“What trees?”
“At your two o’clock.”
“I don’t see them.”
She pointed, though his back was to her again. “You can’t see that?” True, they weren’t much—a tangle of spindly branches—but they were clearly outlined, black against gray. The more she looked, the more trees she made out. Could you summon a mirage at night?
“Wait. Now I do.” He changed direction, angling toward them. “We don’t have a choice.”
It was all she could do to keep breathing. The trees didn’t seem to be getting bigger. The headlights behind her were.
“Down,” he whispered, hitting the deck as the flashlight swept their way.
She didn’t land quickly enough. The beam lit her up. Crap. It passed on without hitching. Keep going, keep going. It stopped and lurched back, burning straight into her retinas. Flynn sprang up, grabbing her hand. Her vision swam with black and red and purple. They hurtled toward the trees, her shaky legs threatening to give out.
“They still want us alive, right?” she shouted.
“I hope so. If anything, they’ll take me out and haul you back.”
“I’m not going back.” She upped her pace. Gunfire cracked around them.
“Just warning shots,” he yelled.
“How do you know?”
“We’re not dead.”
Her eyes adjusted. Both sets of headlights were trained on them, bouncing light and shadows on their path. The engines screamed. Flynn pulled her to the left—skirting the bleached skeleton of an animal. At least, she hoped it was an animal. Half a minute later, she heard it crunch and snap under a wheel. They passed the first tree, then the second. Another hundred feet and the goons would have to follow on foot.
The terrain changed. They plunged downhill, her knees wobbling as the ground steepened. Flynn’s hand tightened. Spindly trees panned out around them. It was a gully. Crap.
The headlights flared on something red, to her right—a warning sign, with a skull and crossbones.
“Flynn, it’s a minefield.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“That’s what I hoped.” He released her hand and skidded down a bank. “Stay behind me. Some of them spray sideways.”
Oh Jesus. Behind, a vehicle skidded to a stop. More gunshots, too close. She braced. No pain—nothing new, at least. She was still on her feet, her body still taking orders from her brain. The second engine roared closer.
“Out there we have a hundred percent chance of death,” Flynn shouted. “In here, maybe less.”
They careered downward, slaloming between trees, ducking under branches. It was hard to figure out where Flynn even was, let alone follow his path or watch for mines. Her mind was about to blow, with all the warnings it was pelting at her. Gunfire smacked into dirt by her feet. She yelped. Shouldn’t warning shots go upward?
The second vehicle slowed. As the engine silenced, another motor filled the gap, farther off but pushing fast. Possibly more than one. Among the clatter of gunfire she caught shouts edged with panic. Hell, they were worried?
A beam of light swept past them. Something glinted on the ground ahead of Flynn.
“Stop! Flynn!”
He kept charging. Her scalp went cold. She lunged for his waist and dragged him to a shuddering halt, her toes bouncing on the stones.
“What are you—?”
“Don’t move.” She drew upright, practically climbing his body, and clung to his left arm. “Something shiny.”
“Where?” His biceps was rigid.
“An inch in front of your foot.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“Like a bunch of nails sticking up.”
“You’re kidding me. That’s a bounding mine.” He shook his head. “I still can’t see it. You must have superhuman sight.”
“Guess I got used to the dark.”
To their left, the light snagged on trees.
“Maybe I should go first,” she said. God, that was the last thing she wanted.
“No.”
“I can see better than you.”
He caught her waist and lifted her sideways, moving them behind a tree trunk that was half his width. “I don’t want the responsibility,” he whispered into her ear. “You stay behind me, you’re safe.”
“Until you get blown up and then I’m on my own anyway, if I’m even alive.”
“Most of these things will be buried. Just then, we got lucky.”
Gunfire burst out. She shook him off. “And we might get lucky again if we can see. Come on.”
She took a step. He pinned her arms to her sides, his chest grazing her back. “I go first.”
“I’m quite capable of taking responsibility for my own death.”
“I can see that. I’m still going first.”
Wow, he sure had a hero complex. “Oh, I get it,” she said, changing tack.
“Get what?”
“It puts me in their line of fire. If I get shot, you get away.”
“What? No!”
He loosened his grip. Taking advantage of his indignation, she set out, her heart thumping hard enough to break a rib. Best-case scenario, she got lucky. Second-best, she died quickly. Her mind flashed up an image of a boy shepherd she’d met after his leg had been blown off midthigh. She’d forced herself to watch as a doctor had removed his filthy dressing, and then she’d swallowed vomit. The black, pulpy mass had writhed with maggots.
Sometimes knowledge wasn’t power.
Crap—Flynn wasn’t behind her. She glanced back, slowing. He was crouched over the mine. What was he doing—defusing it? He grabbed something from his pocket and laid it beside the spikes. The reflective strip he’d ripped off her bag. A warning to others? He would stop to be considerate, now?
He started running, waving her on. The land began to rise again up the other side of the gully. She stuck to where the trees were thickest. More gunfire. Not potshots—they were spraying the wood. Branches swooshed and cracked like a windstorm. She hurtled across the stony ground, bent double, scanning for shiny things. Or dull things. Anything that didn’t look right. Could the goons see her, or were they shooting blind? A burst clapped out behind her—Flynn had caught up and was returning fire.
A dark hulk loomed. She stopped, an inch from smashing her nose into it. A boulder. She swiveled, thrusting out her hands. Flynn was running sideways, looking back over his shoulder. “Fl—”
He rammed into her chest, slamming her spine into the rock. Pain spiraled through her torso. His rifle smacked her elbow, deadening her arm.
“Merde. You okay?” He bounced off and caught her, his hands pressing up and down her back.
Breath rasped back into her lungs. “Peachy,” she squeaked. It felt like she’d been hit by a rhino. A bullet cracked above them, showering her with rock chips. He pulled her into a crouch, leaning over her as the stone rain settled.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand.
Blindly, she stumbled after him, rounding the boulder. He yanked her down on the other side and scooted in beside her. Cover. Thank God. Her feet pulsed. Ahead, the land flattened out again—the top of the gully easing out into a plateau.
She let her head fall backward onto the rock and took a shuddering breath. Gunfire tore through the trees, their echoes alone loud enough to burst an eardrum. Dozens of bullets, maybe hundreds. A lot of fingers on a lot of triggers.
“Still warning shots?” she said.
“Their orders have changed. My guess? They’re cutting their losses. They’ve realized they can’t risk you getting away.”
“So they’re shooting to kill.”
“It’s a good thing. It means they think we have a chance of getting out of here, which means we must have a chance—we just need to find it. This can’t be a dead end.”
“Wow, you’re quite the optimist.”
“Nah. An optimist sits back and waits for good shit to come to them. I don’t expect anything good to come to me—you gotta go out and make that shit happen. If you get lucky, you get lucky. No such thing as karma—you die or you don’t, whether you deserve it or not.”
“So right now, are we lucky or unlucky?”
“Depends what happens next.” He unzipped the bag and passed her a water bottle. “But don’t go all philosophical on me. My head hurts too much for thinking. Let’s just try not to die today.”
“Hey, it was you doing the philosophizing.”
“Hardly. I can’t even pronounce that word.”
She drank greedily, the water loosening her stuck throat. To her left, a bullet whacked into the dirt. Something pelted her temple. She gasped, fumbling the bottle, but it flipped out of her grip. She’d been shot in the head?
“Tess?”
She patted her face. No broken skin—just a burning sensation. Her T-shirt was soaked. “A stone, I think. Must have ricocheted up.” She grabbed for the bottle but it rolled away, into the line of fire. She lurched forward. A force hauled her back—Flynn’s hand, gripping her waistband. She flew for a second and plopped down, jamming his fingers into her butt crack. Graceful.
“Leave it,” he said, tugging his hand free.
“They’ll see it.”
“They’re more likely to see you—I don’t think they have your superhero vision.”
He grabbed a fallen branch and coaxed the bottle within reach. As good as empty.
“They could keep this up all night, all week,” she said. “Starve us out—if there’s anything left to starve by the time they run out of ammunition.”
“I’m counting on Hamid not having the patience for that. If what you say is true—”
“It is tr—”
“Then there’s too much at stake. The longer this goes on, the more anxious she’ll get, the more likely she’ll make a bad call. You said she reports to someone higher-up?”
“She runs al-Thawra, but al-Thawra reports to Denniston and the senator.”
“Then that’s where the bad call will come from. Bad decisions always come from bosses who aren’t on the ground, aren’t reading the conditions.” He punctuated his words with the bottle. “They want a black-and-white outcome, no matter the cost and screw the circumstances.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Personal experience?”
He scoffed like she’d asked an intimate question. “Human nature. They’ll be telling Hamid to find you before this gets out of control. Minefields aren’t put in dead ends. They’re designed to stop the enemy getting somewhere—they’re laid in shortcuts, thoroughfares.” He shook the last drops of water onto his tongue. “Which means this patch of scrub leads somewhere useful and they know it. It’s not just some oasis.”
“No kidding it’s not. Maybe it leads up into those hills?”
“Hills?”
“There.” She pointed. “Silhouetted against the stars.”
He squinted. “Yep, that’s where they’ll expect us to go.”
He flipped onto his belly and scooted to the far end of the rock. “Man, I could kill for NVGs.” He shouldered his rifle, let off a burst and ducked back under cover.
“What are you doing that for?” He couldn’t take on a couple of dozen soldiers.
The return gunfire surged. “Confirming we’re still alive.”
“If they think we’re dead they might stop shooting.”
“Hamid won’t believe we’re dead until she spits on our bodies. I want to make her nervous, impatient. Staying put and strafing this scrub to keep us pinned—or, better, kill us—is her best strategy. I don’t want her choosing the best strategy.”
He slid into his firing position and let off another round. She shoved her fingers in her ears, though they were already ringing like church bells. As he rolled back, she could smell his adrenaline—sharp and tangy and spiced with scorched metal.
“Aren’t you worried about giving away our position?”
“Not the way these shots are echoing. And there’s enough scrub to mask the muzzle flash. I’ll give it a rest now, anyway. Hear that?” His teeth gleamed. She could no longer figure out where one surge of fire ended and the next began. “The sweet sound of panic. We’re relatively safe here, and sooner or later they’ll figure that out. Meantime, I have a plan.”
“Which is...?”
He looked above their heads. Checking the stars? “I’ll tell you, if it works.”
“Flynn...”
“Hey, the last one worked, didn’t it? Kind of?” He flattened against the rock and pointed along the ridge in the direction of the village, as near as she could tell. “You see any more rocks we could shelter behind?”
“Yeah, maybe a hundred feet away. Man, they are not letting up.”
He dragged the backpack toward him, unzipped it and pulled out the open MRE.
“You’re eating?” she said. “Now?”
“Gotta keep up the energy. Here.” He slapped a bar of something onto her lap.
“You have it. My stomach is flipping around so much the food might bounce right out.”
“Eat the bloody thing. You don’t look like you’re carrying a lot of reserves and I’m not having you flaking out on me.”
In the darkness, her glare was wasted. She fought through a sickly sweet granola bar, a nibble at a time. Oh, for a fresh, crisp apple. At the thought, saliva poured into her mouth. Flynn laid into something that smelled like curry. At a time like this. As they ate, the gunfire became sporadic then eased off, leaving them cloaked in silence. She stashed the bar’s wrapper in her pocket, wincing at the crackle.
Flynn scooted to his vantage point and beckoned her over. They lay on their bellies, shoulders touching.
“What’s that superhero vision telling you?” His murmured words vibrated right through her.
She blinked, hard. “Nothing,” she whispered. “Wait, something’s moving. A person. More than one—maybe half a dozen, entering the gully.” Crap.
“Spread out or in single file?”
“Spread out.”
“Good.”
“Was that your plan?”
“They’re doing what the bastards who buried these mines hoped. The mines are laid out under the theory that soldiers spread out. You go in alone, or single file, odds are you’ll get out alive. A whole unit spreads out, chances are one will set off a mine that catches his buddies with shrapnel, so it lowers everyone’s odds. It’s a numbers game, like the chance you’ll be the one picked by the shark at the beach.” He fell silent. “Maybe a little more likely than that.”
“You’d think they’d know that, living here.”
“They’ll be following orders—bad ones, and they’ll know that and resent it. You can’t do a grid search in single file. I bet they’re praying to Allah.” He caught her eye. “Or God, or Buddha, or their mothers.”
“They’ve stopped shooting, at least.”
“Merde. They might be flanking us.”
Her neck prickled. She rolled onto her back, peering into the trees on the plateau while he watched the other direction.
“You cover our backs,” he said, creeping behind her. “Don’t fire unless you have to, but don’t hesitate, either. I’m going to create some chaos. On my say-so, we pull back to that other rock.”
She flipped the catch to full-auto as he’d shown her. God, she hoped he was wrong about them being flanked. She adjusted her grip and forced her breath to settle. It was just like on the range, shooting at targets. Except targets didn’t shoot back. She widened her eyes as if they were satellite dishes. The bigger the disc, the more it picked up, right? Movement wasn’t always immediately obvious—like before, seeing the soldiers among the trees, sometimes you had to sift through layers of darkness to catch it.
Gunfire burst out next to her. She jumped, her pulse rocketing. Flynn again. A shifting noise as he changed position. He fired again. A boom split the air, rocking the ground. Oh man. That was no gunshot.
A throaty scream echoed up the gully. Light flashed, right up to the plateau, illuminating the unmistakable figures of two men, dressed in camouflage, walking straight toward her, rifles panning left and right.
Her throat dried. She flattened, holding in her stomach—as if that would make all the difference. The explosion from the gully flared, like something was burning. One of the men looked directly at Flynn and raised his weapon. Shit. Shit. Should she fire?
The light flickered and cut out. Darkness swarmed back in. She blinked, blinded. Of course she should fire. But where had they gone? Around her, gunfire cracked, thwacking along the earth, pelting the rock. Incoming, not outgoing. Oh God, had her hesitation got Flynn killed? Where the hell were the men?
