Guarding the Soldier's Secret (6 page)

That was then. In the darkness...touching.

This is now, and everything has changed.

The physical distance between them was small—an arm’s length, no more. He could have reached across it and touched her—her face...her hair...her neck. He remembered the way it smelled, that soft sweet curve of neck and shoulder, hidden by the thick fall of hair, warm and musky from sleep. Memory struck like a knife in his gut so that he winced as if with physical pain. Because he knew the distance between them was a bottomless chasm, one he didn’t know how to cross.

“You know I’ve never been able to talk about my missions,” he said at last.

So, it’s come back around to this. The mission. As it always would.

As Yancy gazed at him through a haze that was half tears, half anger, it appeared to her as though Hunt was moving away from her, as if she was on a fast-moving train and he was left standing on the station platform. She felt an almost overwhelming sense of grief and loss.

She made a small, helpless gesture, taking in the whole of him—clothes, beard, surroundings. “That’s what this is—all this—a mission?”

“Of course.” With arrogance in his voice and his arms folded on his chest, in the near-darkness he seemed to become the Afghan chieftain he pretended to be.

“And you can’t tell me anything about it.”

“No, I can’t. Not until it’s done.”

“What happened today—did that have anything to do with your
mission
?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

She turned away, choked by her own frustration, unable even to say good-night.

His words stopped her. “But I can tell you about
her
.” She looked back at him, at his silhouette against the lighter sky. “About Laila. Her mother. How it happened. If you’d care to hear.”

Was there entreaty in his voice? She so wished she could see his eyes, his features—though she doubted they’d have told her much. She took a deep breath and, with great effort, said carefully, “I would. Of course.”

Now there was no sound at all in the courtyard; the background noise of the city had faded away and the fountain had ceased its music. The darkness seemed to enfold the two of them in its own embrace. Wrapped in it, she could feel his heat, smell his scent. So close...too close...

She put out her hand expecting to touch his chest, meaning to hold him at bay, knowing she had no will to resist him if he chose to move closer. Her hand encountered only air. It was her perceptions that made him seem so near. To disguise the gesture she turned it into something else.

“But first—” She turned quickly, before he could guess how close she’d come to stepping into his arms. “First, just let me check on Laila. It’s a strange place... I don’t want her to wake and be frightened. It’s been such an eventful day—”

“I’d like to come with you.” She halted without turning and felt the light touch on her shoulder. “If it’s okay. Please.”

She nodded, shielded her feminine responses, swallowed all her maternal misgivings and protective instincts, and murmured, “Sure. Of course.”

She led the way into the silent house, into the smaller of the two living rooms that were traditionally used for sleeping, as well as dining and relaxing with close family members. In this one the walls were soft buttery yellow, lit by small lamps in sconces placed high on the walls. There were sleeping mattresses against three of the walls and pillows covered in red and orange and black patterns. On one of the mattresses, Laila slept soundly, curled on her side in her favorite position, with her cheek pillowed on her hand. Her lips were parted, and her lashes made dark shadows on skin turned golden by the lamplight.

As Yancy knelt beside the sleeping child, she felt her chest tighten and her throat ache and her fingers burn with the need to touch...to reassure herself this small beautiful creature, this miraculous being, was real...and
her daughter
. Behind her she could feel Hunt balancing himself on one knee, but she didn’t look at him, afraid of what she might see in his face.

Which would be worse—to see him dispassionate, cold, aloof...the kind of man too occupied with making war to care about a child...the kind of man who could so easily walk away and leave his child in the hands of strangers and vanish without a trace? Or to see in his face the same overwhelming love that fills my heart? The kind of love that won’t let go? That will fight to the last breath for his child.

She drew a shuddering breath and rose, and he did, too, almost simultaneously, one hand under her elbow to steady her. She slid away from his touch and turned on him a blind smile as she whispered, “Obviously, she’s fine. Where would you like to—”

His hand on her elbow guided her back into the courtyard and to another door, this one leading into the other living room, the larger one in which Mehri had served them their dinner. Here, too, there were mattresses and brightly patterned pillows against three walls, but with a slightly raised platform of polished wood in the center. The walls here were a darker gold, the lighting, as in the sleeping room, subdued. It occurred to Yancy that the effect of all this was warm...intimate...intensely seductive, and to her extreme distress she felt an electric current race through her body, making her palms sweat and her pulse quicken.

“Would you like some tea?” Hunt gestured toward the raised platform that earlier had held their dinner.

She shook her head. “It’s late. I don’t want to impose on Mehri.”

“She’s retired for the night.” He sounded oddly formal, as if, she thought, he’d slipped back into whatever role he’d been playing. “If you want tea, I’ll make it.”

She couldn’t help but smile. He caught it and lifted his eyebrows.

“What, you don’t think I’m capable of making tea?”

“I’m pretty sure you could do anything you set your mind to,” she said as her smile went wry, “but it’s definitely a side of you I’m having a hard time imagining.”

“I imagine there are a few sides of me you might not have imagined,” Hunt replied drily.

She gave a soft laugh and said, “No doubt,” and it seemed the tension between them eased...for a moment. “But really,” she added, “I don’t need anything.”

Hunt nodded and let a breath escape, in full acknowledgment of the words she hadn’t spoken:
I don’t need anything from you except an explanation. Except the truth.

He gestured at a mattress and said, “Have a seat.” When she had done so, he settled himself on the same mattress, but more than arm’s length away. He didn’t recline or lounge, but sat upright with his knees bent, as if he were squatting before a campfire or on lookout with his rifle at the ready. He looked extremely uncomfortable. After a long silent moment he frowned at his hands as if he didn’t know quite what to do with them, then draped them over the tops of his knees and cleared his throat.

“You were going to tell me how you met Laila’s mother,” Yancy prompted.

“Yeah. It was—” he began, then shook his head and looked around angrily, reminding Yancy of a correspondent beginning a live report only to discover a problem with the audio feed. She’d done that herself more than once.

Sympathy mixed with something else, something she couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge, made her chest ache. Pushing against the pain, she uttered the question she hadn’t even realized was uppermost in her mind. “Did you love her?”

He threw her a startled look, and for an instant there was something in his eyes that, in spite of the full dark beard and hollow cheeks, made him seem very young. Then he shook his head and shifted his gaze away from her, letting his knees fall into a more relaxed cross-legged position. Slightly hunched and speaking now to his clasped hands, he said, “It wasn’t like that. Sometimes, in war—” He paused to clear his throat. “You have to understand, sometimes things happen you’re in no way prepared for. We’re supposed to be prepared for anything. I should have been. But I...wasn’t. Let’s just say it wasn’t my finest moment.” He gave her his warrior’s glare. “I take full responsibility for that.”

Not trusting herself to speak, Yancy only nodded, and after a moment, he went on in an expressionless drone, as if he were being debriefed for the umpteenth time.

“The mission was to take out a target—an al Qaeda leader we’d been after for a while, pretty high up on our most-wanted list. We had intel he was supposed to be at a wedding—his, actually. The location was a small village in the mountains near the Pakistani border—the bride’s hometown. We knew the area would be difficult to penetrate using a ground attack, and blowing up the place with a drone strike wasn’t an option if we wanted to collect any intelligence data the guy might have. So we used a chopper approach.” He paused to look up at Yancy. “Like the one that later took out Bin Laden.” She nodded and he smiled without humor. “Lessons were learned. Having a backup chopper, for one.”

“You had one crash?”

He shook his head. “Not then. The operation went as planned, just the usual small glitches, nothing we couldn’t handle.” He paused long enough for Yancy to hear everything he
wasn’t
saying. “We went in...took care of our objective. We were in the process of gathering intel—interviewing members of the wedding, family, guests...confiscating whatever we could carry...and this woman comes to me. I realize she’s the bride—now the widow, I guess—which hits me harder than I expect it to, because she’s so young. The al Qaeda guy was at least sixty, and this girl couldn’t have been more than maybe eighteen...nineteen. And she’s obviously scared out of her mind. She begs us to take her with us. Says her family sold her to the al Qaeda guy in exchange for protection and she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her now.”

“Why did she come to you?”

He gave her another look. “I speak both Farsi and Pashto. She heard me doing most of the talking during the raid.” He paused, coughed and straightened a little. “Anyway, I told her we couldn’t take her, obviously. We were deep in hostile territory and still had to be extracted for the mission to be a success. No way were we equipped to deal with hostages, prisoners, refugees—whatever. I mean, we
couldn’t
take her.” The look he gave Yancy now was steady, not asking for understanding, just stating facts.

But she did understand, both the necessity of saying no and the pain it must have caused him to do so. She nodded, and he let go a breath.

“I figured that was the end of it. But then, as we were making our way back to the choppers, here she comes running after us. Out in the open. I figure it was a miracle she didn’t get killed then and there, but it was a sure bet the people left behind in that village weren’t going to be happy with her.

“It was my call—you know, I figured she might have some intel that would make it worth the risk of taking her with us. But she’d delayed us just long enough. We started taking fire at the extraction point. I took one in the leg.”

He says it so matter-of-factly.

Which wasn’t a surprise to Yancy; she’d heard the same tone and the same stoic acceptance from countless other soldiers she’d interviewed over the years.

That’s when I knew I’d been hit...

I realized my arm was gone...

Don’t remember much...

My buddy next to me...

She wondered if she would ever understand the kind of courage it took to face that kind of horror every day.

“We all made it to the chopper,” Hunt went on. “But we were taking some heavy fire. A couple other members of the team had been hit, and they were worse off than I was. We got off the ground, but it was obvious right away we weren’t going to make enough altitude to get out of shooting range. There’d been five going in. Now there were six, thanks to me, and the chopper had evidently taken a few rounds where it hurt. It was pretty clear either a couple of us had to get off the chopper, or we were all going down.

“Zahra knew something was wrong, and when I told her what the deal was, she didn’t even flinch. Just said, ‘I know where to hide.’ And she pointed down. We were flying over some pretty rugged terrain, but the pilot managed to find a place to put us down.”

“
Us?
Why did
you
have to stay? You were wounded!”

He gave her a long look, then said quietly, “Simple logic, Yankee. We needed to lighten the load. Couldn’t very well leave a girl alone in the wilderness in her bridal clothes, not after I’d already compromised her by taking her along. There were five team members in the chopper, two with life-threatening injuries. My wound wasn’t life threatening. The two uninjured didn’t speak Pashto and were needed to keep the injured alive until they could get back to base. Do the math.”

She shook her head, though she knew he was right. “So, they put you on the ground and left you there.”

“With enough supplies to last a few days—until they could send a chopper to pick us up. Zahra knew the terrain—she told me she used to tend her family’s sheep in the area. She knew a cave the sheepherders used, which would be deserted at that time of year when there was no wild feed to graze.”

He fell silent but didn’t look at her, gazing instead at his clasped hands. She had no way of knowing how much time had passed before she saw his shoulders lift, and he drew in a breath and went on.

“It took longer than it should have for the extraction team to get to us—there were reasons, but it doesn’t matter why. She took care of me. Nursed me. It was a small cave. It was cold. Hell, I can make a hundred excuses, but the bottom line is, what happened shouldn’t have happened. I take full responsibility.”

Of course you do
, she wanted to tell him.
God forbid you should be human.

But she kept silent, and he cleared his throat loudly. “Obviously, I had no idea she was pregnant, and neither did she. I arranged for her to be taken in by a family—friends, contacts of mine, people I knew I could trust—in a village far enough away from hers that I felt she’d be safe. I gave her a backstory—husband killed fighting the Taliban, that kind of thing—and I arranged to have money sent on a regular basis. But I was sent back to Germany for rehab, and then...well, it was almost a year before I was able to get back there to check on her.” He gave a short, hard laugh. “And there she was.”