To the Brink (25 page)

He glanced at the women. Amy was hanging in there, but Darcy was the glue that held her together. Like she'd held him together yesterday until Manny had arrived.

He took in his fill of her. He hadn't lied. In a sweatstained and beat-up T-shirt and shorts, with her hair plastered to her head, exhausted and miserable, she was still the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

And one of the strongest. She didn't know it, but she'd saved his life yesterday.

While he was passed out and headed for shock from blood loss, she'd done the tough work. She'd staved off infection by cleaning him up, dressing the wound, and stopping the bleeding.

Yeah. She'd saved his ass. Watched over him like a mother hen ever since and yet somehow managed to keep her distance. He understood. She'd contacted him for one reason. She was in trouble and she'd known she could count on him to get her out of it.

End of story.

And he'd be a fool to think there were any unread chapters to a book that involved him and her together after they got off this island.

If we got off this island,
he thought again.

Ethan redialed Nolan. "Come on; come on." He yelled into the SAT phone to be heard above the wind. "Answer me, gawd damn it!"

"Keep your shirt on, big brother." Nolan's voice came through loud and clear. Finally. "As I said to my sweet lady the night before I left her, I'm coming as fast as I can, darlin'."

Ethan pushed out a grunt. "Damn, I was beginning to think you'd bailed on us."

"What? And miss all this fun? Nice to hear you're still among the living."

"Yeah," Ethan said, and left it at that.

"Fuck." Nolan's curse came from between clenched teeth as Ethan heard the growl of the chopper in the background. "I've never seen a storm come up so fast. What island god did you piss off, anyway?"

"Damn near every one of 'em from the looks of things." Ethan searched the sky for a sign of the Huey. "So what's your ETA?"

"ETA? Fuck that. I'll be there when I get there.
If
I get there," he added.

Yeah, Ethan knew they were still dealing with that factor.

"This is some bad shit," Nolan continued. "I don't know. I might have to deep-six this party and turn back, catch you when this sucker blows over. Can you hang on that long?"

It wouldn't matter if he could. No way was Ethan going to jeopardize the entire rescue on his account. "Hell yeah," he said. "I'm starting to like it here anyway. Sort of hate to give up this cushy spot on the beach."

"Well, before you lay down any cash for a time share, let me talk to Dallas."

"Be happy to, but he's not here." Besides, Ethan knew what Dallas would say. He'd tell Nolan that they needed to get him and his bloodless self a transfusion yesterday.

Ethan was about to tell Nolan to turn back to Zamboanga when he saw a blur of motion scuttle down the beach toward them.

He had started to wave the women back into the cover of the trees when he recognized Dallas.

Dallas was panting when he dropped to his knees beside Ethan on the beach. "We've got trouble."

"Hold on," Ethan told Nolan.

Dallas's head snapped up. "You got Nolan?"

When Ethan nodded, Dallas reached for the SAT phone. "Where the hell are you, Bro?"

"About to turn back and wait for this crap to break."

"That's a negative. Repeat. Negative. We're going to have company any minute and they aren't comin' for juice and cookies."

Ethan's grip on the M-4 tightened as he listened to Dallas's side of the conversation.

"You know that company of Philippine infantry you said might be on the hunt for Abu Sayyaf?" Dallas asked Nolan as Manny and Ben joined them. "We just spotted them—about a hundred strong. And if they keep on their current heading, they'll be hitting this section of beach in about ten minutes."

To a man, they all knew what that meant. If it turned out this was a left-wing faction of the Philippine military—and that was too much of a possibility—their purpose might be better served by killing the Americans and blaming it on the Abu Sayyaf rather than helping them get out alive. Politics on this side of the world played fast and loose with more than diplomacy.

Even if they weren't dealing with left-wingers, Ethan and the boys were here without U.S. or Philippine military sanction. It would be shoot first, ask questions later, and the soldiers wouldn't care if the women went down in the process along with the men.

"Yeah, things could get worse," Dallas said, evidently responding to Nolan's metaphoric question. "And they are. You're probably going to be spinning into a hot LZ. I repeat, it's going to be a hot landing zone here, Nolan. Providing you can land at all."

Ethan glanced at Manny, who was grinning and shaking his head and, Ethan figured, thinking the same thing as he was.

The main rotor span on the Huey was about fourteen or fifteen meters. The beach where they were camped wasn't any more than ten meters wide. Didn't take a math degree to compute that sad equation.

Manny used his finger to draw the letter
F
in the sand.

Yeah. They were so fucked.

And just to make sure they knew it as a certainty, another vengeful island god joined the fun and let loose with the rain just then to remind them who was really in control. It was like someone poured a swimming pool against a wind tunnel fan as the rain beat down sideways and made hearing almost impossible.

"Negative!" Dallas shouted in response to something Nolan had said. "We don't have that much room! ... Right! And no way can we make it the two clicks to a section of the beach that's big enough for you to set down! We're going to have to do a fast extraction!"

A fast extraction. Under fire.

Could it get any better?

"Roger!" Dallas yelled. "We'll be ready!" And he hung up.

"So." Manny turned his back to the pelting rain, and the faint sound of the Huey's rotor blades chopping through the wind reached them. "We're going on a suicide ride."

Chapter 18

Darcy looked from Dallas to Manny
and finally to Ethan as they gathered their gear in preparation for Nolan's arrival.

The men were worried. They didn't say it, but to a man the grim looks on their faces relayed the urgency of the situation. And it wasn't just the advance of the Philippine army that added an elevated level of gravity to an already grave situation. It was the weather.

"What's a fast extraction?" Darcy yelled to be heard above the deluge of rain and wind. At least the rain had settled the sand. Her arms felt raw where it had constantly peppered her skin.

The men cut dark glances to one another. Ethan finally answered her. "There's a winch fixed on the side of the Huey—just above one of the doors. The winch lowers a rope with harnesses. We clip onto loops and Nolan will haul us up and away. When he finds an LZ wide enough to set down the bird, he'll lower us to the beach. Once he lands we'll climb on board and get the hell out of here. Piece a cake."

Darcy squinted against the rain, scooped her sopped hair out of her eyes, and tried to absorb what Ethan had just said.

The picture formed in her mind of the six of them dangling from a rope over the whitecapped water in a blinding rain while a company of Philippine soldiers took potshots at them from the beach.

Piece of cake?

Ethan's hand on her arm shocked her back to reality—the other reality that was: how was he physically going to manage the extraction?

"It's okay," he assured her. "Nolan's a pro. And it's nothing the three of us haven't done before. We'll get you hooked up. We'll get you out of here."

Darcy nodded, but her teeth had started to chatter. Beside her, Amy slipped a hand into hers. Darcy squeezed it tight just as the chopper appeared offshore, dipping and dodging and bouncing around in the air like a cork in choppy water. A rope dangled out of the open door, its tail whipping back and forth like the tail of a tornado in the gale-force winds.

"Suicide ride," Darcy said aloud, thinking of Manny's grim statement.

Ethan leaned in, slung an arm around her shoulder—as much, she suspected, to help him stand against the force of the wind as to reassure her. "Don't mind Manny. He's afraid of heights."

She looked up. And Ethan was grinning.

Grinning.

"Just think of it as the ultimate amusement park ride."

"Probably be best if I don't think at all," she said, then dragged her sodden hair out of her eyes again as Dallas and Manny waded thigh-deep into the raging surf.

"Come on, No-man. Come on. You can do it." Watching from the beach, Ethan urged his brother on as the chopper swooped down, then lifted a full twenty feet as the wind slapped it around and made jockeying for position close enough for Manny or Dallas to snag the rope look like an impossibility.

"They are coming," Ben said urgently, and pointed behind them.

Shit.

Talk about your rock and hard place.

"Move the women down to the water's edge," Ethan said, hobbling over to their cache of weapons. "Get 'em ready to go."

He traded his M-4 for Dallas's with the M-203 grenade launcher attached. He didn't intend to engage unless they were fired upon, but—

The
chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck
of automatic weapon fire ended any debate on return fire.

"Go!" Ethan yelled at Ben, and shoved Darcy toward the surf.

From the corner of his eye Ethan saw Dallas make another grab for the rope and miss. Manny was right beside him. When the chopper swooped down again, Manny jumped and lunged, snagged a loop on the rigging, and hung on like a leech as the chopper lifted again. Manny flew out of the water like a torpedo, hung out over the choppy surf at about five meters, then rode it back down as the chopper dipped again.

Another round of automatic fire sprayed the sand several meters in front of Ethan's feet.

"Hook 'em up!" Ethan yelled, shouldering the M-4. "I'll give these guys a little something to think about."

The M-203 had a fifty-meter kill zone, so he sighted to a spot about sixty meters ahead of the boots closing in and fired. The explosion sent sand shooting in every direction and left a crater the size of a Jeep. He didn't want to kill anyone if he could avoid it. He just wanted to slow them down.

And he didn't want to get shot—again—or leave anyone on the beach. On the off chance they were taken prisoner instead of killed, it would be a little difficult to explain what they were doing there and why.

Can we say "international incident," boys and girls?

The warning round did the trick. The forces scattered back into the jungle brush and trees.

"Good thinkin', boys," Ethan said under his breath. "You all just sit tight back there until you figure out what you're up against."

With a little luck—okay, with a battleship full of luck—they'd be outta here by the time the Philippine CO came up with a plan of action.

Still wielding the grenade launcher, Ethan backed toward the surf, his thigh screaming in pain with each step. He ignored it and glanced over his shoulder. And his heart damn near sank into the deep.

They'd hooked Amy up to the harness. She was thigh-deep in water as Dallas snugged Darcy onto a loop about three feet beneath Amy. Dallas had just gotten Darcy secured when the wind sucked the chopper up again and jerked both women out of the water.