Leave No Trace (Black Ops, #5.5)(10)
Author: Cindy Gerard

He sprinted across the dusty street, peripherally aware of Carrie keeping pace beside him. The few seconds it took them to cover the ground felt like an eternity, but they made it without being spotted.

Carrie followed orders like a good soldier and scrambled onto the floor in the back. He dove for the floor in the front, then checked around for a key. No such luck.

Keeping low, he smashed the hilt of the Warthog against the steering column until he broke the plastic molding around the ignition and exposed the lock. Then he held his breath, unfolded the blade, stuck its tip into the hole, and turned it.

Nothing.

Cursing and sweating, he fiddled with the blade, reached down and depressed the clutch, and tried again. Bingo! The engine grumbled to life with a hiccup and a whine. He shot up off the floor before the motor fell into a rumbling purr, slid behind the wheel, and shifted into first gear.

“Keep your head down,” he reminded her and peeled rubber, sending a rooster tail of fine dust flying in their wake. They’d made it! Almost.

The unmistakable pop pop pop of an AK-47 shattered the passenger-side windshield. So much for getting out of here unnoticed.

He glanced over his shoulder. Four Junta soldiers were squared up in the street behind them. All four had shouldered their rifles and were firing on full auto.

“Need some cover fire, sweetheart!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Just aim and squeeze. And keep your head down!”

Less than five seconds later he heard the AK shucking out rounds from the backseat.

The return fire stopped immediately.

He laughed out loud. Jesus. What a woman.

“Nice going, deadeye!” he yelled over the whine of the motor as he lead-footed the accelerator and they roared out of town.

Twelve

“Still clear,” Carrie told Cav from the passenger seat.

She’d climbed into the front shortly after they’d cleared the village.

That had been a good ten miles ago and if his GPS coordinates and crash map lesson were correct, this narrow, serpentine road would lead them to the designated landing zone where the extraction team would be waiting for them in—he checked his watch again—less than five minutes.

Providing the team was waiting for them.

And providing they could limp their way there with one flat tire. One of the Juntas had scored a hit. The flat had slowed then down, but there was no way in hell Cav could stop and change it.

Blind faith was a powerful thing. It had to be, because right now that’s all they had going for them.

Cav kept both hands on the wheel and one eye on the rearview mirror as they topped the rise of yet another steep grade, then rolled down a thirty-degree decline toward a long metal expansion bridge.

Straight out of an old erector set, it spanned a wide river basin flanked by deep ravines and lush grass. Small green islands floated like clouds on water the color of café au lait. A herd of brown horned cattle grazed placidly along the banks. Tall, jagged mountain peaks towered in the distance. And directly ahead of them hung the blazing ball of the sun, guiding their path down the road like a beacon.

The scenery was beautiful, idyllic and serene, and all Cav could think about was how in the hell a chopper was going to manage the wind currents that were bound to be prevalent at this altitude.

“How much farther?” Carrie yelled over the wind and the motor and thump thump thump of the deflated tire.

Cav glanced at her. She looked like a Rambo wet dream with the AK balanced across her lap, her unbound br**sts straining against her tight olive T-shirt, and her long legs encased in green camo pants.

And she looked like a woman he did not want to let down. Ever.

“Getting tired of my company?” He was only half joking.

“Getting worried about that dust trail that just topped the hill behind us!”

His gaze shot to the rearview mirror and he saw Junta jeep.

“Fuck!”

He’d hoped they’d had a big-enough head start to meet up with their ride before the soldiers arrived.

If they met with their ride.

He searched the road ahead of them, scanned the sky for a chopper. Except for the sun and a flock of birds nada.

He slammed down on the accelerator to spread the distance between them and the Junta, who were no more than a quarter mile away.

“Hold on!” he yelled and charged toward a pothole the size of a small ox.

Carrie clamped one hand around the roll bar, dug her fingers into his thigh, and let out a scream as the jeep hit hard, then went airborne. They crashed back down with a bone-rattling bang.

Miraculously the chassis held together.

“Hold on!” he repeated as they began to climb a forty-degree incline, the flat tire giving him ten kinds of grief as he struggled to keep the jeep on the road.

The sun was completely hidden by the hill rising in front of them; all he could see was road and sky. The motor whined and complained but he never backed off the gas. He was practically lying back in the seat as they struggled toward the peak, fishtailing and clawing for purchase.

Just when he thought they were going to stall out they crested the rise—and there, silhouetted against the burning sun, was a big, bad Huey hovering above the road like the Goodyear blimp.

The big bird was gray and gorgeous, with the thwump thwump thwump of the main rotor drowning out everything but his rebel yell. It was the most welcome sight he’d ever seen.

“OhmyGod!” Carrie ducked, a knee-jerk reaction to the low-hanging Huey.

“It’s the cavalry!” Wyatt had promised a Huey and damn if he hadn’t delivered.

The pilot was good. The Huey banked hard left, made a full one-eighty, then flew straight down the center of the road toward them.

“Thank you, Wyatt!” Cav pounded the flat of his palm on the steering wheel.

“Are they going to land?” Carrie yelled, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder as the Junta vehicles—a truck had joined the jeep—showed no sign of backing off.

“That was the plan,” Cav yelled back, straining to be heard as the decibel level reached new heights. But when one of the chopper’s crew appeared in the open doorway and kicked out a coil of rope he knew the plan had changed.

“Oh, God!” Carrie went pale. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

Cav studied the terrain ahead of them, which allowed no spot for the chopper to land. He glanced at the Junta behind them. The truck had gained ground and a gunner had gotten into position behind the big gun mounted on a tripod on the truck’s roof.

Not just a big gun. Ma Duce. A Browning .50-caliber heavy-barreled belt-fed machine gun. Christ. Each projectile weighed an ounce and a half, and if one of them hit either the Huey or their jeep, there’d be nothing left but fireballs, fumes, and red mist.

Fire flashed from the big gun’s muzzle and a series of roaring booms reverberated through the air.

When the road exploded ahead of them, Cav swerved hard right. The jeep skidded, fishtailed, and nearly slipped off the side of the eroding shoulder before he regained control.

Shit! If the bastard got any closer they were done for. “Switch places with me!” he yelled.

Shifting his left foot from the clutch to the accelerator to maintain speed, he scooted toward the middle of the bench seat. “Take over driving so I can catch the rig.”

Her wild gaze flew to his face. “What rig?”

He hitched his chin skyward.

She looked up, saw the rope, and gasped. “You’re serious?”

“You can do this! Now move!”

She gave herself a nanosecond to come to terms, then, God love her, flew into action.

He’d never switched drivers in an open vehicle racing fifty mph down the road while being chased by men with guns, but they somehow managed to shift and shimmy and change seats with barely any loss of speed or control.

A second volley from Ma Duce kicked up dirt just behind them. Another narrow miss. Third time, someone was bound to get lucky.

But then the unmistakable chuck chuck chuck of an M-60 gave Cav a reason to believe they might just get out of this.

He glanced skyward and, sure enough, the barrel of an M-60 mini-gun poked out of the belly of the Huey. The gunner was peppering the Junta truck with 7.62 x 54 NATO rounds like he was seasoning a steak.

Cav let out a war whoop. These boys knew how to throw a party!

He stood up, one hand gripping the windshield frame, the other grabbing for the tail end of the hundred-plus feet of rope that dangled from the Huey. The rotor wash whipped the rope and the attached harness back and forth like a pendulum on a wide, arching swing.

“Can we really do this?” Carrie yelled.

“Piece of cake!” he promised as the Huey pilot timed its speed perfectly to theirs, then tucked in directly overhead just low enough for Cav to finally grab the spinning harness when it swung by.

Behind them, the Junta truck and jeep had gained ground. Ma Duce kept firing. The M-60 kept answering. Cav paid no attention. He unhooked the SPIES—Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction System—harness from the dangling rope, then concentrated on getting himself buckled in.

Now came the leap of faith. There was only one harness. They needed two. He improvised by quickly making a loop out of an extra length of webbing.

“Under your arms!” he ordered Carrie as he tugged the looped strap over her head, then under her armpits in a dizzying dance of coordination and caution while her hair flew around her face and she managed to maintain control of the fast-moving jeep.

“I don’t want to know what’s going to happen next, do I?” Her eyes were dead ahead on the road as Cav hooked a carabiner attached to the front of his SPIES rig to the strap he’d made snug around her chest.

“One more act of faith!” he told her as he quickly hooked his SPIES harness back up to the rope, looked skyward, and gave the Huey crew a thumbs-up.

“Let go of the wheel!” He pulled Carrie out from beneath the steering column and, just that fast, they were airborne.

“Arms and legs out!” he yelled when they’d cleared the jeep and the Huey lifted them fifty feet in a split second. “Spread-eagle it or we’re going to spin like a top, and then I’m going to embarrass myself and make you very unhappy!”

“I’m already unhappy!” She buried her face against his chest as the ground fell away beneath them and the chuck chuck chuck of the M-60 sang like music above them.

As they flew through the air and cleared the tree line, Cav looked down to see the jeep roar off the road. It bounced several yards, then rolled end over end down a steep ravine and exploded in a ball of fire. Even more spectacular was the sight of the M-60 lighting up the Junta truck in a blazing fireball when the Huey’s gunner scored a direct hit.

Prettiest sight he’d ever seen. Well, almost.

He glanced down at the woman in his arms as they continued to climb, dangling from the end of that long rope at a dizzying two hundred feet above the ground and a heart-racing seventy or eighty mph.

She was the prettiest sight he’d ever seen as she lifted her face to his. Through her fear and her shock, she met his eyes with a smile so dazzling it lit a fire inside him that made the flame-engulfed Junta truck pale in comparison.

“MAN, YOU GUYS are a sight for sore eyes!” Cav yelled above the Huey’s engine roar.

They’d set down in a field a safe mile away from the extraction site so Cav and Carrie could climb on board.

“Just like old home week.” Luke—Doc Holliday—Colter grinned as he held out a hand and pulled Carrie up into the chopper bay.

He had that right, Cav thought as he scrambled up behind her, shook hands all around, and saw the men who’d enlisted his help to blow up half of Jakarta’s waterfront over a year ago in their rescue mission of Crystal Debrowski.

“Glad we could return the favor.” Johnny Reed sat at the bird’s controls with none other than Nate Black riding in the copilot seat.

“Thanks, man.” Cav returned a quick embrace and back slap from Joe Green, his old CIA buddy. “When Wyatt said he’d send a team, I didn’t know he was going to call out the big guns. Appreciate it.”

“Like Reed said”—Nate turned in the seat—“one good turn needs another.”

“I’d say this more than makes us even.” Cav glanced at Carrie, who was still wide-eyed and a little shocky. “Carrie,” he yelled to be heard above the Huey’s big engine, “meet Reed, Doc, Joe, and Nate. Friends of Wyatt’s. Friends of mine,” he added as he strapped in while Doc made sure Carrie was secure.

As soon as they were buckled up, the Huey lifted off and they tore through the skies.

“It’s over,” Cav said, leaning in close to Carrie. “It’s finally over.”

Not until then did she finally break down and cry.

Thirteen

Her life had gone from colorless to vivid Technicolor, then back to shades of gray again.

Rain streaked down the tall glass panes as Carrie stood alone, staring out the window of the waiting area outside the consulate’s office at the U.S. embassy in Jakarta.

She still couldn’t believe she was in Indonesia. Or that Cav was in conference with the consulate, arranging her passage back home.

Home. The concept was abstract to the max, even though she’d spoken to her parents a short while ago, fighting tears as they’d wept openly with relief.

She didn’t feel relief yet. She still felt numb disbelief. Less than twelve hours ago she’d been outrunning soldiers with big guns, flying through the air at the end of a very long rope before being set carefully back on the ground, then hustled into a helicopter by men she’d never met but now owed her life to.

Reed. Black. Green. Colter. Friends of Cav’s. Friends of Wyatt, who had orchestrated their action-adventure-movie rescue from thousands of miles away in the United States.

Life in living color.

She folded her arms beneath her br**sts and sighed deeply. It was what she’d wanted: a little excitement, a little color. Well. She’d gotten way more than she’d bargained for.