Close Pursuit. Cindy Dees

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СКАЧАТЬ she answered with conviction. “They may be wearing civilian clothing and rebel colors, but no way are those regular soldiers.”

      A barrage of machine-gun fire exploded from over her right shoulder, and she jumped violently. Where had that come from? She craned her head to the right and spotted the muzzle flash up the valley a little ways. A very little ways. The weapon rat-a-tatted loudly, and the soldiers at the river hit the deck, diving for cover.

      This was nuts. She was standing in the freaking middle of a no-kidding combat zone. The unreality of it struck her forcefully. She might have wanted adventure, but she didn’t do combat. This was a bad dream. She was going to wake up any minute and it was all going to go away.

      Alex joined her in the doorway, and she pointed out the action quickly. “Locals have the soldiers pinned down for the moment, but those troops will send out a patrol to flank the gunners and take out the position. The patrol will have to pass right by here to get to the gun,” she whispered frantically.

      He nodded in quick agreement with her assessment and breathed, “Time to go.” He picked up a rucksack from the floor just inside the door and shouldered it. “Get the girl and follow me. I’ll find us a route up the mountain.”

      Katie whirled and ran to the laboring girl. “We have to leave.”

      The girl stared up at her in disbelief.

      “I know. But we’re about to get overrun by soldiers who will shoot first and ask questions later. I’ll help you.”

      Awkwardly, the patient sat up. Katie wedged a shoulder under her armpit and levered the unwieldy girl to her feet. A moan escaped her. Alex slipped outside and turned to the left, toward the advancing soldiers. Better them than the local gunners, Katie supposed, given that they had a laboring girl in tow. Although the soldiers would probably be inclined to shoot her and Alex for rendering medical aid to the locals anyway. Because it was such a huge crime to help innocent girls give birth to tiny, future terrorists, she thought bitterly.

      Alex jumped up on the boulder beside their tent. The laboring girl reached up, and, with Katie hoisting from below and him pulling from above, they got her up onto the outcropping. What scrub there was up here was sparse and mostly dead. They had to rely on rocks and terrain for what little cover they could find.

      Seeking cover and ways up the nearly impassable terrain, Alex doubled back to them often when one route dead-ended out and he had to find another. Katie put an arm around the girl’s shoulders to steady her as they moved a few dozen yards up the steep slope. Without warning, the girl bent over, breath hissing between her teeth as she grasped her swollen belly. She devolved into a fit of coughing interspersed with low moans of pain.

      Alex looked over his shoulder impatiently as Katie and the girl fell behind. He slid back down the gravel-strewn slope to them, pistol in hand, to wait out the contraction. Finally, the girl exhaled and nodded. They resumed picking their way up the hill.

      During the girl’s next contraction, Katie looked over her shoulder down the valley. She couldn’t see the unidentified, definitely military, patrol headed their way, but she could feel it as surely as she felt the girl’s fingers digging painfully into her forearm. A few more coughing breaths and the girl nodded once more.

      They were able to go maybe thirty feet up the mountain between each contraction. It was agonizingly slow, particularly when the gun emplacement lit up once more. Sure enough, soldiers down the hill fired back. At least a half-dozen weapons returned fire in a wide arc that would roll right over their tent any second.

      They were maybe a hundred yards from their shelter when another contraction gripped the girl. This one drove her to her knees, and she doubled over, grasping her belly. “I have to push,” the girl grunted.

      “Not yet,” Alex snapped under his breath when Katie translated the girl’s words.

      Katie relayed his order, but the girl shook her head. “You’ll die if we have to leave you out here,” Katie whispered frantically. “A few more minutes. We’ll find a place to hide and then you can push.”

      “I can’t go any farther,” the girl moaned.

      “Keep her quiet, or we’ll all die,” Alex bit out.

      “I’m trying,” Katie retorted, panic climbing into her throat.

      The girl’s contraction passed, and Katie heaved her to her feet. They made it only a dozen yards before the girl collapsed again, groaning into her hand pressed over her mouth.

      Shouting erupted below them. Katie looked down as a burst of flame lit the night. The soldiers had just torched their tent. Cold terror washed over her. What if they hadn’t left when they did? They’d be dead right now. The rebels probably had mistaken it for a local headquarters of some kind. The more immediate problem, though, was the wash of firelight illuminating the entire hillside.

      “Get down,” Alex ordered, yanking Katie and the girl down behind a waist-high boulder. A barrage of machine-gun fire raked the mountainside close enough to make Katie flatten herself to the ground.

      Fear like she’d never known before roared through her. They were going to die. The three of them were not soldiers. They were barely armed, they had no gear and their only escape was up a forbidding mountain that only a seasoned climber—or a mountain goat—would attempt to scale.

      Another drone flew past, barely higher than eye level, raking the ground with gunfire from a pair of machine guns mounted on its belly.

      The girl’s hands clamped around Katie’s elbow just then and squeezed so tight the circulation in her hand felt entirely cut off. “Uh, Alex,” she whispered. “This girl’s going to deliver pretty soon.”

      Alex had picked up a few phrases in the local dialect, and he used one now, biting it out succinctly. “Don’t push.”

      “Can’t...stop...” the girl ground out from behind clenched teeth.

      Katie translated grimly.

      “We have to keep moving,” Alex whispered in English. “We’re not out of the line of fire, and the patrol will sweep the area looking for whoever was in that tent.”

      They would never outrun highly mobile soldiers. Katie shook her head in disbelief and denial, but it made no difference. He was right. She told the panting girl, “Crawl if you have to, but keep moving. Do you understand me?”

      “I can’t,” the girl wailed under her breath.

      It was becoming a familiar refrain, but Katie replied fiercely, “Find a way. I’ll drag you if I have to.”

      Katie had to give the girl credit. She pushed up to her knees, moved her burka aside and staggered up the hill after Alex, using her hands for support on the steep hillside before her. She fell twice, and each time Katie bodily lifted the girl back to her feet. The next time they dived for cover, though, the girl’s breathing changed. An element of really sharp pain entered her gasping breaths.

      “She really can’t go on,” Katie told Alex. In a flash of mortar fire, Katie saw the frustration and futility that passed across his face. He nodded, though, and angled off to the right.

      It was only a half-dozen yards to where he stopped and waved for them to join him, but Katie didn’t think she and the girl were ever going to make it СКАЧАТЬ