Part 28 (1/2)

Jamie watched him walk away, wis.h.i.+ng he didn't require so much energy. She shook her head to cast off the weight of his animosity, to ease the discomfort that had been part of every waking moment for seven months and now escalated too quickly into pain-a sign that she, too, needed rest.

Rotating her shoulder blades, she forestalled a fatigue she could almost taste. Not yet. As mission commander, first she must make sure these twenty-seven souls were secure. It would take a while.

She exhaled. Well, Corporal Gwynmorgan, not dead yet. The odds were still against them, but a bit less so. After this night, just a bit less so.

Nearly an hour pa.s.sed before Jamie finally had a chance to whisper to North Carolina, ”How's she doing?” A few meters away, half under mosquito netting, Lynn Hillinger cautiously experimented with a hammock.

North Carolina nodded. ”Okay, LT. Holding her own. She's pretty strong for a civvie.”

”Good. You keep her that way, Doc. We've got a long way to go.” Jamie gave the corpsman a slow nod, reminder of her special a.s.signment, the most important job of all: Get the senator back safe to our people.

North Carolina answered Jamie's nod by straightening almost to attention. ”Yes, ma'am!”

* 229 *

”And what about you, North Carolina?” Jamie asked.

”I'm good. Feels fi- ine to be able to really move around again.” North Carolina inspected Jamie in that way only corpsmen get away with. ”C'mon, LT ma'am, I got some chow for you over here. And I set up your hammock right next to me and the senator.”

”Yeah? Thanks, North Carolina.”

Jamie glanced over at Lynn, now perched precariously in the center of the hammock, clutching its edges. Amazed that Lynn would allow her hammock to be placed so close to a torturer's, Jamie approached hesitantly, ready to retreat if Lynn's eyes, Lynn's demeanor revealed repugnance or discomfiture or even just too much politeness.

”Don't tell me you've never been in a hammock before.” Lynn looked up, gauzy under the mosquito netting, and shook her head. ”Uh-uh, not this kind. Sort of wiggly, aren't they?” Hmm, that seems okay. Jamie slipped under the netting of a neighboring hammock and sat in it. ”It's more stable than you think.

Try lying back like this-”

Lynn complied, lumping into the middle of the hammock.

”That's it. Now straighten out and s.h.i.+ft your legs slightly left- good-and s.h.i.+ft your shoulders slightly right. See how you're angled just a little off-center and can lie pretty much flat?” Lynn beamed enthusiastically. ”I think I've got it!” Whereupon she spun horizontally-”Oh!”-right out of the hammock. Jamie whirled to slide underneath her just in time to catch her before she hit the ground.

”Generally,” Jamie deadpanned, ”we do that feet first.” She wondered if the woman wrapped in her arms could sense her pounding pulse, her desire to not let go.

”Yeah,” Lynn said, an appreciative grin creasing fine-chiseled features only inches from Jamie's face. ”I can certainly see why.” Lynn's look, Lynn's words, Lynn's touch felt like forgiveness.

* 230 *

Chapter tWenty-seven.

a real ChanCe n.o.body slept much or for long.

They were all uneasy-worried that they'd been tracked, worried that every pa.s.sing minute brought the enemy closer. Jamie urged them to rest, reminded them that the Chinese officer's scanner showed nothing, that they heard no helos. ”We wait 'til the heat and humidity crank up enough,” Jamie said. ”We need the habagat, people.

So sit tight.”

As the cave filled with stifled foreboding, Sherman lost it. ”What if there's no rain today at all?” Angry and too loud, he was only marginally in control himself. ”We should go now, dammit!” Jamie looked at him, incredulous at first, then with concern. He wasn't an insubordinate kind of guy, not even to a coyote one-lite, and certainly not to any kind of major. But he'd disobeyed orders when he punched the Chinese officer, and now his loss of control threatened the group's cohesion.

”Sit the f.u.c.k down, Sherman,” Donato said, ”and shut the f.u.c.k up.”

Sherman complied, staring forlornly at the cave floor.

”On me, Lieutenant,” Jamie murmured to him after a few minutes, then turned away from the others toward the darker recesses of the cave, where the bats lived. Sherman followed, his eyes hopping skittishly over the rough rock that arced above them.

”How many missions did you complete in the Palawan before you were captured, Mr. Sherman?”

He stood several inches taller and was at least forty pounds heavier than Jamie, who belligerently shoved her face upward into his. He * 231 *

leaned back, away from her, but his defiant jaw jutted, his eyes dared her, his huge hands formed fists.

Jamie stepped even closer, glaring up at him an inch from his nose.

”I asked you a question, Lieutenant!”

For a long moment, he glared back.

Jamie didn't move, and finally he stepped away. His shoulders curled and his eyes fell. ”I-I haven't completed any missions here. Got grabbed the first time out.”

”Well, Mr. Sherman, I've been here for almost two years. More than fifteen months of that in combat. Don't know how many missions.

Lost count a long f.u.c.king time ago. But there's one thing I have counted with great care: n.o.body I've been responsible for has been toasted.

n.o.body. And I'm not about to start letting it happen now because you get claustrophobic. So you get your f.u.c.king Annapolis act together right the f.u.c.k now and do what I G.o.dd.a.m.n tell you when I G.o.dd.a.m.n tell you. No more, no less. If you do not, mister, you will be the first person I lose, because I will blow your f.u.c.king brains out myself.” Sherman gaped at her.

”Do you read me, Lieutenant Sherman?” Jamie said, a band of heat clamping around her head. She stared at him hard. If you even breathe any of your s.h.i.+t at me, I will take you out right now, you f.u.c.ker. She moved her hand to the Chinese officer's pistol strapped to her belt.

”Yes, ma'am.”

”Yes ma'am the f.u.c.k what?” Jamie spit.

Sherman blinked and brought himself to attention, his eyes focused straight ahead. ”Yes, ma'am, I read the lieutenant loud and clear, ma'am!”

Jamie stepped back. ”Good. You're dismissed, Lieutenant Sherman.”

Just as Jamie returned from the back of the cave, a light rain began.

She looked at the noonday sky to find it filling fast with ominously dark clouds. Very soon, the rain would be a downpour.

”Okay, people, gather it up,” she called out. ”We move in ten.” By Jamie's reckoning, the cave just south of Mount Mantalingajan where months ago Marty Rhys had left supplies stood about nine hundred meters higher and seven klicks away. Getting there meant skirting three mountains, each requiring an arduous uphill climb followed by a knee-wrecking descent.

* 232 *

Their path continued to retrace the one Jamie had taken the previous autumn during Operation Repo. Soon they moved along a much narrower, far more rugged track than the previous night's more traveled trail. Barely visible to an inexperienced eye, it was entirely invisible from above without the ground-penetrating radar now hindered by wet ground.

As she led the way, Jamie had plenty to worry about. Thermal detectors would spot them unless they stayed under heavy vegetation.

In anything but rainy weather, they were easily detectable with look-down infrared and radar surveillance systems. Enemy satellites and maybe aircraft, too, might already be searching for their anomalously large group.