“Sorry,” she said firmly. “I’m flattered, but I’m an old-fashioned girl.” She hadn’t been, not until Beck.
“Me, too. War makes people forward….”
“I bet you’ve got a girl in every port. Isn’t that the Navy way?”
“Yep. But on board this bird, I don’t. Just so you’ll know there’s no hard feelings, I’m going to appoint myself your personal bodyguard for the duration—you have any problems, you come directly to me with them. Rafic thinks very highly of you and that’s an automatic rating in my book.”
Just then one of the commandos came toward them, crouching as he got closer: “Sir, somebody on board’s using electronics that are fouling up the pilot’s instruments.” The commando was eyeing her steadily.
Her hand went to her watch, cradling it. She didn’t know whether to surreptitiously turn it off or explain.
Mac said, “Shit, I thought we searched that bunch,” rising into a crouch. Then she tugged at his sleeve and he looked at her over his shoulder and shook his head infinitesimally. “I’ll handle this, Lieutenant. You stay here with the lady.”
Uncertain as to what she was supposed to do, she tapped the winding stem which would silence her watch’s homing device and wriggled sideways so that the Delta commando would have room to sit without touching her.
He had longish hair and a short beard and through it he said, “Old Prick’s going to have our butts for breakfast tomorrow about this, lady. If you’re one of Rafic’s little girls, make my life easy—turn whatever you’ve got off before we crash into some damn tree or a mountain peak. This is no terrain for a three-day hike with a hot wind blowing.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Lieutenant,” she said and saw from his narrowing eyes that he didn’t believe her but that for some reason his esteem for her was increased.
Almost immediately, after talking quietly to each dignitary in turn, Mac came back and said: “All taken care of, Lieutenant. And it’s time all of us rejoined the others. Miss Patrick is from The New York Times and she’s got work to do that had better not include interviews with any of us.”
“Sir.” The Delta commando scrambled away from her and forward, and she followed. Mac was right: she had work to do.
But without using her tape recorder, Mac warned her: “The old way—take notes. That’s an order.”
She didn’t ask why, and since no one mentioned the electronics Elint had given her again, she assumed she’d done the right thing. The most infuriating part of dealing with these people was that they hardly ever told you anything. It was as if declarative sentences were against their religion.
The dignitaries weren’t much better: Zenko Tsutsumi’s eyes were bloodshot; the little Japanese was still upset over what he’d seen the day before and every time the intercom crackled with instructions to look to their left or right, he started in his seat. Nacht, the IMF ComBloc rep, was bellicose and defensive, spewing the party line at her whenever she asked a question. Najeeb Thabet was obviously in fear for his life, twisting his fingers in his lap, the knuckles fish-white against his dark Mediterranean skin. And the Saudi prince and Dugard from NATO were involved in a long, unpleasant wrangle about how much of the burden of rebuilding the US would be taken on NATO’s shoulders and how much borne by the Arab League.
She should have recorded all of that, and since she couldn’t, her fingers and wrist soon numbed as she took longhand notes.
Every so often, when she looked up, she caught one of the Delta commandos staring at her and was glad Mac had gone to the trouble of demonstrating his personal interest in her. She tried to tell herself that she was the only female aboard and thus the most interesting thing to look at and that they meant no harm, but she was uncomfortable under their scrutiny. They sat so still, with their shooters’ eyes resting on her like a target. She was glad she wasn’t.
To cheer herself up, she thought about the serum again—she’d never get cancer; she’d survive all this and set up housekeeping with Marc Beck. It would happen; she’d make it happen.
Hours wore on, the drone of the rotors and the disconcerting banking of the helicopter as it swooped low to show the occasional functioning hamlet making her stomach queasy, until well after noon, when the Delta team started to bring out sandwiches and Thabet complained that he was airsick as it was and couldn’t eat unless they put down on solid ground.
Mac handed him a Dramamine without a word.
Thabet took it, turning the tablet in his fingers until one of the Deltas handed him a canteen.
As he put it to his lips, one of the pilots in the cockpit called out, “Mac, you’d better take a look at this—I’ve got a visual on a non-registering bogey at fifty feet, underflying radar, headed our way just like trouble!”
Mac unfolded himself with uncanny speed and, crouched low, headed for the flight deck, where the pilots were now whispering together in an urgent undertone.
One of the Deltas stumbled to the window in the sliding door as the chopper veered suddenly and said, “Aw, shit.”
Somebody on the flight deck called out: “Incoming! ”
Then an explosion rocked the Black Hawk and flame spouted before Chris Patrick’s eyes.
She had time for a momentary indrawn breath which brought fire into her lungs and to throw herself backwards as her vision registered a final image: flung bodies as silhouettes before an orange fireball.
Then she was falling, along with the tail-section of the Black Hawk, toward the trees, unconscious.
When she woke, she wished she hadn’t. It was nearly impossible to breathe and something wet kept spouting up in her throat, choking her.
She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Her left arm was pinned under something and no matter how she tried she couldn’t free it to activate the homing device on her left wrist; her right leg felt as if it were being twisted from her body.
Sitting up was out of the question; she was trapped. She’d never experienced so much pain. She’d never thought you could hurt that much and still be alive.
Mostly, she wanted to clear her throat, take a deep breath, but she couldn’t do either. Whatever was welling up in her throat was salty and it just kept coming. After an interval, when she realized the gurglings she was hearing were coming from her, she decided that she was choking in her own blood.
She wondered how long it was going to take her to die. Then she tried to call Beck’s name. Nothing came out but awful retching sounds, like a dying animal.
Then she thought about Jerusalem and everything she’d almost had.
And that caused her to remember that she had a side arm and that all she had to do was pull it out and thumb off the safety and it wouldn’t hurt any more.
Her limbs were beginning to twitch of their own accord by the time she got it out of the holster; her body seemed like someone else’s, but that person was in terrible pain.
She really wanted to say goodbye to Beck, to see him leaning over her, just in time, to have him stare at her in that way he had and tell her that everything was going to be all right. Even now, if he did that, she’d believe him and take the gun barrel out of her mouth.
But he didn’t come.
Though Chris didn’t know it, she was all alone on a Kentucky hillside except for dead bodies and pieces of helicopter and a sick horse that hid among the trees, flanks quivering, where it had run when the helicopter had exploded above its head.