Close Pursuit

Crud. Mental math required. Twelve times two was twenty-four, times two was forty-eight. “That’s almost even odds in three days,” she blurted.

“Like I said. Two days from now, we’re out of here.”

“Should we leave tonight?” she asked in alarm.

“We should certainly think about starting packing.”

Awesome. Maybe he would be so tired after packing up tonight he wouldn’t want to collect his winnings. Although, part of her—a tiny part—was curious about what sex with him would be like. He seemed really sure of himself when the subject came up. Would he be gentle or fierce? Vanilla or...not? He probably wouldn’t fumble about clumsily; she would bet a hundred bucks he knew his way around the female body very well, indeed.

She dived into the task of packing with gusto. As long as she was moving, he couldn’t have his wicked way with her. For his part, he busied himself with the boxes of medical gear, hauling them one by one down to the Land Rover. To date he’d never let her look inside any of them. When she’d asked about them, he’d only shrugged and said he’d crack them open if and when they needed the supplies inside. Whatever was in the boxes was heavy. Alex moved carefully down the hill in the darkness before the moon came up.

She’d just gotten back from carrying down a bag of miscellaneous camping gear they could do without for the next day when an explosion ruptured the night.

“Uh, Alex?” she said quietly. “That was pretty close.”

She jumped when his voice came out of the gloom right behind her. “No more than a half mile.”

And how, exactly, did a physician know how to judge distance on artillery fire? She opened her mouth to ask him, but another explosion, even closer, silenced her. Alex’s arm went around her waist as he sprinted up the hill and all but threw her past him into the tent.

She tried to ask him what the heck that had been for, but his hand went over her mouth as he yanked her back against his hard body. Heat seeped through her clothing, and had she not been straining to hear what had flipped him out, she might have relished it. But as it was, she stood tense and silent in his arms.

There it was. The sound of people moving down by the river. Maybe a half-dozen by the sounds of their scuffling. A voice floated up the hill...a male voice...saying something in the local dialect about engaging the rebels in the lower pass.

Alex backed up, dragging her with him, and sat down on the cot in the back of the tent, which had the effect of landing her in his lap. She lurched as his hot breath touched her right ear. And then, oh, man, his lips moved against it.

“We’re going to have to wait out the battle until it moves on, and then we’ll bug out of here. We’ll take whatever supplies we can carry in one trip down the mountain. But until then, no lights and no sound. Understood?”

She nodded and felt her hair moving against his cheek. His hand fell away from her mouth, and he lifted her off his lap.

He stood and moved into the corner. When he came back, he pressed something cold and heavy into her hand. She recognized the rough grip and heft of a pistol.

“Do you know how to use this?” he breathed.

She ran her fingers over the weapon in the dark. “Luger .22 with an extended clip. Standard model. Check.” She loaded the clip he passed her, clicked off the safety and rested her index finger beside the trigger guard as she laid the weapon in her lap.

“You can tell the make and model just by feel?” Alex blurted. He added grimly, “If we get out of here alive, you and I need to talk.”

His right hand rested by his side, presumably with a weapon in it, as well. She shivered a little, belatedly registering that the night was growing cold around them quickly without their propane heater to ward off the chill. He held out his left arm, barely visible in the dark, and she accepted the invitation gratefully.

He tucked her close against his side. His body was solid and warm, and she had to admit she found it reassuring to cuddle up against him. A shell whistled overhead, and a tremendous explosion nearby sent dust raining down on them in the brief illumination.

How long they sat there listening to the artillery barrage blasting the valley to smithereens, she didn’t know. An hour, maybe. The explosions ebbed and flowed, sometimes close and sometimes farther away. Small-arms fire announced that the rebels and local ground forces were engaging in direct combat close by.

She heard the high-pitched engine whine again. Another drone. But this time, the scream of its engine was followed immediately by the sound of ordnance exploding in airbursts nearby. An attack drone? Who in the hell had access to that kind of weaponry out here?

Yet another whistling scream pierced the night. A big explosion deafened Katie as a flash illuminated the darkness. She looked up and a little scream escaped her when she saw a black figure looming in the doorway of their tent. She yanked up her pistol to shoot the intruder, but Alex was faster. He slammed his hand over her pistol, shoving it down to the cot before she could pull the trigger.

What the—

He was on his feet, moving as quickly as a cat to the shadow in the door. He took the person by the arm and guided him or her inside.

It dawned on Katie that the shadow was much shorter than Alex. And clothed in voluminous robes. Crap. She’d almost shot a local woman.

“Talk to her,” Alex ordered low. “But keep it quiet.”

Katie nodded and waited out a momentary lull in the shooting. As a spray of small-arms fire started up again, she used the noise to murmur, “Can we help you?”

“My baby. It comes,” a young voice moaned.

“Then you’ve come to the right place,” Katie replied. “Lay down here, and Doctor Alex will take care of you.”

“Keep her dressed,” Alex ordered when Katie reached for the hem of the girl’s burka.

“Why?”

“We may need to move her.” He sat down at the foot of the cot to examine the patient with a flashlight he shielded with his hand.

“But she’s having a baby,” Katie replied blankly.

“Haven’t you ever watched Gone with the Wind?” he retorted. “Babies don’t care if the city is burning down around Mom. They come when they come.”

“This isn’t Atlanta, nor is it the nineteenth century,” Katie whispered back. She’d watched enough women struggle with all their might to push out babies over the past two weeks to understand that during the middle of childbirth was no time to move a patient.

“Tell that to the soldiers out there,” Alex retorted from between the girl’s knees. “She’s dilated eight centimeters. Time her contractions for me.”

Ten centimeters was the magic number when Alex allowed women to start pushing. Some women went from eight to ten in a half hour. A few had taken hours to get there. Katie waited in tense silence for the girl’s next contraction to start and end.

“Three minutes apart, one minute in duration,” she reported in the rumbling aftermath of some sort of incoming missile.

“We’ve probably got a little time then,” Alex remarked. “Stay with her. I’ll be back.”

Shocked, Katie watched him glide outside the tent and disappear into the night.

“Where—” the girl blurted in alarm.

Katie shushed her hastily. “He’ll be back. He’s just checking the battle. Stay as quiet as you can.”

“Cursed, greedy Tatars,” the girl muttered. “They think to destroy us. They are demons who rape our land. Steal the food from our mouths. Poison the wells, salt the fields. I curse them all unto the end of time—” She devolved into the local cough.

Katie frowned, not understanding the Tatar reference. Weren’t they nomadic raiders from southern Russia from the time of, oh, Genghis Khan? The girl’s language sounded old. Religious in nature. But clan rivalries and tribal feuding had been going on out here as long as humans had lived in these barren mountains. It was a revealing glimpse into mankind’s violent and harsh past. Frankly, she found it miraculous that humans had survived their own homicidal tendencies to populate the planet.

In the flashes of artillery explosions, the girl looked to be in her late teens. And pretty. Really pretty. Her eyes were big and dark and doe-shaped, her black hair lush around a heart-shaped face that high-fashion models would envy. It seemed strange, though, that a girl this young would have made her way to Alex by herself.

“Does anyone know you’re here?” Katie whispered to the girl.

Fear made the girl’s eyes even bigger as she shook her head vigorously. “My family does not know I am pregnant.”

Katie stared. “How is that possible?”