She hit the fourth gunman squarely in the head, knocking him down and back, giving Thomas a clear shot.
“Tasha, get down!” Thomas shouted as he fired—three down, one to go—but she was ahead of him, already diving toward the same tree that now sheltered Ted.
It was a miracle she hadn’t been killed—that third and final hostile was out there somewhere, hiding. Somehow, in the chaos, Thomas had lost track of him, goddamn it—a potentially deadly mistake.
“Thomas, Ted’s unconscious and there’s so much blood!” Tasha’s voice was strained as Thomas crept forward, searching for a glint of the thin, fading sunlight on a rifle barrel, listening for the sound of stressed-out, ragged breathing.
“Use your towel-scarf as a tourniquet,” he called back. “Tie it tight, between the wound and his heart.”
“Please hurry. The man I hit had a walkie-talkie,” Tasha told him. “He called for backup.”
And there it was—movement in the brush in front of him. A branch, trembling. Thomas took careful aim and...
But Tasha shouted, her voice sharp in the stillness: “Behind you!”
As he was turning, muzzle flashes exploded—two of them, simultaneously, shots ringing out—not from behind him but from the cover of the brush way up ahead of him, just this side of the ridgeline.
In that split second, as he braced for bullets to tear into his body from all directions, time seemed to stop and he knew it was over. He was dead. “Tasha, run!” he shouted.
Because the attacker’s cavalry had arrived.
He’d failed at this, the most important mission of his entire life.
But in that split second, he knew one thing for goddamn sure: he was going down fighting. And maybe, just maybe he could buy the time for Tasha—his achingly beautiful, vibrant, funny, perfect-for-him Tash—to get away and hide.
In that split second, he raised his rifle to take out the last man in the patrol—only to watch the gunman fall, pushed back and down. Killed by the shots fired from the ridgeline, from bullets that had gone just over Thomas’s head.
He’d take that good luck and double it. He turned back toward the gunmen on the ridge, ready to hold them off for as long as he possibly could. He shouted again, “Tasha, run!”
But the brush on the ridgeline parted to reveal two men with their hands and their weapons held up for him to see as one of them shouted down to him, “Hold your fire, LT, it’s Rio and Dave!”
Rio.
And Dave.
It was, absolutely, his teammate, his BUD/S swim buddy, Rio Rosetti and... yeah, that was Dave Patterson up there, too.
The gunman behind him hadn’t been killed by luck and friendly fire.
His teammates had taken him out, saving Thomas’s life.
He’d made a nearly fatal mistake by losing track of that last gunman, but that was okay. He was okay. Tasha was okay. They were gonna be okay.
Because the cavalry that had arrived in the literal nick of time were U.S. Navy SEALs.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Were you hit?” Thomas shouted at Tash as he came sliding in to help with Ted, exactly at the same time she shouted, “Are you hurt?” to him.
“No!” They shouted back at each other, in close to unison, with Tasha adding, “Run? Seriously? You really thought I would run?” But she didn’t wait for him to respond because: “That man I hit—he had a walkie-talkie. He called for backup. We need to get out of here.”
What she really wanted to do was to throw herself into Thomas’s arms, and maybe even cry a little in relief that he was okay—that they were going to be okay, because oh my God Rio Rosetti and Dave Patterson had appeared out of the blue, like some kind of twin SEAL deus ex machina. Instead she scrambled back, to give Thomas more space to assess the damage to Ted’s leg. There was so much blood, but he loosened and then even removed the tourniquet she’d tied.
“The bleeding’s not that bad,” Thomas told her as he worked. “Small caliber bullet—I have no idea how that happened—the hostiles all had rifles. The good news is there’s a clean exit wound—and the bullet didn’t hit bone. The breaks in his tibia and fibula—down near his ankle—must’ve happened when he fell.”
“Did he hit his head?” she asked. Ted was still unconscious. She’d checked for a bump or contusion—or God, another bullet wound—but had found nothing.
Thomas did the same now, too, and shook his head. “He was alert before—I think he passed out from the pain. I wasn’t gentle when I moved him back here.”
Understandably.
He glanced up, tossing a terse “Rosetti, make sure Tasha wasn’t shot,” over his shoulder to Rio, who’d come to assist.
Thomas clearly didn’t trust her to accurately assess her own physical health, and she couldn’t really blame him. It had only been a few short hours since she’d failed to notice that she’d been shot—ish—in her arm. For all Thomas knew, she had a long-standing habit of not-noticing when she was wounded and bleeding.
“Nice to see you, too, LT,” Rio said as he signaled for Tash to turn in a circle while he checked her for bullet holes. He beckoned her closer, leaning in to stare hard into her eyes, looking for signs of shock, as he reported, “We got an SUV parked just down the mountain; gravel road on the other side of the perimeter fence. Tasha’s good.”
Out of all of Thomas’s friends and teammates, Tash had always found Rio to be the most annoying. In the past, he’d teased Thomas mercilessly about having a teenaged best friend, but Tasha currently didn’t have even the slightest urge to punch him.
In fact, she’d never been more glad to see him, ever, in her entire life.
True, two SEALs and an SUV were a far cry from the swarm of helos Thomas predicted would be coming on that very first night they’d huddled together for warmth in their very first hide. But she had zero complaints.
Rio gave them a swift rundown of why the rescue op was limited as Thomas swiftly fashioned a splint for Ted’s broken leg, using the fleece belt from his “pants” to tie it in place.
A series of attacks by homegrown terrorists in several U.S. cities meant that the helos and their crews were a little busy. Also, all nonessential flights had been—and were still—shut down. Rio and Dave had driven cross-country—three thousand miles—to get to Maine, at the request of Uncle Alan, who was fine, but also busy.
Very, very busy.
“What are you wearing?” Rio asked incredulously as the “pants” sagged down to Thomas’s thighs, revealing the cheerful red plaid he wore beneath.
“Long story,” Thomas said shortly. “You got a med kit with painkiller? Morphine, ketamine?”
“Good idea,” Rio said. “Ketamine will make those pants look so much better—oh, you meant for the prince.” He got serious. “Med kit’s in the SUV. We got fence cutters, too, LT.”
“We need to move.” Thomas raised his voice. “Patterson!”
Dave appeared almost instantly. “Yes, sir. Hey, Tash. Everything’s still quiet out there, but we probably shouldn’t linger. But while I was taking photos of the scene for my new FBI overlords, I found this.” He held out a small handgun. “I think maybe it’s Prince Tedric’s...?”