Page 67 of The Woman Left Behind

“But I’m here,” Jina whispered into the night. “Don’t leave me.”

Twenty

Jina scrambled out of the wadi, no longer caring if she was exposed to anyone at the ruin who might have been looking for her. The fire had burned down to a much smaller blaze now and was farther off than she’d thought it would be. Wildly she looked around, but without Tweety and the laptop she couldn’t pinpoint the guys’ location, and without the night-vision goggles she had only the starlight to see by.

She could hear the guys in her ear, as if she were there with them. They made litters with the materials they had at hand, scavenged from the bodies of those they’d been in the firefight with, and within an impossibly short length of time they were moving. Boom and Jelly were carrying Voodoo, Snake and Trapper were carrying Crutch, and Levi was on point. They would swap out positions, to give each of them in turn a rest.

She tried yelling, only to find that the dust she’d inhaled had scratched her throat so much she couldn’t get much volume. They were too far away to hear, anyway, but she tried.

They were gone.They were gone.

She was alone.

They’d left her.

The realization was like a knife, slicing into her gut. Knowing why they had—two of the team were seriously wounded, and they had to get them out—that was accepted by her logic. Her heart, though, felt as if a giant hand was squeezing her. They’d left her behind, hadn’t even sent someone back to check.

She was the least valuable member of the team.

Knowing that and feeling it were two different things, and feeling it was shattering.

Despite the heat her teeth chattered, and her breath hitched in her throat. They thought she was likely dead, but they hadn’t checked and now shewoulddie. She had no weapon, no water, no shelter. She would die out here tomorrow, or the next day, assuming someone didn’t capture her and she thought she’d rather die first, all things considered.

Mom!The single word echoed in her brain, brought all of them, her family, into sharp focus. They would never know exactly what happened to her, never have a body to bury. At best they’d be told that her remains were unrecoverable.

But the guys hadn’t even tried. They’d left her behind.

No!She had to get past that, push it away. She couldn’t just stand here and wait to die, she had to do something, and she couldn’t function if she let herself get sucked into despair. They’d done what they had to do. Now she had to do whatshehad to do.

Inaction wasn’t an option. She refused to accept defeat, refused to give up. She had a chance, because she knew where they were going, knew the coordinates of the secondary exfil point.

Willfully she fought down the thought-clouding panic; she needed every brain cell she had to get out of this alive. Not only did she know where they were going, but she had that damn compass in her cargo pocket, because months ago, almost a year now, they had insisted she learn it, use it, keep it with her, because sometimes phones and GPS didn’t work. Like now.

“I can do this,” she said aloud, and hoped she wasn’t lying to herself.

Cautiously she slid back down into the wadi and pulled out her little penlight, something else the guys had impressed on her to always keep with her—not in a bag, not nearby, butwithher, just like the compass. They might have left her behind, but perhaps they’d also given her the means to survive.

She had to plot her course. She had nothing to write on other than the ground, and her finger to scratch in the sand with, but she could do this. She opened the compass, figured the variables, and set her course, as much in her head as in the scratching on the ground. Then she stood and rubbed her boot over the scratches, because she didn’t want to give anyone who might look for her in the morning, in daylight, an idea where she had gone.

If she let herself think about what she had to do, she’d be defeated before she even started, because this was so much more than she’d ever asked of herself before. She took some deep breaths, both calming herself and gearing up for what she had to do, then climbed out of the wadi again, and set out across the desert in a trot.

Panic lurked, nipping at her heels. She wanted to run, she wanted to set a blistering pace across the sand, but she couldn’t. She shoved it down, forced herself to focus on what was real, on the now and perhaps the next five minutes. If she thought about the future, or the what-ifs, then she was done.

Reality was that she was in the dark and she didn’t dare turn on the penlight to see better, because not only would she use up the battery way before daylight, but if any unfriendlies were out there, the light would pinpoint her location for them. Light was visible for long distances, even tiny pinpoints of light.

But—what if the guys were close enough they could see the light, too? Would they investigate?

They might shoot her. They had their NVDs, but the range of their weapons was greater than the visual range of the NVDs.

There was no safe way to reunite with them en route. She had to get to the secondary location.

She had to keep going. Focus, push, keep going. Set a steady, easy pace, and keep going.

The heat and the night and the wind pressed down on her. Even at a trot, soon sweat was pouring off her. Her lungs burned, her mouth was cotton dry. No matter how easy the pace, in this kind of heat she needed water, water that she didn’t have and had no way of finding. Without water, she had no chance of surviving the daytime heat.

Do this or die. Do this or die.

She stepped on a rock that slid out from under her foot and she went down, sprawled on the sandy, rocky ground. Her fingerless gloves protected her palms, but her knees scraped. She ignored the pain, got up, resumed her pace.

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