Page 51 of D-Day

They made good progress, until he sensed someone pacing alongside them. He yanked Helen to the ground, shielding her while he scanned every inch of the terrain in front and behind them.

There were three of them, but when he took them out, more would come. His keen eyes saw that they weren’t wearing uniforms, which meant they were NPA. He leaned close toHelen. “When I signal,” he said into her ear, “I want you to run and keep running.”

She gripped his forearm. “Alone? Without you?” Her breathing accelerated, and she squeezed her eyes closed, swallowing hard.

His chest tightened. “You have to, Helen. Everything depends on it.”

“Drew—” Their eyes met and between one heartbeat and the next, he felt her love like a beacon and knew that his heart would never beat as hard for anyone else. He forced his attention to the threat at hand. “Get ready.”

Helen eased away, and he took aim at his targets, adjusted his stance. Blindly, he reached behind himself, and Helen gripped his hand for an instant, quick and tight.

“Go,” he growled, taking out three targets in three successive shots as Helen bolted into the dangerous night.

Helen’s heartwas pounding as the gunfire exploded behind her. Her feet pounded on the jungle floor. She batted away branches and prayed that he would survive. He had to come back to her. A hundred yards away or so, she stopped to catch her breath, then pressed on. She didn’t get more than a few feet when someone stepped into her path, grabbed her arm and pulled her behind a tree.

Helen fought against the small, but strong hands. “It’s me. Stop fighting,” Dragonlady’s breath hissed out.

Helen sagged against the back of the tree in relief. Chinese, foreign operative, the enemy, she didn’t care. This woman knew her way around a fight, and Helen could use her expertise.

“Where is D-Day?”

“I think they have him,” Helen cried softly, the horror of that statement sinking in like a hammer to her bones. She only had an inkling of what her brother did, but now she knew the full force of the man he was, and the ones he fought with, and she was humbled as hell. He and his brothers had a capacity for violence, but that was only part of the equation. Each of them was an individual fighting machine that made up parts of their team. Together they formed a lethal unit, and together they went into the bullets without flinching. But now she also had the benefit of knowing one SEAL intimately, every aspect of him rife with determination, courage—scads and scads of that, and a dedication that was part of every fiber of his body. He was a part of her, and even though she wasn’t in the military, there was no way she was leaving her man behind.

“The triggers?” She took a hard breath, cordite heavy in the air, mixing with a faint breeze of green, moss, and earth.

“I have them, but I’m not leaving him to die out here” she said, pulling the weapon he’d given her from the waistband of her pants. “I’ve already been forced to do that, and it’s not happening with the man I love.”

Dragonlady studied her face and sighed. “Definitely not just a pretty face,” she said, sighing more heavily. “You want to take the very weapons we’re trying to keep out of the NPA’s hands into whatever hellhole they are taking your man?”

“You take them, then. Get them safely out of here. I’m not leaving.”

“Give them to me.”

Helen slipped off the pack, pulled out the small case and handed it over.

“Just like that, huh?”

“You could have killed us numerous times, and you protected us from the NPA by getting us out of Lando’s compound. I trust that you are dedicated to preventing the kind of devastationinherent in those devices. So, yeah, I trust you out of desperate necessity.”

Dragonlady smiled. “You never cease to amaze me,” she said. She walked to a particularly thick area of foliage and started digging with a piece of sharp bark. When she had a hole big enough, she turned toward Helen. Holding up a thumb drive, she said, “This has all the intel you’ll need to track down the creator of those triggers. We don’t need him loose and making any more.” She released the latches on the case and dropped the device inside. “When we get your guy free, you can come back here and dig them up. That will keep them safe if something happens to us.” She ripped off a piece of her green T-shirt and tied it around one of the stalks, smoothing out the ground with the flat of her hands, then she set several rocks over the disturbed earth. She swiped her hands against the sides of her pants as she rose.

“I’m not buying that you’re doing this for China. What’s the catch?”

“My mom and sister live here. If the NPA uses those triggers…well, you get the picture.”

Helen nodded.

“So, can you fire that thing with any precision?”

Helen brought it up and pointed it at her, then fired. The bullet went past her and into the man sneaking up on them. Dragonlady whipped around, noted the neat head shot, even as Helen turned and released the meager contents of her stomach onto the rich jungle floor.

Helen swallowed the bile in her mouth, her stomach queasy, but settling. She’d just killed a man.

“Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

“Wyoming. I was raised on a ranch.”

“Hmmm, okay, cowgirl. Let’s saddle up and get operation petticoat started.”

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