Page 58 of Lethal Pursuit

He straightened to look down into her face. “You’re in no condition to walk.” She wasn’t in any condition to be standing, as far as he was concerned.

Her lips pressed together for a moment. “I’m walking out of here.”

She didn’t want anyone to see her weak and helpless. Jackson understood that. But he also wasn’t going to allow her pride to place her or the rest of them in jeopardy. “I’ll let you walk until we’re out of sight of the village if you can get that far. But the moment you can’t keep up, you’re takin’ a ride over my shoulder.”

She gave a firm nod. “Fair enough.”

He let her exit the house ahead of him and brought up the rear, not taking any chances in case anyone in the village had it in his mind to take a shot at them on their way out of town. Luckily no onetried anything, and soon they had passed through the village to make their way down the sloping hill into another shallow valley.

So far Maya was keeping pace okay, but he could see the effort it cost her. A few times she paused to cough, and when she walked he could hear the wheezing quality of her breaths. The accessory breathing muscles in her neck stood out in sharp relief as she gasped. Over the next thirty minutes, the space between them and Sandberg started to increase. At the top of the next rise Sandberg paused to look back, and when he saw how far behind they were, he set Haversham down to have a rest.

Maya saw it and pushed herself even harder, determination stamped all over her face. But the incline was too much for her. Partway up, a bad coughing spasm had her doubling over and going to her knees. Jackson reached out to catch her before she could topple over and waited only until she’d caught her breath before pulling her up. Her face was blanched of color, slick with sweat.

“No more hiking for you,” he told her, and bent to hoist her over his shoulders. She grunted in discomfort and wrapped her good arm around his chest to steady herself but didn’t try to argue. He could feel her shaking from pain and cold. Reaching the top of the hill, he took in the scene below him. The trail wound through the barren landscape like a dusty ribbon in the dun-colored soil, rising and falling with the landscape before it vanished around a bend in the distance.

“We have to hump it six klicks to the west-northwest, just before we hit that bend,” Sandberg said.

Jackson studied the topography, not loving what he was seeing. In addition to the boulder-strewn terrain and steep climbs they’d have to make, there were plenty of blind corners and other places where the enemy could be hiding. Not to mention the other potential concealment spots he couldn’t see.

Paying careful attention to his surroundings, Jackson started down the slope after Sandberg. The ground was littered with small rocks and pebbles, making it slippery, but he was more concerned with speed than he was about keeping his tracks to a minimum.

Small as she was, Maya was solid muscle and heavy for her size. Every few minutes he had to shift her to ease the strain on his backand shoulders, causing her further pain. He didn’t let himself think about the burn in his muscles or the distance they had to travel, because that was wasted mental effort and a self-defeating mindset. In the Pipeline, they’d taught him to be mentally tough and break seemingly impossible tasks into little ones, then focus on the immediate one at hand. He used that training now, breaking the march down into smaller sections marked by each short pause they took.

At the bend in the trail, they broke left and headed west-northwest. Jackson was winded from carrying Maya. He hated moving out in the open like this, but there was no way around it. The sun was fast approaching its zenith, beating down on them with surprising intensity, considering it was only early March. Sweat soaked his back and chest, his face and neck. At one point, Maya reached out with a corner of the blanket she’d unwrapped around her to dab at his face and forehead.

“You give good piggybacks,” she whispered close to his ear.

He swallowed a crack of laughter at that. “Had lots of practice,” he managed, his lungs working overtime with the added demand for oxygen from his muscles.

“You carry sick women around often?” Her voice was dry, the wheeze in her chest pronounced.

“This is a first,” he admitted. “Mostly guys in the field. And my nephews, o’course.” Who he couldn’t wait to get home to see. Had his sister found out he was missing and told the boys? They’d be devastated. He had to make it home and be with his family again. And he wanted Maya to go with him. “So, when we get back...” He paused a second to catch his breath. “Will you come visit my family with me?”

He felt her stiffen in surprise against his shoulders and she was silent for a long moment. “You want me to meet your family?”

“Yeah. They’d love you.” The boys would go nuts over her, a real-life American heroine. They’d build Maya Lego figurines in her honor. When she didn’t answer right away, he swore he could hear the wheels of suspicion turning in her head.

“I’ll...think about it.”

“You do that.” With her background, he knew she’d need time towrap her mind around that one, and he was okay with that as long as she consented in the end.

They took their next break in the shade of a small rock overhang. Sandberg looked as done in as Jackson felt. The guy was soaked in sweat as he dumped his ruck with a rough groan and bent to divvy up water and some protein bars. Jackson, Haversham and Maya wolfed them down, desperate for the nutrition and calories of any kind. Right then, Jackson was fantasizing about a big box full of Kit Kat bars he’d seen at the back of the Pat Tillman USO. He could do serious damage to that box right now.

All too soon it was time to head out again. He adjusted the M4 into place across his chest and reached for Maya, who backed up a step.

“I’ll walk for a bit.” Her cheeks had red flags of color on them and she’d just finished another coughing fit that had left her gasping and wheezing.

Jackson shook his head once. “Don’t even,” he warned and hauled her into the air, the muscles in his back and shoulders screaming in protest. She huffed out a pained breath and hung on to him with her good hand, her cheek resting on the back of his shoulder.

“Another two klicks, then we head due north until we hit the LZ,” Sandberg panted, stumbling a bit under Haversham’s weight. He quickly shot out a hand to steady himself against the rock wall and started off again. This time they kept to the shadows to conceal their movements, winding their way up a steep slope in their path.

Gritting his teeth, Jackson forced his burning quads and glutes to propel him and Maya upward, reaching out for a rock near the top to help get him the last few yards up. Sandberg was sucking wind too and didn’t look like he had much more in him, yet he set off down the hill without pausing, carrying a sweaty-faced Haversham safely down the other side. They did it two more times before finally reaching the next change in course.

A good twenty minutes later at the edge of a dry riverbed, Sandberg slid his wounded passenger off him and all but fell to his knees in the dust beside Haversham. He shrugged out of his ruck and bent forward to rest his weight on his hands while he tried to catch his breath, smoked from carrying his heavier passenger. Jackson setMaya down as gently as he could and went to one knee, head bowed, chest heaving, grateful that she weighed much less than the Sec Def.

“How much farther?” he gasped.

Sandberg had just opened his mouth to respond when a puff of dust erupted on the hillside in front of them, followed a split second later by the report of a high-powered rifle.

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