Page 100 of Deadly Strain

Sharp smiled gently. “You’re going to need all of us, darling. You’re the bug expert, but we’re the bad-guy exterminators.”

She glanced behind him and the team and said, “But—”

“You can’t talk us out of this,” Sharp explained. “We don’t know how Marshall is going to react when we get there. You need backup.”

“What about General Stone?”

“We’re going to recommend he leaves as soon as possible after we land.” Sharp waved a hand at the case of spray bottles, and Hernandez stepped forward to pick it up.

“Are you ready?” Sharp asked her.

“No,” she told him with a sigh. “But I guess I’m going anyway.”

Sharp offered her pack to her and she took it with a wry grimace. “I think I’m going to burn this thing when I get home.”

“There you go,” Sharp said, nudging her a little with one elbow. “Now you’re thinking ahead.” He led the way into the tunnel, and they began the trek toward the hatch at the other end. She fell in behind him.

“Why are you so cheerful?” she asked, frowning at him.

“It’s just nice to get out of the cave for a little while,” he said like he was some 1950s housewife.

She rolled her eyes. “Why is it, that when the danger is the highest, you get really silly? Like when you had to slap me out of my hysterics after our helicopter crash.”

“Dude,” Hernandez said, disapproval coloring his tone. “You slapped her?”

“No. I slipped a spare magazine for her Beretta into her back pocket.”

“Huh,” Smoke grunted. “Is that what we’re calling it these days?”

For a moment no one said anything, then Grace began to laugh. So hard she stopped walking, slapped a hand over her mouth and had to lean one hand against the tunnel wall to keep from sliding down to her knees.

Sharp grinned at Smoke, the sly devil, and winked at the other man.

Smoke gave him a brief smile in return. Usually Smoke’s expression was blank, so blank it was hard to tell what he was thinking. He watched Grace laugh like she was one of their team—with respect, loyalty, and acceptance.

Grace stopped laughing and smacked Smoke on the shoulder. “You ought to come with a warning label.”

“What, like slippery when wet?” Hernandez asked.

Smoke appeared to give it some serious thought. “Smoke. Fire. Boom,” he said.

“Yours would read, ‘out for lunch,’ Hernandez,” Sharp said as he started walking again.

Very quietly behind him, Grace said, “I shouldn’t be laughing. Our situation is so...terrible. Is it okay to laugh?”

Sharp glanced at her over his shoulder. She sounded so tentative, so uncertain, he wondered if her fever had come back.

“Doc, we don’t have time for the sniffles now,” Hernandez answered her. “We’ve got to use every weapon we’ve got to stay focused and alive. We’ll cry together later, when it’s safe.”

“Humor,” she said slowly, “is a weapon?”

“Damn straight.”

“You cry together?”

“Laugh, cry, get drunk, and generally lose track of a couple of days. If you don’t find a way to vent the crap you pick up when you’re on a mission, you’ll goloco.”

“Well, I sure wish someone had told me that a couple of years ago.”

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