Down Range (Shadow Warriors - Book 2) (15 page)

Morgan lay there, wanting to tell Jake about Emma. But her mind, her experience in war, warned her to say nothing. Jake was vulnerable right now, just as she was. They had to go after Khogani at daybreak. They had to focus on the op, or they’d make mistakes because they weren’t emotionally together. Distraction was always a killer. His attention would be diverted in terrible ways that could get either himself or her killed. He’d want to see Emma. Hold her in his arms.

Plus, Morgan wasn’t sure how Jake would react to her withholding the information from him for so long. It was complicated. And there were layers of entanglement that would take days, weeks, even months to straighten out between them. Closing her eyes, Morgan sighed raggedly, guilt eating her alive. Jake had lost so much…much more than she had. He deserved to know. But not now…God, not now….

“Here,” Morgan told
him the next morning, before they mounted their horses. “Can you keep this, Jake?”

Jake turned, making sure the cinch on the horse’s saddle was tight. The entire village had surrounded them to say goodbye. Reza was already mounted, the packhorse tied to the back of his saddle, waiting near the gate. It was barely a gray dawn, the winds cold off the Hindu Kush. He looked down at the white envelopes Morgan held out toward him in her gloved hand.

He gave her a startled look. When going downrange, SEALs would give their CO a death letter. That letter, if the SEAL was killed, was carried by two of the team’s SEAL brothers to his wife or parents. It was always a letter that would, in some way, help those left behind and ease their grief.

“Please, take them.” She’d written it this morning after Jake had dressed and left. Her heart twisted in her chest. Morgan noticed his hesitation. No doubt, he didn’t want to admit that where they were going, she could die. His mouth tightened as he stared at it, as if it were alive. Morgan’s heart overflowed with love for Jake.

This morning, as she’d written the letters and wept between the sentences, she’d known without a doubt, her love for Jake had deepened over time, not lessened. It was a cruel sentence, especially if they didn’t survive this mission.

Swallowing hard, Jake took the letters, opened up the pocket on his Kevlar vest pocket just below his chin. There, he folded them into the small area, pressed the Velcro closed with his gloved hand.

Morgan stepped a little closer, lowering her voice so only he could hear. “There are two letters, Jake. One is for my parents.” Her voice caught. “The other is for you….”

Jake scowled. He still felt raw from last night. So much had been laid out on their respective tables with one another. There was love burning in her eyes. Love for him. Despite this, Morgan was okay this morning, back where she needed to be for this op. He wasn’t. At least, not yet. He would be soon enough because their lives depended upon it.

“You’re not going to need them,” Jake told her in a growl. “I didn’t give you one, did I?”

Her mouth stretched into a partial grin. “No. But you’ve always been the optimist in our relationship, Ramsey. What else is new?” Morgan turned away because if she didn’t, she would cry.

As she told Hamid and his wife goodbye, lifted her hand to the silent, huddled villagers, Morgan mounted her horse. The letter to Jake told him that he had a daughter. Emma couldn’t replace Joshua. But she could fill his grieving heart with new love and hope. He would at least have her.

She had included the photo of Emma that she always carried with her into combat. For Morgan, her daughter was like a guardian angel. Now she wanted Emma’s sweet spirit to watch over Jake. The other letter was to her parents and to her daughter. Kicking the flanks of the horse, Morgan trotted the frisky gelding toward the opened gate where Reza patiently waited for them.

Cursing softly, Jake shook Hamid’s hand and told his family goodbye. Many of the children waved to him. The grim looks on the adults’ faces mirrored what Jake knew. Where they were going, there was a strong chance they might not return. It might be the last time the villagers saw them alive. Jake lifted his hand to them, mounted and kicked his horse into a gallop to meet his team.

They trotted across the valley, long before the sun rose over the rugged, shadowed peaks. Jake had spent thirty minutes on the sat phone with Vero much earlier and gotten the latest drone intel. He’d filled in Morgan as they rode, the cold air making the horses eager to run.

Khogani was wily. The drone would circle and briefly spot him with seventeen men out on a goat trail. But not long enough to send a missile into the group, obliterating them off the face of the earth. No doubt, Khogani automatically assumed a drone was watching their every move.

By early afternoon, they were at nine thousand feet, their horses snorting and laboring up the thin, rocky goat trails. Above, Jake saw the white snow that would never leave the peaks. He had the M-4 slung over his shoulder, hanging at his left side in case he needed it. Morgan carried the sniper rifle, strapped upside down, outside the ruck on her shoulders.

The winds were erratic and changeable at this high altitude. Finally, Reza found a cave near the ten-thousand-foot elevation, and they dismounted inside the shelter. He quickly tied the horses together and made a small fire from wood he carried on the packhorse.

Jake moved to the front of the dry cave. The sunlight lanced strong and silent into the mouth, high above them. They’d been riding for eight hours. Morgan joined him where he knelt, the Toughbook laptop open, receiving real-time intel signals from the drone via the satellite. She looked over his shoulder, squinting to see the images.

“Khogani is still moving south,” she muttered.

“Yeah, he knows he’s being watched.” Jake turned, her face inches from his. That calm and reserved game face Morgan had was in place. She was all business now, and it made him feel good. Sometimes, for whatever the reason, one teammate was not as focused as the other. There was an automatic shift to the partner who was steadier. He wanted to be, but their conversation about Amanda and Joshua had torn open an old, festering wound he’d never wanted to revisit. In truth, Jake was glad Morgan knew. He’d seen the difference in her since letting her in on his married life.

Morgan moved around to where he was kneeling. She remained just inside the cave so as not to become a target for a sniper. She waited until he closed the laptop.

“How are you doing?” she asked him softly, seeking out his gaze. Reaching out, she placed her gloved hand on his shoulder, feeding him strength, letting him know she cared.

Jake studied Morgan’s serene expression. “Up and down,” he admitted.

“This was a bad time to ask you, Jake. I’m sorry.”

He reached out, barely brushed her ruddy cheek with his gloved fingers. “Having you here is helping, whether you know it or not.”

Her cheek warmed beneath his unexpected touch. Morgan gave him a tender look. “We’re not going to engage Khogani today.” She stood up, which was good because if she didn’t, Jake was going to kiss her. Wrong time. Wrong place. Worse, he couldn’t afford to fall in love with her again. It would never work.

Jake said nothing and rose to his full height, tucking the laptop beneath his left arm. He walked with Morgan toward the rear of the cavern. For all the trauma she’d gone through, he was amazed by her resiliency. She walked confidently, shoulders back, head high. Amazed by her woman’s strength, Jake shook his head. Few SEALs ever recovered as quickly as she had. It occurred to him as they crouched down around the small fire Reza had made to boil tea that his perspective on women being weak was completely wrongheaded.

Chapter Sixteen

They huddled near
a small fire as night fell, in another cave, ten miles south of where they’d been in the early afternoon. It was nearly 2200, ten at night, and Morgan laid out her sleeping bag in a tunnel. Reza would sleep near the cave opening, about a tenth of a mile away from them. It was the only entrance/exit point. He’d unsaddled the horses, given them dried grass and water. This cave, miraculously, had a small pool of water near where they would sleep.

Jake laid his sleeping bag next to Morgan’s. He didn’t remove the Kevlar but did place his SIG near his rucksack that doubled as his pillow. She had done the same. The grimness of their mission was landing four square on them.

Ten miles away, Khogani and his men had slipped into another cave right at dusk. The drone was doing its work by tracking them. If, for any reason, Khogani moved during the night, which Jake felt they wouldn’t, Vero would call Morgan on the radio and awaken them.

With the tension building, Morgan could feel Jake watching her face in the firelight. The small fire didn’t do much except to heat food and water. They chose to sleep near the wall of the tunnel, and the drip, drip, drip of water from overhead was from snow melt far above them. The horses had eagerly drunk their fill. After putting purification tablets into the water, so had they.

It was a luxury for them to get clean. They both had stripped down as much as they could to wipe off the sweat and dirt. Morgan had kept on some clothes since she didn’t want Reza to accidentally walk in and see her naked.

As they settled down next to one another, the sleeping bag warming them, Morgan lay facing Jake. The fire was slowly going out, but she could still see the hard planes of his face. A hell of a lot was going on within him. All day, he’d seemed to become more alert and present. He was working through his emotions just as she had back at the village.

“Khogani is always going to stand down at night,” she told him in a soft voice.

“I know. I’ve been turning in my mind the best way to nail him. Dawn or dusk? Those are our two opportunities.” His eyes went flat and hard.

“Look, today was getting back into the saddle. Getting locked into the mind-set of this op. I think we need to ride hard tomorrow and catch up with him. We need to be there at dawn the next morning, to surprise him when he comes out of the cave.”

Jake nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. We can set up the sniper scope above wherever he’s going to be hiding.” His nostrils flared. “I just hope like hell we get a decent angle to shoot from.” That wasn’t always possible with the wind, the ambient temperature, the time of day, all of which conspired to work against a sniper, not with him. Or her.

“I’m on the same page.” Morgan wanted to reach out, touch his hand, but she stopped herself. Jake was so easy to love, and so damn hard to live with afterward. “We need to tell Vero about the plan. We’ll have to get authorization, like always.”

“Yeah, he’s going to have to get assets in place.” Assets like an F-15 loaded with smart bombs, Apache helicopters from Camp Bravo on standby…and Jake didn’t want to go beyond that. But he knew a medevac would automatically be on call, as well, in case one or both of them got wounded.

He scowled. He did
not
want Morgan harmed. But dammit, it could happen. It bothered him she’d given him those death letters. It was SOP, standard operating procedure. Still, Jake had a bad feeling about the coming mission.

“If we can get a clean shot,” Morgan said quietly, “killing Khogani is going to throw his men into an immediate hunt for us. They’ll want revenge.”

“And if we miss him,” Jake said grimly, “all hell will break loose, too. Either way, we know they’re coming after us.”

“If we get lucky, we’ll take him out with a second shot.” Morgan knew in these mountains, the one shot, one kill maxim didn’t always work. The wind was their nemesis. A spotter worked closely with the sniper. SEALs were trained to be sniper and spotter, but on a mission like this, each would have their duty and responsibility. Spotters knew the direction of the wind, speed and any wind shifts. Sometimes, they could pull it off. Other times, they couldn’t. Then it came down to Kentucky windage. It was a sniper term that meant the sniper relied on his or her experience to make the correct adjustments to the rifle.

Jake sighed and moved on his back. He slid his arms behind his head, glaring up at the shadows dancing on the tunnel’s ceiling of jagged rocks. “Taliban soldiers are damned good at knowing what direction a bullet’s come from. We’re going to have an exfil planned, big-time.”

Exfil meant exfiltrate or get the hell out of the op or mission, their escape plan. Morgan felt his worry and knew the situation only too well from her own experience.

“All we can do is try. We’ll have exfil, a rally point, and the assets will be ready to come in and pick us up,” she said. Even all of that could go to hell in a handbasket, and Morgan knew it. Jake knew it, too. They were on rocky, steep mountain slopes. Anything could happen. Anything…

They lay there for a long time, the silence thickening. Morgan fought herself. Fought touching Jake again. It would not help them with this coming op. She heard his breathing settle down and closed her own eyes.
God, let Jake survive this. Let him be able to hold Emma in his arms….
It was the last thought Morgan had as she surrendered to her exhaustion. Tomorrow would up the ante. Tomorrow, they moved into sniper mode. Tomorrow, their world changed….

Morgan lay on
her belly next to Jake just below a rocky ridgeline. The sun was setting, the wind sharp and cold as Jake moved the Night Force sniper scope toward a cave to the left of them. Because her shoulder was not fully healed, Morgan gave up the right to be the sniper. Instead, she volunteered to be his spotter.

She held her scope, watching as the last of the seventeen Taliban rode into a cave. Her heart beat slowly, her breath even. Now they were stalking. Every hour, they traded off the sniper-spotter position because the amount of intense energy and mental focus could only be held so long.

Jake had the AW Mag sitting on a bipod that kept the rifle barrel aimed and steady. The stock was tight against his shoulder and cheek. They’d just missed Khogani riding into the cave after they’d scrambled up the slope behind them to locate the enemy horsemen. The drone, however, had identified him going into the cave earlier.

Jake watched through the scope, the rocks biting into his prone body, causing discomfort here and there along his hips and legs. He was used to it. The Kevlar actually protected his chest and torso from the rocks, which was good.

Morgan remained where she was. It appeared the Taliban were in for the night. Their cammie jackets blended in with the rocks and scree around them. She lowered the scope and studied the cave entrance. They had a high, angled shot, one chance, to kill Khogani. Her mouth turned down as she studied the surrounding area.

Khogani and his men had come up and over a goat path right where they lay now. The path was steep and vertical, and even the horses would have a hell of a time sliding down the winding trail to the cave below.

Darkness fell. The wind picked up, howling toward them, the temperature below freezing. Their voices would not carry down to the cave with the present wind direction. His eyes still trained on the cave, Jake whispered, “Exfil?”

Morgan grimaced. “We miss that shot this morning, and they’re going to come boiling up and over this goat path we’re lying on.”

“Not good,” Jake agreed. He moved the scope slowly, studying the rocky brown, black and cream-colored terrain around the cave. “Only one exit point out of that cave. And that’s back up this goat path we’re on.”

“Reza said that particular cave is big, but there are no connecting tunnels to it. Khogani has to come back up this scree slope tomorrow morning. He has no choice.”

They were in for a long, brutal night on the ridge. Reza was about a quarter of a mile down below them, in another, smaller cave. Tonight, he’d feed the horses, give them some water from the large five-gallon tins they carried on the supply horse and keep them saddled. Jake watched through the AW Mag’s scope. A sniper never left his target unobserved. One or the other of them would have to watch that cave like a hawk all night long.

Morgan gazed behind them on the scree slope. The goat path was a thousand feet long, and at the bottom, it split and went north and south. To the north part of the path was a wadi, or ravine. The wadi was shaped like a lightning bolt, a zigzag ravine, a good two thousand feet in length. She studied the scraggly trees eking out an existence in the wadi. There was a lot of six-to ten-foot-tall brush clogging the ravine, as well. It would be easy to hole up in the wadi and not be seen.

If Jake missed the shot or shots, and Khogani survived, the Taliban leader would be coming after them to kill them. Those hardy mountain horses could climb like goats, acclimatized to the high altitude. They wouldn’t have much time to escape. It was seventeen Taliban against the two of them.

Neither of them wanted Reza caught up in the melee if it happened. The man had already lost his family. That was enough. Jake had given Reza orders yesterday evening to leave at dawn, no matter what happened. To head north, back toward the valley and to the safety of Hamid’s village far below.

They settled on the ridge, the wind blowing toward them, well below freezing. Morgan had the spotter scope set up next to where Jake lay prone on his belly, the AW Mag’s barrel draped with camouflage netting and pointed down at the cave. The drone was somewhere overhead, watching. Always watching. It was on the western side of the mountain, circling, its eyes on the cave where Khogani and his men had holed up for the night. They lay next to one another, body warmth important for the long night ahead of them.

“Another thirty minutes and dawn will break,” Jake told Morgan quietly. The wind was raw, and he was glad for the thick jacket, hood and gloves. Still, he was freezing his ass off. No one could lie out on a rocky slope, motionless for hours, and not get numbingly cold.

Morgan nodded and lay nearby, her spotter scope on the cave below them. They’d traded off positions every hour. She’d take the rifle and he’d become her spotter. As dawn rose, it was Jake’s turn at the sniper rifle to make the shot.

Grimacing, Jake knew as a sniper, being cold and uncomfortable came with the territory. This wasn’t his first gig at hiding up on a mountain waiting for his HVT, high-value target, to appear at dawn. “I hope Reza is right about that cave where Khogani’s holed up.”

Morgan rubbed her hands, trying to warm them. She had on gloves, but the wind was sharp, gusting and sporadic. “What? That there are no tunnels to this side of the mountain?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. Because if Reza had been wrong, a tunnel could lead to their location. They could be blindsided, surprised and have seventeen of those bastards climbing up after them to kill them.

“He doesn’t think there is.”

“Reza doesn’t know this area as well as north of Hamid’s village.”

“I hear you.” Morgan continued to watch through the spotter scope. Having used the laser scope earlier, she gave to Jake the closest distance estimation she could get on where Khogani would emerge. Jake set the dials and all they could do was wait. There was only one place where he had a shot.

Morgan saw light to the east, behind them. The dawn glowed behind the highest peaks, announcing the coming day. The drone would let them know if Khogani moved. They’d have time to set up a shot, albeit a very badly angled shot. It would be their only chance. Morgan had already received authorization from J-bad to take the shot. The exfil plan was to get an Apache in the air from Camp Bravo, as well as a medevac following it. Other than that, they’d ride their horses down the mountain and meet a Night Stalker MH-47 Chinook on the valley floor and fly away. That was if everything went according to plan. And like the SEALs always told Morgan, Murphy was always around: what could go wrong, would go wrong, and plan for plan B, C and D. Murphy’s Law was real to them. They’d seen it in action way too many times.

Jake’s mouth turned down. They were vulnerable. Up on a scree slope, just below the ridgeline, they had no cover whatsoever. The wadi was too far away to reach by foot. Reza had tied their two horses below, but that was a thousand feet down this slope in order to reach them. A very bad feeling washed through Jake. He’d gotten this feeling before, and it always came true. Dammit, he’d just reconnected with Morgan. Something pushed him to speak.

“Listen, when this is over, I want to stay connected with you, Morgan.” He waited, afraid that she might not have the same idea.

“I feel the same, Jake. We’re older.”

“I’ve matured a little bit….” Jake wanted to laugh but his focus was on the cave through the scope.

Morgan smiled, but Jake couldn’t see it. “We’ve been through so much together and individually.”

“Life is hard, babe.” His eyes narrowed as he watched the entrance to the cave, seeing nothing, but always on guard. “We’re getting it at both ends—personally and career-wise. There’s nothing easy about being a SEAL.”

“You’re right about that. Like you guys say, the only easy day was yesterday.”

“I’m so damn proud of you, Morgan. You’ve changed my mind about women in combat.”

“If you didn’t have to care for your chronically ill mother, I don’t think you’d have been so bullheaded about women being the weaker sex, Jake.”

“Yeah, after twenty-nine years, I finally realized that.”

“Where will you be sent after this op is completed?”

“I get PRODEV. I’ll be stateside with my new platoon in Coronado. Do you think General Stevenson will send you back over here?”

“No. I’ve petitioned her to let me take 18 Delta medical training.”

Jake was surprised. The U.S. Army medic course was the best in the world. Handpicked male medical corpsmen from every military branch spent eighteen months learning battlefield medicine that would save men’s and women’s lives when it counted: under fire. “Will you get the billet?”