Heart of a Hero (39 page)

The set crackled and a voice answered, the volume dropping as he turned it down. “Roger, Jongilanga. Coordinates? Over.”

She heard him give their GPS coordinates. “We have hostiles in area, what’s your ETA? Over.”

“Twenty. Clear.”

Hunter swore softly. Then all was silent. Sarah swatted blindly at a cloud of insects she could feel hovering near her face. He took her arm, helped her rise, led her back up the road. They began to walk briskly. He then guided her down what appeared to be another path toward more trees.

“I want you to lie low in the woods here until you see the chopper. Don’t move until it’s right over the clearing, then you run for your life, okay? There will be light, you’ll be able to see where you’re going.”

A cold feeling of unease began to leach through her. “Where will
you
be?”

He guided her into a crouching position in the trees. “Wait here,” he whispered. He took her wrist and wrapped her fingers around the handle of the biohazard canister. “And take this.”

Panic ripped through her. “Why? Where are you going?”

He cupped her face in his palms, turned it to face him. “If the militia crossed the border into Cameroon and are looking for us, they will pick up my radio signal, and you can bet your life they’re already on their way. I’m going to leave you and Branna here, and I’m going to try and engage them farther
down the road, give the chopper a clear path in and you time to get out.”

A cold dread took complete hold of her. “No, Hunter,” she whispered. “You can’ t! You’ll be outnumbered. They’ll kill you!”

“I’ll be fine. The FDS would’ve alerted the Cameroonian troops to hostiles in the area. With luck they’ll arrive in time to do the real dirty work, but I must leave,
now,
or they’ll be within shooting range of the chopper.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he muffled her words with a hard kiss. Then he pulled away, held her face, studied her quietly in the dark. “Wait for me on São Diogo, Sarah,” he whispered. “I need to talk to you. We…have some things we need to work out.” He hesitated. “I love you.”

And he was gone, a shadow melting into the night, just the lingering, salty taste of him on her lips. Tears burned her eyes. Her heart thudded against her ribs.
He loved her.
And the notion that she might never see him again speared through her gut. She cradled Branna, rocking back and forth on her heels, trying not to let wild panic and desperation blind her.

She forced herself to calm down, tried to conjure up Hunter’s comforting, grounding bass voice, imagine his eyes. Home.
He
was her sense of home. He’d said he loved her.

She was going to get out of this. She was going to do this for him. For Branna. For a chance at a future. The notion filled her mind, and suddenly she was no longer alone with a newborn in the dark. A quiet determination filled Sarah, and she waited in silence, Branna making hot little snuffling noises against her chest.

Then she heard it, a distant chop in the air, growing louder. Her pulse tripped into high gear. She could see the lights coming over the trees from the north.

Then an explosion rocked the air and orange light flashed in the distance, to the south. She heard gunfire. Another explosion.

Hunter!

The helicopter materialized over the tops of the trees, a massive black blot in the sky. It banked sharply and hovered over the clearing, the whir of lethal blades drowning out the sound of gunfire. As it lowered, a searchlight flashed on, illuminating the ground with a halo of white light, instantly bringing her world into focus. Long grass flattened under the downdraft. One side of the chopper was open, a man waving at her from the doorway. Sarah grasped the handle of the canister, hunkered low over Branna and ran for her life.

Somewhere beyond the trees she could see the faint orange explosions cutting through the blackness, but the sound of the chopper overpowered everything. She stumbled, almost fell, caught herself, ran a little more carefully, the blades of grass lashing at her legs. She couldn’t afford to fall. She’d hurt Branna. The violent downdraft forced a stream of tears from her eyes and whipped her hair around her head. She was vaguely aware that Branna was screaming under chin.

As she reached the door, a giant of a man, in military gear with a pack on his back, jumped out, ran toward her. He took the biohazard container with one hand, her arm with the other. He guided her to the hovering craft, and another man reached down, hauled her up into it. She barely found her feet before the craft lifted sharply and veered up into the air and over the trees, leaving the first man on the ground.

A dark-skinned man with hooked brows guided her down onto a hard bench and began to strap her in. She realized she was shaking violently and Branna was screaming bloody murder.

“What about Hunter?” she yelled over the roar of the engine as the helicopter rose higher in the sky and banked again.

The man said something, but she couldn’t hear him above the deafening din of the blades. The door was still wide-open. She leaned forward, could see the black trees fading into the distance. Terror clawed at her heart.

“You’ve got to get Hunter!” Hot tears streamed down her face. “He’s down there! You’ve got to help him!”

The man motioned with his hand for her to calm down. She couldn’t. Hysteria was overwhelming her. She just could not think of leaving him down there in that place.

The man leaned over her and she realized he was putting earphones and a mouthpiece over her head. She heard his voice in the set. “Sarah, I want you to stay calm. My name is Rafiq Zayed, I’m with the FDS—”

“Where’s Hunter?”

He raised his hand. “He’ll be all right.” He had a rich Arabic accent and his voice was deep, smooth, strangely calming. A sense of rationality began to diffuse through her and she began to pull her surroundings into focus. She was in a big, hollow military craft equipped with the bare minimum. Rafiq Zayed sat on the bench opposite her. He was leaning forward, studying her with intense, piercing dark eyes. His face was angular and his glossy black hair was tied back in a ponytail.

Rafiq. That was one of the names Hunter had mentioned, one of the men he trusted with his life. The knowledge took the brunt off her panic. She began to rock Branna, trying to get her to suckle on her pinkie. Hunter had all the baby milk in his pack. “What’s going to happen to Hunter?” she asked, much more calmly, speaking into the mouthpiece.

“December Ngomo—the man who helped you into the helo—he is with Hunter. They will be going into Gabon tonight. They will be picking up a doctor at a research station who will help us identify the pathogen you brought with you.”

The hatchet of panic struck right back into her heart. “What do you mean? Do you know what he’s been through? And what about the militia that came across the border—the fighting down there?”

A smile pulled at Rafiq’s lips. “McBride has Cameroonian army support, and he and Ngomo will have air support into Gabon. It’s a simple mission.” He reached forward, placed a hand on her knee. “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.”

Sarah stared at him, barely able to absorb what he was saying. Hunter had hardly slept in days. What kind of men were these? She turned to look out the gaping doorway. She could see ocean below them now, shimmering like beaten black metal in the pale light of the small moon. She could see the pale purple hint of dawn along an endless horizon. She swallowed, turned back to Rafiq. “My baby needs milk. She…she needs medical attention. She’s an orphan, a newborn.” A sob of emotion choked her. “We rescued her. Her name is Branna.”

Rafiq nodded calmly, as if this kind of thing was done daily. “We’ll have her in the clinic on São Diogo in under two hours. I’ll radio ahead and we’ll have a physician waiting for both of you.”

Sarah sank back against the cold metal and stared down at the sea. She could feel the steady, powerful throb of the machine vibrating through her. They were out of the cloud, and stars spattered the sky. She could see strips of land below, islands. She felt Branna sucking on her finger, her teeny little hands groping. And Sarah knew she could never, ever live with a man like Hunter. She just couldn’t be with a man who got up every morning to do a job like this.

Tears burned behind her eyes.
He couldn’t even get on the damn helicopter with them.
He had another job to do. He’d said it would be so, and he’d already moved on. That’s how it would
always be for him. Whether he loved her or not. She closed her eyes against the emotion that swelled though her. She’d known it would be like this. She’d known this feeling would come. She just didn’t think it would hurt this badly.

If there was one thing she could take away from all of this, it was Branna. Sarah would adopt her. She would give her a future. She would nurture and cherish this innocent little life that had been born out of violence and chaos.

And even though she couldn’t be with him, she would always cherish the man who’d saved them both and taught her how to be strong again.

03:00 Alpha. Congo-Cameroon border.
Friday, September 26

“Y
es?”

Andries du Toit cleared his throat nervously. “We got them.”

Silence.

It made him uncomfortable. “They were both killed in a shootout on the Cameroonian side of the border. The nitrogen in the biohazard canister ignited in a mortar blast. The pathogen has been destroyed,” he lied.

Silence stretched again. Then the man in New York spoke, his voice dead calm. “What about the Cameroonians? What do they think happened?”

Du Toit mopped the sweat off his brow with his handkerchief. “They think it was rebels. We’ve done cleanup operations,
taken care of their bodies. There’s no sign we were ever there.”

“Thank you,” the man said simply. And the line went dead.

Du Toit swiped his handkerchief across his forehead again, then stuffed it into his breast pocket. He took another swig of his whiskey. He could
not
let New York know that he’d failed, that the nurse had escaped. Besides, it would all be over before anyone found out, anyway. Still, he’d play it safe. Once he’d collected final payment, he’d disappear—just slip into the wild of Africa. He’d done it before. He would do it again.

The man in New York replaced the receiver on his secure phone and ran his tongue slowly over his teeth. It appeared the glitch had finally been sorted out, thank God. Things could now proceed normally, just as soon as he’d taken care of the last loose end. He pulled open his desk drawer, withdrew a cell phone, the one he used only to contact his “caretaker.” He pressed a button. He had to wait only one ring.

“Yes?”

“Kill Du Toit.”

17:15 Alpha. FDS base, São Diogo Island.
Friday, September 26

Sarah followed the sandy path through the dune scrub, making her way down to the beach. The clinic doctors had tried to give her medication to help her sleep through the day, but she’d refused to take it. Perhaps she should have. She felt both overtired and edgy, as if there was too much caffeine buzzing through her system. But there was no way she could think of numbing herself and going to sleep while Hunter was still out there somewhere.

And this was exactly why she could never be with a man who did what he did for a living. It would kill her—waiting for
days and nights for him to come home from his next mission, wondering
if
he’d come home. Wondering what he’d done, who he’d killed, knowing he’d never talk about it.

She sat on the highest dune, pulled her knees in close to her chest and stared out over the Atlantic. God, she hoped he was all right. She felt sick not knowing. At least Branna was fine. The doctors had put her in an incubator, just to be sure. She’d been a little dehydrated, but otherwise she was in perfect health.

Sarah watched the waves rolling relentlessly to shore, white spindrift blowing in the wind. Hunter had told her to wait for him. She gave a soft laugh. What a joke. She couldn’t leave this little island paradise if she tried, at least not until she’d been fully debriefed and this whole mission of theirs was over. Rafiq had made that politely, yet perfectly clear last night. He’d said he’d debrief her himself tomorrow, once she’d rested a little.

A silver speck over the horizon caught her attention. Sarah shielded her eyes and watched as it came closer, the sound of chopper blades eventually reaching her over the crunch of the waves along the white beach.
Hunter?

Her heart began to thud against her chest. She got to her feet, watched the helicopter near the island. The chopper buzzed right over her and came in to land on the helipad just behind the ridge of dunes.

She couldn’t help herself; she raced along the ridge toward the area, then stopped and squinted against stinging sand as the helicopter settled onto the packed earth.

The door opened. December, the soldier who’d helped her into the chopper in Cameroon, hopped out and assisted an older man behind him. The man was stooped slightly, like a question mark. He had a shock of white hair, glasses and a lab coat that flapped about his knees in the downdraft. He must be the doctor
from Gabon, the one who’d come to analyze the samples in Dr. Regnaud’s container.

Sarah took a step toward the helipad, then froze as she saw Hunter jump down. He was still in military gear and his face was once again streaked with black paint. Even from here he looked wild, dangerous. Sarah’s mouth went instantly dry and her heart began to jackhammer. She wanted to go to him, to touch him. God, she loved that man…a man she could never have.

December escorted the doctor to a Jeep waiting on the far side of the helipad, but Hunter stopped. He turned slowly, looked at her. He must have known she was there, must have seen her from the air. He stood still, just watching her, the slowing rotor blades whipping his black hair about his head.

Sarah couldn’t hold back; his power over her was too great. She ran across the sand to him. “You…you’re okay,” she said breathlessly as she reached him, her simple words belying the tornado of emotion churning through her heart.