Cindy Gerard - The Way Home

“How bad?” Nate asked.

Mendoza grinned. “Not mine. The big guy here stuck his head in front of a bullet and decided to bleed all over me.”

“Hard as a steel plate,” Jones assured his boss. “Relax. It’s a scratch.”

“Coulter,” Nate called, as AK-47 fire continued to zip around them.

“Right behind you.” Hunkering low, Coulter removed Jones’s helmet and checked out what, fortunately, turned out to be a flesh wound. “You make my life so hard.”

“I make your life complete.” Jones grinned at him. “We all know that.”

“I thought I made your life complete,” Reed protested.

“I know this goes against the grain,” Nate cut in, “but now might be a good time to stay focused.”

Out of the dark, directly in front of them, a horde of Taliban fighters ran screaming toward them with one goal in mind.

This is it, Nate thought, seeing his wife’s face as clearly as if Juliana were beside him. This was where he was going to die.

Then he heard it. The distinct sound of MK19 40mm grenade launchers and Browning M-2 fifty-caliber machine guns bombarding the air.

He glanced over his shoulder. Three Stryker armored fighting vehicles rolled to a stop directly behind them, their big guns blazing.

Beside him, his men let out a whoop, and faced with the intimidating guns mounted on the Strykers, the Taliban fighters who were still alive turned and ran in the other direction.

The cavalry had indeed arrived.

JEFF WAS ALONE IN THE hospital room when he woke up the second time. A machine blipped softly in the background. He lifted his arm, let it fall. A plastic tube ran into an IV port inserted into the back of his hand. A cuff on his arm tightened, measuring his blood pressure and pulse. The plastic clip on his finger measured his blood-oxygen levels.

He vaguely remembered someone telling him they were treating him with IV fluids that dripped from a bag hanging somewhere behind him.

He specifically remembered Nate Black assuring him that they’d made it. That he was safe. Once again, he didn’t remember everything that had happened to him. He remembered that the rough, hot, dizzying ride inside the belly of the Stryker had kicked up the vertigo with a vengeance. He’d puked his guts out and then gotten the dry heaves. Long before they’d made base, he’d been barely conscious despite the team medic—Coulter—hanging an IV to rehydrate him.

He didn’t remember much after that, including the flight to the AFB or his admission into the hospital.

“The NATO-run hospital at the Kandahar Air Force Base is a forty-plus-million-dollar facility,” Black had assured him, as he’d helped him into the ambulance that had met their air transport from FOB Shaker. “The medical staff will do everything humanly possible to get you squared away again.”

Everything but one. They hadn’t let him see Rabia.

“Rabia.” He could barely speak, his throat and mouth were so dry. He didn’t know how long he’d been out this time, but he was frantic to know what was happening with her. “Rabia.” He tried again. Her name came out as a hoarse croak.

“Well, hello, soldier. Welcome back to the land of the living. How you feeling?”

He opened his eyes. A tidy Air Force nurse in a prim white uniform stood by the side of the bed.

“Rabia,” he croaked again.

“I’m sorry. I can’t understand you.” She turned away, then came back with a wet sponge swab that she gently wiped over his lips. “See if this helps.”

He sucked on the swab like a man dying of thirst.

“Better? How about an ice chip? It’s not much, I know, but we don’t want to overdo it.”

He nodded, then regretted it as the room began to spin.

“The vertigo should settle down a bit for you soon.” She laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Doctor prescribed both antinausea and antivertigo meds. That’s why you conked out on us again. Stuff makes you sleepy, but I guess you already figured that out. We’re pumping fluids to get you rehydrated. In the meantime, try to stay still and let the meds do their work. If you continue to progress, I wouldn’t be surprised if they authorize a flight home to a hospital in the States tomorrow.”

She went on, checking his IV bag, then fluffing his pillow, “Normally, they would ship you to Ramstein AFB in Germany, but since you’re a special case, you’re going straight home.”

He was a special case, all right. He still didn’t know where home was. He had so many questions. No one had come up with any answers.

He opened his mouth for the ice chip, let it melt, then reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Where. Is. Rabia?”

“Rabia? Is that the Pashtun woman who came in with you?”

“Yes. Where is she?”

“She’s down the hall.”

“I want to see her.”

She carefully removed his hand from her arm and laid it on top of the pristine white sheets. “Let me go see what I can find out, OK?”

He closed his eyes, afraid to feel too much relief. “Thank you.”

“I’ll be right back. You rest.”

NATE ADDRESSED THE team once Albert had been turned over to the medical staff. “It goes without saying, we need to keep the mission and Sergeant Albert’s rescue quiet, for national security reasons and for Albert’s privacy. The last thing the guy needs is for his story to blow wide open on an international scale. He’d be bombarded by the press. Hell, his story has blockbuster movie written all over it. But for now, he has a lot of recovery ahead of him. A lot of healing physically and emotionally. A lot of adjusting to do.”

For that reason, Nate asked for a volunteer to stand guard outside Albert’s hospital room.

Despite the fact that his back was killing him, Ty had stepped forward without hesitation and now stood at parade rest outside Albert’s door.

For the same reason that he couldn’t articulate why he needed to be a part of the rescue mission, he couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he’d volunteered for this duty.

“Why are you doing this to yourself, bro?” Mike had asked on the plane from Minnesota to Virginia before they’d deployed to Kandahar.

“What would you do?” Ty had asked. “If you suddenly found out the woman you loved had a husband, a war hero, a man who has to have been through hell and back… wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want to see for yourself if he was alive and, if he was, face him so you’d know firsthand what kind of man she’s leaving you for?”

“You don’t know that she’ll go back to him.”

Unfortunately, he did know. Now that he’d seen Albert and knew what sad shape he was in, he knew exactly what she would do. “I know Jess. She’s loyal. She doesn’t quit on anything. If he needs her, she’ll be there for him. And we both know where that leaves me.”

So yeah, maybe in a way, he was doing this more for Jess. He sure as hell wasn’t doing it for himself. Was he glad Jeff was alive? Of course. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dying by degrees knowing he’d lose Jess because of it.