Before today, I hadn’t met the dying man in front of me. We’d never worked together, never been on a base together. But he was a Navy SEAL just like I was, a member of the armed forces, a brother who had given me cover so I could get inside the building. I wasn’t going to leave him here to die alone, not if I could help it.
Carter seemed to know what I was thinking, though, because he shook his head again, this time with more strength. His lips formed the word “no.” I could read it clearly even though no sound came with it.
The man’s labored breathing was rapid, forced, gasping now, the blood welling in fresh spurts beneath him, and he held out his hand to me. I grasped it, brother to brother, watching him fight until the end. I heard the rattle, the blood bubbling, his eyes opening wide in panic.
Then Carter sighed, barely a breath. His hand went limp, his arm slackening as his head fell back and his eyes closed. I hung my head for just a moment, not sure whether I was praying or taking a moment of silence. Maybe I was just letting the moment be.
I heard a sob behind me and looked up to find the woman with her hand over her mouth again, her eyes glimmering. Had she ever seen someone die before? Now her count was up to two.
“I’m going to come back for you. For all of you,” I swore to Carter in a murmur. I didn’t leave men behind.
Climbing to my feet, I pointed the way I had come when I’d first heard the shooting. “We need to run.”
The woman nodded and didn’t struggle when I retook her arm.
I rushed us through the thick undergrowth, following the path I had taken, apparent to my tracker’s eye but hopefully no one else. Or, if someone did find it, hopefully, we’d be long gone. Thickets and branches tore as us, and I felt the woman stumble again as I ducked a shallow branch, her breath coming in gasps.
In the rush to get us back to that boat, I had entirely forgotten about the dead scientists, and I didn’t remember again until the woman shrieked. She pulled her hand from mine, and I turned to find her stumbling towards the bodies I’d blundered across earlier. The woman sank to her knees, her hands pressed over her mouth as she let out a wail.
“Doctor Erdogan.”
The words were in perfect, unaccented American English. So, she was American—or an exceptionally trained spy. But from the simple fact that she seemed to know this scientist, the one from the Oceanic Institute, my suspicion that she was Russian or working for the terrorists began to seem like less of a reality.
The woman’s gaze was trained on the man’s face, his frozen in his last gasp of fear, the eyes staring in terror up the sky. She reached out but stopped the forward motion just before it reached his hand, some sadness flashing across her face.
“His daughter is starting college,” she said suddenly, her voice rough and nearly inaudible. “This fall. At Berkley. And Jones is—was—” she corrected herself with an audible jerk and twitch of her head “—going to get married in September. Sophie has a cat—”
The woman’s words trailed off, but her lips still moved like she was going down the list in her head of the lives, families, and futures the bodies in front of her were leaving behind.
And despite our exertion, I could see her going pale again, the glassy, lost look returning to her eyes.
“Your team?” I asked.
The words seemed to penetrate her spiraling thoughts and pull her back down into shock. She shook her head and looked up at me, blinking as though she had forgotten I was there and was surprised to find someone else alive beside herself.
Then she nodded. “They were only here for research. That’s it. Why did they have to kill them?”
I reached down and pulled her back up, but her attention remained on the bodies as though she couldn’t look away. “There isn’t anything we can do for them right now. We need to get out of here before anyone else shows up.”
The woman’s head whipped towards me, her eyes round and terrified with the prospect that hadn’t seemed to occur to her before. She was following me the next instant, my hand around her wrist again as I propelled her through the trees.
I heard the waves on the shore before I could see it and ducked down behind a boulder at the tree line. I couldn’t see anyone on the rocky beach, and I couldn’t hear anyone behind us—it seemed like no one was coming after us.
For now.
Taking long, deep breaths, I worked to settle my adrenaline back down, down to my center, because I had to think. Drawing momentary calm over me like I would a blanket, I flipped through our next steps. The boat bobbed out in the water, anchored about half a mile out from the shore, which was a good swim. I did a mental body scan—I was sore, my limbs heavy, and I was tired, but I could make it to the boat at least. And I was sure we had enough fuel to get us back into Japanese territory. The problem was the boat itself, because it was large, possibly too large, and visible.
We knew the terrorists had boats; small, fast ships that could easily overtake the rusty old fishing trawler. And for our continued survival, I had to believe more were on the way to back up their comrades. I knew if it came to that, there would be no way I could fight them all off. It was only myself with two guns that were nearly out of bullets, without backup or a cache of extra rounds. I doubted the woman would be much help in a firefight. So, if the boat was too loud and too visible to be stealthy, how were we going to get away from this island?
Intensely aware of the time ticking by, my mind worked feverishly. We’d spent precious time waiting with Carter and taking those few moments in the forest for the woman to grieve her fallen colleagues. The map of the area I’d committed to memory flickered into my thoughts, and as I scanned it, a plan fell into place. It wasn’t a great plan, and I only had part A, which without a part B would still be as deadly, but it was the only option we had right now.
I looked back at the woman, trying to decide how she fit into the plans. She was still frightened, her eyes darting at every sound, her hands clenched tightly before her. Was I going to have to carry her? Force her to move? Swim the two of us out to the boat?
But as I surveyed her face, I didn’t see the signs of shock I had seen before—her color had returned, her cheeks ruddy with our mad dash through the forest, her pupils small against the light coming off the water. And I even saw her take a breath of relief when she saw the trawler.
My mind was working in overdrive to come up with a plan to escape. I knew what we had to do, and the pieces were clicking into place. But I was a Navy SEAL, and it was going to be rough after everything we’d already been through today.
Could the woman do it? There was only one way to find out.