Taking Fire

Khat brought two more bottles, opened them and placed them beside him. She retrieved her medical ruck and knelt at his left side. She watched as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How much pain are you in?” she asked, opening her case.

“Enough that I can’t get up,” he growled unhappily. Mike watched her pull on a pair of latex gloves, pick up a syringe and place the needle on the end of it. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you some pain relief,” she murmured, picking up the bottle of morphine. “You’ll heal faster if you’re not in pain.”

Mike watched Khat pull a very small dose into the syringe. “Are you sure that isn’t a truth drug of some sort?”

She smiled. Taking an alcohol swab, she pulled the flap of his sleeve aside on his upper arm. “Positive.”

Fascinated, he watched her give him the shot of morphine. Or at least, he hoped it was. Every move she made was graceful, and he found himself absolutely mesmerized with Khat. As she put the needle into a sharps container, he asked, “You’re black ops?”

“Don’t try to figure me out, Michael Tarik.” She pulled off the gloves and threw them where the other pair was. Closing the ruck, she looked deep into his eyes. He was wary, and she couldn’t blame him. “I need to examine you.” She pulled a small flashlight from her pocket, slid her hand beneath his chin. His flesh tingled. “I’m going to shine the light in your eyes. I need to see if your pupils are equal and responsive or not. Just look straight ahead at me?”

She was so damned close to him. Her touch was firm but gentle. Her breasts beneath that muscle shirt were inches away from his chest as she slowly moved the light from one eye to the other, and then back again. She smelled of fresh air, sunshine and her own unique woman’s scent. He dragged it into his lungs, feeling his entire body respond.

Khat eased away from him. She placed the light in the bag and then pulled out her stethoscope. “I’m going to listen to your lungs and heart now.”

She opened his blouse, exposing his chest covered with a tan T-shirt. When she placed the stethoscope against his heart, his muscles tightened beneath it. Strands of her hair tickled his nose and cheek. Her hand lay lightly upon his left shoulder.

When Khat straightened, she picked up a small notebook and wrote down the information. He rasped, “Are you a physician?”

“No. I’m a paramedic.” She placed the stethoscope into the bag. “Last but not least, your pulse.” And she stood up and walked around to his right side.

Khat knelt and placed his hand against the curve of her thigh, two tapered fingers coming to rest upon the inside of his wrist. Mike felt the coolness of her fingertips. She looked at the Rolex on her right wrist, following the second hand’s movement. Her touch was electric. He was so damned hot and sweaty, her fingers soothing. He stared at the scars he saw across her shoulders just barely exposed beneath her shirt. They were deep. Ridged. What the hell had happened to her? It angered him on another level that she was beautiful, young and yet someone had either beaten or tortured her. The ridges were white, indicating there were probably four or five years old. Damn, he had a helluva lot of questions for her.

“Good,” Khat murmured, pleased. Removing her fingers, she picked up his hand and placed it against his belly. “You’re stabilizing.”

Mike watched her. She put the medical ruck away. And then she walked down the tunnel, past the horse to where he saw a Western saddle sitting balanced on a gate of some kind. She pulled out a sat phone from the nearest saddlebag. Only operators got them. He had one himself and it had a bullet hole in it. His ruck was nowhere in sight.

Khat walked out into the other cave, and she made a call. She reported Michael Tarik’s medical condition to her handler, Hutton. She knew it would be passed on to Bagram. There, someone would decide when he should be picked up.

Right now Khat said he couldn’t ride ten miles down the mountain on a horse to reach a Medevac. He couldn’t even sit up on his own.

Mike heard the entire conversation. She wasn’t hiding it from him. He watched her return and put the sat phone away.

“Are you hungry?”

“No. Just thirsty.”

Nodding, Khat knelt beside him and handed him the opened second bottle of water. It wasn’t uncommon on a long SEAL patrol for a man to go through two gallons of water. When she placed the bottle into his hand, she felt small, electric sensations move through her fingers. He was watching her. But it wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling. She sat down, bringing up one of her knees, her hands wrapped just below it. Khat watched him chug down the water. He was sweating freely, dirty and still pale beneath his tan.

“I’d offer you the waterfall,” she said, gesturing toward it, “but you can’t even stand yet. Would you like me to get a washcloth and some water in a basin? I’m sure you’d feel better if you got a little bit cleaned up.”

Mike set the emptied bottle aside and stared at her. “I’m feeling pretty damned wary of you.”

Khat nodded. “I understand,” she said quietly. “I realize it’s a strange situation.”

“Who were you talking to on that sat phone just now?”

“Someone who will send your vitals to an ER doctor at Bagram hospital. That physician will decide when you should be airlifted out of here.”

“Move me?” His wariness shot up. She looked so damned calm about it all. Okay, he got she had to be an operator. Khat was a marine sniper. And she had a sat phone, and whomever she’d talked to was high up on the black ops food chain.

Khat lifted her hands and pulled her dried hair off her shoulders, the mass tumbling down her back. “Yes. As soon as you’re ambulatory, I’ll take you to a place, providing it’s not got Taliban around, and they’ll fly in a Medevac for you.” She smiled a little. “And then you’ll be home, in familiar surroundings once more.”

Mike couldn’t stop staring at Khat. Her arms were lean and tightly muscled. She was feminine, but in damn good shape. There was nothing weak about this woman.

“Would you like to get cleaned up a little?” she asked. She smiled a little and stood up.

From another of the many holes in the cave wall, she pulled out a large aluminum bowl and walked to the pool, dipping it down into the water. Bringing it back, she stopped and took the washcloth she’d been using earlier, plus a dry, clean towel.

Kneeling beside him, she took his right hand and placed it in the water, gently washing all the dirt, sweat and blood off. He had large square hands, long fingers and she saw many small white scars across them as she washed each one individually.

“Tell me about yourself?” she asked, glancing at him. “Is your team out of Coronado?”

Mike felt his entire body go hot with longing. He hadn’t expected her to wash his filthy hands. Her movements were gentle, careful. “I don’t really want to say anything to you. For the same reasons you’re not sharing anything with me. For all I know, you could be Taliban.”

Her lips curved ruefully as she soaped the cloth and slid it up to his hairy wrist and lower arm. He felt his muscles leap and tense beneath her ministrations. “I understand,” she answered. “In our business, it is a need to know only.”

Mike wanted to talk to her. His mind plunged through ways to get information out of Khat. He looked at the water in the bowl. It was filthy. That’s how the rest of him felt. He wished like hell he could stand and go over and bathe under that waterfall.

“Your horse?”

Khat nodded. “Yes. She’s my best friend. She’s saved my life so many times...” Holding his clean hand, she brought the towel over and dried him off.

“That’s no Afghan mountain pony,” he said, hoping this line of conversation wasn’t going to end in a box canyon.

“She’s purebred Arabian.”

“My father has an Arabian horse ranch,” he said. Mike saw her chin lift, her eyes widen.

“Really?” Khat searched his shadowed golden eyes. The morphine was helping him to relax. When a partial smile pulled at his chiseled mouth, a white-hot heat moved down through her. Shocked by her body’s response, Khat swallowed. “Can you tell me more?”

Hearing the sudden excitement in her husky voice, those green eyes so large, reminding him of green tourmaline, he said, “My father was born in Saudi Arabia. He became a renowned cardiac surgeon, met my mother, who is American, and came to the States. After I was born in San Diego, he decided to have a small, select herd of Egyptian Arabians at their ranch in Alpine. He was able to acquire a stallion from the House of Saud.”

She released his hand. “That is wonderful. We share a love of Arabian horses. I need some clean water.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty dirty,” he agreed drily. Watching her rise, those thick red strands of hair tumbling across her shoulders, Mike felt hungry for her on a purely sexual level. Rubbing his jaw, he watched her walk into the other cave. There was a gentle sway to her hips, and those long damn legs of hers went on forever.

Then he stopped himself. He had no business reacting to Khat like this. She’d saved his life. She deserved better than his male reactions, and he was unhappy with himself.

When Khat returned with a clean bowl of water, she handed him the cloth so he could clean his face. There was a lot of dried blood along his temple, across his high cheekbone and matted in his black beard. She rested her hands on her thighs. “Do you still have Arabian horses?”

“My parents do,” he said. God, the cool cloth felt so damn good against his gritty, filthy skin. He closed his eyes, wiping his brow, eyes and cheeks.

“Then, they are Egyptian Arabians?”

He squeezed the cloth into the water, quickly watching it become dirty. Lifting it out, it felt good to wipe his nose and lips. When he rubbed the left side of his face, it was swollen and tender. “Yes. They keep one stallion and six broodmares. It’s a hobby of my father’s. He likes the fire of the Egyptian Arabians.”