Candace Irvin - Crossing The Line

But her friend just blinked back her tears.

“Carrie, please.”

“T-told you. It’s d-dead…gone.” She coughed. “I c-can…feel it.”

“Don’t talk like that—”

“The b-baby…ours…it’s gone.”

What?

Eve hadn’t realized she’d breathed her shock out loud until Carrie answered her. Or maybe Carrie had read her mind.

“So s-sorry. I didn’t know h-how to…tell you. Please, m-make sure we’re b-buried w-with him.”

No!

Dammit, no. Carrie was not giving up.

She wouldn’t let her.

But before she could argue, Carrie started coughing again—and this time, she began hacking uncontrollably. Eve forced the panic down and held her friend’s hand until the coughs eased. “One m-more thing, p-promise m-me…” Oh God, Carrie’s whispers were getting weaker. The rasping gurgle in her lungs, louder. Frothy blood had begun to bubble and seep from the side of her mouth. She was losing her.

She had to act.

Now.

Eve ignored Carrie’s gasps as she grabbed the buckle again. But again, Carrie’s hands found hers. They were beyond icy now. Almost white.

“P-promise…me.”

“Anything.” She’d promise anything in the world if Carrie would just let her help.

“Don’t…h-hate me.”

Eve’s mind and heart shrieked in unison. No! Dammit, no. This was not happening. Her best friend was not dying.

But she was.

Eve could feel it even as those icy fingers lost their grip and slipped away from her own hands altogether.

Just do it. Promise her. Let the woman die in peace.

Lie.

She smoothed Carrie’s matted curls back one last time and kissed her shattered cheek. “I promise. I won’t hate you.”

Carrie managed a smile, and then she was gone.

Eve screamed.

The loss was excruciating. Unbearable. So intense, she couldn’t even feel the agony wracking her ribs anymore. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, shaking Carrie’s shoulders, begging her, shouting at her to come back, not to abandon her. But eventually, reality set in.

The smoke set in.

The sweltering flames.

The leaking fuel had finally ignited. The Black Hawk was burning, its searing metal creaking and bubbling around her. The sweet stench of melting rubber filled her nostrils.

She had to get Carrie out of here.

Their crew chief, too.

Dead or alive, she was not leaving them to roast in this fiery shell of buckling steel. Determination seared into her, giving her the strength to unlock her own harness and bash her aching shoulders and splintered ribs into the chopper door. She fell out into a whimpering heap on the jungle floor.

But again, determination forced her to overcome the agony. She lurched to her feet and managed to stagger several steps. But in the pain and confusion that followed, it took several more before she realized she was moving away from the chopper and not toward it.

The next thing she knew, something hot and hard slammed into her body, shattering her eardrums and ripping the very breath from her lungs as she went flailing backward into the choking gray mist. But the moment she smashed into the tree she also knew that, dead or alive, it was too late for Carrie or anyone else in that chopper.

Because it had just exploded.

Christ Almighty, his head.

Rick groaned. He hadn’t had a hangover like this since he and his brother had polished off half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s back on their father’s farm in the tenth grade. Ah, cripes, he was going to throw up. A second later, he almost did. Rick thrust his hands out, searching for something to grab on to as he worked to steady his aching, spinning brain. He pushed himself up from what appeared to be a rock to suck down a mouthful of air, but what he got along with it was the distinctive sear of smoke.

This was no hangover.

The crash.

He tried scrambling to his feet but ended up on his knees, cradling his forehead as he struggled for balance…and something was wet. But why? It wasn’t raining. He pulled his hands down and forced his gaze to focus on his shaking fingers. They were covered in blood.

His?

It had to be. He didn’t see anyone else around him.

Sergeant Turner.

Where was he? Where was the chopper for that matter?

Once again Rick used his hands to steady his throbbing skull as he twisted his battered torso about, searching. If his eyes were cooperating as well as he hoped, those were trees wavering in and out of his view. Hundreds of trees.

But no chopper.

The smoke. Follow the smoke.

He could still smell it.

He braced himself against the nausea and lurched to his feet, grateful he managed to remain upright despite his drunken weaving. At least his vision seemed to be clearing. Wary of his tenuous grip on his balance, he began a slow, systematic three-hundred-and-sixty-degree search of the dense jungle undergrowth. He made it to the one-ninety mark before he spotted the small clearing Paris had tried landing the chopper in. It was a good twenty yards into the brush. He caught a flash of something else through the trees, too.

Was that red? Or orange?

He couldn’t be sure. It was just a flicker.

He advanced anyway, determined to check it out. Grasping vines and thick foliage snapped back at him as he moved, lashing around the legs and sleeves of his jungle fatigues with enough tenacity to topple him. He definitely could have used his machete because twice they succeeded. In the end, it was the red that kept him going.

Flames.

He was sure of it now.

He could hear them consuming the chopper, devouring the steel with a vicious rumble that kept him staggering forward until he was almost on top of the tiny clearing. But as he stumbled past the final trees, it wasn’t the chopper that brought him to his knees.

It was his sergeant.

Rick swallowed the roiling bile as it threatened once again, knowing it was hopeless even as he slid his fingers down his sergeant’s throat and pressed them into the man’s carotid artery. The soldier he’d entrusted with his life for nearly three years was gone. Given the angle of the break in Turner’s neck, it would have been a miracle if the man had been otherwise. Guilt seared through Rick, burning the pain from his head, leaving only the anguish in his heart as he cupped his hand to his sergeant’s face and gently closed those dark, unseeing eyes.

Dammit, why had he brought Turner along?

As soon as he realized Carrie was on that chopper, he should have sent his sergeant back to the rest of their men. Sure, Turner would have figured out the real reason Rick had ordered him to come along this morning. But even that would have been better than this.

Rick stared at the almost peaceful expression on Turner’s face, remembering. The good of the last three years far outweighed his sergeant’s distraction these past five months. Turner had saved his ass more times than he could count. In training and in the real thing.

What a waste.

His waste.

Dammit, there was no time to mourn.

The chopper. Her crew.

Once again, Rick hauled himself to his feet, grateful his strength was coming back. He’d need it. For himself and whoever else had survived the smoldering hell thirty feet away.

Please, God, let the rest have survived.

He murmured the prayer over and over, holding fast to the mantra as he crossed the clearing and reached the blackened, shattered shell on the other side. The prayer died on his lips as he spied the remains of the two forms inside the wreckage.

Carrie Evans. The crew chief.

Like Turner, both were beyond hope.

He sent up another prayer for each, saving his last for the soldier he’d yet to find.

Eve Paris.