Page 78 of Take Me Back
Present day
Aslap to my face awakens me, and I roll over, baring my teeth.
“Whoa, brother.” The voice is familiar.
Am I fucking dreaming?I blink to adjust to the bright light.
“He’s gonna need more than a field dressing. He needs a fucking hospital.”
My vision clears, and faces I recognize hover over me.
Faces that haunt my dreams, asking me why I abandoned them.
“Two guys—” I croak, my throat burning.
“With AKs. Got ’em. They’re down. The perimeter is secure. No one’s gettin’ the drop on us.” Rome Hennessy cuts through the rope tying my ankles first, and then my hands. “The fuck happened here? We got two dead bodies. Another guy barely hanging on, and I’m not sure whether he’s good, bad, or indifferent. Give me sitrep, DC.”
Tanner drops the first aid kit next to me on the floor.
“Don’t fucking worry about me. You gotta go after them. They’ve got Kat. Taking her to a boat.”
“We’ll get her. We can’t be far behind. One of the bodies is still warm.”
Tanner shoots a look at Rome. “It’s the fucking tropics. Of course it’s warm.”
“Whatever. He hasn’t been dead long.”
“Then fucking go!” I try to yell, but my voice is wrecked.
“I know you’ve been gone for a year, but we’re still of theleave no man behindphilosophy. We’ll get you patched up, and we’ll figure out a plan. We’re not walking into this blind, which is what I’m guessing you did here.”
The shame of my fucked-up rescue attempt eats at me like acid. “I had a plan. It went balls up.”
“I told you to wait for us.”
I meet Rome’s gaze. “I don’t wait when it comes to Kat.”
Pain burns through my arm as Tanner swabs it with antiseptic. “Lucky news—this one’s a through and through. But ...” He shifts to look at my leg. “I’m gonna have to dig this one out of your leg, and it’s going to fucking suck.”
“We need to get in the air. Now.”
“We’re here by water. Gotta take a boat to the chopper. Next time you want to be rescued by air, pick a fucking place where a chopper can land.”
Tanner spends the next ten minutes supergluing the cut on my throat, digging a bullet out of my leg, dumping QuikClot on it, and then slapping duct tape across both gunshot wounds.
“That’s as good as we can do until you get your ass to a hospital.”
Rome stands and cracks his neck from side to side. “Now we talk about how we’re getting your woman back.”
* * *
My unwilling assistant in my shit-ass rescue plan isn’t dead. While Rome draws plans on the beach with a big stick, Tanner pulls two bullets from the guy’s chest and patches him up well enough that we’re pretty sure he isn’t going to die.
“Can’t kill old Julius so easy,” he tells me when they load him up first.
He’s along for the ride, although we gave him the option of staying on the island and radioing a friend for help. He took one look at the carnage and chose to come along rather than try to explain what happened there.
Whoever lands on Genie Caye next is going to get a hell of an unpleasant surprise.
