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Their training kicked in and they leap-frogged, providing each other cover as they worked their way to the fighters and knocked them out, one by one.
T-Rex hurried to where Gunny lay in the rubble of the building damaged by the grenade.
The man lay so still, T-Rex’s gut knotted. He bent to feel for a pulse. At first, he could feel nothing. He held his breath and shifted his finger. That was when he felt the reassuring vibration of a heartbeat. Quickly scanning the man’s arms and legs, he noted the tears in his clothing where shrapnel had penetrated. None of the wounds was bleeding profusely. If Gunny had sustained an arterial wound, T-Rex was prepared to apply a tourniquet. But he hadn’t.
Chief Petty Officer Miles Kieslowski ran up to him. “Sir, we got incoming enemy reinforcements. We have to get out of here while we can.” He stared down at the man covered in dust. “Damn.” He glanced up into T-Rex’s gaze. “Is he...”
“Alive. But I don’t know the extent of his injuries.”
“Let’s get him out of here.” Kieslowski started to lift Gunny. “Kenner is on the radio, calling in for pickup.”
“No. I’ve got him,” T-Rex said. “You cover me.” He handed his rifle to Kieslowski. With his hands free, he pulled Gunny to a sitting position and then draped the man’s body over his shoulder. Straightening, he felt the strain on his back and legs. But nothing would stop him from bringing his man out. Never, in all of his skirmishes, had he left a man behind. He wouldn’t start now.
With his burden, T-Rex hurried toward the designated extraction site. As he emerged from the village into the open, he spotted several trucks in the distance, stirring up dust as they barreled toward them. In the light from the moon, T-Rex could tell the men loaded in the backs of those trucks all carried weapons.
The thundering roar of helicopter rotors sounded nearby as the aircraft rose up over the hill behind the village and landed a couple of hundred yards from where T-Rex had stopped to catch his breath. The other marines from his team knelt behind him, firing at the village, as more enemy fighters came out of hiding.
T-Rex had one goal: to get his men to the waiting chopper and out of there before they were outnumbered. As he reached the helicopter, he gave over Gunny’s care to the medic on board and turned toward his team.
Several of them ran toward him, while the others returned fire, backing up as they did. When they were out of range of rifle fire, they ran toward the aircraft and leaped in.
T-Rex stood beside the vehicle, helping his men board. When the last man was in, T-Rex climbed in, yelling, “Go! Go! Go!”
As he settled into his seat, he noted the trucks had stopped short of the village. Several men climbed out carrying long narrow tubes. “They’ve got RPGs!” he yelled.
The helicopter couldn’t move fast enough for T-Rex. It lifted off the ground with its heavy load of souls on board and swung back toward the hill.
They had just made it to the ridge when an explosion went off so close, it made the chopper shudder.
Instinctively, T-Rex ducked.
They made it over the ridge and dropped out of the line of sight of the truck and the RPG-bearing fighters.
The rest of the trip back to their post seemed like they were moving in slow motion. The medics worked furiously over Gunny and the other men who’d sustained injuries.
“Is he going to make it?” T-Rex leaned over his gunnery sergeant, thoughts on that sonogram photo of the man’s fourth child. The boy he’d always dreamed of having. For the first time in a long time, T-Rex closed his eyes and prayed.
Chapter Two (#u6e32857e-6827-5a94-a61e-7a4335488036)
“Time to line up,” Sierra Daniels called out to the toddlers on the playground outside the Grizzly Pass Community Center. Some of the little ones headed her way. Others ignored her completely and continued to play with their favorite outside toys or apparatus.
Sierra couldn’t be angry with them. They were children with the attention spans of gnats, and so adorable she loved each one of them like she would her own. If she had any kids of her own. She sighed, pushing back against that empty feeling that always washed over her when she thought about how much she’d wanted to hold her own baby in her arms.
With a shrug, she called out again, forcing her voice to sound a little sterner. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to line up for a game.” Though they were all under six years old, they seemed to have a keen sense of who they could push around and who they couldn’t. Sierra was 100 percent a pushover when it came to children.
Once all the boys and girls stood in front of her, Sierra instructed, “Let’s play follow the leader. Hands on the shoulders of the one in front of you, like this.” She placed the hands of one of the little girls on the shoulders of another. When each child had his or her hands on the one in front, Sierra led the little girl who was first in line around the play yard, weaving back and forth, creating a giggling, laughing snake of toddlers.
The community center had once been a US Army National Guard Armory. Eventually, the Montana National Guard moved its meeting location to a larger town and turned the building over to Grizzly Pass. It was now used as a community center for local events and the Mother’s Day Out day care program. There were also several offices in the building rented out to local businesses.
Sierra had been ecstatic to land a job as a caregiver to the small children who were too young to go to public school. Jobs were hard to come by in the small community, and she’d needed one when she’d filed for divorce.
She and the other caregiver, Brenda Larson, worked together to corral the little ones and see that they were happy, fed and learned something while they were at the center.
Brenda was inside with the babies and infants. The two women traded off between the babies and the more mobile toddlers.
Sierra led the children around the yard one more time and had angled toward the door to the armory when a truck pulled up and the driver honked the horn.
Her fists clenched and she tried not to glare at the man stepping down from the vehicle. The children picked up on her moods more than she’d ever realized. If she was sad or angry, tiny Eloisa would pucker up and cry her little eyes out. It broke Sierra’s heart to see the tiny girl with the bright red curls shed a single tear, much less a storm of them. She refused to give in to the temptation to yell and throw rocks at the man walking her way.
She pasted a fake smile on her face and waited until he was within twenty feet of her before she said in a patient but firm voice, similar to the one she used with her class, “Please, stop where you are.” Her smile hurt her cheeks, but she refused to release it.
Clay Ellis crossed his arms over his chest. “Get your things. You’re comin’ home.”
“I don’t live with you, Clay,” Sierra said, her voice singsong in an attempt to fool the children into thinking she was fine and that the angry man wasn’t scaring her, and therefore they shouldn’t be frightened either. She glanced down at the thirteen children gathering closer around her knees.
Eloisa stared from Clay to Sierra, her bottom lip trembling.
Oh, no. Sierra wouldn’t let Clay’s bad temper impact the little ones. “Come on, everyone. It’s time to go inside.”
“Like hell it is.” Clay stepped forward.
Eloisa screamed and flung her arms around Sierra’s legs, burying her face in Sierra’s slacks.
She laid her hand on the bright, soft curls and faced her ex-husband. “Clay, I’ll have to ask you to leave. You’re frightening the children.”
He didn’t leave. Instead, he walked up to her, grabbed her arm and pulled. “Quit playing around with these brats and get home. I’ve put up with enough of your nonsense.”
Sierra dug in her heels, refusing to go anywhere with the jerk. She’d put up with enough of his verbal and physical abuse. “We aren’t married anymore. You have no right to boss me around, now or ever. Let go of me.”
He raised his free hand as if to strike her.
Sierra braced herself, but wouldn’t flinch. There had been a time she’d cowered when he’d raised his hand to her. But not anymore. She’d learned the hard way that she had rights, and she didn’t have to take abuse from any man.
The children clung to her, their eyes wide, scared. Eloisa sobbed loudly into the smooth linen of Sierra’s tan slacks. Once Eloisa started, the other children sensed her distress and joined the squall.
“Shut up!” Clay yelled.
For a moment, all the children stopped crying and then, as if the spigot had been opened full blast, they all screamed and cried like a dozen caterwauling cats in a back-alley fight.
Clay yanked her out of the center of the noise and dragged her toward his truck.
Sierra dug her feet into the dirt and resisted with all of her might. “Let go of me. I’m not going with you.”
“The hell you aren’t,” he said. “You belong to me.”
“I belong to no man.” She clawed at the meaty hand gripping her wrist like a vise. “I have a restraining order against you.”
“No one’s going to honor it. Everyone knows you’re my wife.”
“Ex-wife. What part of divorce don’t you understand?” She couldn’t let him get her into his truck. Sierra couldn’t go back to this man. He was a bully, a cheater and a monster. “Let go of me, or I’ll scream.”
“Scream. Only those brats will hear you.” He snorted. “You expect them to come to your rescue?”
“I don’t need anyone to rescue me.” She stopped leaning back against his hold on her and let him pull her close. When she was in range, she stomped hard on his instep and raised her knee hard against his crotch.
Clay bellowed and bent double, clutching the area she’d injured. But he didn’t release his grip on her wrist.
Sierra’s fingers were growing numb, and the kids behind her were hysterical. She had to do something to stop this madness. But what? Clay was bigger, stronger and meaner than she was. He’d demonstrated that over and over again. She had the scars to prove it.
“Please, Clay, you’re scaring the children. Let me get them into the building. When I’m done, I’ll go with you.”
“Yeah, right.” He grunted and straightened. “You expect me to believe you?”
“I will. Cross my heart.” She held up her hand as if she were swearing in front of a jury, something she’d had to do in order to convince a judge she’d been abused and needed out.
“No way.” He turned and dragged her closer to his truck.
“You can’t leave them standing outside. They might get lost in the woods. They’re just children.”
“Like the kids you wouldn’t give me? Why the hell should I care?”
“I wanted children. I tried,” she said. “You can’t blame our problems on these little ones.”
“They aren’t mine. I don’t give a crap what happens to them.”
When he set his mind on something, there was no stopping the man. He’d refused to listen to reason when they were married. What made Sierra think he would listen now?
Using another one of the techniques she’d learned in her recent self-defense class, she twisted her wrist, jerked her arm downward and broke free of Clay’s hold. Free at last, she spun and ran. She hadn’t gone two feet when a hand clamped on her hair and yanked her backward.
Sierra screamed and stumbled backward. The children screamed, as well. She could see them standing there, terrified and confused. It made her mad enough she could have spit nails, and all the more determined to free herself of the madman she’d once promised to love, honor and cherish.
“Well, it goes both ways. And you didn’t live up to your part of the bargain,” she muttered, twisted and turned, attempting to get away. But short of letting him rip chunks of her hair out of her head, she was caught.
Chapter Three (#u6e32857e-6827-5a94-a61e-7a4335488036)
A persistent ringing grated on T-Rex’s nerves. He didn’t like to look away from the road when he was driving, so he waited until he pulled to a stop sign before glancing at his cell phone.
GALLAGER
The name on the screen made his heart tighten. The man had gotten out of that Afghan village alive, barely. He hadn’t lost his life, but he’d lost so much more. “Hey, Gunny, how’s that baby?”
“Great. I got to hold him today. With a little help.”
T-Rex swallowed hard before saying, “That’s great, man.”
“Did I tell you that I’m getting some of the feeling back in my fingers?”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.” Gunny sounded more upbeat than T-Rex had heard him since he’d returned to the States. The hand squeezing his heart loosened a little. “Glad to hear it.”
“I’ll be throwing a football for slugger before long.”
“Please tell me you didn’t put ‘Slugger’ on his birth certificate.”
“No. The wife wouldn’t let me. Officially, he’s Lance Gallagher. But I drew the line at Junior. Nothing shoots a man’s ego down more than being called Junior.”
“True.”
“So, how’s your TDY going?” Gunny asked. “About ready to head back to home station and ship out again?”
“Past ready.”
“That boring?”
T-Rex had to think about that. “Not really boring, just not what I want to be doing.”
“What? Kidnappings and big-game hunters not exciting enough?”
“How’d you know about that?” T-Rex asked.
Gunny snorted. “I read the news.”
“I could do without some of the excitement. I want to get back to the front line.”
“You know you won’t find the guys who did this to us,” Gunny said, his voice softening. “You could hunt every last member of the Taliban and still not know whether you got the guys who staged that trap.”
“Maybe, but if I don’t try, they get away with what they did to you.”
“Oh, is this about me?” Gunny laughed. “The way you blew up in front of the command psychologist, you’d think it was all about you.”
T-Rex’s hand squeezed the cell phone so hard, he was surprised it didn’t crack. What he was feeling was in direct response to what had happened to Gunny. The man had taken the full brunt of the attack. He’d suffered spinal cord damage and might be a quadriplegic the rest of his life. The thought of the father of four spending his life in a wheelchair made T-Rex want to rage at the universe. “It’s just not fair. I should have been the one injured. I didn’t have a baby on the way.”
“You didn’t get to pick,” Gunny said. “It’s the way the cards fell. Or the grenade, in our case.”
“Anyway, things might be settling down here. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels.”
“Yeah, but I doubt the commander will want you back so soon. He was pretty hot when he sent you off.”
“If he knew what a boondoggle it is, he wouldn’t have sent me.”
“Boondoggle?” Gunny snorted. “Sounds like another day in the life of a marine. You’ve got enemy hiding in the hills, you’ve been shot at and you’ve taken out some of the bad guys.”
He had a point. Still, T-Rex would rather be back where his world had come apart. Then maybe he could put it back together. “I don’t know which strings our team lead pulled to get a loan of highly skilled military men to work for the Department of Homeland Security.” Luckily the team had been there, or there could have been a bunch of kids dead or trapped in a mine. “It’s like the Wild West out here in Wyoming.”
“Dude, Wyoming is the Wild West. Who lives there, anyway?”
“Exactly. Mostly a bunch of cowboys. There’s not much more to do out here than ranching or work for the pipeline.”
