"Now, you let me in there, G.o.ddammit," he breathed in fury at the Marine sergeant in front of him.

"No, sir, I cannot," he growled back, glaring at the spook, his rifle up and across his chest.

Gabe came and stood between the two Marines. "What's your problem, Granger?"

Eyes turning black with fury, Granger snarled, "Go to h.e.l.l. I've got authorization from Langley to interrogate that Taliban girl. Now let us through!"

Gabe moved his M-4 from his right hand, unsafed it and put a bullet in the chamber and held it across his chest in an unspoken "no."

Granger huffed and puffed. He was a good six feet three inches tall, heavily muscled and knew how to intimidate. The only problem here was he knew he was intimidating the wrong person.

The Marines held their ground, unimpressed. Gabe smiled a little. "As I understand it, Granger, you have no authority in a hospital matter. Dr. Johnson is the person you ought to talk to, not us. Asifa is her patient. Why don't you take her on?"

Granger's nostrils quivered as he glared at the guards and then at him. "This isn't over, Griffin. Not by a long shot and you know it! You and these jarheads are a.s.sholes."

Gabe calmly watched the two CIA dudes spin around on their heels and go hunt up Dr. Johnson. He was surprised their heads didn't start rotating three hundred and sixty degrees, too. He grinned a little at the Marines, who grinned back. Gabe walked back into the room. Asifa had slept through the whole thing. He wasn't surprised; the girl had almost died out there on that mountain last night and was still in deep shock over the horrific experience.

"Wow, that dude is out of control," Bay murmured after he quietly closed the door. "What's going on between the two of you? It looks like you have some history with each other?"

Sitting down, he cleared and safed his M-4 and said, "Granger and I go a long way back. It's nothing personal. He thinks because he's the head spook out here at this FOB, he should be treated as the head G.o.d of Bravo in general. LT Brafford routinely puts him in his place and Chief Hampton has tangled with him a couple of times, too. Granger isn't well liked by anyone stationed here. He's arrogant, pushes his weight around and tries to intimidate everyone that gets in his way. He's a tiger without teeth."

Grinning, Bay chuckled over the picture Gabe drew of the CIA agent. "A toothless tiger. Could have fooled me. Out there this morning, I was sure he was going to push me out of the way to get to Asifa."

"Yeah," Gabe said, watching Asifa sleep, "he was going to do that and that's why I stepped in." He gave her a sideward glance, his mouth hitching upward into a feral smile. "Granger doesn't respect women."

"No kidding. I was facing him. I saw it." She rubbed her brow. "I wasn't sure what to do, Gabe. He's a bully."

"If there's ever a next time, just pick up your M-4 and punch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the chest like I did. Hit him in the sternum because there's a ma.s.s of nerve endings there, and when you get punched there, it can take you down to your knees, screaming, in a heartbeat. That's why you need to learn CQD. He got my message. If nothing else, Granger does respect power."

"Great, we have a war going on between them and us. Isn't one war enough for everyone?"

Chuckling darkly, Gabe said, "The CIA thinks they own everything. They can't help it. You have to pity the poor a.s.sholes. Granger is a field agent, which is bad news for everyone. CIA field agents are pretty d.a.m.n squared away and we work well with them most of the time. Granger is an exception."

Bay tried to keep her laughter quiet. When she dropped her hand, she said, "I'm starving to death. Is there any chance you can stay here while I run over to the chow hall? Maybe bring you some food back, too? Plus, those Marines out there haven't eaten, either."

Warmth moved through his chest. Bay always thought about others. He held her soft blue gaze and felt his heart pound to underscore just how badly he wanted her in every way. "Yeah, grab me half a pizza? I've got water on me. That's all I need." I need you. The words d.a.m.n near flew out of his mouth. Stunned, Gabe compressed his lips, in shock. How easily Bay reached out and touched him.

Rising, she pulled on her knit cap and hoisted the M-4 over her shoulder. "I'll be right back...."

THEY HAD JUST finished eating dinner when Dr. Johnson entered the room. She didn't look happy. The doctor shut the door and grimaced.

"Doc Thorn, I need a big favor from you." And then Johnson shifted her gaze to Gabe. "You, too, Griffin."

"Yes, ma'am?" Bay said, standing up. Gabe remained sitting but alert toward the doctor.

"Griffin, call your LT and ask if I can have the two of you fly this girl to Bagram right now. I got those two spook jerks trying to run my show, and it isn't going to happen. They get more joy out of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g over their own people than sending up those drones to kill our mutual enemy."

Gabe raised his eyebrows. "You need us?"

"d.a.m.n straight I do." Johnson nodded toward the door. "I don't put anything past them. I want an armed guard with this girl from beginning to end."

"Then, ma'am, you'd best call LT Brafford, because he has to authorize it. I can't make that decision."

"Understood, Griffin." She sighed loudly and then looked over at the monitors next to Asifa's bed where she slept.

"She's doing okay," Bay rea.s.sured the doctor.

"Good." She turned toward Gabe. "I'll call your LT. One of my nurses will get back to you with his decision. I've got a medevac on standby right now. I want this kid out of here. Rock it out, Griffin."

"Yes, ma'am," Gabe said, somber.

There was grit in the doctor's tone. She was upset and angry. Bay wondered how Granger had threatened her. They would probably never know. "I'll get her prepared for transport, ma'am."

"Yes, thank you."

Gabe followed her out and the doctor made the call to the LT. Bay was fairly sure that the LT would not want them at Bagram. That was a couple of hours of flight time and night was falling. It would mean staying over on temporary duty, at the air base. She'd never stayed overnight, so she had no idea where to go. There was most likely a woman's enlisted barracks on the huge air base, and she'd have to find it.

Gabe sauntered back into the room later, a humored look on his features.

"What now?" Bay asked. She saw Asifa begin to awaken, her eyes looking much clearer than before.

"LT is giving us a thumbs-up on this unexpected guard dog op." His grin increased. "Apparently, Granger went over earlier, screaming at our LT about my behavior and punching him in the chest with my M-4. Granger is threatening to level charges at me for doing it."

Bay's hands stilled and she looked in horror at him. Gabe seemed nonchalant about the whole thing. "What happened?"

"LT told him to get his a.s.s out of his office or he'd take his M-4 and do worse than what I did to him," he said. "A little interagency dustup. Nothing to worry about."

"This is truly a frontier FOB," Bay muttered, placing her hand on Asifa's gowned shoulder.

"More like Dodge City," Gabe agreed dryly. "Tell the girl what's going down. Try to act like this is a normal course of action, because we don't want her stressed out any more than she is already."

Nodding, Bay turned and quickly told Asifa what was going to take place. At the knowledge that they would be flying into Bagram with her, Asifa seemed grateful, her eyes misting over. She reached out with her cut, bruised fingers and gripped Bay's hand.

Gabe kept the door open and saw two orderlies with a gurney coming their way. The Marines stepped aside to allow them in and traded fist b.u.mps with them. Gabe moved out into the E.R. area, keeping watch.

Granger was known to be an a.s.s about things at times like this, and Gabe put nothing past the agent. Granger liked high drama. Gabe hated it. SEALs were professionals and conducted themselves as such. He couldn't say the same for these two CIA nut jobs.

He kept one ear on the transfer of Asifa from the bed to the gurney and one on the sliding-door entrance. Moving his M-4 into a comfortable position in his arms where he could get to it if necessary, Gabe ambled out to the doors of the dispensary. The night had fallen, the wind cold and freezing. The stars above were huge, as if he could reach out and pull one out of the black velvet sky.

Bay relaxed as the medevac headed out into the night. She sat next to Asifa's gurney on the deck, monitoring her and the IVs in her arms. Gabe sat in the back, M-4 resting between his legs, his one arm resting across his raised knees. As the helicopter moved close to nine thousand feet to crest the highest Hindu Kush mountain, she saw him close his eyes to sleep.

Weariness. .h.i.t her, too, but she had to remain alert for Asifa's sake. Her oxygen levels were still not good, and it did, indeed, indicate a tear or leak in her left lung where one of the ribs had punctured it. She was in a lot of pain, could only breathe shallowly and wouldn't move much because of the broken ribs. Bay had given Asifa just enough morphine to dull the pain but not interfere with her breathing ability. Bay was glad they were taking her to Bagram. There, they had a state-of-the-art hospital where Asifa would get the best of care.

She had washed Asifa's hair earlier today and gently threaded her fingers through the teen's dry, dark strands, smiling rea.s.suringly down at her. Asifa's stress disappeared beneath her ministrations. Touch was everything. As Bay sat cross-legged next to Asifa's gurney, facing toward the rear of the helo, the dull green light in the cabin revealed the shadowed faces of all aboard.

With a helmet on, she heard all the intercabin talk. The two pilots were wearing NVGs and flying through the black night, focused on their task. The chief air crewman had lain down on the metal deck parallel to Asifa's gurney, his arms wrapped around his chest, catching a few minutes of sleep. The other air crewman on her side of the helo was scrunched up in a corner, awake and alert.

Sleep was rare and always needed out here, Bay knew. She wished she could sleep. Lifting her gaze, she looked back in the deep shadows of the shuddering, shaking cabin, the hypnotic thumping of the blades overhead. Gabe's head was tipped back. He wore a helmet just as she and the other crewman did. Now she could openly stare at him with impunity. He was not pretty-boy handsome, but ruggedly appealing. Yet his wide-s.p.a.ced eyes, that deep green color in them, moved her body and soul. It was his mouth, full and expressive, that drew her. There was nothing weak about his face. The beard gave Gabe an even more lethal look. His brow was broad and lined. The crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes hinted at time spent out in strong sunlight. That, or they were laugh lines; she wasn't sure. Gabe had a wry sense of humor, black humor for sure, but he never smiled much. She wondered, with an ache, if it was because of being abused by his father for so long. There wasn't much in his growing-up years to make him smile.

Her mouth moved into a soft line as she allowed herself to simply absorb Gabe as a man. His hands were large and square with long fingers. There was a quiet, coiled tenseness that existed in him even as he slept, as if always, on some level, he was automatically on guard. She wondered how he stood the stress of what the SEALs did. They were an amazing lot of men, she conceded, thinking back to her year with the Special Forces team in Iraq. Here at Camp Bravo, things moved at lightning speed, everything dependent on what was coming across that Pakistan border into Afghanistan. Every day was stress, unlike in Iraq.

For just a moment, Bay allowed herself the secret pleasure of wondering what it would be like to glide her mouth against Gabe's. She felt undeniable warmth pooling in her lower body, desire. And yes, it was a completely selfish want on her part. What would Gabe look like without clothes? Her womanly senses told her it would be a lavish pleasure of her five senses to move her sensitive fingers up across his body, explore him, feel his strength inside and outside her. No man had ever affected her like this. And they'd done nothing, at all, except share s.p.a.ce and time together. Amazing. Giving a shake of her head, Bay returned her attention to Asifa, who slept.

Would Asifa stop being hounded by those two CIA dudes? What if Granger made a call to the CIA group at Bagram? Worried, Bay placed her hand gently on Asifa's small, bony shoulder. She was relieved Gabe was allowed to go with her. He knew how to handle trouble.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

GABE JERKED AWAKE. Something was wrong! He quickly sat up. The cabin was dark. Bay was sitting next to Asifa, who slept. Scowling, he quickly looked around. The air crew chiefs heard it, too.

"Bay?"

She snapped up her head, her eyes drowsy looking. Hearing Gabe's concerned voice, she saw him tense and alert in the rear of the helicopter. "What? What's wrong?" Something was by the look in his face, his gaze moving up toward the ceiling of the shaking, shuddering helo.

"Rotor a.s.sembly problem," he growled.

Frowning, Bay, who like all the others, had helmets on to stop the ma.s.sive sounds pummeling their eardrums that the helo created, looked up at the ceiling. "I don't hear anything...."

Suddenly, there was a grinding, shrieking sound throughout the cabin. Even with her protective helmet on, it hurt Bay's ears.

Dammit! The helo lurched and began to lose alt.i.tude. Gabe saw the horrified expression on Bay's face. Instantly, he got his radio out, looked at the GPS of their present location and called into SEAL HQ at Bagram, reporting the issue and their location. This was going to be a major problem.

"Bay, get those IVs out of Asifa's arms. We're going down!"

Terrorized, Bay moved into action. She felt the medevac waffling, the shrieking whine continuing. Asifa was awake, her eyes wide with fear. She had no helmet on her head and she was stunned by the earsplitting sounds. Bay made sure the gurney was locked to the deck. The only problem was, there were no safety straps to keep Asifa in the gurney if the helo suddenly lost all power and started flopping around in the black sky. Quickly, she removed the IVs, explaining the problem to the girl. Asifa's eyes turned to horror. Bay felt the same way.

"Where are we, Gabe?" she asked, grabbing for her medical rucksack and her M-4.

"Going into h.e.l.l," he warned her grimly. He'd already slipped into his ruck and tightened the straps, leaning against the wall as the helo began to flounder, the metal screaming above them. "Probably ball bearings in the rotor a.s.sembly cracked and broke. We're going down into a pro-Taliban valley. This isn't going to be pretty. Get your gear on. We're going to need every gun we got for this fight."

Bay looked forward. The pilot gripped the cyclic and collective. The copilot was on the radio with Bagram. Mouth dry, she shrugged into her ruck. Half of it contained medical supplies; the rest were things she'd need out on a patrol. Most important were the magazines for her M-4 rifle.

"How many mags have you got?" Gabe demanded, counting his across his H-gear harness around his chest.

Her heart was beating harder in her chest. "I've got twelve. You?"

"Twelve. That's three hundred rounds for each of us."

"What about the pilots?"

"Only a pistol on each of them."

"The crewmen?"

"Same thing. There's an M-16 above the egress door. They don't carry many weapons...o...b..ard a medevac. Usually just one pistol each."

She heard the calm acceptance in his deep voice. She stared over at Gabe for a moment, scared. "I've never been in a helo crash. Have you?"

"Too many," he said wryly. "You need to put yourself across Asifa. Kneel on one side of the gurney and place your hands on the other side of the railing if the pilots can't get this bird under control. Otherwise, she's going to fly about the cabin, and that can kill her. Okay?"

"Got it." Bay's mind began to work furiously and rise above her initial terror over their situation. She heard all the talk on the radio comms between the pilots and Bagram. Gabe was on his radio, on another channel. Probably calling Chief Hampton back at Camp Bravo. There was a QRF, quick reaction force, available on patrols, composed of other SEALs who would run to an MH-47 Night Stalker and race to where the downed SEALs were. They never left a man behind.

Asifa gripped her hand and Bay devoted her attention to soothing the young girl.

"No QRF," Gabe warned her. "This was supposed to be a simple medevac night flight, was all."

Her mouth fell open, her eyes going large as she stared through the cabin at him. "What, then...?"

"LT's on it. They're scrambling. They know we're going down into that valley."

Suddenly, the screeching sound stopped. The helicopter immediately dropped like a rock out of the sky. Bay's hands were ripped off the litter. She was thrown toward the ceiling. So was everyone else. She landed hard against the door as the helo violently shifted. Everyone was scrambling. Asifa managed to cling to the rails as the bird began to whirl around in a wide circle, gravity pinning everyone.

Fighting to her hands and knees, Bay struggled over to reach Asifa. She had managed to grab the metal rails on the sides of the gurney and not allow her to fly out of it. The young girl's face was stricken with terror.

Just as Bay lunged for the railing, the medevac sheered off and banked sharply to the right. Gravity grabbed her. Hands tightening on the railing, Bay managed to press her body across the gurney. It stopped Asifa from being thrown out. Bay hunkered down, Asifa's only protection.

Gasping, terror racing through her, Bay heard the pilots yelling, trying to regain control of the helo. They were whirling around and around, dropping down, down, down.

Bay's throat tightened with terror as the gravity pulled hard at her. Her knuckles whitened around the metal bars, and her sweaty hands slipped. Asifa grabbed on to her, screaming. The helo was heading down, dropping silently out of the night sky.

"Bay."

She heard Gabe's calm, deep voice in her helmet.

"The pilot is going to let this bird fall. He has no choice. About a hundred feet above the ground, he's going to try and pull up the bird's nose."

Bay felt Gabe come up behind her. He was large and his long arms moved around her, his hands closing over hers, anchoring her to the rails. Literally, Gabe was protecting her and Asifa with his much larger, wider body. She felt tears come to her eyes for an instant, realizing what he was doing. Gabe was using his own body as a shield to protect them. "Okay...what do you want me to do?"

"Hang on. This is going to beat a Six Flags ride by a mile...."

She managed a choked laugh. His voice had a droll edge of humor to it. His long fingers moved over hers, curving around the bars of the gurney, anchoring her. The silence in the cabin was scary. She could hear the wind whistling outside the helicopter, the erratic thunking of the rotor blades above her. Jerking a look out the window, she saw only blackness. Bay had no idea if she was flying upside down or right side up. The sensation terrified her. Gabe's large, calloused hands remained firmly over hers, holding her securely. It stopped her from being jerked and yanked around as the helicopter spun in slow, wide, floundering movements as it headed toward the black, unseen earth somewhere below.

Bay felt they were going to die. Licking her lower lip, she tried to halt the fear from overwhelming her. "H-how many crashes have you been in?"

Gabe heard the raw terror in Bay's voice. He felt the jerk and pull of the spin as the helo sank rapidly earthward. "Too many. I could write a book about it."

His black humor broke Bay's terror. "Gabe, you're certifiable, you know that?"

"Yeah," he said, amus.e.m.e.nt in his tone. And then the humor left his voice. He continued to monitor the movement of the helo. "The pilots are good. They know what they're doing. The worst problem is where we're going to land. It's Taliban central, Bay."

"Okay, what do I do? Tell me." His warm, strong hands fed her strength. Even Asifa had calmed, seeing him protect both of them.