v "Can I give you a hand?"

Lynn turned, reached for Jamie's arm, and smiled. "Good morning."

Jamie smiled back in shy astonishment that, of all the women * 244 *

on earth, this one greeted her, touched her, with such warmth.

"North Carolina's briefed you?" she asked as she helped pack Lynn's hammock.

"Yep." Lynn's smile broadened, her relief evident. "Sounds like the home stretch."

"Yeah. We're heading for a pickup."

"Is it true about the diversion team?"

"Two volunteers-Vargas and Tibay-will stay here and hook up with them, then catch up with us," Jamie said while she studied Lynn, trying to decide what to do. "They'll have a comlink, so we'll be able to stay in contact."

Lynn caught the examining glance. "What?"

"Just checking in. We'll be shoving off in about ten minutes." Lynn touched Jamie's arm again. "What? Tell me." Their eyes locked briefly, no more than a second, and then Jamie looked down, opened her mouth to speak, but thought better of it.

"Okay, then let me guess." Lynn's hands now firmly grasped Jamie's forearms. "You need to push today, don't you? To get us closer to the pickup. But you're afraid I can't hack it." Several seconds pa.s.sed before Jamie responded. "Lynn, I'm not engaging in that conversation until you tell me something. Honestly."

"Tell you what-honestly?"

"How you're doing. How depleted you are. How strong you feel."

"On a scale of one to ten?"

Jamie wasn't distracted by the feeble tease. "Yes. Exactly. And honestly."

Lynn sighed as she released Jamie's arms; her shoulders slouched a little. "Fair enough, fair enough." She looked up into Jamie's eyes and shrugged. "Truth is, my knees hurt. Not as much as after the first night, but I'm sore. And I'm tired. I work out, you know, I'm not a sloth. But I'm not used to these hills or being wet all the d.a.m.n time." Jamie nodded as if the conversation had ended. "I underst-"

"Wait a minute. I'm not done yet."

Like an errant child, Jamie looked at the ground and pushed the dirt with the toe of her boot.

"It's true, isn't it?" asked Lynn. "We need to really hump today, right?"

* 245 *

"Yes." Jamie drilled her gaze into Lynn's. "But only if you can handle it. And I don't think you can. I think you're wasted."

"More wasted than you?" Lynn said. "You've been running on empty since way before I came along."

"I'm a marine. It's supposed to hurt."

"I'm okay, Jamie. I can do it."

Jamie shook her head, frowned her reluctance. "No," she said softly, but found herself unable to leave until Lynn accepted her decision.

Lynn's eyes glowed with a ferocity Jamie hadn't seen before, but her voice stayed calm. "How far would you like to get today?"

"Roughly ten klicks. Ten kilometers." Why am I even talking to you about this? Jamie half turned away, but Lynn's hand on her arm again stopped her. Okay, then, here it is.

"The scouts are out there now making our trail, but it's minimal, Lynn, because we don't want the enemy to be able to see it-or us.

You'll be going single file on a rough track, and part of the time you'll have to hold a tarp above your head so the enemy can't spot you, since the weather'll be just pa.s.sable enough just often enough for them to get a glimpse of us if we let them. And that's not all. Downlink indicates we're on the edge of a typhoon that'll be intensifying-lots of rain, higher winds as the day progresses. That's why we're getting under way now. If we can beat a klick an hour, we'll be d.a.m.n lucky. So ten klicks will take at least eight hours-very likely a good deal longer, because we'll be in downpours pretty much the whole time. Sometimes quite bl.u.s.tery downpours. It'll be very, very strenuous. Best scenario is it'll be really brutal."

"I understand, Jamie."

"Do you?"

"Please let me try."

Slowly, Jamie's frown relented. She grasped that Lynn was, in effect, joining up and volunteering for a mission. "Okay. But you gotta promise me: Before you crash and burn, you'll ask for a.s.sistance.

Means you have to pay attention to yourself, antic.i.p.ate your breaking point."

Lynn said nothing.

"Lynn," Jamie said. "That's the deal for all of us. That's how we keep each other alive. You gotta promise me."

* 246 *

"Yes, Jamie." Lynn's determination inflected her voice. "I promise you."

v For twelve hours they trudged, hoisting each other over ledges, lifting each other out of the mud, unsnagging the billowing tarps from branches and jutting rocks, saving each other from sliding down mountainsides. They detoured around once-tiny streams now swollen into cla.s.s-six rapids. They dodged trees collapsing before the predatory wind.

During the worst of it, squall lines bristling with lightning attacked them and they cowered under shallow rock ledges, holding on to each other as thunder exploded around them like a well-aimed artillery barrage.

And when they reached their goal-a cave about halfway between Mantalingajan and Mount Landargun-Jamie watched Lynn Hillinger enter it on her own two feet, without aid, North Carolina close behind.

v "North Carolina tells me you're refusing pain meds," Jamie said, swinging into the hammock next to Lynn's.

"Not exactly. I just don't want to max them out. I'll be too groggy tomorrow."

"Mmm, well, don't worry about that. We're gonna sit tight until at least tomorrow afternoon."

Lynn twisted in her hammock, a too-sudden movement that induced a flinch. "Not because of me."

"I suppose it is because of you, in a way." Jamie's rea.s.suring grin belied the words, and Lynn shook her head at the razzing. "Today we averaged better than three-quarters of a kilometer an hour-despite the weather and the horrible ground conditions. We're going to put the margin you gave us today to good use. You kept quite a pace. d.a.m.n impressive."

"Me?" Lynn asked blankly. "I don't get it."

"You set the pace today, Lynn. We made sure you got support, but it was you who set the pace. And you never let up."

* 247 *

"G.o.d, all I was trying to do was keep up." Jamie swung her legs out of the hammock and leaned toward Lynn, two small pills resting atop the scar in the middle of her extended palm. "Take these, okay? They'll make it easier to sleep."

"Yes, all right." Lynn washed them down with a long swig of water from her hydropack and relaxed into her hammock.

Next to Lynn, Jamie relaxed, too. The wind and rain howled outside the cave, and occasionally a light spray whirled into its depths and cooled their faces.

Sleep came for Jamie softly, gently. She snugged toward it, knowing that for a few hours, until her turn on watch, she'd be able to truly rest.

"Jamie?" Lynn's voice lilted toward her from far, far away.

"Mmm?"

"What happened to your hands?"

"Mmm...can't...'mem..."

* 248 *

Chapter tWenty-nine.

this is a GiFt Lieutenant Sherman's vehement objections didn't change Jamie's mind. "We're staying put so everyone has a chance to rest."

Everyone except Jamie and two others, who donned pa.s.sive-identifier cammies and ventured into the storm to hook up with the diversion team and its escorts, Vargas and Tibay.

"Why do you have to go?" Lynn asked as Jamie put on the cammies.

"I know the paths better than anyone else."

"Christ, Jamie, you need rest, too. Why not just wait here for them? They'll find us, won't they?"

North Carolina came to the rescue. "We have to reel in our guys today, ma'am. Ay-sap. But don't worry. It shouldn't take long. And since LT might have to use splinter-noise commo to make contact, this way any splinters the enemy picks up are far enough away from here that they'll be misdirected."

Lynn didn't give up her frown, but she acquiesced with a small dip of her head.

By early afternoon, Jamie had returned with Vargas, Tibay, and the diversion team. As best anyone could tell, they hadn't been spotted, hadn't been tracked.

A day later-on the twenty-first of June-they used the remains of the retreating typhoon as cover and made it to another cave where Rhys had stashed supplies. This cave west of Mount Landargun would be their last. They had reached the pickup point. Here they found * 249 *

additional MREs and a couple more comlinks as well as another sniper rifle, two squad automatic weapons, and a trove of ammunition.

"Ooh-rah! SAWs!" Sherman rooted as he picked up one of the squad automatic weapons. About thirty seconds later, he began lobbying for a SAW nest with himself manning it. As he talked too fast, too loud, Jamie scowled at him on principle.

But she agreed with the idea and had already mapped out how the escapees would execute their part of the pickup plan. Her goal was to get everybody out before any weapons needed to be fired, although the odds of pulling it off weren't good.

Now that the weather had cleared, the enemy searched for them in force. Soon after they took shelter in this last cave, the mountains around them reverberated with the nearly continuous thumping of enemy helicopter rotors-not just small, two-crew attack helos, but also at least one older MI-19 support aircraft capable of carrying thirty people.

Ops center detected nothing, of course. The PIA and their helos had long since been stealthed up. But the sounds suggested PIA fighters were being ferried into the mountains south of them-close and moving north, coming closer-some as close as six or seven klicks away.

Jamie deployed shifts of marines outside the northeast-facing cave in a perimeter extending to the craggy ridge just above it. At least they wouldn't be taken by surprise, and so could choose whether or not to be taken alive.

The pickup, which would begin just before dawn, couldn't come soon enough. All thirty-one prisoners from Saint Eh Mo's listened diligently to Jamie's description of the plan.

"Ladies and gentleman, ops center has given us a new name. We are Prancer, and the spot where we will climb aboard a Shark helicopter tomorrow morning has been named Prancer X-Ray. It's a clearing about two hundred meters north of here. At zero-five-hundred, we begin our move to Prancer X-Ray."

Their Shark helo would be escorted and covered by two Barracuda attack helos. While they boarded the Shark, the enemy would be distracted and diverted by a small team of marines-dubbed Rubyfish-which would helo-drop onto a plateau about five hundred meters southwest of the ridge that loomed over the cave entrance.

* 250 *

Supported by two other Barracudas, Rubyfish would intercept any PIA approaching from the south and then move north over the ridge to Prancer X-Ray for a second, later pickup.

Jamie called out eleven names, the eleven strongest people she had, and took them aside. "To get everyone to the Prancer X-Ray pickup site, we need three overwatch teams. Prancer-Dog One will overwatch the Prancer X-Ray clearing. That'll be three people. I want six people on Prancer-Dog Two to maintain a mobile perimeter during our move from the cave to Prancer X-Ray. And I'm asking for two volunteers for Prancer-Dog Three. You'll be overwatching from the high point on the ridge above the cave, and you may have to stay and extract later with Rubyfish."

Four people volunteered for Prancer-Dog Three. Jamie chose Vargas and Tibay. She didn't mention to them or anyone else what she worried about most, what she'd tried most to change about the pickup plan: The number of helos. Four Barracudas wouldn't be nearly enough unless they got very lucky. However, for reasons that were beyond Lieutenant Gwynmorgan's need-to-know, four would be all they'd get.

v "Ready?"

After gearing up on the other side of the cave with the people in the overwatch teams, Jamie had checked on everyone except Lynn. She saved Lynn for last.

At the sound of Jamie's voice, Lynn looked up and gaped. A long moment pa.s.sed before she said anything. "Do you really need-" Lynn stopped her words, but her eyes kept going, from the sniper rifle cradled in Jamie's arm to the a.s.sault rifle slung across Jamie's back to the vest laden with ammunition stacks. Clutching her hydropack, Lynn blinked.

"Uh..." Her voice jittered. "Have you got water, Jamie?"

"Oh yeah." Jamie patted the two containers attached to her vest.

She pulled off her boonie hat and her eyewraps and gazed intently at Lynn, but the words she'd wanted to say got stuck somewhere and she said nothing.

Lynn's eyes filled with tears.

* 251 *

"No," Jamie said, words now flowing, "don't, don't. You'll be fine, Lynn. North Carolina will be with you every step of the way. Just do what she tells you and you'll be safe, you'll be home real soon."

"But you- you-"

Jamie reached for Lynn's forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze.

"Oh, don't you worry about me," she said, smiling, allowing herself one last look at Lynn Hillinger.

So she'd remember. This is a gift. Getting these people out, getting Lynn out-it's a payment on what I owe. If I can just make it work...

"You ready, Senator?"