The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  “Cut that shit out,” Snake said as he mopped at the blood, which was trickling in rivulets down Levi’s muscled back. “Just hold still.” He pressed the wad of gauze against the wound and with his other hand searched for something in his bag. He didn’t carry a military-issue kit, but a long, narrow bag that he packed himself and carried quiver style across his back. “Shit,” he said again. Quickly he looked around, and his gaze settled on Jina. “Babe, come over here and get a QuikClot out of the bag for me. Things must have got a little disorganized when I hit the ground.”

  Knowing she’d been chosen because she was the least effective team member when it came to hitting what she was shooting at, she swallowed her chagrin and slid her weapon back into her thigh holster, then secured it before approaching and kneeling beside the medic bag. While she searched through the disordered bag, Snake squirted the wound with saline solution to wash out any trash, then did more mopping before pressing the wad of gauze against the wound.

  Jina located the QuikClot pack and tore it open. “Slap it on,” Snake said, and she did, holding the gauze pad in place while he quickly tore off strips of tape with his teeth and secured the pad. She tried to keep her eyes firmly on what she was doing, though she was acutely aware of smooth tanned skin and heat and a lot of hard muscle that made her mouth water. She tried—and she failed. She’d never seen Levi without a shirt before, for which she could only thank God, because if she had, she might have lost her fight with temptation. Some of the guys had gone shirtless in front of her, and though they were all in extremely good shape, they hadn’t appealed to her. How could they, when all her senses had been focused on Levi?

  He was kneeling on his right knee, leaning forward a little with his left forearm propped on his left knee, his weapon in his right hand while Snake tended to him. The broad expanse of those powerful shoulders made her heartbeat stutter; she was so acutely aware of him that she noticed everything: the tufts of dark hair under his arms, the tattoo of the ace of clubs on his left shoulder, another tattoo of the letters PBJ (the initials of an old girlfriend?) on his right shoulder, the deep furrow of his spine, the hot scent of his sweaty skin, the thick layers of muscle. He was on high alert, head turning back and forth as he surveyed the surrounding foliage, his dark eyes narrowed, searching.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” he said, surging to his feet. Snake efficiently stuffed his supplies back in the roll bag and slung it crossways across his back, morphing from medic to operator in the matter of a half second. Jina wasn’t as fast getting back into mission mode; she forced herself to look away from Levi so she could regain both her breath and her composure. Still, he moved back into her line of sight as he jerked his bloody shirt back on over his head; she saw the dark patch of hair spread in a tree-of-life pattern on his chest, and her mouth filled with drool again.

  Stone-faced, she returned to her position between Voodoo and Jelly.

  “I know who this is,” Ramirez said, looking down at the body Trapper hauled into the open. “He’s one of the Restrepos, three brothers who belong to FARC. They’re known as ‘the hounds,’ because finding people is their job.”

  “Hunting you specifically?” Levi asked.

  “Seems likely.” Ramirez was from Chicago but spoke a couple of the Colombian dialects like a native. He shoved his sweaty hair out of his face. “They spread out when they’re hunting. The other two will have heard the shots and will be converging on us.”

  “Then we have to move,” Levi said sharply. “Babe, move to the center. Crutch and Boom, fall back to the rear. Double time.”

  Jina opened her mouth to protest, then shut it. He wasn’t moving her to protect her; he was moving her so the team members most accurate with their weapons were both in front and in the rear. They had to move now and move fast. They might run straight into one of the remaining Restrepo brothers, but that was a chance they had to take because what they couldn’t do was sit in ambush, maybe for hours, and miss their ride out. They had already lost precious minutes, and the timing had been tight to begin with.

  They began double-timing out of the area, Levi still taking point. As before, Jina soon lost sight of everyone except Voodoo in front of her, but he would have eyes on the team member in front of him just as Jelly, behind her, kept her in sight. The heat and humidity pressed down on her, making every breath an effort because the air felt so thick. She was coated with sweat, sticky sweat that made dirt and insects stick to her. Damn, why couldn’t they ever go somewhere with a temperate climate, like maybe Seattle?

  Abruptly she noticed that Voodoo wasn’t in sight. She could hear him, but she’d lost line of sight, and that was bad.

  Shit. She couldn’t let them get separated, or there’d be hell to pay. She dug deeper, pushed harder, reached for every bit of speed she could muster. Her thigh muscles ached, her lungs burned. She ignored them; she’d breathe later, when they were on the plane. Air was overrated, anyway.

  She pelted around a huge tree, leaped over a giant protruding root—and slammed headlong into the side of a man who popped out of thin air, his head turned toward Voodoo whose back was just visible as the man raised a rag-wrapped weapon and pulled the trigger.

  Simultaneously:

  The sharp crack oddly muffled by the vegetation and thick air, out of balance because her left ear was protected by the communication bud she wore, but her right ear was unprotected.

  Whump! as she collided with the shooter

  Sick shock reverberated through her. Voodoo had likely been hit, maybe killed. The shard of sorrow that pierced her gut was unexpected. Voodoo was an asshole—but he belonged to her the way the other guys did. He was a part of the whole.

  The impact of the collision rattled her teeth, jarred her bones—twice, because she hit the guy at full speed, bounced off, then hit the ground flat on her back. She landed on the equipment bag, knocking her breath out.

  The shooter staggered sideways, swung around to face the unexpected attack. She saw slanted dark eyes, a mop of matted, dirty black hair, bad teeth, his weapon coming up, and she knew she was dead. The realization was staggering and brought a sort of numbness with it. Then there was another crack, this one from behind her, and clots of red sprayed out of his chest. He staggered back, still bringing his weapon around toward her, and a second shot hit him square in the forehead. He went down like a rag doll, falling across her feet and legs.

  Jina gasped for breath, too much happening in a couple of seconds for her to process. She couldn’t get her lungs to work, or her brain to move faster than wet mush. A body lay heavily across her legs, brain matter leaking out of the massive exit wound on the back of his head. She couldn’t push it off, couldn’t even sit up.

  Jelly ran up. Keeping his weapon aimed, he hooked his foot under the shooter’s armpit, rolled him over, mostly off Jina’s legs but with her left foot still trapped. His expression was grim and set, no sign of the incorrigible team joker on his face now. He slanted a fast glance at Jina. “You all right?” he asked, then snapped his attention back to the guy’s body.

  No. Maybe. She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. All she could do was move her lips like a guppy, trying to somehow get air into her lungs. Her brain said she was okay, she’d just had the wind knocked out of her, but her body was in a panic and the two were miles away from agreement. She totally took back the thought that air was overrated, because she couldn’t breathe, and all of a sudden that was damn important.

  She had a confused sense of being converged on, the rest of the team surging around, weapons drawn and ready. She saw Voodoo, not only alive but evidently unhurt, though she wasn’t sure how that had happened. Levi’s face swam into view, his expression so savage she’d have run if she could. Fat chance of that; she was dying here, lying on the forest floor with damn bugs crawling on her, and they were too busy to notice. But he stood astride her like an avenging angel, holding an HK MP7 instead of a flaming sword, his head on a swivel as he looked for additional threats. Snake slid i