The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  Assume the worst.

  She had to destroy the laptop. That had been drilled into her over and over, into all of the drone operators. The software was highly classified and could not be allowed to fall into anyone else’s hands. Before she did anything else, even before she tried to save herself, she had to do her job and destroy the laptop.

  Feeling along the edge, she located the switch on the upper left of the casing, and toggled it down. There was a bright, brief flash as the hard drive was destroyed. She had to trust that the destruction was complete because she had no way of checking.

  Now she had to save herself.

  Her scrabbling fingers couldn’t locate her bag, the NVD, anything. Ahead, a flashlight beam . . . two beams . . . were slashing through the dust and smoke. She couldn’t go out that way, couldn’t hear if they were talking, if they thought she was dead and were looking for her body, or if they assumed she’d lived through the destruction and was waiting for them, possibly injured but definitely armed.

  Armed. Her pistol had been lying beside her. Now it was God knows where, and she didn’t have the time to feel around for it.

  The hole, the one she’d located in the back wall—that was her only chance. Her gut instinct to not be trapped in the back with no escape had been completely on point. A flashlight beam flashed too close and quickly she ducked to the floor. She had seconds, literally less than a minute, before they would be back here unless by some miracle she found her pistol and shot in their direction. She wasn’t waiting for that miracle, she had to move and move now. She half crawled, half slithered back and to the left, holding her breath so she wouldn’t cough and give away her position, assuming the people searching for her could hear better than she could.

  She reached the back of the ruin, couldn’t go any farther. She scrabbled around, searching for the opening, and finally found the partially blocked hole. More stones had fallen, slowing her down. She shoved some rock out of the way, got down on her belly, tried to wiggle through. The stones scraped on her arms, caught on her shoulders. No. Desperately she turned on her side, worked her head through, pulled with her hands, pushed with her feet, and her shoulders were free. She was half in, half out, completely helpless if anyone saw her. She sucked in a breath and dust clogged her nostrils, her throat. Quickly she covered her mouth with both hands and tried to muffle the harsh cough she couldn’t stifle.

  Out. She had to get out. She pushed some more, got her hips free, and pulled her legs out. Quickly she turned, on her belly, and reached back through the wall, pulled some debris back in place to hide the hole. Maybe that would buy her some time before they realized she’d escaped rather than being buried under the rubble. Staying flat, she belly-crawled to where she remembered the wadi being, though she couldn’t see a damn thing and could only pray she was going in the correct direction.

  The ground fell out from under her and she slid into the wadi, rocks and sand going with her. Found it.

  She had to move, she couldn’t stop and assess the situation until she was in a safer location. All they—whoever they were—had to do was walk to the edge of the wadi and shine one of those flashlights down, and they’d see her.

  Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel her fingertips throbbing. She knew what direction the team had gone in, but when she thought about what she’d seen through Tweety’s cameras, she remembered that the wadi went roughly left to right, not on the diagonal she wanted. But it wasn’t as if she had another to select, she had to go with the wadi she had. She chose to go right, stumbling along the rough bottom, tripping over rocks, falling again. Shit! The delay and possible noise dismayed her more than any pain she might have felt if she’d thought about it.

  On her feet, move, keep moving.

  Her eyesight was adjusting, clearing, now that she was away from the smoke and dust. She could see deeper shadows, tell that the wadi curved back to the left, taking her more in the direction she wanted and the curve effectively hiding her from anyone still at the ruin. She stumbled along, unable to run because the bottom of the wadi was so rough, but at least she was moving.

  She realized there was light, a strange light, with an odd flicker to it; she glanced back and saw the night sky lit by the red, pulsing glow of fire, at least a hundred yards behind her. Whatever had exploded was now burning. What? Couldn’t be the ruin, stone neither exploded—on its own, anyway—nor burned. The truck. Had to be. There was nothing else there.

  The pieces fell into place. Mamoon. He’d been talking to someone. The little bastard! He and his uncle—if Yasser was indeed his uncle—were part of the ambush. When he’d seen on the laptop that she was surveilling the area ahead of the team, and that she could see them in the dark, he’d left immediately, likely to warn the others. Then whoever he’d told had faced the problem of both alerting the ambush waiting, and preventing her from giving the alarm to the team. He’d failed in the last, but succeeded in the first.

  Levi. The team.

  The ringing in her ears was fading a little, enough that she could hear rapid, muted sounds. It took her a few seconds to identify gunfire, but where? Blindly she spun in a circle, oriented herself by the glow from the fire, focused in on the distorted sound.

  There.

  Yes. The gunfire was coming from the direction of the team.

  Her stomach clenched. At least she’d been able to give them warning. Her headset had been knocked askew but was still around her neck; she fumbled for the earbud, put it in place. Through the ringing in her ears she could hear disjointed curses, grunts, the cracks and booms of gunfire, but she couldn’t distinguish individual voices.

  She started walking again. Her headset was out of place, wrenched sideways by the explosion, or when she’d pushed herself through the jagged hole. The strap was twisted, the throat mic . . . her fingers ran over it. The mic was damaged, she could tell just by touch. Shit. Shit! She couldn’t make radio contact with the guys.

  She tried anyway, clicking on the mic—no, the mic had been on, she’d at least gotten out a warning about the ambush, so she had just turned it off. She clicked again, opened her mouth, then shut it. Anything she said right now, assuming her mic worked, would be a distraction.

  The wadi turned sharply to the right, once more taking her away from their direction. She didn’t dare climb out of it, not yet, she wasn’t far enough away from the ruin, and they were in the middle of a firefight.

  She couldn’t get to them.

  Sick with worry, she continued cautiously following the wadi; in some places the dry creek bed was shallow enough that she could see around her, plainly see the blaze in the distance, though it was beginning to die down. She had to bend double to not offer a silhouette in case Mamoon or the man—men?—with him was scanning the area with night-vision goggles. An NVD had fairly limited range of vision and she thought she might be beyond that now, but she wasn’t certain.

  The wadi continued to bear to the right; if she continued following it, it would take her farther and farther from the team. Uneasy, she stopped, trying to make sense of the cacophony she could hear from the earbud.

  The rapid RAT-TAT-TAT of automatic weapons in the distance died down. Anxiously she waited, her heart pounding, sweat pouring off her. Please, God, oh please, let them be all right.

  At Babe’s two sharp words, “Ambush! Ambush!,” they all hit the ground. Simultaneously behind them was a boom! and Levi snapped a look over his shoulder to see, in the distance, a spreading glow exactly where the ruin would have been.

  The internal shock wave that hit him was staggering. Jina! Before he could process anything else, Yasser wheeled, holding a weapon he must have had hidden beneath his loose clothing, and began firing while he ran to the side. Yasser didn’t have an NVD so he was shooting wildly toward where he thought Levi’s team was, which came close enough. A bullet zinged overhead with an angry whine. Levi rolled, aimed, and stitched a line of shots across Yasser’s torso. The man staggered, shook, went down. He twitched