Page 4 of Handling Haven
Frisco dodged around several people running for the cover the trees behind him could provide. As he neared the downed couple, he swung his Colt-M4 around to his back by its strap so it was out of the way. Sliding like a baseball player trying to beat a tag at home plate, he stretched out next to the injured woman, confident the two other men had his six. They stood over them, their weapons at the ready, scanning for more threats, as he got to his knees. The female operative’s wide-eyed charge had been about to roll her over, but Frisco stopped him. “Wait!” He eyed the bullet hole in the back of her dress, in the region of her midline, lumbar spine.Shit, that’s not good!“Come over to my side and grab her legs. We’ll roll her as one unit.”
While the shaken geek obeyed the order, crawling over to kneel next to the woman’s hips and thighs, Frisco reached across her back and grasped her opposite shoulder with one hand and her waist with the other. After making sure theother man was ready, he said, “On the count of three. One ... two ... three.”
As they gently rolled her over, another explosion shook the ground. Screams of terror followed as the crowd started running again, this time toward the parking lot and their vehicles, which most couldn’t access due to the valets having their keys. But several limousines were already barreling toward the exit and the roadway beyond. Brisk intel was reported over the comm units followed by more gunfire. Apparently, whatever was happening was on the far side of the compound, and Frisco prayed it stayed there as he stared into the wounded woman’s face.
She grabbed his arm, her pretty, brown eyes and pale face were filled with pain and ... resignation? Her voice was raspy and weak. “L-Leave me.”
“Not on your life, darling. We’re gonna get you out of here.”
She shook her head. “No. C-Can’t move my legs. Leave m-me.”
Shock and anger rose within him as what she was telling him sank in. She was paralyzed and wanted him to leave her to die—to be killed by whomever was behind the attack, whether swiftly or following hours of torture.Like fucking hell!
As the gunfire grew louder, Sawyer snapped intohis microphone, “Babs! Get the fuck in here! West lawn—critical extraction!”
A female voice answered over the sounds of a chopper’s rotor blade, “Coming in hard and fast, Boss-man.”
It was nice to know someone had brought the big toys. Behind his teammate, Hollywood fired his weapon. “Get her up, Frisco! Tangos are moving in. We gotta get out of here fast!”
“I can’t! She can’t move her legs!”
“Pick her up! The damage is already done!” To anyone else, his teammate’s words would probably sound harsh and callous. But Frisco had heard the regret in them along with the unspoken message that if they didn’t get her out of there fast, things would get a lot worse—for all of them. He didn’t have a choice. There was no way he was leaving her to die—no way any of them would.
A rapid thumping, signaling the approach of a helicopter, increased as did the gunfire. A Blackhawk appeared low above the treeline and, indeed, it was coming in “hard and fast.” Thankfully, most of the guests had run for their lives by this point so the grassy expanse between the burning mansion and the jungle was basically clear for the pilot to land. A few stragglers quickly got out of theway, unsure if this was a new attack. Hollywood and Sawyer were both now firing their weapons at targets as several bullets hit the dirt not far from the ragtag group. All around the six-acre property, Delta, Trident, and Deimos team members were engaging the enemy that seemed to grow in numbers. It was unclear how many of them were actually just the hired security for the event, who had no idea who the good guys were and weren’t, and were shooting at anyone with a weapon. Unlucky for them, there was no way to tell the difference between the tangos and the armed innocents, either.
Frisco knew they were out of time and options. Ignoring the pain and fear etched on the injured woman’s face and her repeated pleas for him to leave her, he got to his feet, gestured for the geek to move out of the way, and grasped her right ankle. The maneuver he was about to do was called a Ranger Roll and one he’d practiced many times with his teammates. It was the fastest way to pick up an unconscious or incapacitated person while under fire. Dropping his right shoulder, he did a quick somersault over her left hip, bringing her lower body with him. When he rolled back onto his knees, he had her in a fireman’s carry as she hung limply across his shoulders.
Sawyer reached down and grabbed the redhead by the collar of his tuxedo jacket, dragging him to his feet. “Get up and on the fucking chopper, Reardon! Move!”
Not waiting to see if the others were following, Frisco stood and ran toward the Blackhawk as it touched down less than twenty yards away, ducking low to avoid the rapidly moving rotor blades. The rear door was open, and a man, dressed in black, wearing a balaclava, covered Frisco and the others with a mounted M-60 machine gun, as they hightailed it across the lawn. As they neared, Sawyer ran past everyone and vaulted through the open door, before turning around and holding out his hand to Frisco. The two men grasped each other’s forearms, and Sawyer yanked him and the woman into the rear bay. Hollywood practically threw Reardon into the chopper before jumping in himself.
“Go, Babs! Go!” Sawyer yelled to his female pilot.
As Frisco lowered the injured operative to the floor as gently as he could, the Blackhawk lifted off the ground. Just as fast as it had landed, it was back up in the air, banking toward the treeline again. The Trident team leader yelled again, this time into the comm’s microphone, “Alpha, Omega, Delta, principals secure. Ghost, Devil Dog’s takingmy lead down there. We’ve got Hollywood and whatever Taint-waffle’s name is again. We’re medevacing to our standby.”
Kneeling next to the woman, Frisco realized she was no longer responsive. Her eyes were shut, and her head was rolled to the side. His heart leaped into his throat until he realized she was still breathing. She’d either passed out from blood loss or the pain—it didn’t matter which, but it was probably better that she was out. The man who’d already been on the chopper ripped off his face mask and dragged a large medical duffel out from under the row of jump seats. He and Sawyer worked together to cut the woman’s dress so they could assess her injuries. Frisco spotted a trauma blanket tucked in the duffel among the medical equipment and snatched it. Tearing open the package, he spread it out and covered her nearly naked body after they saw there was no exit wound on her chest, abdomen, or flanks. The bullet was still inside her somewhere—that could either be a good or bad thing, but one they couldn’t rectify in the airborne tin can. Rolling her as one unit, the three trained operatives located the wound on her lower back. It’d matched up with the hole in her now discarded dress, right near her spine.
“Just get her stabilized, Skipper,” Sawyer ordered the man who’d been posted on the helicopter, before addressing the others. “We’re heading for Kearsarge.”
Frisco had figured that was their initial destination. The Navy’s third Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge, was currently located in the Arabian Sea. The crew had been ordered to take position in international waters, offshore from Mumbai, in case Delta needed them. Apparently, it’d been arranged for Sawyer’s team and Deimos to use the ship, with its advanced medical services, as well. At least someone had known there’d be more than one military branch or government agency working this mission from hell. The doctors onboard would be able to perform surgery and stabilize Haven. From there, they’d fly her out on an Osprey to an airbase where she’d be transferred onto a plane en route to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the US military hospital in Germany—if she survived until then. Frisco’s heart clenched at the thought.
Hollywood poured Quikclot powder onto the wound, slowing the blood flow, then placed a trauma dressing over it, before they rolled her onto her back again. Skipper started an IV in her left arm. There was nothing else any of them coulddo until they reached the ship except remove as many slivers of glass as they could from her feet and arms and clean the wounds. Reardon sat on the edge of one of the jump seats, unashamed tears rolling down his face as he held the unconscious woman’s hand as she lay at his feet. The worry in his voice was clear as he yelled to her over the sounds of the rotors slicing through the air. “Haven, you’re gonna be okay. You hear me, Haven? You’re gonna be okay.”
Unwilling to sever the connection he’d begun to feel toward her the moment he’d looked into her eyes, Frisco held her other hand the entire trip—and prayed.
CHAPTER 4
Three hours later,Frisco, Hollywood, Reardon, Sawyer, his operative, Kip “Skipper” Morrison, and the chopper pilot, Tempest “Babs” Van Buren sat in Kearsarge’s mess hall, waiting for news about Jane Jones—that was the only name for Haven that had been given to the staff who knew better than to dispute it. There would be no record of her ever having been aboard, and all the medical documents in her chart would leave with her. The crew was steadily bringing the ship closer to the Persian Gulf, northwest of the Arabian Sea. The less time Haven spent in the air following surgery, the better. Frisco just prayed she made it that far. She hadn’t regained consciousness before being taken into surgery.
Glancing at Van Buren, a retired Air Force pilotin her early or midthirties, Frisco had to agree with her handle, which was short for “bad-ass bitch.” She’d flown like the hounds of Hell were nipping at their tail rotor, getting them to Kearsarge in record time, before battling some nasty crosswinds and high seas, left over from an earlier storm, during the landing. Even some of the ship’s crew had remarked it was some of the best flying they’d ever seen under those conditions. The only person who hadn’t agreed was Reardon who’d tossed his cookies a few times into a barf bag Sawyer had thrust into his hands.
It wasn’t until after Haven was being whisked away on the gurney, which had been waiting for their arrival, that Frisco had gotten a good look at the other woman. As the brunette climbed out of the pilot’s seat, he’d caught a glimpse of her titanium left leg. Later, Sawyer had told him how she’d lost it when an RPG had struck her helicopter in Afghanistan as she was extracting a bunch of Marines from a hot zone. Despite her leg being mangled, she’d managed to fly the damaged bird far enough away from the enemy before crash landing it. Every single one of the Marines had survived with, at worst, a few broken bones. By the time a second rescue crew had retrieved them, they’d hadto apply a tourniquet to Babs’s leg to keep her from bleeding to death. At the hospital, the limb had needed to be amputated just below the knee. After giving her time to recover and get her disability discharge, Sawyer had approached the woman, who’d flown him and others from SEAL Team Four on numerous missions. He’d offered her a job as both a helo pilot and fleet mechanic at Trident. Frisco had been impressed to learn the private company had its own Sikorsky MH-X Silent Hawk—an extremely expensive toy. Unfortunately, though, for this mission on the other side of the world, they’d had to borrow the Blackhawk from allies in the region. It must have cost a small fortune or a lot of payback markers to arrange it.
Taking another swig of the disgusting swill they called coffee around there, Frisco grimaced. Usually the Navy vessels had awesome coffee, but this tasted like it’d been brewed with a dirty sock for a filter. It was the middle of the night, and they’d been offered bunks to crash in, but everyone wanted to wait until the surgery was over. Aside from a few crew members coming in and out for various reasons, the six of them were alone. They’d been able to take showers and change into sweatpants and T-shirts purchased from the ship’s storeon Trident’s tab. Sawyer and Hollywood were both catching a combat nap in chairs to his left. Across the room, Reardon, Skipper, and Babs were monitoring the news the crew had patched into a closed-circuit-TV via the ship’s satellite feed, even though the reception was sketchy at times.
The BBC was covering the story of the tragedy in India at what some people, newspapers, and magazines had been referring to, prior to today, as the Royal Wedding of the Year. So far, a reported twenty-seven people were dead, including the groom’s father and brother, and scores were injured. Most of the deaths, some bodies burned beyond recognition, had occurred in the cigar bar, which’d been down the hall from the library where Haven and Reardon had been standing. The numbers were expected to rise as the authorities began to sift through the rubble of the mansion that had almost completely burned down after the two explosions had destroyed several rooms.
There was wide speculation about the tuxedoed men with guns found dead in the carnage of the building. Several hadn’t been identified as being on the venue’s security detail. There were also questions about the masked, militarized men, who’d emerged from the jungle, some of whom had beenswooped up by a helicopter while kidnapping a couple. The others had disappeared back the way they’d come after the chopper had taken off. Some people were saying they’d been members of ISIS, others were blaming al Qaeda, and a few were saying it’d been British Special Forces getting revenge for recent attacks in London. It was almost surprising no one had suggested they’d been aliens from another planet. Frisco knew the Indian authorities would never be able to prove who’d actually been involved—Delta, Deimos, and Trident were that freaking good. Nothing had been left behind that could come back and bite them on the ass.
