Private Rogue

Chapter 59

Drifting through darkness, I wondered if this was death. But where at first there was nothing, I suddenly saw her face: Justine. I came round to pain. I felt as though I’d been to hell and back. My ears were ringing, my head throbbing with pulsating waves of pressure. Acrid fumes had burned my sinuses and my lungs had been stripped raw. All I could taste was high explosive and smoke. Every muscle in my body ached as though pummeled by giant meat tenderizers. Even my bones felt sore. I had no idea whether I’d been blinded or if it was genuinely as dark as the grave.

Then there was sound and light. I turned my head to see Joshua Floyd holding up a windproof lighter. The flame seared my eyes and I looked away, turning toward a mass of tumbled rocks. Then it all came rushing back. We’d caught the edge of the first blast and it had flung us against the rockface at the base of the mountain. The explosion had dazed me, but Floyd was alert to the fact it had thrown us almost exactly to the place he’d been running for. He’d grabbed me and pushed me into a narrow opening in the rock I would never have noticed on my own. Together we had scrambled further into this cave a split second before the second explosion hit. The rocket blast had shaken the mountain and caved in the entrance to the tunnel, but the rock-fall had at least protected us from the flames. We’d felt their heat all around us. For a time the cave had become like an oven. The fierce temperature had done something odd to the air and, feeling suffocated, I’d blacked out. My last thought had been of Justine, and she was the first thought that had greeted me on waking.

I turned back to Floyd and we grinned at each other like a couple of idiots.

“I owe you,” I said.

“It was dumb luck,” he replied. “If I hadn’t found this place last night, we’d be a couple of briskets out there.”

“Dumb luck or design, I still owe you.”

“You OK?” he asked.

“I think so. You?”

“Probably about the same,” he replied. “That was intense.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Did Beth really send you?” he asked, groaning as he rolled onto his knees.

“Sort of,” I replied. “I was initially hired by a man claiming to be her father.”

“Her dad died years ago.”

“I didn’t know that. Turns out the guy posing as him was part of the group hunting you. So this is me making good.”

Floyd looked worried. “Are my family OK?”

“They’re fine. My colleagues have them somewhere safe. If we can get out of here, I intend to take you to them as soon as possible.”

Floyd nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “The rescue mission didn’t start well.”

“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”

“Let’s keep it that way. Want to see if we can dig our way out?”

He nodded, put the lighter between two stones to keep it upright, and we crawled over to the tunnel mouth and started moving rocks.

“The intelligence reports suggested you were killed in the attack at the crash site,” I said. “There were believed to be no survivors.”

Floyd stopped digging and I saw him bow his head. Even though his face was lost in shadow, I could sense his pain.

“I lost a lot of friends. Brothers...” he trailed off.

“I’m sorry. I know that pain myself. Before I was a private investigator, I was in the Marines. I was a pilot too — I flew Sea Knights. I was shot down in Afghanistan. Most of the men I was carrying were killed.”

He lifted his head to look at me. “I keep playing things back. Could I have done anything differently?”

“I know that one too.” I had reached a heavy boulder. “Give me a hand, will you?”

Floyd shuffled over and the two of us strained to shift a piece of rock not much smaller than an oven. Our sinews stretched and our breathing grew labored as we dragged the obstacle clear of the tunnel and rolled it behind us onto the damp earth of the cave. We were rewarded with the appearance of a shaft of moonlight about the size of a human head.

“You did everything you could,” I said to Floyd. “If there had been another way, you would have taken it.”

“I guess,” he replied. “But it doesn’t ease the pain.”

“Time dulls that. It heals like a scar. It’s only on bad days that it feels like a fresh wound again.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Let me check if I can see anything out there,” I suggested.

I pressed my face into the gap as far as it would go.

“Just scorched earth,” I said. “I can’t hear any movement.”

I withdrew and we carried on shifting stone.

“Hopefully they think we’re dead,” Floyd remarked.

I nodded in agreement. “Do you know why they want you?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been around. Done my fair share of things people might want revenge for, but since they didn’t kill me, I’m guessing they’re not going to all this trouble to settle an old score. They want something else, and it’s been playing on my mind because I don’t have the first idea what it is.”

I knew he’d be bound by oaths of secrecy, but I sensed genuine puzzlement and got the impression he was telling the truth.

We worked for another hour before we finally cleared the entrance enough for us to wriggle out. It was cold and dark. Steam and smoke rose off the burned forest.

“You got a map?” I asked.

Floyd shook his head. “It was in my pack. I ditched it to get into the cave.”

There was no point looking for it, the remnants would be among the ash and cinders that surrounded us. I cursed myself for leaving the map Chris and John had given me in the chopper.

“My feel is the pass is over there,” I said, pointing at two peaks on the other side of the valley. “The border is just beyond it.”

“That’s my read, too,” he replied. “Looks pretty simple. If two pilots can’t plot a course there, I don’t know who can.”

I smiled, and we started walking.