tossed sand in their eyes as it landed.
“Hurry, sir,” Agent Michael Harris yelled loud enough to be heard over the battle raging around them.
“We have to go, Ella,” he told her. From her mutinous expression, Kyle realized he’d have a fight on his hands getting her on board. “We have about two minutes to board the chopper and get airborne before those guys behind us take out our only means of escape. The chopper can’t stay on the ground much longer.”
Still, she didn’t budge. She stared at him in defiance. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere. I can’t,” she insisted with more emotion than he’d seen so far.
Whatever her reasons for wanting to stay, he wasn’t about to leave her behind to face certain death. Kyle took the matter out of her hands and lifted her into his arms.
“No.” She froze for half a beat and then she struggled with all her might to be free, her fists pummeling his chest. Kyle ignored her efforts completely as he headed for the chopper. A barely audible sob escaped as she gave up. Tears soaked his shirt.
His emotions were raw and on the surface. Her likeness to Lena had him off his game. Yet he wasn’t prepared to accept this woman as anything more than a prisoner of war at the very least. She hadn’t shot him when she’d had the chance, but until he knew for certain where her loyalties lay, he didn’t trust her, and he certainly wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
Kyle raced to the Black Hawk as bullets whistled past their heads. Michael took Ella from his arms and hauled her into the chopper, where she quickly pushed his hands away and huddled in one of the empty seats.
With her safely aboard, Kyle cleared the entrance and the door was slammed shut. Seconds later, the Black Hawk went airborne.
He took the seat next to Ella and glanced her way. She scrubbed tears away with fisted hands. He didn’t buy that her being out there in the desert was an accident, but to gain answers, he’d need her cooperation.
He handed her a set of headphones and put his on so that he could try again to reach her. “Ella, let me help you. Tell me who you’re trying to save.” Her only answer was a brief shake of her head. His disappointment rose.
With Liz piloting the chopper, it made a ninety-degree turn and headed back in the direction of Bagram. They’d covered less than a quarter mile when a fireball lit up the night sky. Liz used all her skills to avoid a direct hit.
Seconds later, the radio exploded. “I’m hit, I’m hit,” a panicked voice—it sounded like Sam’s pilot—shouted into the mic, shocking the chopper’s occupants.
“What’s happening, Liz?” Kyle asked with urgency as he leaned forward to get a clearer look. In shock he watched Sam’s chopper slowly drift to the ground.
“He must have taken our hit,” Liz said in disbelief.
Kyle couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that his friend’s chopper had been shot from the sky.
“What were Sam and his team doing out here anyway?” Kyle asked in astonishment. As a civilian, Sam was forbidden to go out on military maneuvers.
“He insisted. They wanted to help,” Liz replied over her shoulder.
Kyle closed his eyes and said a silent prayer for Sam and his team. He couldn’t handle it if something happened to them because of him.
Liz veered back in the direction of the combat zone and Ella clutched the arms of her seat in a death grip.
Kyle struggled to keep his own fears from showing as he tried to reassure her. “It’ll be okay. They need our help.”
She stared at him with those soulful eyes. “You don’t understand. It won’t be okay.”
Before he had the chance to ask what she meant, the chopper in front of theirs pinpointed the downed machine with its spotlight. Kyle watched in shock as a handful of men strong-armed the occupants of Sam’s chopper into one of the waiting vehicles. With Sam’s men so close to the enemy, his team couldn’t risk shooting them from their chopper.
“Do we have a survivor count?” Kyle dreaded the answer. He didn’t want to think about losing his friend like this.
“I counted five men other than enemy soldiers. Several are injured, but they all appear to be alive...for now,” Michael added in an ominous tone.
Liz opened fire on one of the fleeing vehicles that didn’t contain the hostages. The vehicle engaged right away and a surface-to-air missile barely missed them.
“Fall back, fall back,” Kyle ordered as another missile came within a foot of taking out the second Black Hawk’s main rotor blades. “We’re outgunned. We don’t stand a chance against those missiles.”
“Sir, they’re getting away.” Michael turned to him in disbelief. “What do you want to do?”
Kyle prayed he wasn’t making the worst mistake of his life—one that might cost Sam and his team theirs.
“Call Bagram. Get backup out here right away and have Booth and Dalton airborne...now. Once you’ve off-loaded us at the base, I want you and Liz on this, as well.”
With his fear for Sam escalating, he ordered, “We have enemy soldiers on the ground. Have the remaining chopper land and make sure they haven’t gotten away or been picked up. We need every man we can get on the ground. I want them questioned. One of them has to know something, and I want to know the second you have anything at all.”
Kyle struggled to make sense of what had just happened. Why had the enemy risked coming after them so aggressively?
Ella. Somehow, it had to be because of her. She’d been at the compound. He couldn’t get the fact that he’d clearly been set up out of his head. He trusted Hadir. He didn’t believe his asset was responsible for what happened. That left the woman beside him.
I can’t leave him. Was she talking about Alhasan? The idea settled uneasily in his mind. Was it possible she was somehow responsible for the ambush?
He saw her staring down at the nightmare below, her arms wrapped tight around her body in a self-defense gesture. Still, there was no doubt about it, she was important to Alhasan somehow. Only one question remained: Was she his prisoner or was she playing the part?
“You’re safe now,” he said. She didn’t look at him.
Kyle’s first instinct was to begin interrogating her right away. They had another witness to Alhasan’s crimes. Yet from the way she’d reacted to him so far, he knew he wouldn’t get anywhere by being aggressive. He’d have to go slow. She was barely keeping it together.
As hard as he tried, he couldn’t get the similarities she shared with Lena out of his head, even if he wasn’t prepared to accept them. It was ludicrous.
If she was Lena, where had she been for so long and who had he buried all those years earlier?
The Black Hawk churned dust and debris in its wake as it landed at
