and scratches. She pulled off the latex gloves and threw them near the wall. First things first. She had to give him a shot of antibiotics. After giving it to him, she quickly cleaned up and put the medical ruck away.
Getting off her knees, she walked over to Mina who stood patiently watching, her ears flicking back and forth. Taking the sat phone, Khat had to make a call to J-bad and alert Hutton she had one of the SEALs in her care. She hoped she was in time so that no wife and parents of this man would get a call from a casualty officer, telling them that he was missing in action. Pushing a strand of red hair off her brow, she punched in the numbers.
Hutton came on the other end, and Khat told him what had happened. The best news was the other three SEALs were picked up down at the bottom of the slope an hour later by a Night Stalker helicopter. And Hutton was surprised to hear about her patient. Everyone thought he was missing in action.
“That’s Petty Officer First Class Michael Tarik,” he told her. “He was leading the team.”
“I rescued him out of a wadi. He’s unconscious. I’m hoping he’ll wake up pretty soon.” She chewed on her lower lip, watching him beneath the glow of the lantern. Even now, he looked hard. A warrior.
“Report in tomorrow morning. I hope he makes it. There’s no way we can drop a Medevac in there to pick him up. We just got a drone up, and that mountain you live on is crawling with Taliban. We’ve counted about a hundred so far, so keep a low profile.”
Khat snorted. “Don’t worry, I will. I’ll contact you tomorrow. Out.”
Walking back to her mare, she tucked the sat phone away in the huge leather saddle bag. “Come on, girl, your turn. I’ll bet you’re starving.” Khat led the mare to the other side of the tunnel, about ten feet away from where Tarik lay. She stripped the mare of her saddle, the SEALs gear, brought her a bucket of water, curried her and then retrieved a flake of alfalfa hay from a nearby room. She shut the gate because Mina would wander in there and eat herself into colic. Khat didn’t need one more emergency on her hands right now.
It was her turn. She grabbed her small towel, a washcloth and Afghan lye soap from a hole in the cave wall. She smelled of raw-fear sweat, and she could feel the grit of dirt chafing her flesh. Grabbing the kerosene lamp, some unscented shampoo, a comb and brush, she walked the fifty feet into the waterfall cave. She had fashioned a bench out of rocks with a piece of wooden plank across the top of it a long time ago. Laying her towel over it, she quickly stripped herself of boots and clothes. The water was going to be seventy-five degrees because that was the cave’s temperature.
Stepping into the sandy bottom of the small pool, the coolness felt wonderful against her hot, sweaty body. Closing her eyes for a moment, she pulled the rubber band out of her hair and allowed it to swing free. Soon she would be clean. This was one of the few perks of living in the Hindu Kush that she looked forward to. The light spread out, eventually graying at the edges as she moved into the clear green, waist-deep water beneath the waterfall.
Every once in a while, Khat would look in the direction of the SEAL to see if he was conscious yet or not. She hoped he would awaken. With head wounds, one never knew.
Tipping her head toward the falling water, she groaned with pleasure as the wetness soaked into her long, thick hair. In moments, it would be soaped up, the grit and dirt cleaned from her strands and scalp. This luxury didn’t happen often. Tonight was a special gift to her.
MIKE TARIK AWOKE SLOWLY, pain throbbing through his head, making him frown. His ears were ringing badly, and he fought to become conscious. What had happened? His mind felt unhinged as he struggled to fight the darkness. There was pain in his head and pain in his left arm. His mind focused on that, and he felt incredibly exhausted, unable to move.
It took him a good ten minutes before he could force open his eyes. A ceiling of what looked like a cave was above him, grayish and deeply shadowed. Licking his lips, dying of thirst, he tried moving his hands and feet to see how badly wounded he was.
The memory of an RPG sailing through the air finally grounded him into reality. Yeah, the ridge. His men? Panic settled in him for a moment. Where was his team? And where the hell was he?
Mike heard water running. The ringing in his ears would lower for a bit and then return to near normal volume. Knowing he’d been close enough to the explosion to pop both his eardrums, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were blown. He felt pain in his ears when he focused his concentration there. Vision blurring, he blinked several times. Wherever he was lying, there was something soft beneath him. He slowly moved his right hand, his dirty, sweaty fingers encountering something soft. Fabric.
Vision blurring again, he shut his eyes, concentrating and trying to figure out where the hell he was. He’d been on a scree slope, nothing but rocks. The RPG had been fired by a Taliban.
Opening his eyes, his vision cleared. His head throbbed with unremitting agony. It hurt even to blink his eyes. Moving his right hand, Mike encountered his left arm in a sling. A sling? He was in a cave. This wasn’t making sense to him. The sound of rushing water, like a small waterfall, caught his attention again. As much as it caused hellacious pain, he slowly moved his head to the left, toward the sound.
Tarik simply wasn’t prepared for what he saw. He had to be having some kind of hallucination. Or the wound he’d sustained to his head was playing tricks on him. His eyes narrowed. There, maybe fifty feet away, was a tall, naked woman beneath a waterfall. She was washing herself with a cloth, her face tipped up, water splashing around her head and shoulders.
He closed his eyes. No, this was his messed-up head. One didn’t find a naked, beautiful young woman under a waterfall in the Hindu Kush. No way...
His hearing returned briefly, and he heard the water again. Opening his eyes, he was sure the hallucination would be gone.
But it wasn’t. Mike watched, mesmerized as she walked slowly out of the pool, picked up the towel and began to dry her dark, very long hair. What the fuck is going on here? Closing his eyes, frustrated, Mike touched his head, his fingers running into a bandage around it. Exploring further, he felt a heavy dressing where the pain was originating from along his temple. He wasn’t in a Medevac. He wasn’t at Bravo’s dispensary, nor was he at Bagram hospital’s emergency room. He’d been to all those places at one time or another. The trickling sound, the music of water falling, surrounded him. This was all his imagination. His brain was scrambled.
Opening his eyes, he saw her. Again. He watched as she sat on a bench and combed her long, damp hair. Mike could see her very clearly. Her profile looked Afghan, a broad brow, strong nose, full mouth and a stubborn-looking chin. She was probably in her late twenties, maybe.
Every motion she made was graceful. Her skin had a golden sheen to it. The rest of her body was lean, glistening with water as she sat there and allowed the air to dry her. Her breasts were small, her hips flared. It was her long, long legs that caught his attention. Beautiful thighs, curved and firm.
Groaning, Tarik shut his eyes. He had to be hallucinating! That was all there was to it. The pain in his left arm nagged at him when he tried to move it. Not good. Lying there, breathing raggedly, mouth dry, he tried to get a hold on where the hell he was lying.
Opening his eyes, he watched her, finally convinced that she wasn’t an apparition. Or a ghost from his imagination. She was combing her hair, getting out the snarls in the long strands. When she was finished, she
