AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Daria wanted to hold Nik in that moment, to give him assurance, but she could do neither. “He’ll live. He has you as his medic. You’re the best,” and she meant those words as never before. Now that she’d seen Nik operate under combat conditions, she knew how able he still was to help save lives. This knowledge did nothing but make her love him even more. She was starting to climb down off her adrenaline high, too, her emotions raw and more on tap.
“God,” he muttered, shaking his head, “I hope so. Everything…everythinghangs on Korsak living…”
Daria felt sorry for Nik, saw the angst in his stormy blue eyes, heard the thick emotions in his lowered voice. How badly she wanted to hold him. Give him a sense of safety he’d never known ever since Dan had been wounded. She found his hand, dirty and bloody as it was, and gave it a quick, firm squeeze.
“Look, let’s just take this an hour at a time,” she counseled him, holding his exhausted gaze. “Together. I’m here for you, Nik.”
He gave her a warm, intense look. “You are so very brave,moya kotya. Today, you showed your jaguar side. I watched you in combat. It’s not something I ever want to see again because I feared for your life.” He reached out, grazing her cheek briefly. “We have so much to talk with one another about after things calm down and get sorted out.”
Swallowing hard, Daria felt her fierce love for Nik suddenly rise and flood her chest, making her heart pound with yearning only for him. “I was worried for you, not myself.”
He snorted and gave a rueful shake of his head. “You really are a sniper at heart.”
Daria couldn’t say anything else as they walked within earshot of the Russian team. In the distance, she could hear the thick chopping noise of a helicopter coming their way. Soon, they would be out of here, flying Korsak and the rest of the wounded team back to Cusco. She stood near Nik while Brudin studied her beneath his drawn brow, his eyes hard with distrust. She was glad she had weapons on her, although, right now, she didn’t think Brudin was going to do much of anything. Korsak was his friend and he’d been with him for two years, so his main focus was on him, not her. Still, Daria did not trust the Russian bastard at all. There were equal measures of malevolence, censure and suspicion in the man’s eyes, all aimed at herself and Nik.
Glad that she had the sat phone the Russian team didn’t know about, Daria was going to make sure that she was the first one off that Russian helicopter once it landed. If Brudin thought he could capture or accost her for his own brand of interrogation, even given his leg wound, she wasn’t going to allow him the opportunity. She would leave her weapons on board the helo. To walk even a single step with them on civilized Peruvian soil would be foolhardy. Thepoliciawould descend upon her and throw her in prison, permanently. She knew the Russians would also leave their weapons behind once they landed in Cusco. That gave her an opportunity to escape Brudin once and for all. If she never saw his pig-like face again, it would be too soon. All Daria wanted was to see Korsak live through all of this.
Stealing a quick glance over at Nik, who monitored Korsak, kneeling at his side, she saw the set of his mouth. His expression was one of worry. What if Korsak didn’t make it? What then, for Nik?
CHAPTER 19
Nik sat tenselyin the lobby of the surgical ward. Exhaustion gripped him, but his heart, his soul, was focused on Korsak who was presently in there under the knife. He heard a noise and looked up. Daria was there; her face unreadable. She was as dirty, bloodied and as grim looking as him. She carried her ruck over her shoulder. The tiredness in her gold-brown eyes tore at him. He could have lost her out there today. It had been so close…
She sat down near him, placing her ruck on the floor. “Anything yet?” she asked him quietly.
“No… nothing… too soon. It’s going to take hours. I just don’t want him to dump and his heart stop.”
She pushed tendrils of hair back off her face, grimacing from the grit she felt beneath her fingertips. “What about Brudin and Kravec?”
“Both in surgery, too. I found out from the surgery nurse that Brudin has a fractured tibia in his lower leg. Kravec has a torn artery. Both should be short surgeries and they’ll live, no problem.” His mouth flattened and he slowly rubbed his sweaty, dirty face.
“Why don’t you go back to the safe house and get cleaned up then?” Daria suggested quietly, laying her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll stand watch here for you.”
He pulled in a deep breath and his hands fell to his thighs. “First, tell me what your sat phone call yielded. Did you talk to Jack?”
“Yes. He patched through a call to the CIA and I talked to all of them at once. They’re just as shaken up by Valdez attacking out of nowhere as we were.”
“They shouldn’t be,” he said grimly, scowling. “It’s always been a chess game between the Russians and those two Latin drug lords. It’s just this time that Valdez caught us off guard. That’s never happened before. The more I think about it, the more I feel that he’s been planning this for a while. He never knows where we’re going next, either. Wrong place, right time for him and his soldiers to take us on.”
Daria nodded, moving her hand gently across his tight shoulders. “I managed to get a hold of Kilmer and his men, too.”
“Bet they were as surprised as we were.”
“Yes. They backed off. But, because they have silencers on their weapons, they were shooting in from back behind the tree line on our behalf.”
Nik nodded. “I thought they might. They just needed to stay out of sight.”
“Right. And they’re all okay, no injuries.”
He studied her as he placed his elbows on his opened thighs. “Has anything changed with the CIA regarding Korsak?”
“They want him alive, Nik. I pinned them down on their promise to you and Dan, to bring you into the country, giving both of you political asylum. Provided Korsak was delivered alive to them. They’re initiating a C-130 Air Force flight as soon as we know if Korsak is going to survive. It will take them six hours to reach Lima, Peru. They’ll authorize a Nightstalker medevac Black Hawk down there to fly up here to Cusco during the daylight hours and pick up Korsak as soon as he can be moved. If that all goes according to plan, once they have him on US soil, then you and I are going to take a flight down to Lima on a commercial jet and go home.” Daria gave him a searching look, her hand coming to rest on his broken shoulder. “Home.”
Shaking his head, Nik muttered darkly, “So much could go wrong, Daria. I could be stuck down here if Korsak dies on the surgery table.”
“I know,” she said softly, seeking and holding his worried gaze. Moving her hand across his shoulder she added, “It’s a waiting game. It’s not doing you any good to stay here. Go get cleaned up? Come back, and then I’ll go over to the apartment and do the same.”
Stiffly, he rose and offered his hand to her. “Come here,” he said thickly.
