It didn’t seem impossible anymore.
The road curved up ahead.
Elliot smiled. He looked out the window at the flat landscape and thought—for the first time in as long as he could remember—that he had something worth coming back to.
The blast came out of nowhere.
A white wall of sound and force, the vehicle lifting, the world tilting sideways, glass. The brief torn from his hands. Something hit him hard on the right side of his head and the landscape came apart into pieces.
And then there was nothing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
HUDSON
The chair wasnotcomfortable.Hudson had established that seventy hours ago and hadn’t moved from it since. He was physically and emotionally unable to leave.
The room was too quiet—nothing but a soft mechanical rhythm of monitors and a distant sound of chatter and movement beyond the door. It smelled of antiseptic and the now wilting lilies his mom and Taylor had sent.
Hudson had memorized all of it. The stain on the ceiling tile above the window. The way the light from the corridor snaked in under the door in a broad stripe. The tone and frequency of the beeps that indicated when everything was all right versus the sounds they made when nothing was. He had learned to differentiate them on his first night here and he was pretty sure he would never forget.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. It was 0300. He’d barely slept more than an hour at a time in three days. It didn’t seem like that was about to change.
Thirty minutesafter Hudson had watched Elliot’s vehicle pull out from the operations window, disappearing into a dust trail on the horizon, Hudson was listening to Carver outline the differences between a Siberian husky and an Alaskan malamute. Then the wordsroadside deviceandeastern roadcaught his attention.
His brain stopped. Just—stopped. Mid-thought, mid-breath.
No one said a word while Okafor listened to the voice in his headset.
“What road?” Hudson finally croaked. “Which checkpoint?—”
“Captain—” Okafor started.
“Eastern road, which part? There are fifty klicks of eastern road between here and?—”
“Captain Hale.” Carver placed a hand on his shoulder. “We’re getting information. Hang tight. Thirty seconds.”
“Is it his vehicle?” Hudson’s voice came out all wrong. It was too exposed. No one answered. “Major Okafor. Is it his vehicle?”
Those thirty seconds were the longest of Hudson’s life. With Carver’s hand still on his shoulder, he listened to Okafor talk to someone in his headset. He tracked the second hand on the clock on the wall.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…
Around him the room had gone still. Marsh, Miller, Shaw. These were their people.
Okafor had his back to them, trailing his fingers down a map. Then he turned around and looked between his waiting personnel.
“It’s their vehicle,” he said. “We have a confirmed fatality.” He stopped. Swallowed hard.
It was probably not more than a second or two, but the pause tore at Hudson’s hope.
He loved Elliot. Had loved Elliot for six years. Didn’t know how not to love Elliot.
“It’s Corporal Marsh.”
The room absorbed it in silence. Someone behind Hudson said something low and unintelligible. Carver dropped his hand and sat down.
“Miller is okay,” Okafor continued. “Minor injuries.” Another pause. “Shaw is critical. Head trauma, unconscious. Medevac is en route.”
