A Soldier's Pledge Page 6
They could be right behind him, but he had to hole up. He found a place where he could make a stand if he had to, and he pulled his jacket back on because he was cold, really cold. He thought he’d just rest a while, listen and watch his back trail and be ready to fight if they caught up with him. He would stay alert because to sleep would be fatal. Disciplined vigilance was his only chance.
Don’t fall asleep.
That was the order he gave himself just before he passed out.
* * *
HE OPENED HIS eyes on the bright dawn, and the sight of the grayish-colored pup lying beneath the brush with him, almost within touching distance, head on its paws, watching him. “Back in Montana the ranchers would use you for target practice,” he muttered. “They don’t care for coyotes.”
His calf was throbbing, his head ached, he was desperately thirsty and sick from all the adrenaline, but he was still alive and the enemy hadn’t caught up to him. Yet. He ate some jerky for breakfast, drank water from his bottle, tossed the last three strips of dried meat he fished out of his pocket to the pup, figuring he’d make it back to the outpost within hours. He left the bandanna tied over the wound, pushed awkwardly to his feet, took up his weapon and started out. He could barely hobble, but he was sure once he got moving his leg would limber up and travel would get easier. When he looked back over his shoulder, the pup was following him, no longer trying to hide. That day the hours passed in an endless and painful blur, but there was no sign of the enemy.
Or the outpost. He was traveling far too slowly.
That evening he made his way back to the river to refill his water bottle. He drank his fill crouched by the river, knowing that would be the only supper he got. That night was colder than the last. When he awoke, stiff and aching and chilled to the bone, the pup was within hand’s reach, lying right beside his injured leg. When she saw he was awake, she raised her head off her paws and tensed, ready to flee at the slightest aggressive move from him. He extended his hand slowly, and she sniffed it. He touched her for the first time, a light stroke that brushed the black-tipped hair along her back while she remained rigidly motionless and watched him steadily with those dark golden eyes. He stroked her for some minutes, slowly and gently, and as he did the wary caution left her eyes and was replaced by something else entirely, and from that moment she was his.
That day his progress was slow and halting, and he rested often. If he was still being followed, the enemy would have picked him off by now as he hobbled slowly along. That evening he drank his fill again at the river and wondered if the pup would stick with him when he had no food to offer. The temperature dropped and snow fell during the night, and in the morning, the pup was lying on top of him, her nose tucked beneath his chin, warming him with her body. That day his progress was slower than the day before. His strength gave out, and he collapsed at dusk. He could travel no farther. He knew he was within striking distance of friendly territory, and his last conscious thought was how important it was that his unit get those GPS coordinates.
His discovery by a scouting party the following morning caused quite a stir, not only because he’d been out of radio contact for so long that they’d just about given him up for dead, but also because he was being so fiercely guarded by the wild pup who refused to let anyone approach. It took some doing by one of the scouting party to drag her away. He made a noose from a belt, attached it to a long pole and slipped it over her head. Two of the party returned to the outpost and brought back a stretcher. By that time Jack had roused enough to tell them about the pup and make them remove the noose from her neck. They loaded him onto the stretcher, and she dogged their heels all the way back to the outpost. She shadowed him in the medic’s tent and followed him when they transferred him to a waiting truck. He was barely aware of any of it.
“The medics say your leg’s infected and needs surgery,” Lieutenant Dan Royce said as they slid the stretcher into the bed of the truck. “We’re transporting you to Hatchet. They have a better setup there. That wild dog can’t go. You know the rules,” he said when the pup tried to climb into the bed of the truck.
“Sir, that dog’s the only reason I found that Taliban training camp. She saved my life.”
“I didn’t make the rules, Parker, but I have to enforce them. You can’t keep the dog.”
Ruben Cook, who had helped carry Jack back to the outpost and was standing with a group of soldiers, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her for you.”
Jack looked at him, dizzy from the morphine. “She saved my life,” he repeated. “Treat her good.” He reached out one hand to the pup as she gazed at him with that intense golden stare.
“I’ll be back,” he told her as Ruben replaced her makeshift collar and pulled her out of the truck.
It was over sixty rough road miles to the next outpost. Jack didn’t remember much of the journey itself or the surgery that followed. When he woke up, he thought he was still out in the bush, hiding from the enemy, and an experienced army nurse talked him back to reality. The following morning the same nurse roused him gently and said, “Sergeant Parker? There’s something you should see.”
She helped him out of bed into a wheelchair and pushed him to the door of the tent. Outside the mobile hospital, a crowd of medical staff had gathered to stare at a starving, half-wild pup who had just limped into the camp. “One of your men forwarded a message for you yesterday,” the nurse explained. “He said that your wild dog got loose and chased after your truck when you left the camp. None of us ever thought it would make it this far.”
Jack spent five days at the mobile army hospital unit. His “wild dog” stayed under his cot, shared his meals and accompanied his every movement. When he returned to his unit, the pup’s presence was discreetly ignored by his commanding officer, especially when less than two months later she alerted the outpost to a hostile intruder wearing an improvised explosive device. Her growling caught Jack’s attention, and he exited the mess tent just as she sank her teeth into the intruder’s leg. Jack tackled the hostile, who was subdued, arrested and later tagged as a Taliban trainee. He was sixteen years old and wearing an IED that had failed to detonate.
From that point on, Jack’s wild dog became the camp’s highly regarded mascot. Jack worked to teach her basic commands, which she picked up quickly, but she never took to any of the other soldiers. They nicknamed her “Ky” because she looked like a coyote, and tempted her with the choicest of tidbits to gain her trust, but her loyalties belonged to Jack. She would answer to no other.
Jack began to worry about her fate, should he be killed in action or shipped stateside. While his unit was on leave in Kabul three months later, he contacted his sister and began the arduous process of getting Ky safely back to the United States. It was a process that took months but was ultimately successful. When he last saw her, Ky was huddled in a dog crate at the airport awaiting shipment to his sister in Montana. Her intense yellow gaze was fixed on his face, and her expression was one of fear and anxiety.
“You’ll be okay,” he reassured her. Those words had haunted him ever since his sister’s visit while he was at Walter Reed.
* * *
“SO, THAT’S WHY I’m here,” he said, returning to the present and looking across the campfire at Cameron, who had listened quietly while he told the story of a soldier and his dog. “I told her she’d be okay. I lied.”
CHAPTER SIX
CAMERON REFILLED JACK’S wineglass a third time while he told her his story. The wine, after a long and challenging day, had loosened his tongue. The man who had been so aloof, so silent, had revealed a side of himself that she suspected few had ever seen.
“You didn’t lie,” she said. “You did what you thought was right. You couldn’t have known what would happen. Your sister did her best, too. A bear came into their camp. Your dog chased it out. That was nobody’s fault.”
“No more talk,” she ordered. “Eat.”
Cameron fixed her own plate and sat. She was ravenous. The steaks were grilled to perfection. They ate in silence while the river rushed past and the deepening twilight brightened the campfire. When they were done, she covered the grill with coals, threw a few more pieces of wood on the fire and let the heat burn the grate clean. In bear country, one kept a clean camp. One also camped a good distance from the cook fire, but she was stretching the rules in this instance due to Jack’s exhausted state.
“Now,” she said, “you go into the tent and get out of those wet clothes. I’ll put your pack inside, and you can set up your sleeping bag in there. No point in setting up two tents. I’ll wash these dishes in the river.”
She gathered the supper dishes and went down to the river’s edge to give him time and privacy, and to think about her next moves. He was exhausted but well fed, and he’d drunk half a bottle of wine. Things were going pretty well. It baffled her that anyone could be so attached to a dog, but people were funny about their pets. Some put more value on a dog than a human. Her father’s hunting dogs were good hunting dogs, but they’d been focused on two things: her father and hunting. To them she’d been an ancillary figure in the family pack. By the time she was fifteen, both had died of old age and they’d had no other dogs. The life of a bush pilot in the far north was unfavorable to owning pets.
The river water was cold. Years of traveling in the bush had taught her to carry all essentials on her person, so when the supper dishes had been scrubbed clean she fished her toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste out of a pocket and brushed her teeth and washed up as she crouched on her heels beside the river.
In a few days she’d be rich. She’d buy Johnny Allen’s red Jeep with the money. It was flashy and bold, with a good stereo and aggressive tires. The guys would think that was sexy.
When she’d finished with her nighttime routine, she walked quietly back to the tent, unzipped the door and eased inside. Darkness wrapped around her like a thick blanket, but she could make out a long shape lying prone against the far wall, darker than darkness. She stripped down to her camisole and panties and slipped into her sleeping bag, only then switching her LED headlamp on low, providing just enough light to read by. She picked up her book, nestled into her comfortable bed and cast a secretive sidelong glance toward her quarry. In the dim light she could see only that he was there. Awake? Asleep? She didn’t know. It was a shame he hadn’t seen her matching black and very sexy underwear, but tomorrow was another day.
“No talking in your sleep and no snoring,” she said softly, and turned the page of her book.
“No worries” came the low reply.
* * *
WHEN JACK OPENED his eyes, it was already light and Cameron was up and gone. Her sleeping bag was rolled neatly into its stuff bag and sitting on the cot. He could smell wood smoke and coffee. He dressed in clothes that were still slightly damp from the day before and moved to the door of the tent. She was nowhere to be seen, but a small fire burned in the fire ring, and the coffeepot was off to one side where it would stay warm without boiling. A cup had been placed thoughtfully beside it. He exited the tent and filled the cup, taking a long appreciative look at the predawn wilderness that stretched away from him in all directions; the river, the mountains, the forest; mist rising from the rushing water into the cool morning air. He spotted her down on the riverbank, fly casting to that spot below the riffles she’d spoken about last evening. Her movements were practiced, graceful. The girl could also fly-fish, among all her other talents.
He took a sip of hot coffee. Rich and delicious. Perfectly brewed. He expected nothing less after the meal she’d served him last night. He carried the coffee down to the river, upstream of her, and washed the sleep from his face. He contemplated shaving but discarded the idea. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was trying to look good for her. The sooner they parted ways, the better. In the meantime, he’d add to his scruffy look.
He returned to the campfire, poured more hot coffee into his cup and walked down to where she was fishing the river.
“Good morning!” She greeted him with a bright smile after making an impressive double haul and delivery, the fly settling clear across the river from her. “You must be raring to go. You slept like the dead last night.” She watched the fly drift quickly toward the big boulder.
“Did I talk in my sleep or snore?”
“If you did, I didn’t hear you. I was tired, and the sound of the river was nice.” She was fishing the drift, watching the fly. “I hope you’re hungry. I caught three trout while you were sleeping.”
“I could eat.”
She smiled, and at that moment a trout struck her fly. Within five minutes she’d landed a fourth trout, an eighteen-inch arctic char. She walked into the water to release the fish without lifting it out. “What a beauty,” she said, watching it swim away, tired but uninjured. “I file the barbs on my flies. Makes catching them a little harder but hurts them less, especially if you release a lot, like I do.”
“Admirable,” he said.
She reeled her line in and cast a glance in his direction. “You don’t like me much.”
“Not true. You’re a great cook, and your coffee is excellent.”
“But you think I talk too much,” she said, bending to lift the stringer of cleaned trout out of the cold water. She gave him a critical up and down. “I see you’re wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday. What am I supposed to ferry down to the trapper’s cabin?”
“Three stinky socks. I draw the line at backpacking in the nude, especially when it’s buggy.”
“You didn’t bring a change of clothes?”
“I brought a set of long johns, spare socks and underwear.”
“Three’s an odd number of socks.”
“I have an odd number of feet,” he said.
She flushed and dropped her gaze. “Well, I’ll fix you a good breakfast before I leave. You’ll need it.” She marched back to the campsite, and he followed at a slower pace. In jig time she had bacon frying and the trout prepped and ready to slide into the bacon fat while he studied the map she handed him. He unfolded it over his knee and tried to figure out their location.
“The black circle halfway down the Wolf is where the cabin is,” she told him. “It’s a little farther than I thought. And that other mark upriver of it is where I think we’re camped right now. I don’t know how long it will take me to reach the cabin.” She forked the cooked bacon onto a plate. “Calculating distances on a twisty river can be tricky. I’ll unload the heavy gear, most of our food into the camp and then ferry the canoe back up here. That’ll take me considerably longer. You can keep hiking downstream, so I won’t have to come back so far.” She thought about her plan for a moment and frowned. “What if we miss each other on the river?”
“Why don’t you just stay at the cabin, and I’ll meet you there.”
She thought about that suggestion briefly, then shook her head. “We should stick together. That’s the safest way. You should come with me.”
“No, thanks. I’ve seen the way you handle a canoe.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m good with a canoe. I just didn’t see that rock because I was distracted by you.”
“Not my fault I have that effect on women.”
“If you took the canoe down to the cabin, I could do the walking,” she offered, ignoring his comment. “I’ll drag your socks behind me on a piece of parachute cord and lay down a good scent trail. I could make ten miles easy before dark, camp the night and meet up with you at the cabin tomorrow. Have you ever paddled
a canoe?”
“Hell, I’m part Indian, remember? I can paddle, and shoot a bow and arrow and my tomahawk skills are unmatched. It’s a genetic thing.”
Cameron took a slow breath. “There’s no need for sarcasm. I’m only trying to be helpful. I think we’d make better time if I did the walking and you did the paddling.”
“Backpacking along this river with no trail brushed out is tough work. My sister must be paying you a small fortune.”
Her expression turned to stone as she slid the three char into the frying pan. Bacon fat spattered. The edges of the trout curled. His mouth watered. He figured if there was a grizzly within ten miles, they’d have company for breakfast, but any bear would have to tackle him first to get a bite of that fish.
“I’m offering to help you,” she said. “It was a genuine offer. Do you want to find your dog, or don’t you?”
He had no response for that. They sat upwind of the small cook fire and ate the three trout and finished off the pot of coffee. He thought of Ky when he tossed the fish bones into the coals. Thought about how she’d shadowed him, slept beside him, watched over him, protected him, loved him. Depended upon him. He thought about how he’d let her down. He had to find her. Ky was out here, somewhere, and he had to find her.
Cameron was offering to help. Why did she irritate him so much? Was it because he was sure she was being paid handsomely to guarantee he made it out to the Mackenzie? Was it because he didn’t like being chaperoned? What red-blooded man wouldn’t want to keep company with a great-looking gal who could cook and clean and set up camp and drive a plane and paddle a canoe and fly-fish with such panache?
“Who taught you to fly a plane?” he asked as he ate the last of his bacon.
“My father. I use to fly everywhere with him, and he taught me to work whatever controls I could reach. I soloed as soon as my feet could reach the rudder pedals, but I’d been flying since I was six. That’s when my mother left. It’s how we get around up here, and my father couldn’t leave me alone, so he took me with him whatever job he was on.”