Danger Close (Shadow Warriors) (9 page)

Cathy picked up three sets of filthy utilities and chose a predetermined spot between the group of Marines and a group of WLF women further upstream. She slipped her flak jacket back on and settled the well-worn utility cap on her head, the ever-present rifle slung over her good shoulder. She slowly got up, dizziness washing over her. Cathy felt her strength ebbing away as she approached the water. At the bank, she received several curious looks from the group of Marines less than two hundred feet downstream. Too groggy to care, Cathy set her rifle down on the shore and waded out into the ankle-deep water. Selecting a stone, she squatted down on her haunches and systematically began to beat her utilities. For all the armed forces modern weaponry and other electronics gadgets, rocks were still used to wash clothes.

After half an hour, Cathy began throwing water on herself, letting the evaporation cool her down.

“Hey, you shouldn’t do that,” a male voice volunteered from farther down the stream.

Cathy ignored him. Whoever the Marine was, he had guts. They were under standing orders not to talk to WLFers and vice versa. The Marine sloshed up toward her, his one large hand filled with wet clothes.

Cathy refused to look up at him when he came to a halt beside her. All she could see out of the corner of her eye was his badly scuffed black boots and his bloused utilities stuffed in the tops of them.

“Do yourself a favor and put the water on the inside of you where it will do some good,” he said, offering his canteen. “You look dehydrated.”

Cathy scowled, biting hard on her lower lip, continuing to beat her utilities. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d get the message and leave. Panic ate at her: Lane would come down on her hard if she fraternized with this idiot.

He shrugged at her lack of response and recapped the canteen, stowing it back into his webbed belt. “Mind if I join you?”

“Yes, I mind! I’ll catch all kinds of hell talking to you!”

His laugh was pleasant and without rancor. “It’s nice to hear a woman’s voice again.”

Cathy yanked her head up, glaring at him. She felt the intensity of his inspection, absorbing it. Shaken by his hawklike gaze, Cathy was momentarily speechless. Those narrowed, intense gray eyes pinned her and she froze. His face was square with a day’s worth of beard shadowing it, making his rugged features handsome in an unconventional sense. His nose was crooked, indicating it had been broken a least once. He had a hard, intelligent face that would have been merciless except for his mouth. Cathy gave an inner sigh of relief: the corners turned upward and not down.

The crazy thought that he looked like the perfect model for a Marine Corps recruiting poster almost made her choke. He was at least six-two and moderately built, wearing a flak jacket, a pair of dusty trousers and boots. His bare shoulders and arms were nearly black, indicating he had spent considerable time in the Thai sun. An easy smile pulled at his mouth, softening the natural hardness of his face. He pushed the cap back on his black hair as he continued to drink in her stunned gaze.

Dully, Cathy said, “I don’t want any hassle,” and returned to her work.

“My name is Jim Boland. You aren’t by any chance the gal they call the Valkyrie?”

“So what if I am?” she muttered between compressed lips.

“We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Go away!”

He sat down on his heels. “How long have you been stationed here?”

Cathy jerked her chin up. “What the hell is this? We’ve all been up here for three months. If you’re with this regiment, you know that.”

Boland shrugged, that same smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He placed his clothes on a rock in front of him. “My Recon platoon has been up at Ban Pua with the ROKs for two months now. We just got choppered in here yesterday. Up north we heard so much about the women stationed here that my curiosity got the upper hand. I’d read about you in
Stars and Stripes
and I wanted to see if you really existed.”

Her head was pounding hollowly. “Why don’t you just leave?” Cathy pleaded in desperation, looking around to see several of the women upstream watching them with more than an idle interest. Cathy knew she’d be written up on report in a matter of an hour. There would be holy hell to pay.

He touched his stubbled jaw momentarily, looking in the same direction.

“They’ve sure got you running scared, don’t they?”

Cathy’s lips tightened.

He motioned to her bandaged arm. “Were you one of the gals out in that firefight we monitored this morning?”

“Yes!”

“Shrapnel?”

“No, I slipped on my bayonet!” Her eyes grew jade with anger. “Don’t you know about the standing regimental order against Marines fraternizing with the WLF?” Cathy’s pounding heart took an unexpected wrench as she saw his gray eyes change and regard her with some indefinable tenderness. Completely caught off guard, she could only stare at him in a moment that spun out into several.

Boland reached over and took a pair of her unwashed utilities and began wetting them. “No…haven’t been here long enough to hear about it.” And then he gave her a devastating smile. “Or are you just making that up as a polite way to tell me to get lost?”

“What are you
doing?
” Her voice came out hoarse.

“Helping you,” Boland said complacently, as if totally unconcerned with her anxious reaction. “It’s the least I can do for getting you riled when you’re dead tired. My way of apologizing.”

Cathy glanced apprehensively around. “No,” she mumbled, just loud enough for him to hear.

Not giving her a chance to snatch back the clothes, Jim opened up the one-sided conversation again. “I understand you have a C.O. who’s hell on wheels. Or is that just bad scuttlebutt?”

Cathy starkly recalled the encounter with Lane this morning. “She’s okay,” she lied sullenly. God, it was hot. She felt suffocated by internal heat building within her.

“So is mine,” Boland returned amicably, smiling for a moment. He hesitated. “Are you feeling all right? Your face is flushed red.”

Suddenly nausea and dizziness descended upon her. Cathy put her head down between her legs in an effort to fight the faintness. She heard the Marine get up, felt the touch of his fingers upon her shoulder.

“Come on, we’d better get you into some shade. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re suffering a sunstroke.”

Cathy jerked away from him. “Dammit, leave me alone! I’m going to catch hell….” She stopped, felt the world nose-diving into a tailspin and then blackness swallowed her up.

NO ONE WAS more surprised than Boland as he reached out with a lightning reflex and caught Cathy Fremont before she fell headlong into the water. Immediately, several of his team, who had been covertly watching them, rushed up to see if he needed help. One woman from the closest group of WLF came running full tilt toward him.
I’m going to cause an international incident
, Boland thought, as he hoisted the unconscious woman into his arms. Cathy’s head lolled against his chest and he felt a tightening in his throat as he risked a quick glance down at her. She was nothing but badly sunburned skin pulled tight over bone. Any nagging questions he had about whether what he was doing was right or wrong vanished.

“Gomez,” he thundered, “get Crossly and a stretcher.” The Recon on the bank nodded and sprinted up the hill toward Alpha Company facilities to get their platoon medic.

“Hey!” a woman panted, coming to a halt, “What’s wrong with Cathy?”

Jim twisted his head toward the black-haired woman. “She just keeled over. I think it’s sunstroke. You got a doctor over there?”

Penny Amato reached out, touching Cathy’s shoulder, worried. “Yeah,” she gulped, “we do.”

“Get him pronto. Alpha’s medical bunker is closer than yours. She’s going to need emergency attention as fast as we can get it for her. And then, inform your C.O. what’s going on. Hurry.”

Raw anxiety creased Penny’s face and she gave Boland a pleading look.

“Whatever you do, take good care of Cathy. God…”

“We will,” he assured her. “Now, go on.”

She nodded and turned, splashing back to the small group of awaiting women.

As he carried her from the water, Boland assessed her condition. Sunstroke was a killer and she had all the classic symptoms. She’d need cooling down in a hurry. Her right arm was bright red from an earlier dressing on the wound she had sustained in a firefight. He laid her down on the bank of the stream and raised his head.

“Billy, get a blanket and wet it. Get Crossly and bring a stretcher.”

“Sure, Cap’n.”

Cathy became aware of distant, blurred voices, voices of men muttering in low, anxious tones. She felt someone’s arm go about her shoulders, levering her into a sitting position. A cup was being forced between her cracked lips and she drank thirstily. She barely opened her eyes and saw Boland’s concerned face dancing before her.

“Try to relax,” he ordered quietly.

She closed her eyes, aware of the sense of protection she felt from him. She savored it.

“I—feel like hell,” she managed.

Jim eased her back down on the ground. A crowd of Marines gathered around, curious to see one of the women up close. He picked up her limp wrist, taking her pulse: it was hard and fast. His scowl increased. She was a hell of a lot sicker than either of them realized.

“I’ve got help coming from our platoon. I’m pretty sure you’ve suffered a sunstroke. If you have—”

Cathy tried to get up. “No,” she moaned, “I’m in trouble. If my C.O. hears about this—”

Boland pressed his hand against her shoulder, forcing her to lie back down. “No one is going to get chewed out over this. I’ll stand up for you if there are any questions.”

Cathy was too weak to fight. Tears welled up into her closed eyes. She heard other Marines standing around and talking. Men. She was with men and Lane would punish her.

“Just leave me. I can make it—outfit. Back to my outfit,” she slurred, making an effort to roll onto her side so she could try and sit up.

He shook his head. Damn, she was stubborn. “I said, lie still,” he growled. “A sunstroke can kill you.” He saw Billy flying back down the hill on his lanky Arkansas legs that reminded him more of thin tubes of straw. Right on his heels, struggling to keep up, was Crossly, their Navy corpsman.

“Soak the blanket in the river, Billy,” he called. Within moments, he was back with the dripping blanket.

“Here you go, Cap’n.”

Cathy frowned, moving her head from side to side, dizziness making her nauseous. “Captain?” she muttered faintly, “you’re a captain….”

“That’s right. Now lie still. Your pulse is off the charts,” he answered grimly. With the help of Billy and Crossly, they wrapped her in the wet, cool blanket in an effort to stabilize her body temperature and try to bring it down.

Cathy lapsed in and out of consciousness. She began to dry heave before they completed wrapping her up. Nothing came up because she hadn’t eaten since late yesterday evening. Delirium replaced her vomiting. She felt the heavy, cool blanket tucked around her. It was almost like being tucked in as a child.

Although Crossly was the platoon medic, he handed his captain the blood pressure cuff because the officer was a trained paramedic. They both saw the high reading and Boland handed the cuff back to him.

“Sunstroke?” Crossly ventured, as they moved her to the stretcher.

“Yeah. Get to the med bunker and have an IV of saline standing by. That doctor with the WLF ought to be here any minute.” Boland made a motion for four of the Marines standing around to pick up the stretcher.

Crossly jerked a look over his wiry shoulder. “Come on, guys, let’s get her over to the bunker. Pronto! Billy, lend a hand, dammit!”

News that a WLF woman was in the midst of Alpha Company spread quickly. Boland found his own personal team of Recons gathering above the well-sandbagged medical facility bunker.

“Who is she?” Townsend asked.

“A scared little girl,” Boland growled under his breath.

“What?”

“Nothing. Hey, isn’t your team suppose to be digging up on the northern perimeter this afternoon?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get to it, then. Have the beer ration handed out at 1600.”

The Recon’s hazel eyes lightened. “Great!”

“Townsend…” Boland called.

“Yes, sir?”

“Save one for me. I’m going to need it before this is all over.”

DR. TUCKER arrived scarcely five minutes later, out of breath and carrying his emergency medical bag. He worked his way down the wooden stairs and glanced at Boland, who stood out of the way. The air was stale and humid in the well-lit bunker. And then he saw Cathy unconscious with an IV in her arm.

“What happened?” Tucker demanded, immediately moving toward her.

Boland explained briefly while the doctor, in unison with Crossly, worked over Cathy Fremont. Tucker placed a second IV into her other arm, opening it full bore to pour lifesaving liquid back into her body.

Later, Boland asked, “Is she going to make it?”

The doctor’s thin face grew pinched. “Pretty bad case of sunstroke, Captain.” Then, almost to himself, he muttered angrily, “I knew I should have kept her there a little longer. She wasn’t looking well. I thought her reaction was from getting wounded this morning.”

“Will you want us to order a Medevac to take her to the rear? They have better facilities to handle something like this.”

Tucker laughed explosively. “There’s no time. I’d have to get someone from the WLF to authorize her transfer to the rear. She’s in need of ice packing immediately. What Cathy needs is rest. And plenty of it! They’ve been pushing her too hard….” And he glanced up, forgetting were he was at. The Marine Recon captain looked mildly surprised but said nothing. “Did you notify Major Lane?” Tucker asked acidly, stuffing his medical paraphernalia back into the bag.

Boland roused himself from his own thoughts. “Yes. One of the WLF women went to inform her of what happened. I guess it’s true then?”

“What?” Tucker asked irritably, keeping his hand on Cathy’s shoulder, watching her closely.

“They say the major pushes her troops real hard?”

“Lane? You bet your life she does, son.”

“What will happen to the corporal? She kept mumbling something about being in trouble over this incident.”

“Since I’m officially with the WLF staff, I can’t comment. But off the record, Cathy’s right—she’s in a hell of a lot of hot water over this even though it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t help it if she had a sunstroke or the fact you were there to help her.” He looked around the bunker. “Or brought her here instead of to the WLF med bunker.”

The Marine officer’s dark gray eyes clouded with disgust. “Why don’t you put your comments on record, Doctor, and save her from getting in trouble with her CO?”

Tucker shrugged defensively. “Captain, you’re young and have a whole lifetime of heroic deeds ahead of you. I’m fifty-three and have too many years in the Navy to jeopardize my last two before retirement on some foolhardy windmill tilting.”

They were interrupted by the sharp sting of a woman’s voice at the top of the bunker. Tucker drew in a breath between clenched teeth and threw Boland a warning look.

“That’s Captain Kay Ingram, XO for Delta. Someone’s going to pay for involving you Marines in this incident.”

Kay’s eyes were narrowed slits as she rapidly made her way down into the bunker. The moment she caught sight of a Marine standing near the stairs with his arms folded against his chest, she snapped, “Who are you?”

“Captain Boland,” he replied in a tone meant to take the bite out of her question. Then he stressed slightly for her benefit, “Who are you?”

Kay’s mouth turned in as if she were holding back the urge to bite him. He was hard looking and too cocksure of himself for her taste. She bridled beneath the neutral tone he might use when addressing a junior officer. Well, she wasn’t his junior anything! And why the hell wasn’t he wearing any sign of his rank? His actions left no doubt in her mind that he was in charge.

“I’m Captain Ingram, XO of Delta.” She deliberately turned her back on him, swinging around to where Dr. Turner stood with the medic. “Doctor? What’s going on with Fremont?”

Jim remained as Tucker explained the urgency to transport the woman to the rear. Every hair on the back of his neck stood up. The XO was one powerful woman. When his gaze slid to Fremont’s face, he felt as if someone were twisting a knife into his chest. Cathy’s face was almost angelic compared with Ingram’s angry one. He struggled with unexpected emotions, desperate somehow to keep Cathy out of Ingram’s clutches.

“Why the hell can’t Fremont come back to Delta and be treated? I don’t want any of our women in the rear.”

“She needs continued, monitored care, Captain Ingram. She’s got to be ice packed pronto or she could die….” Tucker’s voice was quavering from outrage that Ingram might risk Cathy’s life and not approve the transfer. “A Medevac should take her to the rear. Immediately.”

Kay placed her hands on her hips, glaring over at the small medic. Crossly stared belligerently back at her, unblinking.

“Look, Captain Ingram, Fremont is in serious condition. I can’t stabilize her here. She needs to be packed in ice. She needs specialized IVs to get her electrolytes back into balance. We shouldn’t even be standing here discussing the situation. She ought to be on a nine-line Medevac call for the rear area where she can received trauma care.”

“That bad?” A nine-line meant the person was critical and could die.

“Yes.” And then Tucker glanced around Ingram at the Recon officer, silently pleading for his intervention in order to convince her to let Cathy be released.

Jim eased himself to his feet and wandered over. “There’s a regimental policy that, if in the opinion of the attending medic or—” he glanced at Tucker “—doctor, any personnel is too ill to function, we send them to the rear. I’m sure you’re aware of the order, Captain?”

Kay jerked her gaze to Boland and seemed as if she hated having to raise her head to meet his impassive stare.

“How long would Fremont be in the rear, Doctor?”

Tucker shrugged. “That’s entirely up to the medical staff there, Captain. I’d guess, if she doesn’t turn for the worse, five to seven days.”

Five days without Fremont would be a godsend, Kay decided. She quelled her pleasure. And if she did take a turn for the worse, maybe she’d die or be sent Stateside; either way, it could prove to be an unexpected bonus that would delight Louise.

“Of course,” Boland added in the same neutral tone, “you’re in charge, Captain. I can appreciate the microscope you have to function under. Probably plenty of hotshot reporters hanging around to dig up some dirt on the WLF. I’m sure Major Lane wouldn’t want any bad press by having it appear that one of her enlisted women suffered. Our tardiness in implementing standing regimental orders may make the WLF look less than the noble cause that it is. It’s your decision. I’m afraid I wouldn’t do anything but follow the doctor’s orders.”

“All right, Dr. Tucker, I’ll sign the papers and release Fremont to the rear.”

Tucker’s face mirrored relief. “I should go with her, Captain Ingram, to—”

“You go nowhere, Doctor!”

“But—”

Kay’s face grew livid. “You’re coming back with me, Doctor. Right now. I can’t allow the company to be without medical support because of one lousy corporal deciding to get a sunstroke.” She jerked a look in Boland’s direction. “She’s all yours, Captain Boland. Any decisions made on Fremont from here on out fall into your jurisdiction. And if she gets worse or dies—” Kay jabbed her finger toward Boland “—your ass is in a sling with the press, not ours. For your sake, you’d better handle this correctly.”

Boland managed a nod of his head, stepping back as Ingram walked toward the stairs. “I’ll be in touch with you, Captain Ingram,” he promised lightly, struggling to contain his emotions.

“Doctor? Are you coming?”

“Momentarily. I want to leave a few more orders to the medic who will fly back to the rear with her.”

Kay couldn’t tolerate them or the surroundings. She lunged up the stairs. “I’ll be waiting. Don’t be long, Doctor.”

Jim looked over at his medic. “Crossly, call the Medevac. Tell them it’s a nine-line and tell us when it lands.”

The Navy corpsman gave him a look of relief. “Yes, sir.”

The instant they were alone, Tucker turned to Boland. His voice was low. “There are some things you need to know for the doctor who’ll take charge of Corporal Fremont.”

Jim stepped closer so that Tucker’s voice wouldn’t carry. “Yes?”

“She is near total physical exhaustion. She’s been running two patrols a day for thirty-three days now. She is one of the bravest women over there,” he began strongly, his gaze meeting Boland’s with frankness, “but her problem with Lane is simply…”