Wilde Love (Forever Wilde 6)

“There you are, you stubborn bastard,” I said with an exhale of relief. “You were bleeding again, so I patched you up. A little bit farther to the LZ.”

“Rifle,” he breathed. “Grenades.”

“Afraid not. Unless you have some hidden in your pants.”

I watched him reach a hand down as if to check his pockets. Stifling a chuckle, I grabbed for his wrist. “Easy, buddy. I was kidding. I’ve already been in your pants, Major. There’s no rifle in there.”

“You went in my pants?”

“Stitched up your leg and hip. Good as new, if I do say so myself. So let’s get going.”

He tried moving and groaned, clutching his head. “Fuck.”

“Yeah, um, I dosed you with the good stuff. Gonna make you dizzy. Plus I think you hit your head in the crash.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

I tried to put an arm around his back to lift him partway up. He paled and poured sweat, but clenched his teeth against whatever he was feeling.

“Let’s go,” he grunted. “Ready.”

He was nowhere near ready. But I really wanted to get us closer to the LZ before the pain meds began to wear off.

I kept my handgun ready on my right and held on to the major on my left. After being scared of the dark Vietnamese jungle earlier, I was finally grateful for it. While we wouldn’t be able to see them, they wouldn’t be able to see us either.

We made slow but steady progress for a few hundred yards in the direction of where we’d been heading for the rescue before I felt the major’s legs wobble. I quickly lowered him to the ground and pulled out my canteen to wipe his face off with clean water.

He met my eyes through the dark. “You’re okay?” he asked softly. “You hurt?”

“I’m okay. Not hurt, just…”

“Yeah,” he said before I had to finish. “Gonna be okay, Doc. I’ll get you home to those babies.”

The mention of my kids grabbed my heart and squeezed it until I almost choked.

“And, uh, your lady,” he added, looking away. I thought of Betsy struggling to take care of three kids under three and wondered, not for the first time, how the hell she was staying sane. I thought about Rusnak’s wife and said a quick prayer of thanks that at least he hadn’t left behind three little kids.

“What about you? Who do you have waiting for you back home?” I checked the bandage on his calf to make sure it wasn’t bleeding too much. It seemed to be holding up okay. Whenever the four of us had spoken of our families, Major hadn’t been very forthcoming.

After I was done checking his bandages, I realized he hadn’t answered. “Major?”

“No one. I’m a lifer.” His voice was gruff and a little slurred from the drugs. “My men are my family.”

I glanced at him in the dark. “Oh.”

“C’mon,” he said, standing up without help and gritting his teeth again. “Let’s go.”

Whether he liked it or not, I slid an arm around his back again to support him.

We moved slowly but covered a decent amount of ground before he stopped again.

“Close enough,” he muttered, moving over a few feet and lowering himself to the ground at the base of a tree. Somehow I got the feeling he was probably right. The man most likely had a sixth sense for common landing zones after flying so many missions.

I set the pack down before sitting next to him and offering him one of the canteens of water. I took a second one and drank the tepid liquid while trying not to think of the dead man who’d originally filled the vessel. How the hell was I ever going to tell my commanding officer about this when we returned to base? Four American soldiers had died on my watch. Some medic I was.

After closing the canteen, I pulled my knees up and crossed my arms over top of them before burying my face in them and letting out a long breath. A strong hand squeezed the back of my neck, digging a thumb in the tight muscle there. It hurt, but in a way that reassured me it would feel better in the long run.

I got up the guts to ask a question that had been gnawing at me. As a pilot, he shouldn’t have had that many opportunities for direct combat, but I didn’t know what his previous assignments had been. “You ever killed anyone before tonight?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

Silence for a few beats. “It’s not a story I tell people.”

“Even when you might die in the damned jungle and never get a chance to unburden your soul?” I asked, reaching a tipping point with his mystery-man bullshit. I was stuck in enemy territory scared to death. I wanted connection. I needed a friend.

“We’re not going to die,” he said. The major’s low voice sounded a little stronger than before. The morphine was finally working its way out of his system which was both good and bad. I selfishly wanted him to be more lucid, but I hated to think of him in pain.