He blew a worried breath between pursed lips now. It was a damned eerie scene. The two little boys were laughing like pranksters, kicking and slapping sad little Eeyore’s sides, making him run on his stiff, stubby legs. The donkey was as tall as he was round. With every smack, puffs of dust lifted off his furry rump and shoulders. The boys bounced, their dirty brown legs spread too wide for them to stay seated much longer. He kept running. They kept laughing. Beyond them, only sand, rocks, dehydration, and certain death, while all hell broke loose behind them.
“We know where they came from?” Petty Officer First Class Jase Yeats, handle Shakespeare, cut in. “Shit. How can they not hear those fuckin’ AKs?”
AK-47s. The dirty, inexpensive, but prolific weapon in every poor Iraqi’s arsenal.
Jameson had no answers. Only a solution. “Won’t take long. Cover me.”
“Shit, no!” hissed Derby. “You’ll die.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll be careful. Stay here.”
“They’re just kids, damn it!” Shakespeare bellowed. “Someone else’s kids. Not our problem.”
Jameson turned a stark stare to his Navy SEAL buddy. Shakespeare was scared, that’s why he was ready to turn his back on the latest macabre twist to a day that had already gone horribly wrong. Jameson understood. He was scared, too. The A-10 was late, and ammo was running low. But someone had to save those boys from themselves. If Navy SEALs wouldn’t, who would?
Shortly after they’d arrived, the SEAL team had easily located Murdock and Upton. Everything went down like clockwork. The infil. The swift, quiet elimination of the eleven hostiles holding Murdock and Upton. The acquisition of both professors. As well as the quick stabilization of Professor Murdock’s knife wounds, both superficial.
But exfil went sideways. The second Commander Boyington ordered, “Go time,” more ISIL tough guys appeared out of nowhere. Thirty-plus more. All armed to the teeth and now pounding the hell out of the mudbrick wall the SEALs and their rescued professors had taken cover behind. Even that leftover of a previously bombed-out building couldn’t explain where those boys had come from. Seemed AF drone intel had proven wrong again.
Jameson rolled his shoulders, loosening his muscles and nerves, readying his body for a quick sprint through the loose sand from here to there. Once he snagged those two little guys off that donkey’s back, Eeyore would be on his own. Jameson was only saving the kids, who, now that he had time to think, might be deaf. There were more maimed, blind, and deaf children in this country than anywhere else he’d been. All these boys wanted was to be free to run and play again. What child didn’t?
“Damn it, Saint,” Derby groused. “You can’t go out there alone.”
“Chief Boyington’s going to have our heads for this, but… shit!” Shakespeare muttered. “Shit, shit, shit! I’m going with you. Let’s get it done, damn it.”
Jameson shrugged his fifty-pound pack off his shoulders and to his feet, praying the upgraded tactical gear his parents had sent last month did its job today. His nostrils flared at the acrid stench combat always brought with it. The hard, lean, spring-loaded muscles in his calves, thighs, and buttocks bunched, as he powered away from safety and into trouble. Zigzagging, he aimed for Eeyore, but ended up scaring the little thing. Jameson ran fast; the donkey ran faster. Hot lead hissed around them as they ran, smacking up clods of sand and dirt, spraying confetti death while his SEAL team returned fire. God bless ’em.
Eeyore’s running made sense. He, at least, knew how to save his life. Pounding across that sand like a son of a bitch, Jameson closed in on the escape artist, and, with one gloved hand, grabbed the boy nearest Eeyore’s head. Hard on his ass, Shakespeare grabbed the other. While they rolled to the ground with their rescues, Eeyore kept going, and that was okay.
Gibberish poured out of both boys’ mouths. Total shrieking gibberish. These kids weren’t just deaf. Their skinny chests and empty bellies were laced with explosives, and this was a gawddamned trap. No son of a bitchin’ kidding.
Jameson looked at Shakespeare.
His best buddy had the same wide-eyed, ‘we’re fucked’ shock in his eyes. “You’re shittin’ me. We risked our lives for these little assholes?”
“No, we risked our lives for two kids.” Jameson jerked his chin at the ISIL bastards firing from across the wadi. “Those are the assholes.”
Without thinking, he ripped the shirt off the panicked kid in his arm. Simple twine, a cell phone, and a small brick of C4. Which meant some asshat right now was dialing this phone’s number. What did he have to lose? Jameson tugged his Leatherman Super Tool out of his vest and deftly ran a gloved hand between the boy’s heaving chest and the explosive. Automatically, he told the kid to hold still, not like that helped a damned thing. The frightened kid didn’t understand. He kept spewing gibberish. The clock kept ticking.
Jameson snipped the damned wires, and—thank God!—nothing happened.
Shakespeare did the same. Like two fuckin’ idiots, they shoved off the sand with the terrified boys in their arms and beat feet back to their team, dodging a hail of gunfire, with Boyington screaming ‘what the fuck?’ in their headsets all the way. Yeah, they had a butt-reaming coming, but Jameson flat didn’t care. He’d done his duty today. And he’d do it again. God and country, man. But God and kids always came first.
That brick wall sure felt good and solid when he slammed his ass against it, though.
“For fuck’s sake!” Derby growled. “Why didn’t you save the donkey?”
Breathing hard, Jameson licked his lips, a profanity laced answer on the tip of his tongue for the man who hadn’t the balls to save anyone. By then, Chief Boyington was running toward them, his face a contorted, red mask of rage, his jaws jacking, and Hell flashing in those fierce black eyes. Satan couldn’t have looked meaner.
Jameson passed the boy in his arms off to the Air Force
