Free Never Surrender (Task Force Eagle) by Susan Vaughan Page A

clicking together in the breeze.
    And her clattering heart.
    Grasping trees and rocks for support and avoiding the
sparse undergrowth and patches of ice, she maneuvered down the steep grade. At
every footfall, the terrain mocked her attempts at stealth. Twigs snapped.
Pebbles clattered. Desiccated leaves shivered.
    How the hell did Rick do it?
    She focused on the ground and eased around an ice
patch to step on a soft patch of reindeer moss. There. No sound.
    The next step took her silently to a clump of
bearberry, its stems devoid of summer’s shiny green leaves and red berries.
Grinning with success, she hopped over a jagged stone to a lichen-encrusted
boulder. When an overhanging branch snagged her pack, the sere wood broke with
a loud snap. Her breath caught in her lungs and her heart seemed to stop.
    Crack! The report came from below. That was no
branch.
    Her stomach knotted and her temples felt clamped in a
vise. She swallowed and made herself listen. Made herself think. The scrabble
and thumping below meant her failure at stealth didn’t matter.
    She slid and leaped downhill toward the dissonance of
combat. She raced through underbrush and over logs. When she rounded the
boulder marking the last switchback, she crouched and peered through a tangle
of branches.
    A figure in dark clothing lay beneath the cedar tree
at the trail’s edge. A crimson stream trickled onto the frozen earth beneath
his head. Needles pierced her heart.
    But the clothing was wrong. Not Rick. Thank God .
    Guttural exhalations and the jarring stridency of bone
striking flesh and bone drew her gaze beyond the wounded man. Rick and the man
she’d dubbed Droopy Mustache grappled in the middle of the steep trail. They
struggled for possession of the pistol in Rick’s right hand. Another pistol lay
in the middle of the rocky path.
    Heart pounding against her sternum, she bit her lower
lip. If she rushed out and grabbed the discarded pistol, then what?
    Mustache delivered a chop to Rick’s right arm. Rick’s
pistol sailed across the rocks like a pebble skimming water. When he tried to
dive for it, Mustache wrenched his arm.
    From her downhill side came the scrabble of someone on
the gravel path. She hunkered lower in the underbrush.
    It was the other one, the heavy-set, lumpish one who
had pinned her for Droopy Mustache’s interrogation. Lumpy halted beside his
prostrate comrade, but barely spared him a glance, his attention focused on the
fight. The man presented his back to her, but held a pistol with a long black
barrel.
    She had to stop him. She shrugged off the pack and
searched it for a possible weapon. Lumpy was short and built like a bulldog,
but maybe . . .
    Mustache twisted, holding Rick in a headlock. Lumpy
stepped toward the combatants.
    A spasm gripped her chest. She slapped a hand over her
mouth to contain a scream. She crept out, planting each step with precision. Don’t
let him turn around.
    Lumpy stared ahead. He didn’t notice her stealing
closer.
    Rick jerked away and shot an elbow hard into Mustache’s
belly. Freed, Rick spun and snaked out a sideways kick that knocked his
opponent flat.
    Lumpy aimed the pistol.
    Juliana brought the binoculars down on his head with
so much force she nearly fell over. The plastic cracked like a champagne magnum
on a ship’s bow.
    Lumpy dropped like a lightning-struck tree. He didn’t
move.
    She stood dazed. Her breath came in great gulps. The
busted binoculars slipped from her shaking hands to the ground.
    Rick glared at her, eyes blazing black fire. “What the
hell are you doing here? I told you—” He dragged in a breath and shook his
head. Pistol in hand, he hoisted Mustache up and then marched him over to lie
with his cohorts. He grabbed the other guns and checked them before tucking
them in his waistband.
    “Are you all right?”
    She nodded and gaped at him. Blood and dirt daubed his
left cheek. A gouge disfigured his jaw and blood smeared his lower lip. His
sleeve was torn.