Free Alarm of War by Kennedy Hudner Page A

sending all of the precious, mysterious boxes across and they were loaded into the lead truck.
    Sergeant Kaelin stood behind her, hands on his hips. “Got an hour and a half left, Tuttle. You just might pull it off.”
    “Just might, Sergeant.” She couldn’t suppress a grin. “Just might at that.”
    “Catch a ride, Little Sister,” one of the miners called as the last truck splashed past her. She leapt onto the passenger side door runner. The driver smiled broadly. “All honor to you! By my life, this is a great day!” The truck reached the end of the sand bar and another miner tied the rope to its tow ring. On the far shore the truck started to pull. The tow rope lifted out of the water, spraying droplets everywhere. Emily wanted to sing.
    She was never sure exactly what happened next. Maybe the truck had not been lined up properly, or maybe the previous trucks had weakened the sand bar. As the truck lurched forward, the entire side of the sand bar suddenly collapsed. The truck shuddered, creaked loudly, then fell over on its driver’s side as if in slow motion. When it crashed to the river bottom, Emily’s face cracked into the door frame. Her nose broke in an agonizing spray of blood and pain lanced all the way to the back of her skull. Black dots suddenly crowded her vision, growing larger and larger and-. Suddenly she was in the water, sputtering, coughing, then under water, choking, then she felt herself grabbed hard by the shoulders and hauled to the surface.
    Pain ravaged her head and overwhelmed her senses, but she became dimly aware that people were still shouting and someone was screaming and more people came running, and only then did she realize that there were people trapped under the fallen truck.
    When it was over, two soldiers – two of her beloved miners – were dead.
    Sergeant Kaelin cursed. He exchanged a long look with DI Johnson. Something passed between them, then Johnson shrugged. “Fuck it, Andy. I’ll back you either way,” he told Kaelin.
    Emily felt thick-headed, fuzzy. What was Johnson talking about? She looked at the two bodies laid on the shore. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes and she scrubbed them with the back of her hand.
    “Tuttle,” Sergeant Kaelin said quietly.
    She thought about the two men and wondered if they had girlfriends waiting for them. Did they-
    “Emily!” Kaelin said more sharply. She looked up at him. He looked tired, she thought. He was soaked to the skin and his thinning hair was plastered to his head.
    “Emily, listen, I have to call for a chopper to evacuate the casualties. If I call now, it will come within minutes, but the Major will insist that the maneuver be stopped. Do you understand?” He looked at her hard. But why was he telling her this? The men were dead, of course they had to-
    And then she did understand. There was still time for her to take the convoy to the Four Corners. Still time to complete the mission. But if they called in the fatalities now, the operation would end. She shook her head. Stupid, stupid,
stupid
. All a game and now two men were dead forever. She looked up at Kaelin and the tears came freely now, almost invisible against her wet cheeks, but there.
    “I hate this,” she said. “Gods of Our Mothers, I hate this.” Then she turned to the river and waived her arms until she caught Rafael Eitan’s attention on the far shore. Her radio was on the bottom of the river somewhere. She checked her watch and saw they still had forty minutes. She cupped her hands to her mouth.
    “Go!” she shouted. “Take it to the Four Corners!”
    “Come across, Emily,” he shouted back. “We’ll wait for you!”
    Emily waived him away. “Go! Complete the mission. You’re running out of time.” Eitan stood for a moment, then climbed into the truck without another word and the convoy drove across the field.
    Emily turned and walked to edge of the water. Men who were standing there silently moved aside. She knelt down between