A Soldier's Pledge. Nadia Nichols

position. He was a little over twenty miles from the outpost. He’d only made ten straight line miles since finding his dead soldiers. Twenty more miles didn’t seem that far, but when moving carefully and trying to avoid detection, those miles would be long and slow.

      He slipped the GPS onto his belt next to his water bottle, wanting to keep it near. He was exhausted but unable to relax. He rested sitting up, using his pack for a backrest, draping his sleeping bag over his shoulders like a blanket and cradling his weapon in his lap. He closed his eyes but knew he wouldn’t sleep. He couldn’t get the image of those three dead Afghan soldiers out of his mind.

      A noise roused him in the middle of the starlit night, a low, almost inaudible warning growl coming from the pup. He gathered his legs beneath him and let the sleeping bag slide off his shoulders. He was lifting his weapon and preparing to rise to his feet when the night exploded around him and all hell broke loose. Lightning and thunder, muzzle-flashes and bullets, an ambush on his position and no place to go except straight into it. He dove forward, rolled and came up all in one motion, firing at the nearest spit of flame, then raking the muzzle to the right and triggering another burst. He jumped over a fallen form, crashed through the brush and ran like a jackrabbit, zigzagging and dodging.

      How many were there? Four? Five? He wasn’t going to stick around to find out. Another movement to his right, and he swung his weapon and fired another short burst, kept running. Felt something sting the calf of his leg and pushed on. He’d always been a good runner, and he ran now as he’d never run before. He could hear shouts coming from behind him, nothing up ahead. He dodged among trees. Slowed down when the canopy closed out the starlight and the darkness became too thick. Sped up when he could see the ground again.

      He ran as if his life depended on it, because it did. He ran until he had to slow down, catch his breath, and even then he kept moving, walking fast, pausing from time to time to listen for sounds of pursuit over the pounding of his heart. He heard nothing but that meant nothing. They could be right on his heels. They were stealth fighters, and they were very good at it.

      For over two hours he pushed hard. He paused only once, to check the burning in his calf. His pant leg was soaked, his boot full of blood. He had no idea how bad the wound was, nor was there time to find out, but he knew the bone wasn’t broken and counted himself lucky. If the bullet had struck bone, they’d have had him, and he’d be dead right now. He tied his bandanna around his calf to try to staunch the bleeding, then angled toward the river, and when he reached it he walked in. The water was frigid. He continued downriver in the shallows along the water’s edge. This wouldn’t slow his pursuers much, but they might think he’d crossed the river. He’d walk like this as long as the night covered his movements.

      Too soon the sky began to brighten, and he lost the cover of darkness. He scouted ahead, searching for places where he could leave the river without leaving tracks. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around his lower leg when he came to an outcropping, and then climbed onto it. The ledge ran back far enough to get him off the immediate shoreline before ending in a choke of brush. He kept his jacket around his leg while he was on the ledge to prevent a blood trail, and removed it only after he was well into the brush. He moved back into the woods and kept moving, but his head wasn’t as clear as it should have been, and he could feel his strength failing him.

      They could be right behind him, but he had to hole up. He found a place where he could make a stand if he had to, and he pulled his jacket back on because he was cold, really cold. He thought he’d just rest a while, listen and watch his back trail and be ready to fight if they caught up with him. He would stay alert because to sleep would be fatal. Disciplined vigilance was his only chance.

      Don’t fall asleep.

      That was the order he gave himself just before he passed out.

      * * *

      HE OPENED HIS eyes on the bright dawn, and the sight of the grayish-colored pup lying beneath the brush with him, almost within touching distance, head on its paws, watching him. “Back in Montana the ranchers would use you for target practice,” he muttered. “They don’t care for coyotes.”

      His calf was throbbing, his head ached, he was desperately thirsty and sick from all the adrenaline, but he was still alive and the enemy hadn’t caught up to him. Yet. He ate some jerky for breakfast, drank water from his bottle, tossed the last three strips of dried meat he fished out of his pocket to the pup, figuring he’d make it back to the outpost within hours. He left the bandanna tied over the wound, pushed awkwardly to his feet, took up his weapon and started out. He could barely hobble, but he was sure once he got moving his leg would limber up and travel would get easier. When he looked back over his shoulder, the pup was following him, no longer trying to hide. That day the hours passed in an endless and painful blur, but there was no sign of the enemy.

      Or the outpost. He was traveling far too slowly.

      That evening he made his way back to the river to refill his water bottle. He drank his fill crouched by the river, knowing that would be the only supper he got. That night was colder than the last. When he awoke, stiff and aching and chilled to the bone, the pup was within hand’s reach, lying right beside his injured leg. When she saw he was awake, she raised her head off her paws and tensed, ready to flee at the slightest aggressive move from him. He extended his hand slowly, and she sniffed it. He touched her for the first time, a light stroke that brushed the black-tipped hair along her back while she remained rigidly motionless and watched him steadily with those dark golden eyes. He stroked her for some minutes, slowly and gently, and as he did the wary caution left her eyes and was replaced by something else entirely, and from that moment she was his.

      That day his progress was slow and halting, and he rested often. If he was still being followed, the enemy would have picked him off by now as he hobbled slowly along. That evening he drank his fill again at the river and wondered if the pup would stick with him when he had no food to offer. The temperature dropped and snow fell during the night, and in the morning, the pup was lying on top of him, her nose tucked beneath his chin, warming him with her body. That day his progress was slower than the day before. His strength gave out, and he collapsed at dusk. He could travel no farther. He knew he was within striking distance of friendly territory, and his last conscious thought was how important it was that his unit get those GPS coordinates.

      His discovery by a scouting party the following morning caused quite a stir, not only because he’d been out of radio contact for so long that they’d just about given him up for dead, but also because he was being so fiercely guarded by the wild pup who refused to let anyone approach. It took some doing by one of the scouting party to drag her away. He made a noose from a belt, attached it to a long pole and slipped it over her head. Two of the party returned to the outpost and brought back a stretcher. By that time Jack had roused enough to tell them about the pup and make them remove the noose from her neck. They loaded him onto the stretcher, and she dogged their heels all the way back to the outpost. She shadowed him in the medic’s tent and followed him when they transferred him to a waiting truck. He was barely aware of any of it.

      “The medics say your leg’s infected and needs surgery,” Lieutenant Dan Royce said as they slid the stretcher into the bed of the truck. “We’re transporting you to Hatchet. They have a better setup there. That wild dog can’t go. You know the rules,” he said when the pup tried to climb into the bed of the truck.

      “Sir, that dog’s the only reason I found that Taliban training camp. She saved my life.”

      “I didn’t make the rules, Parker, but I have to enforce them. You can’t keep the dog.”

      Ruben Cook, who had helped carry Jack back to the outpost and was standing with a group of soldiers, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her for you.”

      Jack looked at him, dizzy from the morphine. “She saved my life,” he repeated. “Treat her good.” He reached out one hand to the pup as she gazed at him with that intense golden stare.

      “I’ll be back,” he told her as Ruben replaced her makeshift collar and pulled her out of the truck.

      It was over sixty rough road miles to the next outpost. Jack