The Loner. Lindsay McKenna

the officer over. He’d worked with Sean for five years. They’d grown up together in the platoon. He was twenty-eight and had just married Isabel before going out on this rotation, their first child on the way. Blood gleamed dark along the LT’s throat. Dakota saw where two of the three bullets had struck the LT in the chest. The Kevlar had stopped them from killing him outright.

      A loud RPG explosion occurred. Automatically, Dakota threw himself over his LT, a rain of rocks hailing down all around them. He heard Mac yell. The next moment, a grenade was fired by the SEAL. More explosions lit the night on that cold ridge. Rolling off the officer, Dakota heard the throaty fire of the M-4s. Both his teammates were fighting back with fury. He heard their comms man, Mac, call for air support. They needed it.

      As he pulled away Sean’s collar in his quick examination, Dakota noticed the terrible wound the third bullet had created as it sped through the side of his neck. Gulping, tears blurring his vision for a second, Dakota forced down his emotions. Rapidly, he applied a battle dressing with pressure to the side of Sean’s neck. He could feel the warmth of the SEAL’s blood as it leaked quickly out of the white dressing and through his fingers. He was going to bleed out, his carotid artery cut in half by the bullet. Oh, God, no, no, don’t let this be! Bullets whined around Dakota. He heard a roar of the Taliban to his right. Jerking his head up, he saw at least ten Taliban rush around the slope from another direction, firing at him.

      Dakota had to return fire. In doing so, he had to lift his hand and stop the artery from bleeding out. It was a terrible choice....

      Groaning, Dakota awakened in a heavy sweat. His chest was rapidly rising and falling, his mouth opened in a silent scream. Flailing around on his bed, the springs creaking, he tried to run from the rest of the nightmare that dogged him. His heart pounded so hard he felt as if it would tear out of his chest. Throwing off the wool blankets, burning up, he pulled himself upright. The moment his bare feet hit the cold surface of the floor, he opened his eyes. Perspiration ran down his temples. He could taste the sweat at the corners of his mouth. Tears were running out of his eyes and no matter what he did, Dakota couldn’t stop them.

      Oh God, no...no.... Sean died right there. Right behind that friggin’ rock in the middle of nowhere. He jammed his palms against his closed eyes, trembling. His muscles bunched and knotted. If only...if only he’d have died instead of Sean. He left his beautiful, pregnant wife behind. Somehow, they got off that ridge before being decimated. The Night Stalkers sent in an MH-47 Chinook accompanied by two army Apache combat helicopters. Making a heroic landing, one of the four wheels on the mountain, the others in thin air, Dakota carried his dead LT and himself on board. Then the other two SEALs jumped off the ridge, slid down the rocky scree and leaped into the awaiting helo. As the Chinook powered up and left the ridge, the Apaches lit it up like the Fourth of July, cremating every one of those bastards, sending them straight to hell.

      The shaking wouldn’t stop. Dakota rubbed his eyes savagely, trying to force the tears to stop. Sean was like the brother he’d never had. Sean’s platoon was his family. Burning up. He was burning up. At this time of year, it was below freezing at night, but barely. Why wouldn’t his body cool down? His mind felt spongy. Dakota realized he wasn’t thinking clearly. The nightmare still had its claws into him. Still...

      Forcing himself to his feet, Dakota staggered. Dizziness assailed him and he found himself falling backward onto the bed. He hit it with force, one metal leg bending and snapping. The jolt of the bed falling on one side shocked him. Breathing hard, his heart refusing to stop pounding as if he were in the middle of a heart attack, Dakota forced himself to focus. It was something SEALs did well. He placed two fingers on his pulse. It was leaping and bounding as if it were about to tear out of his skin. By now his body should be calming down, cooling down. But it wasn’t. His flesh felt scalded beneath his fingertips. What the hell? And then it hit him: he had a fever. Shit. Doc McPherson was right: infection had set in after the surgery.

      Lifting his head, his eyes narrowed, sweat running and following the course of his hard jaw, Dakota tried to think. As he tried to get up, the dizziness felled him. The bed sagged and tipped to one side where the leg had been broken off. His left arm throbbed like a son of a bitch. He looked at it. The arm had swollen so much that the skin on either end of the tape bulged outward. When he touched it, his arm was hard and hot. Bad news.

      Help. I’ve got to get help or I’m gonna die. I’ve gone septic...

      Moonlight shifted through the small glass windows, which were smudged with dust and dirt. A flash of white on the wood table caught his wandering attention. Dakota knew he’d never get to his truck, much less drive it down the mountain to get help.

      Barbie Doll...need to call her... Said she’d help...

      The cell phone lay next to her white business card on the table. Could he reach it? Dakota forced himself up, staggering those five feet to the table. He sat down in the chair before he fell down. With shaking fingers, his mind hallucinating from high fever, he slowly punched in the numbers. Would Barbie Doll answer? Did she really mean what she said? She’d help him if he needed her, or was it just lip service? Dakota had never felt so goddamned useless. He’d been a SEAL. He knew how to survive. And yet a high fever was raging through him, had dismantled him in record time. If that blond-haired angel didn’t answer her cell phone, he knew without a doubt she’d find him dead on the floor when she dropped by at 0700.

      His senses began to spin. Dakota tried to focus on the phone ringing and ringing and ringing.... Blackness began to assail him. He fought the fever. Fought the darkness encroaching upon him. He couldn’t see anymore. Everything was turning black. Oh God, I’m going to die.... The grizzly bear had gotten its revenge....

      Soft, beeping noises slowly brought Dakota out of the darkness. He heard women’s voices. Far off. Too far to understand, but he tried to listen anyway. He had that familiar sensation, as if he was drowning and swimming toward the surface. It reminded him of being a SEAL frogman. He’d had his LAR V Draeger rebreathing system malfunction at fifty feet in the warm waters of the Arabian Sea during a night mission. Holding his breath, Dakota swam strongly, pushing his flippers hard toward the surface. It was barely dawn, but he could see the light above him through his mask. His chest swelled, he felt the pressure, felt the reflex to breathe. But he couldn’t! If he did, he’d inhale a lungful of water and drown. Struggling, fighting, kicking, he willed himself to hold his breath just as he’d done back in BUD/S in that pool. Was he going to make it?

      And then a gentle hand touched his sweaty lower arm. Instantly, it broke the hold darkness had on him. Dakota inhaled audibly, gulping in a huge, deep breath. The fingers tightened a little, as if to steady him, help him to reorient. Yes, the hand was cool, fingers long. He could feel their softness against the dark hair and sweat rolling off his arm.

      Dragging his eyes open to slits, Dakota saw nothing but blurred green walls. The hand. That cool, soft hand. He forced himself to close his eyes and concentrate. Between heaven and hell, Dakota fought to move toward the light. Toward that hand that was like an anchor promising him life, not death. His mind churned, hallucinated and then like a tide, flowed out, leaving him lucid for a few moments.

      “It’s all right, Dakota,” a voice whispered near his ear. “You’re going to be all right. You’re safe....”

      Her breath was warm, a hint of cinnamon on it, maybe. Dakota absorbed her husky, breathy tone, the warm moisture caressing his ear and cheek. He felt her fingers tighten just a little, as if to convince him to believe her. Most of all, he was safe. He felt safe even though he swam in a mix of hallucinations and God knew what else. Where was he?

      Shelby kept her hand on Dakota’s arm. Jordana McPherson stood on the other side of the bed, watching him. Lifting her gaze, she met Jordana’s. “He’s coming around....”

      “Yes,” the doctor murmured, checking the IV drip that was slugging his body with antibiotics and fighting the massive infection within him. “Finally. He’s past crisis. He’s going to make it.”

      * * *

      THE AFTERNOON SUN SLANTED through the window near the hospital bed. “It was a close call,” Shelby said in a low tone. She watched Dakota struggling to