Page 8 of Out of Control

He fell to his knees beside the jumble of brown rags and camo netting. He yanked it back to reveal the man laid out beneath. “Drago?”

Movement. A groan. Oh, thank God.

Drago’s dark hair, tanned face, and black beard stubble were coated in beige dust. He looked eerily ghostlike. His head turned slightly, and one dark eye opened, unfocused, disoriented.

The past ten years fell away in an instant, and they were back in Tel Aviv on that awful day. Oily black smoke tinged with the scent of death rose in a thick column beyond Drago and hung there, heavy and oppressive. Or maybe it was the spirits of all the people who’d just died lingering in the acrid-tasting air. God. It wasexactlylike Tel Aviv.

“Are you hurt?” Spencer tried. “Can you move?”

“Am I dead?” Dray mumbled. “We going… to Hell?”

“Probably. But not today. I’m alive, and so are you.”

Drago’s head turned more fully. Decent range of motion, no expression of pain. Probably no broken neck. That was good. This time both eyes opened to stare up at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving your ass, apparently.”

“Bull. I saved yours.”

“Can you walk, Dray?”

“Dunno.”

“Let’s find out.” Spencer reached down and helped lift him to a seated position. “Easy. Are you dizzy? That blast could’ve messed up your ears and your balance pretty good.”

“Ya think?”

He looped his arm around Dray’s waist, which was as hard and fit as he remembered it. Drago wasn’t the kind of guy who worked out in a bougie gym, chasing a photo-ready six-pack. But he was the kind of guy who lived hard and worked harder and had a body honed into layer upon layer of functional muscle. A warrior’s physique.

“You’re fun when you’re dazed,” Spencer muttered as he hoisted Drago to his feet. “Less of a shithead.”

“Go fuck yourself with a pine cone,” Drago mumbled.

“That’s more like it. Lean on me if you need to. We just have to make it over that ridge. I’ve got a vehicle stashed on the other side.”

They stumbled away from the apocalypse behind them, a miniscule, not even newsworthy, blip on the radar of US military intervention, but the final, irrevocable end of dozens of human beings. Sure, a few terrorists had bitten the dust. But so had families, friends, children. Vaporized. The parallels to the hotel bombing were chilling.

“You were supposed to go to the Mandolib. Why’d you come here and try to blow me up?” Drago mumbled.

“I didn’t try to blow you up. Heck, I was closer to the compound than you. I don’t have a death wish.”

“Since when?”

Spencer merely rolled his eyes. It was no use trying to argue with Drago. “Why did you signal me with that little appearance at al-Mandolib?”

“Who says I was signaling you?”

He threw the guy a withering glare, and Drago muttered, “Fine. I was signaling you.”

“Why?”

“Obviously because there was something I wanted you to see.”

“Some guys having a meeting, using civilians for cover, and them all getting blown up? I hate to break it to you, Dray, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like that. If you were hoping to stir moral outrage in my soul, it’s not happening.”

“I don’t give a shit for your moral outrage. But I do think your soul is in grave need of saving.”

“I beg your pardon?”

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