Page 23 of Close Pursuit

Tears welling in her eyes, she shook her head at Alex.

He continued to work in grim silence for several more minutes. But finally, he went still. He stared down at the girl’s body bleakly. And then, all he said in a terrible agonized whisper was, “Turn off the flashlight.”

Her second hand freed, she turned to the business of quieting the infant. She maneuvered the hot little bundle inside her coat until it laid across her, the baby’s head on her left breast. Sometimes the sound of a heartbeat calmed a newborn. It took a few moments, but it worked.

Alex shook himself out of wherever he’d gone mentally and crawled to the edge of the crevasse. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“What about her?” Katie glanced down at the corpse of the girl who’d been so brave and angry and determined to live.

“We have to leave her.”

Every cell in Katie’s being protested the notion of abandoning the girl here like a discarded hunk of meat.

Alex crawled back to the girl’s side and gently closed her eyelids before pulling the end of her burka across her face. He covered the bloody mess that had been the girl’s belly with a towel and arranged the girl’s robes over it all.

He placed his hand over the girl’s heart and murmured barely loud enough for Katie to hear, “Rest in peace, and be with whatever God you worshipped in life.”

Tears overflowed Katie’s eyes and she sucked back a sob. She was shocked when Alex’s strong arms wrapped around her, dragging her up against him.

Between them was the hot bump of an infant torn from its mother’s dying body. Katie didn’t even know what sex it was. Alex pushed her face down gently onto his shoulder and buried his face in her hair. He shuddered against her while she cried into his neck.

But as the ominous thwocking of a helicopter became audible in the distance, he stilled and muttered into her hair, “If you want to live, grieve later. Follow me, now. Fast and silent.”

4

The next hour was a nightmare. The mountain was no less steep at the top than at the bottom, and the baby fussed occasionally, sending her into a cold panic as she tried frantically to shush the newborn. It didn’t help matters that the battle raging below grew more intense as the night wore on. And who knew what lay over the mountain peak?

Alex was grim and silent, focusing intently on finding a route up the mountain. He was quick to lend her a helping hand, though, or to haul her up over a particularly rough patch.

As she’d correctly guessed, he was deceptively strong. And, when her strength lagged and her will to go on faltered, he was indomitable.

When she thought she couldn’t go on, she thought about that intense hug in the cave. It had been more than simple comfort. He had let her inside his guard. Made a human connection with her. Maybe he’d even needed her for a minute, there.

Alex murmured from ahead, “Get down on your hands and knees. We’re cresting the mountain. Don’t want our silhouettes visible.”

She crawled across open peak and huddled in the lee of a boulder just over the crest beside Alex.

“How’s the baby?” he asked low.

“Alive. It moves around now and then.”

“Let me see it,” Alex muttered.

She unzipped her coat and lifted the infant out. In a flash of mortar fire from below, she saw it was a baby girl, a healthy size and weight—she guessed around eight pounds. And she took immediate and loud umbrage at being exposed to the sharp chill, however, and started to squall.

“Good lungs,” she commented under her breath.

Alex pulled a scarf out of his pack and swaddled the infant in it after a fast examination. Thoughtfully, he passed the baby back to her, and Katie slipped the child back in her coat. It took a minute or so, but the baby quieted in the warm and dark next to Katie’s heart.

“We have to get food for her,” Katie said worriedly.

“She can go a day or two without eating, actually,” Alex replied. “Most babies don’t take in much nourishment in their first twenty-four hours. As long as we can get some water down her, she’ll be okay for a day.”

“What about us?”

He shrugged. “We’ll also need water before long.”

“Any bright ideas about what to do next?” she murmured.

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