TARIK AWOKE SLOWLY, pain throbbing through his head, making him frown. His ears were ringing badly, and he fought to become conscious. What had happened? His mind felt unhinged as he struggled to fight the darkness. There was pain in his head and pain in his left arm. His mind focused on that, and he felt incredibly exhausted, unable to move.
It took him a good ten minutes before he could force open his eyes. A ceiling of what looked like a cave was above him, grayish and deeply shadowed. Licking his lips, dying of thirst, he tried moving his hands and feet to see how badly wounded he was.
The memory of an RPG sailing through the air finally grounded him into reality. Yeah, the ridge. His men? Panic settled in him for a moment. Where was his team? And where the hell was he?
Mike heard water running. The ringing in his ears would lower for a bit and then return to near normal volume. Knowing he’d been close enough to the explosion to pop both his eardrums, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were blown. He felt pain in his ears when he focused his concentration there. Vision blurring, he blinked several times. Wherever he was lying, there was something soft beneath him. He slowly moved his right hand, his dirty, sweaty fingers encountering something soft. Fabric.
Vision blurring again, he shut his eyes, concentrating and trying to figure out where the hell he was. He’d been on a scree slope, nothing but rocks. The RPG had been fired by a Taliban.
Opening his eyes, his vision cleared. His head throbbed with unremitting agony. It hurt even to blink his eyes. Moving his right hand, Mike encountered his left arm in a sling. A sling? He was in a cave. This wasn’t making sense to him. The sound of rushing water, like a small waterfall, caught his attention again. As much as it caused hellacious pain, he slowly moved his head to the left, toward the sound.
Tarik simply wasn’t prepared for what he saw. He had to be having some kind of hallucination. Or the wound he’d sustained to his head was playing tricks on him. His eyes narrowed. There, maybe fifty feet away, was a tall, naked woman beneath a waterfall. She was washing herself with a cloth, her face tipped up, water splashing around her head and shoulders.
He closed his eyes. No, this was his messed-up head. One didn’t find a naked, beautiful young woman under a waterfall in the Hindu Kush. No way...
His hearing returned briefly, and he heard the water again. Opening his eyes, he was sure the hallucination would be gone.
But it wasn’t. Mike watched, mesmerized as she walked slowly out of the pool, picked up the towel and began to dry her dark, very long hair. What the fuck is going on here? Closing his eyes, frustrated, Mike touched his head, his fingers running into a bandage around it. Exploring further, he felt a heavy dressing where the pain was originating from along his temple. He wasn’t in a Medevac. He wasn’t at Bravo’s dispensary, nor was he at Bagram hospital’s emergency room. He’d been to all those places at one time or another. The trickling sound, the music of water falling, surrounded him. This was all his imagination. His brain was scrambled.
Opening his eyes, he saw her. Again. He watched as she sat on a bench and combed her long, damp hair. Mike could see her very clearly. Her profile looked Afghan, a broad brow, strong nose, full mouth and a stubborn-looking chin. She was probably in her late twenties, maybe.
Every motion she made was graceful. Her skin had a golden sheen to it. The rest of her body was lean, glistening with water as she sat there and allowed the air to dry her. Her breasts were small, her hips flared. It was her long, long legs that caught his attention. Beautiful thighs, curved and firm.
Groaning, Tarik shut his eyes. He had to be hallucinating! That was all there was to it. The pain in his left arm nagged at him when he tried to move it. Not good. Lying there, breathing raggedly, mouth dry, he tried to get a hold on where the hell he was lying.
Opening his eyes, he watched her, finally convinced that she wasn’t an apparition. Or a ghost from his imagination. She was combing her hair, getting out the snarls in the long strands. When she was finished, she took the brush, taming the drying strands. Once, she turned her head away, and he saw her hair was a deep, rich red color. It glinted for just a second in the lamplight.
This was real. Friggin’ real. Mike felt as if he’d stepped into a Tim Burton movie, Alice in Wonderland. There was a sense of calm, of peacefulness where he lay. And then, his ringing ears caught another sound.
Munch, munch, munch.
Mike turned his head very slowly to the right. There, five feet away, was a black horse with a halter, eating alfalfa hay on the cave floor. He could smell the alfalfa, a sweet scent filling his nostrils. One he was very familiar with. But how did alfalfa hay get into the Hindu Kush? The more he saw, the less made sense to him. Alfalfa did not grow in this country.
He slowly turned his head back toward the woman. She had moved her long hair that was nearly halfway down her long back and brought it over her naked right shoulder. His eyes narrowed. What was he seeing on her back as she stood up? He scowled. Her back was heavily scarred. Dark, puckered ridges indicated she’d been whipped with something that had metal on the ends of the tips. He felt himself getting angry. Afghan women were punished with whips like this when they didn’t “behave” properly toward their husband.
The woman shrugged on a muscle shirt of dark olive green. She sat down and pulled on a pair of camouflage cammie trousers. They weren’t SEAL cammies. His memory was barely functioning. Maybe marine? He watched her pull on a set of olive-green wool socks and then a pair of combat boots. She quickly laced them up with her elegant fingers. When she was done, she stood up, used her hands to spread that cloak of red hair about her shoulders, fluffing it in a fully feminine gesture. He saw glinting waves of crimson, burgundy and gold shine beneath the kerosene lamplight.
He was torn. He could pretend he was still unconscious, or he could reveal to her he was awake. As she picked up her toiletry articles in her left hand, Mike decided to let her know he was conscious. Curiosity was burning him alive. He’d seen no weapons around. Just her and the horse, contentedly consuming hay.
As she drew near, Mike watched her gaze lock on his. She slowed her pace toward him, wariness coming to her face. She was deeply tanned, face oval and eyes that made him drag in a deep breath. She carried the kerosene lamp in her hand, and the light flashed up for a moment, revealing the most incredible green color to her large intelligent eyes.
* * *
KHAT FELT HER heart wrench in her chest as she drew close to the SEAL. He was awake, looking at her with confusion. His face was dirty, sweaty, but those gold-brown eyes of his were clear and pinned on her.
What Khat didn’t want was for him to try something stupid, like leap up and grab her or try to find one of her weapons and point it at her. She halted a good ten feet away from the SEAL. “I’m Khat,” she said in a low voice. “You’re safe. I’m your friend.”
He stared up at her like she was a ghost. Khat was used to that reaction. How many women were riding around a fifty-square-mile area of the Hindu Kush? No one else she knew of.
He had large eyes, and she could see they were a light brown color. He was intensely assessing her, and she could feel it.
The SEAL was confused, and Khat didn’t blame him. What she didn’t want was for him to go into defense or attack mode. Because he would. He was completely out of his element. She’d removed his pistol and his knife from him earlier.
“You’re in a cave,” she explained, keeping it simple. “I saw an RPG explode very close to you. Later, when I found you in the wadi, you were unconscious.”
She gestured toward his head. “You’ve got a pretty bad concussion, and you have a broken left arm. You need to stay calm and relax.”
“Are you thirsty, Michael Tarik?” she asked when he didn’t say anything. She put her toiletry items back into the cave wall hole. The damp towel hung on a peg she’d pounded into the walls years earlier. Khat turned and picked up one of the plastic quart bottles from a box filled with them.
*