The men were approaching, and he had little time for the details, but his military training took over. The smallest little things could save your life, like checking back around you on the sandy surface, seeing the footprints, then knowing exactly how to get rid of them without making even more of an obvious trail.

Declan pulled the knife from his pocket and sliced away several dried-up branches from the base of the back of a nearby shrub. He used it like a brush, painting away the marks they’d left. That’s how he liked to think about it, a calm activity like painting. Clearing away. Smoothening out, surviving. In order to survive these next few minutes, he knew he’d have to hide just like Sophia.

He made sure he erased any trace of their passing from the moment they’d stepped from the rocks lining the riverbed, staying low. There was very little brush nearby, and he didn’t want to hide himself too close to Sophia. If they caught him, then he’d deal with it, but he didn’t want to risk her safety at any cost. He quickly glanced around and saw the slight bulge of what looked to be an overflow runoff from the dry riverbed. There was no telling how long it had been since this area had gotten enough rain to cause flooding, but he’d take anything he could get at this point.

Flattening himself to the ground, he lay in the slight indentation, quickly grabbing some rocks and placing them nearby. One between his ankles, one next to his waist, another near his head. Taking the branches he’d used to erase their tracks, he laid one near his knees, repeating the process with another clump by his side, the other shielding his face. Without causing too much disruption to the ground around him, he swept sand over his clothing. If he were lucky, and they came this close, their gaze would merely skim over him. It helped that the sun would be in their eyes, the brush and river rocks behind him catching their eyes more than he might . . . 

He resisted the urge to lift his head, to watch the direction from where he heard the motors, the sound of squeaking chassis metal and sliding tires approaching, moving fast. They’d be kicking up a plume of dirt and dust behind them. They’d likely lose the trail in the riverbed rocks, but would they get out to search more carefully?

The vehicles grew closer . . . two of them. The sound of rocks crashing together. They had entered the river bed, but it sounded like they would cross . . . voices filled with tension. Orders being shouted. Confusion. He closed his eyes and tried to still the pounding of his heart. He prayed that Sophia wouldn’t move, wouldn’t twitch. Wouldn’t let her fear overcome common sense. He felt it as well; the desperate urge to leap up and run. To get away. His training held him in good stead, but Sophia?

The vehicles stopped. How far away? They sounded close. Too close. He didn’t dare look, hardly dared to breathe. Don’t move . . . don’t move . . . don’t move!

The voices and the shouts undulated, some closer, some farther away. He heard boots crunching on rocks, but not too close. Voices again, no more shouting. He tried to make out what they said. His Farsi was far from fluent. He caught a few words . . . “look” . . . “west” . . . he heard someone say “woman.” They started to move away, further from their hiding place, and just as he was about to succumb to a sense of relief, he heard another word. A name. His heart jumped.

“General Ironside.”

What the hell? How did any of them know of General Ironside? They couldn’t mean him, could they? No, he wore civvies, had no identification on him. Maybe . . . it made no sense.

He wondered if Sophia could hear it, too. She might not understand Farsi, but she would understand the name. What was she thinking? Did her heart pound as hard as his? Was she struggling to keep her breathing under control, to resist the urge to move even a fraction of an inch? He wanted to reach over and touch her, but she was too far away. He prayed that she kept her focus on what was at stake. Of course she did. She’d be a fool not to. He longed to hold her, but there was too much dirt between them. Moving dirt would be a dead giveaway. He hoped the two unmoving lumps would go unnoticed. He hoped he did a good-enough job hiding both of them. He hoped that he made the right decision to even hide in the first place.

All these decisions had been made quickly in reactions, ones he usually trusted. Making choices at the knife’s edge was the way he’d survived so many campaigns. But in one day with Sophia, he felt like he’d made more decisions than in all of them combined.

And now this single minute of hiding, waiting for the trucks to pass, felt like the equivalent of that whole terrible day with her.

Or was it two minutes? It must have been two or three impossibly long minutes before the sound of the trucks picked up again. No more voices, just driving, and on past him and Sophia they went, missing them by less than fifteen yards. Declan could almost feel the heat radiating off the vehicle as it passed. So close again to death.

When he heard the trucks gain enough distance, Declan slowly emerged from his hiding place. He spoke softly to Sophia. “Stay down,” he cautioned, heading immediately to where he’d hidden the radio.

One eye on her, he reached for the radio. She didn’t move. Good girl.

“They’ve gone, haven’t they?”

He turned toward the lump of dirt. “For now. Just stay where you are, just in case they decide to double back.”

There was no sense in her risking her, too. He had to get that radio fixed.

Declan pried open the back panel with the blade of his knife, hoping that would be all the knife had to do this mission. Now in the light and close up, he could see what was wrong. A wire had been knocked loose. He wasn’t a radio expert, or even a tech expert, compared to others in his team, but he knew enough to thread the wire back in its place, using the knife’s edge to tighten the screws to secure it. Then he moved back to the front to turn it on and heard an immediate blast of static. It was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

Sophia spoke to him again. “It’s working!”And then his name was called.

“I got it fixed,” he said. “I’m calling in.”

She didn’t say anything, just waited there for the ordeal to be finished. It was almost over. All he’d needed was to call in for an extraction.

“Desert Fox to Howz-E-Madad,” Declan said, using the name for the forward operating base in the Zhari district.

Nothing. He tried again. More static.

“Dammit . . . come on . . . come on,” he urged. “Desert Fox to Howz-E-Madad,” he repeated.

Two seconds . . . five . . . he was about to try again when he heard the muffled voice.

“Come in, Fox.”

Finally, signs of life.

Declan uttered the verbal passcode without batting an eye. Twice. He’d been ready for this call since his adventure had begun. They came back to him asking immediately if he needed extraction. It was no surprise; his and Sophia’s disappearance must have been the hot topic at every FOB in Afghanistan. He imagined Jackson and his crew had been scouring the desert without rest. No one probably imagined he’d be calling in with an iffy radio from an old army backpack at some unknown location off a riverbed several kilometers from a mountain riddled with abandoned mine shafts.

“Is everything okay?” Sophia asked after his transmission ended.

“Well,” he said, turning to her. She still hadn’t moved. “That depends. But we’ll have to do a lot of walking to find out.”