Dangerous Territory: An Alpha Ops novella Read Online Free PDF Page A

shouldn’t.”
    “What?” She looked down in the dark at her jeans and long sleeved T-shirt.
    “They’ll be looking for explosives. They’re kind of sensitive about who they let on their birds.”
    Oh. Okay. Fair enough.
    He ripped off his helmet light and gave it to her. “Don’t trip and skin your knee, okay?”
    “I’ll try not to.” She paused and shone the small light toward the ground. Her skin bristled with fear, which her brain was trying very hard not to acknowledge. She wasn’t supposed to be here. The commanders only sent her on “safe” missions and patrols.
    “Safe.” A relative word in a war zone.
    She really didn’t want to leave Beth, but that was another thing in her brain she was trying not to pay any attention to. Attachments hurt. Friendships hurt. Here especially.
    Walker ran her to the cover of the rocks and pointed her in the direction of where he wanted her to hide. Then he returned to Beth.
    She gave one last look at Beth and started to scramble up the hill, trying to avoid the scree that trickled down the slope at the slightest of wrong steps. A wind blew from her right, the side of the valley they hadn’t reached, and the gusts muffled the sound of gunfire to where she had to strain to hear it. A cave entrance appeared in her peripheral vision, and she changed course to take shelter in it. It was perfectly placed so that she would be able to see the helicopters landing. She struggled to find a path to it, but eventually made it up there.
    It was strangely silent in the cave. Tall enough to stand up in and deep enough to house a football team. In the middle of the night, with the hillside alive with insurgents, she didn’t explore. She pressed herself against the rock, about a foot in from the entrance, and watched.
    An aircraft screamed up the valley, sounding as if it were mere feet away from her. She cowered, plugged her fingers in her ears, and waited for the first wave of explosions.
    The booms brought trickles of small rocks running past her hiding place.
    Was this really what her life had come to? Crouched in an Afghan cave in the middle of the night without anyone to interview? Shit.
    She heard a loud thrumming noise and looked to see if the helos had arrived… Thank God. She could get back to base and shower off this unholy mess. Make sure everyone made it back okay, especially Beth.
    But as the noise got closer, she didn’t recognize the sound as an aircraft. It was more like a train, but not a consistent tone. Wind blew her hair off her face, and as it did, splatters of sand peppered her skin. Billowing clouds were coming up the valley like a slow-moving tsunami. Sandstorm. Not good. So not good.
    She dived into her backpack and brought out the traditional Afghan head covering she used when interviewing locals. She wrapped it around her face and head, tucking the ends in so that no part of her was uncovered. She stuck her hands in her pockets and sat on the backpack to keep it safe.
    A few minutes later, she had to retreat farther into the dark cave. No helicopter could land in this.
    All she could do was take cover and wait. And wait…
    *     *     *
    As Josh’s team neared the landing zone, the primary helo had pulled up and alerted them that a huge sandstorm was blowing up the valley.
    “Okay. Circle until we have confirmation of new LZ,” Josh’s pilot ordered the other pilot.
    A crackle came from a radio on the ground. “This is Playboy. I have cleared LZ to the north, repeat, north of the road. You have about five minutes before the storm hits. Six before the Strike Eagles open their doors.”
    Josh smiled. He knew that meant that they had six minutes before the Strike Eagle aircraft dropped five hundred pounds of explosives on the Taliban position.
    The pilot radioed back. “Copy that, Playboy. Any enemy combatants?”
    “Affirmative. There are five of us holding them off on the west side of the LZ. They are entrenched in the hill there. We’re