Chapter 2
890 Words
2
Sergeant Katrina Melman suddenly remembered the feeling of flying.
There had been the high whistle of an incoming mortar round. She and Tomas—who she always teased about abandoning his name’s poor H somewhere along the way, cruelly leaving it to wander the world on its own—had dropped flat in the vineyard and offered up a quick prayer for the round to land somewhere else.
It had partially worked. Rather than a direct hit, the force of the blast had merely thrown her aside, slamming her into a line of grape vines. The burnt sulfur smell of exploded TNT overwhelmed the sweet grapes and rich soil.
Pain was starting to report in. Abused muscles, the nasty gash on her hand, but nothing felt broken.
“I think I’m okay.”
Tomas shushed her again. Again she had to concentrate on his lips to figure out which words he was speaking silently. You’re shouting.
“I am?”
Again the hand clamped over her mouth.
The silence. The echoing silence. The world hadn’t gone quiet. Her hearing had gone instead.
Deaf.
When she nodded her understanding, Tomas eased off his hold on her. He mouthed out some long sentence that she had no hope of unraveling, especially as he kept looking away to scan the vineyard, hiding his mouth in the process.
“I can’t hear you,” she tried to make it a whisper.
Tomas spun back to face her and winced.
Unable to hear herself, she’d lost all calibration of her volume.
You can’t? Tomas’ lips moved, but she heard nothing—not even the proverbial pin. At least she was fairly sure that’s what he’d said. Lipreading was something they taught undercover types. She was a shooter.
Katrina stuck with just shaking her head.
Shit! No problem reading that. With quick rough hands he began inspecting her.
She slapped his hands aside then sat up, and wished she hadn’t. Every muscle screamed—silently—in protest. She began inspecting herself. Everything moved when she tried it. A quick pat-down revealed no sources of blood other than her hand.
Tomas bound that quickly enough, using the medkit that hung from his vest.
Armored vest.
Field.
Mortar.
She looked around and spotted her rifle tangled in one of the grapevines. She slid it out and it appeared none the worse for having been blown up.
“That makes one of us who’s okay,” she whispered to her baby. The MK21 Precision Sniper Rifle was fifty-two inches and eighteen pounds of silent death that let her “reach out and touch someone” over a mile away. It was her reason for being—her role in Delta Force. Her role in—
Moldova. She and her rifle had been blown up in a vineyard in the Eastern European country sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania. Except no one was supposed to know they were here. They—
Tomas slammed her down to the ground and lay on top of her and her rifle. She could feel by the rigidity of his body that he wasn’t dead. He was bracing over her like a human shield. For half a moment she thought she finally saw a bird flying across the sky. A falcon swooping on its prey. An…incoming round!
She felt the ground buck against her back from the explosion. The air blast hit against the far side of the vines, peppering the two of them with hundreds of grapes blown off the vines. The vintner was going to be furious.
Tomas pushed back to kneeling beside her.
We’ve… but Tomas turned away and she missed the rest of his sentence. It was as if he didn’t want to look at her after lying full length upon her a moment before. They were both wearing combat vests, making it one of the unsexiest moments ever, but she got the feeling he was still embarrassed by it.
Sitting up, she grabbed the helmet straps on either side of his jaw and turned him back to face her.
“What did you say?” Katrina struggled to keep it soft. Tomas didn’t reprimand her so she must have succeeded. “I’m deaf.”
His eyes widened briefly. Then he grabbed her head, his powerful hands strong but gentle along her cheeks, and turned it to either side to inspect her ears.
No blood, his lips formed the words quickly, but she hoped she got it right.
She heaved out a sigh of relief at his words. Good. That was good. No dribbling blood meant that maybe her eardrums were still intact.
He made a sharp slicing motion to the west with a flat hand. Right. They needed to get moving. He signaled reminders to stay low and go down the center of the path—jostling a vine might give away their changing position.
At her nod, he led off.
Stepping out, she walked straight into a grapevine.
She scooted to the middle of the path and tried again.
This time she plunged into the grapes the next row over.
It wasn’t vertigo, she’d had that induced during training and learned how to fire through it. Besides, vertigo always made you spin in the same direction. With her ears out of operation, her balance was off.
Tomas grabbed her arm and, though it felt like he was pulling her hard to the right, they progressed straight down the aisle of dirt between two rows of green leaves with her weaving like a drunkard.
Fifteen seconds later she felt the air thump against her back as a mortar killed the poor grapevines she’d stumbled into. Whoever was firing at them was good.
- Writer
