Chapter 31

"No," Jules gasped as she ran forward and collapsed to her knees beside Marc's body, bullets firing around her on both sides as the stalemate ended. The sand had not settled on Abbas's dead body behind her before Jules was reaching out and clasping onto Marc, her breath ragged as she let go of the her handgun and it dropped to the ground beside her.
Grabbing handfuls of his jacket Jules grunted as she pulled him over onto his back, praying that he was still alive. As Marc's body rolled over she saw that he was unresponsive, his head lolling to the side a little, as she leaned over him and ran her hands up his chest, "Marc?"

It felt like someone had reached into her stomach and was squeezing her stomach with both hands as she looked from Marc's ashen face before she saw the blood at his neck. The wound was small, barely a few inches in length, but it was deep and she could see the twisted flesh inside. Its position on the side of his neck and the amount of blood that was escaping told her that it had most probably cut some major artery. The blood pooling by the side of his head was already substantial as she reached forward and pressed the palm of her hand firmly against it. His blood was warm and his skin slippery against her hand.

"Marc!" She shouted at him, her face less than a few centimetres from his, as bullets whizzed over the top of them. Lifting her head she looked around them to check they were in no immediate danger before she turned back and shouted at him again. She could feel the blood beneath her fingers beginning to build up, pressing against her hand. "MARC!" She screamed as the first tendrils of fear began to grip her heart, her voice conveying all of her anxiety and panic. Gasping as she felt his blood seep through her clenched fingers she pressed both hands over the wound when she looked at his face and saw his eyelids begin to flutter gently. "Marc?" Jules breathed uneasily as hoped exploded within her chest.

Over the noise of bullets and men shouting around her Jules did not hear someone move up behind her until it was too late. One arm wrapped itself around her neck whilst the other curled around her waist and dragged her away from Marc along the ground.

"No!" Jules screamed as her fingers slipped from his wound, exposing it once more, her eyes drifting from Marc's that had slowly began to peel open.

Reaching up she grappled at the tunic that covered the man's arm whilst she kicked out with her legs at the ground as she was dragged along before the man stopped moving. She felt the arm around her waist slide away and the arm around her throat be replaced with the tight grip of a hand as the man clambered out from behind her and moved around until he was straddling her waist. Both of his large hands wrapped themselves around her throat, squeezing the life from her body, but when Jules looked up and saw who it was she screamed in shock.

The lights from a vehicle were shining directly upon them lighting up Abbas's face violently and illuminating the gaping bullet graze on the side of his head. His turban had been knocked off and the bullet had left a rivet in his head which was dripping with blood. She could feel her brain working triple time as her body panicked and her legs thrashed out beneath her uselessly. Her fingers clawed at his arms before she wrapped them around his wrists and tried to push him off of her but gravity was working with him as he bore down upon her, his knees digging into her ribs painfully.

"He killed my son," Abbas grunted down at her through clenched teeth, "Now I shall kill you."

Her heart was beating so fast inside of her chest it felt like one continuous beat as she felt her windpipe getting crushed beneath his hands. Her lungs started to protest at the lack of oxygen as she let go of his wrists and reached across to the left side of his head with her right arm and tried to push him off of her but his fingers clamped tighter around her throat. She felt her chest beginning to fit as choking sounds escaped her lips and her vision grew darker. Her mind was raving, shouting in protest, even as the strength began to leave her body. She could feel her hands slipping from his head when she made one last attempt to hold on. Clawing at his face she felt her fingers pressed against something slippery and warm to touch and as she dugs her nails in Abbas let out a tortured scream, his fingers loosening around her throat.

Her vision began to come back and a sudden rush of oxygen to her lungs made her dig her fingers in deeper. When she looked up she saw that she was pressing against the bullet wound in his head and his face was contorted in pain, but he was still choking her. Trying not to think about it too much Jules sunk her fingertips down into his exposed flesh and underneath a flap of loose skin. Abbas screamed as she pulled his head back and he rolled off of her, his hands releasing her.

Instinctively rolling away Jules gasped for air as her heart pounded against her ears. Turning over she looked towards Marc and the handgun she left by the side of him. It seemed so far away to her deprived body but it could only have been a few feet. Still trying to get her breathing under control she clawed at the ground, dragging herself closer to the gun. It felt as if she had been crawling for days but she had only made it a few inches when she felt a boot against her back, kicking her to the ground.

Collapsing onto her front, Jules felt her head hit something sharp. Wincing in pain she looked up and saw the gun lying beside Marc's thigh. Stretching out her arm she gasped as her fingertips just about brushed the metal. Grunting she tried to shuffle closer when the boot that hit her back descended upon her once again but this time it remained sitting on her back, pressing her into the ground. Gritting her teeth against the pain Jules continued to reach for the gun praying that she would suddenly grow a few inches when she felt the boot slide across to the side of her waist and kick her over onto her back.

"No," Jules cried as she was rolled further away from the gun. Staring up Jules saw Abbas stood over her, staring down at her like he was a god and she was just a beetle he could crush with his boot. Raising his foot he was about to do just that as he aimed for the soft flesh of her abdomen when a single gunshot went off next to her. Gasping, Jules gave a start when she looked behind her and saw that Marc was holding the gun in his hand a few inches off the ground. The nozzle of the handgun was pointed up at Abbas and when she looked back her eyes widened when she saw a red stain on his chest growing larger by the second.

"Hey," Marc's voice was weak but filled with emotion as he spoke to Abbas, "Say hi to your son for me," Marc told him bereft of strength before he tilted the gun back a little and fired a shot. Jules watched Abbas's face change from anger to shock before his head was suddenly knocked back by a bullet entering his brain, blood spatter spraying out behind him onto the windshield of the jeep, followed by his body collapsing to the ground in front of them. Relief flooded Jules's body as she turned over and dragged herself back to Marc's side.

Marc let his head fall to the side as he watched her drag herself towards to him, wishing he could reach for her. It was one of the worst things he had seen in his life seeing her lying there, getting beaten. He had seen her in difficult situations before but it was something he would never get used to.
"You- You're losing your touch," Marc tried to smile as she came towards him but he only managed to lift the corner of his lips. Jules heard his ragged breathing and saw the layer of clammy sweat building on his pale skin before she looked at his neck and saw that the blood pooling by his side was now much larger.

Lurching forward, Jules leant across his chest and stuck her fingers against the wound, trying to keep more blood from seeping out, but worryingly she found that the flow of blood had slowed along with his pulse. "Stay alive Marc," She croaked, her throat feeling like sand paper as she tried to speak.

"I- I'll try my best," Marc rasped beneath her, trying to laugh but it only made him wince in pain as his breathing altered and he took in a lungful of air suddenly. Jules did not like the pale colour of his skin or the amount of blood he had lost as she looked around them, trying to see how she could get him out of there. The compound wasn't too far away and Twitch was there, he could patch Marc up until they got to a hospital.

But as she looked around them she saw a few muzzle flashes of gunfire before noting that the number of Abbas's men had dropped drastically. Their bodies were strewn across the ground but there were still some men stood behind their jeeps for safety whilst they fired at the compound roof where Ridgeway's operative covered them. If she stood up now and tried to drag Marc to safety they would see her and if she was dragging Marc she couldn't keep the pressure on his wound at the same time. He would die of blood loss before they reached the compound.

"Just stay alive," Jules told him painfully as she reached beneath her and took the gun that rested limply in his hand and kept watch around them, resolved to staying there until every threat was eliminated. She looked towards the sky for the plane but she couldn't see or hear it. She wondered if there had been a plane at all or if she had imagined it.

Marc reached up and caught the bottom of Jules's jacket between his thumb and forefinger. She didn't feel it but he did and it felt like an anchor when all his body wanted to do was slip away.

*

Samantha craned her neck back and squinted her eyes at the sky as she looked around for the miraculous plane which had suddenly flown in to the rescue but it was nowhere to be seen. "Where has it gone?" She exclaimed when a sudden burst of bullets ripped into the boulder she was stood behind, blasting large chunks of rock into the vicinity around them.

"Hey!" Carlos snapped as he reached up from where he was crouched on the ground behind the boulder, grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled her to the floor, "Are you trying to get your head blown off?" He snapped at her.

"No," She shoved his arm away from her as she sat up and tucked her legs underneath her. Holding her gun in her hand she used her arm to brush wayward strands of dust covered hair out of her face before she turned and looked between him and Twitch. Knelt behind a small cluster of boulders and large rocks resting at the bottom of the mountain, which were slowly getting smaller and smaller as the terrorists chipped away at them with their automatic rifles and machine guns screwed onto the back of their trucks, they looked almost as if they could have been at a beach drinking a margarita by how little it was affecting them.

"Could have fooled me," Carlos rolled his eyes as he crouched, his rifle led across his lap.

"Are we just going to sit here?" Samantha exclaimed, throwing her arms out to the side.

"What do you expect us to do?" Twitch asked her, "We're pinned down. The moment we go around these boulders we'll be shot to smithereens. And I quite like being in one piece," Twitch smiled at her and to prove his point he raised his gun so that it poked out over the top of the boulder and nearly immediately gunfire hit the mountain behind where Twitch had been holding up his weapon. He arched an eyebrow at her as he lowered his gun once more.

"So we do nothing?" Samantha frowned, looking to Carlos.

"No," Carlos told her calmly, "We wait for the plane to come back, and then we run a few hundred metres that way," He pointed to his right, away from the compound, "We'll have a better vantage point from there."

"But what if it doesn't come back?"

"It'll come back," Carlos sighed, "For now just sit down and wait."

"That's never been my best forte," Samantha huffed as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Really?" Twitch piped up, "I thought all you spooks did was sit around and watch people. Seems like you would need patience for that," He shrugged.

"I'm not a spook," Samantha narrowed her eyes at him.

"You work for MI5, yeah?" Twitch asked.

"Yes but-"

"-And work undercover?" Twitch interrupted.

"Sometimes yeah, when its warranted, but not-"

Twitch and Carlos found themselves looking at each other in confirmation as they both said "Spook" at the same time.

Samantha breathed out through her nose in frustration before she looked at Carlos in outrage, "You can't presume to take the moral high ground here with your past history."

Carlos looked at Twitch before he turned to Samantha and frowned, "I'm not taking any moral high ground-"

"You look down on intelligence agents and yet your own actions with General Ridgeway, Reynolds, Evans and Jackson were less than exemplar-"

"-Hey!" Carlos exclaimed in anger, raising a hand to stop her speaking, "You have no idea what you are talking about."

Samantha was stunned as she stared at the way his face shut down and his muscles tensed. The whole easy going and relaxation he had been exhaling left his body as his eyes burned into hers with rage. She realised then that whatever had caused Evans's and Jackson's death had not been a light thing and was still very raw.

Twitch watched them curiously before he looked at Carlos carefully. He never spoke of Evans and Jackson but he knew they had all been close and he knew he shouldn't feel threatened, that the friendship he shared with Carlos was real and so was everything they had been through together. But it still dampened his mood and made him feel slightly inadequate. When Carlos turned to look over at him Twitch found himself turning away.

"Twitch-"

But Twitch was saved from answering when they all heard the low rumble of an aircraft returning over the sound of gunfire and knew it was time to move.