Chapter 149

The sewer pipe was pitch black. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face.

The ground was slick with slimy mud, and the air was thick with a nauseating stench.

Lucy moved almost on instinct, dragging the half-unconscious Jack forward, one unsteady step at a time.

Through a weak signal on the walkie-talkie, Alex guided her with broken, crackling directions.

"Left, take the left fork... yeah... then keep going straight... about 1500 feet... there'll be a ladder going up..."

Lucy had burned through every last bit of her energy. Each step felt like walking through wet concrete.

Sweat and mud had mixed together and were stinging her eyes.

She nearly slipped and fell more than once, but every time she thought about the man she was dragging behind her — a man whose fate she still didn't know — she clenched her jaw and kept moving.

This man had done this to himself trying to get justice for her. To fight her battles when she couldn't fight them herself.

Now it was her turn to save him.

Jack's consciousness drifted in and out of the darkness.

He felt cold. Like he'd fallen through the ice into freezing water beneath.

The pain in his body had gone numb, replaced by a bone-deep chill that was slowly eating away at him.

He wanted to let go. To just close his eyes and drift off.

If he slept, it wouldn't hurt anymore.

But through the darkness, he kept hearing Lucy's voice — cracking, desperate, on the edge of tears — calling his name over and over.

"Jack, hold on!"

"We're almost out!"

"You can't die! Do you hear me!"

Her voice was like a thin, tough wire, refusing to let his slipping soul go.

He tried to open his eyes. Tried to say something to her. But his eyelids felt like they were weighted with lead.

All he could do was repeat the same words to himself, again and again, somewhere deep inside.

Stay alive.

You have to stay alive.

He hadn't seen Ronan fall yet. Hadn't seen the White Tower Foundation pay for what they'd done.

He hadn't... said a proper goodbye to this woman.

After what felt like forever, Lucy finally felt the cold metal rungs of a ladder at the end of the tunnel.

"Alex! I found the ladder!"

She called into the walkie-talkie, her voice raw and hoarse.

"Thank God!" The relief in Alex's voice was overwhelming. "Climb up! The exit is inside an abandoned outpost! My people are already waiting for you up there!"

Climb up.

Easy to say.

Lucy looked at the ladder going straight up into the dark, then looked at Jack slumped beside her like a dead weight, and felt a wave of helplessness wash over her.

She could barely climb it herself, let alone with an unconscious, badly wounded man.

What now?

Had they come all this way just to die down here?

Just as she was starting to lose hope, Jack's hand moved.

He grabbed her arm. Tight.

His eyes opened. The sharp, focused look she knew so well was gone — his eyes were dull and fading — but behind them was something hard and absolute.

"Rope..." he breathed. "In my bag... there's rope..."

Lucy blinked, then immediately started digging through his tactical pack. Sure enough, she found a coil of high-tensile climbing rope.

"You... go up first..." Jack forced out between labored breaths, each word costing him something. "Tie off the rope up there... then pull me up..."

"No! I'm not leaving you down here alone!"

The answer came out before she even thought about it.

"Listen to me." Jack's voice suddenly went hard. "That's... an order."

An order.

That word made Lucy's body go still for just a second.

She looked at his face, white as paper, and finally nodded through her tears.

She tied one end of the rope securely around Jack, took the other end in her hands, and started climbing.

The ladder was long. Close to a hundred feet.

Lucy had never done anything like this in her life. With every rung, her arms burned like they were being torn apart.

But she didn't stop. Couldn't stop. She just gritted her teeth and kept pulling herself up.

Then her hand hit a manhole cover.

She pushed it open with the last of what she had.

Blinding sunlight and fresh air flooded in all at once.

Above her was a world of sand and open sky.

A few black SUVs were parked nearby. A dozen or so mercenaries in desert camo stood in a tight perimeter, weapons raised, all of them aimed at the hole she'd just come out of.

When they saw Lucy — covered in filth, barely standing — the big bearded man in front hesitated for a moment, then confirmed something over his earpiece.

"She's one of ours! Go! Get down there!"

Two mercenaries were already sliding down the ladder. Within minutes, they'd hauled the unconscious Jack up using the rope.

When they saw the wound on his abdomen — deep enough to see bone — every one of those battle-hardened men drew a sharp breath.

He was still alive with a wound like that?

What was this guy made of?

"Move! Everyone in the vehicles!" The bearded man called out to Lucy. "The Egyptian army has locked down the entire Sinai Peninsula. We leave now or we don't leave at all!"

Lucy nodded and climbed into one of the SUVs.

Inside, a field medic was already working on Jack.

Cutting away his clothes. Disinfecting. Stopping the bleeding. Bandaging. Running an IV. All of it fast and practiced, like he'd done it a hundred times.

"He's lost over three liters of blood. Multiple organ lacerations. Four broken ribs." The medic shook his head without slowing down. "The fact that he's still alive is a miracle."

Lucy sat beside him, staring at Jack's colorless, motionless face, and felt a pain in her chest that had nothing to do with her own injuries.

She reached out and took his cold hand in hers.

"You're going to be okay, Jack," she whispered close to his ear. "I promise."

The convoy started moving, cutting through the swirling sand, racing toward the border.

Behind them, the Black Hawk base — a place that had carried so much glory and so much sin — collapsed in a series of deep, muffled blasts, and was swallowed by the desert forever.