Sanders had tensed next to her, his carbine ready. She knew he wanted to be with his men, and she wondered how he felt about being trapped in here babysitting her.

In the silence of the vehicle, she could hear the sounds coming from his earpiece. Voices yelling, gunfire not in tune with when the sound reached her. It felt like listening to an action movie without seeing the screen.

The gunfire became more sporadic, then stopped just as Sanders said, “Go. Now!”

Ready for the command, she put the truck in first gear, then carefully pressed the accelerator and let up on the clutch. Now that the time of action had arrived, she feared failing on such a level that when the truck started to buck as the gear slipped, she quickly pushed the clutch back in and closed her eyes. “Please, God,” she whispered, then went back through the motions. This time, the truck moved smoothly forward.

“Lights,” Sanders said.

She found the knob and pulled it, and suddenly the road lit up in front of her. “Thanks,” she said, then concentrated on shifting into second gear, then third.

“Faster,” Sanders said.

“I don’t want—”

“If there were enemy combatants anywhere within a few miles, they heard the gunfire, and their drivers are flooring it to get to this bridge.” He put a hand on her knee and pressed down as if trying to control her speed. “Faster. As fast as you can make this pile of rust go.”

She’d agreed to do whatever he said without argument. Emotion brought tears to her eyes, and she prayed he couldn’t see them.

She pressed down on the accelerator until it touched the floor. The speedometer pushed toward sixty kilometers per hour, then seventy. When she hit the edge of the bridge, the front of the truck went up, causing a feeling of vertigo before it crashed back down.

She never saw Rick and his men. She just drove as fast as she could, hitting bumps and dips in the road like she didn’t have a critical patient in the bed of the truck. On straight stretches she drove faster, and as she rounded corners, she slowed and downshifted, afraid to encounter a pack of duikers or a troop of monkeys, or men bent on stopping her truck and killing everyone inside.

It still took almost fifteen minutes to get to their destination. She felt like she’d driven super fast, but she must have kept her speed more conservative than she thought. She backed into the jungle, facing the field across the road like they’d told her to. As she turned the truck off, she heard Ozzy moan.

She glanced at Sanders. “You okay?”

“Finer than a frog hair split three ways,” he said, opening his door and speaking into his microphone. “Feet dry.”