HARDER!” RANDI SHOUTED over the sound of rotor blades chopping the air behind her. Deuce and the medic threw their full weight on the levers dug in beneath the boulder pinning Billy Grant and raised it a few critical centimeters.

“Sorry about this,” she said, grabbing him beneath the shoulders and heaving back. He let out a stifled scream and looked like he was finally going to lose consciousness from the pain, but she managed to get his leg clear before the boulder slammed back into place.

Arterial blood spurting from his leg suggested that they’d done the right thing leaving the stone in place until the evac arrived. Randi dropped to her knees and pressed a hand against the wound while the medic put a tourniquet in place.

“I’ll clamp it when we’re in the air!” he shouted, indicating for them to lift the injured man. “Now let’s get the hell out of here!”

Randi felt the same guilt she always did when one of her people was injured and remained silent as they slid him through the open door of the chopper. The leg would never be the same, assuming the docs were even able to save it. She should have anticipated the grenade. She should have held Billy back…

Deuce jumped in behind the medic and Randi looked up at him for a moment before backing away a few steps.

“Where are you going?” he said. “Get in the chopper!”

She shook her head. “You guys go. I’ll find my way back.”

“Now, hold on, Randi. We were under orders to get the sons of bitches who attacked your base. And by my count, the asshole behind that rock was the last one.”

“Yeah. But there’s something else I want to check out.”

Deuce rolled his eyes and said something she couldn’t hear over the accelerating rotors, then jumped out with his gear.

“Seriously, Deuce—go with Billy. I’ll be fine.”

He waved at the pilot who immediately lifted the aircraft off the ground and began gaining altitude. They watched it recede into the horizon, not speaking until it was out of sight.

“So what the hell am I doing here, Randi?”

“I said I could handle it.”

“Yeah, like I’m going to go back and tell everyone I just left you. If you got killed, I’d never live it down. Now tell me what we’re interested in here, because it looks like the middle of nowhere to me.”

She didn’t respond immediately, instead turning her gaze to a cliff about twenty kilometers away. The sheer rock was pockmarked with tiny caves starting at about the sixty-meter mark and becoming more plentiful above. She focused on the largest and highest of them, finally pointing.

“Remember the survivor from Kot’eh I told you I caught up with?”

“The one you took down outside his village?”