* * *
As I sprinted toward the trees with Charlie's limp body in my arms, her head lolled against my shoulder. Each jarring step drove her weight harder into my chest, and the heat radiating off her skin burned through my bare skin like hot coals.
She's way too hot.
I'd seen heat stroke drop a soldier mid-patrol. The guy could ruck thirty klicks with full kit, yet he’d collapsed as though someone cut his strings. One minute joking about the heat, the next seizing in the dirt while we dumped water on him and screamed for medevac. The human body was resilient as hell until suddenly it wasn't. Then you had seconds, not minutes.
How long did Charlie have?
We were days from safety.
The shade of the coolibah trees was instant relief, maybe five degrees cooler, and stopped the blazing heat from frying my brain. I dropped to my knees, still cradling her against my chest, my heart trying to hammer its way out through my ribs.
"Charlie." I shook her gently. Nothing.
Her skin was slick, flushed dark red beneath the dirt and sunburn. I pressed two fingers to her neck. Her pulse hammered way too fast. Heat stroke. Had to be.
"Charlie, come on. Stay with me."
Her eyelids fluttered but didn't open.
I scanned the endless expanse beyond our pathetic circle of shade. Red dirt, scrub, that relentless sun beating down in a personal vendetta. No water. No help for miles in any goddamn direction.
The swollen creek water was an option, but even if I could haul water back here, I had nothing to boil it in. Dirty floodwater could kill her just as dead as heat stroke from giardia, crypto, E. coli … Christ knows what else. I'd seen soldiers in the field shit themselves to death from drinking bad water.
I had two pouches of clean water in Zeus's saddlebags. Wherever the hell my horse was.
A hot gust kicked grit across the back of my neck, and as a crushing wave of uselessness crashed over me, I wanted to put my fist through the damn tree trunk. Somewhere behind me, a crow gave its ugly, laughing caw like the Outback itself was mocking me.
"Come on, Charlie." My voice came out rough, raw. "Don't do this."
Her breathing was too shallow, too rapid. Her eyes moved beneath closed lids like she was trying to escape a nightmare she couldn't wake from.
"Don't you dare give up now."
I shifted her more upright, trying to get air moving around her core. At the base of the tree, I tore into the dirt with my knife, frantically digging out four more coolibah roots. As I watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, I peeled back the root skin and got them ready for the moment she came to.
Minutes crawled by like wounded animals. Five. Ten. I'd survived firefights in Kandahar. Pulled wounded men from burning Humvees. Navigated ambushes that should have killed me six times over.
But out here, in my own goddamn country, I was helpless.
All that training, all those years in the SAS, and I couldn't do one damn thing to help her.
Her eyelids fluttered again, and her lips moved.
"Charlie!" I leaned closer, my hand cupping her face. "Come on, open your eyes."
They cracked open to a squint. Unfocused. Confused.
“That’s it, Charlie. You can do it.”
"Mitch?" Her voice was barely a whisper, cracked and dry as the dirt beneath us.
Relief hit me so hard it left me dizzy. "Yeah. I'm here. Don't try to move yet."
She blinked slowly, struggling to focus on my face. "What...? What happened?"
"You passed out. Heat stroke, probably. Or severe dehydration." I grabbed one of the roots and pressed it into her hand. "Here. Suck on this."