“I’m sorry. I thought it was just … low air pressure. I didn’t know.”
She’s never done this before, remember?
She looked up at him, clearly worried. “What about you? You need oxygen, too.”
“I’ll be fine for a little while. Jones and Segal are trying to fix the problem.”
If they couldn’t find the cause, they would have to share O2.
“What were we talking about? You were telling me something.”
“You asked about my time with the Huntsman Corps in Afghanistan.”
“Yes. Right. I remember. Did you see combat?”
“Our job was to go after high-value al Qaeda and Taliban targets, which meant we got into a lot of firefights.”
“That sounds scary.” She seemed more alert now.
“Fear comes from not knowing. Training offsets fear. If you know how to react and have confidence in yourself and your comrades, there’s less room for fear.”
Of course, terrible things still happened. They’d lost men on his last deployment, good soldiers blown apart by an IED. But Samantha didn’t need to hear about that—or how far he’d gone to avenge his friends.
“I can’t imagine having people shooting at me.”
“I can’t imagine working with a giant telescope. I’d be afraid I’d break it.”
She looked at him as if he were crazy. “If you know what to do, it’s not scary.”
“Exactly.” He couldn’t help but grin.
She’d made his point for him.
Her eyes crinkled, her smile hidden behind her mask. “I see what you did there.”
Jones and Segal made their way back to the front.
“It was a bad regulator. We found a spare.” Segal sat, buckled in, put on his mask.
Jones did the same. “It should be working now.”
Thor took Samantha’s mask for himself, letting her keep his. “If you feel tingling, dizziness, confusion—anything at all—tell me right away. You’re essential personnel on this mission. We need you to be clear-headed.”
“Right.” She raised her seatback upright once more. “Thanks—to all of you.”
Jones turned, looked back at her, a smile on his face. “That’s why we’re here. Our only job is to get you safely in and out.”
“Is that what private security companies do—keep people safe?”
That wasn’t the whole story, but close enough.
“We’re not hired to fight, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He saw on her face that’s exactly what she’d wanted to know. “If the person we’re protecting is attacked, we fight back. Most of the time, we act as a security team for traveling CEOs and government officials, though we helped in a hostage rescue recently.”
“I’m sorry I called you mercenaries. Do people ever shoot at you?”
“Oh, hell, yes.” Jones chuckled. “I took a round to the chest in Mazar-e-Sharif.”
Segal cracked open a bottle of water. “A lot of Cobra boys got hit on that one.”