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his wounded leg; he couldn’t feel either of his feet.
    And he figured he must have kept passing out, because every so often he’d wake up from some dark place to McKade throwing snowballs down at him.
    “You guys oughta just leave me here,” he argued between clenched teeth as Chaffee stuffed more and more of the cottonlike Curlex into his wounded leg. If someone had given him a bullet to chew on, he would’ve gnawed it in half hours ago, but at least thanks to the cool-headed medic, he wasn’t bleeding out. At least not yet. “Before you all get killed.”
    “What?” Tremayne turned on him. “You think you SOAR guys are tougher than a SEAL?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You implied it.”
    McKade stood over him, arms crossed, huge in the too-small white tunic and billowy pants that had him looking like an oversized Frosty the Snowman. Not that Shane would ever dare accuse the sniper of that out loud.
    “Whatever happened to that Night Stalker Creed y’all make such a fucking deal about?” Tremayne demanded. “The part about about never surrendering? Or never leaving a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy? That you’d rather fucking die than quit?”
    “No way would I fucking surrender!” It took more energy than Shane wanted to expend to shout it, but he wasn’t allowing that accusation to go unchallenged. “Just give me my rifle, set me up against a damn rock, and give command my coordinates so a bird can pick me up tonight.”
    “That’s the stupidest fucking idea I ever heard,” McKade ground out.
    Of all the SEALs Shane had worked with, Quinn McKade was the least likely to lose his temper. But right now his jaw was clenched so hard Shane wouldn’t have been surprised if his teeth shattered.
    “It also pisses me off that you’d even suggest that any of us, but most of all us SEALs, would leave any man behind,” McKade continued. “There is no fucking way that’s ever going to fucking happen!”
    He knelt down in the snow. At six-feet-five, even on his knees, he towered over the SKED, so he bent down until they were nose to nose. “You fucking get that?”
    Shane set his own jaw and glared up at the man who’d become as close to him as a brother. “It would be a little hard not to,” he yelled back, the effort causing the icy air to knife his lungs. “Since you’re fucking yelling in my fucking face!”
    “Well, you fucking deserved it.” McKade stood back up again, huge hands braced on his hips.
    “At least unfasten the straps,” Shane said, his own hot flare of temper cooling. “If we come under really heavy fire and things go south, I don’t want to be tied down.”
    McKade stared at him hard. And long.
    All around them men were holding their breath.
    Finally, the SEAL sniper crouched down and sliced through the straps with his KA-BAR. “You fall off this thing, you’re going to have to crawl your skinny butt back on by yourself,” he warned.
    “Roger that,” Shane shot back.
    “Coffee break’s over, ladies,” Tremayne called out to the others who’d been watching the conflict. “Let’s get humping.”
    There was not a single muttered word of complaint. Shane wasn’t sure whether that was because they totally agreed with the SEALs, or they were afraid if anyone opened their piehole to say anything negative, McKade would shoot them.
    Chaffee walked alongside the SKED as they continued on up the mountainside. “You want some morphine?” he asked.
    The offer wasn’t real encouraging, given that he’d already told Shane that since morphine lowered the heart rate, it would be risky to give it to him at this altitude. He wondered if the medic’s change of heart meant he was already close to dying, like the Marine who hadn’t even stirred during any of the firefights.
    Besides, if he’d really wanted morphine, he could’ve used his own; no SOAR pilot or crew member ever went on a mission without a morphine Tubex tucked in their first-aid pocket.