The face of the person lying in the pool of blood was completely unrecognizable. The eyes were closed and swollen, the mouth bloody and shredded. Her cheeks were bulging, yet there did not seem to be any bones to support them. One tooth was cracked and two were missing.
Rad noticed her bare feet sticking out and picked up a foot. Seeing the crooked toe, and small patches of nail polish, he primed his mic for all to hear. “It’s her. Positive ID.”
The other men in the team quickly herded up the farmers, while others spread out in a defensive position. The roar of a helicopter landing about one hundred yards away seemed to occur simultaneously.
Picking her up as gingerly has he could, Rad ran toward the chopper with his precious cargo, all the while thinking, My God, she weighs less than my ruck pack. There’s nothing left of her.
In full kit and body armor, Rad ran across the uneven terrain, trying not to stumble and go down. He heard sporadic gunfire, but it sounded like it was from a distance or coming to him through water. Guess the Taliban paid for their package and aren’t going to let it go without a fight.
Rad knew the men behind him were prepared for that situation. He kept churning his legs despite the bullets now kicking up dust at his feet. Got to make it to the chopper, he kept telling himself. No matter what.
Now the gunfire was unmistakable and growing louder. Rad fought the urge to look over his shoulder to see what was happening behind him. Instead, he put his head down and ran even faster until a sudden spurt of fire and pain in his thigh caused his knee to twist, buckle and hit the ground. Stumbling to his feet despite the pain, he tried to keep his legs moving, but that was no longer possible. His right leg crumpled beneath him at every step, so he had to sort of hop and drag it behind him.
Rocks and dirt continued to spray around Rad’s boots as gunfire tore up the ground around him. Every step was agony. His lungs felt like they were about to burst, and yet it seemed like he was running in slow motion. He looked up and saw hands in the helicopter waving him on, and then felt their firm grasp as they pulled him inside just as the chopper lifted off the ground. The gunfire continued but was drowned out by the sound of the blades slicing the air as the chopper struggled to gain altitude in the thin mountain air.
“Holy shit,” he heard someone say as they pulled Lauren out of his arms and onto a backboard. “This ain’t good.”
Rad lifted his head and watched three men on their knees working silently and quickly over her as another pushed Rad gently down and began cutting away what was left of his pants. He struggled to sit up, to see if she’d been hit by the gunfire, but the world tilted sideways as if the helicopter had suddenly become a ship rolling in thick ocean swells. He felt his head loll to the side and his stomach lurch. Pain flared and pulsed in his leg.
“Take it easy, soldier.” The medic pushed him down. “You’re losing a lot of blood.”
“Is she okay?” Rad thought he asked the question out loud, but no one answered. Instead he heard the medic who was leaning over him say to his comrades in a loud but calm voice, “I need some help over here.”
Rad wanted to argue, to tell them to keep working on Lauren, but a sudden surge of nausea and dizziness made it difficult to hold his eyes open. He heard a muffled roar in his ears and thought at first the helicopter was having engine trouble. The next moment he thought it was the sound of angry waves violently hitting the beach. At last, he realized it was the sound of his own panting, echoing and reverberating in his ears in a way that made him shake his head to rid himself of the confusion.
“Stay with me, soldier.” The sound of the medic’s voice came to him as if through a dense fog, followed by the slight sting of a needle as someone put an IV in his arm. Other voices seemed to be talking over him now, but they were indistinct, like listening to a conference call with a bad connection.
Why aren’t they helping her? Rad curled his right hand into a fist as it lay on the floor of the chopper and felt something sticky and warm and wet. Lots of it.
“Once you get that one going, start another line.” The voice broke through the distortion, but Rad didn’t know what it meant. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to have two DOA’s on the same flight.”
These words Rad somehow processed and he struggled to sit up. “Jesus, is she okay?” Again, he thought he asked the question out loud, but the voices hovering over him never replied. Their tones simply grew more anxious. “Stay with me, brother. Can you hear me? Stay with me.”
Rad heard them but couldn’t find the strength to respond. He was being sucked into a deep, black void and had to use all his energy to fight it. He tried to reach out and grab onto something, but his arms wouldn’t move, and anyway, there was nothing to grab. He was being swept along in a sea of dark, swirling water that carried him closer and closer to a giant abyss. The medic’s voice came to him again, this time more urgent. “Stay with me, man!”
Rad struggled to open his eyes, to stay conscious, to take another breath. I don’t think I can, he thought just as a roiling wave swept over him, spinning and swirling him down, down, down, into the depthless hole.
Chapter 29
Rad slowly became aware of light against his eyelids and the muffled sound of someone moving around the room. He moved his fingers and felt sheets but could tell he was not in his own bed.
When he finally mustered the strength to open his eyes, a young woman stood over him, smiling.
“Are you awake?”
Rad blinked and tried to focus his vision on the speaker. He wanted to speak but found an impenetrable wall between will and action.
“I’m Donna. You’re at Walter Reed. Do you remember how you got here?”
Rad stared over her shoulder blankly a moment without responding, trying to clear his head from the hazy images that seemed caught in a sticky web.
“Lauren,” he finally said.
When there was no response from the nurse, his gaze drifted back to her.
“Lauren,” he repeated. “Where?”
“Is that your wife?” The nurse sounded confused. “I’m sure she’s been contacted.”
Rad closed his eyes in order to summon the strength to talk. “On the chopper.” He ran his tongue over his dry lips and swallowed. “Rescued. Where is she?”
“Radcliff, I see you’ve finally decided to rejoin the living.”
Rad turned his head painfully and watched a good-looking blonde with a folder in her hand and a stethoscope hanging around her neck walk into the room.
“I’m Dr. Bradley. Lindsey Bradley. How ya feeling?”
Rad ignored the warm greeting. “Lauren. She okay?”
“Hello or nice to meet you might be a more appropriate way to greet someone who’s been working night and day to save your life.” The woman’s tone was gentle even if her words were not. She reached for his wrist and proceeded to take his pulse.
Rad struggled to sit up. “Is she okay? Was she hit?”
“Whoa, cowboy.” Dr. Bradley put a restraining hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. Looking up over her glasses she asked the nurse, “Is he talking about his wife or what?”
The nurse shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Rad’s hands curled into fists as he looked from one to the other. “What the hell is going on?”
Dr. Bradley kept her hand on his arm and sat down in the chair beside him. When she leaned in, he caught the faint scent of her perfume. “You’re pretty heavily sedated Radcliff. Maybe you’re a little mixed up.”
Rad bristled at the insinuation as she bent over with a stethoscope and listened to his heart and lungs. “Why am I here?”
Dr. Bradley remained silent a moment as she finished checking his vitals. Then she leaned back in her chair. “You were hit in the thigh with a bullet that ripped you apart to the bone and ruptured your femoral artery. You subsequently almost bled to death on the hop.”
Without thinking, Rad reached down to feel his leg, to make sure it was still there.
<
br /> “Yes, we saved it,” Dr. Bradley said. “But it was touch and go for a while.”
“How long?”
“How long, what?”
“How long have I been here?”
“You spent a day in a field hospital getting stabilized, then went to Germany where you had your first surgery.” She paused a moment, seeming to study his blank stare. “And you’ve been here about ten days.”
Rad focused his attention on her. “Ten days?” He struggled to sit up again. “Where’s Lauren?”
Dr. Bradley pushed him back down and sighed heavily. “Tell me who Lauren is.”
Rad winched at the pain induced when he turned his head fully toward her, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “She was on the chopper with me.”
He watched Dr. Bradley make eye contact with the nurse, then lower her gaze to the folder she carried.
“I’m sorry, but there’s no record of any other injured combatants coming in with you.”
Rad closed his eyes and tried again to clear his groggy mind. Maybe it is a drug-induced dream. Maybe she hasn’t been rescued at all. Maybe…
But then he remembered holding her in his arms, running to the helicopter, the pain when he was hit. It had to be real.
Rad moved his attention to the doctor again and studied her intently. Was she lying? Was she afraid to tell him the truth? He reached out and touched her arm. “Level with me. Is she dead?”
The doctor still did not raise her gaze to meet his. “Here’s something.” She appeared to be reading from the file. “It says here you were injured in a routine live-fire training accident.”
Rad’s eyes widened. “Training accident?”
He took a deep breath as he grasped two reasons why that would be placed in his chart. Either Lauren Cantrell survived the ordeal and the government didn’t want anyone to know the rescue had taken place—or she had not and they wanted to make it appear she had never existed. His pulse began pounding in his ears as he thought about the latter, and then a machine beside his bed started beeping with an alarm that surpassed the loudness and intensity of his throbbing heart.
“I need to talk to my CO,” he said impatiently.
“You need to calm down is what you need to do.” Dr. Bradley nodded to the nurse who pushed a button on the machine, silencing the alarm. “See what you’re doing to yourself?”
“I need to talk to my CO,” Rad repeated. When there was no response, he reached up and wrapped his fingers around the doctor’s wrist. “Right away.”
Dr. Bradley gave him a serious and sympathetic smile. “Okay. As soon as you wake up.”
He blinked in confusion. “I am awake.”
“You won’t be in another few minutes.” She nodded to the nurse who stood near his IV bag with a syringe.
“No! No! Don’t!” The sound of his voice made his head pound like it was in a torture device and caused the machine to start beeping again.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Bradley said, “but you’re scheduled for another surgery on your leg. In the meantime, I’ll look into the missing Lauren.”
Rad thought by the tone of her voice she knew more than she was admitting, but he had no time to dwell on it. He fought with every ounce of strength to combat the effect of the drug, but it was no use. He looked up pleadingly at the nurse, then at the empty syringe, and remembered nothing more.
Rad lay in his bed two days later staring at the ceiling when he heard someone enter the room.
“Did you have a nice talk with your CO?” Dr. Bradley said the words lightly as if the two of them were friends who had known each other for years.
Rad shrugged. “I guess.”
“I take it he couldn’t tell you anything.”
“Nothing I didn’t already know.”
Dr. Bradley sighed and sat down. “I’m sorry about the other day. The surgery was scheduled. There was nothing I could do.”
Rad didn’t respond.
“Well, look what I brought you.” She stood and pushed the wheelchair a little closer to the bed. “I thought a nice spin in the courtyard would do you good.”
“A wheelchair?” Rad stared at it for a moment, and then raised his gaze to meet hers. “No thank you.”
Dr. Bradley shook her head. “Look, superman. Your leg was blown apart and you basically bled out on the way here, so no need to feel like a weakling for sitting in a wheelchair for a few weeks.”
Rad just turned away. He was tired of arguing with her. All he wanted to do was get out of the hospital so he could start looking for Lauren. McDunna had promised him he was doing everything in his power to find her, but Rad wanted to do more.
“Your chart says you’re not eating much.”
Rad didn’t know if she was trying to make conversation or actually wanted to discuss his eating habits. “Maybe it should tell you I’m not hungry.”
When he looked up at her silence, she was biting her lip.
“I’m trying to make you better so you can get out of here.”
“Here’s an idea.” He turned his head away and stared at the ceiling as he talked. “If I could get out of here, I would probably eat—and then I would feel better.”
“Radcliff, if you think I’m going to partake in your pity party, you are grossly mistaken. The only way you are going to get out of here is if your health improves. And the only way your health is going to improve is if you eat.”
The phone on the stand beside Rad rang, and Dr. Bradley reached down and answered it. “Hello?” She looked at Rad sternly. “Yes, he’s here. Hold on.”
She handed him the phone. “It’s someone named Wynn.”
Rad took the phone. “Hey, brother. When you coming to break me out of this joint?”
He watched Dr. Bradley roll her eyes, and then proceeded to talk to Wynn as if she were no longer in the room.
“Yeah, that was my doctor.” He cocked his head to the side and squinted as he stared her. “Yeah, I guess so. She’s kind of tall, blonde… What’s she wearing?” Again he studied the doctor, who was wearing navy blue scrubs. “Right now she’s got on this little short skirt and heels. Yes, high heels. Red. They match her lipstick.”
Not pausing in his conversation, Rad said, “Hold on, I’ll ask.” He smiled and moved the phone away from his mouth. “He wants to know if you give sponge baths.”
Dr. Bradley grabbed the phone. “When can you come get him?”
She handed the phone back to Rad and turned to leave. “I’m going to see about getting your discharge papers together. You’ll be moving to a rehab building. I’ll make a call to warn the staff.”
Chapter 30
Wynn sat at a table in the exclusive Georgetown pub, squeezed in between Heather on one side and Rad on the other. Joining them in the celebration of Rad’s release from Walter Reed were Pops and Annie, Reese, Crockett, Bipp and Holly. They had all decided to splurge for a night of good food and good company over drinks in Washington, DC.
A fireplace blazed along the far wall, giving off a warm glow that danced and shimmered in concert with the soft light of the candles at their table and in every window. The mantel was draped with boughs of pine decorated with red ribbons, and a large Christmas tree dominated one corner. It was homey and festive and warm.
Wynn lifted his nearly empty glass into the air. “To brothers,” he said as glasses clinked together. “To friendship,” Heather added as the clinking continued.
“I’ll drink to that.” Rad lifted his glass unsteadily, killed it in one swallow, and then set it down with a resounding clank.
Heather touched Wynn’s arm. “I need a refill. Let’s go to the bar.”
“I’ll just grab a—” Wynn turned to wave down a waitress but felt Heather kick him under the table. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, giving her a questioning look. “Let’s go the bar. It’s probably quicker.”
Guiding his fiancée through the crowd with his hand on the small of her back, he leaned down and whispered, “What’s up?”
“I don’t think Rad is his old self. I’m worried about him.”
Wynn laughed as he leaned on the bar and hailed a bartender from the other end. “He almost lost his leg—and his life—a month ago. He’s not one hundred percent yet.”
“It’s not his leg,” Heather said as he ordered the drinks. “It’s Lauren. Isn’t there anything you guys can do?”
“Believe me, we’ve been trying to move heaven and earth but it’s not easy dealing with that type of bureaucracy.” He paid for the drinks and turned to head back to the table. “I know what you mean though. It’s like the spark has gone out of his eyes.”
“It’s worse than that.” Heather took her drink from his hand. “I’m worried about him. His heart is so big and it’s breaking. You can see the pain on his face. I’m afraid he’ll do something crazy.”
“I’ll have a talk with him.” Wynn paused a moment to let someone squeeze by and had walked only a few steps more before he froze in place, causing Heather to almost collide with him. “Holy shit.”
When Heather followed his gaze to the doorway, her reaction was even stronger. “Fu-u-ck.”
Wynn stared down at her and smiled. “Damn, Heather. I’ve never heard you say that word before. Ever.”
“I’ve never had reason to use it.” Heather put her hand on her stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Standing in the doorway, looking like an actress arriving on stage, was none other than Angela Powers with her cousin Jackie at her side. Dressed to the nines in a tight red dress with matching shoes, she looked like she had just stepped out of a fashion catalog.
Wynn didn’t know whether to be angry or amused, but decided on the latter. Angie might be able to manipulate and coerce Washington insiders, but the guys at the table in the corner were not going to fall for her sweet talk and flattery. If she wanted to try playing with the big boys, it might be fun to watch her getting taught a lesson she would never forget.
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