Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  Dr. Barr was still in surgery, but he wasn’t about to wait for her to finish. He pushed open one side of the OR’s swinging doors and planted himself in the jamb. Wonderful. He’d arrived in time to see the doctor working on Shane’s ass. “Hey.”

  Dr. Barr’s eyes bolted up. “This is a sterile environment!”

  “Yeah, I know, uh…” He was struck dumb for a moment. With Dr. Barr’s surgical mask hiding the lower half of her face and a cap covering her hair, she’d been turned into all eyes, making it impossible not to notice what he hadn’t noticed before—because he rarely ever noticed women. Her eyes were incredible. Set beneath dark and very full eyebrows, they were almond-shaped, surrounded by lush black lashes, and the color of dark chocolate. He’d read somewhere that eating dark chocolate increased libido, and he believed it. Just looking at Dr. Farrin Barr’s eyes seemed to be releasing pleasure endorphins into his system.

  “Uh, I know it’s sterile,” he continued. “I’m not coming all the way in, but I have to talk to you.”

  The doctor went back to her work. “Your friend is packed with solid muscle,” she complained, using a pair of forceps to dig around the upper portion of Shane’s butt. “The bullet is stuck in the meaty part of his gluteus medius.”

  More wonderful. And there went his pleasure endorphins. “Nobody’s here,” he informed her.

  She pulled the forceps out of Shane’s butt, then stuck a finger into the wound and rooted around. Her expression brightened. “There you are!”

  He tried not to watch. “Did you hear me, Doctor? Nobody is in this compound. Not your guards. Not anyone.”

  She flicked a quick glance up at him. “My guards are repairing the southern part of the fence.”

  “No, they’re not. I walked the entire perimeter and didn’t see anyone.” Or, for that matter, signs of repairs on any part of the fence. He told her this part, too.

  She probed around with her forceps again. “My laundryman is—”

  “Nowhere to be found, either.” He understood that Shane’s ass was probably fascinating to most women, but he really needed her to pay attention to what he was saying here.

  “Ah!” She pulled out a bullet with the tips of her forceps and plinked it into a metal dish. Then she squirted liquid into Shane’s incision, using something resembling a turkey baster. The wound ran extra-bloody, and unexpectedly a PTSD slideshow whipped across Jason’s vision—tangled bodies dressed in desert camouflage; Schmidty, his gunner, with lifeless eyes frozen into an expression of astonishment; the Mickey Mouse Club kid at the wrong place at the wrong time because of Jason; that tango wearing Aladdin’s bloody ruby.

  He gritted and ungritted his teeth. “Our clothes are also gone. I checked the washer and dryer. Nothing.”

  Her head finally came all the way up. “What?” She scowled at him over the top of her surgical mask, a needle and thread in her hand. “Are you sure?”

  Am I sure? Was she kidding? “I’m sure our clothes aren’t in the washer or dryer, Doctor.” Rising annoyance leaked out of his chest to edge his words. “Would they be anywhere else?”

  “No.”

  He held her gaze captive with a steady stare. “I haven’t liked the feel of this place since I got here. Something’s not right.”

  Her brows speared together into a sharp vee.

  He could tell she was fighting against believing him. It deepened his annoyance. But then indecision and inaction always torqued him. “You yourself said you’ve been exercising extra caution.”

  “Very true, Commander, but I’m also one who believes that when you hear hooves, assume it’s horses, not zebras. Most strange situations have a logical explanation. Your clothes are missing? Why? Everyone’s gone? Where would they go?”

  Hot air moved through his lungs. If she’d been a junior officer, he would’ve locked her at attention and conducted the rest of this conversation a half inch from her face. “Could you maybe pause for a second, Dr. Barr, and think about this situation with your gut…you know, the gut that made you evacuate your aid station in the first place.”

  Her surgical mask puffed out a little, a clear sign she’d exhaled a breath, probably an exasperated one. “Very well, supposing something’s not right, what do you suggest we do?”

  “Evacuate, like the rest of—”

  She shook her head. “I’ve got a ward full of patients.”

  “Evacuate everyone.”

  “And, who, exactly, would do all this magical evacuating, Commander? IHMR isn’t equipped for large-scale, emergency personnel transport—that’s not their mission—and the American military certainly won’t. The majority of my patients are Pakistani. And that would be generously assuming US troops could even get anywhere near this aid station. Yesterday, several US Navy helicopters flew into Pakistan’s sovereign airspace without permission, and two crashed in this country. Any man associated with the American military is a persona non grata in Pakistan these days, wouldn’t you say?”

  He really shouldn’t squeeze his rifle like this. The safety was off, and he might shoot her…you know, accidentally.

  Something of his inner thoughts must have shown in his expression. She tossed him a conciliatory, “Look, I’m almost done here.” She gestured at Shane’s bloody rump with her needle. “Let me finish suturing your friend, then you can help me get him to the post-op ward, and we’ll discuss this further.”

  He nodded stiffly. He’d take it. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the guards’ barracks to raid a locker. I want out of these scrubs.”

  Farrin developed a newfound respect for her orderlies fifteen minutes later when she grabbed an unconscious Shane by the legs—Jason coped with the SEAL’s front end—and hefted the inert body mass from the operating table onto a mobile gurney.

  She expelled a woof of air as she and Jason rotated Shane onto his back. “Your friend’s a moose.”

  “Where to?” Jason was now wearing a pair of flowing black salwar pajama-like pants, plus a dark brown kameez tunic with four black buttons running down his sternum. Even dressed like a Pakistani man, he still looked the farthest thing from; his pants were two inches too short for his legs, his military haircut was conspicuously obvious—he wasn’t wearing a head covering—the dark metal chain holding his dog tags peeked at his collar, and he’d kept on his black boots rather than change to the typical footwear of sandals. This last unfashionable statement was frankly ridiculous.

  “Head through the OR doors,” she told him, “and immediately turn right into a U-shaped hallway.” This path would take them around the Authorized Personnel area, instead of through it. “Go left, then another left into the post-op ward.”

  Nodding, he first set his gear—the two rifles and the two packs—on the rails underneath the gurney.

  “Don’t forget the IV,” she added.

  Jason unhooked the IV bag from its standing pole and laid in next to Shane’s arm, then took hold of the front end of the gurney and started to walk backward, pulling.

  She pushed.

  They followed the prescribed route, driving the gurney into the post-op ward where—

  She threw her spine into a straight line, shocked rigid. The gurney drifted out of her frozen hands. “Besme ilahe rrahmane rrahim!” she gasped, then sucked in an open-mouthed breath as if to call her words back in. She was so stunned she’d done the unthinkable: she’d blurted out an exclamation in Persian.

  Jason straightened with a sharp snap of his own. “What’s wrong?”

  “My…my…” She floundered. This was beyond belief. “My patients have disappeared.” The post-op ward was a sea of empty, unmade beds…save for the one containing the American helicopter pilot, whose left eye was bandaged, the other closed in sleep.

  Jason spun around to see for himself, then faced her again, his voice turning to steel. “When was the last time you saw your patients?”

  “Right before I went into surgery.�
� She stood with a hand at her throat. Maybe those patients had never really been here… No, no. The sheets and blankets on the beds were in disarray.

  “How many were here?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “All Pakistani?”

  “Yes. Except for your copilot.” She gestured at the one-eyed man.

  “So only Pakistanis are gone?”

  “Yes.” Alarm was creeping in unnaturally fast, like bacteria in a petri dish under time-lapse photography. “What…what does this mean?”

  The muscles in Jason’s face tightened. “We need to evac, Dr. Barr, as I said before. Now.”

  She nodded. She was done questioning him. Missing guards, missing Kaleem, missing patients, missing clothes… There was no doubt in her mind now: Jason was correct. Something was very wrong. “How?” He couldn’t mean for them just to stroll out the front gate.

  “I can call in an extraction to my team in Jalalabad. They’ll know how to get us out. Where’s your comm equipment?”

  “There’s an encrypted satellite phone in my tent.”

  “Perfect.” He bent down and grabbed both rifles from under the gurney. “I’ll go get it.”

  A shot of unexpected alarm hit her, throwing off a couple of her heartbeats. He was going to leave her alone? “Um…”

  “I won’t be long,” he assured her. “I’ll double-time it to your tent, get the phone, then double-time it back here.” He held out one of the rifles to her.

  She looked at it. Looked back at Jason. Repeated the revolution. Like an automation. “Are you joking?” She didn’t know how to use one of those things.

  “I need you to hold down the fort while I’m gone.” He pressed the weapon forward. “Take it.”

  She took the rifle. Her hands dipped down low from the cold weight of it.

  “The safety’s off,” he said, “so be careful.”

  Wasn’t it amusing how he assumed she could possibly shoot it? She could barely lift it.

  He studied her for a moment, then took the rifle back and laid it beside Shane on the gurney. Digging a pistol out of his pack, he gave it to her instead.

  It felt as cold, deadly, and repugnant as the rifle. Just not as heavy.

  “Which is your tent?” he asked.

  “Number seven. The phone is in a box on the top shelf of my bookcase.”

  “Got it.” He moved quickly toward the front of the medical tent, passing Farrin’s huge desk set just inside the entrance. He cracked open the door and peered out, then glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Hold tight. And don’t let anyone through this door but me.” He vanished.

  She stood in place, her hand clammy around the unfamiliar weapon. A lump built in her throat, cell upon cell, like a growth. She tried to swallow it down to a more manageable size. The skin on her stomach crept in the silence.

  There was such a thing as peaceful quiet, noises that were soft and comforting, like the gentle glugging of expensive wine into cut crystal, a brush slowly stroking through untangled hair, the easy shifting of embers in a cozy fire. And then there was unnerving quiet. That’s what this was, the noises brittle and fitful: the uneven breathing of the one-eyed pilot, the irregular mechanical croak of the aid station’s two-bit generator, wind scuttling sand erratically against the bottom edge of the canvas tent. The unnatural thud of her own heartbeat.

  She ran her tongue along her lips. She hated this feeling of cold dread. It reminded her too much of…

  Then.

  Chapter Eleven

  Eighteen years ago

  Elahieh District, northern Tehran, Iran

  Nasrin Farrin Behzadi sat at the vanity table in her bedroom and stared down at the letter. She hadn’t opened it. Just as she hadn’t opened the countless others her mother had sent to her…although this time please write to me! was scrawled across the front of the envelope.

  Souzan was clearly growing desperate for some contact with her daughter.

  Ever since Nasrin’s wedding six months ago, she’d written return to sender on all her mother’s letters and sent them back unopened. She didn’t mean to be nasty, especially since Souzan honestly thought Raham Reza Behzadi was a good match for Nasrin…although in some ways, that was almost worse. Nasrin just couldn’t bring herself to read page after page of her mother’s glowing descriptions of him. No matter how many times Souzan wrote “wonderful match” in her letters, it wouldn’t make it true. Maybe for a woman in her forties or fifties—Raham Reza Behzadi was a powerful and wealthy man.

  He was also sixty years old!

  “I’m fifteen!” Nasrin had argued with her mother, standing in the family kitchen seven months ago, her face hot. She could not believe her parents wanted to arrange a marriage for her to a mummy! She put her foot down, stomped it a little even. “I won’t marry Raham Reza Behzadi, Mother.”

  Souzan was stirring a pot of boiling Basmati rice, her back turned. But she whirled around at that, her wooden spoon gripped in front of her, dripping water.

  Nasrin’s cheeks went from hot to cold. How could she have blurted out such a thing? She’d never defied her parents before. Not ever.

  “Selfish girl,” Souzan hissed. “Would you see us all ruined?”

  Nasrin shrunk into a ball. Down in her stomach, her heart raced. Ruined?

  “Raham Reza Behzadi has threatened to fire your father from his job if you refuse. He’ll strip Ebrahim of his reputation, and your father will never get a good-paying job again.” Souzan gestured with her wooden spoon in a wide arc that included the universe. “We’ll lose everything.”

  Nasrin didn’t just shrink this time; she shriveled. Holy Allah, now what could she do? She couldn’t refuse a match that would lead to her parents’ ruin. What kind of daughter would that make her? Tears trembled onto her lashes. But how would she be able to bear marrying a man forty-five years older than she was? Forty-five years! Besme ilahe rrahmane rrahim… In the name of Allah the merciful, the compassionate, if only she could turn back time and erase her visit to her father’s workplace two weeks ago.

  Ebrahim was CEO of the oil refinery in Abadan, near the Persian Gulf, and Raham Reza Behzadi, the Minister of Petroleum, had been onsite for an inspection. As her parents gleefully told her later the same evening, the minister took one look at Nasrin and was smitten.

  Nasrin only just stopped herself from saying, “Gross.”

  “For what reason would you ruin us?” Her mother kept at it, her voice like hard, driving pellets—like hail. “To refuse a wealthy, powerful, politically connected, kind man? And, yes, Raham Reza Behzadi is kind. Your father and I wouldn’t give you to a husband who wasn’t. And yet you stand there like we consign you to a monster.”

  Shamefaced, Nasrin lowered her lashes. Making sacrifices for a family’s benefit should give a woman only pride. And, really, what reason did she have for wanting to refuse Raham Reza Behzadi? Because she preferred a young, virile husband? Even in her own mind, that reason sounded like a selfish one.

  As it turned out, Raham was kind. In their short marriage, he hadn’t done a single thing wrong. Especially on their wedding night, her new husband had been very careful to be gentle with her. There was absolutely no reason why Nasrin should’ve hated it…why she hated it more each night… But…

  She couldn’t help it. Every inch of her skin recoiled whenever Raham became…affectionate.

  Another uprising of tears washed over her vision, blurring her mother’s letter. She’d only been married for six months, but it felt like six years. Six lifetimes. Six eternities! And stretching out before her was more of—

  Raham came into their bedroom, and Nasrin quickly wiped the single tear from her cheek.

  “Why are you still in your nightgown?” Raham asked her, although not unpleasantly. He was always so wretchedly pleasant to her.

  Selfish girl…

  He walked over to her, dressed neatly in a navy blue suit and open-collared blue dress shirt, his gray hair slicked back as if with wallpaper glue. H
e’d probably once been a handsome man—his facial bones were okay. But age had added extra flesh beneath his eyes and under his chin, and attractive wasn’t something she’d call him unless there was a gun to her head. His slender form also looked nice enough in a suit, but the reality of him was flab. At night, in complete darkness, his naked body felt like sholezard pudding on top of her.

  The back of her throat burned. “Just being lazy,” she said, forcing a smile. It was nearly nine in the morning, a full hour after the maid had brought her a tray with breakfast—sweet, hot tea plus a square of lavash bread with feta cheese and quince jam. The maid offered to help dress her, but Nasrin sent her off. On the breakfast tray was also the letter. Please write to me!

  Raham chucked her under the chin. “You should go shopping on Fereshteh Street today.”

  Turning away, Nasrin fiddled with her hairbrush. As if spending your money at the upscale shops there could make up for marriage to you?

  Sweet flower…sweet flower…

  The two words pulsed through her mind, building a headache at her temples. There wasn’t enough money in all of Iran! She felt her smile flatten. “I might, yes. Shouldn’t you be at work already, dear?”

  “I have a meeting at home first, then I’m off to the ministry.” He leaned down to kiss her.

  She obediently presented her cheek to him.

  He tucked his fingers beneath her chin and coaxed her around for a light kiss on the mouth.

  She blushed.

  His eyes glinted.

  Bile pushed onto the back of her tongue, the unwelcome and familiar flavors of disgust and despair. What was it about Raham’s adoration of her shy and—should she say it? Yes! Virginal—innocence she found so appalling?

  “I’ll see you at supper,” he said, and left.

  When the door shut, she leapt off her vanity stool and whipped her clothes on. She was leaving! She didn’t know where she’d go. She didn’t care where… Maybe she would go to Fereshteh Street and…and stomp up and down the sidewalk all day long, doing nothing but pretend she was free! Pretend she didn’t feel like an old woman at fifteen…pretend she had a life full of wild exploits stretching out ahead of her…pretend she was married to a husband who could do youthful things with her.