“More like three or four,” came the doleful reply.
“Esther said he’s a pessimist,” Sam muttered under her breath. “Let’s hope she’s right.”
Tony was a short distance away, rearranging his burden of camera and equipment bags, now short two neck straps. Sam was about to stand up, too, ready to help Cory to his feet, when he touched her arm, then beckoned her closer.
“Sam…I want you to know something…in case I don’t…” The weakness in his voice terrified her.
“Don’t you even think about it,” she snapped back at him, shaking with fear and impotent fury. “Don’t you dare. Just…don’t you dare.” She shoved herself to her feet, her vision blurred and shimmering, chest heaving. “Trust me-you’re gonna have a whole lot of time to say whatever it is you have to say to me. Now-if you’re quite finished feeling sorry for yourself, do you think you can get your butt up offa there, so we can get going?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cory muttered contritely. But he was quivering inside with a crazy mixture of amusement and admiration, weakness and fear. He knew he was in a bad way, not just because of the way he felt, which was as lousy as he could ever remember feeling, but because Sam was in a temper. And if Sam was in a temper, it meant she was either upset or scared-in this case, he figured probably both. Scared for him, he thought. And for Esther. Scared she wasn’t going to be able to get them help in time. It was a sobering thought.
But at the same time, as he watched her take charge, shoulder the weight-literally-of the sick and injured, get everyone moving again, he felt a tremendous surge of admiration. And pride. And humility. And in a way, shame. He’d always admired her, of course, both as a woman and as a person, and been proud of her, too. But he wondered now if there’d been something patronizing in his enjoyment of her, as if he’d been somehow responsible for her, or as if she were an extension of himself. God help him, was he only now seeing her as the incredible and amazing person she was, separate and apart from him? It was a horrifying, humiliating thought.
And with it came another: She loves me.
He felt dazed as her shoulders came under his arm and lifted, and her strong bones and supple muscles grew taut in support of his weight…as he felt the heat and energy radiating from her body, smelled the sweat of exertion and fear, heard the fierce, determined sound of her breathing. My God, he thought, she does. And he realized he hadn’t really believed it before, or understood how much. He wondered if he’d ever heard her say it. Wondered if that was why he’d felt abandoned when she’d gone off to pursue her career, and why he’d put her to such a terrible test, forcing her to choose. An impossible choice, he understood now. What he’d asked her to give up had been nothing less than what made her who she was. And so much about her he loved.
The thought made him sick and weak with shame. I don’t deserve her, he thought. She was right to turn me down. And if I do make it through this, and she decides to give me another chance, I’d damn well better figure out a way to make it right.
If we get through this…
“Sam,” he murmured, turning his face toward her and away from Tony, who was holding him up from the other side. He could feel the wet ends of her hair, like kitten kisses on his face. “That thing behind your ear…”
Her arm tightened around his waist. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Can you use it to call for help? Like…is there a code for Mayday?”
He heard the hiss of a breath and saw her eye crinkle and her cheek change shape with her smile. “An extraction? Yeah, and I mean to do that…just as soon as we get to a clearing big enough for a chopper to set down.”
Well, he should have known she’d have thought of it already. That she’d have it covered. Should have known he could leave it to her. This business of trusting her with his life…it seemed it was going to take some getting used to.
He let go, then, let himself slide into a twilight of pain and struggle and jungle growth and dampness that seemed to go on and on…endlessly.
Though he knew when it began to rain again. They didn’t stop to look for shelter, but just kept going, following Hal, whose gaunt, heroic figure seemed like a ghostly outrider in that curtain of rain, plodding tirelessly ahead, carrying his wife in his arms and leading the way.
And he knew when at last they left the jungle for the cultivated fields on the outskirts of the village, but he felt no sense of triumph or relief when he was lowered onto the muddy bank of a rice paddy…only terrible cold and weakness, and an exhaustion that seemed unconquerable even by his most powerful effort of will. But, he remembered, they were in the open, now. Sam would call for extraction, using that sci-fi chip in her scalp. He didn’t have to get up, didn’t have to move again. He could wait right here for the chopper to come and pick him up…
Except, the next thing he knew Sam and Tony were there again, pulling at him, making him get up, forcing him to walk, making him move on.
“It’s the rain,” Sam yelled above the roar of the deluge as they struggled on. “I can’t get a signal through. Right now, I’m hoping we can at least get some first-aid supplies at that little hospital…clinic, or whatever. We’ll ride this out…try for a chopper later. If all else fails, we’ll just have to fly out.”
Fly out, Sam thought. Yeah, that’s if the plane’s still intact. And if the landing strip isn’t knee-deep in mud. If we make it that far…
But she didn’t want to think that far ahead-couldn’t let herself. One step at a time. First, make it to the hospital in the village. There’d be medical supplies there, and food and water and shelter…maybe even dry clothes, if the bags they’d had to leave behind were still there. Imagining what it would feel like to be dry again nearly made her weep, and her stomach growled at the thought of those nonperishable field rations in her backpack.
It was because of the rain that she had no warning. It had washed away the smoke and the stink of wet ashes and death, so it wasn’t until they came out of the trees that lined the road leading through the village that she realized al-Rami’s forces had been there before them.
The chaos was appalling. At least half the houses in the village had been damaged or destroyed and the muddy lanes between them were littered with debris and the carcasses of animals. A few people moved slowly through the wreckage, too dazed and numb to pay much attention either to the rain or the five new refugees among them.
Except for a softly uttered profanity from Tony, no one spoke as they made their way through the ruined village. Sam tried to close her mind to the devastation and concentrate only on the task at hand, but it was impossible; she’d never experienced the waste of war firsthand before. She was badly shaken, though she didn’t want to be, and already dreading what they would find at the hospital.
“I guess you’ve seen all this before,” she said in a low voice, directing the comment to Tony past Cory’s rain-slicked chest but tilting her head to include both men in the pronoun.
“Yeah, we have.” Tony didn’t look at her as he replied; he was bearing most of Cory’s weight now, and his face was set in a bulldog grimace of effort. “Never get used to it, though.”
“Nobody should,” Cory muttered. “Get used to it…” His voice trailed weakly off.
Sam and Tony exchanged a brief look. Please, God, Sam prayed, let the hospital still be standing.
But her prayer wasn’t to be answered, not that one, anyway. Where the hospital, the village’s pride and joy, had stood, there was only a burned-out ruin, a charred skeleton reeking of soggy ashes.
She’d been looking ahead, her attention riveted on the devastation, her gaze sliding past Hal Lundquist, who was trudging doggedly on some distance ahead of them. But she saw him halt in his tracks, then sink slowly to his knees in the muddy road. His shoulders hunched and his head bowed; he seemed to curl himself over the woman he held close in his arms, and it appeared poignantly as if he was shielding her from the rain. As Sam came nearer she could see his shoulders shaking.
; “Can you manage?” she said in an undertone to Tony, and when he nodded, though every nerve in her body screamed in protest at the separation, she peeled her arm from around Cory’s waist and eased her shoulders out from under his weight. And as she moved away from him, her side and shoulders where his warmth had been felt chilled and raw, as if her skin had been stripped away.
She bent over Hal and laid her hand awkwardly on his shoulder. “Come on, Hal, don’t give up on her now.” She’d meant to say it gently, but it came out gruff instead, and she thought, Damn you, Pearse-you’d have been so much better at this than I am! Because suddenly, irrationally, she was more than a little angry at him for getting himself shot and letting her down like this.
“It’ll be all right,” she said to Hal, awkwardly patting his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay.” And she wondered who she was trying to convince-him or herself?
Miraculously, though, the lanai adjoining the hospital had survived almost untouched. While Sam supported most of Esther’s weight, Hal managed to stagger to his feet, and together they stumbled the last few remaining yards to shelter. They found Cory and Tony there already, Cory stretched out on one of the market tables and Tony standing beside him with his hands braced on the edge, hunched over and breathing hard.
“How’s he doing?” Sam asked Tony in a low voice as she helped Hal lay Esther down on another table nearby.
“He’s doing just fine-awake and lucid and capable of answering for himself,” Cory muttered irritably, sounding almost normal, although he slurred his words a little. “Wish you guys’d quit talking over me. How’s Esther?”
“Hangin’ in there. And don’t you dare get testy with me, Pearse.” Sam’s voice was clipped and breathless. God, it was hard to see him lying there like that…pale and thin, bearded and muddy…shivering like a castaway or the survivor of some wilderness ordeal. Fear blew its icy breath into her lungs and she gasped, momentarily paralyzed by it.
Tony lifted his head, still winded and breathing hard through his nose, and saw Sam’s eyes lose their fire and her face go bleak. She’s losing it, he thought. Hang in there, Captain. “Okay, boys and girls,” he said briskly, “if you’re all done bickering, what’s our next move?”
To his relief, Sam gave herself a little shake and took a breath, and he saw her eyes focus once more. “Okay,” she said, “We’ve got two choices. One, we can wait for the rain to stop and see if I can call in a chopper. Don’t ask.” She glared at him, holding up a hand to shut him up before he could ask her how she planned on doing that. “Trust me, okay?”
“Okay,” he said when he saw Cory nodding his head underneath the arm he’d thrown across his eyes. Tony nodded toward the table where Hal Lundquist sat beside his wife’s still form, hunched over, eyes closed, hands clasped…lips moving. Praying, he thought, and from long ago and half-forgotten memory, he felt a sudden impulse to cross himself. Lowering his voice, he said, “I don’t know if we’ve got time to wait.”
He saw Sam’s eyes drop for an instant to Cory, and the pinched look of fear come back into her eyes-just for a moment, though, like a bird’s shadow crossing the sun. “Yeah, I know. The other option is to get to the plane and fly it out-” her eyes flicked to the destruction around her and her face went bleak “-assuming the plane’s there and in any shape to fly.”
“Right,” said Tony on an exhalation. “Maybe one of us should go check it out first. I can-”
“You wouldn’t know what to check for. I’ll go,” Sam said in a hard, no-arguments voice, and he could tell from the way her eyes clung to Cory that she’d about rather chop off her arm than leave him. “You stay here and look after the others. I’ll be-”
They both froze as something rustled in the foliage behind the lanai. Both Tony and Sam moved instinctively, almost as one, to shield Cory’s body with theirs, and even as he did that Tony was thinking, Damn, she must love him. I believe she’d die for him in a heartbeat. He knew without a doubt the reverse was true as well, and he had time for a flash of something that was maybe half envy, half exasperation with the two of them for being so damn stupid, for not knowing what a precious thing it was they had going for them.
While his eyes were darting around the lanai looking for something he might be able to turn into a weapon, a man stepped out of the curtain of rain and under the relative shelter of the thatched roof. Tony relaxed and let out a relieved breath when he recognized the slight and humble figure as the hospital’s caretaker, the man who’d met them on their arrival.
Sam went eagerly to greet him, speaking to him in the language they’d used before-Tagalog, if he had to guess. The man rotated his upper body as he replied, and shifted something from his shoulder onto a nearby table.
Damned if it wasn’t Cory’s laptop.
The man spoke with Sam for several minutes more, gesturing descriptively and pointing, looking excited one minute, weighed down with grief the next. Finally, after a sad little bow to Sam, he nodded toward Tony and the others and slipped back into the rain.
“Hey, Pearse, I brought you a present,” Sam said as she rejoined them, taking the laptop from her shoulder and placing it gently on Cory’s chest.
He managed a thin and groggy-sounding, “Hey, that’s great…” as he clutched it with both hands and struggled to sit up. “Where did you…”
“He said it was the only thing he was able to save when they evacuated the hospital. Personally,” she added with a flash of wry grin, “I wish he’d left the laptop and saved the food and clothing. Right now I’d kill for a candy bar and a dry shirt.”
“Anyway,” she went on, her face grave again, “Tomas said the attack came this morning, just before dawn. Government forces-”
“Government forces did this?”
“They were after Fahad al-Rami. Guess they didn’t care who they got in the process,” she said dryly. “What do you guys call it-collateral damage? Anyway, al-Rami and his bunch arrived last evening and took over the hospital-made everyone else leave. They figured government forces wouldn’t attack a hospital. Turns out they were wrong.”
“Did they get him?” Cory croaked. “Al-Rami? Is he dead?”
“Tomas doesn’t know. He says they all fled when the shelling started, and took their dead and wounded with them. The good news is-” she took a breath, and this time her smile blossomed unrestrained “-he says he thinks the plane’s okay. He says al-Rami’s forces came in from the other direction and went out the same way, so they didn’t get as far as the landing strip. And he hasn’t heard any shelling from over that way, either. So-what about it, guys?” The smile wavered. “You up for one more run?”
“I’m ready,” Tony said, and nudged Cory. “How ’bout you, buddy? Think you can hobble that far?”
“Let’s get the hell outa Dodge,” Cory muttered, straightening up and sliding off the table. He would have kept going right on down to the ground if Tony hadn’t caught him.
Like a daddy picking up his child, Sam thought as she rescued the laptop and slung it over her shoulder. She got her arm around Cory’s waist to help Tony hold him upright, and her heart lumbered back to its customary location in her chest after another brief sojourn in her throat. And once again it flashed through her mind that Tony Whitehall was really a very sweet and gentle man, and not at all the tough guy he looked like.
She turned to Hal, who was still sitting slumped on the edge of the table, gazing at his wife. She touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Hal? Do you need help? Would you like Tony to carry her now?”
He gave himself a shake, as if rousing from some gentle reverie. “What? Oh-no, no, that’s all right. I’ll carry her. Don’t worry about me.” His voice, which had started out breathy and faint, seemed to grow stronger as he went on. “We’ll be fine,” he concluded firmly. Then he picked up his wife, cradled her tenderly against his chest once more, and without another word walked out of the lanai and into the rain.
“He’s got to be going on sheer willpower,” Sam said as s
he and Tony set out after the Lundquists, with Cory, stoic and silent, hobbling loose-jointedly between them.
“Uh-uh,” Tony said between panting breaths, “that’s love, babe. Most powerful force in the world. Willpower can’t hold a candle to it.”
That would explain why I don’t seem to have any power against it, Sam thought bleakly. But why did it have to be so complicated, so hard to identify-at least for absolute certainty? Shouldn’t such a powerful force be simple and straightforward, like other forces of nature? Like hurricanes and volcanoes and tidal waves-no mistaking those things for what they were! But love? That was like…like…Frustrated, she gave up trying to think of an analogy that felt right-Cory would probably have had the perfect one, she thought-and it was almost a relief to put the whole thing out of her mind and concentrate on the nearly impossible task ahead of her.
Tomas’s guess had been right. The plane was just as they’d left it. Both it and the landing strip appeared to have escaped the devastation that lay barely half a mile away beyond the fringe of palm and bamboo and banana trees.
The big question, Sam knew, was whether the landing strip would be firm enough to hold the weight of the DC-3 during takeoff. The cultivated fields on both sides of the strip were lakes of water, mud-colored sheets that seemed to boil under the bombardment of raindrops. The landing strip was raised above the level of the fields and seemed to be free of standing water, but she had no way of knowing how solid the ground was underneath the grass cover.
There was only one way to find out.
“You-all stay put,” Sam yelled in modified Southern, as they huddled in a small grove of banana trees on the edge of the fields. “I’m gonna go check out the runway.” Cory caught at her hand, and she flashed a strained and crooked smile, looking past him with unfocused eyes. She couldn’t look at his gaunt, pain-ravaged face, or the blood-soaked cargo pants. Didn’t dare. “No sense in everybody getting stuck in the mud, if that’s the situation.”
Secret Agent Sam Page 20