by Vanessa Kier
“No. I can’t do this.” A tight fist squeezed all the air out of her lungs. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Spinning on her heel, she fled, knowing from the pain in her heart that he’d already claimed part of her soul.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The United African Republic
West Africa
TWO WEEKS LATER, Helen checked the chart of her teenage patient and nodded in satisfaction. “You’re making good progress, Charles,” she said in the local language. “I think we’ll be able to release you in a few days.”
He beamed at her, then turned to grin at his mother.
Helen put the chart back in its holder on the wall, then put a mock serious expression on her face and wagged her finger at him. “But from now on, if you see a man with a shotgun, you run away, okay? Don’t play hero again.”
“This I told the boy many times,” his mother said, fighting a smile. “But he never listens.”
“Well, you had better listen this time, isn’t that right, Charles?”
He nodded somberly. “Being shot is no kind of fun.”
“That’s right.” Helen talked a bit more with the two of them, but when she saw Charles starting to tire, she excused herself. As she walked down the hall toward her office, she nodded at one of the local nurses and received a friendly smile.
God, it felt so good to be back here. The facility had been updated since her first assignment and now boasted some of the most advanced diagnostic tools in the region. Not only that, but it was a joy to work in a fully stocked operating room, rather than having to improvise and perform minimal care due to lack of equipment. If Charles had been brought to her clinic, she wouldn’t have been able to save him. The damage to his abdomen had been too severe. But between the equipment here and the skilled nurses, Charles would make a full recovery.
See, Lachlan was wrong. I’m not doing this because of my mother. I truly love making people’s lives better.
Dammit, just that one brief thought of Lachlan and her heart had started pounding as if a predator stood behind her. She had to divert her attention to something else before the volatile mix of emotions that he always stirred up sent her running back to her quarters, where she’d either cry until her head hurt or yell into her pillow until she was hoarse.
While she’d done as he’d asked and sent him a text confirming her safe arrival here, she’d forced herself not to reach out to him since then. The fact that he hadn’t tried to contact her just proved that he hadn’t really meant what he’d said about wanting to explore the connection between them.
She entered her office and settled behind her desk to write up patient notes. The logic required to summarize a patient’s presenting condition, the tests and treatment given, and the suggested recovery plan helped steady her nerves. She quickly lost track of time.
“Dr. Kirk! Come quick,” Tom, an orthopedic surgeon from Belgium, said from her doorway. “You must hear this.”
Helen bolted from her chair and the two of them raced down the hall.
“The rebels are driving down the Mataya River road,” the mechanically distorted voice of the announcer on Rebel Tracker Radio proclaimed as Helen skidded to a halt outside the staff room’s door. “Witnesses report that the convoy has bypassed several villages and seems to be intent on reaching a particular target. Speculation is high that the rebels are aiming for Koryani. Perhaps even their destination is the main hospital outside of Koryani. If you are in the vicinity of Koryani or the hospital, we advise you to evacuate to the east. We estimate that the rebels will be in your area within one hour.”
Helen froze. Was this her fault? Had Natchaba discovered where she was and sent one of his vicious bands of rebels to carry out another attack like the one that destroyed the villages near her clinic? Her stomach churned and she fought against the urge to throw up.
“What are we going to do?” Eileen asked nervously. The red-haired nurse’s Scottish accent reminded Helen so much of Lachlan that every time she heard it, her heart ached. This time, though, the young woman’s need for reassurance helped steady Helen’s nerves.
Plus, it made her realize that it was unlikely this attack was about her. There were seven foreign doctors and nurses on the staff. All of them had been working here for months.
About three-quarters of the staff had crowded into this small room to hear RTR’s report and when she entered, all eyes turned toward Helen. Each person had devoted his or her life to healing others. Seeing the varying degrees of fear on their faces, Helen vowed that the rebels would not hurt any member of her staff, or a single patient, without a fight.
She took a deep breath. Her senses sharpened and fear slipped away as the calm of her emergency mode settled over her. “Okay. If the rebels assault the town first, then we probably have more than an hour before we’re in danger. But to be safe, we have to assume that we’re the rebels’ target. I’m formally initiating the evacuation protocol. All of you know what to do. Work fast, but be thorough. I want every single patient to survive. And tell every visitor you encounter that we need his or her vehicle to help move the patients.”
Her staff gave nods of agreement and filed out of the room.
It was just bad timing that the hospital’s sole ambulance had left this morning on its daily run up to the area of most intense fighting. That left only a pickup truck and an SUV to be used in the evacuation until the townspeople who’d volunteered to provide transport in such a situation arrived.
“Kofi,” Helen said as one of the orderlies moved past her. “Please notify the security guards that the rebels are coming and we’re starting the evacuation process.”
“Yes, doctor.” He hurried toward the front door.
Helen indicated for the remaining doctors and nurses to accompany her to the critical care ward. Unfortunately, this clinic hadn’t been built by Layla’s Foundation so it didn’t have an underground safe room, just a morgue. The exterior doors were reinforced with steel and the windows were fitted with safety bars, but many of the interior rooms didn’t even have locks on the doors. Which was why the emergency protocol called for evacuation to an abandoned leper sanctuary a ten-minute drive north of here. The townspeople generally avoided the area, believing the sanctuary to be haunted. The overgrown road and the thick vegetation would help hide the tracks of the vehicles that dropped off the patients.
“Doctor Kirk,” Ateni called out.
Helen turned and saw the receptionist racing down the hallway toward her.
Ateni skidded to a halt in front of Helen’s group. “The phone line is dead.” Ateni’s job had been to use the landline to phone the telecomm center in town and notify them of the evacuation. The telecomm center would then contact people on the list of evacuation volunteers. Ateni would next have called the numbers of the embassies and other key contacts on the emergency list.
Pretending a calm she didn’t feel, Helen pulled out her cell phone. She’d been planning to send a text to Lachlan in the hopes that his team or some other group in the area could bring a helicopter in to speed their evacuation. But she had no signal.
“Does anyone have reception?” she asked.
A chorus of noes rose from the group.
Helen quelled a spurt of panic. Destroying phone towers was one of the tactics the rebels used to isolate a population before launching a major offensive.
“All right,” she said. “Tom, you and Ateni use the shortwave radio in my office. You know the emergency protocol.” She didn’t have much hope that they’d actually reach anyone in a diplomatic capacity. Too many embassies and consulates had recently shut down. Some had closed voluntarily when rebel forces presented a direct threat. Others, as with the U.S. embassy in this country, had been forced to close when the national government had broken diplomatic ties and publicly told all foreigners to leave the country in an attempt to forestall a rebel attack by removing the rebels’ primary targets. The only reason this hospital had been allowed to keep its foreigners had been because
African lives depended on the medical care they provided.
“Dr. LaSalle might be your best bet,” she added. “He seems to have contacts and influence in a variety of sectors, including the military. Maybe he can find someone to help us. If you’re unable to reach him, try the U.S. embassy in the Greater Niger Republic.” That was the only remaining fully staffed foreign embassy in West Africa. Plus, it was located next to an American military base. “I know they’re too far away to be of any immediate help, but we need someone to be aware of our situation.” In case we don’t survive.
Tom nodded grimly. From the downward turn of his lips, she knew he also wondered if they’d make it out alive. But neither one would speak that fear aloud, in case it caused the others to panic. He gestured for Ateni to precede him, and the two of them headed for Helen’s office.
“Okay,” Helen said to her team. “Let’s prepare our critical patients to be moved.” It would take time to transfer all the patients who were hooked up to machines to portable versions.
Forty-five minutes later, Helen was transferring the last patient from an electricity-powered breathing device to a battery-powered one, when the lights went out. Despite having practiced what to do in this scenario the day after she’d arrived, her heart still gave a frightened lurch. Then the generator kicked in and the backup lights came on.
The loss of power only reinforced the last report from RTR that the rebels had reached the outskirts of town. She motioned for one of the nurses to take charge of the patient, then strode down the corridor, checking on the patients that were waiting their turn to be loaded onto one of the evacuation vehicles. Thankfully, her staff remained calm, so the patients weren’t panicked. Still, when Helen looked out the back door and saw that only the hospital’s pickup truck had returned from dropping off its last group of evacuees, her heart sank. There were about twenty patients waiting to be evacuated, but they wouldn’t all fit in the bed of the pickup.
“We have to get as many patients onboard the truck as possible,” she told the security guard who was in charge of loading the patients. “Even if it means some of them are pushed uncomfortably together.”
His eyes flicked to the open door to the hospital. “The power is out?”
She nodded, and he cursed softly. “Then it won’t be long now,” he said. He’d been a member of the national military before joining the security firm and his calm, steadfast manner reminded her of Lachlan and his men.
“When will the other vehicles return?” Helen asked.
“Perhaps some fifteen minutes.”
“Then I hope the rebels take their time in reaching us.”
The man nodded, then shouted for one of the orderlies to help him load up the pickup truck.
Helen returned to the critical care ward. She supervised the last of the patients being wheeled down to the evacuee line, then checked that no patient records or life-saving medicines were being left behind. They were twenty minutes over the original hour mark, and Helen was just locking the last of the remaining medicines in the secure cabinet, when Kofi burst into the room.
“The rebel trucks have just made the turn from the main road,” he announced.
“Thanks. I’ll be right there.” Helen waited for him to leave, then unlocked the cabinet. Her hand hovered over the vials of morphine. Telling herself that taking them with her didn’t mean that she had to use them, she shoved the vials and several packages of syringes into her pockets, then re-locked the cabinet and ran for the back of the building.
She reached the door in time to see the taillights of the overpacked pickup truck disappear down the lane. Behind her, six critically injured patients waited in the hallway. All of them were hooked up to battery powered devices. “Quick. Move everyone down to the morgue.” Without electricity, they’d have to use the hydraulic lift, which could only take one gurney at a time, and the stairs.
Her staff moved with well-oiled precision. They’d just lowered the last patient into the dark, cool morgue when the building shook under the force of an explosion.
“Doctor, please we have to leave,” the owner of one of the local restaurants announced. His minivan was nearly full with those remaining patients who could tolerate sitting up, but he’d saved a few spots for her staff.
“Go,” Helen told her staff. Since each group of patients evacuated was being attended by several nurses or other personnel, there were only twelve staff members remaining, not including Helen. “I’ll stay here with the patients.” Even if everyone jammed into the car, they wouldn’t all fit.
“No.” Tom shook his head. “I will also stay.”
Helen started to protest, but gunfire and angry shouts punctuated the air. “Fine. Those of you who want to leave, go now. The rest of you, into the morgue with me.”
All of the staff elected to stay. Even the security guard shook his head when she told him he should go and protect the evacuees. “I will set some traps here to slow the rebel soldiers down.”
Tears in her eyes, Helen waved the businessman off.
“Thank you. Stay safe,” she told the security guard, knowing that this was likely the last time she’d see him alive. Then she locked herself and the others in the morgue.
Two minutes later, after another explosion, the generator shut off, plunging the room into darkness. Helen fumbled to activate the battery powered lights as another explosion shook the building above them. Dust rained down in the faint illumination.
“Kofi, please activate the emergency brake on the lift and destroy the door mechanism. I don’t want the rebels to have easy access to us.” Hopefully, the rebels wouldn’t have the patience to manually force open the sliding metal door.
But the regular door at the top of the stairs would be easier to breach. The landing in front of the door was barely three feet deep, but at least the door opened inward. “Everyone else, let’s stockpile as many items against the door at the top of the stairs as we can fit so the rebels will have to work hard to break it open.”
But even as she went to work creating a barricade with her staff, she fingered the vials in her pocket and knew the moment was coming when she’d have to make the most difficult decision of her life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Republic of Dahomey
West Africa
FROM HIS POSITION at the edge of the jungle forty kilometers north of a medium sized town on the western edge of Dahomey, Lachlan watched two rebel guards turn the corner of the main building in the middle of the small compound.
After saying good-bye to Helen, and receiving confirmation from Obi that the security firm hired by her new employer had a solid reputation, Lachlan and the rest of his team had driven to the town of Sotoume. That was where Obi’s informant had seen Natchaba meeting with a man that was listed as a business partner to one of Natchaba’s aliases. But the informant turned up dead before Lachlan’s men could question him. The team had then visited the local house bought by Natchaba using that alias—not as large or fancy a house as the one near Helen’s clinic, but still far above average—only to discover that the household staff had been killed in the same manner as the staff at the mansion.
Not long after that, WAR had been notified that the rebel prisoners being held at the jail in New Accra had escaped. Fearing for Helen’s safety, Lachlan had notified the head of the security company to assign extra men to her hospital.
Wishing that his team could take over the job of protecting Helen, Lachlan had returned his attention to tracing Natchaba’s movements within Sotoume. The sooner they found Natchaba, the sooner Helen would be safe.
His team had found no further sign of Natchaba, and Lachlan had begun to think this was another dead end, when the tracking device he’d placed on the rebel lorry up by Helen’s clinic had suddenly started transmitting again. Half of Lachlan’s team had followed the signal to an airfield, watched as cargo had been transferred from the plane to the lorry, then part of Lachlan’s team had continued to follow the lorry while Lachlan
led the others to capture the pilot. While the pilot was not Seth Jarrod, questioning him did reveal that this was the second shipment he’d flown to this airfield for Natchaba’s alias since the attack on the villages.
While Lachlan had been prepared to use force to get the pilot to talk, he’d succumbed to regular questioning. The pilot wasn’t a believer, just a man who asked no questions as long as he was paid. In keeping with Natchaba’s policies, the pilot knew little more than the name of the man who paid him and the man who supervised the unloading of the cargo. Still, the local police were happy to have someone to put in jail so they could appear to be making progress in stopping Natchaba’s organization.
The other team had followed the lorry to this compound and watched it park inside a large garage, where the tracking signal had cut out. Levine and Hoss had snuck inside and taken photos, documenting that the cargo had been cartons of Eastern European assault rifles and semi-automatic pistols. The same weapons they believed Natchaba had smuggled through Helen’s airfield. But they’d found no sign of the missing mini-explosives.
Based on the variety of insignia on their uniforms, Lachlan’s team had determined that the force in residence consisted of men from five different rebel groups. Two of which were the ones responsible for the destruction of Helen’s clinic and the nearby villages.
On orders from Azumah, Lachlan had reported his team’s findings to the national government. The president had decided to conduct a joint raid, with the understanding that Lachlan’s team would do the bulk of the takedown but the government forces would receive all the credit.
Lachlan had no problem with that. He was just happy to have a chance to take down some of the men who’d been behind the attack that had killed little Sisi.
Right now, most of the rebels were in their bunks in the two barracks out behind this main building. But thermal imaging showed that several of the leaders were having an informal meeting around the kitchen table in the back of the main building, while the less popular leaders slept upstairs in their private quarters.