by Vanessa Kier
Her heart sank.
Natchaba walked to the center of the platform. “My fellow citizens,” he called out.
The cavern fell silent.
“You have all seen the images from our most recent success, the event the media is calling the Hospital Massacre. The photos and video demonstrate how our loyal soldiers treat those who oppose us and consort with foreigners.”
The men roared their approval, the sound mirroring the roar of fury in Helen’s ears. They’d shot video of their butchery and sent it to the media? Making it so that the families of the ones who’d died might see the images and be forever haunted by the acts committed against their loved ones?
“One of our soldiers was severely injured as he attempted to return here to base,” Natchaba continued. “His wounds were so extensive that healing him was beyond our own doctors.” He turned and gave a mocking bow to Helen.
Helen flinched inwardly. She barely held her calm, detached expression in place as renewed fear clawed at her.
“Dr. Helen Kirk has spent most of her adult life working as a medical doctor here in West Africa. She has greedily held on to the head surgical positions at our hospitals and clinics, denying such work to more deserving Africans.”
Natchaba’s raised eyebrow dared Helen to protest.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
When it became clear that she had no intention of speaking, he shrugged. “Is it not fitting to bring Dr. Kirk here so she can heal this soldier, this brave man who brought justice to those traitors at the hospital?” He raised his hand over his head and snapped three times. The crowd once again separated. Two men carried a stretcher over to the platform and transferred their patient to the surgical table.
“Behold your patient, Dr. Kirk.”
Oh, God. Even with his battered face, Helen recognized the man. He’d been the most vocal of the torturers. The one who’d told Helen and the others how much he enjoyed the feel of skin splitting beneath his blade. How he dreamed at night of the beautiful songs that were the screams of the foreign devils who he had been honored to kill.
Oh, no. Operate on this butcher? The man she’d watched hack and saw off the arms and legs of her friends? Her stomach heaved. How could she possibly heal such a man, knowing that he would be sent back into the world to torture and kill more people? How could she live with herself if she helped one of the men who had mutilated her colleagues while they screamed and Helen and the others had begged for the rebels to stop, to take their lives instead?
Just the sight of his open wounds and the blood covering his body threatened to send her rational mind screaming away in terror. Her eyes bounced away from the shiny piece of intestine sticking out from beneath the soaked bandages over his abdomen.
Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick. Her throat muscles tightened and she swallowed back bile.
Natchaba leaned closer. “Do you know who hurt this man so badly, Dr. Kirk? Your own bodyguard. Commander MacKay.”
Oh, God. Lachlan had done this? Sliced open the man’s belly?
Murderer. Torturer.
Her vision swam. For a moment she thought she was going to pass out, but she dug her fingernails into her palms and managed to bring her awareness back.
If what Natchaba said was true, and she wouldn’t put it past him to lie for his own sick pleasure, Lachlan must have thought he had reason to hurt the man. Yet no matter his reasons, this latest act of violence just proved the differences between them.
“What is your answer, doctor? Are you going to save this man?”
Helen stared at the injured rebel, trembling as she fought against the memories of what he’d done. Acts far worse than what Lachlan had done to him.
Even if she could calm down enough to operate, how could she ethically agree to operate? Better that they kill her. She shook her head.
“You refuse?” Natchaba gave a satisfied smile. He gestured to the man standing behind Mrs. N’Dorah.
“Should you continue to deny my request,” Natchaba said smoothly, “my man here will carve up this traitorous woman.” The man slashed a cut across the right side of Mrs. N’Dorah’s face. Blood flowed down her cheek.
Helen’s stomach threatened to heave. “No! Stop.”
Mrs. N’Dorah’s eyes met hers. She shook her head slightly.
Helen didn’t think she could be equally as brave in the woman’s position.
“What is your answer?” Natchaba demanded. “Or do you need another demonstration of what will happen should you refuse?”
The man behind Mrs. N’Dorah positioned his knife at the juncture between her neck and shoulder.
“No!” Helen took a deep breath. Perhaps the right thing to do, for the greater good, was to let Natchaba kill both Mrs. N’Dorah and herself. Two deaths instead of the multiple deaths this wounded rebel was capable of causing.
But Helen couldn’t do it. The rebels had forced her to kneel and watch as they’d mutilated her colleagues. She’d been helpless then to stop it. She wasn’t helpless now.
She would do what was in her nature to do. She’d heal this butcher and by doing so save Mrs. N’Dorah. Plus, that would buy them both a little time. Time they could hopefully use to escape.
“I’ll do it.” As the words left her lips, the calm of her emergency mindset settled over her.
“I thought perhaps you would see things my way,” Natchaba said.
“But I can’t do it by myself. I need someone to hold the clamps and suction out the blood while I work.” She nodded toward Mrs. N’Dorah. “She has medical training. Let her assist me.”
“Do you really expect me to fall for such a ploy, Dr. Kirk?” Natchaba asked.
Helen jerked her chin toward the assembled rebels, amazed that she was able to speak so clearly and without any tremor of emotion in her voice. “How many of them are experienced at holding the edges of skin together while another person stitches the wound closed?” Her stomach lurched, but she pressed on. “How many of your men have held the intestines of a living, breathing human being and tried to keep the patient still while a doctor fixes the holes in them? Intestines are slippery. They—”
The guard on her right slapped her so hard, her head whipped to the left. Her teeth cut so deeply into her lip, she tasted blood.
“Is there not one man among you who has experience in surgical matters and who can step forward to assist this doctor with saving our comrade?” Natchaba called out.
The crowd murmured, but no one volunteered.
He turned back to Helen. “Very well. But I will be watching. My men will be standing behind you with their rifles ready to fire. If you threaten our brother in the slightest way, Mrs. N’Dorah will suffer for it. Are we understood?”
“Yes.” At this point, she’d take courage from any victory, no matter how small.
“Good. Then begin.”
LACHLAN AWOKE TO a throbbing head and the urge to vomit. Since he was lying on his side and gagged, that would be a bad idea. He didn’t want to open his eyes yet and let his captors know he was awake. But the darkness—and the bandana shoved in his mouth that tasted of sweat and insect spray—only made his nausea greater. His were bound together behind him, so he pressed the buckle of his watch against the acupressure point on his wrist that would help push back his nausea.
When his stomach finally settled, Lachlan opened his eyes into slits. It was dark, but flickering light beyond his line of sight provided enough illumination for him to determine that he’d been dumped on the floor of a small room carved into the rock. Crates of weapons and ammunition were stacked to the ceiling. A lantern sat on a rocky outcrop at the entrance, to the left and a few paces behind the guard. The guard stood outside the entrance, his attention focused somewhere ahead of him. From the distorted sound of many voices, Lachlan suspected that Natchaba’s forces were gathered not far away.
The guard’s AK-47 was slung over his shoulder and he flicked an occasional glance at Lachlan. But because of the shadows
cast by the lantern’s light, Lachlan suspected the guard couldn’t really see him. Allowing Lachlan such an advantage was further proof that Natchaba’s men lacked the depth of training of a professional force.
Lachlan continued to feign unconsciousness, and after a few minutes the guard edged farther away from the entrance.
Moving slowly so as not to make noise that would draw the guard’s attention, Lachlan bent his legs until the soles of his boots were within reach of his fingers. The pitch of the voices rose. The guard threw one more look at Lachlan, but didn’t appear to notice that his legs were now bent. Then he moved just out of sight.
Brilliant. Lachlan pressed the two spots that activated a release mechanism in the heel of his left boot and a blade sprang free. He began the slow, tedious process of sawing away at his rawhide bonds, although the incremental progress sorely tried his patience. He needed to find Helen before Natchaba hurt her.
The original plan had been for Morenga’s man to let Lachlan’s team and the government forces into the rear of the base. Lachlan would lead the team that would find and rescue Helen, while the other teams neutralized the rebels and secured any weapons.
But not only hadn’t Lachlan trusted Morenga, he also hadn’t liked Helen’s odds of survival in the chaos of such an assault. Now that he was inside, his primary mission was to locate Helen and make certain she was safe within the given timeline. By the end of that time, Lachlan would also need to find the mechanism to open the doors, which was the signal for his team and the government’s men to enter. Because once Lachlan had allowed himself to be captured, his team had gone radio silent, reachable only via secure WAR channels.
The voices of the group assembled out in the cavern fell silent. A moment later, one man began speaking. His voice carried with the clear precision of an experienced speaker. This must be Natchaba. He spoke in English, which told Lachlan that the assembled men were from too many different tribes to all speak the same dialect.
As Natchaba talked about the righteousness of what his men had done at the hospital, the rawhide binding Lachlan’s wrists finally snapped. He activated the mechanism again and the blade fell out of his boot heel. Lachlan picked it up. It was significantly less substantial than a regular combat knife, but the rebels had removed the backup knife in his boot. So he’d have to make do with this one. He cut his ankles free and removed the gag from his mouth.
A quick check of the time showed that he’d been inside for nearly twenty minutes. Which left a bit over an hour for him to find and secure Helen, locate the controls for the front door, deactivate any booby-traps, and let the others in.
While he worked through a series of short exercises to bring blood back into his hands and feet he studied the boxes surrounding him. He counted a dozen crates of Eastern European assault rifles, twenty boxes of semi-automatic pistols, and fifty cartons of ammunition. Those were just the ones he could see in the faint lantern light. Making an estimate based on the depth of the cave, he doubled that number. Natchaba had enough weaponry here to do a fair bit of damage to a large city.
He tried the lids of the most accessible crates, but they were all nailed firmly shut. Unfortunately, no one had conveniently left a crowbar near to hand and his emergency blade wasn’t strong enough to pry the lids off. He didn’t like leaving such a stockpile behind, since the rebels could use the weapons to fight his teammates, but without a way to open the crates, Lachlan couldn’t disable the weapons or arm himself. With a frustrated glance at the boxes, he crept toward the entrance. Using a bulge in the wall to keep his body mostly hidden, he performed a quick, visual assessment. Across from this room a wall of stalagmites and stalactites formed a nearly solid wall that created a natural corridor. To his left, the corridor ended in a wall. The guard stood a meter or two to Lachlan’s right, peering through a gap in the stalagmites.
Lachlan snuck up behind him, put his hand over the man’s mouth and nose, and stabbed the man in the kidney. Lachlan’s emergency knife wasn’t designed with killing in mind, so he had to put a fair bit of strength into the thrust. Once the man went slack, Lachlan dragged him back to the storage cave. He grabbed the man’s AK-47, extra magazines, and combat knife, then moved over to the gap in the stalagmites where the rebel had been standing.
The tall columns formed by the meeting of the stalagmites and the stalactites formed a thick forest. Lantern light flickering between several columns revealed a few men in rebel uniforms standing with their backs to Lachlan, but he could not see beyond them.
Wondering why the guard had been so interested in that view, Lachlan moved farther down the corridor. Enough light filtered through the stalagmites to illuminate the way. Any water source must have dried up years ago, because the air and rocks were dry, not damp. He’d just reached another side cave holding boxes of weapons when a rebel stepped into the doorway. Before the rebel could sound the alarm, Lachlan killed him.
Lachlan hid the rebel’s body behind a stack of boxes. A quick check showed that as with the other cave, the boxes here contained only weapons and ammunition. There was no sign of the miniature explosives, so returned to the corridor and his search for Helen. He didn’t find her, but he did find two more caves full of conventional weapons. One cave held rocket-propelled grenade launchers and surface-to-air missile. Had all of these been stolen from Morenga? Or had Natchaba been buying weapons from someone else in addition to stealing them from his father?
Spotting a rock formation to his left that formed a sort of table and was hidden by an overhang of rock jutting out from the back of the cavern, Lachlan climbed on top and took his first good look at the cavern’s interior.
Buggering hell. The columns of rock thinned out a few meters in front of him, opening into a cavern longer than an airplane hangar and equally as wide. The ceiling was lost in darkness far above, with stalactites reaching down to the quarter point like ghostly fingers.
The cavern held perhaps a hundred men in rebel uniforms. Lanterns set at regular intervals along the perimeter threw flickering shadows on the gathering. Several entrances to side passages like the one he was in showed as dark gaps against the far wall.
A wooden stage had been set up in the center of the cavern. Natchaba and Helen stood upon it.
Relief soared through Lachlan, lifting his spirits with dizzying speed. He hadn’t realized until now how terrified he’d been that she was already dead. Even from this distance, he spotted the dark slashes on the white arms of her lab coat from where the rebels had cut her with their machetes, as her colleague Tom had mentioned. But Lachlan couldn’t tell if she had additional injuries. Rebels had hold of each of her arms, but she appeared to be standing under her own power. Mrs. N’Dorah was tied to a chair and had a guard to either side of her, plus another man behind her.
The stage was in the process of being set up as a operating theater. Rebels carrying a stretcher emerged from one of the side passages and approached the stage.
Natchaba announced to the crowd that he wanted Helen to operate on one of the men who’d participated in the Hospital Massacre.
Shock and fury heated Lachlan’s blood. He would kill Natchaba for forcing Helen to make such a choice. She didn’t know his team and the government forces were nearby. She would think that by healing the man, she’d be sending a killer back out into the world. Would she choose her own death rather than be responsible for multiple deaths as her mother had been?
Would she recognize that the choice wasn’t remotely similar?
Helen protested Natchaba’s request. In response, the man standing behind Mrs. N’Dorah cut her cheek with a knife.
Oh, yes. Lachlan looked forward to killing these men. Slowly.
No. He shook his head. He could not let his emotions rule him. He was not his father. He would not allow himself to indulge in violence just to ease his fury. If he was to earn back the full respect of his men, if he was to have any hope of a future with Helen, he had to be better than that.
Out in the cavern, Natch
aba demanded an answer from Helen.
Come on, sweetheart, tell him yes. Don’t throw your life away.
“I’ll do it,” Helen eventually said.
Yes. That was his lass. Strong enough to choose life.
Knowing that she would be relatively safe for a bit, Lachlan slithered off his shelf, keeping one ear tuned to the conversation in the cavern. It was time to locate the controls to the front door. With that in mind, he returned to the hallway running along the back wall and began searching for the control room.
By the time Helen started operating, Lachlan had nearly reached the main passage where the stretcher bearers had emerged. He’d passed several more caches of weapons, but hadn’t seen any of the special boxes that held the miniature explosives. Had Morenga been wrong? Did someone else steal the explosives? Or had Natchaba already deployed them?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
AT NATCHABA’S SIGNAL, Helen’s guards stepped back. Good. She’d been afraid that she’d be bumping elbows with them while she worked. And she couldn’t afford any distractions.
Thankfully, the circle of industrial-grade lights surrounding the platform blocked her view of the rebels in the cavern. Yet she could still hear them. The shuffling of feet. Coughs. A sneeze or two. One man tapped out an annoying rhythm on some hard surface, but was silenced by the angry retort of a comrade.
Forget them. They don’t matter.
Walking over to the metal basin resting on a tall cart, Helen poured rubbing alcohol over her hands and watched it pool in the bottom of the basin. The scent reminded her that she was working now. As she dried her hands and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, her nervousness fled. Once Mrs. N’Dorah was similarly gloved up, Helen approached the rebel on the table. She carefully removed the blood-soaked bandages so she could fully examine his wounds. His facial injuries, including a broken nose, were consistent with a high-speed impact against a hard surface such as a windshield. He had several deep gashes and punctures on his arms, legs, and torso. But by far the most severe injury was the cut that had opened his abdomen and exposed his intestines.