by Julie Rowe
“We can try,” Sharp said, bending over and picking up the headset off the floor of the helicopter. He handed it to her.
It still had Cutter’s blood on it.
Her stomach rolled, but she stuck it on her head and asked, “Smoke?”
“Fire,” was his response.
A joke? Now? “I hope that means you’re paying attention. I need to get through to my CO. Can you do that?”
“Where is he?”
She told him, then waited while Smoke made the connections happen over the radio. She glanced outside. Their altitude was dropping. They were almost to the village. She wouldn’t have long to talk.
“Dr. Samuels?” Max sounded worried and pissed off at the same time. “Where the hell have you be—?”
“Colonel, there’s no time to go into detail,” she interrupted. “My helicopter was shot down shortly after we left the site. Only two of us survived, the others died in the crash or were killed shortly after by insurgents. It took us almost a day to make contact with American troops and get back to Bostick.”
She sucked in a breath and kept talking before he could interject. “Here’s what’s really important. Marshall has my original samples, but I don’t know what he’s done with them. He charged me with a bunch of bogus shit, then threw me in a makeshift brig without allowing me to talk to anyone. He blames me for the death of some of his men. Men who I believe contracted the disease from airborne spores. He didn’t even send a search team out to look for us until six hours after our helicopter crashed. He’s lost his mind. The A-Team I’m working with grabbed another helicopter and we’re about to land at the village, but Marshall ordered his men to fire on us as we took off and they killed Commander Cutter.” She ran out of air and paused to grab another lungful.
Max spoke in a calm voice. “Slow down. Take it easy. Are you saying Marshall ordered the murder of an American soldier?”
“Someone fired on us from the base... Who else could have ordered it?” Tears threatened to escape her tight control, but if they escaped, everything would, all the terror, fear and frustration of the past two days. Sharp and his team were depending on her. She didn’t have time for a nervous breakdown.
“I knew he was a stubborn jackass,” Max said, frustration evident in the way he clipped off the ends of his words. “But I didn’t realize he would jeopardize the situation because a couple of quacks didn’t agree with him.”
“Is quack the worst thing he’s called you? It’s the nicest thing he’s called me,” Grace said with a weak laugh. “I think he’s determined to make this my fault and, I think by extension, your fault. He’s likely to blow the whole place up, and I still don’t know how the villagers contacted anthrax. I think it’s airborne, but it could also be in the water supply. This bug acts so fast, it’s impossible to know from what little investigation that’s gone on.”
“We need to know that information.”
The helicopter landed. A soldier in a bio-suit waited, crouched about twenty feet away. There was no sample container anywhere near him.
“We’re here,” she told Max. “I’ll call you back.”
“If you don’t,” Max said with a steely tone she’d seldom heard from him, “I’ll assume the worst and send a new team. That’s going to take time we don’t have.”
“Understood.” She took the headset off and dropped it on the floor.
Before she could get out of her harness, Sharp put his hand over hers and leaned close. “The samples are on the ground right next to us.” He gave her a hard look. “I’ll get them. You stay here.”
“But—”
He pointed at her. “Number-one asset, remember?”
She frowned, yanked a pair of gloves out of a side pocket of her pants and smacked them on the palm of his hand. “Until the outside of the container is properly decontaminated, no one touches it without gloves on.”
He pulled on the first glove with a snap and saluted. “Yes, ma’am.” He grabbed the sample container, identical to the one she’d carried for almost two days, and brought it on board. He stowed it to the interior bulkhead with straps, then turned to her and waggled his hands, silently asking what to do with the gloves.
She had more in her pocket.
She mimed crumpling them up in a ball and throwing them out of the helicopter. So that’s what he did.
Smoke turned and waved at her from the pilot’s seat, but she wasn’t sure what he was trying to say.
“Leonard needs to talk to us,” Sharp said. “We’re shutting the bird down, okay?”
The level of noise dropped as the engine was turned off.
“Is it really important enough to delay getting the samples to the lab?” she asked.
“He wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t.”
The rotors slowed down and most of Sharp’s team took up defensive positions on either side of the aircraft. Two of them took Cutter’s body, wrapped it in a tarp and strapped it to the bulkhead, as well.
Leonard walked toward them, but stopped about ten feet away. As soon as the noise from the helicopter was low enough for him to be heard, he started yelling.
“We’re all in deep shit.”
That much she knew already. “Can you be a little more specific? Shit is all I’ve been in lately.”
“Marshall has issued an arrest order for all of you. Those of us on the team that came here initially are to be put under arrest as soon as we leave the site. No one is to assist you in any way.”
Grace’s jaw fell open. “He can’t do that.”
Leonard looked at Sharp. “Where’s Cutter?”
“Dead.” Sharp gestured with his head at their commander’s body, covered and anchored to the bulkhead.
Leonard stared at them for a moment, then exploded with, “What the fuck? When? How?”
“About thirty minutes ago,” Sharp answered. “When we were taking off. We took fire from the base.”
“Crazy bastard,” Leonard said, pacing a few steps away then back again. “What a giant clusterfuck.”
“We can’t stay here,” Sharp told him. “For all we know, Marshall has another bird coming in behind us.”
Leonard raised his hands in frustration. “Where the hell are you going to go?”
Chapter Fourteen
“We have to get these samples to the lab in Bahrain yesterday,” Grace told Leonard.
“Where are you going to stop for fuel? Every military base between here and Bahrain has probably been alerted.”
“Colonel Maximillian will pave the way,” she argued. “He—”
“Maybe,” Leonard interrupted. “But how fast can he do that? If Marshall’s already issued orders and has people looking for you, it’s going to take a while for new orders to reach them.”
“They’ll want to confirm those orders,” Sharp added. “That will take even more time.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Grace said between clenched teeth. “Is there nowhere else to get fuel besides American military bases?”
“There aren’t any Coalition forces’ bases left,” Sharp said. “We’d have to stop at a civilian airport or landing field. Anyone with an ax to grind with American military could take a shot at us.”
Grace’s hopes fell.
“There is one place,” Leonard said in a faintly hesitant tone. “A friend of Cutter’s set up a not-quite-legal emporium near the border between Afghanistan and Iran at an abandoned military base.”
“I hear a but in there somewhere,” Grace said.
“But this guy is a little on the shady side.”
“Do you know the coordinates?”
“No, but Cutter has them in his journal. Do not let your guard down around him.”
“Journal?” Sharp asked. “What journal?”
“He keeps it with him, usually under his clothes.” Leonard backed away a step. “I’ve got to get back. We’ve got our hands full with someone taking shots at us everyone once in a while. We had to turn away some family members who wanted to get into the village. Make sure you read through the journal. There might be more info in there you can use.”
Sharp waved. “Thanks, man. Take care of yourself.”
“Same goes for you.” Leonard glanced at Grace and saluted.
She saluted back as Smoke started up the engine again. She made her way back to her seat, but Sharp, Hernandez, Runnel and March went to Cutter’s body. Sharp searched his body for the journal and found it under his clothes, in a plastic bag strapped to Cutter’s lower back. He handed her the book, then helped the rest of his team rewrap their commander’s body in the tarp.
Grace looked at the tattered book in her hands. The plastic covering was coated in blood. Cutter’s blood. She ripped the plastic off, unable to look at his blood for another moment more.
The team secured the body to the bulkhead then returned to their seats.
Sharp took the journal and skimmed. About three-quarters of the way through, he stopped to read a couple of pages more thoroughly.
“Fuck.” He shook his head.
“Did you find it?” She couldn’t tell if he’d found the information or not.
“Yes.” He looked around at the team and gave them the coordinates to Cutter’s friend’s Afghan emporium.
Smoke, who’d turned around in the pilot’s seat to listen, asked, “Now give us the bad news.”
“Cutter’s friend is CIA.”
The helicopter was suddenly full of more swear words than she’d ever heard in one place, ever.
Hernandez said it best. “We’re fucked. Totally fucked.”
The rest of the team seemed to agree, until Sharp put in, “We don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“We can’t stay here,” Grace added.
Everyone stopped complaining.
Smoke looked at Grace and Sharp, then at the rest. “Let’s hope Cutter’s friend is actually friendly.” He revved the engines some more and they lifted off.
As soon as they were safely away, Sharp leaned over to talk in her ear. “When we get to the location, I want you to stay out of sight.”
“Hide?” she asked.
“Yes. I don’t want this guy to know you’re with us until I’ve had a chance to figure out if he’s going to help us or bury us.”
“Okay, but where are you going to hide me?” She glanced around the aircraft. Every space and crevice was already in use.
“Behind Cutter’s body.”
She turned her head to look at him so fast, she was sure whiplash was going to be an ongoing problem. “What?”
“It’s the least likely place anyone will look.”
“It’s the first place I’d look,” she retorted.
His frown was unforgiving. “You got a better idea?”
“Yeah, why don’t we pretend I’m one of your guys and I’m injured. I can fake unconsciousness.”
His gaze flickered to her chest. “There’s just one problem with that, Doc.”
“What?”
“You don’t look anything like any Green Beret.”
She grit her teeth. “So, I’ve got a chest wound.”
“There’s no chest wound in the world that could result in your...figure.”
“I’ll be lying down,” she managed to say without punching him in the face. “Cover me up with blankets or something.”
“This isn’t World War Two. We don’t have bulky blankets, just the reflective, emergency kind.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“If you won’t hide, you won’t hide.” He shrugged, a jerky, tense movement. “Just sit there and don’t make eye contact with anyone.”
“How imaginative. The old hide in plain sight plan, eh?”
He didn’t respond.
She was going to die. Not from a bullet or bacteria. No, she was going to die of terminal irritation. Men.
She crossed her arms over her chest and attempted to relax enough to lower her blood pressure, but her mind wouldn’t stop revisiting their impossible situation.
Marshall blamed her for the death of his son. She understood that. She blamed herself for his son’s death too. What she didn’t understand was his belief that she was somehow culpable for the deaths of his patrol. They hadn’t followed procedure. They’d waited too long to put on their protective gear. Yet, he seemed absolutely certain she was at fault. Had his rage compromised his objectivity? That seemed likely. And she’d dragged the A-Team into this mess and now Cutter was dead.
She should tell them all why Marshall had seemingly gone nuts, but she needed them to help her complete the mission.
The mission came first.
Exhaustion weighed her eyelids down, and she didn’t have the physical resources to fight the oblivion of sleep.
The rattle and shake of the helicopter kept waking her up to snippets of the conversation around her.
“Why the fuck does Marshall hate her so much?” Hernandez shouted.
“I don’t know,” Sharp answered. “She didn’t buck any of his orders until we got to the village and he wanted to just bomb the place.”
“Maybe they’d had an altercation before?” Hernandez’s question faded into a fog.
A hard bump of turbulence woke her to hear Runnel saying, “It’s like he’s gone crazy of the batshit-crazy variety.”
She knew why he wasn’t acting rationally. The IED explosion two years ago had damaged the living as much as the dead.
Faces slid past her mental eye. People shouting, hiding, shooting. Someone calling out for medical help. She had to get there fast, dodge soldiers taking defensive positions and reach the bloody man on the ground outside of his destroyed vehicle. He was dead. She continued forward. There were two of her nurses, both dead, but the man underneath them was alive. His calls for help spurring her to... A shout from the right and—She heard herself screaming.
Men were yelling, the voices indistinct. The whole room vibrated at a rate that felt wrong and uncomfortable. The discomfort rose, helping her fight her way back to complete consciousness.
“What the fuck happened to her, man?” Hernandez shouted.
“I don’t know,” Sharp yelled back. “Unlike most women, the doc doesn’t talk about personal stuff.”
Wonderful, they were talking about her.
“What happened during that convoy attack?” March asked Sharp. “Did you read the entire report?”
“I read the official citation for her medal and talked to one of the men who was there,” Sharp answered. “He said she more than earned it.”
“So, what is this?” Hernandez demanded of all of them. “Post-traumatic stress?”
“Yes,” Grace said, opening her eyes and trying to sit up properly, but Sharp put his hand on her upper back and urged her to keep her head down. As much as it comforted her, as much as she would like to crawl onto his lap and hug him for a year, she waved him off. Not in front of the team. “I started experiencing panic attacks a few months ago in response to specific stimuli.”
“You sound like a textbook, Doc,” Hernandez said. “PTSD doesn’t follow a textbook.”
Tears dripped down her face, but she found the strength to smile anyway. “I’ve discovered that the hard way.”
“What’s Marshall’s problem with you, Doc?” Sharp asked.
She didn’t want to remember. “Someone died during that attack. Marshall blames me for that soldier’s death.”
The men of the A-Team stared at her. They didn’t need to give voice to the question on all their faces.
“No,” she told
them, weary to her bones of carrying the guilt for events out of her control. “I wasn’t personally responsible for the death Marshall blames me for. I think I could have prevented it, had I made different decisions, but then other people would likely have died. Hindsight sucks.”
Everyone but Sharp nodded. He watched her with narrow eyes and a tilt to his head that told her he knew there was more to the story.
“Nothing about the way he’s conducted himself is rational,” Sharp said. “Maybe he needs some time stateside, or counseling, or there’s something else we don’t know about going on, but it’s clear he’s advocating actions that are questionable, if not illegal.”
The face of every Green Beret on the aircraft transformed, becoming cold and calculating. No one said a thing, but they didn’t need to.
They were on her side.
Sharp grabbed the headset and handed it to her. “Call your CO. We need info and support.”
She wiped the tears off her face and sucked in a deep breath. “Okay.” She put the headset on and said, “Smoke?”
“Fire,” he replied so fast she had to wonder if that was how he always responded to his name.
“Do you always say that when someone calls your name?”
“Only when things are good.”
She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. Curiosity made her ask, “What if things aren’t good?”
“I say something else.”
Wow, this guy was not a talker. “I need to reach my CO again, Colonel Maximillian.”
“Roger that.”
She waited, staring at Cutter’s blood on the floor of the helicopter. They were lucky only Cutter got hit.
Lucky? That word did not apply. God, the whole situation was messed up. They had a man-manipulated, weaponized bacteria to deal with, and an officer who seemed hell-bent on making it worse.
A click came through the headset and Max’s voice filled her ears. “Grace? Dr. Samuels?”