by Mel Odom
Matthew worked with an interpreter as he checked over the children who were brought to him. Only a few had any appreciable English, and hardly any Americans were proficient in the local languages. Matthew’s command of the Somali language had grown admirably in the past three weeks, but he still didn’t want to talk to parents without the interpreter.
He worked hard, and Bekah respected that. He arrived at the clinic at daybreak and didn’t leave until the sun was setting. Travel after dark was limited, and most people wanted to return to wherever they were living within the city by then. A large number of the people were homeless, either because their residences had been destroyed or because they’d come in from villages outside Mogadishu.
They lived in tent cities in alleys, courtyards, and wrecked buildings. Bekah had been through some of the areas and felt bad for the people, but they were living. That was what people learned to do when they had nothing. Bekah had seen that in Callum’s Creek.
“The kids like you.” Bekah walked beside Matthew as she escorted him to the break area. He didn’t take breaks often, usually only long enough to grab a sandwich and a bottle of water and go to the bathroom. He was gone on break usually ten minutes tops, then he was back in that receiving room facing a long line of ailing children. She didn’t know how he did it.
Matthew smiled, and some of the fatigue etched into his face briefly lifted. “I like the kids. It’s a simple relationship. They’re sick or hurt, and I fix them. And I thank God I’ve got the medicine and the staff to get that accomplished.”
“I’ve seen some of the other medical people working with them. Those kids don’t like everyone.”
The break area was a small room with a few groceries kept in ice chests. Two small, round tables in the center of the room were flanked by mismatched chairs. Another rectangular table occupied a spot against the wall. The ice chests containing the food sat atop it.
Matthew opened one of the chests and glanced at Bekah. “Sandwich?”
“I can make my own.”
“I’m sure you can, but I’m willing to do it for you.”
“Thank you.” Bekah kept the sandwich simple, ham and cheese and vegetables with mustard.
Matthew fixed both sandwiches, wrapped them in paper towels from a nearby roll, took two more towels to use as napkins, and grabbed two diet soft drinks. He turned toward the tables and smiled. “Looks like we have our choice of seating.”
Bekah went to the nearest table, put her rifle on the floor, and placed her helmet in the chair next to her. She accepted the sandwich when Matthew offered it, then waited for him to settle in.
Cries of sick and wounded children carried into the break area. It was a constant undercurrent of noise. Bekah was certain it would join the other nightmares she already suffered every night.
Matthew gazed at her. “How are you doing?”
Bekah picked at her sandwich. “I’m okay.”
“You look tired.”
“Long days will do that to you.” She gave him a slight grin. “Having people shoot at you kind of adds to the stress level.”
Matthew laughed, but she knew he only did that out of reflex. There was nothing amusing about the situation they were in.
He sipped his drink. “Are you sleeping all right?”
“I am.”
“Because you don’t look like you’re getting enough sleep.”
“Have you seen a mirror lately?”
Matthew grinned, and she liked the easy way that expression appeared on his face. “Okay, I’ll back off. I was just concerned about you. So far, I haven’t lost a friend over here. You have.”
“I’m working through it.” Bekah took a bite of her sandwich. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Is this everything you thought it would be?”
Matthew sighed and slumped back in his chair. For a moment Bekah feared she’d gone too far.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Yes you did.” Matthew smiled at her wearily. “I think we both meant to pry. It’s what we do when we’re in a situation we don’t have control of and don’t completely understand. We check the people around us and see how they’re feeling about things. I’m sure you have someone like that at home.”
Bekah thought about that for a moment. “My granny. Every time I was going through something—when I was pregnant with Travis, when I was going through my divorce, when I was first activated to come overseas—she was the one I talked to.” She smiled at the memories and was surprised at how much comfort they brought her. “We usually have our best talks when we’re hanging laundry.”
“You hang laundry?”
“Yep. Clothesline. Clothespins. The works. Granny likes the way everything smells when it’s dried in the sun. For that matter, so do I.”
“What do you do in the winter?”
“We use the dryer. Oklahoma isn’t exactly the Old West. We do have modern conveniences. Like indoor plumbin’ and ’lectricity.”
Matthew looked chagrined. “I didn’t think—” He stopped himself. “Well, yes, I guess I did think maybe it was. Not all of it, but maybe where you were from.”
Bekah laughed at his discomfort, and it felt good to do so. “I’ve got some pictures on my camera to prove it. I’ll show them to you sometime.”
“I’d like that.”
Bekah was surprised how comfortable she felt around Matthew, especially since they came from two very different walks of life.
“In answer to your question, being here is a lot different than I thought it would be.” Matthew took a bite of his sandwich. “I just didn’t realize how . . . overpowering helping these people would be. Especially the kids. I love working with the kids. That’s the one thing I’ve always been certain of, the one thing I believe God gave me to do. And I believe God put me here to help.”
“You could have helped kids in Boston. You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”
Matthew shook his head. “It wouldn’t have been the same. It wasn’t the same. This . . . this is different. I feel like I was called to this place, at this time. Haven’t you ever felt like God put you somewhere?”
Bekah was quiet for a moment, then decided to be honest. “I don’t think God has much of an interest in my life.”
Matthew frowned. “How can you say something like that?”
“Because if there’s any place I should be, it’s back home with my son and my granny. Travis needs raising, and my granny needs help on that little bit of family land we’ve hung on to.” Bekah shook her head. “And when I get back, I’ve got to find another steady job. I lost the last one.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Bekah shrugged. “I can find another job.”
“That wasn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about the fact that you don’t feel God is working in your life. That’s got to be an awful lonely feeling.”
“If he’s been around, I haven’t seen any signposts. And I don’t know what he would expect me to do.”
“You’re raising your son and helping your grandmother.”
“When I’m there.” Bekah tried not to sound bitter, but she suspected she wasn’t quite pulling it off.
“Keep an open mind. You might be surprised at what you see one day.” Matthew nodded at the people standing in line to be examined. “These people come to me for medical aid, but I want to give them more than that. I talk to them about God as I work. A lot of these people’s souls are wounded worse than their bodies.”
Over the last couple days, Bekah had overheard Matthew talking about God’s love and salvation, praying with patients, and encouraging them, and many times she had felt better for it.
Matthew smiled. “Some of these people are Christians already. Others just need to be shown the way. God cares about them. They need to be told that until they can see it for themselves. Everyone needs that sometimes.”
Bekah nodded, but she didn’t think so. She was cert
ain that if God had any interest in her life, she’d have known it before now.
The attack on the clinic came during shift change for the Marines, and it was perfectly camouflaged.
Bekah walked out of the building feeling guilty at leaving Matthew Cline behind, but she knew her team needed the precious little rest they were getting, and they had orders to stay together. It was after eighteen hundred hours, and the line to get medical attention wrapped around the building. Parents and children sat on the ground. Mothers held blankets over small children to protect them from the heat of the sun. They swatted at flies that tried to feast on the children’s open sores.
A man and a boy caught Bekah’s attention, and she didn’t know what it was at first. Something just wasn’t right. The fact that a mother wasn’t present wasn’t surprising. Many of the mothers were dead, victims of the violence and sickness that ravaged the city. Then she realized it was the way the man and boy were sitting in line together.
The man was in his early twenties, and the boy was eleven or twelve, though age was sometimes hard to determine in the young because malnutrition often kept them small. But the man had to be an older brother, perhaps an uncle.
Bekah couldn’t help wondering where the parents were, or where other siblings might be. But even that could be explained—all kinds of people came to the clinic.
These two sat side by side and stared at the building across the alley, like they were looking but seeing nothing. They weren’t talking. But many of the other people waiting outside weren’t talking either. Several of them slept or sat listlessly while trapped in fever or pain. Some parents held animated, sometimes irritated, conversations with their children. Or the children entertained each other or themselves.
The boy beside the man sat stiff and looked scared.
The man glanced over at Bekah and wore a hard look. When his eyes met Bekah’s gaze, he quickly looked away.
Warning bells went off in Bekah’s head. The boy wasn’t acting right either, and it wasn’t sickness or pain or even worry about the doctor that had him acting so strangely.
Bekah spoke in a low voice that barely carried. “Pike.”
“Yeah.” Pike turned to her.
“There’s a man and a boy over here at four o’clock.”
“Got them.” Pike’s expression remained neutral.
“Something’s not right.”
“They look okay to me.”
“Trust me. The boy’s not okay.” She still couldn’t put into words what bothered her about the scene, but she knew the disturbance was real.
Pike nodded. “What do you want me to do?”
“Wait here with the others. Cover me.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know. But that kid’s not acting right.”
“All right.”
Bekah split off from her team and headed over to the line of waiting patients. The man looked at her suspiciously, but the boy never moved. Quietly, Bekah walked along the line of people and carried her rifle at the ready. She acted like she was checking the severity of the patients’ conditions, something that had gone on all day because Matthew wanted the weakest and sickest patients brought in immediately. Nurses and Marines had been making triage examinations, so her presence there wasn’t out of the ordinary.
Except that she had her team waiting on her.
The man’s dark gaze slid from her to the three Marines standing only a short distance away. He shifted nervously, his hands hidden inside his long coat. Bekah was eight people away when the man leaned over and spoke to the boy. The boy ignored him, continuing to stare at the blank wall across the alley. The man spoke again, more sharply this time.
Woodenly, the boy got to his feet and turned toward the clinic door. His eyes were vacant, but it wasn’t from sickness. It was from fear. The look in his eyes reminded Bekah of the time Travis had discovered a rat snake in the henhouse eating chicks. Bekah had been with him, and he’d looked like he had seen a monster.
That was the way this boy looked now.
“Hey.” Bekah stepped in front of the boy. “Are you all right?” She didn’t know if he spoke any English.
Although the boy stopped, he didn’t look up at her. He stood there like a statue.
Behind him, the man barked an order.
The boy shook for a moment, then lifted his hands and pulled the pin from a grenade he’d been hiding under his shirt.
Adrenaline hit Bekah, flooding her with that old, familiar fight-or-flight response. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered that the grenade only had a three- or five-second delay before it detonated. The kill radius could be as much as fifteen yards. Several of the people waiting in line saw the grenade and went into a panic as they ran for their lives.
Knowing that she couldn’t run and get away in time, Bekah grabbed for the grenade. The boy tried desperately to hang on to the explosive, but she managed to knock it from his grasp, and it bounced onto the ground and rolled toward the man who accompanied him.
Seeing the grenade, the man kicked at it but missed. He had a pistol in one hand and fired three or four shots.
Everything moved slowly for Bekah. She felt like she was mired in molasses, a fly trapped in amber, and she thought of Travis and Granny and how she’d never get to see them again. At the same time, though, she was moving, rushing toward the man with the gun in spite of the weapon.
She knew she had to cover the grenade. The Marines had trained her for a situation just like this. It was better for one Marine to die than a half dozen, better that one Marine die instead of dozens of men, women, and children who had been seeking medical attention. And in the back of her mind, she thought of Matthew Cline’s words about the meaning of sacrifice.
The man pushed himself away from the wall and at her, evidently thinking he wanted to live a little longer. His path took him into Bekah’s way. Single-mindedly intent on diving to the ground, Bekah hit the man in the stomach with her shoulder. They went down in a tangle, flailing, and when they hit, Bekah was on top of him and the grenade was only inches away.
The man lay facedown, squalling in fear and struggling to get up. Acting on impulse, thinking only to cover the grenade, Bekah caught the explosive in a cupped palm and shoveled it under the terrorist. The grenade slid right under the man’s midsection, and she barely had time to get her hand and arm out before it detonated.
The horrific boom deafened her immediately and white noise buzzed through her head. She felt the man’s body jump beneath her and blood was suddenly everywhere, splattered across the ground and over the wall only a foot away. The air left her in a rush as the concussive force slammed into her through the terrorist’s body, and she felt something strike her body armor.
After a moment, she realized she was still alive, but blood was dripping into her right eye. She tried to get up, but her arms and legs wouldn’t work.
Then Pike was there, lifting her in his strong arms and holding her so he could survey her. Trudy and Tyler had set up a field-of-fire perimeter and were searching the crowd for anyone else who might have been involved with the attack.
Pike looked her in the eye. “Are you all right?”
Bekah couldn’t hear him, but she read the big man’s lips. She nodded, and her head spun.
“You’re one crazy broad, do you know that?”
Bekah knew she was lucky. She’d intended on covering the grenade with her own body. She just hadn’t been able to.
Using his thumb, Pike wiped blood from her eye. “C’mon, hero. We gotta have the doc take a look at you.”
She went with him, managing to walk under her own power despite her shaking legs. The boy stood there watching her, tears tracking down his face. Tentatively, not knowing what kind of response she would get, Bekah held an arm out to the boy. He hesitated, then came to her in a rush and wrapped his arms around her, holding tight as he cried.
27
SEATED IN THE COMMAND POST and nursing a cold cup
of coffee, Heath Bridger studied the court papers on Lance Corporal Bekah Shaw on his iPad. He’d already been through them a few times. He grimaced at what he was reading.
“Have you been oversampling the local cuisine again?”
Startled, Heath looked up and spotted Gunney Towers entering the room. Despite the long day, he looked immaculate and ready to go. The man was almost old enough to be Heath’s father, and he seemed to have energy to burn.
“I told you that your stomach is too tender for some of those spices.” Towers set a big stack of folders on Heath’s desk.
“It’s not the food.” Heath sighed and placed the iPad on the desk.
“I’ve seen that look before. There’s something that ain’t setting right with you.”
“Lance Corporal Shaw’s court case.”
Towers lifted a mocking eyebrow. “So, did she turn out to be some kind of felon after all?”
Heath shook his head. “From everything I’m seeing here—and I’m having to do a lot of reading between the lines to get the whole story—Bekah was trapped into a fight with a local guy.”
“Bekah? Not Lance Corporal Shaw?”
Heath frowned at Towers, who held his hands up in surrender.
“I assume you’re looking more favorably at . . . Bekah.” Towers didn’t crack a smile, but his dark eyes twinkled.
“I think I may have jumped to conclusions.”
“You were tired. Jet-lagged. She talks like a hillbilly girl, and you just figured she was a troublemaker.”
“Maybe.” But Heath knew that wasn’t all of it. Growing irritation filled him at the fact that Mark Kluger still hadn’t gotten in touch with him regarding the motion to set aside Darnell Lester’s death sentence. He hadn’t liked leaving things unsettled. No one at his father’s firm would shepherd Darnell the way Heath wanted the case handled, and he felt guilty about leaving the man.