by Mel Odom
The loss of that child stung horribly. Earlier in the day, she’d gone to check on Varisha. The young girl had acted dazed and disconsolate, but the other women were able to take care of her now, making sure she was eating and resting. Something like this would take time. Bekah knew that was what Granny would say, and she’d go on to tell her that nothing could substitute for that time. Varisha and her son took up so much of Bekah’s attention that even when she tried to keep her mind on the good she was doing at the camp, her thoughts veered back to the suffering mother.
We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Bekah wasn’t sure how that old memory cropped up. It was one of Granny’s favorite verses from the Bible—Ephesians 2:10. She’d made Bekah memorize it when she was a small girl and felt frustrated by life. That was just something to say, though. Bekah had never felt anything really happen when she’d said it. Now, though, as she reflected on all she’d been through since arriving in Somalia, she felt closer to that truth.
She finished the bowl of rice and beans, set it aside, and looked over her team. Tyler and Pike were passed out on the ground, and Trudy wrote in the journal she’d been keeping. She also wrote letters to her class, to let them know she was all right and thinking of them.
Bekah felt guilty watching her because she hadn’t written Travis or Granny in days. She owed them a letter. As she reached to retrieve her pack, she saw Heath walking her direction. She started to get to her feet.
“At ease, Marine.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Heath had his iPad in hand. He pointed at a place on the ground beside Bekah. “May I sit?”
“Of course.”
Heath folded himself and sat easily. “I’ve been studying the satellite maps of the area and found something interesting.” He tapped the iPad and brought up a map. “There’s a structure, looks like an ancient fortification, about twenty, twenty-five klicks south-southwest of our present position.”
Bekah studied the glowing monitor. The fortification, if that was what it was, didn’t look clear on the map. “Are you sure that’s a fort?”
Heath shook his head. “Nope. But I keep thinking about Haroun and Daud. Those guys must each have someplace they’re disappearing to in this area. I thought maybe you and Indigo Seven could take a quick run up that way in the morning and do a brief recon. Two teams, in and out.”
“Sure.”
“It should be pretty safe there and back. We don’t have reports of any hostile activity in this immediate area. You guys should be able to make it round-trip within a few hours. And you can maintain radio contact.”
“Yes sir. When do you want us to leave?”
“A half hour before dawn. That should put you at your objective just about first light.” Heath tapped the iPad. “Time it right, you can set up somewhere to the east of the site. That will put the sun in the eyes of anyone out there. If there is anyone. Then you can report back.”
“Yes sir.”
“I’ve pulled your people out of rotation for tonight. Get a good night’s sleep and start early.”
“Yes sir.”
Heath stood. “This should give you a chance to get some distance from what happened last night, Bekah.”
Bekah smiled at him, knowing he’d noticed her watching the grave site. She felt awkward and insecure about it, but she also felt relieved that she was going to get a chance to be away from the sick children and all the suffering going on at the camp.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Just be careful. Don’t take any chances, and get back home.”
“Yes sir.” Bekah watched him walk away and couldn’t help noticing how broad his shoulders were and how self-confident he seemed. Lieutenant Heath Bridger was shaping up a lot differently than she’d expected.
The next morning, Bekah woke twelve minutes before she’d scheduled one of the night guards to wake her. She lay there for a few moments, enjoying the warmth of her sleeping bag just a little longer, and waved the Marine off before he reached her.
Then she went to wake the rest of her team. Pike was already awake and dressed, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He nodded at her and reached to shake Tyler’s shoulder. The other man woke readily enough, but he wasn’t happy about it.
Trudy woke as well and took a deep sniff of her uniform blouse. “I can’t wait to get back to base. This is too long without a shower, people. Pretty soon I won’t need an M4 to defend myself.”
Bekah grinned at that but refrained from saying anything. She didn’t care for the grungy state she was in either, but it couldn’t be helped. This far out, there was precious little water to spare. The best they could manage was cleaning themselves with baby wipes, and even that was an extravagance.
Within a few minutes, they’d grabbed breakfast MREs and climbed into the Humvee. Indigo Seven was right on their heels.
Bekah took her place in the passenger seat while Pike slid behind the steering wheel. He turned over the engine and it caught on the first try. Then they were headed out of the camp. Bekah locked her assault rifle beside Pike’s as they bounced over the terrain. The vehicle’s lights cut through the darkness, but the eastern sky was already starting to lighten.
By the time full morning hit, the two Humvees were in place east of the fortification. The heat of the day was already starting to bear down on them.
“Looks like the lieutenant was right about the fort.” Pike lay on the ground beside Bekah and held a pair of binoculars to his face.
“Yeah.” Bekah studied the structure and was amazed at how it looked up on the hill. If she’d stayed in Oklahoma, if her marriage with Billy Roy had worked out, she’d never have seen anything like this. The most she would have hoped for were occasional trips to Dallas, maybe a vacation or two to Branson, Missouri.
When she’d been in high school, she’d enjoyed the history classes all right. Stories about people living in different parts of the world were fascinating, but that sense of timelessness had never truly touched her. Oklahoma had only been a state a little over a hundred years. That building on the hilltop was—according to the intel Heath had sent—nearly five times that.
The al-Shabaab troops standing guard on the fort were new.
Bekah took a Marine-issue high-speed digital camera from her kit and snapped pictures of the fort and the men. She wished they could get a look inside the fort to see the extent of the manpower. Judging from the number of vehicles they watched arriving and leaving, there were a lot of people.
After a few more pictures, she put the camera back in her pack. “We need to get going. We’ve probably pressed our luck long enough out here. We hang around too long, we’re gonna get seen.”
Pike nodded, but the thought of getting seen didn’t seem to bother him too much. “A place like that? It’s gonna be hard to bring down.”
“That’s why we’re gonna wait for backup. Our first objective is to keep that camp safe.” Bekah withdrew slowly till they were on the other side of the small hill they’d used for cover. She got to her feet and headed back to the two waiting Humvees.
As she reached the vehicle, her MBITR flared to life. “Indigo Eight, do you read?”
Recognizing Heath’s voice, Bekah keyed the transmit button immediately. “Affirmative, Indigo Leader. I read you five by five.”
Over the connection, shots sounded plainly amid screams of frightened people.
“The camp’s under attack. We need you back here ASAP, but you’re going to have to be careful. They’re all around us.”
Bekah pulled herself into the seat and reached for the safety harness just as Pike pressed the ignition button and got the Humvee into gear. “On our way.”
32
DURING THE NIGHT, the boy got worse. Daud watched over him the whole time and was happy to see that the wounds had stopped seeping blood. However, a fever had set in, plaguing the boy with sweats and then chills, with precious
little rest in between.
By morning, Daud felt he had little time to act if he was to save the boy’s life. He called Afrah to him.
“I am going to take him in.”
Afrah looked at Daud for a moment. “Into the medical camp?”
“Yes. There is no choice. His fever climbs steadily. If I don’t do something for him, he will die.”
“You do not know that.”
Calmly, Daud pulled back the bandage from the wound on the boy’s stomach. The flesh was dark and angry with infection, and the swelling strained at the wound enough that he feared it might burst open.
Afrah sighed. “If you go into the medical camp, they will recognize you.” He touched his own face.
Daud shook his head. “I can disguise my face with bandages enough to keep them from recognizing me. With so many people scarred by the struggles that sweep this land, do you truly think I will stick out any more than another man with burns? Especially in a medical facility? No. They will only think that I am another of our country’s walking wounded.” He looked at the boy. “But he needs medical attention, Afrah. He needs more than I can give him.”
“We could all go.”
“No. Only the wounded shall accompany me. That way there will be less attention paid to us.” There were two other men who needed medical attention. One of them had a bullet in his shoulder that Daud hadn’t been able to get to, and the other had a broken thigh that needed a proper setting if he was going to keep the use of the limb. “The boy and our men need help.”
“I know, but I fear for you.” Afrah dropped a heavy hand on Daud’s shoulder. “Should these Americans realize you were the one who killed the UN soldiers, it would go very badly for you.”
Daud looked at the boy. “If this boy dies while he is in my care, things will go even worse. I cannot bear to watch this happen again.”
“I understand. The rest of us, Rageh, will be here should you need us.”
“Thank you.” Without thinking about what he was doing, Daud wrapped his arms around Afrah. For a moment the big man held him, and it was almost like his father was there again. Then he broke the embrace, turned to the boy, and picked him up. “Help the others get to one of the pickups.”
As he approached the camp along the weather-beaten road that led to the collection of military vehicles and aqals, Daud’s stomach threatened sickness. He wanted to run, to turn around and go back as quickly as he could. The boy lay beside him in the seat, and he was attuned to the boy’s rapid panting and plaintive groans as he lay trapped in a feverish delirium.
A pair of Marines waved him to a stop between two Humvees.
Heart beating rapidly, Daud glanced in the rearview mirror to make certain the bandaging on the scarred side of his face was in proper position. Satisfied, he applied his foot to the brake and slowed the pickup. He didn’t carry a weapon. Neither did the two men in the back of the vehicle.
A young Marine stepped to the door with one hand on his pistol. Another Marine stood behind his partner with an assault rifle in both hands.
“May I help you, sir?”
Daud pointed to the boy and to the two men in the back of the pickup. “I have wounded. We were attacked by al-Shabaab at a nearby camp.”
The Marine looked at the boy. “What’s wrong with him?”
Daud lifted the bandage from the boy’s side to reveal the ugly wound, knowing that the Marine’s attention would be focused on that. “He was shot and now is fevered.”
The Marine cursed and shook his head. “He’s young.”
“Yes.”
“Give me a sec.” The Marine stepped back and talked quickly on the radio. Then he pointed to a Humvee that pulled up in front of the pickup. “Follow that Marine. He’ll take you to the doc.”
Daud nodded. “Thank you.”
“Good luck with everything. The doc’s good. He’ll get him fixed up.” The Marine waved them forward, and Daud lifted his foot from the brake and applied it to the accelerator. He rolled into the camp without any problems.
Daud followed the Humvee and pulled over when it stopped at the center of the camp. The driver pointed to the large tent nearby. Daud nodded and waved, then switched off the engine and gathered the boy into his arms.
Nurses spotted Daud carrying the boy and came over to him with concerned expressions. One of them reached for the boy. “Let me help you.”
Daud held the boy more tightly to his chest. “I have him. One of the men in the pickup has a broken leg. He will need your help more than I do. Thank you for your offer.”
The nurses went away, one of them to the pickup and the other to get a litter and two men to help her with the wounded man.
Daud strode into the tent and looked around. “I need a doctor. Quickly. This boy has been shot.”
One of the men in scrubs came over and lifted the bandage that covered the boy’s wound. “I’m Dr. Cline. Is this your son?”
Daud answered without hesitation. “Yes.”
“When was he shot?” Gently, the doctor took the boy from Daud’s arms.
Daud felt empty and more frantic as he followed the doctor to a nearby operating table. “Yesterday.”
“Who stitched the wounds?”
“I did. To stop the bleeding.”
“You did a good job, but I’m going to have to open him up and clean those wounds out. I’ll also need to take a look around and make sure everything’s intact.”
“Of course.” Daud stood by helplessly as the doctor placed the boy on the table.
Working quickly, talking to two nurses who came over to assist him, the doctor cut the boy’s shirt from his body, then removed the bandages, applied yellow-orange-tinted antibacterial, and used a scalpel to cut the stitches. Freed of the stitches, the wound opened on its own and wept infection.
“Will he be all right?” Daud kept remembering how he’d been forced to put Ibrahim in the grave with his mother. He could hear the whistle of the night air as he’d accomplished that, and he could taste the salt of his tears on his tongue.
“We’re going to do our best, and our best is very good.” The doctor smiled at Daud and kept working, calling out instructions, which the nurses carried out professionally and with speed.
Daud began to feel a little better.
“How badly are you injured?”
The doctor’s question caught Daud off guard, but then he realized the man was referring to the bandages he wore. “I am fine. Please attend to the boy.”
“If you’re in pain—”
“Please, this is nothing. The bandages are there to keep the flies from the wound. Take care of the boy. I will be fine.”
The doctor nodded and continued working. Within minutes he had cleaned out the boy’s wounds, inspected the damage, and pronounced the boy to be luckily free of life-threatening or debilitating damage.
Some of the tension that had filled Daud vanished in that moment, and he took his first relaxed breath. His next feat was to get back out of the camp without alerting suspicion.
Then a nearby explosion blew out the side of the tent and killed a nurse and the man Daud had brought in with the broken leg. The concussive wave blew people and supplies in all directions.
Daud threw himself across the boy in an effort to protect him, but when the second and third explosions arrived, he didn’t think any of them had long to live.
33
“INDIGO LEADER!”
Hearing the note of panic in the Marine’s voice, Heath answered immediately. “This is Leader.” He halted near the center of camp and looked around, not seeing anything that would warrant the tone.
“This is Indigo Two! Bogeys are coming in from the north! They’re rolling fast!”
“Affirmative, Two.” Indigo Two was one of the scout teams presently watching the camp’s security perimeter.
Heath looked to the north and thought he detected a smudge of dust against the early-morning sky. Before he could be sure, however, mortar explosions we
nt off inside the camp and he knew their security had already been compromised. The ground quivered under his feet.
Two of the aqals took direct hits and went up in gouts of flame. Bodies hit the ground several yards from the impact area.
Heath lifted a woman to her feet, picked up the small child beside her, and hustled both of them toward one of the cargo trucks. There wasn’t going to be enough time to evacuate the camp in the trucks, but Heath was hoping that whoever was attacking them was after the cargo and wouldn’t want to risk damaging it.
Many of the people were already heading out of the camp. They knew from a long association with violence that staying in one spot didn’t bode well in an attack.
More mortars fell into the camp, bringing mass destruction all around. Heath worked as swiftly as he was able, grabbing more people who were nearby and directing them to the truck. Then, realizing that there were too many, and that he was having to fight against those fleeing, he headed for a Humvee and spotted Gunney Towers legging it in that direction as well.
They reached the vehicle at the same time. Towers clambered into the rear deck and manned the .50-caliber machine gun. Heath slid behind the steering wheel and pressed the starter button. The engine blasted to vibrant life, and he released the clutch as he floored the accelerator.
“Two, do you have eyes on the mortar teams?” Heath headed north, toward the incoming vehicles. If he’d set up a vehicle attack on the camp, he would have set up a defensive line the vehicles could fall back to. Gunney Towers seemed to be willing to go along for the ride.
“Affirmative, Leader. North. Same as the bogeys.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Heath saw that three other Humvees were now in pursuit. “What kind of vehicles are the bogeys?”
“Pickups and light jeeps. Armed with machine guns and shooters.”
The dust cloud to the north was definite now, a solid line that revealed the vehicles racing toward the camp.