Protecting His Own

by Lindsay McKenna

  “Depressed?”

  “That’s two questions.”

  “Oh…yes, you’re right. Okay, your turn.”

  He grinned wolfishly. “What do you do to relax? I haven’t seen you do that yet.”

  Sam rolled her eyes. “Oh, that. I’m a triple type A. I never stop working.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s two. It’s my turn.”

  “You’re right.” He grinned. She had a nice smile. Even more, he liked her full lips. The sunlight struck momentarily, illuminating Sam’s entire profile and making a halo of her fiery hair. She was beautiful in an arresting way, and Roc found himself staring at her in fascination.

  “What’s your favorite hobby?” she asked him. Then suddenly, she tripped. His hand shot out, gripping her left arm as he steadied her.

  “Thanks…I’m a klutz in this stuff.” Laughing a little breathlessly as she felt the strength and firmness of his hand on her arm, Sam added, “I guess I’m used to moving around on polished tile floors, not chewed-up asphalt streets.”

  Reluctantly, Roc allowed his gloved hand to slip from her arm. Seeing the flush of pink across her cheeks, he realized she was embarrassed by her stumbling. “That’s my job—to take care of you. Otherwise I’d feel useless.”

  Chuckling, Sam gripped the straps and readjusted her load once more. “You’re far from useless, Captain.”

  “Can we be less formal in situations like this?” he asked. “Would you call me Roc when we’re out of earshot of our people?” Searching her eyes, he saw Sam’s flush deepen, if that was possible. Her gaze skittered away from his and she looked flustered. Had he overstepped his boundaries with her? Militarily, they were the same rank, even though they were from different services. It wasn’t unusual in such a situation, when alone or behind closed doors, to refer to one another by their first names. So why was Sam reacting like this?

  “I realize you don’t like me,” he said, trying to help her out of his faux pas.

  “Oh, no!” Sam exclaimed quickly. She raised her hands. “I never said I didn’t like you. Did I?”

  “You never said it, but it sure showed.”

  Pursing her lips, she shrugged and wagged her head. “You don’t exactly endear yourself to others when you get in their face and start demanding things, Captain…er…”

  “Call me Roc,” he insisted once again.

  “Like Rock of Gibraltar?” she teased. Sam realized that he was genuinely trying to create a connection with her that would override their past. More than likely he was doing so because they had to work closely with one another over the next week, and he wanted a more neutral atmosphere between them so they could get their mission accomplished. That made sense.

  “Sometimes my men refer to me like that. Roc is fine.”

  “You strike me as utterly solid. Like a canyon wall rising a thousand feet straight up, made of granite.” Giving him a smile as she spoke, because she didn’t want him to think she was insulting him, Sam saw redness tinge his cheeks. Was he blushing? It was cold out and the early morning sun hadn’t made an appreciable difference in the temperature yet. He had to be blushing! Well, of all things. Thrilled that she’d gotten to him, Sam tried to rein in her assertiveness.

  “So I’m a rock wall to you?”

  “Well…kinda. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Can I call you Samantha?”

  “Er…sure. But my friends usually call me Sam. Either will do….”

  “Sam’s kinda masculine sounding.”

  “I get kinda masculine when I need to be.”

  “No kidding.”

  Laughing softly, Sam saw his mouth thaw. Even more, she saw warmth in his eyes for the first time. “Okay, my reputation precedes me.”

  “You earned it the hard way. You confronted me.”

  “You weren’t the first, nor will you be the last. Sometimes a woman has to stand strong and speak up. Speak the truth, no matter what.”

  “Well, you certainly took me on and did just that.”

  She heard the dry humor in his tone. “Thank you. I think.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I don’t think you like strong, independent women, Roc. Do you?”

  “I have a tendency to draw women like my mother, as I said,” he admitted.

  “Oh,” Sam murmured, “that’s why I was such a shock to your poor system.”

  Chuckling darkly, Roc saw her grin. He was really enjoying seeing the playful, teasing side of her. There was so much to this woman. Far more than he’d realized. “That’s putting it mildly. You flatlined me.”

  Flatline was a medical term that meant a person’s heart had stopped beating. She chortled. “Oh, now who’s embellishing things? You gave as good as you got. Judging from the murder in your eyes aimed at me in that E.R. that day, I shoulda been DOA—dead on arrival!”

  “Now who’s embellishing?” As he laughed with her, Roc felt his chest expand with an unfamiliar sensation of warmth, followed by a heady joy. What was happening? He was in a devastated area, surrounded by millions of people in dire straits, and he was laughing with this woman. A woman whom he’d thought had no heart, just a steel trap mind, who wanted things her way or else. How wrong he’d been.

  “You’re a fifteen-thousand-pound Daisy Cutter bomb, Samantha.” He saw her brows rise in surprise. “You know that baby they drop by parachute from a C-130 at high altitude, which explodes three feet above the ground, killing everything for six hundred yards around it? That’s what I thought you were. A real destroyer.”

  “Wow…and I only compared you to a rock wall. Whew!” Frowning, Sam searched his face, which was far more readable at the moment. She was starved to know him better, because she saw he wasn’t the ogre she’d first thought. “Sometimes, as a doctor, I’m the last line of defense. You’re a paramedic, so this isn’t news to you. You work with these types of situations all the time.”

  “Yes, I do. I just never had the experience I had with you.”

  “Because I was a woman medical doctor and not a male? That made it different?” She was searching to understand his reaction to her.

  “Yeah, I guess that was part of it.”

  “And would you have come up and demanded the same things if I’d been a male doctor?”

  Roc pursed his lips. He thought about that for a minute as they walked shoulder to shoulder in silence. Ahead, the residential area ended, revealing a small hill, maybe five hundred feet higher than the present terrain, that was flattened on top. According to the map he’d studied last night, there should be another shopping mall on that hill.

  “You’re probably right. If it had been a male doctor, I probably wouldn’t have gotten in his face like I did in yours.”

  “And you got into mine why?” Sam asked. She eyed the changing landscape as they walked. Ahead of them, the houses ended at the foot of a hill, the top of which had been bulldozed flat. It seemed to be a construction site, from what she could make of it. There were cracks on the slopes in the compacted yellow dirt, due no doubt to the earthquake. Except for that, it looked like an excellent spot for a medevac unit to be built.

  Roc glanced at her. “I don’t know. I saw you across the E.R. It was your red hair, I guess, that got my attention. You looked competent. You seemed to be in charge and I was desperate. He’d lost a lot of blood with that leg wound, and I was afraid he’d need a transfusion and go into deeper shock than he already was if he didn’t get it pronto.” Roc scratched his jaw and gave her a searching look. “Maybe it was your face that made me think I could count on you. There was something about you, with the red hair and those freckles.”

  Sam touched her cheek. “My freckles?”

  “Yeah,” Roc said uncomfortably. “You looked, well, I guess…trustworthy. You reminded me of a young girl, full of life, of fire, and I felt like you could help my man. So that’s why I headed for you.”

  “There was a male doctor in E.R. that day, too. Did you see him?”r />
  “Yeah, I did.” Roc grinned sourly. “He didn’t inspire me like you did.” Slinging the M-16 over his other shoulder, he added, “I don’t know. Maybe because you were a woman I felt he would get better treatment. Quicker attention.”

  “I see…so on some level you trust a woman in the midst of an emergency more than a man?”

  Her insight was as startling as it was unnerving to Roc. “You aren’t afraid to shoot from the hip, are you?”

  Grinning, Sam said, “Is there any other way? I prefer the truth over the other possibilities. Don’t you?”

  “You don’t play games.”

  “No. Never did. Gets people in trouble when they do that, don’t you think?” She gave him a probing look.

  “The women in my life were the opposite of you. All they did was play games,” Gunnison muttered. “The wounded-bird-with-the-broken-wing routine.”

  “So, you headed for me because I was maternal.”

  “Probably, looking back on it.”

  “And when you hit a brick wall and I told you we were in a triage situation and to put your man out in the passageway to wait for help, it destroyed your expectation of me as a woman healer?”

  Nodding, Roc said, “Yeah, that about sums it up.”

  “You realize now I was right to make the decision I did?” Sam held her breath. If Roc held a grudge, she’d find out shortly. Watching his face, she saw him scowl.

  He swung his head toward her, he met and held her serious green gaze. “Yeah, you were right. I was wrong.”

  Releasing that held breath of air, Sam jerked her gaze from his. Relief pounded through her chest. “Thanks for being honest, Roc. It becomes you.”

  “You’re the woman who likes honesty. I was just following your bullheaded charge in that direction.”

  Her lips pulled upward. “So now you see me as bullheaded.”

  “Sure I do. You can’t be in charge and not be.”

  “Well, you’re just as bad as I am in that department.”

  Roc pointed to the black embroidered captain’s bars sewn on the shoulder of his desert-cammo jacket. “Yep, and here’s all the authority I need to be that way.”

  Her heart lifting unexpectedly, Sam looked up and saw the point marine, Corporal Barstow, halt at the base of the small hill and turn toward them.

  “Duty calls us both now,” she told Gunnison. “It looks like we’ve arrived at our destination.”

  Roc nodded. “Yeah. This is the area I’d chosen. You remember seeing it from the air the other day?”

  “Yes,” Sam said. She watched her people gather with the marine contingent. Starting forward again, she picked up her pace, excitement thrumming through her. Roc strode easily at her shoulder. Suddenly, the pack she wore seemed lighter. “It looks perfect, Roc.”

  Warming to the way she used his first name—in a hushed tone only he could hear—he grinned. “Thanks! A compliment this time, not an insult…”

  Chuckling, Sam met his blue gaze. “Captain, I think in the last hour we’ve been able to put the past behind us. I’d even predict that the only way we have to go from here is up. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  Her teasing was direct and unmerciful, but Roc had the good grace to take it in stride. “You’re right, good doctor.”

  Sam could see the enthusiasm written on the faces of her group as she approached them.

  “This is perfect!” Lieutenant Shan said excitedly. “Look how flat it is for tents, Dr. Andrews!”

  Roc nodded to his men as he halted in front of the huddled group. The sun was higher now, the sky a light blue color and cloudless—another beautiful day in Southern California. Judging from the looks on his men’s faces, they liked being out in the field as much as he did.

  “Listen up,” Roc called, to get the group’s attention. “We need to climb this hill and check out the top, as well as the neighborhood. From up there, Dr. Andrews and I will study the map and see if this site will do. Sergeant, I want you to take the team and start assessing how many cracks have appeared in this hill due to quake activity.”

  Sergeant Simmons nodded. “Yes, sir. You want me to mark their location by latitude and longitude?”

  “Yes, I do. Measure the length and depth of each one. We need to feed this info back to Logistics and have the engineers eyeball it. This section—” he pointed to the left flank of the hill “—will likely have at least one, maybe two helo pads built on it. We can’t have the whole slope start sliding down when a helo delivering tons of supplies tries to land on it.”

  “Got you, sir,” Simmons said. He promptly raised his hand and called the rest of the team to follow him. “We’ll get started in the north, and work our way right around the base of the hill.”

  Nodding, Roc said, “Excellent plan, Sergeant. See me when you’ve got it completed. Keep your eyes and ears open for Diablo, too.”

  “Don’t worry, sir, they’re top of the agenda.” Simmons grinned.

  Roc smiled briefly and waved them off. Then he turned to Sam and her team, who stood by expectantly.

  “Doctor, do you want to check this out as a potential medevac site?”

  “We sure do,” Sam said enthusiastically. She smiled slightly. “You’re very smart, Captain.”

  Lifting his head, he studied her. “Oh?”

  “I’d have never thought about those cracks in the hill being problematic.”

  “You stick to saving people’s lives, Doctor. I’ll stick to what I know best.”

  The medical team chortled at his dry teasing. Roc saw Samantha’s face turn crimson, but he knew that she took his jesting in stride.

  “Still,” Sam said, “I’m impressed. I can see I’m going to learn a lot from you.”

  “Everyone can learn something from the marines, Doctor.”

  Again the group laughed. It was a good sound to hear, under the circumstances. Roc knew the age-old rivalry between the navy and Marine Corps was a good-natured one. And faced with this unmitigated disaster, they all needed a lift. After hiking through that hell in the suburbs, seeing victims of all ages barely hanging on, and knowing that epidemics were going to kill many of them if medical help didn’t get in here fast, they all needed a moment of relief.

  Roc didn’t say it, but just seeing the gold flecks in Samantha’s eyes as she stared at him lifted his spirits. Sam made him happy. That was a new and startling revelation. As he opened his map and refolded it to show this area, he stopped smiling and pinned her with a serious look.

  “You and your team ready to look at this site with me?”

  “Of course, Captain. Lead the way.” She gestured gracefully toward the hill.

  As Roc took a scrambling leap up the dried, hard-packed yellow dirt, which was mostly clay with some sand mixed in, he smiled to himself. Maybe this mission wasn’t going to be the hell he’d feared it might be. Maybe Dr. Samantha Andrews had a pair of hidden wings, and a halo beneath that blazing red hair that he hadn’t been aware of until now….

  Chapter 7

  February 4: 0815

  It wasn’t long before the curious residents nearby started trailing over to the site. Roc had given Sam the assignment of walking the square, flattened hilltop and drawing a rough sketch of where the medevac should be set up.

  As the sun warmed her and the air lost its chill, she stood with a clipboard in her gloved hands and began to draw where each tent would sit. The rest of her group were helping Roc’s men measure the fissures in the hill. Happiness threaded through Sam as she stood alone amid the activity.

  Hearing voices below, Sam lifted her head. She saw Roc pause at the edge of the hill, his rifle in hand, ready to be fired at a moment’s notice. Alarmed, Sam started toward him. He was wearing the helmet, but had set down his pack. With its bulky weight off his back, she could see that he was in damn good physical condition beneath the camouflage utilities he wore. Around his sand-colored web belt were grenades, a black leather holster with a pistol in it, and two canteens.

 
Approaching him from behind, she decided to call out and let him know she was coming. Under no circumstances did she want to scare him or make him think she might be an enemy. Everyone was jumpy because of the ever-present threat of Diablo, and Sam knew better than to come up unannounced.

  “Captain Gunnison?”

  Hearing Sam’s strong, clear voice behind him, Roc partially turned away from the two men standing below him. “It’s okay, Lieutenant.” He’d heard the question in her tone.

  Sam came to a halt nearby. Below were two silver-haired men, their faces lined and weathered. Each was dressed in civilian clothes—dark-colored jackets and slacks.

  “Trouble?” she asked in a low tone.

  “No.”

  “Good. Who are they?”

  “Their names are Frank and Jack, and they are retired civil engineers who have come to volunteer their services. I was just explaining to them that we have to gather information on this hill as a possible medevac site. They’re going to help my men with measuring the cracks, and also give me their assessment of this location.”

  Brightening, Sam smiled and waved at them. They smiled and returned her wave. “That’s great! And very kind of them.”

  “Yeah.” Roc slung his rifle across his left shoulder. “I’m taking them around the east side. You doing okay?” He looked over at her. Because the day was warming up, Sam had unwound her muffler and left it hanging around her neck. He noted the warmth lingering in her eyes, and his heart expanded.

  “I’m fine. Fine. Go ahead. I’m busy sketching—even Van Gogh would be jealous.” She grinned.

  Roc motioned toward a stretch of suburb in the distance. “Frank and Jack told me a number of children out there have dysentery. The parents have got all of them at one house that’s still standing, trying to keep them warm and do what else they can. When you’re done, do you want to go over there and try to help them? We’ve got some medical supplies with us.”

  “Sure,” Sam murmured. “This is only going to take me about ten more minutes and then I’ll be ready to go.”

  Nodding, Roc said, “I’ll send Private Lorenzo Gonzalez, my radioman, with you. Don’t go anywhere without one of my team escorting you, okay?”