“Felix!” Kyle yelled.
“I’m good,” he said, his mouth working a little too slow.
Felix pushed up and groped for his gun, but it was gone. Didn’t matter. He’d use his hands if he had to.
“Did you kill the pilot?” Kyle asked.
“I think so.” Felix shook his head and peered out onto the roof.
The mercenaries milled around the bird. They weren’t rushing off and away.
“I’m guessing those were their pilots,” Kyle said.
“Hope so.”
“What are you guys doing?” Val’s voice echoed up after them.
Double shit.
Felix glanced back at her group carrying both Isaac and Shane. They were totally out for the count.
“We need that bird,” Felix said.
Kyle took aim and fired, Adam a moment behind them. They shot to wound, hitting arms, legs, taking the mercenaries out but not killing them.
“Enough!” Zeina turned toward them, Jackie held in front of her, a gun pressed to her temple. “Who flies?”
“That’d be me.” Felix climbed the last stairs and marched toward them.
He didn’t have a fucking clue how to fly a chopper, but if it got him closer to Jackie, he’d take whatever opportunity came his way.
She was down to two able-bodied mercs. The rest were barely standing. With any luck, they were running the numbers on this op and seeing it for the disaster it was.
“You think I’m letting you fly me? Hell no.” Zeina pointed the gun at Felix.
He stopped, hands up.
“No,” Jackie wailed.
She turned in Zeina’s grasp and grabbed the other woman by the hair.
“Jackie—no!”
Jackie swung her fist and hit Zeina in the jaw. The other woman stumbled backward and swung her gun arm up. Felix dove for Jackie, wrapping his arms around her and turned not a moment too soon. The bullet ripped through him—but Jackie was safe.
Kyle and Adam rushed in.
Neither of the mercs even tried to stop them.
Jackie collapsed on the roof, clutching her side. Blood coated her back.
“Ja—Jackie?” He went to a knee, searching for her wound.
She rolled over and blinked at him, her face so beautiful and perfect.
It was the last thing he saw before everything faded to black.
20.
Tuesday. Presidential Palace Nouakchott, Mauritania.
“Felix? Felix!”
Jackie barely eased his fall to the roof. Between their weight and size difference, and her already being on the ground, he nearly flattened her.
“What happened? Roll him over.”
That voice, she knew that voice.
Val leaned over Felix, her face set in the hard lines and tight lips of the woman Jackie had first met. Together they got Felix lying on his back. Jackie ignored the burning in her side and instead felt of Felix’s chest.
He was soaking wet. With blood. His, hers, someone else’s? She was afraid of the answer.
“He wasn’t wearing a vest.” Jackie’s words were drowned out by the whine of the helicopter gearing up.
Val grabbed Jackie’s hand and stared into her eyes.
“I need you to focus right now. Those people are coming in this building and we can’t be here when they get here, understand? That is an angry mob, and they’re going to see any American as a mercenary. We’ve got to get Felix on that chopper.”
Jackie nodded and pushed to her knees. The first wave of dizziness smacked her nearly on her ass.
“I’ve got him,” someone yelled.
Kyle darted past her and scooped Felix up and over his shoulder.
“Come on.” Val grabbed Jackie’s hand and hauled her to her feet.
The pain stabbing up and down her side was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She limped forward. Val wrapped her arm around and guided her toward the chopper.
“Are you hurt?” Val yelled.
“I don’t know.”
Whatever was wrong with Jackie, whatever injuries she’d sustained, were nothing compared with the sudden deathly pallor she’d seen on Felix’s face. Jackie stumbled into the helicopter and Val pulled her the rest of the way in so she sat above Felix on the bench while Val continued to examine his wounds. They were crammed into the chopper so tight there were men holding onto the sides of it.
The blades whined louder and her stomach did a summersault as the runners lifted off the ground and they were airborne. She glanced out the open doors, past the men holding on, at the sea of people pressing in around the palace on all sides.
Where had they all come from?
What was happening?
The fences were down in places, there were no guards to be seen. The few military style trucks the PPM had were rolled over onto their sides. And the great, Mad Max style bus sat in the middle of the roundabout, flames springing from the roof to curl toward the sky, sending plumes of thick, black smoke up to mingle with the clouds.
This was what greed did. It destroyed and killed.
She blinked back tears and focused her gaze on Val. Except a bit of pink caught her eye.
Zeina Razqa sat at the front of the chopper, a man next to her with a gun pressed to her ribs. She still had her nose stuck up in the air and no doubt thought she was due better treatment. Because she was rich or some other reason that had crawled in that rigid mind of hers. How could someone who created such beauty, be so ugly inside?
Jackie’s vision blurred, either from tears or the wind, it didn’t matter. The helicopter dipped and bobbed to the side on an incoming gust of desert wind. The man sitting next to her grabbed her around the waist. His hand clenched her side and the most excruciating pain radiated through her body. She gasped for air, sand getting stuck in her throat and blinked up at the face of someone she didn’t know.
The noise of the chopper was lessened and so was the wind. Instead people yelled. She pushed up, but the man leaning over her planted his hand on her shoulder and shook his head.
Jackie must have passed out. It was all a blur. One moment she was holding on and now she was lying down on the bench in the chopper.
“Felix? Is he okay?” She twisted and glimpsed his boots as he was carted off on a stretcher.
The red and white cross painted on the wall made more sense than the scrolling, Arabic print her brain was too muddled to understand.
“Okay, Jackie? They’re going to put you on the stretcher.” Val leaned into the chopper. “I need to go assist Dr. L, okay?”
Jackie held up her thumb.
The man at her side helped her up and out of the chopper. A stretcher waited just outside the reach of the blades for her, and a few feet from that, the still-standing Alpha Team members and what looked like some of Duke’s team had Zeina cooling her heels.
Jackie had so many questions.
Kyle peeled off and jogged to keep up with her.
“Everything’s going to be fine, Jackie,” he yelled.
“You keep saying that. I’m beginning to question your meaning of fine.” Her mouth was dry, her words hard to force out.
Kyle kept pace with her stretcher.
Despite being on the top floor of the hospital, patients lined the walls, sitting on the floor, makeshift pallets of linens, on extra beds. It was a miracle there was even a stretcher to get her off the plane. And she didn’t need it. Not like these people.
The men steering her stopped at what she’d consider the nurses’ station. It was the only empty place she’d seen.
“Where’s Felix and the others?” she asked.
“Okay, they’re going to assess you here, then decide where you’re going.” Kyle took up a spot next to her bed.
“I heard them. What about Felix?”
“I don’t know, okay?” Kyle focused on the nurse or doctor closing in.
The two of them cut the melahfa off her and lifted her shirt. She stared down at an open wound the size
of her palm.
“The bullet must have gone through Felix and grazed you,” Kyle said, still in Arabic.
“Grazed?” She swallowed, tasting bile.
“When it left his body, it must have started to spin, churning up tissue.” Kyle pointed at the jagged bits of skin.
“That’s really shitty bedside manner.” She sucked down a breath, panic eating away at her shreds of calm.
“It’s superficial, right?” Kyle glanced at the doctor who agreed.
After a quick dressing and what looked like some over-the-counter pain pills Kyle helped her off the bed. Under normal circumstances, something as gnarly as her wound would mean time in the emergency department or more. But with so many wounded, there wasn’t time or space to give her the bed.
“Where’s surgery?” Jackie held onto Kyle. Whatever daze she’d been in since getting shot as wearing off and the pain setting in.
“Not sure. We’ll find it. Sit.” Kyle grabbed a clunky, old wheel chair for her and they set off.
“Where have you been? What just happened?” She glanced up at him. One moment everything was dire, and no hope existed. The next, well, she still wasn’t sure what she’d just seen.
“That’s a long story. The short version, well, Duke got plugged into a bunch of outspoken church leaders with the mosque and as it turns out they liked having a president they elected, who was not dead, by the way. Injured yes, but Val took care of him. They weren’t too keen about someone taking that away, so they did what people have been doing for hundreds of years. They fought back.”
Jackie closed her eyes. She had so many questions. How did Duke fit into this? What about the president? She couldn’t form the words, not with the sensation of bile slowly rising up the back of her throat.
“Surgery, this way. I think we’ve found it. Hey, look. There’s Adam.” Kyle eased her to a stop next to a line of chairs.
Unlike the rest of the hospital, the surgery waiting room was almost empty.
“Dr. L is working on Felix. Both Shane and Isaac are in prep and should go in soon,” Adam said.
“Who said that?” Kyle asked.
“The Canadian nurse.”
That should comfort Jackie. Dr. Lefebvre was a world class trauma surgeon. One of the best. But this was Felix. The man she hadn’t seen coming, and who’d put everything on the line for her and the man she still hadn’t gotten the chance to hash things out with. She slid further down in the wheelchair and stared at the tile floor.
She was going to lose her mom, she couldn’t lose Felix, too. She needed him.
“What happens now?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“We do what we always do.” Kyle grimaced. “We wait, and we hope the doctors can fix them.”
“I’m sorry.” Jackie sucked down a breath, causing a chain reaction of stabbing pains.
“This is not your fault.” Kyle went to a knee and took her hand. “None of this was your fault, understand?”
Then why did she feel responsible? If she hadn’t come here, if she hadn’t made herself a target, their team wouldn’t have been decimated. Her friends wouldn’t be trying to breathe life into the injured.
“You’re thinking right now how we could have avoided a lot of this, aren’t you?” Kyle asked.
Jackie nodded, too numb to answer.
“Look, if we weren’t here, Duke’s team wouldn’t have the intel they did to make the leaders of the mosque listen. They couldn’t have helped organize the people, find the president, or pull off that crazy plan of theirs. This could have been a completely different situation if it weren’t for you. Shit happens, and we deal with it. These are tough guys. They’ll pull through.”
Despite Kyle’s kind words, she didn’t feel any reassurance. These terrible and wonderful acts could have gone on without her. She should have waited, gone through the proper channels. But at what cost of life? All she’d tried to do was the right thing, but there was no one answer. If she hadn’t come when she did, more people would have died. People still might die today, she just didn’t know.
Wednesday. Al-Saddaaqah Hospital, Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Jackie couldn’t take her eyes off Felix for fear that if she did, he’d flat-line again.
Eight hours of surgery and all Dr. Lefebvre could say was he’d done his best. Jackie believed him. The man didn’t half ass anything. But this was Felix they were talking about.
She squeezed his hand, and still nothing happened. No response. Nothing.
They might never get the chance to butt heads and argue again. She could never tell him that this time he was right.
It’d only taken one bullet to topple the strongest man she’d ever met. One bullet to rip through his lung, nick an artery, and create enough internal damage that all they could do was hope, pray and wait. Val kept saying Felix would be fine that he was young and strong. But they’d almost lost him once, just after surgery when she’d been allowed back to see him.
That was hours ago.
She wasn’t yet convinced, but the longer they went without incident the better.
“Here they are.” Val’s English was strange after the near constant murmur of Arabic in the background.
Jackie glanced up. The curtain whisked aside and Val led some old and new faces all in her favorite color of green into the room.
“We’re running short on rooms, so we’re going to put Shane in here with Felix,” Jackie said.
“What about Isaac?” Jackie clenched Felix’s hand harder. She still had Isaac’s blood on her clothes.
“I’m here,” he called out.
A man Jackie didn’t recognize rolled him forward in a wheelchair while another kept a hand on his IV pole.
“Everyone’s okay then?” Jackie glanced at Val. She had her hundred miles a minute face on, hair up and wasn’t about to stop.
“Not everyone, but mostly, yeah.” Val glanced down at her. “Have you eaten? Showered? Slept?”
“No.” Jackie clenched Felix’s hand tighter.
“I’d suggest you do all three, and soon,” Val said.
“Why?”
“The Davis corporate jet should land any minute,” Kyle said.
“Of course it is,” Jackie muttered. Her Dad would no doubt be stopping here to head straight to his mines and check things out.
“Did we ever find out if they were cleared to bring blood?” Val asked.
“Wait—blood?” Jackie blinked up at Val.
“I have no idea,” Kyle said.
“Don’t quote me, but I think they are,” one of the newcomers said.
“Why is Dad’s jet bringing blood?” Jackie asked.
“When I made contact with Mr. Davis last night, he asked me what we needed,” Kyle replied. “I told him the hospital was in sore need of help. Blood, IV, short on staff, and he said he’d be here this morning.”
“Huh.” Jackie frowned. What was her dad angling to do?
“If that’s the case, we need a freezer truck to transport it.” Val closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t even know where to start with that.”
“I bet Duke can make that happen,” Kyle said.
“Have you seen him?” Val asked, her voice changing, going tight.
“No, not since yesterday. I’ll go make some calls, see if I can’t flush him out, or I’ll find a truck myself,” Kyle said.
“Let me know if you find out anything. I’ve got to get back down to surgery.” Val bent and gave Jackie’s shoulders a quick squeeze, then she was gone.
Jackie didn’t know what had happened to Val while they were apart, but Jackie would need to hear that story.
“Jackie?” Kyle knelt by her chair. “I’m going to hand you off to Grant and his team to get you to the airport, okay?”
“I can’t leave.” She clenched Felix’s hand tighter.
“Look, Felix is a fighter. If anyone can pull through this, it’s him. He’s got a lot to live for.” Kyle swallowed, his expression turn
ing grim. “Your mom...”
God damn it.
How did she choose?
On one hand, her mom was mostly gone. The only thing left was her body. On the other hand, Felix could pull through and be fine—or he could die. There was no way to know.
If she stayed and Felix lived, she’d live the rest of her life knowing she passed up the opportunity to say her goodbyes to her mother. Felix had said one of his biggest regrets was choosing to not be there when his cousin passed. Was that a mistake she wanted to repeat?
“He’ll understand,” Kyle whispered.
“I just—what if I let go and...?” The flat hum of the heart monitor would forever haunt her.
“We’ll be here with him. He’s too stubborn to die with an audience.”
“Is there a direct flight I could take instead?” She didn’t want to leave Felix’s side to go cool her heels on an airstrip while Dad made nice with people.
“Your dad’s jet? It’s picking up a couple groups of Americans who got stuck here and Letpa’s going to hitch a ride home with him, too.”
“Oh.” Jackie frowned. “You mean he’s not here to do a walk through?”
“Look, none of us are your dad’s biggest fans, but I think you might want to consider cutting him some slack. He’s not you, but he’s also not Satan incarnate.”
“Are you sure?”
“Malick—the guy who brought you medical supplies and dinner—is driving you. Talk to him.”
“What about you guys?”
“Well, Felix and Shane won’t be able to travel for a few days. Isaac might go back with you if the doctor clears him. Adam and I are going to hang tight to pitch in where we can until they’re cleared.”
Jackie nodded. Her gut had decided her next move for her, but she didn’t like it. She squeezed Felix’s hand and eased it back to the mattress.
Val was right. Jackie needed to shower and eat before she was trapped on a plane for however many hours it would take them to get home.
“I’m going to go see about that truck.” Kyle straightened. “Grant only looks like he just ate lemons. Don’t let that sour face fool you, he’s a pretty alright guy.”
“Fuck you. Sorry, ma’am.”
Jackie barely registered Grant’s words. She leaned forward and smoothed Felix’s hair off his face. His braid had come mostly undone and she couldn’t fix it. There were so many things she couldn’t make right, starting with how they’d left off. Yes, she’d forgiven Felix for not telling her about her mother, but there was a lot left unsaid between them, a lot she wanted to work toward. Right now, she just had to hope they’d get the chance.
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