by Julie Rowe
“I’ll leave now, but I’m not taking this moron with me.” She angled a thumb over her shoulder at Jessup.
“Moron?” Max asked, his voice hard. “How big a moron?”
She glanced at Jessup now and from his frown, he still had no idea what that meant.
“What did you do, man?” Hunt demanded.
Jessup’s surprised face told her he hadn’t expected anyone else to care. “I didn’t do anything.”
His defensive tone said it all.
“All I did was ask a question.”
Max stared at him, all trace of understanding mentor gone. “What question?”
“I asked her if this flu was a man-made weapon.”
“How would she know the answer to that question?” Max’s voice was silky smooth. Bad things happened when he sounded like that.
“Well, she’s, uh, sleeping with...you, so I figured you might have told her a few things you hadn’t told us.”
No one said anything for about three seconds.
“You’re right,” Hunt said to Ali. “He is a moron.” He glanced at Max. “I’ll back her up, if that’s all right with you, Colonel.”
Max looked at her, and she nodded.
“Yes. Go.”
Ali and Hunt headed out.
“Stupid fuck,” Hunt muttered.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m the moron,” Ali said conversationally. “I work my ass off trying to get you guys trained, but every once in a while, an asshole still makes it through.”
“I might not always like you, Stone, but I damned sure respect you. Anyone who doesn’t is too stupid for the teams.”
“I can’t be everyone’s friend,” she said, keeping her tone level. “I have to be a bitch and push people to their limits in training or they’ll never discover just how much they can do or how far they’ll go. Hell, even Max knows that and he’s not a Snake Eater, he’s Medical.”
Hunt was silent as they quickly slid around the back of the hospital and up the mountain. Where they were going offered no good views of the valley or easy trail to leave the area, but it was full of gullies and washout ravines, the perfect area to drop a small bundle of supplies.
“If you did sleep with him, it would be career suicide for both of you.”
Ali looked sidelong at the other soldier. “Really? After the conversation I just had with the moron, you’re going to say that to me?”
“I have eyes in my head, you know, and they work too.”
“So what?”
“So, you two have your own...language.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“When a man and a woman really give a shit about each other, they have a way of looking at each other. Expressions and gestures that mean something more. Code words and phrases. They talk with their eyes.”
“I had no idea you were such a romantic.”
“I’m not, but my parents are like that.”
“You think the colonel and I have...that?”
“Yeah. You both try to act professional, but to anyone who knows you, it’s obvious. You defer to him like I’ve only ever seen you do with your father. Actually, it’s more. And he, shit, he eats you up with his eyes, and when you see it, you smile. If you saw that expression on anyone else, you’d tear their face off.” Hunt chuckled. “It’s been kind of cute watching the two of you.”
Cute? It was cute watching them? It was lucky she hadn’t eaten anything much in the past couple of hours or she would have thrown it all up right on Hunt’s boots.
It was her worst nightmare, and now it was a reality.
All the men she’d trained, all the respect she’d gained, gone.
Poof.
They could all see it. They all knew. Sergeant Stone was fucking a man who was her superior officer and the man she was assigned to protect. She’d lost her objectivity, broken regulations and crossed a line she’d sworn never to cross.
“Say the word cute again in reference to me and I will punch you in the face.” She said the sentence absolutely deadpan.
Hunt chuckled again, unaware of how close to death he was skating, because right now she really, really wanted to choke him.
They left the village behind and she forced herself to walk ahead of Hunt so she’d have time to calm down before they stopped and she had to look at him.
If he wore a smug expression of any kind, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stop herself from...what? Taking her stupidity out on the first handy person who came within reach? She was the one who turned her relationship with Max into one that violated every promise she’d ever made to herself when she joined the army.
It wasn’t Hunt who deserved a beating.
She deserved every smirk and joke that came her way. Every one.
“I see it,” Hunt said behind her.
She stopped and looked in the direction he indicated. There it was, a camo-green package.
They scrambled down an embankment to reach it. Bigger than she’d expected. Four feet by four feet and covered in green cargo netting, it might be hard to sneak through the village without attracting attention.
Then again, people might still be interested in the drone they’d shot down.
It didn’t require conversation for Hunt to grab one side of the package while she nabbed the other. It didn’t require conversation to start heading up the hill either.
Hunt kept glancing at her, though, actual concern on his face.
“What?” she asked as they reached the goat track. “Worried I’ll break a nail?”
“Uh, no.” He cleared his throat. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”
“Probably, but you didn’t.”
He’d done her a favor, really. At least now, she had time to figure out some kind of exit route before shit got embarrassing.
“Look,” Hunt said, sounding nervous. “I’m sorry. It was unprofessional of me to bring it up while we’re out on a mission.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s none of my business and, hell, you haven’t even admitted it, so maybe I’m wrong and there’s nothing going on between you and Max.”
“Just drop it, okay?”
“On one hand, I’m happy for you, you know,” Hunt continued, seemingly unaware of her deteriorating temper. “You’ve got this iron maiden reputation, but it’s good to know you—”
Ali cut him off. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”
He shut up.
So did she.
They reached the edge of the village and took a moment to make sure they were unobserved before slipping in through the outermost houses. The smell of death and decay from inside told Ali that their occupants were no threat.
As they made their way to the old hospital, the odd gunshot was audible in the distance, but nothing close by. The locals, or whoever was around, must still be picking through the crash debris, looking for useful bits to sell or trade.
A small herd of goats and two cows trotted past them, on their way to the grassy hillside surrounding the village.
Either the farmer had let them out, or their owners were dead and they’d found an escape. One of those goats would make a decent meal for the people who were now under their protection.
She glanced over her shoulder and noted the direction the animals took. She could go after one once the package was delivered.
The hospital finally came into view and they walked through the doorway without incident.
Why did that feel way too easy?
Max came rushing toward them. “Everything okay? No one followed you?”
Hunt was right. Max treated him like he was invisible. All of the colonel’s attention was on her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ali looked mad
enough to tear a man apart with her bare hands.
Something had gone wrong, but he could see no injury on her, no evidence she was any less healthy now than when she left. He glanced at Hunt and saw nothing there either.
“What happened?”
“We picked up your package.” Ali sounded like she was angry with him. Furious with him. She dropped her end of it and walked around him, going into the building without a backward glance.
Max watched her for a second, then leveled his gaze on Hunt. “What happened? And don’t tell me nothing went on, because she doesn’t get angry like that without cause.”
Hunt winced. “It was something I said.”
When the other man didn’t add any details, Max’s moron radar went off. “What is wrong with you people?” he demanded. “Have you seen us doing anything we shouldn’t? Like holding hands or kissing? Or even disappearing together for unexplained periods of time?”
“Um, no.”
“Do we call each other pet names?”
“No.”
“Why does every soldier who spends more than five minutes with us think we’re behaving unprofessionally?”
“You have your own language.”
“What?”
“You know, married couples develop their own code words and body language. When you’re in a room together, you each know where the other is all the time. You’re careful to keep each other in sight and if she’s in a room, you always look at her first.”
Fuck. Shit. Their relationship was already harming her. If he didn’t do something right now to explain both their behavior, the harm would be irreparable.
“You,” Max said in what he hoped came across as the voice of doom, “have watched one too many Discovery Channel shows on human sexuality.”
“But—”
“General Stone assigned Sergeant Stone as my personal bodyguard. Threats have been made against my life. She’s not just teaching me how to shoot and defend myself. It’s her responsibility to keep me alive and safe. I wasn’t all that pleased to have someone hovering over my shoulder, and she wasn’t happy about having to do the hovering. But we both got over ourselves, worked out our differences and developed a working relationship that actually might leave me alive long enough to retire. I had to learn to trust her and she had to learn to trust me. I will never do anything to damage that trust, do you understand me? I had to deal with Nolan, Jessup and now you suspecting I was doing things or behaving in a disrespectful way toward the one person I do not want to piss off.”
Hunt closed his eyes, his wince taking over his entire face. “Bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard,” Max confirmed.
“I wasn’t trying to be an asshole,” Hunt said. “I was trying to protect her. She’s been limited in what she’s allowed to do. None of us want to see that continue.”
“Sergeant Stone is more capable of protecting herself than almost any other person alive,” Max told him.
“So, you’re not having sex?” Jessup asked.
When had he joined the conversation? Did Ali have to put up with this crap all the time? How on earth did she manage to not kill anyone?
“Just to be clear, so there’s no misunderstanding,” Max said carefully, “your question disrespects Sergeant Stone. I will never do anything to disrespect her, including answering your question, because the moment I do, I infer that the question is acceptable, when it’s not.”
He waited for Hunt or Jessup to respond.
Finally, after a few seconds, Hunt said, “I get it.”
“Me too,” Jessup said, glancing away. “She’ll probably kick the shit out of me during our next training session.”
“Probably,” Max agreed. “Set up rotating watches with whoever is healthy and inform Sergeant Stone. She won’t be on watch, but I’m putting her in charge of security in our new home until I get this damned vaccine finished.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, saluting as one.
“Dismissed.”
The men left and Max went into his lab.
Ali was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. “Nice pep talk.”
“Pep talk?” Max asked. “I was trying to save yet another moron’s life.”
“It’s hard to be you, obviously.” She hadn’t moved, hadn’t changed her tone one iota, but he suddenly realized she was laughing at him.
“I damned near strangled the two of them,” he confessed. “And you know how anti-violence I am.”
“You’re not anti-violence, Max,” she said. “You’re anti-murder.”
He glanced at the eggs he had incubating in his makeshift incubator consisting of an ancient lamp with an intact light bulb and some thin metal sheeting he’d shaped to direct the heat generated by the bulb at the eggs. “I’m most definitely anti-mass murder.”
She pushed away from the wall. “How long until you have a vaccine you can test?”
“Another eight hours. The kids came back with more eggs, so I can start a second batch now.”
“How many people can you vaccinate with the first one?”
“Maybe three or four, but I’ll need to test it before I give it to anyone.”
“Test it?”
“Normally I’d use mice, but...” He gestured at the shabby interior of the hospital. “I’m going to have to improvise.”
“Improvise how?”
There was no point in hiding it. “I’m going to test it on myself.”
“What’s the worst-case scenario if the test goes wrong?”
“I die of the flu.”
She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the only doctor we’ve got. You can’t test it on you.”
“I’m not expecting anyone else to do something I won’t.”
“I can guarantee you’ll have volunteers.” The determined expression on her face told him she was going to be first in line.
He had to head that off right now, but he knew Ali, knew she wasn’t going to let this go. She’d fight him tooth and nail. “If I can’t be the test subject, neither can you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”
“The test subject has to be healthy, no sign of the flu.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t leave a lot of people.”
“I guess you’ll have to cross your fingers and your toes that someone volunteers who’s not already sick.”
She didn’t answer, just watched him with a frown.
“I’m going to get these eggs cooking. After you’ve approved the watch schedule, could you try to sleep?”
“I will, if you’ll do the same when you’re done playing mad scientist.”
“Deal.”
Ali left the room and Max got to work.
He opened the package and was pleased to see all the supplies he’d asked for inside and unbroken during its landing. Syringes, needles, gloves, masks, saline and a number of small but vital things needed to prepare his homemade vaccine.
He candled the eggs the boys had brought and discovered fourteen that were at the right stage to use to grow the virus. He put four eggs that were too far along in their growth to chickens aside. The remaining ten unfertilized eggs, he gave to Fatima. She was soon happily transforming them into some kind of scramble with potatoes and a root vegetable he didn’t recognize.
The smell of food, real food, was so out of place in his stressed brain that it made him feel a bit nauseated.
Or it could be the lack of sleep.
Or the insane desire to choke Akbar, if he ever caught up to the slippery bugger, with his bare hands. For some reason, he didn’t think he’d have trouble killing Akbar, hand-to-hand or with a gun. Akbar was sick in a way no medicine or treatment could cure.
Predicting his next move was like
trying to see through muddy flood water. Too much, too fast, no obvious path.
Max carefully inoculated each egg. What was Akbar going to do next?
Making an accurate prediction was difficult. There were so many variables.
There were also a lot of militant and extremist groups who would welcome Akbar into their fold, supply him with a place to work and medical equipment on the promise that he was creating a massive weapon to use against the Western powers. None of those militants would suspect that he was willing to kill them along with their enemies.
All Max could do was imagine the worst-case scenario and assume that was what Akbar would attempt to engineer.
A worldwide pandemic that killed hundreds of millions. Was this flu capable of doing that?
Possibly.
And that possibility was enough to ensure that Max would break rules to try to stop it, including testing the vaccine on himself. Not a fact he was going to share with Ali.
He finished with the last egg and set them up to incubate alongside the first batch. He checked his watch—a few more hours and he’d be ready to harvest the virus growing and multiplying inside the first set of eggs, mix it with a stabilizing agent, screen out impurities and inject it into his body.
He turned from his work, stripped off his gloves and found a plate of scrambled eggs covered with a cloth on a backless chair just inside the door of his makeshift lab.
Ali was asleep on the floor, her feet almost resting against the chair legs.
He ate, drank a full bottle of water, returned the plate to the woman he was thinking of in his head as their house mother, and lay down a few feet from Ali.
He wanted to spoon up behind her, but that, after all the posturing and lecturing he’d done to the team, would have been stupid in the extreme.
At least she was only a few feet away.
* * *
Max woke to the sound of his alarm going off. No, not his alarm, it was his timer. For the eggs. The virus was done cooking.
He rolled to his feet and noted that Ali was gone from her spot on the floor. As he glanced up, she walked through the doorway and looked at the eggs. “Is it done?”
“Done enough for the next step in the process.” He gave her a once-over. “You got enough sleep? Had something to eat?”