by Julie Rowe
She sighed, which led to a nasty coughing fit. “I’m going to find my gun, load it and fucking murder you if you don’t shut up.”
“No worries, Stone. I think you two are kind of cute.”
“Asshole,” she said, running out of energy all of a sudden. Her chest was so tight, and she’d hit her wall. Her eyes slid shut and all she heard was white noise.
* * *
She had to fight her way back to consciousness.
At first, all she knew was Max’s voice. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but she’d know his timbre and tone anywhere. She blinked heavy eyelids open, but nothing seemed familiar.
A flurry of movement at the edges of her vision caught her attention and pulled her further into the world.
There were people, lots of them, all in biohazard suits, rushing around with body bags on gurneys. A hand crossed her vision and she followed it back to her own left hand. An IV had been inserted and a tube led up to a bag of fluid, dripping its contents into her vein. Two other, smaller bags were connected to the IV tubing, also contributing to whatever was being administered to her.
A shadow crossed overhead. A tent, tall enough for a man to walk upright in, passed over her and settled around her. She wasn’t sitting up against the well anymore. She was lying down on a gurney. She tried to talk, but all that came out was a painful cough that wouldn’t let go of her lungs. She rolled to the right in an attempt find a position that would allow her to breathe easier.
Hands supported her shoulder and back until the fit passed, then gently helped her to lie down again. Max’s face, distorted by the faceplate of a biohazard suit, hovered over her.
“Sergeant Stone, how do you feel?”
So, they weren’t alone.
“I haven’t really taken stock, sir.” She did an internal audit, but had no good news to report. “Breathing is difficult, chest is tight.” She coughed and something wet splattered across her face. She wiped it away with her free hand, and it came away bloody. “And this isn’t a good sign.”
“What did I say about dying?” Max demanded. “You’re not allowed to die. Ever.”
God, she loved him. “Honey,” she said conversationally, “I don’t know where you got them, but you can take the crazy pants off now.”
Instead of rolling with the joke, he paled and looked like she’d knifed him in the heart.
“Max? I’m sorry,” she said, shocked at his response. “I promise not to die.”
“She’s delirious?” asked a female voice.
“No,” Max replied. “She thinks she’s a damn comedian.”
The woman approached and nodded. “The tough ones are like that. It’s a coping mechanism for when shit hits the fan.”
“Hey, Dr. Samuels,” Ali tried to say between coughs. “Tough ones what?”
“People, soldiers, heroes,” the doctor replied with a tight smile. “Like you.”
“Give her a break, Grace,” Max ordered. “She’s had to put up with me and my lack of soldiering skills.”
“Ha,” Ali managed to say clearly. “You shot at two enemy targets and hit both.”
Max shook his head. “No, you’re right, Grace. She is delirious.”
Now who was the comedian? She wanted to ask the question out loud, but another coughing fit hijacked her body. Who knew how much longer she’d be breathing, let alone talking.
“Colonel,” she said, finally able to speak after several seconds of concerted effort. “Could I speak to you privately for a moment?”
Dr. Samuels looked surprised, but she quickly moved out of view.
Max looked at her questioningly.
“I don’t know how long I have, so I figured I’d better say this while I still can.”
“Ali, it’s okay. There’s no need to give me your report.”
Report? Either they weren’t alone or he was trying to put off the bad news. “You are the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
He stared at her like she’d just spoken gibberish. “What?”
“Didn’t you know? Brave doesn’t mean aggressive. It means putting other people before yourself, putting their safety before your own. You’ve never once hesitated to do that.”
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he managed to say, “Well, some might just call me...slow.”
“Tell them to talk to me. I’ll set them straight.” She smiled at him, tasting far too much iron on her tongue. “I love you. I wish we could have had more time together.”
His mouth did another excellent fish-out-of-water impression before he gathered his wits and growled at her. “Don’t you dare give up now, you stubborn, hard-headed woman.”
She almost laughed. “I’m not giving up, I’m strategically retreating.”
“All retreats, surrenders and capitulations have been canceled.” He leaned down and pointed a finger at her. “No exceptions.”
The weight on her chest had gotten a lot heavier, pressing down, making her fight to breathe. “Promise me you’ll follow your own orders, sir,” she managed to say just before the heavy blanket of night closed over her head.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Max watched Alicia lose her battle with consciousness. She wasn’t responding well to the antibiotic cocktail. Her labored breathing and bloody discharge worried him the most, but she’d also been badly beaten.
“I want her on a plane and back to the base as soon as possible. She may have broken bones or have a small internal bleed,” he said to Dr. Samuels and the two nurses who’d entered the tent.
“Sir,” one of the nurses said, “it’ll take some time to get an isolation medevac prepped and here.”
“As soon as possible,” he said, not caring that he sounded like an inflexible asshole.
“Yes, sir.” The nurse saluted and left the tent.
“Sir,” Dr. Samuels said to him in a careful tone. “I took a closer look at the powder Stone breathed in under the microscope. There are anthrax spores in it, but also flour and cinnamon.”
“Cinnamon?”
“It’s quite irritating if you inhale it.”
There could be only one conclusion. “He used it to facilitate the spores getting deeper into tissue.”
“That’s my fear as well,” Dr. Samuels said softly. She put her hand on Max’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Increase the dosage of the antibiotics and shorten the time between doses.” Unconscious, Ali looked far too small to be the lethal physical threat she was. Her size and bruises made her look vulnerable and beaten.
A small hand tugged at his.
“How did you get in here?” he asked in Arabic to the boy standing next to him.
Coban stared at Ali, a huge frown on his face. “Is she going to die?”
“I’m doing everything I can to prevent that,” Max told him. “Where is your brother?”
“The soldiers gave us food and he fell asleep.” Coban looked up at Max. Calm, much too calm. “Father is dead. What will happen to us now?”
Max crouched in front of the boy and met his gaze. “A doctor is going to make sure you’re not sick. You will have to leave this place, but we will make sure you are safe. Do you have family in another village or town?”
Dr. Samuels came back into the tent with more IV antibiotic bags. When had she left? Max shook his head. He needed to sleep too.
“I don’t know,” Coban said, his chin quivering.
Max pulled the boy into a hug, though the biohazard suit made it awkward. “You and Berez are going to be safe, I promise.” He stood and took Coban’s hand. “Let’s get you back to your brother so you can sleep too.”
The village looked very different than it had only an hour ago. The first air drop had happened only an hour after Max made the
desperate call for antibiotics. He’d spent that hour guarding Ali and triaging the sick who’d ventured out of their homes after the gunfire stopped.
He estimated that 90 percent of the occupants of the village had become infected with the flu. A dangerously high rate. Any virus that could infect that many people in only a few days was alarmingly infectious. Any virus this contagious, with a death rate of 35 percent, could only be described as an infectious nuclear bomb.
As a result, he’d ordered the entire village and the region around it quarantined.
Four hours after his call for help, medical and security personnel began arriving. The fires were put out and a house-to-house search for survivors was undertaken. Anyone with symptoms was separated from those who appeared healthy and taken to a hastily erected tent where a combat support hospital had been set up.
Healthy survivors were taken to another tent with hot food, clean water, cots and heaters, so they could eat and sleep.
Blood samples had been taken from everyone, including Max, Alicia and the surviving members of their team. Only Max and Ali had tested negative for the flu.
Dr. Grace Samuels and Dr. Sophia Perry arrived with the medical team. Grace was overseeing the assessment and treatment of the disease, while Sophia took over the investigative side of the mission, confirming Max’s determination of the virus and restarting the production of onsite vaccine. It wouldn’t help Ali, but it had to be done.
As Sophia put it, why fuck with a method that’s working?
His biggest concern now was Alicia and her worsening condition. They’d gotten antibiotics running into her within an hour and a half of exposure. She shouldn’t be getting worse.
He and Coban reached the tent where the relatively healthy citizens of the village were being cared for. He got the boy into a cot next to his brother and tucked him in. He should tell Alicia that the boys were safe. She’d want to know.
Before he left the tent, he let himself watch the staff and villagers interact, ensuring all that needed to be done was being done.
Max nodded to the staff and returned to Ali’s tent. She wasn’t alone.
Sitting next to her was someone in a biohazard suit. Max recognized the man by his posture.
General Stone.
Max stood in the doorway of the tent, his stomach dropping into the very bottom of his steel-toed combat boots.
“Come in, Max.” The general’s voice sounded tired.
“Sir.” Max hesitated, then moved to stand on the other side of the cot. “I... There’s no excuse for...”
“Max,” General Stone said, “I know. It’s not your fault.”
“Sir, with respect, bullshit.”
General Stone smiled. “I see she’s been a positive influence on your attitude.”
“As the ranking officer, the responsibility for this clusterfuck is mine.”
“Max, you came into this situation with a team of four. We sent in another dozen to help. Do you know how many militants were here?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
“There were two different groups with over eighty fighters. You had bad intel, facing an insane adversary deploying an out of control biological weapon. There is only so much you can control, and my daughter has never played anything safe in her entire life.”
“I appreciate that sir, but I should have anticipated that he’d booby-trap his own body.”
“She’ll argue she should have thought of it.” General Stone cleared his throat. “What’s the prognosis?”
“I wish I could say it’s good, but to be honest, I don’t know. She’s not responding to the antibiotics as well as I’d like.”
“She’s a fighter.”
“Yes, sir, she is.”
“So are you.” The general stood. “You’re dead on your feet, Max. I order you to get some sleep.”
He didn’t want to leave Alicia, wanted to monitor her progress. But his brain just couldn’t come up with a believable excuse for the general.
“Before you can protest, you can sleep here.”
On cue, a biohazard-suited nurse brought in a cot and set it on the ground on the other side of the small tent.
This he could do. “Thank you, sir.”
Max was so tired, there was no point in putting off. He lay down facing Alicia and closed his eyes.
* * *
Max woke to a flurry of activity.
There were several people inside the tent surrounding Alicia’s cot shouting at each other.
He blinked the last of sleep away and the realization that they were performing CPR on her smashed into him.
His first reaction was to get to his feet and charge in to take over, but there were too many bodies between him and Ali. No, they didn’t need him barging in when they were already doing as good a job as he could. What he could do was get out of their way.
He could see Ali’s face in gaps between the first responders. Her pale skin, dark, dark circles under her eyes and the ventilator tube down her throat told him she’d gotten a lot worse very quickly.
They’d barely had any time together, but he already knew she was the best partner he could have ever asked for, professionally as well as personally. He couldn’t lose her now. He couldn’t.
Grace shouted, “Clear!” Everyone stepped back and Grace hit Ali with a jolt of electricity.
For a moment there wasn’t a sound, not a cry or cough, total silence. Then a beep echoed through the tent. And another. And another.
“She’s back!” Grace cried. “Let’s get her ready for transport.”
“Grace,” Max called out.
“Max, good. You’re awake. General Stone wants you on the same transport as Sergeant Stone. The base has an isolation room ready for her and you’ll be decontaminated when you arrive.”
He hesitated, torn by dual responsibilities. This had been his mission, his situation to resolve. He didn’t want to leave the job half-finished, but he didn’t want to let Ali out of his sight either. “What happened while I slept?”
“We had to put her on a respirator with one hundred percent oxygen. Her oxygen saturation got as low as sixty-two percent, but it’s back up to seventy-one now.”
Max glanced at the monitor and confirmed that number. “Has she coded before now?”
“No, that was the first one.”
“Can you manage here without me?”
Grace’s eyes smiled. “Yes. Besides, the general issued an order not a suggestion. You’re supposed to stay with Ali. You’re the best person we have to determine what she needs.” She pushed him to follow Alicia’s gurney. “Go. I’ll keep you updated on things here.”
Duty and desire warred within him so hard his fingertips tingled with the need to do something, anything. “Thank you, Grace.”
“Whatever you need Max.”
Max followed the transport team carrying Alicia’s gurney down one of the narrow roads leading from the center of the village toward the valley. Once past the last houses, he could see a waiting medevac helicopter poised to take off, its rotors creating enough wind to make the inside of his biohazard suit sound like he was taking off in a balloon.
He waited while the team strapped Ali’s gurney securely onto the bulkhead, then stepped forward when one of the combat medics grabbed him by the arm and helped him into the bird.
It took more muscle power than it should have. Then again, he was sleep deprived, hadn’t eaten enough food to feed a mouse and had taken a beating. The fact was, he should’ve been on a gurney of his own.
He hadn’t even reported his own injuries yet. Oh, the head wound had gotten looked at, cleaned and rebandaged, but the bullet wound in his side hadn’t. He was going to hear about that one from someone.
Max sat at Ali’s feet with a clear view of her hea
rt and ventilator monitors. She was stable for now, and her oxygen saturation was up to eighty-eight.
He’d take any good sign there was.
He put his head back, intending to rest for just a few minutes, but when he opened his eyes, they were coming in for a landing at the base in Bahrain.
He glanced at Ali’s monitors, but nothing had changed.
He got out first, then waited to one side while the team off-loaded Ali and ran her into the base. They didn’t go very far. She was taken into one tent, while he was guided into another next to it.
Three people in biohazard suits were waiting for him, as was a portable decontamination shower. They literally hosed him, his biohazard suit and clothing down as he removed it. After he got his pants off, he had to peel the dirty scarf away from his side carefully to avoid causing unnecessary bleeding. One of the decontamination team looked at the wound, then made a radio call.
By the time he was declared clean there were a couple of nurses waiting to take a look.
“How old is this?” one of them asked.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe seven hours.”
The nurses took him by the arms and led him toward a wheelchair.
“What is Sergeant Stone’s current condition?” he asked.
“We’re still evaluating her, but she’s stable.”
He looked at the tent she’d gone into and balked at sitting in the chair. He wanted to stay with her. “Have you moved her to the hospital already?”
“Yes, sir. The on-duty physicians want to consult as soon as you’re ready.”
“They’ll consult now. My being ready has no bearing on Stone’s treatment.” He gave the two nurses his best hard-line look.
“Yes, sir.”
He began giving the nurse a history of Ali’s injuries and how the anthrax was introduced into her system.
They entered the hospital a minute later and Max insisted on seeing Alicia before he allowed the medical staff to put him in a treatment room so his wound could be cleaned and sewn up. They also insisted on antibiotics, which he agreed with, and at least eight hours of rest, which he completely ignored.