All's Fair in Love and War: A story of love and betrayal

by J Theron

  ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR

  By

  J Theron

  Copyright©2016 by J. Theron

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or part by any means existing without permission from the author.

  Also by J. Theron

  Running to Stand Still

  For my husband. I love you. Always.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for buying my book. Although this is a work of fiction, I have tried my best to be respectful towards the American institutions in this book. Unfortunately there are just some things you cannot find on the internet and I did create scenarios which might not exist in real life.

  If I in any way misrepresented the military or CIA to such a degree that it is offensive and detracts from the enjoyment of the book, please let me know. I will try to rectify the mistake as soon as possible. You can contact me on junetvdm@gmail.com.

  Happy reading!

  J. Theron

  PART ONE

  “Love is a war. This war will end when life will end.”

  Author unknown

  PROLOGUE

  Afghanistan

  “Doctor! Doctor Durand!” the young soldier yelled at the top of his voice. Gabrielle Durand turned her gaze to the young man, who looked more like a boy than a soldier, lying on a trolley a few metres away. His arm was in a bandage and he was crying. She could see it was serious but not actively bleeding. He was tall and lanky and his light brown hair was matted with dirt and what appeared to be dried blood. His uniform was filthy and his face was streaked where the tears had washed away the dirt.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Peter,” he gasped in agony.

  “I’ll be with you just now, Peter. I promise. Please hang on. I know you’re in pain but you’re going to be okay. I’ll ask the nurse to give you something for the pain.”

  Gabrielle searched the chaos of the army tent until she saw the head nurse a few aisles down. “Jennifer, I need your help,” she shouted.

  Jennifer hurried down the aisle of haphazard trolleys until she reached Gabrielle. “Yes, Captain Durand, what can I do?”

  Gabrielle pointed at Peter. “Please give the young soldier with the injured arm morphine to help with the pain. I’m going to be busy for a while before I’ll have time to look at his injury.”

  “Yes, Captain,” she replied and hurried to the medicine trolley to fetch the medication.

  Gabrielle looked at the body of the badly mangled soldier lying on the trolley in front of her. She had not slept for more than forty hours, but the adrenaline coursing through her veins kept her awake and alert. Focus Gabrielle, she told herself. This soldier has only you. Don’t mess this up.

  The young man in front of her was bleeding from a massive wound in his upper leg. She was trying to open the wound to see where the bleeding was coming from, but the debris and dirt were hampering her inspection. Every time she relieved the pressure an arterial spurt caused blood to spray over the front of her already blood soaked scrubs. He also had a large laceration on his scalp at the back of his head which was oozing blood. She inspected that wound first and could not feel any skull fractures, but she suspected he had a concussion which was why he was unconscious. His vital signs and breathing were stable and she was glad not to have to intubate.

  She finally managed to isolate the artery causing the bleeding and clamped it with one of the artery clips from her surgical trolley. His leg looked bad. His femur was intact, but the muscle of his upper leg was torn by shrapnel from the blast that hit their unit.

  She cleaned the wound as best she could and tied the bleeding artery with surgical sutures. He needed to go to theatre, but there were only two mobile theatres and twenty seriously wounded soldiers. Fortunately he still had a strong pulse in his foot and she was happy that the circulation in his leg was not seriously compromised.

  When she was happy that the wound was as clean as she could possibly get it, she set about trying to meticulously close the shredded remains of his upper leg.

  “I don’t know why you bother, Gabrielle. His days as a soldier are over.”

  Gabrielle raised her head to scowl at the face of her colleague, Doctor James Smith or Captain Smith, whichever way you wanted to look at him. In Gabrielle’s mind he did injustice to the rank of captain. He was a short, scrawny man in his mid-thirties with balding blond hair and an ego the size of the Grand Canyon. She tried to suppress the immediate intense dislike she felt whenever she had to deal with him.

  “I bother because I want him to be able to walk without a limp, Captain Smith,” she replied in a neutral tone.

  “You’re wasting your time. His leg is fucked and you know it,” he replied nastily.

  Gabrielle continued to suture the wound and ignored James. They had worked together for a long time before they were transferred to this base. He had tried to get her in bed for months until she threatened to report him for sexual harassment. Ever since then he had been undermining her work and criticising every clinical decision she made. Fortunately they were of equal rank and she simply ignored him, which drove him crazy. Men like him did not like to be ignored. They thrived on attention, even negative attention, because it made them feel relevant.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked when he made no effort to leave. She hated it when he breathed down her neck.

  He looked around and shrugged when his gaze travelled over all the injured men. “I’m on my way to theatre to do surgery that will actually be useful.”

  She looked up and could not hide the disgust on her face. “Please go then and leave me to help the soldiers who don’t deserve it.”

  “Stop trying to be Florence Nightingale. You’re a good surgeon. Try to put those skills to use where it will actually make a difference. You will never be a great surgeon because you’re a woman and you let emotion cloud your decisions. This is why women should stay away from war and medicine.”

  She did not answer him. She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but she bit her tongue. She had always prided herself on her ability to remain professional under all circumstances, no matter how difficult. She continued to suture the wound and simply let her mind go blank, as if Smith had disappeared. He continued to watch her and she could sense the frustration he was feeling. After a few minutes he relented and turned around to walk to the rear of the tent. She was relieved to the see the back of him.

  “What is your name, soldier?” she murmured, not actually expecting an answer. She was completely engrossed in her task of suturing the wound and was startled when he whispered, “Ryan, my name is Ryan.”

  She looked up at his face and into the greenest eyes she had ever seen. She had to give herself a mental shake because she was momentarily speechless. She immediately clamped down on the feeling of attraction that flared within her, because under no circumstances would she ever allow herself to have any feelings for a patient beyond compassion and a desire to heal.

  “Hello, Ryan. Are you in pain?” she asked. “I gave you some morphine before I started to clean the wound, but you were unconscious and I didn’t want to give too much.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” he replied in a strained voice. “Thank you for not listening to that pain in the ass, Smith,” he whispered and closed his eyes again.

  “I didn’t know you were awake. I apologise. That was very unprofessional of us to have suc
h a discussion in front of a patient.”

  “The only unprofessional one was Smith. Don’t worry about it. And again, thanks for not listening to him,” he said in a barely audible voice. She could tell that he was in a great amount of pain, but trying desperately to hide it.

  “I tend to follow my own head. Now stop talking and rest,” she admonished him gently. He did not reply and she realized he had lost consciousness again. She studied his face and underneath the grime and dried blood she could see that he was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. He had very dark hair with a strong jaw and high cheek bones. She could tell that he was very tall, maybe six four and muscular, but not overtly so.

  She finished the skin sutures and bandaged his leg before turning him gently to anesthetize and suture the wound on his scalp. When she was satisfied that she had done all she could she waved one of the nurses over.

  “Please take this soldier to the post-surgical tent and clean him up. I’ve written up some IV antibiotics and pain meds. Make sure he gets it,” she said in a stern voice.

  The nurse acknowledged the order and pushed the trolley out. Gabrielle stripped the blood stained gloves from her hands and walked towards Peter, who was still moaning in agony on his stretcher. She turned her full attention to her current patient and did not think of Ryan again.

  Ryan Evans woke up eighteen hours later with the worst headache he had ever experienced in his twenty eight years of existence. He also became aware of an equally excruciating pain in his left upper leg when he tried to move. He tried to breathe past the pain and to get his head clear. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious.

  The last thing he remembered was travelling down a deserted dirt road and making jokes with the young soldier sitting next to him. Sergeant Anders was excited because his wife was pregnant with their second child. He wanted another girl because he grew up in a house with only boys. His wife wanted a boy and she was having the foetal scan to determine the sex of the baby the next day.

  The ambush was completely unexpected and his unit was blown to shreds. He was trying to pull the wounded body of Sergeant Anders to safety when the second explosion ripped through his unit. After that he only had fragments of memory.

  He turned his head very slowly to look at the rest of the tent. Rows of beds were filled with soldiers in varying states of injury. His eyes were drawn to the female doctor standing a few beds down. She was examining one of the patients and he recognized her as the young doctor who was transferred to their unit a month ago, along with Idiot Smith, whom Ryan had the unfortunate pleasure of meeting a few times before. She was quiet and kept to herself, but he could not help but notice her after her arrival.

  He used to watch her as she walked from her tent to the field hospital which was situated close to his quarters. He guessed her to be about his age, but she looked younger. She was tall and lean, but still curvy, and she had long dark hair which she always wore in a thick braid hanging down her back.

  He had fantasized on many occasions what she would look like with her hair loose. She always seemed so poised and elegant and composed. The male part of him wondered what it would take to shatter her composure. He was still staring at her when she looked up and straight into his eyes. He had never been close enough to see the color of her eyes, but now he saw that they were amber and he felt as if all breath rushed from his body as he continued to stare at her. She smiled and he knew he was lost.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CIA Headquarters, Langley Virginia.

  Ryan sat back in his chair and placed his head on the backrest, staring up at the ceiling. He pulled at the gray silk tie around his neck and opened the top two buttons of his white shirt. It was eleven o’clock at night and he was still working. He rubbed his hand over his face and tried to concentrate on the paperwork in front of him. The shrill ringtone of his cellular phone made him jump in his chair and he contemplated not answering when he looked at the caller ID.

  “Hi Amy. How are you?”

  “Hi Ryan. We’re at the bar down the road from your apartment and I was wondering if you want to join us for drinks? You’re always working!”

  Ryan momentarily pictured Amy with her long blond hair and medically enhanced curves. He met her at a party a few weeks back and kissed her in a moment of weakness. Fortunately he was sober and it did not go too far, but she had been phoning him ever since. He needed to tell her that he was not interested in any kind of relationship, but he did not want to be a jerk about it. He kept hoping she would transfer her interest to someone new.

  “I’m still at work. Sorry. This isn’t a good week for me. My social life is completely non-existent.”

  “Again! Why is a guy who works for an IT company working on a weekend?”

  “A computer virus crashed one of our new programmes. It’s going to keep me busy the whole weekend, unfortunately.”

  He heard her exasperated sigh on the other side of the line. “I’m beginning to think you’re avoiding me on purpose.”

  He closed his eyes and had to concentrate to keep his voice neutral. “I really have to work tonight. I can’t leave now. I’ll speak to you later. Then we can go for a drink and talk.”

  “Okay. Don’t work too hard. Tell your boss it’s a sin to keep a gorgeous guy like you locked up on a Saturday.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him,” he laughed. He momentarily imagined what Jake would say if he repeated what Amy had said. He would never hear the end of it.

  “Goodbye, gorgeous.”

  “Bye, Amy.” He disconnected the call and was staring absentmindedly at the blank screen when it rang and startled him a second time. He groaned audibly when he saw the name on the screen. Valentina.

  “Valentina. What’s wrong?”

  “I need to speak to you about something. It’s urgent.”

  Ryan sat up in his chair. He was about to reply when a knock on the door to his office stopped him. He was surprised to find his friend, Jake Adams, strolling in. Jake was his immediate superior but also his best friend. They were often mistaken for brothers when they went out for drinks because they looked so similar.

  “I need to go. I will phone you back,” he said before disconnecting the call. Valentina only phoned when something was seriously wrong, but he could not have a conversation with her when Jake was standing in his office. It would have to wait. He looked at Jake and placed the phone on his desk.

  “Ryan, can I see you in my office for a minute?”

  “Is something wrong?” Ryan asked.

  “Let’s talk in my office,” he replied before briskly turning around to walk down the corridor.

  Ryan rose from his immaculately organized desk and followed Jake to his office. He could tell something was going on, but he knew better than to interrogate Jake. Ryan looked around at the deserted floor. There was very little activity on this floor at night and most of the offices were dark. He strolled into Jake’s office and stopped dead in his tracks when he realized who was sitting in front of Jake’s desk where papers and folders were haphazardly spread over the wooden surface.

  “Evening, Ryan,” the man said as he rose to his full height. He was tall, almost the same height as Ryan, and he had short gray hair and ice cold, gray eyes. He was dressed in an expensive tailored suit and Ryan noticed that there was not an inch of fat visible on his muscular body.

  Ryan hesitated for a second before replying, “Director Martin, good evening.” Ryan carefully kept any emotion from his face and did not reveal that he was taken aback to find the director of the CIA in Jake’s office, late at night, on a Saturday.

  “Please sit down, Ryan,” Jake said and pointed to the other chair across from Director Joseph Martin. Jake opened the door to the glass and dark wood cabinet that spanned most of the wall space in the rear of the office and took out a bottle and three whisky glasses.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Jake asked as he looked at Martin and then at Ryan. “I’ve been dying to taste my new s
ingle malt from Scotland.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Martin replied. Ryan simply nodded his head and took the glass when Jake handed it to him.

  “You must wonder why you’re sitting in Jake’s office, having whisky with Jake and me,” Martin said.

  “The thought did cross my mind, Director,” Ryan said, his gaze fixed on Martin’s face.

  “I requested you,” Martin replied.

  “Why?” Ryan asked.

  Martin studied Ryan and Ryan got the distinct impression that Director Martin was hiding something. Martin hesitated briefly before replying, “Because you’re one of the best agents we have and I suspect you’ll have a special interest in this assignment. I know you just got back from your previous assignment in Colombia, but this is a matter of grave importance and before we continue, I need to ask you to never repeat what I’m going to tell you now.”

  “You don’t even have to ask me, Director.” Ryan glanced at Jake, who observed the exchange without saying a word.

  “Very well,” Martin said. He threw back his head and swallowed the whole glass of whisky. He stared at his empty glass before placing it on the table in front of him. Ryan waited patiently while Martin seemed to contemplate his next question. Ryan thought he was prepared for everything and only years of training helped him to maintain a straight face when Director Martin asked, “How well do you know Doctor Gabrielle Durand?”

  Ryan took a sip of his own whisky before replying, “I was seriously injured in Afghanistan three years ago. She was the doctor who put me back together. If it wasn’t for her, I would never have been able to walk normally. But surely you must know this. It’s all in my file.”

  Martin nodded. “I know, hence my question, how well do you know Gabrielle?”