by S A Gardner
“Because relief operations were made to leave on the same day, the next at most. We need time to find the militant stronghold, to stage a tight enough operation to get the GCA people out alive. Longer medical aid missions were out till a few days ago. They also stipulated minimal personnel, medical, logistics and security. We’re only allowed twenty-one people in all. Since I need my core twelve, this leaves you eight to be your team.”
“We are planning to actually work in the camp while we’re there, right?” That was Ayesha, speaking up for the first time. I started at hearing her voice. I’d phased everyone out during my and Damian’s Q&A volleys.
Damian turned to Ayesha, his gaze gentle. Gentle? De Luna? Nah. “Of course. We need you to have two full surgical teams. On one hand you will be helping the refugees, and on the other you will make us look legitimate and validate our extended stay there.”
“But with fifty-thousand refugees, and only eight of us, we’ll be Code Black all the time,” Ayesha exclaimed.
“Black shmack,” Matt grunted. “A new color has to be invented for this ratio of patients to medical personnel.”
My heart sank. I’d thought I could negotiate for a larger team. My worst estimate had been twenty of us. But if that was it, we’d deal. We always did. There was one other thing I couldn’t deal with.
I raised my hand to interrupt. “Are you saying we’ll only be your cover, and we’ll work full-time in the camp while you do everything else?”
He gave a what-kind-of-moronic-question-is-that shrug. “That’s the plan.”
My own hand gesture was a dream-on one. “I’m not getting excluded from the main event.”
“If you want to contest your role, take it up with the people who depl…who recruited you.”
“I will.”
I did like the idea that my team wouldn’t be exposed to unnecessary hazard. Actually I was relieved. But I was going to be in on every step of the operation. I had to be.
For years I’d been tormented by every “if only” scenario, where I’d had a chance to search for Jake, to save him. Now those fantasies were becoming a reality, I was damned if I stayed on the sidelines while Damian did the job. Not when I had so much to contribute, what might make the difference between failure and success.
Clearly considering the subject closed, Damian went on. “Our biggest handicap is our inability to stock enough weapons and ammunition. We’ve been allowed only the amount that guarding the convoy can justify. We’ll be searched by the federal forces, to make sure we’re not smuggling arms to the militants.”
“But why aren’t the federal forces helping us?”
I glared at Doug. That question could be another bullet in Damian’s arsenal, shooting us down as “amateurs who functioned on a gamble and a prayer.”
Matt answered, saving our team’s face. “Because we can’t let them even suspect our real purpose.”
There was no way Damian missed that little slip up. He still let it go. “If the idea of a projector and a map isn’t too appalling, I need to show you the route we will travel. Lights out, please. Slide eight.”
That unseen genie that instantaneously answered his commands snuffed out the lights, shining the map on the screen
“We won’t land in Moscow, where we would be exposed to too much scrutiny. We’ll arrive through the Black Sea in Sochi.” A tap on the map indicated the location.
“Wasn’t that where Russia hosted the Winter Olympics?” Matt asked.
Damian nodded. “The most expensive ones in history at a price tag of over fifty billion dollars. The venues and surrounding services were supposed to be Russia’s center for international events afterwards. But like all monuments to national vanity, and with the region devolving into civil unrest, they sit decaying and nicknamed ‘Museum of Corruption.’ Not that we’ll go anywhere near that area. We’ll be in Sochi only long enough to pick up the convoy that has been dispatched there.”
Lucia, who’d been too awestruck to talk, now asked, “What about our stuff? All the things we need to do our job?”
I picked up that line of questioning. “Yeah. We’ll need a fully equipped mobile surgery unit, a diagnostic unit, and emergency, triage and inpatient and outpatient facilities. Not to mention our own inventory of customized supplies, for medical purposes and…otherwise.”
“Everything you can possibly need medically is included,” Damian said. “GCA went all out on this one. As for your own supplies, take anything you need. There’s no weight limit.”
“So how will you solve the problem of the limited arms?” Matt asked.
“The convoy vehicles are designed to hide our weapons and ammunition. They’d be in unrecognizable parts just in case the searches are that thorough, and we’d assemble them as needed. And a medical convoy will come in handy, too. Most explosive components can be justified as medical supplies.”
“Making explosives out of medical supplies is one of our specialties,” Matt purred smugly.
Ed chuckled. “Your boss said your specialty is medicine. We’ll make explosives. You remove gall bladders.”
“And before any of us can start dabbling in explosives and gall bladders,” Damian interrupted our right hands’ budding, bickering bromance. “We have to get there first. Once you load your stuff, we’ll travel east, through Karachay-Cherkessia then Kabardino-Balkaria.” He slid his baton over the map, somehow making the same thing Daniels made monotonous into a dynamic thing. As if we were already on our way, facing the unknown. “We’ll be following the mountains throughout. The refugee camp is here, forty miles from the Georgian border by Mount Kazbek. We believe the militants, and our hostages, are up in the mountains nearby.”
After pausing a second, his gaze moved to me, wearing that same inanimate expression. “Any questions?”
About a thousand and one. But they’d keep until I had him alone. Time I started showing some leadership solidarity. Though all bets were off if he didn’t back down from excluding me from field missions.
My team started asking detail-oriented questions, and he raised his hands. “These questions are right up Ed’s alley. Before I leave you in his capable hands and go to my other meeting, I want to thank you all for joining us on this mission. A major part of it is getting you all home safe.”
With a general nod that made a point of bypassing me, he strode out.
I followed.
It was my first time ever in a PACT installation. Very top-secret stuff. Like us really, but just with oodles more money and prestige. I could use their interior designer in my Sanctuaries, too. Hell, I could use a fresh coat of paint.
“De Luna.”
He already knew I was behind him. Damian had eyes in the back of his head and a variety of ESP feelers. I didn’t need any special perception to know how annoyed my pursuit made him.
He turned and growled, “Take it up with Fitzpatrick, St. James.”
“Relax, will you? Sheesh. Were you always this uptight?”
There was that spanking look again. It was all I could do not to shiver. Such a heady feeling, that I affected the impervious Damian De Luna this way, when no one else could.
I could definitely get used to this.
For now, I focused on what I’d pursued him for. “I know GCA think they have everything covered, but they’re not privy to how I work. If we’re leaving so soon, my suppliers may not be fast enough to secure everything I must have on a field mission of this nature and scope. I’m anticipating anything and—”
“Make a list and give it to Ed. He’ll see to it.”
He turned away. I fell into step with him.
Without even slowing down this time, he rumbled, “Now what?”
I blinked up the foot between us innocently. “I’m letting you show me the way.”
“The way to what?”
“To our meeting.”
“Our meeting?”
“Oh, should I have said ‘my meeting?’ I just thought I’d get into the spirit of unity
for the mission.”
His glare did a lot more than spank now. I chuckled. “You are going to the meeting with Davis, Fitzpatrick, Sir Ashton, and those top people from TOP, aren’t you?”
I knew the answer without the corroboration of his glower. It was nice to have it, though. It was spectacular, after all. It hit so many chords I practically hummed like a tuning fork.
To make it deepen for an even bigger thrill, I smirked. “Lead the way, then. For now.”
Twelve
Somewhere deserted between Sochi and Mount Kazbek
It wasn’t like I hadn’t been enjoying the scenery.
Who wouldn’t? Clouds were painting the limitless canvas of the Russian skies with formations right out of a renaissance masterpiece. Slanting rays of a hidden sun kept splurging hues and shadows through them, giving them mass and magic. Rampant plains and rippling hills absorbed the celestial tint, reflecting it in a tableau of vivid tranquility. The frigid air had texture and vibrancy, a revitalizing contrast to LA’s humid toxicity. It imbued nature’s amalgam with its sharp purity, making my GCA’s weatherproof uniform a comforting cocoon.
Everything had been making me wonder how the human race had managed to invent evil and engineer strife among such splendor and harmony.
This poetic state had been upon me since we started our trek two days ago, a convoy of ten highly specialized trailers. We’d stopped for inspections frequently. Apart from that, our convoy maintained its forty-mile-per-hour speed, steadily traveling east.
Beside the scenery, I’d had enough to keep me occupied. Going over our supplies, preparing contingency plans with my team, integrating those with what Damian’s team had in place. Keeping out of Damian’s way.
Not that that had been a problem. With every passing hour, I’d come to appreciate his covert powers more. The guy had engaged his cloaking capabilities.
I hadn’t even seen him when we stopped at the many inspection points we passed through. Not even during the extensive searches that lasted hours on end.
We’d been intercepted by tanks, with armed-to-the-teeth special forces swarming our vehicles and persons, poking and prodding every little detail. Tension until we’d been cleared had had distilled stress hormones flooding my system. Those had felt like a long-lost friend. Familiar and sorely missed.
Intercity danger just never brought out the good stuff.
Of course, nothing had been found. Even to the most suspicious investigator, we had nothing but medical instruments and supplies in our mobile facilities.
The only weapons were with Damian’s team, whose trailers sandwiched our own, posing as our security. One assault rifle and one hand gun each. What the federal forces deemed enough to defend us against a “medium-sized raid.” Whatever that meant.
No, really, what did that mean, medium-sized? Ten, fifty, a hundred attackers? And defend us how, exactly, with that pitiful firepower? Kill half of our attackers before they killed us all? That constituted an acceptable defense and outcome in their eyes?
Was that the penalty for being the good guys, for being bound by laws and fair play and due process? To be prohibited from arming yourself properly? To be easy pickings for free-from-rules villains? To become another breaking story for the media and activists to lament over, to raise their ratings and serve their purposes, before fresher news buried yours in social media feeds? Before you become another statistic, depersonalized and forgotten like millions of victims before you? Like Jake…
But Jake hadn’t been forgotten. PACT had kept his memory alive. To my continuing surprise.
And I hadn’t forgotten him. I hadn’t.
Losing him had made me shed every last tie to the safe and accepted, making me who I was today. Every time I risked my life for someone in mortal danger, I was doing what I hadn’t been able to for him. I was saving him in everyone else.
Now I had what I’d long thought impossible. The chance to save him for real.
With every search, my confidence had risen. I’d felt smug that we were not prey waiting to be victimized, but secret weapons penetrating the system that wouldn’t let us do our jobs in the open.
Then I’d felt like crap. At how deception was endless, how someone bent on destruction could breach the most intensive scrutiny to strike at the unwary.
Right under the noses of specialists, we’d smuggled arms that would decimate an army. Sure, we were on the side of good. But how many on the side of brutality and treachery were getting away with it, too?
The depressing answer was plenty.
But my early point was, between the scenery, my life’s most important and hazardous quest and pondering the state of a world gone mad, I’d had no right to be bored.
But I had been. Bored out of my mind.
It was why I’d done the unforgivable.
I’d wished for some change, some action.
And here it came. Action—in all caps.
An ominous storm of trucks and Humvees were swarming toward us, the thickening barrier of dust they kicked up obliterating the horizon, the illusion of cutting us off from the world growing by the second.
“St. James.” Damian’s voice flowed over our frequency-hopping private channel. So calm, as if he’d ask me if I had any ketchup left. “We’ll handle it. Plan Delta.”
Plan Delta. They’d surround us with their trailers, half of them protecting the convoy from behind their barricades, the other half running to the mountain for higher ground.
Oh, yeah? He thought I’d cower flat on my belly, count on his team and the armored vehicle to protect me and mine? Or worse, to watch them getting hacked to pieces while awaiting our turn?
He really had forgotten more than he knew about me.
I pressed the outgoing button. “Plan Delta is out. Want to bet they have you outnumbered twenty to one?”
“Yeah. Too bad for them. If they attack.”
“If? Those guys aren’t tearing toward us to welcome us to the region. Plan Kappa, De Luna. We keep the teams together, make one line of offensive-defense. My team has first strike. You follow through and keep it up.”
“Do as you’re told, St. James. For once.” His voice sounded nearer, as if he were projecting it on psychic as well as radio waves.
Worried I’d blow things up to kingdom come again?
I didn’t care what he thought. “We’re in this together.”
“Sentiment noted—and unneeded. Plan Kappa is for diversionary attacks. Its time will come. There’s no place for your stealth tactics in a frontal assault situation, against machine guns and rocket launchers.”
What was I doing debating this? Time to pull rank. “I’m in charge, De Luna. Your superiors’ orders.”
“You’re not in charge, St. James.” This was soft, lethal.
Still raw, huh? Couldn’t blame him. To annoy him more than anything, I’d demanded he wouldn’t be in charge of me, that I didn’t have to obey any orders I didn’t believe valid.
His superiors hadn’t only granted me that, they’d decreed that until the retrieval and retreat part of the mission, we co-led. Unless we disagreed. Then my judgment took precedence.
I still couldn’t make head or tails of that decision. But I was using it, and his order-following handicap. I wasn’t letting him fight alone, even if it would save my team.
In this situation it sure wouldn’t. Losing him meant we all died. Or worse.
“Plan Kappa, De Luna. You know it’s our best chance.”
I cut off the transmission. He didn’t call back.
No time to wonder if he’d ignore me. I’d worry only about the hordes coming to slaughter us and decimate our convoy.
Uh, let me rephrase that. Slaughter us and confiscate our convoy.
This was no haphazard attack. Someone must have reported our defense capabilities and route. Someone who knew our convoy’s exchange rate on the black market.
Between the vehicles and the state-of-the-art instruments, we were tens of millions of dollars on
wheels. Medical supplies were also the hottest commodity in the region, after arms and food. Doctors and other medical personnel, caught after their guards were massacred, wouldn’t come amiss either. All in all, we were a very drool-inducing package.
Which gave us an edge. Time to use it.
I opened the common channel. “Turn right, make the convoy into a blockade, perpendicular to their approach.” We were on open, level ground, probably why they chose to attack us now, with the terrain offering us no cover. But it was advantageous for us, too, since we could go off road. “They want our convoy in one piece, so they won’t open fire. They have to come around our barricade to get us. We’ll get them first.”
Damian and his men did just that. Following my order, or had he simultaneously reached the same plan? We were on the same wavelength anyway. May we continue to be. If we didn’t…
I’d have to override him. This time, it would be him who’d be guilty of insubordination.
Ayesha was taking her turn at the wheel. She caught my eye as she followed Matt’s trailer, her usually open, kind face hardening with aggression.
n a couple of minutes, we had our trailers in a seven-hundred-plus-foot barricade. We left just enough space between vehicles to afford us optimum firing windows, while making them unable to shoot at us with any accuracy. Marauders were never sharpshooters, anyway. There was never a need to be, with machine guns and indiscriminate fatalities in mind.
On our side, sharpshooting didn’t even begin to cover it. A new word had to be invented for that kind of marksmanship. Some of us definitely warranted the label of marksinhuman. I knew of three for sure. Damian. Matt. Me.
At their speed, I estimated our enemies would be on top of us in ten minutes. Must have everything ready by then.
Hurtling to the body of the Surgical Trailer Suite through the accordion-like passage, I unzipped two “disaster bags,” got out trauma kits and holsters. They seemed to contain supplies for a code-red emergency. They did—just not a medical one. Our readiness for this segment of the trek was not geared toward saving lives, but taking them.