Lethal Treatment

by S A Gardner

  Damian had relented then, since we couldn’t lose a day’s worth of investigations. He also hadn’t liked the militants involving us in their jobs, and keeping us around. If they were starting to suspect us, we needed the exact location of their base fast for a possible emergency incursion and evacuation.

  So we’d hitched that ride. Me, him and Ed.

  And no, that hadn’t been when catastrophe struck.

  We’d hidden in the trucks’ path, jumped on the last one. We’d held on for the thirty-mile trip, jumping off a few hundred feet from where they parked. This had been our big chance. All searching could end today.

  We’d given them a head start then sprung after them. They’d taken one of the paths we would have investigated last.

  We’d gone higher along the mountain, jogging up increasingly perilous terrain. To maneuver around endless grottoes, they’d taken a shortcut on a narrow shelf of granite cliffs overlooking the infamous Darial Gorge.

  In the moonbeams struggling to shine through bloated cumulus clouds, the Terek waters had glinted its savagery, gushing in the ravine a mile below us, hungry for lives to engulf.

  If someone fell, the river would sweep their corpse through Ingush, Chechen and Dagestani territories on its way to dump its secrets and flotsam in the Caspian Sea.

  One hell of a flush.

  And no, none of us slipped and fell to their doom. That wasn’t the catastrophe.

  That was the militants coming right at us.

  They were doubling back on a twelve-foot-wide stretch of road where we were on an unavoidable intercept course.

  Sending the two-dozen militants to their watery graves was very tempting. Very easy, too. Between the three of us, we’d take triple their number, no problem. But it would mean a very premature exposure, with all consequent catastrophes.

  I hadn’t come that far to be thwarted by a bunch of unwitting hooligans.

  That was the most infuriating part. If they’d detected us, and were coming back for a confrontation, that would have at least been a worthy fight. But from the way they were lumbering back, seemed they’d just forgotten something in the trucks.

  But they hadn’t seen us yet. My goggles had picked up their heat signatures far before a visual could be obtained.

  It had only been a dozen heartbeats since I spotted them. Before I alerted my companions, my mind zoomed, processing our options.We had three.

  Option one, run back.

  Problem with this was, once we reached open ground at the cavern they’d spot us after all.

  Option two, slaughter them.

  Problems here were self-evident and above-mentioned.

  Option three, hide until they passed.

  Problem was we were on a sheer cliff a mile up with the only place to hide vertically up the jagged mountain face.

  This wouldn’t have been a problem, since rock climbing was among our engrained skills. It would have been a piece of cake if we had time. Problem was, we didn’t.

  Had to buy us some.

  Reaching in my backpack, I fingered my drug-dart kit, pulled a blowgun ready with darts loaded with diazepam and succinylcholine, a double whammy tranquilizer and muscle relaxant. With three of those, my target would collapse in five seconds.

  I simultaneously reached back to touch Damian behind me.

  Even before I squeezed his arm with our sign of “interception,” I felt him become aware of the situation. I knew because he engaged his cloaking powers. He hadn’t seen them the same moment I had because he’d been busy recording our path, letting me lead the way.

  Before he could react, I aimed at the second incoming green luminescent head, blew. Then again and again.

  The shape crumpled to the ground almost at once, followed by the diversion we needed. The militants stopped, scattered, gathered again, crying out their surprise and irritation at their comrade’s fainting fit.

  Now.

  Before I could turn to Damian, he lifted me up, effortlessly, making me reach the rocky protrusion leading to a ledge fifteen feet up.

  My gloved hands clamped the icy rock. I swung up, braced my legs on his shoulders, springing from their immovable support onto the ledge.

  The moment I gained a footing I whipped loose the rope at my waist, winding it over the outcrop, wedging my back to the cliff and threw it down. Between the rock’s anchor and my leveraged weight, a man of Damian’s size could climb it up.

  Ed proved this theory, climbing up in under three seconds. Damian was taking care of his people first.

  Get up here already, you overprotective macho pain.

  My diversion’s effect ended abruptly. Rattled by their colleague’s collapse and needing to conclude the mission they’d doubled back for, the militants were rushing toward us.

  They’d see Damian in a second.

  Before that second counted down, I saw him lunging backward.

  He’d thrown himself off the cliff.

  Twenty-Six

  The world ceased to exist. To matter.

  Only one thing did. To jump after Damian.

  Save him.

  Large hands clamped around my waist and mouth, aborting my desperate lunge.

  Ed. Stopping me.

  No. Damian. He could be hanging over the edge. He had to be. I could still reach him.

  The militants were beneath us now. I’d have to engage them, kill them, blow our cover, end the mission. Give up on Jake.

  Had to. Couldn’t save Jake’s life at the cost of Damian’s.

  Images of Damian bloodied my mind. Hanging by his fingertips. Scalpel-sharp rocks shredding through his gloves, his flesh, pain fogging his mind. Gravity snatching at him, the void clamoring for his life force. A second counted…

  “He’s hanging from a rope.”

  Ed’s soundless whisper poured into my brain from the lips glued to my ear, stopping my struggle. And my heartbeats.

  He wouldn’t have said that if he weren’t sure. He’d jump after Damian, too, if he thought him in danger.

  Or would he? If he was under Damian’s orders to protect me and preserve the mission at any cost, including his life?

  No. Knowing Ed, he’d brave disobeying Damian to save him. He’d told me the truth.

  Heart daring to beat again, I peeked over the ledge. The militants were receding, half to the cavern, half retracing their steps with their unconscious comrade. Not that I cared.

  Where was Damian? God, what if Ed had been wrong…?

  He wasn’t. Damian was swinging up the cliff’s edge, unhooking the rope he’d somehow managed to secure before jumping off the cliff.

  I shuddered, what-ifs attacking my balance. He could have messed up in his haste. The rope could have slipped off under his plunging weight, or snapped against the blade-like rocks. He’d jumped backward off a cliff with a two-second prep.

  And he called me reckless.

  Heart using me as a rattle toy, I swung down the rope. I landed on bent knees, knew Ed would follow and unhook it. I had senses only for Damian.

  For a moment too long, I remained crouching, struggling with the need to change him, knock him to the ground and scorch his skin off in fury and relief.

  The ginormous lout didn’t even look in my direction as he so calmly said, “That was all for ultimately nothing. We have to finish them off before they make it back to their base. Then we implement our emergency evac.”

  This brought me up to my feet. His gaze finally panned to me. In a rogue moonbeam, I thought I saw a glint of…relief? I had to be wrong. Why should he be relieved if he believed the mission had been sabotaged?

  As the illumination dimmed again, he kept his eyes on me now I could barely see them. “By the time their cohorts realize what happened, we’ll be long gone. We should be back at Vladikavkaz in ten hours, then I’ll get you and your team evacuated to the States. Now we know this much about the militants, my team will come back from another direction and finish the mission.”

  Miraculously, I sounded e
qually cool as I said, “Is there a why attached to such profound decrees?”

  He shrugged. “When they find your darts in your victim…”

  “They won’t. These darts dissolve.” The moon peeped out from its dense cloud cover in time for me to see his eyebrows descending like vultures over his flashing eyes. I smirked. “Knocking someone out only for the darts to be found later defeats the whole stealth purpose. I used regular ones during the attack as I thought I’d either get the chance to collect them off the dead bodies, or I’d be too dead to care who found them. The darts I used tonight are my patent, a variation on absorbable catgut with a much faster absorption rate. They carry enough drugs for short-term incapacitation, so he’ll revive before they’re at their base. Even if they do examine him, points of entry are undetectable and on closest inspection they resemble insect bites.”

  In the fluctuating moonlight, Damian stared at me, as if this was bad news. The scare must be messing with my perception of his reactions more than usual.

  It was Ed who whistled soundlessly. “Impressive. But shouldn’t we be following the ambulance posse, anyway? They’d lead us right to their base.”

  Damian shook his head. “And have the others coming up behind us? We can only follow those when they come back. We’ll give them an hour, but if they’re any later, and since we don’t know how far their base is, we can’t risk more delay. It they’re still back there by the time we must return, we’d have a hell of a roundabout route to avoid them.” He threw his grappling hook up. It latched where I’d been minutes ago on the first toss. “We wait up there and hope they return soon.”

  I didn’t move when he extended his hand to help me up. “I’m with Ed. We should follow the ones ahead. I can almost taste our target.”

  “We wait, St. James.”

  The way he said that told me he wasn’t against knocking me out and carrying me up the mountainside to stop me from arguing.

  Ed was no help. His leader had spoken. He was back up where we’d been in seconds like the good, obedient killing machine that he was. Outnumbered, I grudgingly followed.

  Time passed with me sandwiched between these two titans, every minute feeling like another notch of my sanity slipping.

  The damned militants didn’t come back.

  The very second the hour was up, Damian jumped down from our hiding place with far more agility and grace than anyone had a right to have. Ed followed him. I loitered behind, hoping he’d give us a bit more time.

  Damian answered my unspoken appeal. “We made a breakthrough tonight. Live to fight another day, St. James. The first rule of engagement.”

  Resignation deflated me. Without a word, I slid down the rope. Burning hope might be egging me on, but cold logic was with Damian.

  The moment my feet touched ground, something else made itself heard. My gut. It knotted on the ice of foreboding.

  Something terrible was going to happen.

  Not up to listening to its adamant but vague omen, I started jogging between the two men. I had enough to worry about until we made it back.

  If we made it back.

  Twenty-Seven

  We made it back.

  And it had been hair-raising. Our alternate route to circumvent the loitering militants had taken five hours of wrestling with maximum risk terrain. All through I’d been sweat-frozen, pissed and promising myself two solid hours of coma time even if I had to dig myself a six-foot-deep hole to get it. I’d kept thinking it could only get worse if we returned to find our cover blown.

  Then we reached the camp from its most concealed route, at a glaringly sunny eight am—to absolute chaos.

  At first I thought it was an elaborate diversion by our teammates to cover our arrival.

  Then the scene became clear. This was what my guts had been twisting in dread of. Why no one had noticed our arrival. The refugees were huddled together by the hundred, focused where the horror was unfolding in the distance.

  Ishmael and Lucia, anxious and stricken, ran to meet us, each carrying two disaster bags.

  “A few children ran out of the camp boundaries,” Lucia panted. “Seems they thought it was safe, or there was an escape route, where we came from. We heard the detonations and ran out but it-it was too late.”

  Venom filled my parched throat. Hatred choked me. “Those filthy monsters! Those fucking cowards!”

  I snatched the disaster bags from Lucia, told her to run back for more. A paroxysm of rage I hadn’t been prey to since Clara shook me apart as I ran.

  Children should be left out of it all.

  How could people sleep at night knowing this was happening? Didn’t everyone understand these people were once just like them, until madness and terror forced them to flee for their lives, only to torment and torture them for the rest of it? Didn’t they understand it could be anyone’s turn next?

  I cleared everyone, and finally saw the crumpled bodies littering the minefield. Every member of our teams was probing the ground, in the excruciatingly slow manual de-mining method. They’d barely cleared a few feet beyond the known safe boundaries.

  My blood frothed, almost bursting my every artery.

  To see our casualties lying there, their life ebbing with each blood-pulsing beat, to know we could save them, if we could only reach them….

  Fury pumped more power to my legs, banishing my exhaustion. Damian caught up with me.

  “No daredevil tricks, St. James.”

  I wanted to sock him. It was my body, my life. I was free to risk them for my patients, for whomever I chose. And he should also know I wouldn’t, this time.

  “Stuff it, De Luna. Whatever you think of my gambling with my life addiction, I know I’m no good to them if I join them in a mutilated mass on the ground.”

  Something terrible came off him in a battering wave. “Wouldn’t be the first time you pulled a suicidal trick when an atrocity blinded you enough.”

  “I’m not spending my life apologizing to you.”

  “It’s not me you should be apologizing to.”

  Mel. The others who died.

  Ignore him. Get this done.

  At the edge of the minefield, I crashed to my knees, threw open the bag and produced my probes. The others had already mapped out the land to our victims in a grid of ropes, each taking care of de-mining their own unit of the grid.

  As I started to work, I forced my eyes away. So I wouldn’t see the torn bodies, witness their final degradation. I should preserve my stamina.

  It took us an hour to clear the forty feet to them. Our crop, twenty-three antipersonnel mines. Fragmenting type, designed for maximum, widespread damage. Cost a couple of dollars to construct, a couple of minutes to plant and incalculable limbs and lives when they went off.

  My blood had charred by the time we’d finally, finally gotten them out. There were fifteen of them, ages ranging from six to sixteen. They all had bags filled with rations with them. This had been an escape attempt.

  We couldn’t rush them to surgery right away. Had to assess injuries first, perform the ABCs of stabilization and resuscitation and triage them first. It took half of us another thirty minutes to do that while the other prepared the STS. Then we rushed them there.

  And the real struggle began.

  Twenty-Eight

  “More suction,” I barked at Ayesha. “I can’t see a thing.”

  A sound of mortification escaped her as she increased suction power to maximum. It still couldn’t beat the blood accumulation rate in the little Nazyr’s abdomen.

  God, oh, God. What a mess. What a mess.

  Nerve-snapping minutes sheared by until I cross-clamped the aorta, cut away necrotizing intestines and anastomosed the healthy ends, sewed liver injuries after sacrificing a full lobe. As I was irrigating the abdominal cavity with antibiotic infused saline, Ishmael grated his ominous report.

  “Pulse 190. Ectopics all over the place. Pressure 60 over 30 and dropping.”

  “Lucia, increase blood delivery
rate.”

  She winced as she caught my eyes. “He’s already gotten six units.”

  What she didn’t say was that blood should be reserved for those most likely to benefit from it. And that such a massive transfusion over such a limited time could cause potentially lethal complications.

  I’d deal with those later. I had to stabilize him hemodynamically before any other considerations.

  “Get me six more units, stat.”

  “We only have two more units,” Lucia said.

  “Hang those, and get me more,” I yelled. “You know who has O-neg. Force donations if you have to.”

  Lucia rushed to carry out my orders, her startled glance telling me what I already knew.

  I was losing it.

  And I was losing Nazyr. God—why now?

  He’d hung on the hour and a half we’d needed to get to him. Then he’d hung on during the damage control surgery and the amputation of both his legs at mid-thigh. Then he’d hung on through the twenty-four hours we’d had him in ICU, correcting his hypothermia, coagulopathy and acidosis, and controlling his bleeding through interventional angiography.

  Then during the re-operation, I’d removed his abdominal packs and all hell had broken loose.

  Why wasn’t he hanging on anymore? The worst was over. He had to hang on. He had to.

  Detach yourself. You can still save his life.

  But I’d done everything I could, and he wasn’t responding.

  Hang on, please. Give me any response to build on, so I can drag you back to life.

  “He’s gone, Cali.”

  Ishmael’s whisper fell on me like a scythe.

  “No.” My shout splintered my ears, jarred me. I swung to Ayesha, dragged down my mask, suffocating. “Defibrillator.”

  She just shook her head. “Let him go, Cali.”

  “I can’t. I won’t.”

  I was doing this. I didn’t need their help.

  I snapped up the defibrillator. Matt turned from the other surgical station, tried to take it out of my shaking hands. I clung to it.

  “It’s no use—mercifully. For him.” Matt’s eyes and voice were bottomless with resignation and sympathy. I still resisted. “Get a hold of yourself. Tend your other patients, and let me get back to mine.”