by S A Gardner
As if resigned I wouldn’t appease him, he leaned against the exam table, folded his arms. “How do you know what they are? They keep no records.”
“We made our own statistics. There’s an estimated fifty-four thousand people here. That’s down from sixty last year. That’s five deaths per ten thousand a day on average. The major catastrophe figure for refugee camps. And it all started after refugees started being ‘taken away.’ Hundreds of the estimated dead are ones who never came back. Those who did, came back only to die, with outbreaks of similar deaths following.”
A shadow entered Jake’s eyes as he reached for my hands. “Tell me you haven’t been conducting investigations overtly. Implicating the militants in something like this is even far worse than in my…situation.”
My heart quivered. His worry about me, when he thought he was the one permanently enslaved, kept hitting me harder each time he expressed it.
My attempt at a smile was a tremulous mess. “Duh, Jake. I do intend to leave here with everyone in one piece.”
His gaze all but drew my life force out of me. “You all almost didn’t arrive that way.”
“Yeah, the damn mines got to some of us.” I’d let him think all our injuries had been incurred that way. “But the damages were minimal.”
“I don’t think your colleague in the anti-gravity harness agrees.”
“I didn’t mean to trivialize the injuries.”
“I know what you meant. But it could have been far worse. It could have been you.”
I blinked at the edge of rage in his voice. “I don’t think I matter more than anyone else.”
His eyes turned into pure silver fire. “That’s where you’re absolutely wrong. You do matter more than any other, because you can do so much more than anyone else, for so many others. If it had been you who’d been injured, no one could have helped you, not in the way only you can, or helped the thousands you helped here. I bet none of your colleagues would have arrived intact in the first place without you.”
Unable to refute his logic completely, disturbed by this view of my importance, I shrugged helplessly. “What ifs aside, it all didn’t end in catastrophe.”
“Yes, thanks to you,” he insisted. “I checked on Shad, read his file. That you managed to save him at all would have been impressive. But I believe he has an almost one hundred percent positive prognosis, that he’ll literally walk away from such injuries good as new. That’s a miracle. You are.”
I shook my head, unable to withstand his adulation. “The miracle here is definitely you. The only real communication I had from the refugees was that you’re their hero, their savior. In spite of your situation, you’ve been here for them, dealing with everything from individual illnesses to mass emergencies. You did far more on your own than we’ve managed to do together.”
Eyes cooling to blue, he sighed. “I try. When I manage to get the militants to cough up supplies. But I doubt even the most sophisticated medical measures would have done much against an epidemic of viral encephalitis.”
Was that his diagnosis? “Hmm. The symptoms did sound like an atypical strain, but of unheard of virulence. It takes about four days from onset of symptoms to death. And that’s not even the biggest issue. It’s that I believe those people were infected on purpose. And I think children are now targeted. I have reason to believe they’ve been rounding them up for some sort of experimentation. Probably still in the investigative phase, since none of them is sick yet.”
Another long, silent moment, then this faraway look came into Jake’s eyes again. “I heard rumors of a multinational project somewhere in the region that’s allegedly developing chemical and/or biological weapons.”
“You think it’s them who’ve been experimenting on the refugees?”
His gaze refocused on me. “Did you hear any tales related by the now deceased refugees, about their experiences? Did the refugees at least tell you who exactly took their people?”
“The sick refugees were beyond talking when they were returned. And I didn’t ask who took them since it never occurred to me it could be someone other than the militants.”
“Whatever happened, it has to be with their approval.”
“So you think they have a deal with that project, importing guinea pigs to experiment on?”
“In this world, anything’s possible, Cali.”
“Do you have any idea where that project is?”
“Damian probably does. Why don’t you ask him?”
“Damian?”
His nod was the epitome of matter-of-factness. “Terrorist bases and ultra-evil R&D facilities of mass destruction are right up his alley, aren’t they?”
Forty
“How would you like to die?”
Damian didn’t even move at my snarl.
Matt and Ed, who were helping him, exchanged curious glances before raising their eyes to me. One look made them realize the gelatin plastic explosives they were making were far more stable than I was right now. They turned to kneading in flour and bicarbonate sodium into the antifreeze and guncotton mixture with extra diligence, lips twitching.
Thought it was a lover’s quarrel they were about to witness, huh?
That earned them a barked, “Out.”
It only got me cool defiance, even from that traitor Matt. Neither man made a move to conclude their work except after meeting Damian’s eyes and getting his corroboration.
Damn male bonding and solidarity.
I didn’t wait for them to exit before coming up behind Damian and hissing, “How about I choose your method of execution? How about I shove you into that mixture?”
Making plastique with antifreeze and the self-igniting guncotton we’d made from cotton and nitric and sulfuric acid was a precarious procedure. Not in Damian’s hands though. He was a true master of anarchy science.
He put everything down with assured care, turned his eyes to me. Their eruptive potential rivaled anything the explosives were capable of as he hissed right back, “I did something to deserve more punishment?”
More? As in I’d been punishing him by not sleeping with him? The colossal nerve.
“Capital punishment in my book…liar.”
Every erg of animation and passion was extinguished, his eyes hardening to amber. “Is this about Constantine?”
“He calls you Damian. As befitting two war buddies.”
“We are no such thing. We crossed paths in Afghanistan, that’s all.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?”
“It never came up.”
“Never came up? You behaved as if you’ve never seen him when I so obliviously introduced you.”
He shrugged. “We were in the same place twice within a two-month timeframe, and when we actually interacted, we didn’t mix well. I forgot all about him until years later when I heard he was missing and presumed dead. Then I met you.” His gaze heated, melted. “Fell for you.”
Oh. No. He. Wasn’t. “Don’t.”
He ignored my bare-toothed threat. “I fell for you, then found out that he of all people used to be your…fiancé, and my interest in him was piqued. So I took over PACT’s ongoing investigation into his disappearance. And here we are.”
“And you didn’t think any of this was important enough to come up during the past four weeks?”
“We weren’t on chatting terms for most of those weeks. Then between the crucial stuff going on, and the monumental development of us making love, telling you of my fleeting encounters with Constantine was nowhere on my list.”
My outrage entered the red zone. “Not even when you were selling me on the idea of not telling him what we are?”
“Between wrestling with you and being out of my mind wanting you, it sure didn’t seem like a priority.”
“Really? You, Damian De Luna, the ultimate black ops operative, who misses and forgets nothing, and takes the most infinitesimal details into obsessive account? You’re telling me your libido sabotaged your logic so b
adly that you pleaded with me not to tell him what we’re here for, when you knew he’d know it the minute he laid eyes on you?”
His face turned grim. “I knew no such thing. I was recovering from an injury both times he’d seen me and was acting as a logistics liaison officer, with duties very similar to my role in this mission.
“Are you saying he doesn’t know what you are?”
“He doesn’t.”
That would have depressurized the steam building up inside my skull, except for the fact that “He does.”
That silenced Damian’s ready retorts.
When he finally spoke, it was slow, ominous. “What did he tell you, exactly?”
“That you were the one I should ask about the top-secret chemical/biological weapons production installation around here, since you’re the one keeping track of all terrorism and mass-destruction efforts around the globe.”
I didn’t scare easy. Or at all. I shuddered in dread now.
Someone I didn’t know was glaring at me. Someone terrifying. Merciless. Inhuman.
Then the moment passed. Damian exhaled and shook his head, his expression so mild, so self-deprecating I scoffed internally at my aberrant reaction.
“That man is a genius for real, isn’t he?” he huffed mirthlessly. “Or that indescribable thing you couldn’t find a term for. I should have known. In the couple of missions we were on, a few days each, he ended up knowing as much as any of us about our own jobs just through observation and a few comments here and there. From evidence I thought negligible, he must have worked out my real job, and why I wasn’t on combat duty then.”
Knowing Jake’s preposterous IQ, that wasn’t far-fetched. If he’d worked it out Damian had been a Special Forces fledgling then, his uncanny logic and insight would calculate with total accuracy what the years’ gap had made Damian, or what he was doing here.
Everything fell in place. Fell flat.
A vacuum filled my head where suspicions and anger had been seconds ago. Damian considered the conversation closed, went back to making pipe bombs, stuffing plastique into the steel tubes we’d used in drinking posts and latrines for the refugees. Shaking myself out of it, I joined in automatically.
As soon as we were done, I tossed him an oxygen mask, put mine on. I was going to make more hydrazine from INH—isonicotinic acid hydrazide, an anti-tuberculous agent—and it gave off toxic fumes. With ammonium nitrate—made from the ammonia that ran in our refrigerator units and the nitric acid camouflaged in steel containers with deionized water we needed for lab work—it would produce Astrolite G, my specialty.
Touted as the world’s most powerful non-nuclear explosive, it was even more powerful than nitroglycerine and TNT. But what made Astrolite perfect for stealth attacks was that it got absorbed into the ground and remained detonable up to four days, in any humidity conditions. We’d soaked the ground around the militants’ base in strategic spots. Igniting it would bring everything down on our enemies. Worst case, it would trap them, stop them from pursuing us. Best one, it would kill them all.
Once I was done, we aired the trailer. As soon as we took off our oxygen masks, Damian spoke again.
“It’s a good thing we’re making our move tomorrow. Constantine hasn’t done anything to compromise us so far, but I’d rather not put it to the test. Just tell me you haven’t told him specifics. Or that you are in on this.”
I glared at him, found his expression carefully neutral.
“Again?” I gritted.
“Knowing about me and a vague plan to storm the base is one thing, knowing exactly how we’re going to pull it off and when is another. If he knows nothing specific, there’s no chance of anything going wrong. Let’s not debate this again.”
I held his gaze and felt my breath deserting me.
Heart discharging, lungs refusing to re-inflate, I finally nodded.
I forced myself to continue working, two thoughts more volatile than anything we were working with preying on me. Convictions actually.
Everything he’d just said was logical, valid. And I’d proven I was insight-impaired where he was concerned. But something had just speared into me. A marrow-deep knowledge. It was one of those two convictions.
Damian was lying.
Though I had no theories about what or why, he was. Unwaveringly, meticulously. If I hadn’t been primed by Jake’s revelation, if I hadn’t been unsatisfied on a gut-level with Damian’s explanation, I wouldn’t have noticed. But I had.
He probably thought he had the best reasons for lying, would never share no matter what. After all we’d been through, I found this unforgivable. This had my faith quotient nose-diving, had every word he’d said to me coming under examination. Even suspicion.
This brought me to the second conviction. It was more of a decision really. As nonnegotiable and final.
I’d tell Jake about our plans. Down to the last detail.
Like Damian had his reasons, I had mine.
Forty-One
Our plan was simple.
No, not simple as in moronic. I hoped.
It was a hybrid of two plans, actually. Damian’s and mine.
Making that marriage had been harder than making a real one.
Damian had been adamant that my team’s part in this mission was over. No matter how battle ready we were, the actual attack should be left to the pros. His team.
His plan was to ambush the militant leaders on the roundabout route, killing most but letting a few run back to the base. Once they took shelter there, the attack would commence with some distant explosions. Those who came out to make a stand would be picked off. Closing in detonations and smoke bombs would bring out more. Pop, pop.
During the mayhem, surveillance of the hostages would be at its weakest. If they were brought out in the open, the rest would be easy. If not, the frontal attack would begin, killing everyone right and left until they got to the hostages.
A margin of “acceptable losses” featured in his plan.
He already knew my view of those from literally fatal experience.
So I’d demanded implementation of my far less blitzkrieg-like plan, replacing the initial part of his. In the retreat, after securing the hostages, I could see no other way out but to let his tactics take over.
But my plan needed my team’s presence in the thick of things. That had been where we’d hit a wall.
Damian’s plan hinged on us being safe on our escape route before he even started his incursion. Then after the mission was accomplished, his team would catch up with us. There’d been the implicit understanding that they might not.
Since I couldn’t pull rank on him during this phase, it had taken protracted debate then unrelenting pressure from every member of my team, and his own team’s corroboration that my plan carried more probabilities of success and less projected losses on our and the hostages’ side.
He hadn’t been a happy man when he’d been forced by unanimous vote to agree to my modification. He’d glared at me with a zillion pent-up frustrations when I’d patted him on the back, telling him he’d thank me later.
I mean, why invade the base when we could walk in, with the militants’ fervent blessings?
Damian’s plan had been to injure some of the leaders enough so they’d escape, but gravely enough they’d die on arrival to the base. My twist was to keep them alive, but deteriorating, with conditions so baffling the hostage doctors would be at a loss how to treat them.
Guess who else the militants could turn to?
The snag in my plan was one thing. Jake. He would have taken one look at the mysteriously declining leaders, solved the puzzle and treated them, spoiling my plan.
I needed him to pretend he was stymied, so the militants would be rattled enough they’d let us come in force, with our trailers along.
That was why I’d told him everything.
I’d never forget the look on his face when I had.
I’d had no time to analyze it, for his response had been
a repetition of Damian’s. Said with the same level of anxiety. Urging me not to risk myself, to let Damian and his team take care of everything. I’d shut him up with a kiss and a promise to have him free before next day’s sunset.
And here we were, before the first light of dawn, waiting for the militants’ high-ranking personnel convoy.
The plan was to ambush them, do our stuff, head back to camp to wait for the militants to come running to us. It was simplicity itself. In theory. We’d see how the execution went. Both figuratively and literally speaking.
We hid behind strategic rock formations on both sides of the road. On my side, I was sandwiched between Matt and Damian as flailing headlights heralded the convoy’s approach.
I felt Damian’s tension rising. Right now, I wasn’t against seeing him burst with it.
Systematically lying to my face burdening you, darling? How about a good whack on the head to defuse it?
Too bad it wasn’t the time to kick his butt over this. Nor had it been during the hours leading us here. I’d had to resign myself that explanations didn’t feature in my near future.
And then we might all end up dead, and not even finding out that Damian and Jake were secretly married would matter.
Damian’s tension spiked, skewering through me.
“Relax, will you?”
His angst became vocal at my hiss. “With you in this world? No tricks, Calista. Plan’s solid. Let it play.”
I didn’t answer him. Tricks were reserved for catastrophic situations. If those arose, he’d bet his gorgeous glutes there’d be some fancy ones. I hoped with everything in me there wouldn’t have to be.
We let the ten-vehicle convoy pass then Damian, Ed, José and Suz did their thing. With improvised mufflers secured to their rifles, they took out the first and last cars’ tires. The convoy came to a staggering halt, vehicles crashing into each other. Two turned onto their sides, their still-on headlights illuminating a hoped-for and satisfying sight. The militants pouring out of their vehicles like ants escaping water, worsening their predicament. There was some retaliatory fire. Haphazard. Ineffective.