Chapter Twenty-Five
G race ran. Blood dribbled down the back of her hand and off the end of her middle finger. When had she taken the IV out?
Someone bellowed her name behind her, but she ignored it. The clatter of footfalls, many of them, chased her, but she ignored them too.
She wasn’t going to lose the father like she’d lost the son. She wasn’t.
A hand wrapped itself around her arm just south of her shoulder and tried to pull her to a stop.
She abruptly switched directions, throwing her weight onto the man who’d grabbed her, pushing him to the ground. She twisted her arm to get him to let go, but his grip was strong and sure, and she found herself hauled down on top of him.
She bared her teeth at the one man she trusted to let her do her job and snarled, “Let me go.”
“Doc,” Sharp growled back at her. “You can’t go in there.”
She met him glare for glare. “I can’t let him die.”
Sharp’s voice was hard, cold and unrelenting. “He’s dead already.”
A cold chill abraded her exposed skin, and a broken sound of protest escaped her tight throat. “We don’t know that for sure.”
“Lying to yourself never works out. I know, I’ve tried.”
His shot hit home, and she sucked in a painful breath, then pushed at his chest with both palms. “We can’t do nothing.”
He scanned her face with an intent gaze, then let her go with slow deliberation. “We can’t run willy-nilly into danger either.”
She had run off without thinking. The bio-suit was damaged. No one should go anywhere near Marshall’s room until the air and surfaces within twenty feet of the doorway had been tested for spores.
How the hell was she supposed to do anything to help anyone without a way to protect herself?
Anger’s heat suffused her body, curling her hands into fists. Helpless—she was helpless to stop this weapon, to stop the man behind the weapon.
Helpless was one thing she refused to accept.
She forced herself to engage her brain. She needed information. “Does Marshall have a phone or radio with him?”
“Yeah.”
“I need to talk to him. I need to know exactly what happened.”
Sharp’s gaze didn’t waver, but he nodded. “It’s this way.” He helped her up, then led her to another set of prefab buildings, these devoted to communications.
He left her standing in the middle of the room to talk to the soldier manning a computer and wearing a Bluetooth headset.
She turned and found the way out blocked by Smoke and Clark. “I’m not going to run away.”
Clark shrugged while Smoke didn’t reply at all except to glance at Sharp once, then back at her.
“Doc?”
Sharp’s voice brought her attention back to him, and she walked toward the phone he held out to her.
“Colonel Marshall?”
A man coughed. “Here,” he said, his voice so rough it sounded like it had been torn to shreds.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
He made an impatient sound.
“I’m sorry if this is getting repetitious, but I need to hear it from you, not second- or third-hand.”
“Understood. I opened the door to my quarters and a light bulb fell from somewhere above me, smashed on the floor, releasing a cloud of fine dust.” He paused to cough for several seconds. “As soon as I saw that cloud of shit, I knew. The son of a bitch had put a trap in my room. I know I’m dead, but I didn’t want to take anyone with me, so I slammed the door.”
“How long after the dust was released into the air did you shut the door?”
“A second, maybe two.”
“It’s only been a few minutes since it happened, yet you sound very ill. Can you describe your symptoms for me?”
“Sore throat, watery eyes, difficulty breathing.”
“When did those start?”
“Within a couple minutes of breathing in that crap.”
“I’d like your input on our next steps. My bio-suit has been damaged beyond repair. This reduces our ability to investigate what’s happened and assist you.”
Marshall laughed. “I’ve heard you talk like that before, and I always thought you were a cold fish, Doctor, but now I realize you’re so angry you’ve got yourself on lockdown.”
She had no response for that.
“Here’s what you’re going to do.” His voice changed from amused to steel-strength hardness. “You’re going to find the fucker who’s fucking with us and kill him.”
“But...”
“No buts, Doctor. Those are your orders.”
It took her two whole breaths to calm herself enough to attempt speech again. “There has to be a way to help you.”
“I’m dead. Make it worth something.”
“I don’t think I can do it. Leave you to die, I mean.”
Marshall didn’t say anything for a few moments. “You never let Joe go, did you?”
A sob burst out of her, and she sucked the rest back until her whole chest hurt from keeping them in. “No. I see his face in my mind every day. When I wake up, when I doubt myself, and before every decision.”
“My son acted without thinking and it got him killed,” Marshall said in a tone she’d heard him use for his own soldiers, but never with her. “He fell for the distraction. Don’t make the same mistake. Find the real enemy. He’s probably not far. Men like him want to watch their handiwork in motion. Figure it out, Major Samuels. Kill the asshole before he kills again.”
“Yes, sir.” She swallowed hard and said, “It’s been an honor serving with you.”
The line went dead.
Grace put the phone down gently and turned to face Sharp. “He said this is all a distraction and we’re falling for it. We need to find the real enemy—Akbar. Marshall thought he wouldn’t be far.”
“What about Marshall?” Sharp asked.
She couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down her face. “He’s already feeling sick. He inhaled a huge amount of spores. I don’t think...he’ll last long.”
General Stone spoke from where he sat, unnoticed, on the far side of the room. “Marshall’s right. Go find me that bugger,” he said to Sharp. “But don’t kill him, not unless you have to. I want to have a little chat with him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doctor,” Stone said to Grace. “You’re going with the Berets. They may need your expertise.”
“Understood, sir.”
“However—” he pointed a finger at her “—no heroics.”
“Sir, I believe Sergeant Foster will sit on me if I try to do something noble like trying to save someone’s life in the middle of a firefight.”
“And take care of that hand.”
She glanced down. The back of her hand was covered in blood and a big scab had formed where the IV had been inserted into a vein.
“I will, sir.”
Stone grunted and waved a hand at them.
Sharp took Grace by the arm again and walked her out of the communications building into supply with Hernandez, March, Runnel, and Smoke trailing behind. He loaded her up with clean clothing, body armor, a Beretta, and extra clips of ammunition.
He marched her to the nearest bathroom, where she washed her hand and put a Band-Aid over the puncture hole.
She disappeared into another female soldier’s quarters and changed clothes. When she came out, she felt almost human again. “I’m ready,” she told Sharp.
“That makes one of us,” he muttered, then added in a louder tone, “We’re expected in the War Room. Those satellite pictures should be ready now.”
She glanced at him while he spoke and watched the muscle in his jaw bunch. “You’re angry?”
He didn’t answer.
She put her hand on his arm and pulled him to a stop. “Talk to me.”
Hernandez coughed. “We’ll meet you there.” He patted Sharp on the shoulder. “Good luck, buddy.” March, Runnel, and Smoke followed him.
Sharp scowled at the men, then met Grace’s gaze and crossed his arms over his chest.
“What?” she asked, matching his posture.
“This is going to be a bitch of a mission, and I don’t want you...”
“There?” she finished.
“In harm’s way,” he corrected.
“I’ve been doing that since I took the Hippocratic Oath. There’s a part that goes, I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure . This is prevention.”
“You’re equating disease prevention to taking out a terrorist?”
“Yes.” She shook her head. “Jerk.” She continued walking to the War Room, Sharp grumbling behind her all the way.
Stone was in the War Room examining a number of satellite photos. As soon as she and Sharp walked in, Stone gestured at Sharp to join him.
She glanced at the photos on the table, but they all looked the same to her. This part, she wasn’t going to have much input in. She just hoped Sharp wouldn’t do anything to make her job harder in the name of protecting her.
She moved around the table to look at the photos from a different perspective. At first they seemed so alike, studying them would be a waste of time. As she looked at them, though, individual elements began to pop out of them. The rutted lines of roads and buildings, or their remains, crafted by man. She found one with three trucks headed down the same rough country road.
Hadn’t Sharp said to look for a spot with a lot of truck traffic in and out?
She picked up the picture and studied it closer. The trucks appeared to be heading to...nowhere?
“Where is this?” she asked out loud.
The room went silent, and she glanced up. Sharp was on his way around the table to her.
She handed him the photo. He looked at it and nodded.
“Here it is, sir. Sixteen hours before that one.” He pointed at the photo Stone was currently looking at. He strode around the table and put the picture in front of the general.
Stone stared at the photos. “I agree. Get out there and find out if this is our traitor’s home base.”
Sharp glanced at the men in his team and said, “Saddle up.”
***
S harp didn’t want her on this mission. Damn it, she’d been through hell already and she didn’t need to get beat up, shot or infected with anything else. Unfortunately, they also needed her on this mission.
It was the only reason he hadn’t duct-taped her to a wall in her quarters.
He led his men and Grace back to their staging area to get geared up and remembered she didn’t have a bio-suit. Fuck.
“You don’t have a suit.”
“No. I don’t.”
Shit, she wasn’t going to let that stop her —she,of the Hippocratic Oath.
“I’m not about to throw my life away,” she said in a softer tone. “I won’t take any unnecessary risks.”
“Who gets to define what unnecessary risk means?”
She sighed. “Both of us.”
He stopped and pointed a finger in her face, when what he really wanted to do was kiss the fight right out of her. “If things go to shit, you follow my commands. No arguing or hanging back.”
“As long as you let me do what I need to, no problem.”
He held out his hand and she shook it.
“Jesus Christ, I’m outta my fucking mind,” Sharp muttered as he resumed their journey to the staging area. And in love with a fucking angel. That, he didn’t say out loud. Something told him she’d run like hell if he did.
A helicopter was waiting for them, fueled and rotors turning when they hit the helicopter pad twenty minutes later. They took off into the setting sun.
The trip wasn’t a long one, only forty miles away, but Sharp got their pilot to slow down and fly low as if on a search pattern a couple of miles out from their target. They hopped out as the bird disappeared behind a rise, then the bird popped back up as if nothing had happened.
Sharp’s team spread out to watch for incoming threats as they moved closer and closer to their target, likely a cave system.
As darkness fell, they put on their nighttime goggles, Grace too, and continued.
They came across the first roving sentry thirty minutes after departing the helicopter. Smoke took him out quietly with a knife to the throat and hid the body.
They moved forward with more caution and took out two more sentries before having to move down into the rocky gullies in search of the place the road led to.
There was a cave with a mouth about three men wide and two high. Four men, armed with Soviet-made rifles, manned the opening. None of them appeared to be wearing night-vision equipment.
Sharp flashed a signal at Smoke, who moved away slightly, then called out for help in Dari saying he’d twisted his ankle.
Sharp settled into his half-crouch shooting position and found the four in his scope. They were a little too far apart.
The men guarding the cave gathered together, talking about what their response should be, whether one of them should investigate or if two should go.
Sharp couldn’t have asked for a better scenario. He let his breath out and fired.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Dead.
Behind him, Grace sucked in a breath.
He waited for her to say or do something to berate him for shooting the men, but nothing came. No one yelled or moved.
A second later, he and his men were on the move, Grace tucked in behind him. Like she’d been when they’d hightailed it to the hills to hide after the helicopter crash. Her breath came in short pants, just loud enough for him to hear. Just loud enough for him to know exactly where she was, even though all his attention appeared to be in front of him.
They moved like a mist, low to the ground in a smooth rush that suddenly contracted and circled the cave’s entrance.
Smoke took point, advancing into the cave. Hernandez followed. He gave the all-clear hand signal and Sharp went in with Grace so close he could feel her body heat penetrating his clothing and armor.
Twenty feet in, voices became audible. Men, speaking in Dari.
Smoke slowed their forward momentum, giving everyone enough time to stay in close formation. Darkness faded as gas lights appeared overhead.
Two men suddenly came toward them carrying a crate, headed toward the cave’s exit. Smoke let them pass.
Hernandez didn’t. He and Clark grabbed a man each and thrust knives into the backs of their skulls. They dropped like dead fish onto the ground.
Smoke and Sharp caught the crate before it could crash on the rocky floor of the cave. They moved it to one wall and went to pry the lid off, but it wasn’t nailed down.
Grenade launchers.
Sharp put his mouth to Grace’s ear. “Could the spores be put into a grenade and launched without risk to the person doing the launching?”
“I doubt it, but I don’t think that would stop him. Them. Whoever.”
He squeezed her shoulder to show his agreement. The asshole behind this insanity didn’t give a shit about anyone. Not even himself.
That made him unpredictable. Deadly.
His gut reaction was to grab Grace and get her the hell out of there, but he couldn’t do that and not damage the trust he’d built with her.
Trust he needed more than he needed to wrap her in plastic Bubble Wrap and hide her away from the world.
“We’re looking for weapons and bad guys,” he said almost soundlessly in her ear. “You look for anything that could be used as a spore deployment device.”
She nodded.
“Stay right behind me. Put your hand on my back. Remember?” When they’d had to hide to evade capture, she hadn’t hesitated to stay in contact, close enough for him to hear her breathing escalate.
She nodded again and kissed him.
It was nothing more than a quick touch of her lips to his. Over in a second, but that second told him she was good with what they were doing. Good with what they had to do. Good with him .
It was just his luck she’d toss him on his emotional backside while on a kill-or-be-killed mission.
He picked up his scattered wits and flashed two hand signals at the team, then led them farther into the cave.