Chapter Thirteen
G race ducked, having already heard more bullets coming at her than she ever wanted to hear. Fear, disbelief and horror made her normal nausea while flying seem like the calm before the storm.
Their own people were shooting at them.
Next to her, Sharp threw himself over her, covering her body with his. The damn hero. She tried to shove him, to get him to move, but he just pressed down harder.
More bullets echoed around them, then it all stopped suddenly. Everything was calm, the helicopter engine the only noise.
A burst of angry, distraught shouting sliced across her nerve endings. Something was wrong. Sharp closed his arms around her tighter for a moment, then he surged to his feet.. He grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up, almost throwing her toward someone slumped in his jump-seat.
Cutter. His head bobbed and weaved with the vibration of the copter in a way that made a painful shiver run up her spine. Blood dripped off his head, and the left side of his chest and shoulder were bloody.
Cutter had been shot.
“Doc!” Next to Cutter, Hernandez twisted in his jump seat and put pressure on his commander’s chest. He turned and yelled at her again. “Doc!”
She tried to step closer, but the aircraft jerked and swayed under her feet, pitching forward onto her hands and knees.
There was a lot of blood soaking the front of his uniform and body armor. Too much blood, and he appeared completely unresponsive.
She put a hand on Cutter’s neck but could find no pulse. Fuck .
“I’ll get the first-aid kit,” Sharp yelled.
“Is there just one wound?” she asked Hernandez, who was still putting pressure on Cutter’s chest wound.
His head jerked up at her question. “I don’t know.”
Where had the blood on Cutter’s head come from? She did a quick visual inspection and found a bullet burn on the left side of his skull. Enough to ring his bell but not kill him.
“Let me see his back,” she said to Hernandez.
He allowed her to put her hands on Cutter’s shoulder and bring his body forward enough to see behind him. There was a hole in the right side of his back, larger than a golf ball. And blood. So much blood.
Sharp appeared at her shoulder with the first-aid kit. She gave him a tight-lipped glance, then she looked at Hernandez and shook her head.
He shouted something, but she shook her head harder. “He’s gone! I’m sorry—but he’s gone.”
Hernandez stared at her like she’d shot him herself. He jerked his hand away with enough violence to make her rear back. He collapsed onto himself, bowed his head and fisted his bloody hands tight on his thighs.
She glanced at Sharp. He gave her a rigid nod. The other team members were either hiding their faces so they could grieve or staring at her like they couldn’t believe it.
Couldn’t believe their commander had been killed by their own men.
Grace swallowed the vomit that had risen in her throat and went to her seat. Marshall had a lot to answer for, and she wasn’t going to let him bulldoze his way out of any of it. She put her harness on, then stared at her bloody hands. Cutter’s body was still sitting across from her as if he were asleep. What would his men do with his body? With Marshall no doubt telling everyone they were the worst sort of criminals, they’d have to keep it with them. As if they didn’t have enough problems.
They hit some turbulence and the whole aircraft shook like an earthquake registering nine on the Richter scale. It was the last straw for Grace’s stomach.
She vomited, managing to miss everything but the floor of the helicopter. Yay her.
A bag was thrust in front of her face and she took it automatically, continuing to fill it with what was left in her stomach. Eventually, her guts stopped clenching and she was able to hand the bag off to Sharp, who threw it out the open door.
She should be outraged. She should be formulating a plan to bring Cutter’s killer, Marshall, to justice. All she felt was tired. So many people had died, so many more were at risk, and now her friend and a man who was the glue to this team was dead.
How on earth were they going to succeed?
How were they going to stay out of jail long enough to prove they weren’t the crazy ones?
Marshall had lost his mind. Ordering his men to fire on them—how was murder an acceptable response to soldiers following orders, even if they were someone else’s?
Were the men on the ground at the village going to fire on them, too?
What about the insurgents who were supposedly firing on the village? Would they even be able to land?
She didn’t have her bio-suit. None of them did. How was she going to take samples? The original patrol had contracted the illness, proving to her it had to be airborne.
She glanced up to ask Cutter her questions, to brainstorm a plan...but Cutter was dead.
Sharp had sat down next to her while her thoughts ran wild in her head. He was still and so, so quiet. She hated what she had to do next. He deserved some time to process what had happened, but none of them had time to come to terms with it.
She put a shaking hand on his arm.
He leaned in close.
“We don’t have any protection against the anthrax. For the discovery patrol to get infected, it has to be in the air. How are we going to take samples without putting ourselves at risk?”
“We’ll get Leonard to collect some, then land a safe distance away to pick them up.”
“Safe distance, huh. How far is that?”
He shrugged, his eyes sunken, his face haggard. “Make an educated guess. We’ll land wherever you want.”
“Wonderful.” If she chose wrong, it could mean all of their deaths.
A hand waving from the front of the aircraft caught their attention. Clark was signaling Sharp to put on a headset. The only one available was the one Cutter was still wearing. Sharp took it off his head and put it on.
He listened for a moment, then started yelling into the mic. Despite the noise from the rotors and engine, she could hear every word Sharp said.
“Commander Cutter is dead, thanks to you.” He paused, then said, “Our bug expert knows what she’s doing, and her chain of command supports her. Special Forces soldiers are trained to handle unconventional warfare and think independently. I don’t believe you’re competent to issue orders on the situation. Stop while you still can.” He pulled the headset off and threw it on the floor.
“That son of a bitch is trying to blame us for this clusterfuck?” Hernandez asked, his eyes glittering with anger and unshed tears.
“Oh yeah.” Sharp’s voice sounded as angry and disgusted as she felt. “He’s so mad I could hardly understand him, but it’s clear. He’s going to make the case that we and the doc are at fault for all of it.”
“There’s just one problem with that,” Grace yelled so all of them would hear. “Colonel Maximillian gave me and the A-Team at the village specific orders. I’m sure he contacted Marshall to explain why the site couldn’t be cleaned right away.”
She made eye contact with Hernandez. “Do you know if Marshall followed Max’s orders?”
“I never heard of any orders from anyone else. Cutter didn’t mention anything about it either.”
Frustration made her want to hit something. “Did he do anything productive while Sharp and I were dying slowly in the desert?”
No one said anything.
She tried a different question. “How long did it take him to send out search-and-rescue after our helicopter went down?”
Hernandez looked like he wanted to punch someone. “About six hours. We didn’t even know your bird had gone dark until three or four hours after you took off. Marshall claimed you took the bird against orders to a different location and weren’t responding to hails.”
“The lying sack of shit,” Sharp said. “He’s out of his mind.”
“We’re coming up on the village fast,” Hernandez said. “What are we going to do when we get there?”
“Can you get in touch with Leonard?”
Hernandez turned around and yelled at Clark in the copilot seat.
Clark said something back and Hernandez reported back to her. “Clark is talking to him now. We’re ten minutes out and clear to land. Leonard says he has new samples ready for you.”
“Tell Clark to land at least a quarter mile from the village and the field where the cows died. Ask Leonard to leave the samples then back away.”
Hernandez nodded and yelled at Clark.
Now all she had to do was wait to arrive at the village.
Horror crept toward her from every direction. Cutter’s body, moving with every jolt and sway of the helicopter, the fear and anger on the faces of the men around her. Nausea threatened to tear her apart from the inside out, her shaking fists clenched so tight the skin over her knuckles was white.
Her hand itched to slide over to Sharp’s, to seek out his strength, to have his long, strong fingers entwined with hers. Holding hands was inappropriate for so many reasons. She was the ranking soldier. Cutter’s death was her responsibility and hers alone.
Cutter had died doing the right thing. Sharp had been shot, more than once, and beaten, and a higher-ranking officer had betrayed his trust. All of which happened because of her. Was she going to get all of them killed? Sharp killed?
No. She couldn’t allow herself to think that way.
What did she need to complete the mission?
Samples of the bacteria.
Safe transport to Max’s lab at the naval base in Bahrain.
Corroboration of her version of events.
She needed to make sure her friends, these men who were doing their best to help her do the right thing, the only thing that could save so many more lives, left this situation with their records clean and reputations shiny. And alive.
Marshall was going to do everything he could to bring her down and Sharp’s A-Team with her.
She couldn’t let that happen.
Grace closed her eyes, breathed deep for a few seconds, then forced her hands to open. She poked Sharp’s arm and waved him close so she didn’t have to yell so loud. “I need to talk to Max. Colonel Maximillian. He needs to be aware of what’s happened, and Marshall’s role in screwing this up.”
“We can try,” Sharp said, bending over and picking up the headset off the floor of the helicopter. He handed it to her.
It still had Cutter’s blood on it.
Her stomach rolled, but she stuck it on her head and asked, “Smoke?”
“Fire,” was his response.
A joke? Now? “I hope that means you’re paying attention. I need to get through to my CO. Can you do that?”
“Where is he?”
She told him, then waited while Smoke made the connections happen over the radio. She glanced outside. Their altitude was dropping. They were almost to the village. She wouldn’t have long to talk.
“Dr. Samuels?” Max sounded worried and pissed off at the same time. “Where the hell have you be—?”
“Colonel, there’s no time to go into detail,” she interrupted. “My helicopter was shot down shortly after we left the site. Only two of us survived, the others died in the crash or were killed shortly after by insurgents. It took us almost a day to make contact with American troops and get back to Bostick.”
She sucked in a breath and kept talking before he could interject. “Here’s what’s really important. Marshall has my original samples, but I don’t know what he’s done with them. He charged me with a bunch of bogus shit, then threw me in a makeshift brig without allowing me to talk to anyone. He blames me for the death of some of his men. Men who I believe contracted the disease from airborne spores. He didn’t even send a search team out to look for us until six hours after our helicopter crashed. He’s lost his mind. The A-Team I’m working with grabbed another helicopter and we’re about to land at the village, but Marshall ordered his men to fire on us as we took off and they killed Commander Cutter.” She ran out of air and paused to grab another lungful.
Max spoke in a calm voice. “Slow down. Take it easy. Are you saying Marshall ordered the murder of an American soldier?”
“Someone fired on us from the base... Who else could have ordered it?” Tears threatened to escape her tight control, but if they escaped, everything would—all the terror, fear and frustration of the past two days. Sharp and his team were depending on her. She didn’t have time for a nervous breakdown.
“I knew he was a stubborn jackass,” Max said, frustration evident in the way he clipped off the ends of his words. “But I didn’t realize he would jeopardize the situation because a couple of quacks didn’t agree with him.”
“Is quack the worst thing he’s called you? It’s the nicest thing he’s called me,” Grace said with a weak laugh. “I think he’s determined to make this my fault, and I think, by extension, your fault. He’s likely to blow the whole place up, and I still don’t know how the villagers came into contact with the anthrax. I think it’s airborne, but it could also be in the water supply. This bug acts so fast, it’s impossible to know from what little investigation that’s gone on.”
“We need to know that information.”
The helicopter landed. A soldier in a bio-suit waited, crouched about twenty feet away. There was no sample container anywhere near him.
“We’re here,” she told Max. “I’ll call you back.”
“If you don’t,” Max said with a steely tone she’d seldom heard from him, “I’ll assume the worst and send a new team. That’s going to take time we don’t have.”
“Understood.” She took the headset off and dropped it on the floor.
Before she could get out of her harness, Sharp put his hand over hers and leaned close. “The samples are on the ground right next to us.” He gave her a hard look. “I’ll get them. You stay here.”
“But—”
He pointed at her. “Number-one asset, remember?”
She frowned, yanked a pair of gloves out of a side pocket of her pants and smacked them on the palm of his hand. “Until the outside of the container is properly decontaminated, no one touches it without gloves on.”
He pulled on the first glove with a snap and saluted. “Yes, ma’am.” He grabbed the sample container, identical to the one she’d carried for almost two days, and brought it on board. He stowed it to the interior bulkhead with straps, then turned to her and waggled his hands, silently asking what to do with the gloves.
She had more in her pocket.
She mimed crumpling them up in a ball and throwing them out of the helicopter. So that’s what he did.
Smoke turned and waved at her from the pilot’s seat, but she wasn’t sure what he was trying to say.
“Leonard needs to talk to us,” Sharp said. “We’re shutting the bird down, okay?”
The level of noise dropped as the engine was turned off.
“Is it really important enough to delay getting the samples to the lab?” she asked.
“He wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t.”
The rotors slowed down and most of Sharp’s team took up defensive positions on either side of the aircraft. Two of them took Cutter’s body, wrapped it in a tarp and strapped it to the bulkhead, as well.
Leonard walked toward them, but stopped about ten feet away. As soon as the noise from the helicopter was low enough for him to be heard, he started yelling.
“We’re all in deep shit.”
That much she knew already. “Can you be a little more specific? Shit is all I’ve been in lately.”
“Marshall has issued an arrest order for all of you. Those of us on the team that came here initially are to be put under arrest as soon as we leave the site. No one is to assist you in any way.”
Grace’s jaw fell open. “He can’t do that.”
Leonard looked at Sharp. “Where’s Cutter?”
“Dead.” Sharp gestured with his head at their commander’s body, covered and anchored to the bulkhead.
Leonard stared at them for a moment, then exploded with, “ What the fuck? When? How?”
“About thirty minutes ago,” Sharp answered. “When we were taking off. We took fire from the base.”
“Crazy bastard,” Leonard said, pacing a few steps away then back again. “What a giant clusterfuck.”
“We can’t stay here,” Sharp told him. “For all we know, Marshall has another bird coming in behind us.”
Leonard raised his hands in frustration. “Where the hell are you going to go?”