10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Day 2 Karaveht, Tajikistan
Was he hallucinating?
Aiden’s gaze slid to the batshit crazy aircraft. Hell, the mechanical bird fit right in as an insane hallucination. But it could be real too. As the commander of Shadow Mountain, a high tech, quasi-military base, Wolf had access to all kinds of nifty toys, including experimental aircraft. This weird chopper-plane hybrid could be something the Shadow Mountain aeronautical engineers had whipped up. Plus, there was the craft’s crew. Mac, Rawls, and Cosky—former SEAL teammates of his—had joined the Shadow Mountain base three years ago. It was possible the three had joined Wolf in a rescue mission.
He still hadn’t decided whether he was hallucinating when Kait flew around the corner of the mechanical bird and headed straight toward him.
“Aiden!” she dropped to her knees beside him and pressed her palms against his bloody thigh. “You’re hurt!”
She was dressed in the same tactical garb and ballistic plates as the men disgorged by the aircraft, but without the helmet. Her hair swung against her back in a long, golden braid.
“Don’t touch me!” He knocked her hands off his thigh with his bound wrists. Dream or not, damned if he was going to expose her to insanity and death.
That’s when he caught sight of her bloody fingers and palms. His chest went hollow, his muscles tight. Hell, his blood painted her hands. If he was contagious, she might be infected now, too. Although…she’d only touched him for a second. Maybe that wasn’t long enough to transfer the pathogen. Thank Christ, Kait’s gift required skin-to-skin contact. She couldn’t heal him through the layers of fabric.
Kait, being the resolute sort, refused to let that stop her. She glanced at Benny’s open med kit and grabbed the small pair of scissors in the top compartment.
When her hands closed on his bloody thigh with the scissors, he slammed his bound fists into them again, forcing them away. “Dammit, Kait, don’t touch me. There’s a good chance I’m contagious.”
“Contagious?” Cosky spun, saw Kait kneeling beside Aiden, and leaped toward them. “Goddammit, we told you to stay in the Thunderbird until we called for you.”
Cosky’s comment convinced Aiden he wasn’t dreaming. His stubborn sister never obeyed an order she didn’t agree with.
Her focus completely on Aiden’s blood-soaked upper thigh, Kait dodged Aiden’s hands and lowered the scissors until the tip pressed against the sodden fabric. “Grab his hands, Marcus. I need to get to the wound, but his pants are in the way, and he won’t let me cut them.”
Aiden didn’t care about his pants, but Kait wasn’t listening. He lifted his head and caught Cosky’s gaze.
“Get her away from me. I’m probably infected by whatever killed my team.” He tilted his chin toward the closest body, which was Squirrel.
A wave of grief hit at the sight of his best friend’s corpse, with its blood-iced face—or what had once been his face. A fist plunged into his chest and squeezed the breath from his lungs. Jesus —he struggled for air. Jerking his gaze away, he counted to ten and fought for control.
“Benioko wouldn’t have sent me if danger was present.” She braced herself when Aiden swung his fists at her hands again. “He sent me with Wolf and the others for a reason. To heal you.”
Who the hell was Benioko? One of the Kalikoia elder gods? Wolf, their Kalikoia half-brother, had exposed Kait to their father’s Native American heritage. But joining the Shadow Mountain team as one of their healers had sucked her deep into the Kalikoia culture.
“Besides,” Kait’s voice turned dry. Her hand with the scissors dodged his fists again. “It’s too late. You’ve already bled all over me.”
True, but beside the point. The more she touched him, the stronger the chance of infection. Maybe by some miracle she’d escaped contamination the first time she’d smeared his blood all over her hands.
Thank Christ Cosky had more common sense than his sister. Aiden relaxed as his brother-in-law leaned down, wrapped his arms around Kait’s waist, and lifted her completely off the ground.
Kait lost her grip on the scissors as she squirmed violently in her husband’s arms. “Dammit! Let me go! He’s bleeding.”
“He’s bled worse.” Cosky tightened his hold on her squirming body and cautiously backed up. “Let’s find out what happened and why he’s tied up before rushing in.”
“I already touched him.” She stopped struggling long enough to present her bloody hands. “If he’s infectious, it’s too late. Might as well let me heal him.”
Cosky’s jaw hardened. He angled his head toward Aiden. “What the fuck happened? Who tied you up?”
“I tied myself up to avoid attacking the exfil crew when they arrive.” He blew out a tight breath. Adopting an even monotone, he recounted what they’d found in Karaveht and what had happened to his team brothers. “Whatever infected the locals infected my crew, too. It stands to reason that I’m infected as well.”
“Sweet Jesus.”
Rawls’s tight voice caught Aiden’s attention. He glanced over in time to see Rawls straighten and back away from the closest frozen, faceless corpse.
“That’s Squirrel. I recognize the tat.”
Aiden’s chest went tight and hot. He coughed to clear the ache from his throat. “Yeah. Squirrel and Grub took out Lurch and then each other. It happened so damn fast—” His voice gave out beneath the pressure in his chest.
“I crewed with all three men,” Cosky said, his voice grim. He lowered Kait until her boots touched the snow crusted ground but didn’t let her go. “They were experienced operators, not men who break under stress.” His head turned toward Wolf. “Was this what Benioko saw in his dream?”
Benioko again. Who the hell was this dude?
Wolf shook his helmeted head. Slowly he turned, as though surveying the carnage. “No. The Old One described something much different. Although, perhaps, what happened here is related. He says Aiden is the key to defeating this new enemy.”
“Enemy?” Aiden sat up straighter. “Did he see who was behind this attack? Who infected the locals and my men?”
“You keep saying infected,” an unfamiliar voice interrupted. A dry voice with sharp undertones. “Not a word I’m fond of. What kind of infection? How does it spread?”
Aiden cocked his head, taking an immediate dislike to the lip flapper. The dude was decked out in the same tactical gear as the others, but his skin tone was more ruddy than terra cotta, like Wolf and his Kalikoia warriors. Plus, the dude had the strangest eyes—metallic green, not brown or black, like the rest of his brother’s crew. This dude didn’t look Native American at all, which was odd. Kait said that most of Shadow Mountain’s personnel and all of Wolf’s warriors were of Kalikoia descent. Well… except for Mac, Cos, Rawls, and Zane—ST7’s former leadership—who’d joined the base a couple years back.
“Unclear,” Aiden drawled, not bothering to hide his instinctive dislike of the dude. The bastard hadn’t said or done a damn thing to elicit this immediate animosity. So, why was he having so much trouble leashing his hostility?
Probably just fallout from this shithole day.
“Which answer is unclear to you?” the asshole asked, his voice sharpening. The metallic green eyes narrowed and…glittered?
“Both,” Aiden drawled.
“Great,” the asshole said. This time, his tone was downright condemning. “Let’s revisit. Something lethal affected the people of Karaveht and your team, turning them into psychotic, violent monsters. But you don’t know what caused their reaction or how it spread.”
“That sums it up.” To piss the bastard off, Aiden offered an exaggerated shrug.
“Which means we could be infected now, too. Isn’t that just peachy?”
Wolf turned toward the sharp-tongued bastard. “ Taounaha would not have sent us if danger still lingered here.”
Even from where he sat, at least fifteen feet away, Aiden could see the hardness stamped across his brother’s cheeks and chin. And there was more steel than calm in Wolf’s normally neutral voice.
“Yeah? Well, I wouldn’t know about that, as the Shadow Warrior doesn’t favor me with his visions.” The sharp tone swerved into sarcasm.
Wolf stiffened. A stare-down began. The disagreeable dude set his shoulders and boots. What he didn’t do was back down. The balls on that guy. Not to mention an obvious chip on his shoulder.
“Pay O’Neill no mind,” Rawls said, dropping to his knees beside Aiden’s bloody thigh. “He’s an ass. Dude could start a fight in an empty house,” he added, his voice wry.
So, the guy’s name was O’Neill. Aiden studied the dude. Wolf obviously had issues with him, so why was he on the payroll?
“Let’s see where that blood’s comin’ from.” Rawls shrugged out of his attack pack, untied it, and pulled out a bulging red and white canvas bag.
Aiden glanced at Benny’s open med kit, which was sitting within touching distance. Field medics were all alike, whether with USSOCOM or Shadow Mountain. No med kit was as good as the ones they packed themselves.
“Just cut my wrists free without touching me.” Aiden lifted and extended his hands. “I’ll treat the wound myself.”
Rawls hesitated, his fingers resting on the zipper to his med kit. “I ain’t gettin’ loco vibes from you.”
“Thing is, we can’t chance that I’m not infected. I touched some locals down there. Just like my crew. Everyone…absolutely everyone else went insane. Why haven’t I? No, I don’t have any of my crew’s symptoms, but that doesn’t mean I escaped it. Hell, I could be infected, just asymptomatic. Or the agent—whatever the hell it is—could be taking its time with me.”
“Squirrel and the boys had symptoms?” Rawls brow furrowed as he unholstered his blade and sliced through Aiden’s wrist and ankle bindings. “What kind?”
“Twitching mostly—around the face and fingers. Bloodshot eyes.” Aiden leaned over and picked up the scissors Kait had dropped when Cosky grabbed her. “Benny said his symptoms started with a tingle in his mind.”
“You havin’ any of those?” Rawls asked as he sheathed his knife and returned it to his tool belt.
“Not yet.” Aiden leaned over his thigh, carefully cutting through his tactical pants and thermals. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”
“How long since your squad succumbed to this insanity?” Rawls settled back on his haunches. His gaze narrowed on Aiden’s thigh as the bloody bandage came into view.
Aiden glanced at his watch, then peeled the soggy dressing from his leg. “Three-and-a-half hours, give or take.”
Rawls digested that in silence before nodding toward the blood streaming down Aiden’s leg. “How bad?”.
“In and out. Missed all the important shit. Just needs to stop bleeding.” Aiden pressed a clean wad of gauze against the bloody hole and pushed down hard.
Once the red stream slowed to a trickle, he tossed the soggy gauze aside and dumped a small mound of hemostatic granules onto the wound. Gritting his teeth against the burning pain, he massaged the granules into the wound. Only this time, the bleeding didn’t slow. Hell, it sped up. Fresh blood washed the granules away as soon as he dumped a new batch into the hole.
A red pool spread beneath his leg. Fucking shit, he was bleeding a lot worse than he’d bled before. The round must have nicked a vein, which had opened beneath his recent activity. An admitted concern, since he hadn’t been all that active.
“Better let Kait have at it,” Rawls said, his gaze locked on the blood streaming down Aiden’s thigh. Worry touched his blue eyes. “She’s got your blood all over her hands anyway. If you’re incubating that loco sickness, she is, too, now. Just sayin’… No sense in you bleedin’ out when she can stop it.”
Aiden scowled. “I might not have infected her the first time she touched me. A second attempt may be all it takes. I’m not chancing that.”
“Benioko would not have sent her to heal you if he saw danger to her,” Wolf said, his voice reasonable. “The danger here has passed.” He turned and looked up, scanning the sky. “But others come. We must be gone before they arrive.”
Aiden followed Wolf’s gaze and scanned the horizon. Was he talking about the exfil crew? “My evac crew won’t arrive for hours yet.”
Wolf’s gaze dropped to Aiden’s face. For the first time, Aiden saw the grimness in his brother’s black eyes. “I do not speak of your people.” He turned to address the equally tall, grim-faced dude standing next to him. “Bag and load the dead. We have little time left.”
Aiden frowned. “Montana’s sending a hazmat team. They’ll know how to handle the bodies.”
Wolf simply looked at him. “There will be no bodies when your people arrive.”
“If we leave them here—”
Wolf shook his head. “They will not be here, nor will you, when your people come for you.”
Aiden thought about that. Dammit . “Whoever’s behind this field test is on their way in?”
“So I am told,” Wolf said.
It made sense. The motherfuckers would want to collect their test subjects. They wouldn’t want evidence of their fuckery to get out. He was damn lucky the bastards hadn’t already showed up and grabbed him.
“In consideration of this news, your Benioko mobilized you boys pretty damn late, don’t you think?” Aiden drawled. “We’re lucky the bastards behind this FUBAR test didn’t snatch me already. I’ve been waiting for hours.”
Wolf shrugged. “It is unwise to question the elder gods. We are here. Our enemy is not. When they come, we will be gone.”
And thank Christ for that. If the bastards coming for him had arrived before Wolf and his crew, his teammates’ bodies would have vanished forever. And Aiden would be dead.
Or worse.