Chapter Twelve
M ovement in the street behind Ali had her tucking the rifle out of sight between her and the wall of the house. She kept her head down as four or five men walked swiftly toward the six surrounding the well.
The two little boys shuffled closer to her, shaking and breathing hard. She wanted to look at them, find out if it was shock freezing them in place or if one of them was hurt, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the action unfolding in front of her.
“Are you okay?” she asked them softly in Arabic.
They didn’t answer. Fear held all their attention. Fear and the murdered women on the ground next to the well.
The newcomers to the party halted about twenty feet away from the gunmen, yelling questions and demands to leave.
“What are you doing here?”
“Why did you kill these women?”
“You don’t belong here, go away.”
“There is already enough death here, take your guns and go.”
The leader of the gunmen shouted back, “We are looking for the Americans. The doctor. Give them to us and we’ll leave.”
“There are no Americans here. The French doctor is dead. She died last night. Killed by the same sickness that killed my son,” one man replied. “Can’t you see? This is a place of death now.”
“The Americans came a few hours ago,” the leader snarled. “We saw the helicopter. Where are they?”
“You are fools,” the same local man replied. “None of the helicopters stop here. No one has come here to help us. We’re all dying.”
The leader of the gunmen lifted his rifle and shot the local spokesman.
A woman screamed and everyone started shooting at everyone else.
Ali kept her gaze on the leader of the gunmen as he ducked behind the well for cover. He was the worst kind of coward, the kind that attacked the weak so he could feel powerful.
That one needed to die.
As shots and return fire turned the area into a scene that could have come straight out of a spaghetti Western, Ali narrowed her focus on her target. The sounds, shouts and movement around her disappeared as she mentally placed herself into a pocket of calm resolve.
She assumed her crouched shooting position, aimed. When her target lifted his head to shoot, she squeezed the trigger.
His head snapped back and he crumpled to the ground.
Target down, she released her mind to take in the scene entirely again.
A bullet hit the stone wall a few inches above her head, raining debris down on her. She eased back from the corner of the house.
When she bumped into the boys, she urged them to back away as well. “We cannot stay here,” she said in Arabic. “Go, quick, quick.”
They just stared at her with wide and glassy eyes. Shock.
“Where is your mother?” she asked them.
The bigger one pointed at the well. “She’s lying on the ground over there.”
Shit, they’d probably witnessed their mother being murdered.
Several bullets hit the house, much too close to her and the kids.
Time to go.
“Come with me,” she said to them. “We’ll find somewhere safe.” She urged them to move away from the fight.
They blinked a couple of times, then scrabbled away, crouching as they ran. She followed, covering their backs with her own body. They made it past the next house, but shouting voices from the scene of the fight told her that they may not have gotten away cleanly.
Ali kept the boys moving with one hand while the other kept hold of her weapon. One of them tripped and fell, and she dropped her weapon to dangle by its strap so that she could grab him. She carried him a few feet before putting him down so he could run on his own again.
She glanced up as she moved to grab her rifle hanging underneath her poncho, and saw a man coming around the house in front of them, his rifle pointed right at her.
The boys froze and put their hands in the air. She followed their example. There was no way for her to get her rifle up before he could shoot her or one of the kids.
The man was one of the six from the well. One of the six looking for the Americans, and she didn’t think it was to ask for help.
“Who are you?” he asked in Arabic. “Answer me.” His shoulders were tense as was his grip on the rifle. He wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if he thought she was a threat.
“No one,” she answered, trying for a tone that might fit a teenaged boy. She nudged the children behind her, but that way wasn’t safe either. They had to get back to the hospital house to warn her team.
She moved toward him slowly. “Will you help us?” she asked, keeping the children pressed against her legs as she made to edge around him.
His shoulders relaxed the tiniest fraction and for a moment she thought he might let them go, but a second later, it was gone and the man’s face lost all emotion.
Decision made, he raised his weapon.
For the first time in her life, Ali fully released the protective warrior at her core. There could be no mercy for a man who’d murder children.
A shout to someone who wasn’t there past his shoulder distracted him. He automatically glanced behind to evaluate the threat.
She launched herself toward the ground, rolling, grabbing a handful of dirt and throwing it at his face as he realized no threat existed and turned back to shoot her.
The dirt spoiled his aim and the shot went wide.
She came up inside his reach, thrusting the heel of her hand against his chin. Her blow knocked him back a step. She grabbed the rifle with one hand while the other hammered down on his wrist, breaking it.
She turned, elbowed him in the face and landed a mule kick to his right knee. The crunch of his kneecap shattering sounded oddly loud.
Something hot and wet scored her side. She completed her turn to find he’d drawn a knife with his left hand. He must have landed a hit, but it didn’t feel significant, so she ignored it.
She blocked his next thrust, and the next, then landed a hard punch against his temple.
He went down like a sack of rocks.
She turned and grabbed up the smallest boy with one arm while tugging on the hand of the larger one, and hurried down the street and away from the fight.
Five seconds passed, and no one shouted at them. A couple of men raced by them toward the well.
Ten seconds passed. The sounds of the battle receded and people peered out of doorways and windows to see what was going on.
Fifteen seconds passed. The hospital house was in sight.
A man called out and rushed toward her. Both boys wiggled out of her hold. She let them go and they ran toward the man, calling him father.
“Go, hide,” she said to him. “There are men with guns near the well.” She hurried on two houses further and into the hospital house to follow her own advice.
Except this was no place to hide. Everyone in the entire village knew where to take their sick. It was only a matter of minutes before the men at the well obtained that information and showed up.
Tom was observing the street through a gap in the canvas and his rifle’s scope. “What the fuck?” he asked as soon as she was inside the tent entryway.
“Six armed men showed up at the well right after I got my water. They shot two women, then beat another while asking where the Americans are.”
“We’re blown?”
“Completely. Watch for bogeys. We’ll probably have some incoming sooner rather than later.”
“Fuck.”
She left Tom to his lookout position and found Max in the room he’d taken over for his lab.
“What’s going on?” Max asked her. “I heard gunfire.”
“There’s an armed group looking for Americans. You. They shot a couple of women and some of the locals took exception to that. I killed a couple of the assholes looking for us, but there are more out there, so we’re in trouble.” She looked at the lab equipment he had set up. “We need to leave. Find somewhere defensible to hole up.”
“If we leave now, I’ll have to start all over.”
“If we don’t leave now, we’re all going to die.”
“Well, when you put it that way...” He sighed. “Damned inconvenient of these people to show up now.”
“Should I ask them to reschedule for three days from now?”
He snorted. “I’d love to see the reactions to that question. Did you get some water?”
Not exactly. “I had to leave it behind to save a couple of kids.”
“I’ll accept that answer. Can you help me with this stuff?”
She grabbed his backpack and checked the contents. It looked like he hadn’t taken anything out of it. Good. She put it along the wall a few feet from the door, where it could be grabbed on the run.
The Sandwich was still out, so she got it back into its padded bag and shoved it into one of the duffels. He was fussing with the rest of the equipment. She glanced around, certain there was something she should be doing.
What was she missing?
“Where’s Bull?” she asked.
“He went out to call the base and arrange for a food and supply drop.” Max’s head came up and he paused in his packing. “Wait. He should be back by now.”
“Be ready to run,” Ali told him calmly.
She trotted toward the front entry and met Tom coming in.
“We’ve got company,” he said, voice low. “At least four, armed with Russian rifles. Older models, but they look like they shoot just fine.”
“Shit. We need to go now.” Ali turned around and ran back to grab Max’s backpack. “Max,” she said sharply.
He looked at her. “What?”
“Catch.” She threw the backpack at him, but he let it hit his chest.
“What the hell—”
“ Now , Max,” she growled at him.
Tom raced past them both and attacked one of the windows. He broke the latch on it and shoved it open.
He climbed out of the window, with Max right behind. Ali slipped out just as gunfire erupted at the front of the house.
What were they doing? Shooting the sick? Assholes.
“Masks off,” Ali whispered to the two men in front of her. She whipped her own off and shoved it into a pants pocket.
They walked through the village and out into the tents, trying not to draw attention by hurrying. Max would have increased the pace, but Tom put his hand on Max’s shoulder and held him back. They took a right, then found a fairly busy area and sat with their backs to a tent.
No one said anything for a few seconds.
“Where’s Bull?” Tom asked quietly.
“He should have reported in a while ago,” Max said.
The smell of smoke, present because of open cooking fires, became much stronger. A small explosion had them all on their feet, along with many other people who came out of tents to look in the direction of the noise.
They let the crowd of people surround and carry them toward the noise and commotion.
Black smoke billowed out of the house they’d left and flames devoured the canvas that had enlarged the amount of space for the sick. And the dead.
The heat shattered the glass in the windows, allowing screams to rise above the flames. There were people still alive in there?
Ali took a step toward the building, but a heavy hand on her shoulder kept her from moving any farther. Max’s eyes had gone hard and flat. It was the kind of expression an officer wore when he made a command decision between equally bad options.
Someone bumped into her and pain radiated out from her side, enough to make her gasp.
Max’s hand tightened and he looked at her with his brows low over his eyes.
She shrugged.
He gave her a little yank and pushed at Tom to get him moving away from the burning house.
At least the screaming had stopped.
They retreated into the tents until they were standing with no one close enough to overhear.
Max examined her, bending down to get a good look at her. When he got to her left side, he touched her poncho and came away with blood on his fingers. “Why didn’t you tell me you were injured?”
“Oh.” She stared at the blood and tried to remember when she’d gotten hurt. Right, when she’d killed the asshole. “I forgot.”
He gave her an are you kidding? expression.
“Sorry.” She lifted her hands. “It was a knife. One of the men who killed the women at the well must have tracked me. He was about to shoot me and two little kids who had the bad luck of being near me when the shooting started.”
“If he had a gun, why do you have a knife wound?” he asked as he lifted her poncho and bent closer to her.
“I was trying not to draw attention, so I didn’t want to use my rifle again. I took his weapon away, but I guess he had a knife too.”
“You killed him with your bare hands?” Max asked, rearing back to stare at her. “A man with a rifle and a knife?”
“Like I said.” She was trying to be patient with him, but sometimes Max made it difficult when he kept asking her to repeat what she’d just told him. “I was trying to be quiet and quick.”
“Your hands are quicker than a gun?”
“They’re quieter,” she said between clenched teeth, working hard to refrain from smacking him.
“I can’t see how bad it is. You have too many layers of clothing in the way. How painful is it?”
They had bigger problems to deal with right now. “It’s not bad.”
“Right,” Max drawled. “You forgot all about it.”
“We can worry about it when we’re out of danger.”
“Speaking of which,” Tom said softly, nodding behind them. “Here comes a little trouble.”
Ali turned.
The bigger of the two boys she’d gotten to safety stood only a few feet away.