Chapter Twenty
A man grabbed Ali from behind, wrapping his arms around her, trapping her arms against her body. Another man was reaching for her legs when she bent over, forcing some space between her and the man behind. Then she elbowed him hard in the kidney at the same time as she stomped on the top of his foot.
His hold faltered as the second man grabbed her legs. Her arms were free now and she punched him in the throat. When the man who’d grabbed her from behind tried to catch her again she turned, kneed him in the balls, then punched him in the throat too.
The other woman screamed as two men tried to carry her away, kicking and punching for all she was worth.
You go, girl.
Distant shouts in Arabic told Ali she didn’t have much time before the four kidnappers were going to have help. And while she’d love the chance to beat the shit out of every single man who arrived thinking he could cart a woman off, she wasn’t alone.
She pulled out two knives hidden inside her sleeves in arm sheaths, one for each hand, and launched herself at the two men carrying the woman off. She flowed toward them like she was riding a wave, stabbed the one who had the woman’s feet in the neck. He went down and Ali avoided his flailing legs as she moved without pause after the other one.
He tried to block her by yanking the woman around, using her as a shield.
Ali went one way then dove the other, ducking low and coming up to puncture his femoral artery in his right leg.
He fell and dropped the woman at the same time.
She didn’t stop screaming, but she did scramble to her feet and kick the man frantically trying to stem the flow of blood from his leg a few times.
Another man, this one armed with a gun, came around the wall and Ali threw one of her knives at him. It took him in the throat and he flopped onto the ground like a dead fish on ice.
Ali tugged at the woman’s arm and managed to get her moving back into the tents before more men arrived.
The other woman clutched at Ali, thanking her repeatedly. Ali found herself in the awkward position of having to shush her so as to not attract more attention from the wrong people.
Speaking of which, the five or six people she’d found better be enough, because it was obvious the militants were going to be looking for her.
They took the long way around to the abandoned hospital, adding a solid fifteen minutes to the time it should have taken to reach it. Time well spent if it saved them from being attacked.
Jessup was off the roof and watching the main entrance in Bull’s place.
He nodded at her, but didn’t otherwise move.
Hunt and Tom were back in the room Ferhat had taken over. He and his kids were sleeping soundly, but the room also housed all the others she’d either delivered or sent for blood donation. Even Bull, whose turn it was to sleep, was in here, laying so he faced one wall. Hunt and Tom had two people lying down with blood slowly flowing into donation bags from tubing attached to a needle in their arms. Hunt was inserting a needle into a third person’s arm.
Ali turned to the woman. “These men are going to take some blood from you. There is a doctor with me who is going to use your blood to hopefully create a medicine.”
The woman looked at the two soldiers dubiously, but before she could speak, Max walked into the room.
His gaze found Ali’s first, and though he wore his medical mask openly, she had no trouble seeing the relief in his eyes. He approached her, stopping a socially acceptable three feet away. “Are you all right?” There was nothing socially acceptable about how intense his stare was. It was as if he touched her with his gaze and she found herself growing hot and damp in uncomfortable places.
“Yes. I had a bit of trouble with a group of thugs who thought they were going to carry my friend and me off, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.” Ali nodded at the woman and continued in Arabic, “She has come to donate her blood.”
“To make a medicine,” the woman said firmly.
Max looked at the woman. “Thank you. Your generosity will save lives.” He included Ali in his glance. “I must get back to the lab. Please excuse me.” He left as precipitously as he’d arrived.
“Your husband is a learned man,” the woman said to Ali.
Ali managed to contain her start of surprise, but Hunt and Tom didn’t bother camouflaging their barks of laughter. So much for pretending to be a young man.
No point in pretending she was something she wasn’t. The female part, not the wife . “When it comes to caring for others, he is, indeed, intelligent and thoughtful. His own care...” She shook her head. “I must constantly remind him to look after himself too.”
The woman nodded sharply. “That is always the way between husbands and wives. My name is Fatima.”
Wait, she and Max acted married ?
“I am Ali, but please call me Ali.”
Fatima was looking at the teen and his little sister. “I know Ferhat, but where are their parents?”
“Dead of the illness.”
For a moment Fatima’s face reflected intense grief, then she smoothed it over. “May I care for them?”
“I think,” Ali said slowly, “that would be good.”
“Is there food?”
“Yes, here.” Ali showed her a collection of Meals Ready to Eat, as well as bottles of water. Ali demonstrated how to use the heat packs on the MREs and Fatima seemed impressed.
She went to the children and asked if they’d had anything to eat.
Hunt continued monitoring the blood donations and when she caught his eye, he shooed her away.
She walked the short distance toward the lab and found Max writing in his journal. He didn’t look happy.
“Got any answers?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, unfortunately.” He sighed. “None of them good.” He looked at her and his laugh held a razor-sharp tone of irony. She was surprised it hadn’t cut anything off her.
“Tell me, Max.”
He blew out a breath. “This H5N1 flu is different from the one we’ve seen so much of in the past few years. This one has a preference for human lung tissue, not avian, or we’d be seeing dead chickens everywhere and we’re not.”
“That sounds deadly.”
“Lethal. On a large scale.”
Large scale? He was talking about that worldwide pandemic again, but it had to start somewhere.
“Where did it come from? I mean...did people catch it from the local chickens first and it changed? Or did it come from somewhere else?”
“Chickens?” Max said, staring off into space. He glanced at his journal and flipped through several pages. “Death occurs within twenty-four to forty-eight hours after symptoms begin to take their toll.”
He paced the length of the room and back again. He looked at his own latest entry. “This is very close to the Indonesian strain, but not quite.” He shook his book at the air. “Not quite.”
“Max?” she asked carefully. “You’re not going all mad scientist on me, are you?”
He muttered to himself for another minute, then seemed to find something significant in his journal. He stared at the page, then closed the book with a snap. “We have to prevent people from getting sick. We need to create a vaccine.”
“You said a vaccine would take a few months, so that’s out.”
“Maybe not. I said the drug companies would take three months to create large-scale doses of a vaccine. If I do it the old-fashioned way, I could cook up a vaccine here, but we’d have no way to test it to find out if it actually works.”
“Well, get started already.”
“It could just give us the disease.”
Fuck, he wasn’t giving her too many options that had a reasonable chance at success. “Can we call in an extraction?”
“If we leave, we condemn most of the people here to death, and so far, we have a disproportionate number of previously healthy adults dying. That would leave a lot of children to fend for themselves with only the very elderly to care for them.”
“What about all the millions in the rest of the world?”
“I can’t risk exposing the extraction team to the virus. We could all be infected. I could request more supplies, but the militants might get it, and those supplies in their hands would not be good.” He paced the room again, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Things are too volatile. We’ve got an unknown number of militant extremists in the area, missing aid workers, and a deadly outbreak in progress.”
“Maybe there’s no perfect answer. Maybe we need to decide on the one that has the best chance of succeeding?”
“I wish I knew which one that was.”
“It’s been a while since you got some sleep,” she said, taking a closer look at his eyes. Yup. Bloodshot . “You’ll think better if you sack out for a little while.”
“A nap,” he said pointing an index finger at her. “I can’t afford to lose too much time.”
“Thirty minutes?” she offered.
“Yes, okay.” He nodded. “I need a clear head for this.” He headed toward her patch of wall where she’d zonked out for a little while. “Have Hunt and Tom collect a unit of blood from everyone who’s had the flu and survived.”
“They’re working on it.”
“Good, good.” Max sat down then lay down on his side, his head on his backpack. “I’d like a few more donors.”
“I’ll see what I can do after you wake up.” She walked to the doorway. “Sleep.”
He closed his eyes and appeared to drop off immediately.
The man was going to work himself to death. When this was all over, she was going to have to insist on a few changes in the way he did things. Take care of himself better. Ali shook her head, then went to check on Hunt, Tom, and the donors.
Fatima was donating blood now, along with the teenager she’d decided to take under her wing. His baby sister slept on the floor between them.
Ali grabbed a bottle of water and a couple of protein bars and put them where Fatima could reach them.
The woman didn’t smile, but she nodded.
Hunt looked up when she came in and gestured with his chin at the door. He followed her out. Tom stayed in the room to monitor the donation.
“Sorry,” Hunt said in a whisper. “I didn’t want to wake up the ones who are sleeping. They’re all worn out.”
“Max is sleeping too.” She glanced into the room. “How many donations?”
“Six.”
“Max wants a couple more for sure,” she told Hunt. “He’s figured out which flu virus it is and he’s pretty scared. He wants to try to create a vaccine.”
“Here?” Hunt’s skepticism wasn’t a surprise. “Now?”
She shrugged. “He said something about doing it the old-fashioned way.”
Hunt glanced into the room and Ali followed his gaze. Berez was coughing, a wet, rattling sound that had her gut tight with worry.
“He started coughing after we got here, and it’s only gotten worse since. He’s got a fever too. Max gave him some acetaminophen and a decongestant while you were outside, but it hasn’t made much of a difference.”
“Did Max take samples from him?”
“Yeah, a couple.”
Then there was nothing she could do but watch over him and his family, and wait.
She looked at Hunt and noted darkened almost bruised looking eyes. “How are you feeling? Any symptoms?”
“I have a headache, which is unusual for me. Max took a nasal sample from me too. Tom says he’s fine. You?”
“I’m tired and sore, but that’s to be expected after a couple of bouts of close-quarters combat.”
“How many times have you gotten in a fight this trip?”
“Twice. A bunch of assholes tried to carry Fatima and me off.”
“Did they appear well trained?”
She thought about it. “They seemed to know one end of a rifle from another, but were ineffectual against me and my knives.”
“Their lack of training is an advantage for us.”
“That and the fact that they don’t expect someone my size to know how to fight back.”
Hunt grinned, but the smile didn’t last long. “When was the last time you heard from Nolan?”
“About forty-five minutes ago. He was in the tents, I think, negotiating with some elders. He was supposed to send the other team medic.”
“No one has shown up.” Hunt frowned. “He’s fifteen minutes overdue for a check-in.”
“You want me to track him down?”
“No, not yet. If things have gone bad, we’re going to need your weapon and your aim.”
Footsteps approached from the direction of the entrance of the building. A moment later, one of Nolan’s team appeared in the gloom.
Mike Holland was the team’s other medic and looked like an extra out of one of those Viking shows. He was tall and broad-shouldered with a regulation haircut, but his blond beard and mustache were a little overgrown.
“Hey,” he said to her and Hunt. “Sorry I’m late, I had a tail I had to get rid of.”
“You were followed?”
“Not very well. It didn’t take me two minutes to figure out the two fellows behind me were out for more than a casual stroll.”
“What’s going on?” Hunt asked.
“A whole lot of dying,” Holland said, pulling a protein bar out of a pants pocket, ripping it open and eating it. “It’s more than moderately horrible.”
“What about the militants?”
“Oh, they’ve been busy, mostly questioning and killing people. Between them and the virus, there isn’t going to be anybody left alive in this place.”
“What are they questioning people about?”
“They keep asking about Americans and other strangers in the village. They’ve grabbed people from homes and tents alike and taken them somewhere. We don’t know where, though we’re searching for the place. Nolan has talked with a fair number of the surviving village elders and found out that this sickness just appeared a week ago, like someone dropped a bomb on the place. The refugees had arrived two weeks prior.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Ali said.
Hunt grunted. “That sounds like a weapon.”