Chapter Thirty
M ax stared at Ali, hoping she had a plan that would end with them alive and free and Akbar dead.
“Let’s get to it.”
Not the answer he was looking for. “With what, as soon as they see us, they’ll make us drop these?” He lifted the rifle he’d taken from one of the dead men.
She was insufferably calm. “No, Hunt stashed a couple of weapons.” She pulled a pile of debris aside in one corner and handed him a Berretta. “Stick this in your waist band behind your back. We’re going to distract and disarm.”
“I thought you preferred a more permanent solution.”
“We need to know where Akbar is going to send, or has sent, the infected.”
Max considered the situation. “He has a lot of men. We need a big distraction.”
“We could blow this place up,” Ali suggested. “Isn’t that what Dr. Perry did?”
“She wasn’t trying to distract anyone. She was trying to deny Akbar access to her work.” Max grimaced. “We’d probably kill ourselves.”
She shrugged. “At least we’ll go big.”
“What if Akbar and his men are right outside?” Max looked at her.
“I could pretend to be unconscious or dead,” she said slowly. “You could say you have information for Akbar and you’ll give it to him in exchange for my life.”
Max looked at her and then himself. “I think we’re both going to need more blood on our clothing to sell that kind of story.”
Max smeared some of his blood that had soaked his pant leg, sock, and boots on Ali’s temple and face. Then they tore up her clothing a bit.
They worked their way quietly toward the front of the building and discovered several armed men talking in a group. Just past them, outside, the Special Forces soldiers still knelt on the ground with their hands behind their heads.
Ali let loose some colorful language. “How do you want to do this?”
He considered her for a moment, then said, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
She raised a brow and stepped toward him, her arms reaching for him. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
He picked her up, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back. “Cough a little, would you?”
She wilted and her coughing became hoarse and wet sounding, like she really couldn’t draw in a good breath.
He purposefully allowed his own breathing to speed up, like he was barely managing to carry her weight, but she wasn’t heavy at all.
How could such a tiny, curvy woman wreak the havoc that she did? Holding her like this made her seem fragile, breakable. She was nothing of the sort. She was a tornado touching ground.
It went against his every instinct to carry her into the fight like a husband carries his bride over the threshold, but she’d have his hide if he didn’t respect her skills and use her like the weapon she was.
He was in love, not an idiot.
His stride faltered as the word registered.
The situation was even worse than he’d thought.
No time to change anything, he’d been spotted by an armed man, so he staggered into the dirtiest reception area on the planet, huffing and puffing.
“She’s got the flu,” he moaned in Arabic. “And she’s been shot. She’s dying.” Max made sure to cough deep in his chest where it would sound like he was sick too. “Where’s Akbar? I have information for Akbar.”
The men pointed their weapons at them and took at least one step backward.
“I need the medicine he took. She’ll die without it.”
There were six. Four of them stared at him with growing horror, but two glanced at each other.
So, not all of them knew Akbar’s plans. He took a step forward.
One of the men said in Arabic, “Stay back. Take her away.”
“She needs medicine,” he moaned again.
“Take her away or we’ll shoot you both,” the same man said again. He was a little bigger than the rest, but not one of the two who’d reacted to his mention of medicine.
One of those two stepped forward and whispered something in the self-appointed leader’s ear.
He froze for a moment, then his expression changed to one of practiced indifference. “Go. Take her back there.” He pointed into the hospital.
Max turned slightly, as if complying with the order, then let the arm under Ali’s knees drop as he pretended to stumble on some unseen thing on the floor.
Ali slipped out of his hold and lunged at the leader.
She had him down in the next three seconds and was working on taking down two more when Max joined her. He didn’t try to make it fancy or even fair. They would kill his Ali if they could, so he wouldn’t let them.
He crashed through them like a linebacker, using his body to knock them off their feet. Shots went off, but he didn’t feel anything hit him, so he elbowed and kneed his way out of the tangle of limbs.
A rifle muzzle was pointed at him. Before it could go off, he grabbed the barrel, pulled it hard past his ear, then shoved the butt into the face of the man holding it. That stunned the militant long enough for Max to twist the weapon out of his enemy’s hands and into his own.
The boom of another shot rang hard on the other side of his head. Instinct had him ducking away, just in time for another one. Who was doing the shooting? He couldn’t tell who’d taken the shots.
A woman screamed and everything inside Max came to an abrupt halt.
Ali?
Where was she? He searched, stumbling over the legs of a man who lay unmoving on the floor, but she wasn’t anywhere he looked.
More shots rang through the building, each one seeming to come from farther and farther away. There was a confusing mass of bodies, limbs and weapons filling his vision, but he couldn’t see Ali anywhere.
More men suddenly piled into the room through the windows. They looked familiar, but hazy, as if someone had put a pane of warped glass between him and the rest of the world.
He couldn’t get that scream out of his head.
A surge of gunfire rocketed through the room and seemed to echo inside his head for minutes, hours.
His sight narrowed and went dark, and for a moment, all he knew was the sound of his own breathing, then...nothing at all.
* * *
T he world came back in a hazy gray. At first Max thought he was dreaming, but his head and body hurt so bad it couldn’t be a dream.
Things came into better focus after a few seconds, but what he saw made no sense.
Bodies, several of them. Adult men covered in blood were piled around him. Local people, from their dress. Smoke curled around the room. A room with windows empty of glass.
A crash from deeper inside the building fractured the eerie silence, then more smoke billowed out in a dark wave that threatened to suck everything in.
Memory returned in bursts.
Ali, Akbar, a confusing fight.
Up, he needed to get up .
Max put his hand down on the dirty floor to push into a sitting position and looked down at himself. He was covered in blood. His left side hurt and he had a horrible headache.
He wiped his face with one hand and it came away smeared with blood. His injuries would have to wait. The smoke was becoming denser with every second.
He struggled to his feet, but was immediately driven back to his knees by an intense wave of dizziness. He’d suffered some kind of head wound, and between that and the smoke, walking was out. He crawled toward the door leading outside.
When he crossed the threshold, he found more bodies. He recognized two of them as Special Forces soldiers. Tom and Bird.
The madman’s name triggered a rush of memory. Akbar holding Ali’s arm and pointing a gun at her head. Akbar demanding information on the flu virus. Akbar ordering Ali to be raped and Max gelded.
Where was Akbar now?
Where was Ali?
He turned and scanned the bodies inside the building, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t one of the bodies in front of the building either.
He attempted to get to his feet again, but was forced down by extreme dizziness. He wasn’t going to find her crawling on the ground. He needed to get up .
Movement at the corner of his vision grabbed his attention and he lifted his head to see Coban and Berez running toward him.
They reached him and their small hands tugged on his clothing.
“Hurry, hurry,” they said in Arabic. “We must run!”
He glanced at the building behind him. Flames had burned a hole in the roof and were dancing in the empty windows.
All his equipment...gone.
His people...gone.
“Where is Ali?” he asked the boys, holding on to them like they were his lifelines.
“The bad man took her and the others away. We snuck out.” Coban put his hand on Max’s head. It came away bloody. “You’re bleeding.”
Max looked at the bodies on the ground. He shuffled over to grab a rifle from one and a scarf from another.
“I need a mirror,” Max told the boys. “Help me find one in one of these houses.”
Coban stayed with Max, helping him to stand, while Berez ran ahead to the nearest house and went inside.
Max’s head hurt so much he had to breathe through his mouth to keep from vomiting. He had acquired a concussion at some point he couldn’t remember.
As he reached the house, the younger boy came out and waved at them to go in. There was a mirror hung on the wall a few feet inside the door.
His reflection wasn’t reassuring.
His head, face, and neck were coated in blood, though it was concentrated on the left side. He turned to get a better look at that side and realized there was a furrow carved out of the skin down the side of his skull.
That explained the blood on his head and his dizziness.
One of the boys tugged at his hand and held out a cup of water.
“Thank you,” Max said to him then took the cup, dipped one corner of the scarf in it and began to clean some of the blood off his face. Then he used the scarf as a bandage and wrapped it around his head, tying it into place to keep fresh blood from obscuring his vision.
He checked his side next and found a hole in his clothing. Another bullet had hit him just below his hip, but it had gone through the muscle clean, leaving an exit wound that was only bleeding sluggishly.
“Can you get me another one of these?” Max asked Coban, pointing at the scarf around his head.
The boy nodded and dashed out the door.
Max went into the kitchen and found a bottle of homemade wine on the table. He drank a couple of long swigs, then took the scarf the boy brought him, folded it and tucked it into his pants so it covered the bullet wound, front and back, and applied enough pressure to hopefully stop the bleeding.
He glanced at his two junior team members. “Which direction did the bad man go?”
The boys led him back outside and they walked cautiously down the street. Behind them, the building on fire was collapsing in on itself. The air was cool enough that it didn’t look like the flames would spread to other houses.
There weren’t many people visible, though the sounds of crying and gunshots echoed across the valley as if the dead were fighting to stay with the living.
A familiar shout caught Max’s attention. It came from inside the village, not outside it. He turned to follow the noise and found himself on a narrow street that led to the center of the village.
He pushed the two boys behind him as he hugged houses to keep out of sight. When they got to the last house between them and the spot all the noise was coming from, Max crouched down to talk to his guides.
“I want you two to find a house to hide in. Far away from here.”
They looked at each other, then at him and shook their heads.
“I need your help,” he told them very seriously. “I need bandages and food for the sick and wounded. Can you find some for me?”
Coban studied him with narrowed eyes, then slowly nodded. “When I am older,” he said to Max, “I will come with you to kill the bad men.”
Max smiled sadly. “When you are older, I won’t stop you.”
He nodded, then grabbed his brother’s hand and trotted away down the street.
Max took in a deep breath and inched his way around the house until he could see what was happening in the center square of the village. The home he was using as cover had a low fenced-in area for chickens. He was able to lie prone on the ground and peek through the wood slats.
Akbar paced in front of four people kneeling with their hands behind their heads, yelling in English at another man with what looked like a smartphone. There were seven, no...eight armed men with Akbar, including the one with the phone.
“These four soldiers have been found guilty of attacking innocent civilians and will be executed for their crimes. We will not allow others to come into our land to tell us what to do, attack us or kill us. The time for diplomacy is over. The time for action is now.”
Max could see Ali, the shortest of the four kneeling, Warren, Hunt, and Jessup, but he couldn’t tell how badly they were injured. Warren leaned increasingly to one side, as if losing a battle with consciousness.
If he didn’t get them out of there in the next couple of minutes, they might not stay alive at all.
How was he going to get them out?
He wasn’t a good enough shot to use the rifle he’d picked up with any hope of success. He’d either get shot himself if he broke cover, or get captured, if he didn’t hurt himself while attempting to rush Akbar.
How was he going to save Ali and the men of his team?
Max thunked his head on the ground. Idiot. He didn’t have to do the saving. Ali and the three Special Forces soldiers were more than able to save themselves. Well, maybe not Warren who was falling over, but...all he had to do was provide them with the opportunity.
That was a job he could do.
So, what was the biggest distraction he could come up with? Something that would keep eight or nine enemy fighters busy...
He needed more than one, and he’d start with something easy.
Nolan had discovered that the bad guys were listening in on the radio. Turnabout was fair play, wasn’t it?
Max worked his way back until he was behind the house, near the back door, then using a gravelly voice, proceeded to inform the medical team—himself—via a radio he’d taken from one of the dead extremists that a supply drop of medical supplies and food was imminent. He repeated the radio call, then shut off his radio and slid into the house.
Not thirty seconds later three of the armed men ran past the house, heading for the valley. Thanks to all the fighting and subsequent fires, visibility outside the village wasn’t that great. They’d be gone for a while.
That left five goons and Akbar.
He’d need to do something dramatic, loud and noisy this time. Should he follow in Dr. Perry’s footsteps and blow something up?
No, there were too many civilians, plus his own people. He was going to have to think of something quickly, before Akbar killed the hostages he’d taken.
Ali’s words came back to him.
“Think of it like this: you’re not attacking anyone, you’re getting them out of the way, removing them from the possibility of coming to harm.”
If he didn’t remove the danger to Ali and his men, the armed men Akbar commanded were going to kill them.
He couldn’t allow that to happen.
He wouldn’t allow that to happen.
Swallowing hard, Max forced himself to sneak back into the fenced chicken coop. The rifle he’d picked up wasn’t a great weapon, but it was all he had.
Akbar was still ranting and pacing in front of his prisoners, but each kneeling soldier had one of Akbar’s men standing behind them with weapons trained on the back of their heads.
Hands shaking, Max sighted down the barrel of the rifle at the man standing behind Ali.
Fuck. If he didn’t control the shaking, he was going to shoot her instead.
He pulled in a deep breath and focused on her. She was splattered with blood, dirt and soot, her scarf and mask had been torn away, and he could see bruises on her face.
Bruises on her face.
Memory punched through his brain. His mother, bruises and blood on her face, yelling at him to run. But he hadn’t run. He’d tried to fight his father, tried to stop him from hurting his mother. His father punched him so many times he lost count. This was where his memory fragmented. The smell of iron and gunpowder. Disjointed flashes of pain, screaming, gunshots, and blood.
His father had shot every member of the family, then himself. Max had survived. The shot to his chest had gone wide enough that it cracked two of his ribs, but did little other damage.
Handling a gun or rifle had been impossible after that. Just the metallic smell of one made his hands shake.
He hadn’t been able to save his mother and sisters.
He was going to do everything necessary to give Ali and the rest of the team the opportunity to help themselves.
He’d gone through the worst kind of trauma a child could go through, but he wasn’t going to let it define him anymore, not even a little bit.
Ali’s voice echoed through his head. “Focus on your target, compensate for distance and wind, breathe in, then out and...shoot.”
Max pulled in a breath, sighted down the barrel of his weapon at the man whose rifle was pointed at Ali’s head, and let the breath out. He fired one shot. Without hesitation, he turned the weapon toward the cameraman recording Akbar and fired again.
The extremist went down.
Chaos erupted.
Ali and two of the American soldiers were on their feet and moving. Warren had fallen over.
Akbar was yelling and running around, his arms flailing around like a windmill.
Two of the remaining militants began firing their weapons, but one of them was tackled by Jessup and they went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
Max had to search for Ali, and finally found her as she flipped a militant over onto his back, ripping his weapon out of his grasp at the same time. She turned the weapon around and shot him, then searched for her next target.
She didn’t see Akbar moving toward her at a dead run. Not until it was too late.
Max fired, but the shot missed.
Akbar plowed into her, knocking her off her feet and sending her flying. She lay on the ground, stunned.
Max got to his feet and sprinted toward them, but Akbar was up and striding toward her, menace written in every muscle of his body.
Max was going to be too late.
Just as Akbar reached for Ali, she threw something at him and he froze.
Max ran into him from the side in a move that would have looked right at home in a professional hockey game. The chemist was tossed into the air then crumpled to the ground and didn’t get up.
Ali rolled to her feet and began shooting past Max’s shoulder.
He got out of the way, letting her help Hunt and Jessup subdue the last of the armed militants.
As quickly as it started, the fight was over.
As he looked at the carnage he’d instigated, he shook his head. No, his fight was really just beginning.
“Max?” Ali said carefully. “Are you okay?”
“Probably not, but since I’m conscious and on my feet, I’m okay enough.” He looked her over, but saw no injuries that would require his attention. “What about you?”
“I’m all right. Warren needs medical attention, though.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Max said. He should move, get right to that, but he found he couldn’t take a single step away from her. He needed... Fuck it .
He closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms for a tight, fast hug. “Are you hurt?”
“Only a few bruises, I promise.”
He nodded and released her. “Okay, now I can go to work.” He released her and moved to examine Warren. “The three guys who went to watch for the airdrop will be back at some point,” he said, tossing the words over his shoulder. “Someone is going to have to disarm them, and I don’t know if there are any other armed militants wandering around. I had trouble focusing...before.”
“That wound on your head—” Ali began.
“Is a surface wound, nothing more,” he interrupted. “I need some first aid supplies and a radio.” He stopped and looked around for two seconds. “We need...” He stared at Ali.
Wait a minute.
His head and side hurt, his whole body felt like a giant bruise, but no cough. No fever.
She wasn’t coughing either.
“How do you feel?”