Chapter 1 #2
“Everything I do is personal.” Her voice barely sounded over the fan’s hum. “That’s what makes me good at it.”
“And what makes you reckless.” He stood. “You think you have to save everyone because you couldn’t save—”
“Don’t.” She looked back at him.
He drew in a breath at her words.
She didn’t care. “Don’t psychoanalyze my motivations. Like I said, children are dying. I’m the only journalist willing to cross a dangerous border to document it. That’s enough justification.”
“For you, maybe. Not for people who care what happens to you.”
She frowned at him, then shook her head. “I’ll be in and out before anyone knows I’m gone.”
He stared at her, but she turned and headed out of the kitchen. “I need to go. The rangers are waiting.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“Tobias—”
“Nonnegotiable.”
He moved toward the staff lockers. Metal hinges squeaked as he pulled out a field medical kit. “If you’re determined to walk into a medical-crisis zone, you need someone who can actually treat the patients you’re planning to document.”
“It’s not safe. I didn’t tell you I was leaving so you would jump in and save the day.” Yeah, tactical error.
Or maybe not, because she couldn’t ignore the sudden loosening of her chest.
“Nothing about this situation is safe.” He secured the medical kit in a larger bag and added supplies from the emergency stockpile.
“But you’re right about one thing—someone needs to help those families.
If you’re going anyway, I’d rather be there to help, and maybe keep you alive while you’re doing it. ”
“Besides, I need samples.” He checked expiration dates on medication bottles. “Whatever’s making these children sick, I can’t identify it from secondhand reports. I need food samples, water samples, soil—anything from the affected area.”
“Why?”
He paused. Looked up from packing. “Because if something happened to you out there and I’d let you go alone, I’d never forgive myself.”
Oh. She swallowed as he held her gaze, his brown eyes on hers.
Oh.
But before she could respond, he’d finished packing and headed for the door, shouldering his medical bag. “Come on. Let’s go keep each other alive.”
Walking out of the hospital in the afternoon heat was like opening an oven door. Asphalt radiated the heat in visible waves, the air thick enough to drink. Her shirt stuck to her back as she climbed onto the bike with Malai. He glanced at Tobias a moment, and raised an eyebrow.
“He’s coming with us,” Chloe said. “He needs to be there.”
Malai nodded, at her, then at Tobias, then pulled away from the curb
Tobias followed on his scooter.
They pulled into the Fbr parking area a few miles through the city.
Containing a small building with a warehouse for vehicles and medical supplies, the parking lot had been transformed into staging ground: two Toyota pickups, tailgates down.
Medical supplies in plastic tubs marked with red crosses.
Anonymous transportation that wouldn’t attract unwanted attention.
Captain Wong supervised loading while two younger Rangers checked weapons and communication equipment. They took the Tatmadaw threat seriously.
Wong looked up as they approached, his mouth pinched. Over his sturdy, compact frame, all muscle, he wore a tactical vest and a few scars that evidenced his history with the Fbrs, deploying all over the world to hot spots that needed humanitarian aid.
He shook his head as Tobias approached.
“I know what you’re going to say, Captain,” Chloe said. “But he’s a real doc, not just a medic. He needs to get a look at these cases.”
Tobias held out his hand. “I won’t be in the way.”
“Dr. Nnamdi. You understand that this is not a medical mission to a stable clinic. This is infiltration into territory controlled by hostile forces. Mistakes result in detention. Torture. Death.”
What he said. She glanced at Tobias.
“I understand.”
Wong studied him. Then he nodded and indicated a truck. “Load your gear. But understand—once we cross that border, you follow my orders without question. No separation from the group. No decisions based on medical ethics if those decisions compromise operational security.”
“Meaning?”
“If I tell you to leave a patient behind, you leave them. Destroy medical supplies to prevent capture, you destroy them. Abandon your mission and run, you run.”
Bossy much? But she’d learned that despite their humanitarian focus, Wong and the others knew how to protect themselves—and others—in the jungle.
And not just from the wildlife.
“Team lives take precedence over individual patients. Always.”
She looked away from Tobias and Wong.
“Understood.”
“Miss Silver.”
She glanced at Wong, who’d given her a hard look. “What?”
“Same rules. Camera stays hidden if we encounter military forces. Document nothing that could compromise the location or identity of villagers helping us. If I determine that your presence endangers the mission, you’ll be left behind at the first safe location.”
“Understood.”
He took a breath. “The Tatmadaw have increased patrols, responding to recent EAO—ethnic armed organization—activity. Intelligence suggests that there are new checkpoints and expanding detention facilities.” He moved toward the lead truck, his boots crunching gravel baked to near-ceramic hardness.
“We cross at sunset. Less visibility for air patrols. We should reach the village before full darkness makes navigation impossible.”
Chloe followed Tobias over to the truck and climbed into the front passenger seat. Malai got in at the wheel, grinned at her. “Got you some moo ping.” He handed her a skewer of pork.
She could kiss him.
They drove toward the Myanmar border, each kilometer taking them deeper into remote territory.
The drive started with decent highways cutting through rice paddies and small farming communities, but as they climbed into the mountainous border region, paved roads gave way to dirt tracks that sent red dust clouds through the windows despite their efforts to keep them sealed.
The air-conditioning fought a losing battle against the oppressive temperature, and the air tasted of dust and diesel.
“Have you filed your report yet?” Tobias asked from the back seat, his voice cutting through the growl of the engine.
Chloe glanced back at him. “Not yet. I need more than speculation and secondhand accounts.” She adjusted her grip on the door handle as they hit another pothole.
“My editor won’t run a story about a potential outbreak of whatever this is without solid evidence.
Right now, all I have are symptoms that could be explained by contaminated water or food poisoning. ”
“But you don’t think that’s what this is.”
“No, I don’t.” She watched the landscape change through the windshield—terraced hillsides giving way to denser jungle, the settlements becoming more sparse.
“Like you pointed out before, the pattern is too specific, too contained. And the timing . . .” She shook her head.
“Three separate villages, all within a fifty-kilometer radius, all showing identical symptoms within days of each other? I agree with you. That’s not natural spread. ”
The truck bounced over another rough section, and Tobias braced himself against the seat. He shot a look at Malai before turning back to Chloe. “So what’s your theory?”
“Someone’s testing something. The question is who, and whether this is the test run or the real thing.”
He stared at her. “Wait. You think—” He cut his voice down. “You think this sickness is some sort of bioweapon?”
She glanced at Malai. “No. I just . . . I just wonder if it’s deliberate. Maybe the government trying a new tactic to take out villages. A new weapon in the civil war.”
His jaw tightened, and he shook his head, stared out the window. “Will man never cease his evil?”
Yeah. That.
They drove in relative silence after that as they traveled deeper into contested territory. Farmland gave way to jungle, the vegetation growing denser and more aggressive, vines curling around gnarled trees and bamboo clumps like prison bars.
The few people they encountered on mules or on foot, carrying bundles, didn’t look up to watch them. Tired, wary people.
“How long since the symptoms started in the village we’re visiting?” Tobias asked, pulling a water bottle from his pack. He offered it to her before drinking.
The liquid tasted flat and metallic from the heat.
“Three days ago,” Malai replied, never taking his eyes off the narrow track that barely qualified as a road. “Twelve families were affected initially. The latest report suggests that number has doubled.”
“Same pattern as the other villages?” Chloe wiped perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand, the salt stinging her eyes.
“Identical. Rapid onset, neurological symptoms, respiratory failure within forty-eight hours.” Malai negotiated around a fallen tree that had been partially cleared from the road, the truck engine laboring in the heat.
“The local medic requested immediate assistance, but official channels are blocked due to military tensions.”
The truck slowed as they approached an abandoned checkpoint—concrete barriers and rusted guard posts remnants of earlier conflicts and changing battle lines.
Wong’s voice crackled through Malai’s radio. “Border crossing ahead. Everyone out. We walk from here.”
The rangers secured the trucks in a grove of trees that provided minimal shade, the leaves hanging motionless in the still air.
Medical supplies were redistributed into smaller packs for the rough terrain ahead.
Chloe took her pack and noticed that Tobias integrated seamlessly into the group, his movements suggesting tactical experience that went beyond typical missionary work.
Or maybe that was just his history growing up in an impoverished village in Nigeria.