by Burke Bryant
What once had been a small stone hospital was now a heap of burnt, useless material. Aluminum poles, oxygen tanks, and other medical debris smoldered on the ground even as small pops still emitted from the glowing embers. Everything—the hospital, the medicine, Grace’s hope of survival—had been scorched off the face of the Earth.
Grace exhaled in Nick’s arms. Her arm slipped from Caroline’s and her knees buckled just as Nick slipped an arm around her middle to catch her. Carefully, he sat her against the smooth recesses of a large, woody, trunked banyan tree. A tear rolled from her lower lids.
“This is how it is?” she asked.
They all knew what she meant—this is how I die.
Nick shook his head. “Sometimes, this is how it is, Grace. I’m sorry.”
Grace’s face went flush, and Nick placed his hands on her shoulders in an attempt at comfort. “I wish I could change that, but I can’t.”
She turned away, trying to hide the tears rolling from her eyes.
Back to square one, Chris thought as he watched Nick do his best to make Grace comfortable, at peace. They had battled the river, risking their lives to get the medical supplies needed to save the woman’s life—even though it was still unclear what she was suffering from, and all they had found was smoke.
Nick left Grace by the tree and returned to his team. “She’s not doing well at all, Rake. We’re running out of time.”
Tell me something I don’t know. “Got any new guesses on what’s wrong with her?”
The other man scratched at his head. A clear no. “Whatever has got her … it’s something I’m not familiar with. I can’t make heads or tails of it. She’s got all the symptoms of pneumonia—cough, fever, sweating, chills, fatigue. I have her on ibuprofen, because it’s all I’ve got, and I’m keeping her hydrated. Doing my best to keep her fever down. But I can’t figure out why her respiratory issues are getting worse. She’s acting as if she’s also suffering from pleural effusion.”
Chris’s neck tightened. “Layman’s terms, Brannon.”
“Pleural effusion is the buildup of fluid in the lungs. If her lungs are filled with fluid …” He pulled his shoulders up, shook his head. “It’s not good. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the fever she’s already fighting. Right now it’s a toss-up between the fluid and the fever, and without the right equipment, there’s not shit I can do to fix either.”
Dead, his medic was saying. Grace was as good as dead.
“What exactly do we need?” Chris asked. He needed specifics, something tangible to put his thoughts around. A directive.
Nick looked back at the burnt village. “Everything that was available in that fucking hospital about a day ago. Intravenous fluids, antibiotics, oxygen, and water pills for starters.”
The sound of Grace coughing in the background spurred Caroline into motion. “She also needs a lot of rest,” she added. “And from what I can tell none of us are going to be seeing any of that for a while.”
“Yeah.” The note of defeat in Nick’s voice was heavy.
Emotion surged through Chris and he pinched the bridge of his nose to hold it at bay. Grace was someone he cared for—not quite family, but as good as. What would he tell Tatiana? Telling his girlfriend her mother had died under his care would be devastating. Unforgivable. And Grace was a tough cookie—an experienced independent journalist in need of a new story, a new angle. When Tatiana had told Chris about her mother’s strong will and a need for a job after the sorry sons of bitches in charge of mainstream media had canned her in favor of a younger breed willing to work for peanuts, Chris hadn’t been able to say no. He needed someone like her on his team for this mission.
He’d needed Grace, and now she was laying up against a tree dying and there was nothing he could do about it—and they’d lost the work she’d done on the expedition, her camera lost at the bottom of the river somewhere downstream.
Chris opened his pack and rummaged through it pulling out a black satellite phone. He studied it for a moment. Everything in his pack was soaking wet, including the phone. Water sloshed on the other side of its small led screen. There was no digital display. Just a blank, white screen. This was their only form of communication with the outside world. Now damaged and broken. Unrepairable. Chris threw the phone back into his pack. His eyes tightened in frustration.
"Fuck." Chris shook his head.
A tangle of wind moved through the burned village, bringing with it the stench of something even worse than fire and destruction—a pungent odor tinged with a sickening sweetness.
Nick’s head jerked upward. His eyes widened and nostrils flared as he sniffed at the air. He grimaced. “I know that smell.”
“Where is it coming from?” Caroline’s face contorted. She’d caught it too, and she put a palm over her eyes to block the sun as she scanned the area ahead.
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” Chris said. He put a finger to his lips and—sparing a glance at Grace, still slumped beneath the tree—used hand signals to motion his team. Move out. Find it. The stink of death was not a smell easily forgotten, and the village hadn’t been burned to ashes by accident.
When he had made it to about fifteen yards off Chris’s left, Nick stood atop a small mound of dirt, overlooking the ground below him.
“Rake,” he called. The name carried another meaning: here.
With Caroline at his side, Chris rushed to Nick’s location. Both men peered down—and stopped breathing.
Caroline was the first to speak, her words spaced apart, drawn out. “What the fuck?”
Just below, about twenty-five yards away, a pile of human remains still smoldered in a dirt pit.
Chris knew the obvious questions on his teammates’ mind, but only had an answer for one—and it wasn’t very good. “About thirty to forty bodies,” he approximated. Could have been more, could have been less. Three feral dogs tugged over what looked like the charred remains of a human limb.
Limb, Chris revised. It was better not to think of the thing as human. As the bodies piled two and three high as people. They were just bodies. Just dead organic matter.
“Someone put these bodies here.” Caroline’s voice was matter of fact, statement rather than observation.
“But why?” Nick wiped at his jaw, still staring at the pit. “Ethnic cleansing?”
Chris shook his head. “No, not here. Not in these parts. This entire region is filled with good people. There hasn’t been this type of violence in over thirty years.”
Unless something happened to change that. He kept the thought to himself.
Nick turned, ready to walk away. “Well, what I’m looking at is not a bunch of happy people anymore. That’s for sure.”
“Over here!” Caroline’s voice rang out, sharp with alarm. The woman was so stealthy, he hadn’t even heard her move, but she was now off to Chris’s right. Had she walked away to gain some distance from the horrific sight, or was she simply that tactical? Sometimes it was hard to tell.
Chris turned to see Caroline pointing about fifty yards away, off to the north side of the village. Something was in the brush, and it was running away. Fast. Heading out of the village and into the jungle. The shape cut through the tall jungle grass, the long, tall reeds swaying around it like a cornfield being plowed through by a fast-moving car.
Instinct kicked in. “Wait with Grace. Keep her safe,” Chris ordered. “We’re going after whatever the hell that is. Whatever that is might be our clue to whatever took place here.”
Chris took off in full stride, Caroline hot on his heels. They wound quickly through the remains of the village, closing in on the wall of thick grass at its perimeter.
The trail changed and Chris stopped, redirected. Whatever was running away had changed directions. It moved like a wild animal, but wild animals didn’t circle back. Didn’t charge a pair of pursuers. At least, not any wild animal Chris had ever encountered in this area.
The pair dropped to a crouc
h, keeping their backs pressed together to cover their perimeter. Silent. Listening. A faint metallic zing thrummed in the air behind Chris’s back as Caroline pulled free the large Bowie knife she wore in a sheath at the small of her back. She held the blade at her chest, its sharp blade pointing outward, ready to strike. Her other hand was cocked behind her in a tight fist, and her eyes stayed locked on a line of grass a few feet away.
Caroline already in first position, Chris retrieved the knife clipped to his boot. He reversed the blade in his hand, so it pointed backward in his grip—one hand in a fist to punch, the other ready to slash. They were ready.
Behind him, a figure leapt from the dense grass. Caroline was on it before it landed. Chris kept his gaze on the area in front of him. He felt Caroline’s arm swing as she rocketed upward, heard a hard thud as she brought it down. She had it.
A second figure leaped from the grass, this time in front of Chris. Men. These were men they were fighting, not beasts.
Chris’s hands moved automatically around the man’s neck, spun him around, and slammed him to the ground. The man gave out a deep moan and then gasped, winded. Still, he managed to swing toward Chris, knife in hand and ready to kill. Anticipating his blow, Chris slammed a knee down onto the man's forearm, driving the bones together until the man screamed in pain and his knife slid from his grip.
Sinew and muscle contracted as the man clenched, writhing beneath Chris, struggling to overpower him. Chris landed a punch in the man’s lower jaw. Blood sprayed as his lower lip ruptured under the impact and Chris’s fist returned to position, ready to deliver a second hit.
But the attacker went limp beneath Chris. The first blow had left him unconscious, and Chris took a deep breath. Lowered his hand.
When he looked over his shoulder, Caroline was straddled atop the other attacker, her thighs locked against his ribcage. The man beneath her was broken and bloody. His neck was bent, and his head cocked to one side, wide open, pupils the size of dimes. Her left hand still gripped the handle of her knife, the blade deep in the center of the man’s chest.
Caroline wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her right hand, leaving a trail of blood smeared across her face. She exhaled, exhausted. The man was dead.
3
Chris, Caroline, and Nick waited for the man who had attacked Chris to wake up. Grace still lay under the tree where Nick had left her, kept away from any potential problems but in line of sight. She hadn’t opened her eyes again, but she was still breathing. She was getting worse.
Chris and Caroline had dragged the second man back to the village where he lay supine and unconscious in the dirt at their feet—hands splayed out to his sides, palms facing the sky. A solid black tattoo of a crow, wings spread, spanned across his left forearm. The man was short, about five feet tall with dark olive skin. A local. His black hair was pulled back into a short, tight ponytail and he wore a frayed pair of cutoff shorts fashioned from an old pair of what might have once been black jeans. The cut job was a hack, one side longer than the other by about two inches, and it made his legs look oddly uneven. His faded brown t-shirt bore a washed-out image of a girl’s smiling face as she licked a giant lollipop. Lettering marched across the man’s chest. Combat Veteran.
Chris stared at the man’s shirt, scratching at the back of his head. “Am I really seeing this right now?”
“Yeah, you definitely bagged a big bad bird lover, Rake. Congratulations,” Nick shot back, chuckling lightly. “At least he’s alive—unlike Hunter’s victim.”
Caroline sat a few feet away, still attempting to clean the blood from her face. “Coming up on a person like that, there’s consequences, especially if you’re a woman.” Her voice was hot. “Guy jumped at me like a fucking tiger.”
“Consequences?” Brannon echoed. “You gutted him like a sea bass.”
Caroline shrugged. Glugged some water from her canteen on the cloth of her shirt and continued to wipe at her face.
“And where did you put the tiger?”
“In the pile with the rest of the dead people.”
Nick laughed. “Ruthless.”
Chris kept his thoughts to himself. Truth was, Caroline was the tiger. Any guy who made the bad choice to surprise her was likely to end up gutted—or worse. Her skills hadn’t come easy. Some had been hard earned, more out of survival than training. Three years ago, Caroline had been rescued by a Special Ops team after having been captured and held as a prisoner-of-war in North Korea. She’d been beaten, drowned, and deprived of food and water for nearly four years.
Caroline had been given one opportunity for escape, and she’d taken it. When a herd of cattle had wandered into an area of ground littered with landmines, Caroline had fled in the ensuing chaos. She’d made it across the border where a woman had found her, starving and dehydrated, and nursed her back to something closer to health. The village was raided by U.S. special forces after they received a tip the village was a training camp for ISIS radicals. They never found any radicals, but they found Caroline. No one knew what had become of the other three American soldiers in her company. No one knew much about that whole operation; it had been very hush-hush. Most were.
When she was brought back to the states Caroline never even took a sabbatical. A week after being cleared for reentry she’d given her seven-year-old daughter a hug and kiss goodbye, then disappeared back into the world, this time, with the Rake team.
And thank fuck for that, Chris thought. Caroline had saved his ass more times even than he’d saved hers. Nick was his brother-in-arms, but Caroline was his right hand.
Chris fidgeted with the clear propylene sample tube he had taken from the man’s pocket, rotating it around his fingers. The tube was capped with a thick rubber cork, marked in black ink: “CV2.” A clear piece of tape ran across the cork, securing its viscous, gray contents in place. What the hell was it?
Once he was confident it wouldn’t leak, Chris handed the tube to Nick. “What do you think it is?”
Nick studied the tube for a moment, slushing it around so he could see the contents inside. He shook his head. “I have no clue. It’s a sample tube, but I have no idea what’s inside. Usually, these types of containers are used for blood, biomaterial. Whatever's in this one is beyond me, and I’m not at all interested in removing the cap to find out. Is this the only one he had in his pocket?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the other not-so-lucky guy?”
Nick returned the sample tube and Chris held it gingerly, just in case. “Nothing. His pockets were empty.”
The eyes of the stranger began to flutter. Slowly, his head raised, but when his gaze found Chris's, his arms pulled back into his side, searching the ground for his knife.
“Careful,” Chris warned. “You don’t want to make any moves that leave us wondering what you were doing. That didn’t end so well for your friend.”
The man went still, looking first to Nick, then Caroline, and then the surrounding area.
Nick stood, ready to take the man to the ground if he attempted to make a run for it. Caroline sharpened her knife on a small coarse rock she had found on the ground just a few feet away. Her face was still streaked with red. Both his teammates looked relaxed, but Chris knew they were primed and ready, deferring to him to lead the interrogation.
“Who are you?” Chris asked.
The man pulled himself into a sitting position.
“Who are you?” he shot back. His voice was raspy, almost hoarse, and the English words clipped in his thick Spanish accent.
“That’s not how it works. We ask the questions and you answer, considering you just attacked my team.”
For a few seconds the man was silent. Then, he swallowed so hard his throat croaked.
“I was here to get supplies.”
“What supplies?” Chris looked around. “There are no supplies here.”
“I didn’t know that until I got here. I come here every fifteen days or so to get supplies for my vill
age, just like everybody else does. This time there are no supplies.” He looked at the ground. “This time there is no village.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.” The man shook his head and looked around once more. “Where’s the man who was with me?”
The sharp clang of steel against stone turned their attention to Caroline.
“He didn’t make it,” she said.
The man looked Caroline over. The blood stains on her shirt. Her ruddy complexion. He lowered his head, took in a deep breath, and licked dry, cracked lips, but no other emotion played on his features.
“Was he from your village?” Chris resumed.
“No. He was here for supplies, but he wasn’t a friend or from my village.”
Convenient.
The man caught sight of the tube in Chris’s hand, and Chris noticed. He continued to rotate the tube between his fingers, studying the man’s expression.
“Does this look familiar? he asked.
The man swallowed so hard you could hear his throat click. “No.”
“No?”
The man’s eyes darted to the tube and then back to Chris.
“I found it,” he said.
Chris pretended to study the tube in his hand, a stalling effect useful in interrogations. “Where did you find it?”
“It was on the ground outside the village. I picked it up as I was coming in.”
Nick scoffed. “There’s not an ounce of fucking dust on that tube. It’s never seen a speck of dirt.”
The man’s voice was strained. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“The truth,” Chris answered. “I want you to tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“He didn’t ask you if you knew what it was.” Nick growled, obviously irritated.
The man gripped his head with both hands. Being knocked unconscious wasn’t a pleasant experience, and a headache was almost certainly setting in.
Chris slid the sample tube into a pocket of his army green khakis. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to get a straight answer now. He’d have to figure it out later.
