by Reed, N. C.
“I wasn’t wearing them,” she admitted, her voice subdued.
“You what?” Tandi asked, as if he hadn’t quite heard her.
“I wasn’t wearing the plates, okay!” Amanda gasped as Tandi’s hands probed her wound. “I…it’s really uncomfortable on the girls when I’m not wearing a bra, and it’s a damn holiday and, well….” She didn’t bother finishing, seeing the look on the medic’s face.
“It’s uncomfortable,” he repeated. “You left the ceramic out of your vest, the same ceramic that would likely have prevented this wound from being more than a bruise, because it made your tits uncomfortable?!” He was screaming by the time he finished. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”
“Easy, Doc,” Gordy said from above. “Plenty of time to chew her ass out later. Assuming you make sure there is a later.”
“Unbelievable,” Tandi was shaking his head. “Bear wore his vest and caught the unluckiest round ever. Shane wore his and was almost hollowed out from the inside. And you,” he glared, “you wanted to be more comfortable.”
“S-s-sorry,” Amanda stammered, pain hitting her now that the shock was wearing off. “I really thought t-t-today it would be okay, Doc. I’ve never not worn them before, I s-s-swear. I just didn’t have anything to wear underneath.”
Tandi ignored her as he set about trying to save her from her own lack of forethought.
Meanwhile, Shane had taken the wheel in the Cougar and was now charging hard straight for the barn where the fire had come from.
“Whatever they’re using it had to be strong enough to go through her vest at two hundred plus,” Greg was saying. “Got to be a hunting rifle, and we need to be damned careful. This is the same round that punched through a Hummer windscreen before penetrating a vest.”
“She didn’t have her plates in,” Shane informed him calmly.
“What?” three different voices said in unison.
“She wasn’t wearing her plates,” Shane repeated.
“How do you know?” Stacey asked.
“I would have felt them when I unfastened her harness and vest to get to her wound,” Shane replied. “I didn’t. For whatever reason, she wasn’t wearing them.”
“For fu-,” Greg cut himself off. Cursing her decision would do no good right now. Not with six or more rifles aimed at them.
“Heath, anything?” he asked instead.
“Not since the one,” Heath replied, still searching the area around the barn as they drew close.
“Have you seen anyone leaving the barn?”
“No, but you can’t use that,” Heath told him. “We were out of sight while we played musical vehicles. I couldn’t see anything going on then. The one I got was still in the loft, but for all I know he was alone.”
“Okay then, we’ll play it hard and fast,” Greg decided. “Shane, if the barn door is open, drive us right up inside. If it’s closed, bust it down and drive us right up inside. Heath, you get the gun up and cover for us. If we start taking fire, then we back out and come at them on foot under cover from Heath on the MG. If we don’t take fire then the three of us dismount with Heath providing cover and search the barn to see if we can find out who hit us, and maybe why. Questions?”
There were none.
“Then let’s get to it.”
Shane had slowed ever so slightly to make the turn off the road, but as soon as he was straightened out, he floored the Cougar. While it didn’t have all that much top speed, it had plenty of raw power to spare. Shane saw that the door was open wide enough to squeeze through and jammed the vehicle through the sliding doors, sliding to a stop inside.
No fire hit the Cougar. For a few seconds there was just the sound of the idling engine and the whine of the turret. Finally, Heath called out.
“I think we’re clear,” his voice sounded far too loud for him in the silence following the action they’d just seen.
“Heath, cover,” Greg reminded. “Take the ground first, then the loft. Here we go.”
It was a textbook sweep and clear, in as much as something like that could be called textbook. The three men on the ground moved quickly and cleanly through the barn while Heath provided cover, first of the upper floor and then of the ground as the three moved up.
“One down,” Shane called a minute after they hit the loft. “Solid hit to the chest, Heath. Just outside the triangle.”
“Roger that,” Heath’s quiet reply was the most normal sound they’d heard in what seemed like hours.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Greg cursed as he moved over to look.
“Know him?” Stacey asked.
“Landon Bone,” Greg scrubbed at his face with one hand. “How the hell did they know we would be coming this way?”
“You think he was laying for us?” Shane asked. “Wait. Bone, like the guy at the store robbery, Bone?”
“Just like it,” Greg nodded. “Cousin. I said then that we probably hadn’t hear the last of it. This will just make it worse.”
“Looks to me like they’d write this one off as a loss and move on to something else,” Stacey mused. “Oh-for-two and what not.”
“We don’t know yet if it’s a zero for them,” Greg reminded him. “Depends on how Amanda is. Why in the hell would she not be wearing the plates in her vest?”
“Don’t know, man,” Shane shrugged. “What do you want to do here?” he nudged the body with his boot.
“We’ll drag him outside,” Greg decreed. “It’s a mile or more to the nearest house that I can remember. We’ll drag him across the road into the open field and then head for home. No,” he paused. “We’ll drag him across the road, go check that nearest house, and then head for home. I don’t want to miss anything while we’re up here.”
“Sounds good,” Shane nodded, grabbing one leg of the late and unlamented Mister Bone.
-
“What’s going on?” Jose asked as he stepped into Building Two and head long into organized chaos. People were running back and forth, some yelling questions, some yelling orders and others replying to both.
“Greg’s patrol got hit,” Clay told him, face tight. “Hummer’s on the way in with Amanda Lowery hit hard. Somewhere around her appendix, it sounds like. The Cougar was covering and then going to try and see who was shooting at them.”
“How long until they get here?” Jose asked, but before he could answer they could hear a large vehicle roaring to a stop at the front of the building. Seeing Patricia moving with a stretcher, Clay and Jose grabbed it for her, following her outside.
There was blood everywhere in the back of the Hummer as Tandi worked over Amanda’s prone form. She had lost consciousness at some point, though from pain or blood loss there was no telling at first glance. If anyone was surprised to see her topless, they didn’t say so.
“She’s at least part way into shock,” Tandi said as he helped move her out of the Hummer and onto the stretcher. “I’ve got an IV going to pump her blood volume up, but she has lost a lot of blood. The round entered the lower left torso, right about the area of the appendix. I don’t know if she still has an appendix or not.”
“She doesn’t,” Patricia supplied. “It was part of the medical history we took on everyone a while back. To help in times like these. She had it removed when she was a teen.”
“Then I don’t know where the blood is coming from unless it hit a tied off artery or something,” Tandi shook his head as the group hurried inside. Clay and Jose carried the stretcher into the clinic where Jaylyn Thatcher and Kaitlin Caudell were already prepared to receive her.
“Single gunshot wound, lower left side,” Tandi reported. “Blood pressure is one hundred over sixty but steady, respiration has bounced up and down between eleven and nineteen before she lost consciousness, then steadied at thirteen after that. Pulse is eighty-five, but also slightly erratic, again while she was still conscious. After she passed out, her pulse rose to ninety but stayed there. It has been spotty at times, but that could have been our working con
ditions. Her pupils are reactive to light, and she was oriented times three before she passed out.”
“Where is her vest?” Jaylyn asked. “We need to see if-,”
“There won’t be any shrapnel from the plates, because she wasn’t wearing them,” Tandi almost spat. “There is a hole in her blouse, and a chunk missing from her web gear. You’ll need to be on the lookout for those.”
“Why wasn’t she wearing her plates?” several voices asked at once.
“I’ll let her tell you, assuming she gets the chance,” Tandi shook his head rather than say. Devon Knowles had no such hesitation.
“She didn’t have a bra to wear, and if you’re not flat-chested then the plates rub you the wrong way without one,” she replied to all at once. “That simple.”
“That isn’t simple,” Clay looked toward the ceiling. “Of all the things….”
“Worry about that later,” Jaylyn order brusquely. “Right now, everyone who doesn’t need to be here, by which I mean everyone I don’t need to help me, clear out. Now!”
Everyone she didn’t need cleared out.
-
“I understand that Amanda Lowery was wounded?”
Clay looked up to see Xavier Adair standing over him. He did a double take since it almost looked as if Xavier was concerned. Clay shook it off as a figment of his imagination.
“She was,” Clay nodded.
“And who might we have to thank for that?” Xavier asked, polite as always.
“Technically, her,” Clay informed him. “She had taken the plates out of her vest because they were uncomfortable to wear without a bra on, and she didn’t have one.”
“I see,” Xavier didn’t react otherwise. “I was actually more interested in who might have pulled the trigger,” he clarified. To those who knew him, that overly polite and precise manner hinted that he was angry. Something rare indeed for Xavier Adair.
“I don’t know,” Clay admitted. “Greg hasn’t returned yet, and they haven’t called anything in. I’m hoping-,” he stopped, cocking his head to one side and listening. Both men turned to see the Sheriff’s Cougar coming up the road much faster than normal.
“Maybe we can find out now,” Clay said, getting to his feet. The Cougar didn’t slide to a stop the same way the Hummer had, instead pulling in at a more sedate speed to drop Greg off before continuing on the way to be cleaned and fueled. Greg looked exhausted as he walked toward the two men waiting for him.
“Any word?” he asked simply.
“She’s in surgery,” Clay told him. “All we know at the moment. What happened?”
“The Bone family somehow either knew what route we were taking, or else made a lucky guess,” Greg sighed. “Laid an ambush for us up on Low Gap Road, in that isolation barn that Mister Jacobs used to use for hay and to hold stock in once in a while.”
“Bone family?” Xavier asked. “Is that some sort of gang affiliation?”
“Oddly enough, it is if you were in Memphis,” Greg nodded. “Here it’s just ordinary riffraff. Mean and vengeful riffraff, mind you, but riffraff, nevertheless. This has to be them striking back at us for Kiefer. Heath killed one of the shooters and it was Landon Bone, a cousin of Kiefer’s. We think there were at least five more, but they managed to get away clean while we stopped to let Doc take over the Hummer to get Amanda back here ASAP.”
“I mean this in no way to be critical,” Xavier said gently. “But did you not do a gear check before heading out?”
“I did, but it was visual,” Greg shrugged. “Everyone was kitted up and ready for action. There was no way to know she wasn’t wearing her plates. It never even occurred to me, as often as we preached about safety, that she wouldn’t have them in.”
“Nor would it have to me,” Xavier admitted. “At some point we must all be responsible for our own well-being.”
“I’m going to check on everyone else and then try and clean up and get some chow,” Greg said. “I want to try and be down here when they bring us the word.”
Clay hadn’t even noticed that Xavier had left until he went to tell him something.
-
“Heard Amanda got shot,” Zach mentioned as soon as Xavier approached him. “That right?”
“I’m afraid it is,” Xavier nodded. “I suppose the proper thing to do in this instance is to await the Sheriff’s handling of this situation,” he said idly, looking off into the distance.
“Probably,” Zach agreed.
“Are you familiar with these Bone people?” Xavier asked, turning to look at him.
“I am,” Zach nodded. “Wonderful folks,” his sarcasm had the usual bite to it.
“I should like to pay these people a visit, I believe,” Xavier remarked almost serenely.
“I just happen to know where they live,” Zach assured him.
“How many of them are there?” Xavier asked, settling down to business.
-
Greg was standing before he even realized he was getting on his feet, Clay about two seconds behind him, and Jose about one behind that.
“She’ll recover,” Jaylyn didn’t keep them in suspense. “The blood was from a tear where her appendix was removed some years ago. It’s a simple procedure that rarely if ever needs any sort of follow-up. It wouldn’t have this time had she not been shot.”
“Fortunately, the tear was small. The bullet caught the very edge of the area where the ligature was placed for her appendectomy. A one-in-a-million shot, probably. Otherwise, it would have been messy but not likely a problem otherwise. As it is, the damage is minimal considering the bullet,” she held up the offending metal. “Thankfully, it was a full jacket, a thirty caliber of some type it looks like, and didn’t splinter. Had it been a soft nose…well,” she left the rest unsaid.
“She’s still under the influence of the drugs and will be for some time,” she continued. “We really need someone to sit with her, preferably one of the other young women since they seem to stick together. It would be better for her to see a friendly face when she wakes.”
“When do you think that will be?” Greg asked her.
“Early tomorrow, barring unforeseen complications,” Jaylyn promised.
“You expect her to recover fully?” Clay asked. “She’s the type to want to know if she’ll be able to keep going out,” he explained. “I don’t want to lie to her about it.”
“No, don’t ever lie to a patient about their recovery,” she agreed at once. “And yes, barring as I said any unforeseen complications, she will recover fully. And once cleared for duty, should she desire to continue to go out on patrol, she will be able to do so. Now, if that’s all, I really do need to rest a bit,” she smiled.
“Of course,” all three said in unison. “Sorry to keep you, Doctor,” Greg added.
“That’s quite alright,” she smiled a bit brighter as she made for the stairs. Once she was gone, Greg let out a long breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and collapsed into his chair.
“Thank God.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“It’s a problem for more than just her,” Lainie informed Clay once he had let her know what had happened to Amanda and why.
“What do you mean?” Clay frowned. “It wouldn’t be a problem if she hadn’t taken the plates out of the carrier. That’s what they’re there for!”
“You said Devon told you that Amanda didn’t have a bra to wear, and that was what made her uncomfortable,” Lainie reminded him. “That-,”
“That’s no reason to remove something that might save your life,” Clay muttered. “How bad can that even be?”
“For some of us,” she raised an eyebrow at him, “it can be very bad. Painful, even. And yes, the plates do make it worse. When I said it was a problem for more than just her, I was referring to the fact that more than one of them has only limited undergarments suitable for that kind of work. A woman with much in the way of build really needs an athletic or sports bra for something like that, and unfortunately, sever
al of them don’t have even one, let alone two or three. So, they’re doing the best they can with what they have. We’re trying to make more for them, but there are always a dozen other things that need our attention at the same time.”
“I still don’t see-,”
“Imagine one of your balls,” Lainie said, deliberately using crude language to get his attention, “caught outside an athletic supporter while the other is still inside and you’re riding your horse at a gallop. How bad is that?”
Clay had no immediate response.
“Why didn’t she say something?” he finally murmured, sighing in mild exasperation.
“How often do you let others know when you aren’t wearing underwear?” Lainie replied at once.
“I meant about the plates,” Clay rolled his eyes. “She could have told Greg she was having trouble, and he could-,”
“A woman tells you, a man, she’s ‘having trouble’,” she used air quotes, “and what’s the first thing that pops into your head?”
“Well,” Clay hesitated, thinking.
“Exactly,” Lainie nodded firmly. “Those girls are doing their best to hold up their part of the bargain they made with you. Having one of you give her hell for missing a patrol due to ‘issues’,” she again used air quotes, “puts her in an awkward position where she gets ribbed about it later. No woman wants or needs that kind of shit, especially from a man.”
“Okay, alright, I get it,” Clay held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I doubt it,” Lainie gave a very unladylike snort of derision. “Every one of you would be on about having to make adjustments for the ‘girls in the crew’. And again, the situation is awkward enough without having some asshole assume she meant ‘female issues’ and not bothering to check and see what was actually wrong. Because God forbid one of you has to actually consider how easy things are for women in these new and exciting times we live in!”
“How did I become the bad guy, here?” Clay demanded, though not harshly. “None of this is my fault, Lainie! And since when have you ever heard me giving someone a hard time like that for something they have no control over? For that matter what have you learned about any of my guys, either from the unit or from Gordy and his friends, that gives you the idea that a single one of them would do something like you’re describing? Not a one of them are that kind of men, and you know that, or should.”
